Heritage
an excerpt

The tubular steamer car obligingly slid to a halt with its door in front of my feet; it slid open with a slight whoosh and a puff of steam to let me and several other passengers in. I took a seat by the window and looked outward as the car left the station with a lurch and groan of rusting wheels.

On a day without rain, I would have looked up and contemplated the greened, sloping cliffs that surrounded Talery Bay on three sides like giant, scarred arms reaching for an embrace with the water. The actual town itself was nestled within its namesake as a cluster of seven islands intercut with canals of all different breadths; of course, the waterways were devoid of any kind of traffic at the time, and the only way one could tell people lived there was if they could glimpse amber lights peeping forth from reinforced windows much like the school’s.

With the rain obliterating all objects beyond the steamer’s windows and the insistent rocking of the car from side to side, I was beginning to fall sleepy. Even though the interior of the car was well-lit—it was that irritating off-white hue that cast the slightest shadow of corrosion upon everything it touched: seats with fading upholstery, the grab bars scratched and chipped from years of constant use, yellowing advertisements crammed behind clear panels by the ceiling and forgotten for months.

The ocean was cold, but I was not—though I still kept my slim profile, I was kept warm by a layer of blubber under rubbery skin, black along my back, white down my front. I looked at my arms and legs; they were now pointed flippers on either side of the pointed muzzle that jutted out from between my eyes. I knew the rest from memory; a double-finned tail extended behind me from the base of my spine, along which ran a dark crest similar to the frills that replaced my ears, and two horns twisted upward from the top of my head...