Well, this is a new one.
So I haven't fronted in a little bit for reasons that are good but private, and as soon as I took over earlier we experienced a (first ever?) shift as what I think is probably our "base form" in shapeshifter terms, which was more or less a bunch of floating magma. And that quickly congealed into a big thick heavy tail, and that settled into a full-body shift as what seems to be a Salamander, as in the mythical creature. Bright, glowing red-orange, frilly gills, big round amphibian fingers, a caudal fin, and the big tail that's sort of oozing and leaving a trail of lava behind us when we walk around. My throat feels warm, I have spots down my sides that spurt little jets of flame.
If this is how it's natural to appear as our "pure" earthkind form, no wonder we've always loved red efts so much. They're the right color. Not the right shape, though, we're broad and flat with small eyes, like a giant salamander.
I drove home from work, and the moment I turned the key I could feel the combustion happening in the engine in front of me, like the heartbeat of a living thing. That's never happened before. It's like there's a whole new sensory system in my body that reacts to flame, even now at home I can feel myself sensing my environment in a new way, almost searching.
I lit some candles and sat with them around me. I could feel them, just like with the car, like they were people in the room with me. It almost felt like being charged, like they were feeding into me, the way adjacent fires heighten each other. I sat and spoke with them for a while, and I think I will start doing this often. I used to sit with candles all the time, I don't know when I stopped. Blowing them out felt like the end of a gathering of friends.
I'm now remembering six years or so ago when I visited Sequoia National Park and spent an afternoon meeting trees with my best friend, the one I suspect is also earthkind, and the one big sequoia that drew me back to him to talk longer. They all knew what I was far more than I did at the time (and probably still do), and I knew this, and I asked him for advice. He told me about how fire is a right of passage for sequoias, how their burn scars mark their age with pride, how it brings life to their children, whose cones can only open in the heat of a full blaze, how they all must find fire to ensure the forest lives on. He showed me where my cone was within me and told me I needed to find my fire. At the time I didn't know what to do about it, because I was lost and hurting and fire was such a foreign element to me, but I think I've finally found it.
It feels like life. It feels like being me.
