Shapeshifters

Ch. 1 The Shapeshifter
My black wings throbbed as I flew across the darkened skies which were slowly being lightened by the false rays of the pre-dawn. There was a rip at the tendon connecting my back and my wings where if I had been in human form would have been known as my shoulder which would have hurt a whole lot less, but I thought it would be a good idea to reach my home before I passed out for the day.
I had been on a joy ride of sorts in a national park near my house, meaning about 10 miles on land, but only 4 or 5 through the sea, when a hunter had come out of no where in the dead of the night and shot at me. Thankfully I had only been grazed or else those hunters would have found themselves on trail for the murder of a 17 year old boy who was 10 miles from home and happened to have been about ten feet about the tree's canopy when shot. As I was contemplating my bad luck and why the hell a hunter would be out at this time of when night my sharp owl eyes pick out my home from the numerous houses that lined my shore.
I lived in a relatively small Victorian by the sea. It was a light purple house, not my choice, my mother's, with a plain brown roof which did well for my dark coloring. It was a pretty normal looking house compared to all the others on the street which were all Victorians painted in different shades besides that there weren't too many similarities between them except for the fact that about fifty yards away there was a dropping cliff, which was the true reason why I loved it. It's walls were rocky and multicolored in the sunlight. Their depths stretched far into the ocean below it. The wind rebuffed and hit my beak calling to my instincts to rid the wind riffs along the coast until the sun came up. It was a call to freedom and was no less alluring that the last time I had heard it, and although I wished to follow it with all my heart; I knew I would be crashing and burning in about ten minutes and should probably see to my arm before I got into bed.
As I neared my house I thanked god that I had left my window open because I didn't think that I would be able to maneuver myself very well with this wing and would be lucky to land on the bed. As I topped and turned in the wind I tried to glide myself into the window. At about ten feet I leveled myself with it and pushed with the last of my strength with sent me flying into my room. I barley made it and with no air drifts inside I plummeted to the floor just after passing the window. I went rolling a bundle of feathers until I came to rest very uncomfortable on my back in the middle of my room. My room blurred and eventually turned black as my eyes shifted from night eyes of an owl to the weak eyes of a human. I felt the relief of being human almost immediately due to the fact hat now I was lying on a human back instead of my curved owl one and that my main use of transportation now just became a expenditure. I lay there for a few seconds breathing deeply after I went through the transformation, just looking at my room. In a dark green it was very comforting to me, reminding me to the jungle from which I had never seen but my instincts knew was home. My room was pretty plain besides that, and exceedingly clean unlike most teenage boys my owl side would not stand for mess or disorder. There was just a bed, a desk, and a closet that was built into the wall; I didn't even have a stereo, not because I was so out of touch with humanity, my mom would never allow that, but because I didn't like the screeching today's humans were listening to I much preferred the calls and music of the birds.
I rocked myself into sitting position and held my wounded arm. The owl wished to lick at the hurt but the human in me knew that I needed to go to the bathroom and clean it out before rapping it up and taking the good three hours of sleep I could get before I had to go to school in the morning. So I put my unwounded arm on my wooden floor and pushed myself into standing position. Holding my arm in a protective position and slightly humped over as if preparing for the next attack, I staggered to the door and kicked it open to walk uneasily and with a bit of help from the wall to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Thank god, Mother wasn't home because she would have gone berserk, but thankfully she was feeding at the moment and wouldn't return until about half past seven for the job which she insisted on having even though as owls they didn't really need to have jobs because the owls as a whole were pretty rich and saw money as nothing more but something to get along with in the human world and would freely give them more than enough to live on if they asked, but Mom liked humans and their ways, but she was also a common barn owl, and they had always been known always liking humans a little too much. My breed, on the other hand, was a large black owl known to be quite rebellious and would frequently live in the wild for extended periods of time. My breed required freedom and space above all things. They never stayed in one area for long. If it wasn't for loyalty to my mother I would have been in owl form almost all the time and would probably have almost no contact with humans. We were a solitary lot who rarely interacted with our own kind let alone humans.
If I was human I'd be in a hospital right now but being an owl I couldn't go to a hospital for fear that they would find out what I was which could be discover just by a simple blood test. This was the reason why all owls were taught to take care of themselves and knew how to fix almost any wound. My wound would also heal much faster than any humans in a few days all I would have was a little scar in my shoulder. I clean out the wound a forced the bullet out of my system; then cleaned it again and put some disinfectant on it and wrapped it up. Then I stumbled into through my hall and fell into bed. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and I was a bit late to my first day of school the next day due to the fact that it was exceeding hard to wake up, me being a nocturnal creature and all.