Inside the building was broken stone and wood and a whole lot of dust, with the debris changing to broken chairs and bits of concrete when I reached what used to be the seating area. I kept going, coming across a couple of people that looked like they were mostly okay, if a little stunned, but I couldn’t find Amelia.
I got to the stage area, or rather what used to be the stage area, only to discover that it had apparently collapsed into whatever was underneath – usually the tunnels and things used to get from one side of the stage to the other, reserved for stagehands or the orchestra or whatever. I paused, not really sure why I was so convinced Amelia would be in the stage area, and then carefully, taking advantage of my cat dexterity, descended into the gaping hole to continue looking.
Then I smelled something familiar and perked up. That was Amelia’s perfume. She was down here.
As quickly as I dared, I climbed through the debris until I found her, then nudged her ever so gently to make sure she was alive, my heart beating in fear that maybe she wasn’t.
But then she groaned a little, opened her eyes, and blinked at me in the darkness. “Ari?” She managed. “Is that you?”
I rubbed my head against hers, then tried to figure out how bad the situation really was.
Amelia was lying on her back and looked like she was trapped under a large beam. I didn’t smell blood and Zahara had said the injury didn’t seem to be too serious, so she might be mostly okay – but she was very clearly trapped. I watched, concerned, as she attempted to push up on the beam, but it looked like a huge support pillar for the stage ceiling and didn’t even budge.
She laid back again, breathing, and I noticed her breathing wasn’t as deep as normal. Right, the beam – it might not be injuring her that much yet, but she was trapped under it, and she couldn’t breathe fully with it on top of her the way it is. She might be okay for now, but she wouldn’t be if she didn’t get help.
Apparently, Amelia figured this out, too. “I think I’m stuck,” she murmured faintly. “But they’re not – they’re not going to be able to get back here soon, are they? Fire and Safety has to be careful when they come in a building like this, to make sure something doesn’t give way and they end up with their own people in trouble, too. I’m way in the back, and moving something like this, with all the debris on top of it,” she paused, and swallowed hard, “they can’t even do that immediately. It’s too risky. They’d probably have to bring in equipment.”
She was quiet for a bit, considering the options. “Ari?” She asked after a moment. “Can you – can you please tell Zahara I love her? Just in case?” She reached over to pet me when she saw the look on my face. “I’m not giving up yet, but just in case – just in case they don’t get here in time,” she said softly. “And maybe – maybe you should be with her, so you don’t accidentally get injured if something else does fall. There are sometimes aftershocks, you know. This building could collapse more if those happen.” She tried to look brave for me, but I wasn’t having it.
No. No way was I just going to let her possibly die because the firefighters couldn’t get here fast enough and couldn’t risk moving stuff without being extra careful. And no way was I leaving here, either.
On almost angry paws, I stomped over next to her, turned around, and glanced up at the beam, eying it for a moment and then adjusting my position slightly.
“Ari?” Amelia asked, watching me. “What are you – ”
She didn’t finish her sentence as I started to change.
Not to my human form, that would be pretty useless here. No, to my other form.
I was an incredibly rare type of shifter. Almost all shifters – non-aquatic ones, anyway – had no magic other than their ability to shift into their animal form and back again. But very rarely, a shifter child of two types of supernaturals might get the abilities of both of its parents. In my case, I was both shifter and sphinx.
As a sphinx, my form was solid stone, and I could grow and shrink to any size I really wanted – as big as statues or even an entire building, or as small as a chess piece. I couldn’t exactly run around in sphinx form –humans tended to notice stone animals that moved – and I hadn’t particularly needed it until now, but right now, I needed a way to lift an incredibly heavy object off of my Mum and this was the obvious solution.
Amelia openly gaped at me, jaw dropped, as I turned to stone and shifted my wings a bit, then continued to grow – slowly, just to be safe – until the beam creaked and started to move.
Her eyes snapped back to the beam and she figured out what I was doing, immediately working to help by trying to wriggle herself out from under the beam. With just a little bit more size from me, she could safely pull herself out, and then she was free, sitting there staring at me in wonder, while I started to carefully shrink back down so I didn’t disrupt too much of the debris in the process.
Just as I started to move out from under the beam and Amelia started to ask me how I’d done that, I heard a noise and felt a rumbling through my paws. I instantly flung myself in her direction – but not on her, a stone sphinx my size would hurt – and stretched out my stone wings to protect her. I could feel some concrete and wood bits breaking against my wings, but they didn’t hurt me, and under my stone wings, Amelia was crouching safely.
And then the aftershock was over. Carefully, I pulled back my wings, looking around to make sure it was safe, then shrank back into proper cat size and switched to my Bengal form.
Amelia was still staring at me, now wordless, but I wasn’t willing to wait. I knew the way out of here, and I could make sure I could get her out.
So I meowed, took a couple of steps, and looked back at her, waiting.
Amelia swallowed, then got to her feet shakily and started following me. “All right, Ari,” she agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”
~~~~~
I wasn’t sure which was better after we got out of the ruined theater – Zahara running for us and hugging Amelia tightly while sobbing; Amelia picking me up and carrying me off before the news and camera people, who were apparently trying to report on the disaster, noticed any of us – even though they wouldn’t have realized who I was in cat form; or the evening after we got back to Amelia’s apartment. We had to get washed up and cleaned and Zahara managed to cook something for us so we could eat, but we were all kind of exhausted and stressed after the day.
Amelia hadn’t said anything for the longest time, but when Zahara asked her if she had any bruises or anything she could heal, Amelia suddenly burst out with it and explained everything that had happened, her words tumbling out of her mouth.
“I didn’t know shifters could do that!” She explained. “Ari turned to stone! And got so big! He probably saved my life,” she added, a little more soberly, reaching over to stroke my cheek gently. “Thank you,” she told me. “Thank you, Ari.”
I rubbed my head against hers, happy to give a cat version of a hug in response.
“That’s not a shifter thing,” Zahara said slowly. “That’s a sphinx. You said your mom was sphinx, you got that from her, didn’t you? And shifter from your dad. That’s pretty special, getting both of their abilities.” She thought for a long moment. “No wonder you knew your aunt was wrong,” she murmured at last. “You could turn to stone and get rid of illnesses. Broken bones, no, but illnesses – sphinx essentially heal themselves of anything but broken bones when they shift into sphinx form. I’m not sure why bones are different, but I guess the sphinx magic needs them to base the sphinx form off of? Anyway, sphinx aren’t invulnerable, but in stone form, it’s really hard to injure one and their ability to heal from almost anything that isn’t bone-related can certainly be handy.”
I was actually surprised to learn this. I hadn’t realized I could heal from stuff like that, but maybe that explained why nothing had ever come of the blood I’d coughed up? I had shifted briefly to sphinx the night I ran away from my aunt’s, because someone had gotten close to me on the bus and I’d just gone for stone cat sculpture instead of actual cat, because actual cat might be kicked off the bus, but stone cat sculpture probably belonged to someone and would be left alone, right? It had worked, but maybe it had also unknowingly healed me from anything residual from my aunt’s treatments.
Zahara apparently noticed my surprise. “You didn’t actually know that, did you?” She mused. “Well, no matter – it proves your point about your aunt, at least. And I’m glad that also means nothing she did will have lasting effects on you.” Then she leaned over and gave me a long kiss on the top of my head, her eyes a little damp when she sat back. “Thank you for saving Amelia,” she told me.
Amelia gave me a kiss, too, then reached over to pull me into a possibly-too-tight hug, but I would never complain about that. “You’re amazing, Ari, and I’m so glad you found us – we found you – whichever. I’m glad you’re our family now.”
I rubbed my head against her face, purring loudly.
I was glad, too. This was my family and I was glad that today, I’d been able to help keep our little family safe. It was nice that after everything they’d done for me, I’d been able to help them in return. Help all of us, really, because I didn’t think either Zahara or me would be okay without Amelia now.
Zahara hugged Amelia with one arm, resting her face against my other side, and we sat there in the kitchen quietly, in each other’s arms, happy that we’d survived and were all okay.
We were a tough little family. We could get through anything.
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