cosmicshifts by Crymsyn Hart Page A

bag, we can distract them. I’ll run them off in another direction. They won’t suspect it.”
    He growled, showing her his teeth. Alika sensed that he wasn’t happy about the plan, but before he could say anything she shoved her bag at him and stripped off her clothes. The light was still on them. She did not care anymore if they saw her shift. Alika stared into the light and caressed her breasts because of the males she had met; they all seemed to be fascinated with that part of her anatomy. The light moved a little and followed her. Her bones moved and popped, but she welcomed the shift rather than fight it the way Phillip did. It flowed through her until she was down on all fours. Then she took off into the woods. Phillip howled in frustration. The light did not follow her.
    She slunk into the shadows and ran toward the mountains. Not sure of where she was going, she raced away from town and human habitation. It was better for all of them. As the elevation rose higher, she caught a familiar scent. It was the faint scent of exhaust from her ship and the aroma of charred earth. The tops of the trees were burned away where her ship had sheared them and made a clear path, giving her a trail to follow. Alika tried to stay far away from it but still follow it, until she came to the place where her ship had crashed. There was no human presence to speak of. The army had moved off. It was almost as if they had not been there at all because they had left no footprints. The area was empty except for the grass and the trees. They had cleared out and gathered all of her ship parts. Taking a minute, she sniffed the air and did not sense any humans. Carefully she went into the crash site and nosed around in the dirt, hoping to find something left of her vessel.
    After finding nothing, Alika went in the direction where she was thrown. She prayed she might find something of her ship near the rocks where she had headed after the crash. While she scoured the ground, she saw something glint from the starlight. Alika transformed back to human form and pushed the rocks out of the way. Down in the hole, she pulled out the very thing she needed. It was the size of the cell phones Phillip had taken for her case. It had been on her belt when she had left the ship. After that Alika did not remember what had happened to it or her clothes, just that she had transformed. Her body had tried to keep itself alive, and she had gone into shock.
    She opened the pouch and prayed that it was still working. When she touched the silver screen, it blinked on. A sigh of relief flooded through her system. It was more than just a communicator. It contained preloaded star charts just in case the main computer went down in the ship; she would be able to use it in a pinch, and there was a long-range communicator built into it too. In the distance, she could see the light from the flying machine that the military had. That meant that Phillip had led them away or they had broken off their search for him and decided to come looking for her. She glanced at the darkness and knew that the entrance to the caves was not far off, but she did not want to chance it in case the military remained. Instead, she thought about getting higher. It would have been nice to have had a form that could take to the air, but her kind only had one animal form. Sometimes they were flyers, but most of the time they were four-legged.
    I can’t stay here. I really need to get back to the caves we were at before, and I don’t know how to do that. If I can get to the gravesite then, maybe there is someplace there that I can hide. I have to risk it . Alika placed the device on the ground and slipped back into her canis form. Then she grabbed it carefully between her teeth and followed her nose. She caught Phillip’s faint scent still clinging to the grass and ran along it until she was at the gravesite again. Alika did not smell any other humans that had disturbed the area, so she assumed that