Pakicetus

The first thing Mizuki learns is this: there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with her.

“You are abnormal.” Mom sneers. “No child is as needy as you. Get a grip.”

Mizuki tries, she swears she does. She bugs mom as little as possible. She keeps her teeth in even if it makes her skin feel itchy and gross. She keeps both feet on dry land even when the water past the harbor calls for her. This time, she thinks, this time I’ll get it right.

She never does.

 “Your grandfather was raised by dolphins.” Daddy tells her once. (She likes it when Daddy tells stories. Sometimes he’ll even let her sit on his lap as he does.) “He could catch fish with his bare hands. I’m sure you got it from him.”

It’s a nice story. Sometimes, Mizuki even entertain the idea that it might be true. She knows it isn’t, though.

After all, Daddy is human.

---

Mom leaves, eventually. Mizuki had not bitten her, had not asked to be held, had not dragged her swimming with her. Mizuki can only conclude that the issue is not anything she’s ever done, but rather what she is.

She can hardly blame Mom. Mizuki doesn’t want anything to do with herself either.

She tries for Daddy, still. Keep your voice in. Keep your claws in. Keep your desires in. She’s not an animal that needs constant care. She’s a human. She’s a human. She’s a human.

That’s a lie, of course, so really, she’s not that surprised when Daddy decides to leave her too.

---

Date is the absolute weirdest person she has ever been given the displeasure to meet. He is way too open about his desires. He keeps mumbling to himself. He works odd hours and refuses to buy another bed. It’s annoying. It’s bewildering.

It’s freeing, in a way. In this house, Mizuki has to fight to stay human, but she can afford to be abnormal.

She buys a fish tank on impulse. She’s angry (she’s always angry) and Daddy gives her money instead of hugs so she spends it on the stupidest thing she can think of. She spends the entire trip home wondering how she will explain this to her roommate. Mom would surely shatter it against the wall. Daddy would bring up the lack of pragmatism in such a huge purchase.

“New hobby?” Date says, and that’s the only thing he asks. It feels more meaningful than anything Mizuki could ever articulate.

---

She fills the tank with cliones. She knew nothing about these two days ago, but now that she’s started studying them she’s getting really invested in these little creatures.

(She still doesn’t dare to swim; if she immerges the whole body in water, there is no way she’ll be able to remain human. But sometimes, she indulges in sinking her arms into the tank. The water feels soothingcalmingrelaxinghomehomehome. Her skin is still too tight and her marrow is thicker than her bones, but… it feels better, for a moment.)

“That’s a lot of little dudes.” Date comments the next time he opens the fridge to grab a beer. “Did you name them?”

She knows he’s mocking her, so she proceeds to tell him the name of all thirty-four of her cliones, to teach him to shut up if he doesn’t want to have his ear talked out for half an hour. He complains about it, but for some reason, he still remembers their names two months later.

---

Date is not Daddy. He’s not father material at all, to be honest. Besides, Mizuki is not naive; she knows she’s most likely a burden to him. Her own parents could not bear her. A man who doesn’t even share her blood has no reason to care for her.

But sometimes, in the dead of the night, she kind of wish they were a real family. She doesn’t know what that says about her.

---

She bit him.

She bit him she bit him she bit him she felt his skin flesh bones under her teeth she bit him she bit him his blood is on her lips on her tongue she bit him he’s been nothing but kind to her and she bit him.

“Mizuki,” he calls, his voice way too soft for the situation, “Mizuki, it’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it.”

He’d startled her. She’d been having a nightmare, and he shook her awake, and during the split second of transition between sleepiness and awareness she forgot she was meant to play human and she bit.

“It was an accident, Mizuki. It’s okay.” He runs his good hand through her hair, over and over, as if he wasn’t bleeding just a few inches away.

She keeps her hands clamped over her mouth. She doesn’t know what she must look like right now- her whole face feels like it’s buzzing, teeth rearranging themselves, jaw growing and shrinking in rapid succession. Mom was right, she’s a freak, she’s a monster, she should have never been born at all-

“It’s okay, Mizuki, it’s okay. Breathe. Breathe with me.”

And yet, here he is. Still unafraid.

---

He brings her to get sushi the next day. Mizuki doesn’t like raw fish (raw meat is for animals and she is human) but she does like cucumber rolls. Date gives her his ginger, to wash her mouth between rolls, and she almost forgets the taste of his blood in her mouth.

---

In stories, nonhuman characters always have better senses than human. A better nose for werewolves, better ears for elves, ect, ect. Mizuki has none of this. But she thinks the sight of her mom’s corpse will still haunt her to the end of her days.

She lifts the weights, up, down, up, down. Date got her the bench after she tore a tree down during training. It was a good way to vent out extra energy back then, all her pent-up frustration from her unfulfilled desires (let me swim let me be loved let me bite let me be held)

Now, the weights are grounding. They force her to be aware of her whole body, every muscle, every nerve. This constricting body she’s trapped in. Up, down. Up, down. She’s alive. She’s human. Everything’s fucked and nothing will be okay ever again, but she’s here.

---

Mizuki initially intended to yell at Date whenever he came home. However, that implies him actually coming home, and that’s why right now she’s rushing through the streets, following an unknown voice on the phone from a lady who seems to know way too much about her.

She can’t lose him. Not after- after losing literally everything else. Mom and Daddy- she lost them long before they died. But Date- she can’t-

(He’s the only person who ever made her feel like a human. He’s the only person who ever made her feel like it would be fine if she weren’t a human at all. If she can be honest with herself, just once- that’s a debt she will never be able to repay.)

She barges into the chemical plant, pipe in hand, teeth bared. There is a man pointing a gun towards Iris, and that may be Date’s face but she would recognize her roommate anywhere and that is not him so she charges to beat the fuck out of him. She hammers the pipe over his back, over and over, and-

Pain.

She only registers the gunshot afterwards. It hurts. It hurts it hurtsithurts pain suffering agony there is fire in her leg there is something inside her leg there’s a bullet inside her pelt and a madman waving a gun and she’s going to die she’s going to die SHE’S GOING TO DIE-

The man steps closer, gloating, threatening, and in the midst of her panic, Mizuki forgets to be human.

Her fingers latch onto his wrist. She cannot control her strength. Thick claws grow into his skin, burrowing themselves into the sinew and muscles. She yanks him forwards, and

Opens

Her

Mouth.

Her jaws unfurl. Her spine extends. At last, her body caves under the pressure of her soul.

A fact, about teeth; most of them are not made to tear. Werewolves, vampires, all those cryptids Iris is so fond of- they’re all made of canines, but no real animal is like that. Teeth are, first and foremost, made to crush.

Mizuki’s arms can lift two hundred twenty pounds. Her legs can kick a tree straight to the ground.

Her mouth shatters the man’s scapula, and he howls.

He tries to run, struggles to get away from her. He frees himself from her jaws for a split-second- a mistake. She aims for his throat next. She squeezes his windpipe tight tight tight feels him squirm like a fish out of water- until finally, he passes out.

She drops him as soon as he stops moving. Her body feels right but the meat in her mouth feels wrong. She’s not a human, but she’s not a monster-

Oh god. Her body. There are people around. There are her friends around.

She whirls around- and immediately trips over her own legs. Her spine is hunched, more appropriate for four legs than two. Her claws scrape on the floor, her tail sways behind her. What does she even look like? When she peers down, she only sees thick, gray skin. She doesn’t even look like any animal she knows.

She looks up. Her friends are staring at her with wide eyes. Any second now, they will start screaming. Any second now, they will chase her away, as they should have long ago.

Date, she wants to plead, Iris, Mrs Sagan, but she has too many teeth and her mouth is shaped wrong so what comes out instead is: “Daaaaaaaaae.”

And the black-haired man, the one she does not know but whom she knows, the one bleeding from one eye covered in bruises, crouches down and asks: “Mizuki, my girl, are you alright?”

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