by Amelia Robinson
April 7, 2013
Sweetest Dark Contest, Figment.com
Prompt: In 250 or fewer, write a scene about a shape-shifter.
Description: A man is executed for being a shape-shifter.
The man they were to hang came into my shop shortly before sunset. He shot through my door like a man with a fire under his tail, and didn't seem to notice me behind the counter until I gave a tense, "Good day, sir."He startled, nearly clearing my shelf of Kipling talons in the process. He watched me as carefully as I watched him. Lames and runaways were common now, with the war with the North sending so many refugees fleeing for the safer, southern lands.Like a startled animal, he came forward slowly. Not a runaway; he was far too old, but he was wounded. A criminal? I touched the knife hidden under the counter."I need two sprigs of wartroot, if you have it, miss," he said politely.His thick Northern accent numbed me instantly with fear; I gave him the requested herb without having remembered retrieving it, and he took it with a hand that was neither furred, nor clawed. After leaving a bronze crown on the counter, the shape-shifter scuttled from my shop.They must've found him later that night. At his hanging the next morning, I thought he looked the way we humans did when the shape-shifters hunted us down: like prey. They left him on the Strait, broken and alone, for the birds to strip away the beast that festered in his skin.
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