Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Isaac
It’s something like three in the morning and Katrina sleeps peacefully in her bed. We still haven’t talked. She’s still going to pretend to be my fiancé unless her commitment before we slept together has somehow changed because of the sex.
That sex!
The woman is insatiable, and it has been a very long time since I experienced a woman who could keep up with me, much less one who could challenge me. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been with a human woman who had this kind of skill, enthusiasm, or staying power. I don’t think that…
“Shut up, grow up, and show up,” I say. It’s a mantra for me back from my time in the Marine Corps. I learned firefighting there. No. I was in the Marine Corps when I learned firefighting but all military fire fighters are trained at Goodfellow Air Force base in San Angelo, Texas. I went through almost nine months of training because they had big plans for me. So, I did two different programs of three months each in Texas and then at Camp Pendleton for almost as long to learn wildfire fighting.
Shut up, grow up, and show up. It’s really just a catch all phrase in my life now, something where shutting up is the most important part, even if only my mind is talking. Okay, you already know that Katrina is sleeping in her bed. I’m in her backyard. I haven’t gotten dressed. Her backyard has a tall fence. In fact, only from the second floor of my home can I see into it. Of course, she could see into her backyard but she’s asleep.
No other houses have a view into the yard. This is still at least slightly irresponsible. But I need to shift. I need to feel things as my animal for a little while. If I did this for hours out in the woods, we would call this going wild. Shifters, I mean. When you shift specifically to deal with the pressures of life in the human world, it’s going wild. We reset the civilized part of ourselves by engaging the animal. I stretch for a moment and then I’m my cat.
It hasn’t been all that long but it nonetheless feels very good to be a panther. A shifter animal is far larger than the natural counterpart so I’m the size of a horse even though I’m a black leopard. I’m a hell of a lot more elegant than a horse, though. Hell, leopards are a hell of a lot more elegant than any animal at any time anywhere. That goes for our natural counterparts, too. There’s no comparison.
All right. You can probably tell now that leopards are also very clear on what animal they believe is superior to all others. Relax. In the shifter world, this isn’t thought of as something evil or what humans would call racism. Tigers think they’re better. Lions think the rest of us are like children who need organization and management.
Wolves think all other shifters are weak. Bears think shifters are too human. And Dragons… well, they’re almost as new to us as we are to the rest of the world.They think we’re inferior but what are you going to do to convince someone who lives for centuries that your blip of a life is as impactful as theirs?
I walk along the inside of the fence until I come to the oak tree in the far corner. It’s an old oak, a strong oak. It can support my weight. I know because I’ve occasionally leapt up onto it from the other side of the fence. I can hear the sounds of the night, and as I get up and into the tree, I hear various close prey grow silent.
I’m not in a hunting mood tonight, though. Tonight, I just want to breathe and let my thoughts ease away for a while.I jump down into the scrub on the other side of the fence. Everything is still very dark and very quiet. At least, it is quiet and dark for a human. For me, the night fills with sounds and sights that are almost overwhelming in the first few moments after my shift.
I trot off in a direct line into the increasingly dense trees. This isn’t some deep wood or anything, just an area that hasn’t been overly landscaped yet.
I’m not being too cautious. There isn’t much that is a threat for me in this form. The human threat would just be any report of sightings of a giant panther lurking around. I’d likely become an urban legend nobody believes regardless of the fact that we shifters are actually out now, known to the world.
My coat, though, helps me become almost invisible, so even if some brave adventurer is out and about right now, I doubt they would notice me until I was almost on top of them.And my hearing is top notch. If I were hunting, it would be my main avenue of finding prey. My smell and vision are excellent as well. There is quite a change in the world when we shift.
Long ago, it was our survival mechanism. We could be hunted and well as hunt. It took a lot to bring us down, but it was still possible, and we had to manage our lives as humans. We had to hide our true identities for a very long time.
We don’t exactly hide anymore, but we aren’t out there hitting people over the head with the fact that we exist, either. We announced ourselves and then, let things settle. Many people still don’t believe in us.Katrina probably doesn’t believe in us.
I stop and crouch as I hear a sudden shifting to my right. My muscles tense and my claws come out to dig into the earth beneath me. I tilt my head up slightly and try to catch the smell of anything new.After a long minute, I relax. It’s only a stray dog, and the moment it caught wind of me it turned tail and ran.
But now my energy is up, and I stretch out and start to run. I eat up ground quickly and have to content myself with going in loops.As my body loosens so does my mind and thoughts of Katrina flood me. Images of her from last night flash by as trees become blurs in the background as I increase my speed.I feel incredible excitement at the thought of getting back to her and a touch of fear as well.
I’m back to the fence before I realize it. I leap into the oak tree’s branches and then I leap lightly down from the branches to the grass. There was no real exertion here but I still feel looser.
Freer.
I jump down into Katrina’s yard and shift back to my human form. I pause only for a moment before I hurry back into her house. I’m feeling energized in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time.As quietly as I can, I slip back to her room so I can grab my clothes.
I don’t grab my clothes, though. Katrina is sitting on the bed with her legs crossed… What do you call it? Indian style? Criss-cross applesauce? In any case, she’s sitting there and I can see in her eyes that she saw me. I can see in her smile that she’s happy she did. She holds out her hand and curls her finger to call me over. “Here, Kitty, Kitty,” she says.