<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Yay, two days in a row!  I'm on a roll... -LurkingWolf __________________              Paul's panic over his transformation had a long time to fade.  Although his father should have been back from work by the time she had woken to discover her change, he had still not appeared two hours ago.  The delay did nothing for Paul's state of mind, however.  An unannounced delay in his father's schedule usually meant that he had gone drinking.  It was one of the things that Paul had been trying to keep his father from continuing while he learned the craft.  It was no secret between them, however, that the man would go drinking whenever he could avoid his son after work.  Perhaps that was the entire reason he had let Paul go early that day.  Either way, it only further terrified Paul that this might be happening.               She tried to sleep, hoping that perhaps her father would just collapse after his drinking spree.  She couldn't do it, however; there was no way to predict how his father would react if he found a young woman in his son's bed, especially while drunk.  She would feel much safer if she could be there, able to give account for herself when her father arrived.  The longer she was awake, however, the more time she had to think over what was going on, and that just compounded her fears.               There was no clock in her dark room, so Paul couldn't be sure of what time it was when she heard the door open.  She jerked slightly as the latch was worked several times, each time more loudly.  Still, Paul could here copious amounts of cursing over each failed attempt at opening the door.  Thankfully, it sounded as though he succeeded before breaking the latch completely.  Paul stood and turned towards his door once the racket died down, but could not bring herself to move towards the door.  Her father's boots thumped around the entry area for a while before becoming quiet as he finally kicked them off just inside the door.               "Boy?  Where are you, Paul?"  His father's voice was noticeably slurred, not a good sign at all as he tried to find his son.  Paul remained frozen, the door in front of her seeming to warp like the surface of the ocean.  She blinked, but the dizziness wouldn't leave.  She was so nervous, she could only barely move at all, and what she was able to do only had the result of keeping her balances.               "Paul!  I asked where you are."               She tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked sound somewhere between a shout and a squeak.  She cleared her throat, almost hoping that he father had not heard her, but she could hear his somewhat softened footsteps stumbling towards her door as though he were on a tossing ship.               Paul finally convinced his body to take a step forward, but his father was already at the door.  The latch worked on the first go, giving her no extra time to think before her father's face appeared outside of her now opened door.               "Who are you?" he demanded angrily.                         "Father, it's me, Paul," she managed to choke in her new voice.               His face didn't move at all for several minutes as he looked her up and down.  It seemed to her that his swaying had become much less severe suddenly, almost as if he had been scared sober.  When he spoke again, however, both his voice and his actions revealed something much different.               "You're not my son," he said coldly.  His slurred voice was nonetheless strong and sure, and each wavering step hit the ground like a hammer as he approached the girl that claimed to be his flesh and blood.  "You hear me?  You're not my son; I don't have a daughter!"               "But father, the Curse took me!"               "No!  You hear me?  My son hasn't been Cursed!  When the Curse takes him, he'll be strong!  He'll become an animal, an ox or a bruin, and he will be the strongest man this Keep has ever seen.  Where is he?  If you've hurt him, I will kill you!"               "Father, stop!"  Paul was genuinely terrified now, and quickly stepped away from her approaching father.  His eyes were filled with tears; clearly he understood the truth on some level, but he had yet to show it.  "Please, I am your son!"               A large hand hit her hard across the cheek, and she staggered back a few more steps, reaching for the stricken area by reflex.  She dropped to hands and knees, crawling away from her father as he approached.               "I said no more lies!  Take me to my son!"               Paul cowered, too consumed by grief and confusion to fight back or try to reason with his father.  She scrambled on the floor, seeking shelter beneath a small table.  She couldn't fit underneath it completely, but anything that kept her from being completely exposed was an improvement.  He father was not impressed.  He pulled one end of the table away from the wall, sending several carvings tumbling onto his changed son.  She cried out as he took her by the front of her shirt, pulling her until he supported all of her weight.               "Where is my son?!?!" he cried, the desperation in his voice mixed with fear and sorrow.  She tried to pry his fingers away, all the while trying to find something to quell his father's rage.  In the end, it was his father's actions, and not his, that finally made him realize the truth.               As he lifted the girl up to demand the location of the his son, Paul's father gave himself a clear view of the girl's tearstained face.  While the change had certainly altered his son's appearance radically, the face he saw before him resembled his wife's even more than it had previously.  As he realized this, the clarity that his rage had given him faded away, replaced my even greater instability as his mind grasped the truth.  He let the girl fall to the floor, stumbling away until he was forced to support himself against the wall.               Paul watched from the ground as his father stumbled to the wall and braced himself for several minutes.  She barely dared to move, until he finally spoke to her again.               "Paula..."  He spoke the name as though it were poison on his lips.  "Help me to my bed.  I am not feeling well."               The young woman's head drooped slightly as she heard her name changed, but it comforted her some to know that her father had recognized her.  She slowly drew herself to her feet, steadying herself before going to help her father.  As she helped him onto the bed, she saw him roll over to stare at the opposite wall.               "That will be all," he said, voice hardly above a whisper.  Paula nodded silently and stepped from the room without a sound.  Her footsteps fell slowly on the floorboards as she returned to her room and sat on her own small bed to consider what had just happened.  She had woken that morning as Paul, eager and ready to help his father at his craft.  Now, she was Paula, changed into a younger image of her mother with no way to return.  Her father had finally recognized her, but she could not help but dread the future.  She had taken the first step, but there were miles yet to be run. !DSPAM:4dedb39846942041213656! </body> </html>