Solstice

"I don't enjoy murder, and I find it terrible that I have to understand it."

Solstice is smooth, suave, and kind. She dances in her free time and is a pacifist: she hates that the clan goes to war but understands the necessity. She works in storage, freezing and storing food with her element. She gets along well with lightshade, the clan's other notable ice-element Spiral and a self-styled master punster (she's not nearly as good at wordplay as he is, but she comes across as much more open-hearted and kind).

A small blizzard follows her everywhere. She is Ice-saturated, and her element twists and dances around her lithe form even in the hottest parts of the desert. She is often taken along on hunting and gathering trips, as her natural freeze acts like a portable air conditioner. She doesn't mind being useful.

She was saturated with ice inside of the egg.

---

Something was wrong. When she woke in the morning, she lay there, longing for more sleep. Lazily, she wondered what her dreams had been, then opened her eyes with a start. She was tired. She was never tired. She shifted, trying to push herself up, but her body was heavy. Hot.

That was also wrong.

She took a breath, trying to calm her hammering heart. The ground before her frosted briefly before melting away, but she felt none of her usual cool. Her scales felt hot, and brittle, like dried mud in an ancient riverbed. She closed her eyes, and was met with fangs. The fear was enough to finally push her to her feet.

The floor swayed beneath her, and everything looked small and distant. The length of her body dragged on the floor, and she winces as one of her brittle scales scraped off in pieces as she pushed herself forward. She needed help, she was sick, she needed...

She blinked.

Again, she was met with fangs, with all-consuming darkness, a phantom memory burned on the backs of her eyelids from a life that wasn't her own. She screamed and collapsed, crying out more weakly as the weight and movement cracked more scales beneath her. Claws scraped the ground outside her room, and she opened her mouth to call to them, but no sound came.

"We need to leave." A thought cut through her head like lightning, a foreign voice with no sound. She tried to argue, but a thought came again, wordless this time, and her vision went dark.

When she again opened her eyes, she rested in a shaded alcove in a craggy river. the water swirled around her, bits freezing briefly before being swept away. She at last felt cool again, but she still felt tired, sore, and heavy. She lifted her head and looked to her side, finding bare skin, exposed... and velvety. Her scales had gone completely, replaced with the bare beginnings of... of all things, downy fur. She moved her claws up out of the water, finding it difficult to lift, heavy with muscle she had never felt before.

"We need to have a talk." The voiceless thought cut through her head again and she winced. "This is no less pleasant for me than you, believe me."

"I have a hard time believing that," she growled, "what did you do to me?"

"Nothing. Nothing intentional, at least, but it would seem..."

"It would seem what?" She thrashed her tail in anger, sending up a huge plume of water onto the bank, where it sizzled and steamed in the desert heat.

"That my presence may be too much for your body to handle."

She froze. The river froze with her as her feared pooled in her stomach and her magic surged. "Too... Too much? Am I dying?"

"No... No, certainly not. But you are changing. It would seem...