September Writing Challenge
1. Petrichor
The fan buzzes loudly and uselessly from one corner of the room, while Xiayu lies on the floor in front of it. This had seemed a good idea 10 minutes before, while the stone floor was still cold and it had given her some respite from the extreme heat. Now it feels like a rock put under the sun underneath her, because her own body temperature is peaking little by little.
Mason tut-tuts while entering the room and seeing her there. She raises her head to look at him, before letting it fall back down.
“Just because of your… condition, you shouldn’t just abandon all your manners, young lady”, Mason says with displeasure.
Xiayu groans and rolls over onto her back. She stretches her arms, little tufts of fur already gathering at her elbows and upper arm and nails getting longer.
“This is taking for-ev-er”, she whines.
“Yes, well”, Mason replies, discreetly producing a handkerchief from his long sleeve and putting it up to his nose. “It is what it is.”
Xiayu looks at him again, brow furrowed at his overcoat.
“I think you’re overdressed even for being dead, Mason.”
Mason shakes his head, handkerchief firmly in place.
“Unlike you, I retain some dignity.”
Xiayu looks down at her orange tank top and denim shorts and shrugs awkwardly from the floor.
“It’s all gonna rip up soon enough, who cares.”
Mason sighs and turns back on his heels to leave.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Xiayu waves him off with a ‘See ya’.
After a while she sits up, giving up on the fan and turning it off, then getting up completely to see out the window.
The cliff that surrounds the house looks specially menacing in the orange glow of the sunset, like it’s a lava pit that will burn off any person who dare approach them. The thought just makes Xiayu feel even hotter.
Looking off harder into the horizon, she sees her salvation still quite a few miles away: darks clouds gathering in the sky.
She takes a big whiff of the outside air. Her senses are not sharpened enough yet, but she detects the slightest hint of rain. Finally!
Both the clouds and her transformation take their sweet time to get there, but both are completely worth it. With a roar of triumph, Xiayu jumps out the window and digs her sharp claws into the soil, thin rain already falling chipper against her, to reach the zenith of the mountain, an esplanade where she can run around while the water starts falling harder and harder.
The clouds have obscured the moon and for Xiayu it feels weird to be out and about as a wolf without having the moonlight shining down on her, but she’s loving the rain so much she doesn’t actually mind.
She howls in delight at the first thunder. She hears a far away response, from an old friend who lives nearby. She answers gingerly.
After a while, when they’ve both tired of the conversation, she just sits on the edge with her front paws outstretched, feeling the raindrops against her fur and her snout, when she raises her head upwards.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knows when she opens her eyes is that it’s almost sunrise and she’s less than half wolf already. She notices she’s no longer at the edge of the cliff, and that she’s been draped over with a cape that couldn’t be any more stereotypical vampire even if Mason has bought it in a Halloween store. Xiayu contains a fond chuckle, while she sits up cross-legged and pulls it tighter around her (very naked) body.
She waits until the sun rises in front of her, all the while smelling the petrichor from last night’s rain, getting a little sad when with each sniff she can tell less and less nuance in the smell. Soon it just smells like wet dirt.
She feels a shudder go through her and quickly rises to her feet, deciding to head back home right this instant. If she catches a cold again after a transformation, Mason will get very mad again.
She pads barefoot over the mud, leaving small footprints over the larger ones she had made last night, and lets the cape flutter about behind her. She laughs, without a care in the world.
Life is good for her.