Cora screams as she jumps out of the plane and falls towards the Earth. She felt alive and the trill was amazing. She couldn’t believe that she had been afraid to do this. She was glad that she let her friends Carter and Mia talk her into learning how to use a wingsuit. She had the necessary training time under her for parachute jumping and now she was enjoying her lessons in wingsuit gliding. Cora follows her friends and instructors and pull her chute when they do.

When she lands beside them on the ground “God! That was freaking amazing guys.”

“So, I take it that you really enjoy it then?” Carter was looking at the big smile on Cora’s face.

“You bet. I want to go again.” Cora was all geared to do some more glide time in the suit.

Carter just laughs “sorry Cora. That’s all the time we have for today and we didn’t bring your spare chute either.”

“Darn!” Cora snaps her fingers as she follows Carter and Mia back to the hangar where he operated out of.

“So, what are your plans for the rest of the week?” Carter puts his parachute down. He’ll repack his chute later.

“Let’s see. I have work this afternoon at the leather shop and my part time job at the pizza store during the day.” Cora hated her job at Olive garden. They kept her in the kitchen washing dishes. They had a religious group come in one day and complain about her being a waitress.
How they found out she was a male under her clothes she had no idea.

“Are you free next Saturday? We could do more than one jump if you’re up to it?”

“Next Saturday? I think I have the day off from work, so sure.” Cora hopes she could hold out that long on her jobs. The Olive garden job sucked and she really did hate it. The job at the leather and bondage shop only paid her minimal wage.

Cora strips out of her flight suit and put it away neatly in her beat-up Ford Escort. The car may look like crap, but her and a few friends suped-up the engine, suspension, braking system and transmission.

“Have fun at work tonight.” Carter waves at Cora as she drives off.

She would really like a job where she didn’t have to work and enjoy life. She stops at the local store and buy a Pepsi, 1 Golden ticket, 1 50X the money and 1 Mystery Crossword. When she scratches them. She couldn’t believe she won all three top prizes for each scratch off.

That was a total of three million dollars she just won in one night.

Since she needs to go down to the regional office to claim the prizes. She puts the tickets in a safe place in her car. Cora heads towards the leather and bondage store to work her shift tonight.

She pulls into her normal parking space and walks inside “hey Arnold, have you been busy today?”

“Nope, it’s been kind of slow. Craig wants you to put the new inventory up tonight if you’re not too busy. It just came in just before you got here.” Arnold didn’t want to put the inventory up, so he left it for Cora.

“Okay, I’ll see you later.” Arnold walks out the back door after clocking out.

“See you.” Cora counts the money in the cash register and makes sure there were seventy-five dollars.

After counting the register and helping a few customers. She starts putting away the new inventory that came in. She hears the bell over the door ring.

“I’ll be with you in a minute.” Just as Cora was heading to the front. She gets jumps by someone from behind. She tries to break free from their grip, but isn’t successful.

She feels a needle stuck in her neck and the next thing she knows, her body started going numb and she blacks out.

She comes around later and find herself strip naked and hanging by her bound wrist.

“Well, looks like our little freak is awake.” One of the kidnappers comes walking over to Cora as she hangs in the middle of the room with her arms stretch high above her head.

“What should we do with this freak?” Another person comes walking in with a riding crop in their hand over towards Cora.

Cora tries to scream, but she had a ball gag held in her mouth. The second kidnapper walks over and smacks her hard across her abdomen twice. He leaves bright red whelps across Cora’s body.

The first kidnapper grabs a whip hanging on the wall and snaps it at Cora’s groin area hitting her hard there. Cora tries screaming again, but is unable to because of the ball gag. For the next twelve hours, the two kidnappers have their ways with Cora.

They cut her, beat her, shove sex toys they had stolen from the store up inside her body. They take a baseball bat to her groin area several times. They break her toes, fingers and hand. Cora passes out from the pain and beating. She no longer feels anything except pain.

The kidnappers pull Cora’s batter abused bloody body down from the hook they had hanged her from. They check her for a pulse, but couldn’t detect one.

“What do you want to do with her?”

“We can take her out to the desert and let the coyotes have her body.” The second kidnapper figure if they drop her out at their normal area.

The coyotes would get rid of the body for them.

They wrap her body up in plastic and carry her out to the truck they had brought her in. They drive throughout the night towards the desert. By morning the two men dump her body out in the Mohave desert and then leave.

Cora manages to open one of her eyes and felt the pain all over her body. She couldn’t move her body or her arms. It was extremely hot out and she was so thirsty. She doesn’t know how long she has been out, but her skin was lobster red. She passes out and hopes death claims her soon.

George Running Eagle was out horseback riding when he comes across a naked bloody body wrapped in clear plastic. He had seen it trying to move, but stopped after a few seconds. He walks over towards the body and notices how beaten and bloody it looked.

George pulls his cell phone out and calls for an air ambulance to be sent out to his location right away. He informs the 911 operator of their GPS coordinates so the helicopter will find them. The helicopter lands and George goes with it. His horse knew the way home.

When they get to the hospital, Cora is rushed into surgery right away. For several hours, she is operated on. Her kidnappers had done a lot of internal damage and external damage to her body. George was worried that her spirit may have been broken as well. He could feel how broken she felt.

After the operation, she is taken to a private room to recover. George stays with her and watches over her body. They had to put her in a medical induced coma to allow her body to heal. Weeks pass and her body heals, but her spirit doesn’t heal. She was unresponsive and trapped inside her mind from the emotional and physical abuse she had suffered.

George knew there was nothing the hospital could do to get her to return to normal. There was something he could do. He sneaks her out of the hospital and takes her to an ancient Navajo spot. Where the medicine men of his tribe have taken trouble souls to reunited with their bodies. He gets her to relax and trust him as he starts the ritual. He throws some herbs and other ingredients into a fire as a huge smoke cloud raises up surrounds them. Cora breathes in the smoke and as she does she collapses onto the ground. The sound of George’s voice disappear as Cora finds herself standing on the edge of a cliff and surrounded by darkness.

“What brings you here my child?”

Cora looks around from where the voice came from.

“Behind you.”

Cora turns around and see a black fox with a white spot on its head and chest. Its eyes were white as well.

“I don’t know. I am scared and frighten all the time now.”

“So, you have come because you are scared and frightened?”

The Fox walks closer to her and looks at her spirit. Images of what had been done to this two-spirit child appears. It could feel the hatred and anger that clings to this child’s spirit from her attackers.

“Are you going to let their anger and hatred install fear into you or are you going to face their anger and hatred and send it away from you? It clings to your spirit like a parasite installing fear and pain. Your spirit is like the eagle and myself you are meant to be free and courageous. Do not let the fear or pain of what you went through kill your spirit. Use it to be forged into a weapon to avenge those who have hurt you and others like you. Be their weapon against those people. Show them you are stronger than they are and make them see the path they are on, only leads to death for them.”

The darkness that surrounded them disappeared and is bright and sunny with a clear blue sky and a bright sun shining overhead. The cry of several eagles could be heard as one comes and lands next to the fox Cora has been speaking with.

“Jump my child.”

The voice had come from the Eagle this time.

Cora steps to the edge and looks down. All she saw was emptiness.

“Fly again my child. Fly like the eagle and the sparrow. Fly and be free.”

Cora jumps off the cliff. The next thing she feels is the feeling she experience when she was soaring among the clouds like she did before. The same enjoyment and excitement she felt when she jumped out of the airplane and fell to earth in her squirrel suit.

Cora wakes up and finds herself laying on her back and looking up into the morning sky. Laying on top of her chest was a large eagle feather.

She turns her head to the right and notice a Native American medicine man watching her.

“You have return to us Night Fox. How do you feel?”

Cora sits up and thinks about his question.

“I feel reborn and whole again.” She picks the feather up off her lap and look at it.

“The spirits have blessed you and given you a task.”

“How do you know?”

“Look behind you.”

Cora looks behind her and sees a black suit, boots and ancient Native American weapons laying near it. There was a silver choker with the shape of a fox head in the middle of it. There was a pair of silver cuff bands next to it. They had the image of the eagle on them. The fox head had white eyes with silver surrounding it.

“These eyes look just like the fox spirit I was talking with.”

Cora had picked up the choker and was holding it in her hand. The band itself was only an inch wide. The whole thing looked to be made of silver. She manages to open it and slide it around her neck. Once she locks it around her neck, she could felt a warmth coming from it. she tries to take it off, but it doesn’t unlock any more. The catch has sealed itself and now the choker was secure around her neck.

Cora looks over towards George “I can’t get it off. It won’t come unlock.”

“The spirit that gave you that choker doesn’t want you to forget your task or the fact that it is looking over you. You are now one with it.”

“Will that happen with the cuffs as well?”

“No, I don’t think it will. Why don’t you go ahead and get dress? We can head back to my place and get some food in you.”

Cora hadn’t realized she had been naked. She notices that the hospital had gone ahead and made her a woman. She was thrilled that she no longer had a male’s plumbing, but a girl’s.

“George, did the hospital make my breast bigger?”

“Nope, the spirit did. You might want to look at yourself when we get to my house. You no longer look exactly like you did. Whoever tried to kill you, did a number on your face so you couldn’t be identify. They even went so far to poured acid on your hands so you couldn’t be identified by your palm or finger prints.”

Cora finishes putting the new clothes left for her on. The one-piece suit felt like it was made of silk, but tougher and hugged her curves. It was like wearing a second skin. It covered her whole entire body up to the base of her neck. The boots and belt where made of leather and were as black as the body suit she was wearing. The boots came up mid-calf on her small legs. There was no doubt that these clothes were meant for a person her size. The belt buckle was silver with an eagle made of moonstone in the center of it. There was a matching leather pouch that held several small obsidian knives and one bigger one that had an antler handle in a leather sheath. There was a fine crafted knife in there as well that had a buffalo bone handle. She straps that onto her body along with the other knife.

She looks at the other weapons still laying on the ground. There was a quiver of hand crafted arrows with obsidian arrow heads and eagle feathers for fletching. There was a spear for her that had an obsidian head to it and two tomahawks with obsidian heads on them.

“It looks like the spirits have been helpful to you.” George stands up and walks over to Cora.

“It would appear they have given me the weapons they want me to use. The thing is, I don’t know how to use them.”

“I think I know the right people to teach you how to use them and other skills you will need in your hunt for those responsible for others like you.”

“I just wish this suit had wings like my squirrel suit did.”

Cora arms move to her side and press against her rib cage and thigh. When she could move her arms again, there was a wing in the space that use to be empty. A smile appears on her face as she realized that the spirits had thought of everything for her. She closes her arms and squeeze them to her side which released her wings as it folded back into her suit.

“Oh, I’m so going to enjoy using these glide wings.”

George escorts Cora back to where he left the horses tied up. They wouldn’t go any further into the area he went when he brought Cora. Cora climbs up into the saddle like she has been doing it for years and ride back towards Georges house. It took them three hours to ride to Georges house. Cora notices it was a modern house that blended in with its environment. As if it had been formed instead of built where it stood.

“Nice house.”

“Thanks. I designed it myself.”

Cora climbs down off the horse and take him to the pasture to run free and drink some water.

George leads the way into the house. The place had a rustic feel to it. There were pictures up on the wall that had people that went back several generations. Cora stops to look at one that had an old US Marshal’s badge in it.

“You had some ancestors that use to be a US Marshal?”

“Yep, that is my great, great, great, grandmother. F.M. Miller. She was the first female marshal to work the Indian territory along with Deputy Marshall Ben Campbell who she traveled and worked with a lot. The next one down from her is my great, great, great Uncle Chris Madsen. He made a name for himself out in the lawlessness of the Indian territory.

“Wow, so where is this mirror?”

“In here.”

George was waiting in a spare bedroom.

Cora walks in and looks at herself in the mirror. George wasn’t joking when he said she didn’t look like herself any more. There were some features of her former face she could make out, but other than that it was totally different. She looked more Native American now with her skin being as darker as it currently is. Her amber color eyes were brighter than they use to be. Her straight black hair needed to be brushed, but it touched her shoulders.

“What did you guys do to my face?”

“We had to rebuild most of the bones under your skin, Cora. Your attackers wanted to make sure you couldn’t be identified. Whoever attacked you, wanted you dead. The police went to the area where I found you and found four more bodies that had been dumped there to die. If I hadn’t stumbled upon you. I fear you would had died from your wounds.”

“Do the police have any leads?”

“Not much actually. All that is known is the victims are from the LGBT community. Someone is targeting lesbians and transgender women.”

“Then I guess that is where I need to start looking. I need to stake out the places you would find them. That’s where our kidnappers would be looking. Do you know what city most of these people came from?”

“Not off the top of my head, but I have a friend on the police that is investigating this matter. I could find out from him.”

"That would give me a starting point."

Cora turns to look at her new body in the mirror.The suit really made her look slim. She was going to need transportation. She couldn't go around riding a horse every where.

“I need to get my car so I can follow these people.”

“Where did you leave it?”

“It should still be at my work. What day is it and how long was I in the hospital?”

“Friday and you were in the hospital for a month and a half. Your car could have been towed and sold by now.”

“I doubt it, but let’s go and make sure.”

“After I get some food in you first. You haven’t been eating like you should while you were in the hospital. We had to put you on a liquid diet to get anything in you.”

“Okay.”

Cora watches as George makes her something to eat. It wasn’t much, but it would hold her over.