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For most of his life, Craig never had any problem with his unique sense of humanity.

Even if it was technically a disguise, he felt just as human as any true homo sapien. Why wouldn’t he? He bickered with his little siblings just as any brother would, did his chores like any ordinary teenager, loved his family just the same as any son. Maybe the face all his classmates knew wasn’t his “real” face, but what did that matter?

He was a bit like a werewolf, he reasoned. Whether he looked like a dark-haired young man or an alligator-dog creature or something between the two, he was the same thing either way: he was Craig Knight, and he was loved. For all he cared, both faces were his real face. He thought he had a pretty good handle on what he was.

Then he started having dreams.

There was something in his hands, small and soft like a kitten. He would’ve thought it was a kitten, but he recognized the long snout, the dark fur, the tiny horns just starting to come in.

That was him, no doubt about it. It was hard to believe he was ever so small and fragile.

It was hard to remember if he had control of himself in the dream. He didn’t know if it would’ve been worse if he did or didn’t while his claws closed around the baby monster in his hands and crushed it.

He barely had time to feel horrified before the dream changed. Maybe he felt pain. He watched the world around him become the world beneath him, and the things that troubled him became small and insignificant. He cast a shadow on the earth like nightfall, blotting out the very sun with enormous wings.

There was no triumph, no feeling of superiority. Only the knowledge that he had become what he was always meant to be.

He woke up with a scream in his throat.

-

He was awake for hours before the sun rose. He sat on the front porch in the morning chill with a mug of black tea in his hands.

The sky was starting to brighten, but it wasn’t yet colored by the sunrise. It was a cool cobalt blue, painting everything to match it. Porch lights hadn’t switched off yet, providing pops of warmth to the coolth of the blue hour.

It was the prelude to a gorgeous morning, but all Craig could think about was the feeling of it all becoming insignificant in the dream.

Of all the things the dream implied, that was what chilled Craig to the bone the most. He was plenty scared of his demonic origins complicating things, never being able to live the mundane future he so desperately wanted for himself, and the thought of possibly hurting his family made him nauseous.

But the idea of the things that made him happy slowly (or rapidly) losing meaning – that rattled him. Badly. Big apocalyptic monsters don’t watch sunrises or collect feathers or look at moss growing on discarded bricks and cinderblocks.

Craig was not a monster. That much he was sure of.

But he wasn't sure if he had a choice in whether or not he'd become one.

-

The concept of metamorphosis came to him one afternoon.

He didn’t remember what he’d been thinking about before, but his troubling dreams were on the brain when butterflies crossed his mind. Making that connection felt so viscerally upsetting that he thought he was going to be sick.

Does a caterpillar know what’s going to happen to it when it forms a chrysalis? Is it awake in there as it’s broken down and built back up? If one was capable of it, would a caterpillar feel dread at the idea of such a drastic change? Does a butterfly miss its old life as a caterpillar, or does it forget it ever was one and embrace the change it was always meant to make?

Can a caterpillar avoid the change at all? Could he?

The question followed him into his terrible dreams. When he looked down on the world, all he saw was an empty cocoon he had shed.