The Shadow's Gift

The shadow slipped silently through the trees, it’s burden fitting into the palm of its hand but the weight on its spirit barely allowing it to walk. It was a genderless entity summoned by one of powerful magic to complete an errand that the mortality of the summoner did not allow. This particular being had borne many names over the countless centuries, lived to see many cultures. It looked now for the last of the summoner’s blood magic. There was only one left who bore both the blood and the magic, a single descendant of the right combination. It did not need a name to find her, like a bloodhound it could smell the person it sought, though it was more of a feeling than a true sense of smell. The woods grew light with the coming dawn, and it could tell it was near its goal. It would get there that day.

Arania sat flipping through an old photo album. She was trying to find a certain picture, but hadn’t been able to yet. She was growing frustrated when she felt the strong arms of a clone wrap around her neck.

"Hello beautiful." His husky voice whispered in her ear.

"Hey sexy," She couldn’t help but smile. "Thought you were helping Disco with something in his lab."

"I was, but we finished early, and he wanted to go sweep his Angel off her feet before Jade finished his watch." Mus settled onto the sofa beside her. "I thought I would come see what you were up to."

She chuckled and showed him the albums, pointing out various people as they started going through the pictures together. Telling him stories of her past and her family, she finally found the portrait she had been seeking.

"My only picture of my great-great-grandmother. She was the first woman shaman in the tribe. She was very powerful, at least according to the stories I was told as a child." Gently tracing around the beautiful face in the picture, she smiled.

"My love, do you see it?" Mus pondered as she shook her head. "You look identical to her. You could pass for twins."

She hung the portrait on the wall in her room, placing it carefully over the fireplace. The room grew dark as the sun set beyond the balcony. She smiled faintly, and prepared herself for bed. She’d be sleeping alone that night by choice. Slipping into a thick warm flannel nightgown and relaxed against her pillows, reading for a while before dozing off.

She was being chased, the echoes of their footsteps followed her closely. The only reason she hadn’t been caught yet was because she knew these woods better then they. She had been brought up here, and spoke with the animals as most spoke with people. Her people were gone now, her children sent away to the schools to remove their heritage from their minds and souls.

And now they chased her, hurling words of anger and hate at her back as she fled into the trees. They called her witch, Satan’s concubine. Their ignorance of her ways caused them to label her. In their fanaticism they wanted to burn her as a witch, like those in Salem were doing. Her eyes darted around her, she was nearing a clearing, and that would mean they could see her. Praying to the Great Spirit, she fell to her knees and dug at the soil beneath her fingers.

When the hole was big enough she ripped her talisman from her neck, burying it under the safety of a giant elm tree and started one final ceremony before they got there. The shadow bowed its head and sunk into the soil. When the men caught up with her she was already dead.

Ari awoke to a soft noise coming from the balcony. She rose and walked out into the moonlight and looked out over the yard and trees beyond. She listened to the night, and faintly heard sobbing from within the edges of the trees. Wrapping a warm robe around herself she floated down to the grass.

Silently stepping around the pond she grew close to the trees. A shadow watched her, unseen. There under a beautiful ancient elm sat a woman. Her long black hair cloaked her face as she knelt with her head in her hands. She seemed to glow in the moonlight, her white dress decorated in shapes made of turquoise beads and silver.

She raised her hand and pointed to the tree behind her, and the shadow stepped out. Arania startled and stepped back a little when she realized the woman was looking at her. Bright blue eyes pierced through the gloom of the night and watched her face. She looked down at her hand as she felt cold metal pressing into her palm. As she looked back up, both the shadow and the woman were gone. In her hand she held a necklace, strung on deer hide, the shape of the pendant she knew as a thunderbird.

Sitting hours later, still awake, she stared at the necklace in her palm, then back up at the portrait over the fireplace. She held the same necklace as the woman wore in the picture. She wondered what was happening. Touching the necklace she saw everything that her great-great-grandmother had done and seen in her life. Oddly it did not frighten her.

"I suppose with everything that has happened here, it’s not really that surprising." She murmured to herself. "But why me? It’s not like I am the only one left in the family, I do have two sisters."

With a sigh she looked up at the picture once more as she put the pendant on a silver chain and put it on her neck. Her eyes glowed brilliantly as the power of the talisman took hold of her and she finally understood.

She stood in the middle of a forest clearing, the woman from the portrait in front of her. It was almost like looking into a mirror. The biggest differences were in the skin and hair. The woman before her had waist length black hair, her complexion a soft rust color. She was the epitome of Native American beauty. Their eyes identical, their stature and way of standing so similar the mirror feeling was even stronger as they looked at each other.

"Greetings my precious child." The woman brushed her long straight black hair away from her face. "I was called She Who Speaks With The Spirits. At least in your tongue that is what it translates to. To make things easier for you, you can call me Raven, for the messenger to the Great Spirit."

"Raven, I suppose that makes sense. I heard the stories and legends before. But why me, what is so special about me that I was given this gift?" Arania sat in the soft grass.

"My child, you were not chosen, these abilities, this gift has always been within you. In my time, had you been born among our people that gift would have been nurtured and you would have been taught how to use it from the time you were little. Because of the time and the world you were born into there was no one there who was able to teach you these things. Your grandfather did not know enough to help you." Raven settled in front of her. "Your friends, the lioness and the one called Angel, their powers stem from the same place as our family’s. There are things that even they do not understand about what they possess yet, but their guides will help them as I help you. You do not need the talisman to use your abilities though, they are within your very being."

Arania absorbed what was said. It made sense to her. She understood the fields of electricity around the world, so understanding the unseen was easy. The concept of the powers being inside of her was difficult to comprehend.

"Tell me my dear, have you ever had feelings of something being wrong and find out something has happened. That is part of it, untrained it can not focus enough to see exactly what is wrong, but it knows enough to know when something is wrong with someone you care about." A smile graced her lips. "Now you will have the chance to learn, to hone the abilities you were born with. You will have a long time to do it too. You see, you are immortal, you have been for a long time, you just didn’t know it."

Arania frowned a little. "What do you mean?"

"Well my dear, when you were altered, the powers it brought out were amplified by what was already within you. Your link with nature was brought out in an unusual manner, and just like the electrical power around you in the world never die, you will never die." Raven continued. "But that is not what I need to tell you about now. The necklace I gave you is a way of channeling the power you possess, a tool to aid you in learning to control it. There are two spells on it though, at least what you would consider spells, to simplify your understanding. It allows you to change, to take on a form other than your own, for instance, your friends, the tigresses, how they can shift to a cat. The form you can possess is limited only by your imagination."

Ari looked down at the necklace around her neck. A half smile graced her lips and she burst out into giggles. "Oh man I know the first thing I will do too."

Raven smiled broadly. She could feel the things that her descendant was thinking, and understood. Though it was not quite what she would have used the talisman for, she could not disapprove as she meant only to play a joke, and have fun, not to do harm.

"There is another thing it can do. You now can take on the appearance of any human you wish, within reason. You must know their size, age and other basic information. Your voice will remain your own however, and without studying them you can not automatically act as they would. As time goes by you will understand more about what you can do. I will always be here to help you, and should you need me again, just think of me, and I will answer."

Arania nodded and looked at the woman before her. Focusing her thoughts she embraced the spirit that would guide her and returned to her body.

A giggle escaped from the shadow behind Sparrow as he stepped out of the shower. Water glistened on his bare white skin as he reached for his towel. He started, looking around, but oddly there was nothing there to have made the sound.

"Hmmm…must have come from the vents." He thought to himself. He looked around again. "Could have sworn I grabbed the towel. Oh well."

He headed into his room and looked through the closet for a fresh towel. Finding one the right size her wrapped it around his waist. Stretching he hunted through his drawers for some clothes, his frown growing as he found his dressers conspicuously empty.

"This is not good." He muttered as he headed for his closet. He glared as he looked into it, empty hangars rocked as he slammed the door shut. "DAMNIT!"

He cursed a blue streak as he hunted for any sign of his clothing. The shadow admired the view and with a wave of it’s hand the towel faded into thin air. His eyes went wide as he saw this and looked around the room again, seeing nothing but his shadow on the wall.

He grabbed a sheet off his bed and tried to fasten it as a toga of sorts. It kept falling off and puddling on the floor at his feet. The shadow ran a hand over his side before returning to its place on the wall. Sparrow jumped, spinning around so fast he fell onto the floor.

"What the blazes is going on here??" He yelled out into the room.

"As light turns to dark, and dark turns to light, I return to the form that is right." The shadow stepped from the wall and winked at the clone at her feet.

"ARANIA!" He gasped, startled at her sudden appearance in the room.

"Mm-hmm, I’ve learned a few new tricks Sparrow my love. Would you like to see?" She grinned and pounced.

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