8 Years
Adaeli lay in bed as her mother's body curved around her own, "Mummy, tell me the story of my great grandmum".

"Again? That's quite the scary story. I don't think it's one for bed-" her mother cooed, stroking a stray hair across Adaeli's face.
"Please, mum!" Adaeli whimpered, her eyes fluttering closed with sleep's heavy weight.

"Okay. Well, your great grandmum was… How should I say this? She was… a bit off. She kept to herself and she never, ever had company. It's a wonder any of us are here at all, truth be told… Anywho, she was a peculiar woman to get down to it. Kept odd distances and would often disappear for weeks at a time. No one questioned it, though, because we as kids were told to just accept it for what it was. Well, one day, your Uncle Joiel when he was just a lad went to your great grandmum's to see if she had any pantry to spare for the winter.

She lived quite a ways down river so you're Uncle Jo… well, he was too far away for us to hear his cryin'."

Adaeli was now sitting straight up next to her mother, looking down at her with mouth agape, "What happened?"
She already knew though as she had heard the story a dozen times from her cousins.

"Uncle Jo heard something in the kitchen, something breakin'. He went in to see what it was and there she was–"
"WHO?!"
"A wolf!" exclaimed Adaeli's mother, leaping at her daughter with a playful snarl. Adaeli squealed, weakly defending herself before snuggling against her mother's chest.

"Are there any shapeshifters in our family now, mum?"

The corners of her mother's mouth frowned ever-so-slightly, just enough for Adaeli to see her mother's train of thought on her face. "No," she replied, "and there never were, Adaeli. It was a wolf who killed your great gran, just like it almost killed your Uncle Jo. Ain't no one in this family a monster like that. Now, get some shut eye."

13 years
Her mother pushed a damp cloth against her forehead and used her fingers to pry apart Adaeli's closed eyes, "She's burnin' up, Lore!" The woman turned to her husband, pointing to the unconcious child, "We gotta throw her out into the snow!"

"Auriel, we can't do that– It'll shock her system!" the man said sternly. But his words were just a hum that faded out against the intensity of the situation.

"She's gonna die, Lore. We need to get her out of the house and into the cold!"

And with that, Adaeli's mother had slung the child the best she could over one shoulder and her husband rushed to her side to help carry her outdoors. Gently, they lay Adaeli in the snow.

"She's like an angel," her mother muttered, brushing hair from Adaeli's face as snowflakes shimmered against the strands.

Adaeli sputtered. Both her parents took a relieved breath, but their softened face hardened once again as Adaeli's coughs turned to wretching of red.

Her still body was now a quake of motion. She felt as though swords were cutting ribbons across her gut and what her skin once protected was raw and pink. Adaeli heard the snapping of her own bones in her ears, but nothing was louder than her own screaming. It felt as if it filled every corridor of the world.

When Adaeli came to, her head was still spinning. She tried so hard to focus. Where was she? She could smell her home's hearth and hear her father's boots scuff across the floor, their clasps tinkling with his stride. But her own feet were so cold.

She curled her toes and collected clumps of soil between them. Outside. She was outside. But why? She suddenly felt alert, her body once again a wire of electricity. Adaeli was overwhelmed with sound, touch, and a sight that narrowed on the detail of every insect and leaf and wisp of hot breath.

It hit her all at once. What she was, what she had become. A monster. Again, she started screaming, wriggling against the rope that bound her fragile body.

Suddenly, her father appeared.

"Shut up, ya fuckin' animal."

Cold metal slammed against her face. It was dark.

15 years
Adaeli had been confined to a stall in her father's stable, where little light leaked through the slates of the roof. She had no recognition of where her body began as human or beast. Her shapeshifting was sporadic still, but at least the wounds no longer ached.

Her transition was more graceful, but her body rippled with the pink scars of bones that had torn through skin over and over again. But now when she changed, her skin stretched over the skeletal metamorphosis instead of ripping to pieces.

In front of her laid a silver plate dangling from a chain where her mother would pull it through the bars and place whatever scraps were from dinner. Lately, it had been pheasant carcasses with nothing but gristle leftover from her father.

Before she could see her mother, she heard her small footsteps cross the grassy space between the cabin and the barn. The shifting of fabrics rustling against her mother's legs. Adaeli longed to just be held against her mother's chest again, in the warm bed, listening to tales of her father's heroic past.

She snapped out her yearning when she heard the chain before her clacking against the bars of her stall. "Mother," Adaeli whispered, "Mother, please."

The chain had stopped moving. Adaeli could hear her mother pause, her breath was being held.

"Adaeli–", her mother sighed.

"Mother, please. Listen. Please. Let me go. Let me out. I'll run away. I know what I am. I know what a burden I must be for you and Father. Please. Let me go and I'll never return."

For what felt like an eternity, there was silence and then Adaeli heard what she hadn't in a year and half of being prisoner; the door's lock slid out of place.

Moonlight poured into the stall and over Adaeli's naked body. She flinched as her mother looked over her and cried with alarm. There was her daughter, ran with scars and covered in waste.

Adaeli shivered, but not from cold. She leaped into the air and her body flung itself into the shape of a fox, bolting for the wood.

Present
Adaeli is now nomadic, working quests for supplies in return. Her body is still pink with scarring, but she has mastered her transformations. Her personality is queer as she is honest about her desires but she will laugh without care at your own misfortunes.