James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"Just give it time," she told him. "The best way to get used to it is to just do it. And it gives me something nice to look at."

" Do you mind ?" he demanded.

"Not at all," she said, looking him up and down in such a way that he blushed to the roots of his hair. She laughed then, and then motioned at him with her paw. "Alright, I guess I am being mean," she admitted. "Watch what happens. After you see it, I think you'll be able to do it easily enough."

He watched as she hunkered down in a squat, her arms lowering to the ground in front of her, and then she simply shrunk , so fast it happened in the blink of an eye. A rather large white cat was sitting on the ground where she'd been standing. There was another flash, this one of expansion, and she was again standing before him. "That's all there is to it," she told him. "To make it happen, you have to want it to happen, and you have to will it to happen. You already know how to do it. It's in your blood. You just have to make it do it."

"Alright," he said. He thought about what she did, how she changed. He wanted to do the same thing, so he kept telling himself to change in his mind, over and over again. But nothing was happening.

"Don't just think it," she said. " Want it. Will it."

Clenching his paws into fists, he closed his eyes and willed it to happen, using all the concentration skills taught to him by his parents. he felt the oddest sensation, a cool sensation, as if his body had been changed into a liquid. He felt it actually flow into that other shape, the liquid filling the new vessel. There was no pain, just that flowing sensation. And then it was over.

He opened his eyes, and he was given a new point of view of the world. One much closer to the ground. Everything was in vibrant color, and the world opened up to his senses as his instincts seem to advance from the corner of his mind where they usually sat. He was closer to them that way, and he could feel them in a way that he'd never felt them before. And after a few seconds of that intimate contact with them, he didn't feel quite so afraid of them. He looked down at his paws, seeing a pair of cat's legs underneath him. He looked at himself, this way and that, getting an idea of how it felt to have four legs instead of two, getting used to having fur all over his body. "You're a handsome cat, Tarrin," Jesmind said appreciatively, then she hunkered down and shifted into her cat form. She was slightly smaller than he was, he noticed, and her smell was the smell of a cat, not the smell of a Were-cat.

"How does it feel?"

Tarrin was a bit surprised. She had not used sounds or words or movements, but he just seemed to understand perfectly what she was saying to him. And he found it instinctively easy to reply to her in the exact same manner. "Strange," he told her in that unspoken manner. "How are we talking?"

"I've never understood the specifics of it," she said. "We just know what other cats have to say. It works with normal cats too, from housecats to lions."

"Odd," he remarked, sitting down sedately. He felt the urge to start cleaning his fur. Though the idea of licking himself seemed a bit unusual, nonetheless he felt perfectly at ease with the concept. That was definitely the instincts of the cat impressing themselves on his consciousness, as she said they would.

"What do you think?" she asked, walking up to him and sitting down in front of him.

"It feels…right," he said after a moment.

"Then you won't have any trouble," she told him. "To change back, you just will yourself back. It's that easy."

"It'll be more comfortable to sleep like this," he remarked.

"Now you understand why I talked about getting rid of the clothes," she said with a light manner, grinning at him in the manner that cats smiled. "Change back, Tarrin. Make sure that you can do it easily."

Tarrin nodded to her, and this time he kept his eyes open. He willed himself back into his bipedal form, and he changed. His vision blurred and grayed over at the same instant that he felt his body go liquid again, and it cleared with him looking down at Jesmind's cat form. "Very good," she told him in the manner of the cat. "Now change back, and let's go hunting. I'm hungry."

"Hunt, as a cat?" he asked.

"Cats are excellent hunters," she said proudly. "And I have a taste for squirrel. So let's go get one."

"Eat a squirrel, raw?"

"You'll understand once you change back," she told him huffily.

Tarrin again willed the change, and he was surprised at how easy it was that time. It just took wanting it, and thinking about making it happen, and it happened. He sat down again in his cat form in front of her.

"It's easy, isn't it?" she said simply.

"Yes, it is," he agreed.

"Now, let me teach you how to hunt, cubling," she told him, assuming a matronly role. "The meat is worth the effort."

Jesmind was right. Raw squirrel did taste good.

Tarrin lay half-awake in the darkness, with Jesmind curled up beside him, against him, sound asleep. They'd found a large hollow log to nest in for the night, where it was dark and warm and snugly cramped, just the way that cats liked dens. He drowsily mused over how complete the domination of the cat was on him while in its form, how things that would have turned his stomach or made him flinch just seemed to be second nature to him now. The hunting was actually rather easy, for he already had a solid understanding of the basics. All Jesmind had to do was teach him the tactics and nuances of doing with stealth, speed, claws, and teeth, rather than a bow or sling. Once he'd caught the squirrel, he killed it with a bite to the neck to asphyxiate it. Then they ate it. And Tarrin had felt like it was the most natural thing in the world. All those little things that cats did made perfect sense to him now. It was like he was blind for not realizing it sooner.

That was the Cat, and he knew it, but in a way, he welcomed it. He hoped that this closer communion with what was inside him would let them co-exist peacefully together. Introducing each other, as it were. And maybe stop the dreams that haunted and terrorized him, the dreams that were the reason he didn't want to fall asleep, no matter how desperately his body and mind cried out for it.

Jesmind yawned and stirred against him. He was a bit surprised when she raised her head and licked his cheek, then kept at it. He closed his eyes and put his head down, letting her groom him, accepting her attention completely.

She groomed his cheek and neck, then put her head back down against his shoulder. "Now go to sleep," she ordered in a gentle tone. "I'm here to watch over you."

Tarrin closed his eyes, and soon he was fast asleep.

Sunrise poured a stream of rosy light right into the log, and into Tarrin's eyes. He opened them blearily, letting them adjust to the light, and he wondered at it.

He'd slept through the night, without a single dream.

Jesmind was sleeping beside him, with her head resting against his shoulder. And there was a strange smell in the air. It was a musky smell, an unwashed one, and from the smell of it there were several of them. Whatever they were. Leaving Jesmind asleep, Tarrin inched out of the hollow log, testing the air with his nose. They were very close, whatever they were, almost within earshot. When he heard the first rustling, he backed well into the log, back beside Jesmind, who was still asleep.

After a few moments, he could hear voices, and they weren't human. They were canoid sounds, full of yips and barks, and Tarrin had been taught by his father about them. That meant that the smell was of Dargu, the dog-faced, goat-horned Goblinoids. He saw one padded, dog-like foot come down right outside the log's opening. He didn't know their language, only knew how to identify it.