James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"Six hundred years?" he said in consternation.

"Oh, that," she said. "We don't age like humans do, Tarrin. How old do you think I am?"

He looked at her. She had a youthful glow about her, even though her features were obviously mature. It made it hard to put an age on her. "I don't know," he said. "About twenty-five, I think."

She laughed. "You're trying to be sweet on me," she accused. "I honestly don't know how old I am. I think I'm somewhere around five hundred. Maybe more."

He gaped at her.

"I lost track," she shrugged. "The next time I see the Red Comet, I'll know. I was born two years before it passed, and it passes every fifty-nine years. I've seen it eight times, and it's going to be coming around again fairly soon."

"In two years," he said absently, doing the math. "That makes you five hundred and thirty-one years old," he said soberly.

"Something like that," she shrugged. "My mother is over a thousand. She's the oldest of us."

"How?" he asked.

"It's just our nature," she replied simply. "Once we reach a certain age, we just stop aging. We live until something kills us."

He continued to eat, wondering over that information. That meant that he was the same. He would live until he was killed. But the way things had gone lately, that could be at any time.

"Any other questions come to mind?" she asked calmly.

"No, not at the moment," he said, chewing on another strip of fish. He was still in a bit of shock over the concept that Were-cats didn't grow old, or die of age.

"I think you understand the basics," she said absently. "I have the feeling that that Sorceress managed to give you a little instruction. You certainly understand your physical gifts," she noted. "We'll start with shape-shifting. It's not that hard, and you should be old enough. You look it."

"You don't know?"

"I've never worked with a Changeling before," she said with a small frown. "Kimmie was a Changeling, but Mist was the one that acted as her mother. Mist is like that sometimes," she mused. "There are things we can and can't do that depend on our age," she told him. "We can't shapeshift until puberty, and taking the human shape isn't possible for a couple of hundred years afterward. I don't know about you, because you weren't born into it. And I can't remember just when Kimmie had managed the human shape." She finished off her strip of fish, and leaned back against a rock. "We'll try this evening," she decided. "You need to understand what all goes into it, and it's easier to do it when we're stopped."

"Why?"

"So you don't lose your clothes," she replied.

He gave her a blank look.

"The clothes don't change with us, Tarrin," she warned him. "You have to take them off."

He blushed furiously.

She laughed richly. "You're one of them," she said with a grin. "I've never understood the human hang-up about clothes. Really, they don't have anything I haven't seen a thousand times over, and besides, I'm not going to go into heat at the sight of a man's bare backside."

He didn't dignify that with a response.

Tarrin had discovered one thing about Jesmind over the course of the day, as they walked south at a very leisurely pace. She was blunt. She tended to say exactly what she thought or felt, and had no reservations of making observations that wouldn't go over well with him. She also had the unnerving habit of speaking almost graphically about things Tarrin wouldn't even think about. And it never occured to her that she was making him uncomfortable. He felt he would die when she started inquiring, very bluntly and thoroughly, about his past love life.

"Why do you want to know that ?" he finally demanded.

"Because I need to know," she shrugged. "If you've never slept with a woman, I need to know. But, judging by your reaction, I'd bet that you haven't," she grunted.

She missed his murderous glare. "That's not what I'm talking about," he said flintily.

"You're so touchy," she snorted. "Didn't you do anything when you were a human? It must have been unbelievably boring."

"I guess humans have different customs and standards than you do," he said frostily, leaving out the implication that she had no morals or standards.

"Yes, I've noticed that myself from time to time. You know, once I was ran out of a town because I took my shirt off to wash at a stream? Humans are the strangest creatures."

"Didn't it occur to you that maybe the town had standards of modesty?"

"You mean it's wrong to take off your shirt?"

"In public, in some places, yes, it is," he told her.

She snorted. "I'm amazed humans manage to breed," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if women had to keep their legs closed in bed, or men have to keep their pants on."

He blushed furiously, right up to the base of his ears. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"I will be, as soon as you shut up," he grated.

She gave him a look, and laughed delightedly. "Tarrin, in that respect, you were right. My people, my kind, what we consider 'right' and 'wrong', it's much different than what the humans believe. Because we are shapeshifters, we spend some amount of time without clothes…so I guess we're used to it. I could look at you naked and not even get a stir. Because I don't associate being naked with sex the way humans do. To me, clothes are for utility, not for concealment. It wouldn't make me bat an eyelash to walk down the busiest street in the world nude." She chuckled. "I'll admit, I was teasing you a bit there. I've been around long enough to understand the human customs. It's just fun to make you blush," she said with a wink and a grin. "But you should start getting used to the idea of being nude in company," she said. "You'll have to be nude when you shapeshift, and I'll be nude as well. So you'd best resign yourself to the idea of being in close proximity to me without clothes on either of us." She wrinkled her nose slightly. "And you are definitely taking them off at night," she said. "They need to be washed, and I'm not sleeping with that smell under my nose."

"What do you mean?" he asked warily.

"If you think I'm sleeping alone, you've got another thing coming," she told him flatly. "It's cozier with another." She gave him a strange look, as he gaped at her. "Oh, come on now," she said accusingly. "If I wanted to bed you, I certainly wouldn't be playing at it like a love-sick human. When I want you, I'll let you know in no uncertain terms. It's not the custom of my kind to play games about it, and we don't assign the same significance to it that the humans do. It's simply something that is very enjoyable, and if you keep making me talk about it, I may change my mind."

That effectively cowed him. "I'm sorry, but you're moving a bit too fast for me," he said carefully.

"Obviously. Don't assume something just because you think you know what I'm thinking, cub," she told him gruffly. "What I consider important is much different than what you do. The faster you understand that, the quicker you'll learn." She gave him a look. "Actually, just shapeshifting a while will show you that. The cat in us, it's stronger when we're in the cat shape," she told him. "Alot of things I'm talking about will make more sense when you see them through eyes closer to my own."

"I have a question," he said.

"What is it?"

"Are you always this cross?"

She gave him a look, then laughed. "Not usually," she said. "To be honest, I'm a bit nervous about you, and a bit worried for you."

That broke a small chip off the big block of animosity he felt for her.

"Worried?"

"Tarrin, I didn't wish this on you, but we can't change the past," she told him with a sigh. "What matters to me now is helping you learn how to live with it. I didn't do it by choice, but I was still the one that changed you. I have to take responsibility for that. And that means that I have to help make it as painless for you as I can."