Shift Excerpt

My first night alone was spent beneath an enormous, dead tree in the woods, my entire life of thirteen years, passing before my clouded eyes, in a continuous carousal of pain, bone aching grief, and fury. My father had once told me, that just before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. I might have welcomed death that night, if it had ever come for me. As painful as being betrayed by your best friend, disowned by your family, and cast out by your people is, it should kill you. But that would be merciful wouldn't it- and El isn't merciful- not to people like me.
I punched the rough tree trunk, intense pain shooting through my hand and searing across my shattered knuckles. I doubled over, gasping and seething, as I held my broken hand to my stomach.  Pain and fury wrestled up my throat, clawing from me in a ferocious growl that echoed across the trees, yet felt disgustingly pitiful in the shadow of my rage, as it melted into a jagged sob. Instantly, my hands shifted into animal-like claws, unnatural and feral, and I tore into the thick bark, ripping through the tree's flesh like the animal they all said I was- and I believed them now.
I sank to my knees, my muscles quivering with fury, as I forced out my cries with vehement rage, only growing more and more angry, when my attempts to scream back at the world for it's injustice, fell mute against the heavy clouds and flat beneath the pouring rain.
It wasn't enough- my furious screams weren't enough to show the world how unfair this was. I stared at my bruised and bloody hands, fingers spread over the ground, my lungs heaving with each howling breath. I watched the bruises slowly fade, from black to purple, from purple to peach, and the ribbons of my flesh on my knuckles knit themselves back together. This was why they hated me. I wasn't normal. And normal was all I wanted to be- if it meant Obe was still a brother to me. If it meant my mother and father weren't ashamed to claim me as their son. If it meant I had a home, a people, a god. I didn't want to be this! I didn't want to live if this was all my life was going to be! It wasn't fair! I could shift my form into anything! From an elephant to a bird, from a fairy to a giant, from a man to a woman, from a child to a man! But the one thing I wanted to change! From Shifter to human- I was powerless to.
I closed my eyes against the hot tears flooding my gaze. "Why have You made me like this?" If He hated Shifters- if Shifters were evil- why did He make me one? It wasn't fair- I didn't deserve this. I grimaced, my hands beginning swim in my tear-flooded gaze. I didnt deserve to be treated like a monster, to be outcast. If El was good, why didn't He give me the chance to be good? Instead, He destined me for Hell, by birth, by blood- with my existance. "Why El?" I asked, but the air was silent. My heart seemed to cave in my chest, as a voice in my head cynically replied, 'El isn't going to answer a Shifter, Simon.' Hopelessness settled over me and a sick numbness seeped into my being. My fingers curled around a shard of wood beneath my hand and my bones ached with longing, to carve into my arms until I found some sort of comfort or solution there.
I collapsed to my side in the mud, watching the blood trail down my arms, and the long, deep ravines slowly zip themselves back up again, as I steadily dug away, determined to put a dent in my body's healing. It really was a curse- I didn't even have the power end my own life . "El-" I began weakly, but I didn't finish. If El wasn't going to speak to me, what was the point in talking to Him? I swallowed a sob, fresh pain and loneliness seizing me by the heart. I winced tremulously under their claws, as they sank into me with a previously unimaginable weight, springing tears in my eyes and taking my breath away.