Can life ever get any worse for Rocky? He stood in the cemetery before his mother's grave, wallowing in sadness, anger, grief, and regret. Why had she gone, leaving him alone without any relative or friend with the exception of Old Lilith who had been the only one in Arisgore who had treated them well but even Old Lilith could not fill the void in his heart.
"What about you father?" a voice in his mind whispered. "At least, you have him."
But his father was absent, far away from him and he does not even know him. Then maybe, it was time to go to the city. There was nothing left for him here anyway and he had been planning to go there for so long, so there was no need to wait any longer, the money he had saved was enough to go to the city and then he would find work to sustain him and a cheap place to stay.
He left the cemetery, a sombre-looking figure with his head bowed down in grief, but his mind was planning for he did not plan to be alone all his life. He had to find his father and find him he would.
He returned home only to find the mysterious man sitting on the steps of his home. His heart lurched in fear but still, he approached the man, who stood up when he reached the steps.
"Who are you and what are you doing here?" he asked.
"I heard about your mother and I'm sorry," the man said.
"Look, I don't know you and....."
"You do not know me because we haven't gotten a chance to talk," the man interrupted. "I am called Wind, by the way."
"I don't care who you are. I just want you to leave me alone." He fished into his pocket for his keys. He was in a hurry to open the door.
"I know you are grieving but you have to listen to me. It is about your father."
This made Rocky turn swiftly.
"What do you know about my father?" He asked.
"Your father wants you back and if you want to meet him, contact me with this." He dug into his breast pocket and retrieved a green card. "Burn it and throw the ashes into the air and I would find you."
Rocky collected the card from his outstretched hands and looked at it but when he looked up to ask him what he had meant, the man was gone.
"That's strange," he thought. "Where did he go?"
He left his house and hurried to Old Lilith's shop where he has seen the man before.
"Old Lilith!" He called out when he got to the shop. "Old Lilith!" he called out again, his voice louder.
"Oh, I'm coming. There's no need to shout down the building." Old Lilith hobbled in. "Oh, it's you," she said when she saw him. "How are you doing, Rocky? Come, come. Let me make you some tea."
"I am not here for tea," he said as she made to go to the stove and this made her stop. "I want to know if you know anything about a man. I was on my way back from Merchant's store and I saw him coming out from here."
"What man are you talking about?" Old Lilith asked.
"He is tall, has lots of scars on his face with a blind eye." A look of recognition passed through their face. "So you know him, don't you?"
She turned and walked over to a stove which was in one corner of the room. She silently placed a kettle filled with water on it after putting the stove on.
"He came to me and tells me that he knows my father and gave me this card to contact him." Hearing this, Old Lilith turned sharply.
"He told you that?"
"Yes."
"Rocky, do you remember all those times you would come in here with other children and I would tell you stories."
"Yes," he answered. Of course, he remembered those times. Coming into Old Lilith's shop was the only time he was able to find peace and happiness and he had listened to her stories with so much enthusiasm and excitement. Those times were the part of his childhood in Arisgore that did not suck as he had grown up without a friend and his mother was called a whore and judged for reasons he could not yet understand.
"There was a time I told a story about men who could shape shift, transform into any animal that they desired."
"Those were stories, weren't they?"
"No, Rocky. There are shape shifters, people who can shape shift because they know how to tap into the earth's core and I am afraid you are one of them."
"I don't understand, what do you mean?"
"Your parents are shape shifters, true blood from a long line of families of shape shifters and that man who came here, he is also a shape shifter and he is bad news."
"My parents?" Rocky was getting confused. He recalled what his mother was saying before she died– something about shape shifters, but he had thought it was a hallucination, an effect of the medicine she took. "So what if..."
"No, no, no, no, no. This is...." he began.
"Too much, but it is the truth and the earlier you know, the better it will be for you." she hobbled to a drawer and took out a key from it. "I don't know what this is for, but your mother said I should give it to you."
He took it from her and looked at it. It was a silver key with the head of a roaring dragon on it. Rocky stared at the dragon on the key and was fascinated with its eyes which were made of onyx. They were so tiny that he wondered how they had been put there in the first place. The roaring dragon also struck a faint memory in his head. He had seen it somewhere but where exactly, he could not remember.
At home, he thought about the key, wondering what lock it was meant to open and why his mother had given it to him. "I wonder what you are for," he said to the key as he turned it slowly in his hands then suddenly he remembered. There was a box with a lock that his mother had kept in her room. It also had a roaring dragon engraved in it and as a child, he had been fascinated with the dragon. He rushed to his mother's room and searched everywhere, the wardrobe, drawers even under the bed but he found nothing. He sat on the bed after searching for some minutes, frustrated. He ran his hands through his hair.
"Where is the box?" he asked himself. He stood up to leave when he noticed a crack in the wall that he hadn't noticed till then. He went closer to inspect it. The crack was long and was in a zigzagged pattern. He ran his fingers along the crack. "I wonder where this is coming from," he thought. He tapped his fingers on the wall and noticed that it made a hollow sound as if it was empty at the other end. This made him wonder if the box was behind the wall. He pressed his palm on the wall which gave way making his hand go through the wall. He brought out his hand and dusted it on his trousers then proceeded to peel away the fragile plaster to make a bigger hole. After a few minutes, he dug inside the hole to feel around for the box until he felt something cold. He brought out the box.
It was as he remembers it, similar to the engraving on without the silver key, but the box was made of metal. He sat on the bed and opened the box where he found a letter and a pendant with the image of a curled-up dragon engraved on it. He wondered what the pendant was for as he held it up to examine it. He picked up the letter and opened it. His mother's slanting handwriting came into view. It read,
"When you read this Rocky, I would be gone from this world. I want you to know that you are powerful and that the blood of two powerful shifter families runs within your blood. People would come to you because of who you are but not all are to be trusted. The pendant is the key. Your loving mother."
He made no sense of the letter but he understood that he had to leave Arisgore to find out who he was and to do that, he must find his father first. He wore the pendant around his neck with the key to the box and left the room.