2026,Tomas
The Awakening has left the world forever changed.

I don’t know who thought giving clearance for a nuclear lab under Mount Saint Helens was a good idea, but I do know the name of the man who proposed it, Doctor James Scrawsky. That name sends ice through my spine and spurred fire through my veins,his desire for power cost more than the earth could give, and cost me my family.

At four years old, living under the volcano seemed like a grand adventure, I would pretend that lava was filling the tunnels and I had to race to save my “precious research” and evacuating my crew. Apparently Scrawsky’s research was more important than his researchers, and it was worth my father’s life. Dr. Scrawsky had filled the only helicopter with samples, equipment, and books full of formulas. Somehow me and my father managed a spot on the chopper, but he refused to leave his wife behind. “Please,” He begged,”Just five minutes.” The Doctor looked as solemn as you could imagine, he spoke in an earnest tone, “Would I ever ask a friend to leave his life behind?”
“Thank you!” He turned to me “Wait here Tomas, me and mom will be back soon.” He hurried into the quaking mountain side. Scrawsky’s mood immediately changed. Gone was the kind, understanding, compassionate friend, in its place was a power hungry, malifacant tyrant.
“Hurry, start up the blades!” To the pilot’s credit he hesitated,

”But sir, didn’t you say”—

Dr. Scrawsky’s face snapped towards the paling pilot, and no wonder. With his black goatee on his jutting chin, Snow White skin and piercing blue eyes, he could strike fear into even the bravest men’s hearts. “What is your name?”

“J-Jack,Jack Po.” The pilot stammered.

”Mister Po, do you really want to die this way?” Outside, the volcano was cracking, chunks of its surface raining down, black smog billowed out, and light seeped through cracks from the lava awaiting below “Mister Po, are you married?”

“Why, yes sir I am, with three children too.”

“Well Mister Po,” The Doctor started, with a murderous look in his eyes, “If you were to die, I would make sure that your family was cared for, however, my employees aren’t always…friendly.” The pilot stopped short, then the blades started to whir.

”No!” I screamed, grabbing Dr. Scrawsky, “Dad said to wait, he said that-“ I was thrown to a corner,

“Fool,” He muttered, then aloud, “Boy, your father and mother knew the most about my research, but now,” He seemed almost cheerful, “I alone have this power.”

It was after that I made the most important decision of my life, I jumped from the low flying helicopter, and just in time to witness the Awakening.

So, yes, my first time in a plane I was four, and it was also the first time I skydived.

It wouldn't be my last though.

I'd like to tell you I remember the fall gracefully, like some kind of tiny action hero tucking and rolling into destiny. I don't. I remember the wind punching the breath out of my lungs, the helicopter shrinking above me into a speck of betrayal, and the mountain doing something no mountain should do. It didn't erupt, not in the way four-year-olds expect eruptions, with leaping strands of lava biting at my feet. The whole northern face of Mount Saint Helens seemed to breathe, one long shudder, and where the cracks split open, the light that spilled out was gold and moving, like a great python had been folded up inside the rock for a very long time and had finally had room to move.

What I remember next is fur. My own fur, which is a strange thing to remember about yourself, like discovering you've grown a second nose. My arms became legs, or maybe my legs became arms, but regardless, I had four limbs and was standing on them. They were wrapped in something tawny and thick, and where my hands should have ended, there were claws, and where my scream should have been, there was a sound I didn't recognize as coming from my own throat: low, rolling, enormous for a four-year-old body. A roar.

I hit a stand of pine trees instead of the ground, which hurt my newfound body but but it also hurt my momentum, and I rolled to a stop in a drift of shattered branches with my heart going like a war drum and my new claws digging into the dirt.

Here is where I'm supposed to tell you I felt powerful. Mostly I felt scared. I lay there in a body that didn't belong to me, watching gold light crawl across the sky like spilled honey, and I cried. I didn't know it then, but I wasn't the only one. Up and down the mountain, in the town below, on the boats out on Spirit Lake, The Awakening had reached into whoever it touched and pulled something out of them, something that had apparently been waiting its whole life for an invitation. A fisherman grew gills. A ranger's dog didn't change, but the ranger did, and neither of them ever really discussed it. And I had just discovered that my family had, apparently, without ever mentioning it to me, been sitting on some very old, very unusual blood.

Tomas. It means "twin." I didn't understand why that detail mattered until years later, when I learned that whatever the Awakening pulls out of you, it pulls out of pairs. This meant that somewhere out there, my mother or my father or maybe both of them had been carrying the other half of whatever I'd just become. Nominative determinism, my foster sister, Melanie, would call it later, rolling her eyes, when she found out my name had been foreshadowing this whole mess since before I could walk. Or something. She was never fully sure the term applied.

Neither was I.

But it sounded smart, and by that point in my life, I was taking smart-sounding comfort wherever I could find it.

I didn't turn back into a boy again until nearly a full day later, starved, curled at the base of a tree that used to be a lot taller. By then, the rescue helicopters were out, combing the wreckage of the research station and the mountainside for survivors. They found me shivering, human again, four years old and utterly alone, and no one asked why there were claw marks gouged three inches deep into the bark above my head.

No one asked a lot of things that year. I've spent most of my life since then asking them instead.