Short story-if you guys like it I'll do weekly installments

[riboflavintx]

The year 2006 is when the New Tribes were brought into being, we know now our ancestors could be our past and yet be nothing like their future. To them, lost in their link of the elements, slaves to tchnology and stubboness. I shudder to think of a world with out the noble Sh'randu, the timeless and wise Gloki, the firey Bryx, or the etheral V'spa. This world in the tale of our beginings had just come to the birth of a new way, and as familar as they are to us, think of the terror felt on that fateful day....
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Water

I stretched, and opened my eyes. Everything looked out of focus, like staring though a fishbowl. I felt cold and a little sick to my stomach. I blamed it on over celebration of my twenty first birthday.
"A pox on bocks, the Irish, and bar night life!"

My voice even sounded funny. I smacked my lips, feeling as though a sponge used in cleaning bar floors had been left in my mouth all night. I yawned, feeling as though my jaw were unhinged from my head, and decided to get started on killing a hang over. I pulled a joint out from the hollowed base of a Fu dog statue next to my bed and wandered into the bathroom. I cranked on the overhead vent, lit the apple spice candle I kept on the sink, stripped and slid behind the curtin before lighting up. I pulled a long drag.

"mmm ahhhh"

I turned the shower on,careful not to get my joint wet, letting the water pound against my midriff. This was about the time I fully woke up. I looked down, seeing elongated lightly scaled toes, and thin gold-green webbing between the toes. My nails, no claws now were still tinted in the light purple nail polish of yesterday. I know I sound rather calm about all this, but I did have some really good hydro in me, and have been unflappable from childhood, also I was hoping it was a dream. I looked at my legs they were corded in muscle now, and the scales ran up the fronts of my thighs growing larger as they approached my pubic and belly regions. Ironically the tiny pearl like scales replacing my pubic hair were exactlly the same shade as the strawberry blonde hair they replaced. I no longer had a belly button, and creamy white large plated scales went from my stomach up to my neck. I wasn't totally covered in large scales however. I rubbed my arm with a fairly normal hand, aside from the same golden webbing, and outer scale protection. I felt like sandpaper, or shark skin. I steppe dout of the shower, with it still running to look in the mirror on the back of the door.

"Well...holy crap"

I was the same height, about the same build. This is one of the few times I was glad I had a small chest, seeing as it has stayed the same, but my nipples were also gone, I now had large pectoral scale plates the color of old ivory. I looked myself over, my skin was forest green with faint slate stripping from my spine to my sides all the way down to my.......tail...

"TAIL?!"

I had a broad proweful tail, like a crocodils. I was willing to bet I was an excellent swimmer. I finally willed myself to look at my face.

"Hmm not crocodil headed like an Eygptain god"

My mouth had thin lips, fewer frontal teeth, and more 'gripping' teeth. I had more of a muzzle look to my nose, I could see water blocking mebranes in each nostril. My face was still oval shaped, but from my brow to my nose it was covered in pearl like beaded scales the same strawberry red blonde as before, I had a ridge of small ruddy horns, or horn like growhs for hair. No eyebrows, and a more sensitive tounge. My ears had become moveable and hard like flippers. My eyes were a lovely glowing topaz. I stuck my tounge out.

"hisssssphhh"


I noticed two small silts beind my ears, I turned my head and tried to get a look with my larger, slightly globular eyes. I blinked(I got to keep true eyelids unlike the reptile I had become) What a crazy dream! I saw what looked to be rudimentary gills. I turned back to the shower thinking. I place dmy joint back on the sink counter, grinning at my reflection.

"I look like kermit the frog with a cig"
I stepped back into the shower sticking my head into the water with caution. My new gills tingled and exposed themselves like a salamanders. I grabbed my body scrub wondering the best way to clean sclaes, and when I'd wake up. That when I heard a scream. My mother! in trouble! I didn't think I jumped from the shower, turning it off, hiding the joint, and tossing on my bath robe. The terry colth felt strange straining against a tail. I bolted down the stairs to her room.

"Mom ....mom are you ok?"
"Oh God, oh my god, Sara it's awful! I'm a monster...a terrible monster"

I felt a chill, surely I was still dreaming?
"mom it's a dream! nothing but my dream!"

She opened her door weeping. "oh God baby, you too?"
There she stood, my mother, looking like some strange humanoid dinosuarian creature. Her coloring was varied from mine...but he ryes...her eyes were the same!

"oh...shit...what''s happened to us?"


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Earth

[Cryptonomicon]

Pretty interesting so far. I like it, plus you've gone and cliff-hung us... So I have no choice.

I love that they were "Slaves to their stubboness"

I could honestly say Stubboness all day long.

In all seriousness though, i do really like it.

[riboflavintx]

*cough missing spellchecking office applications cough*

[riboflavintx]

not yet a week,but I was bored so I decided to set up another element
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Earth

It was the late evening, soon I would step outside.

"I hope they've called off deer season...I hope I'm not the only one"

I knew I wasn't, my brother had called me, hysterical when he and his wife
had...changed...but you don't want to take chances that there is a hunter
out there when you've got the double pointed horns like those of a
Pronghorn and your torso ends in the bottom half of a fine slick coated
buck. I was glad now that I'd rented this remodeled farmhouse instead of a
loft closer to campus. The original doors made it easy to get my awkward
body through as I..trotted.. out into the opening dusk. I had decided to
walk towards town to check on a classmate, who ha had been my confidant
enough times to trust that my newest surprise would not scare her off, or
disgust.

As soon as my hooves touched the soft dusky sage grasses I felt calm,
soothed even. I stopped wondering how such thin legs and skittering
goatish hooves could support such a massive weight as I surely weighed now.
I knew before that i was 5'10, a respectable height, now I suspected I
towered at 6'5 and my weight of 150 must have had 50 or more pounds added.
I decided unlike the centaur I now resembled to keep wearing clothing,
once I got a tee-shirt past my horns it wasn't so bad. I wished I could
get a more in depth look of how I have been altered, but trying to squeeze
in the bathroom had awoke a new found fear of enclosed spaces. I found my
speed greatly increased, flying over the low mounded hills,scrub oak,and
pine that sheltered my home from the small college town neighbor. I tried
to not think of myself as a monster, it made my heart race and my short
tail fly up flashing the white circle of hair on my rump in alarm. I knew
nothing could fly like a scared deer, and focused my thoughts on breathing
deep like my yoga class had taught, the same breathing had gotten me
through tattooing, and I hoped it would work again. Something about
walking on the sweet earth made me gentle, and calm more quick than I would
have thought possible. The hour drive I would have gone through any other
day passed in a blur as I found myself on the edge of Ryanne's
yard.....there was a huge blazing fire and what could only be man sized
bombardier beetles walking around, one was still spewing out the biological
napalm their bodies bestowed them.
I felt a fury in me that these monsters would harm what was mine.

"You...you monsters! if you don't tell me where the family of that home is,
and if they are harmed I will trample you until your own fluids devour us
all!"
One of the smaller beetles looked up, I heard strange clicking sobbing, I
looked at its face....and felt cold inside, for it..no she had some of the
features of my loved Ryanne

she wailed so high that it went beyond even my new hearing.
"Dan...Dan oh god, we're bugs dan! monsters you called us, and monsters we
are!"
Her mother tried to hug her, but she pulled away to beat on my chest.
Her tears would never be able to come from her altered eyes,I wept for her,
I wept for us all.


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Fire