Saliva flooded my mouth as my jaw started to ache, the joint cracking as it lengthened, pain pushing through the bones of my face, then to my inner ears, then down my spine in a flood of heat and acid. My body curled in on itself as my hips twisted, reshaping themselves to align differently with legs and feet that were shorter and longer in different places. Stabbing pain rushed through my left knee up to my hip, followed closely by worse pain on the left side.
If I’d still been human, I’d have been gasping from it.
As it was, I was panting, my hands now paws and my back legs shaking with it.
But, holyshit, the smell wasincredible.
I don’t have synesthesia—a condition where your senses get mixed up and you taste sounds or whatever—but as a wolf, it was like smells had colors and sounds. It was overwhelming, but, weirdly, not in a bad way. But I needed a minute—well, a lot of minutes—to just absorb it all.
I laid down, my legs folding oddly and my head resting on my arms—legs? It was weird. Not bad, just… weird.
It was like adjusting to bright sunlight or sudden darkness—it took me a few minutes to adjust so that I could actually pay attention to the details around me. The feel of pine needles under the pads of my paws, the specific smells of dirt and pine and grass and…
Elliot.
I turned to look at him, then had to look up. That was weird, too. Elliot wasn’t that much shorter than me—maybe three inches or so—but almost everyone is shorter than me. I rarely have to look up at anyone, especially not as far as I currently had to look up to see Elliot’s face.
He was still blurry, for the record. My vision was not noticeably improved by being a wolf. The pine needles betweenmy paws—Jesus, I have paws—were clear, but beyond the distance of a foot and a half or so, things became fuzzy again.
“Seth?”
I snapped my head back up to look at him, his rough voice musically multi-tonal to my canid ears. He took a step towards me, and my tail thumped against the ground, startling me. I hadn’t done that consciously, and I yelped a little.
“It’s okay, baby shifter,” he said, softly, crouching down near me. “You’re okay.”
I was okay.
It was weird, but it was okay. I wasn’t sure how my body worked, what made parts of me—like my tail—move, or how to orient myself in a world where everything was so verymuch… but I was okay.
My tail thumped the ground a little again, and this time it didn’t scare me because I was more aware of its presence than I had been the first time.
“You with me, baby shifter?” Elliot asked me, and I wanted to let him know that I was—I could hear him and understand him, although I couldn’t say anything, obviously, and I didn’t really want to bark or growl at him. Instead, I moved forward, crawling on my belly through the pine needles until I could touch my nose to one of his jean-clad bent knees.
His face was clearer now, and I watched a grin split his face. “Hey, baby.”
He slowly reached out a hand, and I pushed my nose up into it, smelling the musk and earthy scent of his skin. Dirt and wood and sweat and salt. My tail thumped the pine needles again.
“Hey,” he said again, and slowly moved his hand to rub my head, over my ears, the contact sending little pleasant shivers through me. “You know me, don’t you?”
His tone was… not quite what you’d use with a dog, but not what you’d use with a person, either. More like somecombination of the two—I wasn’t sure if I should feel insulted or not, but given that this was the first time I was doing this on purpose instead of in a panic, I probably should give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t know how with it I was.
I wondered if Rule One—the no kissing rule—applied to licking his hand.
I nosed at his fingers again, letting my tongue just stick out enough to taste salt and skin.
Elliot laughed, which I took as permission to actually lick his hand, which he then used to ruffle my ears.
Then he stood. “Okay, baby shifter, let’s see what these new legs of yours can do.”
“Oh,fuck me,”I snarled, or tried to, curled in around myself as muscles spasmed from the pain stabbing through my joints. My spine, my knees, my hips, my elbows… my joints throbbed, and it left me feeling both nauseous and hollow. That was sadly normal—when the pain got really bad, I’d have flashes of nausea and blackening vision. Usually it passed within a handful of seconds, a minute at most.
That wasn’t happening this time.
I didn’t know how long it took for the pain to dissipate, but it was definitely longer than a few minutes. It probably wasn’t an hour, but pain does funny things to your perception of time.
“Seth?” Elliot sounded worried. And close.
I groaned, then forced my eyes to open.
