Chapter 1

Beep beep beep beep

I groaned as I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. Swinging my feet over the side of my bed I made my way to the bathroom.

“Ok, David, time for another day in paradise ... at least it’s Friday,” I murmured before splashing some cold water on my face to help me wake up. Glancing back up at the mirror, I absently traced my finger around the scarring that marred about a quarter of my face. A habit that I developed when the flesh was still healing. Some scars can look cool, like the ones from cuts. Burn scars, on the other hand, never look cool ... The pocked skin started just under my left eye and made its way to my chin, spanning the entire width from my ear over to, and encompassing part of my nose. I didn’t linger for long though. I’d had a couple decades to accept my face for what it was. I ran a comb through my short dark hair a couple times, if only to get rid of the cowlicks, and made a mental note that it was time for a haircut.

I got dressed and pulled my carry revolver from the my nightstand drawer and looked at it appraisingly. Deciding that I felt like going to the bar after work I put it back in it’s safe. Grabbing a cold brew coffee from the fridge I walked out the door to my duplex and into the cool, early spring morning air.

“Good morning David,” a gravelly voice called out and I turned my head.

“Morning, Raylund,” I replied to my gray-lupine neighbor. Many of the other neighbors protested when he moved in with Lorie, his mate a few years back, but I at had a little experience of what it was like to be ostracized on my appearance so I at least tried to be friendly. “Going for your morning run?” I asked, as he was stretching.

“No, I’m going straight to work today. I’m running a little behind.”

“Wanna ride?” I asked, but he shook his large snouted head.

“Thanks, but I’ve got this. Bye.” He took off and for what was probably the millionth time I was impressed at his running speed and the knowledge that he could keep his Olympic-sprinter’s pace for miles on end! Inter-species competitive sports didn’t exist for multiple reasons, and not all of them were fueled by prejudice!

I got in my truck and started toward the job site that had been my ‘office’ for the last few weeks. As a superintendent for a general contractor I never worked in the same place for long.

On the way through the downtown area there were a multitude of people on the sidewalks. Most of them were full human, but scattered about was the occasional lupine, centaur, leonite, and even a lamia and an arachne were walking/slithering together. I saw those two most mornings and people always seemed to avoid proximity with them. Around sixty years ago sentient human/animal hybrid species were suddenly discovered around the world over the course of a few months. There was speculation of some science experiments gone haywire, but no one really knew the real reason for their appearance, including themselves. Them popping up was often referred to as The Arrival, and it seemed like they were here to stay. Most of them lived in their own communities fairly secluded from most human populations, but from what I heard the the living conditions weren’t very good in many of them. In the last few years, however, some of them had started moving into more populated areas like suburbs, and that had been met with a mixed, but mostly negative response.

Soon enough though I’d made it to the contractor’s trailer and my mind quickly became preoccupied with the day’s work. A couple hours later, the door opened up.

“Yo, Dave. Wazzup?” I grinned and glanced up from the mechanical print I’d been going over to see the short, stocky form of Tom Renault, the electrical foreman. He was a bit of a knucklehead, but was good at his job, and had been a good friend of mine since middle school. He’d stuck up for me against a lot of bullying I’d gotten over my scarred face until I’d grown much larger than the bullies.

“Hehe, not much, just happy it’s Friday.”

“I hear that!”

“Wanna toss back a few cold ones tonight?” I asked.

“You know it!” Answered Tom with a grin. A second later he was back to business and we got to talking about the job.