Most cities have their own share of its non-human denizens, some have pigeons, some have crows. The Amber Song city on the other hand boasts an abundance of stray daruk-sphinxes which to an untrained eye look like cats with bird wings on their back and a feline face eerily similar to humans.
Old grandparent tales speak of a magic within the shadows of the streets that when children get lost within them they get turned into a Daruk-Sphinx, forever fated to roam the dark streets and rooftops amongst their own kind.
Rhea wishes this was one of those stories.
It had been nearly 1 and a half seasons since she unwittingly went snooping inside an Old pot in a junkyard, hoping to find some food, instead she came out missing her wings, her tail, furless for but a small patch on her head and a body entirely too big and unwieldy for her liking.
She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but her mind had felt different and beyond all instinct, she was curious what this change would bring to her life… maybe having become a human meant she could get more food? They did grow pretty big afterall.
But after 1 and half season cycles- ‘Years’ they called it, Rhea was certain this wasn’t the life for her. The life of a human child without a home or other people to care for them was terrible. Except for a few specific people, like a witch that occasionally travelled through the city, fed her, taught her the words and even how to read a little, everyone else was shit.
Keeping out of sight of the heavily robed folk that walked these parts, she snuck into the old junkyard she had found the pot in, turns out it was a private dump used by the ‘Mage Sanctum’, whatever that was. Once she was sure there was no one else around, she began searching through the junk, only to realise with dismay that she didn’t recognise any of things around her, the pot was nowhere to be seen.
Hearing a creaking sound and some voices from the other end of the junk-yard she slowly made her way to it, making sure to stay out of sight.
Cresting a small hill of junk, she could see two men lugging a lot of that junk onto Mist-mule driven carts and carrying them off through a gate in the back of the compound.
Once the last of the carts were loaded and moving, she decided to follow them out, maybe they could lead her to what she needed.
Following the carts, she found herself in a bazaar, where a whole bunch of things were being sold on dusty streets formed by an innumerable network of large and small tents as well as older stone pavilions which had been co-opted by many to give a more permanent shade to their new enterprising inhabitants.
She spotted several stands lined with food and still many with older knick knacks like the ones she had just followed.
There were even shops that sold only pots, she could see a familiar lady instructing two men carrying two rather heavy looking stone pots. If she remembered correctly, that lady could make pots herself and she had been friends with the Witch. The Witch and her had long conversations whenever the witch visited, she even gave her something to eat while she waited. But right now she wasn’t what she was looking for, the pots she sold looked new, so she started walking towards the side of the bazaar that sold old looking things.
She only managed to make a few steps in before one of the guards spotted her and started making his way towards her, brandishing his large wooden stick, baton they called it. She hurried into the crowd, weaving in and out to get the guard off her tail. This bigger body was a lot harder to hide with and she sorely missed being able to fly.
She tried to hide between shops, among some finer but old looking things and wait it out until the guard gave up. However a pompous looking, weird smelling lady inside the shop screamed when she saw her and a portly man that was probably the shop owner started hitting her with a broom shouting for guards.
A bunch of guards that had been apparently nearby came running in and one grabbed her and dragged her out into the streets.
One of the guards waiting there simply sniffed in disgust ‘ Ugh, you three, take it to the south side, Get rid of it, and try to be discreet this time’.
Three guards hauled her across the river and one suggested throwing her to the RedSash gang for some pocket change. The one holding her simply smirked at her, but the look in his eyes made her shudder.
Once they were in a secluded enough street, the guard threw her to the ground and took out his baton, raising it above his head. One of the guards spoke up and started to try and intervene when smoke exploded out from between cobblestones, obscuring their part of the street entirely. A low moan emanated from one of the side streets, she and the guards turned to see a massive form with nearly a dozen limbs shamble towards them, it could only be described as several corpses fused together, a green light emanating from the eyes of the three heads that they could see.
‘Ghoul!!!’ one of the guards screamed and started to run, one looked uncertain while the one with the baton took up a defensive position.
She felt a tug on her arm towards a side street disappearing into the shadows, following some instinct that told her to move, she followed that tug and quickly found herself in an old ram shackled house with large mounds of scrap covered in burlap and cloth, a single figure stood waiting for her.
There, smiling kindly at her, was the witch! Her hair, dark like the night sky and her eyes as deep a green as leaves at dawn.
‘Are you hurt anywhere, Rhea?’ She asked, her voice lilting ever so slightly as if she was listening to a song that only she could hear.
As soon as Rhea nodded, the witch’s eyes began to glow a bright green and she felt a deep warmth fill her from within and felt all her scrapes and bruises she had gained in the last hour disappear.
‘I was looking for you for some time you know?’ She said, cocking her head slightly ‘Where did you go?’
Rhea simply looked down ‘ I, Uh… I had things I needed to do, some… problems i needed to solve’
The witch hadn’t blinked the entire time. ‘Well, did you solve it then?’
‘No…’ She sighed
‘Well, we wouldn’t call them problems if they were easy to solve now would we’ she patted her head ‘Here, I got a gift for you little one’
Rhea looked up.
The witch leaned back and moved some of the burlap, revealing a large familiar old pot. She looked from the pot to the witch. ‘You believed me?’
The witch smiled and responded by turning into a massive Daruk – Sphinx herself.
‘I can turn into a cat myself, so I don’t see why you couldn’t do the opposite’ She said, as if that would make perfect sense to anyone.
The witch turned back and gestured to the pot, into which Rhea eagerly climbed.
She began to feel a strange sensation across her body, a now familiar feeling of her flesh changing shape and in the next moments a small daruk-sphinx shot out of the pot soaring up in the air in joy, startling a bunch of crows in the process.
After circling around for a bit, she landed back down to see the smiling witch.
The witch sat down on a crate ‘What do you plan to do now?’
Rhea thought for a bit, Relishing the feeling of her wings and her lithe form ‘I…I’m not sure… my mind still feels different from before the first time i had transformed, I mean… I can still speak’
The witch nodded as If she had been expecting this,
‘Some effects of the transformation would remain permanent I’m afraid, you spent a really long time as a human after all’ The witch got up and and patted her dress to get rid of some invisible dust ‘It’s not all bad, though it will take some time getting used to’
She walked to the door and looked out, a bag manifesting out of mist from her hands
‘You know, given that you’re probably tired of the city for a while now, would you like to join me instead? I can show you faraway places where you are less likely to fall into strange pots’ She said with a smile.
Rhea Looked back at the narrow streets and rooftops that were her only sanctuary for more than a year and the open sky and wilderness beyond the walls that she was now free to roam, she looked back into the eyes of the witch.
She did her best imitation of a smile she could in her current form which she suspected looked rather creepy, but it did make the witch laugh out loud. She could feel a laugh gurgling from within herself as well, she definitely didn’t do that before the transformation.
Yeah, she didn’t mind keeping some things from her time as a human. The rest, well…time would tell.
And so the witch and her little flying cat set off from that city into the world beyond, to find magics never seen before, at least these ones only had a small chance of turning her into something else. She made a mental note not to go sticking her head into any more strange pots, at least not without doing her ‘research’ as the witch put it.
