I am not an overly optimistic person. Ok, I’m also not technically a person, but that’s just semantics. The point is I tend to think of the worst possible outcome for any given situation and dwell on it nonstop. I find that if I think that the worst possible thing that could happen will happen, I always end up either right or thinking well that could have been worse when the other shoe inevitably drops. Unfortunately for me, I end up being right a lot. Maybe if I had better luck, I’d be more optimistic. But I don’t, so I’m not.

Naturally, having two hulking adventurers appear before me so suddenly sent the thinking part of my brain spiralling through a veritable playbill of worst-case scenarios. Meanwhile, the feral Shadeling part of my brain started planning escape routes.

They were not the usual local stock of adventurers either. No, these were seasoned professionals, if the scars littering their forearms and faces were any indication. The taller of the two, a woman with dark brown hair and a thick scar bisecting one eye, had a sword hanging in a simple scabbard at her side. I call her the taller of the two, but really, they were both massive, built like ogres, and horribly intimidating. The other one, a blond man with a well-groomed beard, had only a small knife on his belt.

The rational part of my mind was duking it out with the irrational part. The former argued that I was much too minuscule a monster to warrant the interest of these kinds of people and that if they were there to kill me, they probably wouldn’t be wearing civilian clothes, and would likely have brought more weapons. The latter was pretty much just screaming that they didn’t need weapons, they could probably kill me with their bare hands and not even break a sweat. I started thinking about how far I could make it towards the back door in the storeroom before they started chasing me. Not very far, considering I’m a scrawny pipsqueak and they looked like they considered fighting a dragon to be a light warm-up. My thoughts raced with possible ways I’d been found out.

Maybe they’d gotten tipped off by the adventurers that morning? I thought I’d been in the clear since they’d only seen me post-transformation, but had I been mistaken? Did they see my disguise after all, and pass on the word to these two? Or perhaps they had some kind of new monster detecting artifact, and just knew about me regardless of the events of that morning? What if Mae wasn’t as blind as she let on? She could have tipped them off!?

My rambling spiral of worst-case what-ifs was interrupted by the woman clearing her throat, and I realized much to my own horror that I had been staring blankly up at them both like some sort of weirdo. Of course, I had been totally frozen in fear, but still, I kicked myself internally for slipping up so easily. That was great, nothing says monster in disguise quite like the creepy pale kid in the poorly lit half-basement of the shadiest-looking bookstore in Garrowgreim. I was about half a second away from making a run towards the back when she opened her mouth to speak.

“Hi! Is Mae around?” She asked with a smile, not noticing or perhaps just politely ignoring my staring.

“S-she’s not here!” I blurted the words out purely from reflex. That’s the answer I was supposed to give if anyone asked after Mae, regardless of where she actually was. She could be standing right beside me, and I was still supposed to tell whoever asked she wasn’t in. It was basically the first thing I learned on the job, on Mae’s insistence, and it was pretty firmly conditioned into me after six months. I don’t know why I’m supposed to say it. Maybe she’s a secret celebrity. Maybe she’s a former crime boss who faked her own death. All I know is I don’t get paid enough to care, but I do get paid just enough that I probably wouldn’t sell her out either.

Of course, the sudden and rather abrupt nature of my response was highly suspicious, so I fully expected them to question me about it, and since I really did have no idea where Mae had gone, I didn’t have a better answer for them if they did press me. Instead, thankfully, she just shrugged.

“Oh, well she might have told you about us. I’m Silvia, and this is Martin.” She nodded to the man beside her, who in turn nodded at me. I probably should have nodded back, or done anything at all really, instead of just staring at them blankly as I did. I had never heard of either of them before.

“Uh, sorry she’s never mentioned you.” I managed to get the words out without my voice breaking, but I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Look I’m not very good at talking to strangers on the best of days, and that’s when they aren’t muscle-bound warriors who could squash me like a bug. It was basically torture.

The pair of them exchanged confused glances. “Are you sure? Not even once?” The man, Martin, piped up.

“No, sorry she, uh, she doesn’t really talk to me a whole lot.” That was only partially a lie. Mae talked to me, yes, but it was mostly insults, yelling, and swearing. She never asked me anything personal, and quite frankly I was afraid to ask her anything. We’d never really had a casual conversation, and we both seemed content to keep it that way.

“Well that does sound like her,” Silvia muttered, earning an agreeing look from Martin. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Some time today, I really don’t know when though…” I tried to sound as apologetic as possible. “I could give her a message?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh no, that’s alright.” Martin shook his head. “We can just wait around for her.”

“It's really no bother!” I said, trying one last time to get them to leave, but to no avail. Martin wandered off into the shelves to browse while Silvia leaned back against the counter, and casually began picking at a scab on one hand. I wanted to make some excuse and disappear back into the storeroom, but I didn’t trust my legs, considering how much they were shaking under the counter. So instead, I just opened my book back up and tried to read. Emphasis on tried. I ended up just passing my eyes over the same sentence over and over again, trying to ignore the two visitors and keep an eye on them simultaneously, which resulted in me doing a poor job of both.

Just because they weren’t there for me didn’t mean I was free and clear. They were still professional adventurers, seasoned ones at that. If anyone could spot a Shadeling in disguise, it would be them. They wouldn’t actually be able to see through my disguise though, not in the same way they could a Changeling or a Mimic.

With Changelings, their appearance is merely an illusion, a bit of magic that tricks the viewer into seeing what the monster wants them to. Mimics do actually have to change shape, but without the illusions always they use they’re just a Mimic in the shape of a book or a chest or so on. They can also be seen by other monsters, so they don't have to worry about a fellow creature of darkness attacking them by mistake like I have to. In both cases, such monsters are weak to spells that break illusions. However, that sort of magic is massively expensive, not to mention time-consuming for humans to prepare, so most monsters of those types are still considered massively dangerous to humans. Unless of course, you’re the lucky humans to be born light-touched with the innate ability to see past illusions, in which case you’ll be able to catch them from a mile away since such magic just flat-out won’t affect you. Still, such people aren't exactly common. Shadelings are different since our changes aren’t illusions. Rather, our magic physically alters our bodies. It uses more power, sure, but it's basically tamper-proof. This means when we do get caught, it’ll be our own damn fault for messing up something.

Have you ever had to think about how to behave as normally as possible? Well, I have, a lot, and I was doing it then. Blending in passively is easy, I’m great at that, you just mind your own business, talk to no one, and don’t make eye contact with anyone. It's when I have to actually talk to people that I start having problems. Every time I’ve ever gotten caught, chased, or attacked, it’s been because I had to physically interact with someone, and ended up giving myself away because I have the social abilities of someone who's spent their whole life locked in a deep dark pit. Well, every time except that morning. Stupid cat.

Blending in when someone’s active attention is on you is massively harder. And stressful to no end! You have to make sure you’re not being suspicious, which usually means I’m so focused on not looking suspicious that I end up acting like the most suspicious person alive. I always overthink it and get inside my own head too much. Can you blame me, when getting discovered pretty much means certain death? Oh yeah, the stakes aren’t high at all. They weren’t even really that focused on me and I was still on the verge of panic half the time.

About half an hour passed in silence, with Martin focused solely on the books -sticking primarily to the magic section-, and Silvia hanging around the counter, examining the store as a whole and fiddling incessantly. Both of them seemed pretty at ease, and I started to believe myself when I told the wild Shadeling part of my brain that they were genuinely here on an honest-to-gods social call. I was even beginning to relax a little when Silvia spoke to me again and ruined my progress.

“How can you read in here? I can barely even see, it's almost pitch black!” she asked, trying to look down at what I was reading.

I looked up from the text with a start, her words not quite making their way through to my anxiety-riddled brain at first. “Wha- oh, yeah, I just, I-I have good eyes, I guess?” I cursed myself for forgetting to light at least a lamp or a candle of some sort. What sort of a person reads in the dark!? It’s so hard to remember just how poorly humans see in low light, considering how I see through darkness with such ease. Another of the few perks that come from being made of dark magic.

She nodded, and half-sat on the desk. Still peering at the page that I had open, she raised her hand and snapped her fingers. The sound seemed to echo around the room, and a small ball of gently glowing light appeared above her pointer finger, lighting up the space around her like a miniature sun.

“Well, that’s better!” she said, cocking her head to read the text, now fully visible to her. I, meanwhile, was half-blinded, the light magic having seared itself into my retinas. I barely managed to avoid letting out a yelp, and instead turned it into a sort of strangled throat-clearing sound, which thankfully neither of the pair commented on. I blinked rapidly, still seeing the spot in my vision when my eyes were shut.

“Ah, yes. Shadelings.” She mused, smiling a little, and I nearly bolted before I realized she was commenting on the book, not me. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep my flight reflex in check? I felt like I was about to explode from the effort. “Annoying little bastards.” She held the light over one of the little illustrations, particularly the one of a juvenile Shadeling -still on all fours- cowering from what appeared to be an orange.

“Oh, yeah, I-I’d imagine!” My throat was as dry as the desert. It felt like I’d swallowed my tonsils. I couldn't focus my eyes properly.

“They're not so bad,” laughed Martin, appearing from between two shelves with a weighty tome of his own. “They’re pretty stupid, so they aren’t much of an issue.”

“Oh don’t let Rima hear you say that,” Silvia shoved a playful elbow into his ribs, and the two shared a knowing laugh. I had no idea what the inside joke meant, so I just gave a nervous chuckle and tried to ignore the inadvertent insult. I mean it's not like he was wrong, after all, I’ve pointed out that we start out dumb as a bag of nails on multiple occasions, but still, it's depressing to be reminded of how people see my kind. Even if they're right.

I was stewing a little over the comment when I heard the sound of the front door opening again. I peered around Martin, expecting to see Mae back to save me from the horrors of human interaction. Instead, I saw a tall, thin man in a long, billowing cloak. He was just turning towards us, having pushed the door gently shut behind himself. If I wasn’t already freaking out over the two visitors I’d already had, I probably would have paused to realize that, considering Mae’s Books gets a patron through her doors about once every two weeks, this was the most people I'd ever seen in the store at any given time. To have three in at the same time? Well, that was just unheard of! I should have been massively suspicious of him, but unfortunately, my usual boundless paranoia was overtaxed by worrying about Silvia and Martin.

“I’ll be right with you in a second S-Changeling!” The word jumped out of my mouth as soon as he pulled his hood down, revealing his face -to me at least- as the yellow, blotchy face of a Changeling. Changelings look remarkably similar to my real form, except they’re generally bigger, tougher, and meaner looking. They also have two rows of razor-sharp fangs, while I just have one set of marginally pointy ones that look kind of wimpy in comparison. The two humans exchanged confused glances at each other, and me, since to them he no doubt looked like a completely normal man, thanks to the illusion he had in place. Unfortunately for him, I was a fellow monster and could see his true self.

When he realized he’d been caught, -or at least thought he’d been caught, since why would anyone believe the hastily blurted words of some kid- he thankfully had the decency to screech, bare his aforementioned pearly whites, and lunge towards the counter with reckless abandon. That really removed any uncertainty from the matter.