Rising Shards

“Oh, terrific,” Nurse Lyla said, rushing over to us to look at Kalei’s now clawed hand.

“Wait, what’s happening?” I asked.

“It seems like you all caught some really feral Feral Flu, so.” Lyla said. “You may be about to experience some, er, physical changes.”

Nurse Lyla suddenly got out a little spray bottle and spritzed us with a turquoise mist.

“Hey!” Kalei said. “What wa….waaaaas……thaaaaaa…..?”

“Naomi, can you take care of them and get them loaded onto the usual?”

Suddenly, I was on the ground with my arms behind my back. I felt rope or something around my wrists.

“That was even quicker than last time,” Lyla said. “Good work.”

“Wrangling feral Cani is one of the many dangerous tasks a hall monitor faces.” Naomi said.

“Sorry about the lack of warning on that one, girls, that was a mild sedative.” Lyla said. “Naomi will escort you to your rooms now.”

By ‘escort us to our rooms,’ Nurse Lyla apparently meant ‘awkwardly load us up on a cart thing and wheel us to our rooms, basically rolling us out and locking us in as we fell asleep from the sedative.

* * *

I woke up in my own bed and felt incredibly groggy.

“Hey Oka,” I said. “Do you remember getting to your bed? Because I don’t remember.”

“I don’t remember either,” Oka said. “Hey, look at me quick, and I like fully transformed?”

I rolled over to look at her. “You look the same to me.”

“Alright,” Oka said. “I wanna sleep more, but I’m also super hungry.”

“Me too,” I said. “Do we need to check in with anybody?”

“Maybe they’ll come see us,” Oka said. “With lots and lots of food.”

“I didn’t get to see,” I said. “Was Kalei like…fully transformed there or was it just her hand?”

“I just saw claws,” Oka said.

“Wait, am I all transformed or whatever?” I asked.

“No, you’re good.” Oka said.

I turned onto my back and stared at the ceiling. It was a weird feeling; it was like a sick day, and it was called a flu, but it didn’t feel at all like any cold or flu I’d had before. I just felt hungry. My arms felt warm, especially the spot where Ema bit and scratched at me, but I didn’t have a warm forehead like a fever. I also wasn’t sure how much my funky feeling was from the sedative Nurse Lyla gave us.

“So it’s just us here,” Oka said. “If I accidentally start to consider you meat and instinctively try to eat you don’t be mad.”

“Same…to you…” I said. “But I don’t know if I can get out of bed.”

“Your tail is going crazy,” Oka said.

“Yeah, it’s sapping all my energy,” I said. “Did I ever mention how much this thing sucks?”

“But it’s so cute,” Oka said.

“No, it’s not cute.”

“I’m mad I didn’t get a tail,” Oka said. “I want a tail. They’re so cute.”

I groaned in response, which turned into a growl that came out like a burp.

“It is, let me show you.” Oka said.

She crawled over to my bed. Oka grabbed my tail after dodging my hands smacking her away a few times and started waving it around. “See?”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s cute!”

“This is so weird,” I said.

“Here, you do the same to my tail, you’ll get it,” Oka said.

“You don’t have a tail.”

“That’s right.” Oka said. “I wish I got a tail. It’s not fair.”

“When’s Kalei getting back?” I asked.

“Dude, she got suspended.” Oka said. “For scratching that girl.”

We giggled.

“That didn’t happen, did it?” I said.

“I think I dreamt that whole part.” Oka said.

“OK, good, because that would be bad.” I said. “I do remember her screaming about meat to the cafeteria cooks though.”

“I think that was a dream too,” Oka said. “Wasn’t it?”

“No, because we went to the cafeteria before the nurse’s,” I said.

Oka sat up suddenly. “I smell food.”

I smelled it too. It was faint at first, but my sense of smell had become super sensitive from the feral flu. Whatever it was, it was a warm meal, and it smelled delicious. I heard something moving in front of the door, then someone knocked.

“Howdy, folks,” Dr. Diast said as she entered the room.

“Hi, Dr. Diast,” Oka and I groaned.

“Well, your roommate has gone full Kanibari tier Feral Flu, so that’s fun,” Diast said. “Luckily, it seems like that sedative is working better on you two.”

Dr. Diast had six plastic food holders that she put into two piles. She put two bottles by each pile.

“Here, you’ll probably need one of these now.” Diast said, handing each of us one of the food holders. Within about two minutes we had ripped into them and eaten the meals entirely. I ate mine so fast I didn’t even register what I had just eaten. I felt slightly less hungry afterwards.

“Right, that should satiate you long enough for this to not be a complete pain,” Diast said.

Dr. Diast shined a flashlight in my eyes, then checked my fangs. Then she plucked a hair from my tail and put it into a plastic tube that looked like the one Nurse Lyla had.

“How long were we asleep?” I asked.

“It’s been a few hours,” Diast said.

I didn’t want to ask if Diast knew we had purposefully gotten Feral Flu to get out of doing the Fang Fair.

Once she had finished checking Oka over, Diast gave us each doses of medicine from the bottles she had brought. We had to drink two things of different pink medicine, one tasted amazing and the other tasted horrible.

“That should keep things from getting too out of hand,” Diast said.

“Can you tell how…feral-y this is gonna get?” Oka asked.

“Well, you can expect to either just stay hungry and wild, or to basically become a Kanibari for a day. So you’re going to be stuck in here so you don’t mess anything up. The flu part will keep you pretty chill, hopefully. Some Feral Flu kids get rampage-y and start breaking whatever they can, or they just start running around in circles pretty much.”

“Is it gonna hurt if we end up with the Kanibari thing?” I asked. “Every werewolf thing I’ve read always had the first transformation be painful.”

“Well, the real world isn’t like the books,” Dr. Diast said. “Unless you’re reading one of those long titled Cani books. They have one on Feral Flu I probably should have grabbed.”

“So…not painful?” I said.

“Not painful, and pretty quick,” Diast said. “Kalei went full wolf girl like five minutes after we got her to the temporary room.”

“So do we have to…do anything?” Oka said. “Look out for anything?”

“Nope, just try not to break anything you value if you get rowdy.” Diast said.

Before she left, Dr. Diast pointed out the remaining four plastic food holder things filled with meat that smelled incredible. Unfortunately, she told us we had to wait until we really needed them, and even then, we’d have to pace them out all day. They even had little timer locks on them so we couldn't tear into them. I still am not sure if all of the meals were the same thing, all I knew was that I desired each greatly.