Chapter 2
Winny
"Alright! We're all showered and dressed?
" I do a quick head count to be sure all five of the young raven shifters I volunteered to supervise for open swim are actually ready as I step out of the private shower stall with my toddler niblings, Kyrie and Leighton, in tow.
They're all there, looking antsy to get in the water already.
I don't blame them, swimming is my happy place.
"Great, let's go!" I lead the way out to the pool.
"One last thing before we can swim, the pool has rules--"
I lose track of the lecture I'd planned on delivering to my entourage of young raven shifters as soon as we turn the corner from the all gender changing room and step into complete chaos.
I come to the Four Corners community pool almost every morning to swim laps. I even work part time in the admin office to help with the aquatics programs the pool runs. So I spend plenty of time here. Time when everyone is using the pool for a single defined purpose.
Open swim during the winter holidays is nothing like the more structured activities the pool hosts.
It’s pure noise and chaos. The water is churning with too many shifters for my liking.
The vast majority are kids, their movements quick and impossible to predict.
How am I mean to keep track of two rambunctious toddlers in that mess?
Not to mention the older kids. Jarred to the core, I stare at my haven, transformed into a hell.
I search the echoing room for something to anchor myself so I can regain a sense of calm, but I come up blank.
The tidy lanes that define my morning routine are gone, and their absence makes me feel unmoored and undefined too.
Feathers, I hate that I can't handle such a trivial change.
My comfort in the water is why I chose this activity for my turn helping keep the younger family members occupied during their monthlong break from routine.
It's just that my pool routine is more than a hobby or even a form of therapy.
It's become a part of rebuilding my identity.
Slicing through the water in my human form is as close as I'm comfortable getting to the giddy weightlessness of flying since my accident.
The water buoying my body restored my confidence and let me build a fluid physical strength I thought I'd lost forever when surgery after surgery couldn't fully resolve the pain in my shattered shoulder in either form.
"Um, you okay, Winny?" My oldest sibling steps forward to jostle me out of my dazed staring. I hate the familiar mix of pity and worry in their gaze.
"Yeah. Sorry, loud in here today." I try to laugh off my freeze with a chuckle that verges on hysterical.
"Let's swim!" Leighton tugs me toward the writhing mass of swimmers and thinking of bringing them into that mess makes my gut drops like I've just taken flight from the edge of a cliff only to realize I can't find my feathers.
That analogy is all too real given the scars from my last ill-fated flight.
I don't let myself dwell on the accident or the liar who caused it.
"Hold up there, cub." Elric swoops the almost three-year-old up onto their hip before I can react, and I should be grateful for the help, but I can't help resenting the coddling.
If any of the other adults were here, I know my middle sibling would have ditched the younger kids by now.
But they watch out for me like I can't handle this.
It doesn't sting any less for being true. "Give Aunty a minute, yeah?"
"Sorry, just, rules first." I glance between the choppy water of the overcrowded pool and the kids ranging from fifteen to not quite three years old who I'm supposed to keep from drowning. Ugh, that's a lot.
I clench my fists, feeling the dull tugging of the motion against my stiff shoulder.
I woke up too stiff for my usual laps this morning, but I thought I'd have loosened up enough to handle this by now.
A part of me even hoped a leisurely swim with the kids would be less strain on the sore joint, while still feeding my visceral need to be in the water.
I try to find an anchor point to ground myself in the moment, but it's hard with all five of my little relatives counting on me to be the adult here.
Everything is moving too fast, and is that a half-shifted octopus twirling with kids dangling from each muscular tentacle-arm and tossing giggling shifter kids up in the air?
Damn it, that's beyond the pale! The kids are moving too much for me to count them all as they swim back to the adult shifter for another turn.
There are so many kids playing with her, they can't all be hers.
Not with the number of different species giggling and being spun skipping over the water, and then tossed free with a splash.
Flashes of feathers, fur, and scales blur with the stretchy shift-proof swimwear the pool provides for kids who don't have their own.
It's too bad the stretchy material with customizable fasteners to accommodate a broad range of shifted forms for kids doesn't hold up quite as well to the size variances between adult shifters and their shifted forms. It would be convenient not to deal with changing before and after every shift.
Regardless, the kids take full advantage of their ability to shift at will with their swimwear still in place.
Watching them at play reminds me of a splashing kaleidoscopic whirlpool of chaos.
I half expect the lifeguards to intervene, with how rowdy the kids around the octopus shifter are getting, but they're just watching it all with benign indifference.
The half-shifted adult and the kids are all laughing like they're having the time of their lives, so I guess it's none of my business.
It's not taboo for adults to partially shift in Four Corners where almost all the residents are fellow shifters, it's just uncommon with how ingrained the lessons of blending into static human society are for most of us, even here.
Okay, staring at the enchantingly uninhibited shifter disturbing my peace isn't helping anyone and my little flock is getting restless with standing here waiting for me to get my shit together.
I take a deep breath, then another and settle my gaze on the five sets of bright eyes boring into me.
All of the kids must be wondering what's wrong with me.
Part of me wants to declare the plan ruined and leave right now. I glance back toward the changing area, and almost collide with a family of otter shifters.
"Excuse us," the mom says as the three otter kids shift impatiently to slip between my group's legs and bound toward the water on all fours before I can move. I realize I recognize the adult from my usual swim time.
Hilda teaches aquarobics classes in the evenings and she's a certified aqua-therapist. It took me a moment to place her in this context because I normally see her in the water, working with Luca on exercises to help with his cerebral palsy.
I swallow back my impulse to ask how Luca is doing, since I’ve been coming earlier lately and I haven’t seen the kid or his mom in a while.
I should ask his mom, Clara. Even though she's a crow not a raven and she moved out of our flock's housing to spare her latent son a life of being defined by his lack of an avian form, Clara will always be family to me, by choice if not by blood.
I glance around reflexively for the familiar mother-son duo, but Clara isn't here.
Too bad, she knows how to handle this kid wrangling gig like a pro, and I could use a friend to lean on right now.
It's been too long since I made time to catch up with her.
Still, Hilda's presence serves as another point of familiarity and that helps me unfreeze.
"Sorry." I shuffle my group out of the otter shifter's way.
"No worries.” Hilda nods at me, then steps past me to yell after her kits, “Hey!
No running means in both forms!" She gives me an exasperated look, and I'm not sure if she's frustrated with the kids or me until she cracks a fond smile, taking in the crowd of youngsters with me and adds conspiratorially, "Kits, right? "
"Right." I swallow hard and watch her drop a pile of towels on the end of a vacant bench before joining her offspring in the water.
Okay, I'll take that as a vote of confidence.
Hilda thinks I can do this. Maybe I can handle the unexpected shift in the currents.
I scramble to salvage the moment. Deep breath, I can do this, I'm not alone.
The distinctive scent of the shift-safe salt water pool that I associate with safety grounds me.
"You with us sis?" Elric waves their hand in front of my facennerved I am for their sake. I'm supposed to be babysitting the kids, not the other way around darn it.
"Sorry, it's busier than I expected today. What was I saying?" I ask, forcing myself to focus on the five kids crowded around me.
"You were telling us the rules," Myra says helpfully. At eleven, she's my oldest nibling. Myra doesn't pause from digging through my swim bag with Cory, my eight-year-old youngest sibling. They each pull out a pair of goggles and some pool toys they packed as I watch.
"Right, the rules," I glance at where they're posted on the wall and sigh at how blatantly inapplicable most of the rules I live by during my morning laps are during open swim.
"No running, to start," Elric says, setting a squirming Leighton down when they shift into a wriggling bear cub to make another dash for the water.
I'm familiar with that trick, the change in form makes them much harder to hold onto, so I move to block the cub's path.
Kyrie, the youngest at almost three, almost trips me up, clinging to my leg.
Ugh, their clutchmate is ready to bolt for the water again at any moment so I grab the more daring toddler by the scruff.