It wasn’t like any form of communication he’d experienced before. As a human, he could converse like any other man except that the senses that were his as a raccoon, sight, scent, instinct, combined with more human ones in the transition. He could communicate with ordinary raccoons and other animals as natural as could be. Except that the concerns on their minds were much simpler than his. This was a wonder. She was human. Brig was sure of it. But even though his contact with human society was limited, it was hard to think it was a common trait. It wasn’t just words passing back and forth, but something that to the Kelvic felt completely more natural. He wanted to ask her how she did it. He sensed that there were things that didn’t put her off as much as he’d worried they might. Then other things that he thought were unfamiliar. But he didn’t find it strange that she was unfamiliar with Kelvics. Brig himself had come across very few others like him, and he thought that some might keep themselves hidden from others. ”I was away in the forests when it happened,” he said as his dark amber eyes settled on the doll then drifted up towards the woman’s. ”when I got home it was too late.” He was sure that if he hadn’t been out prowling the wilds, if he’d been there it wouldn’t have happened. Or he’d have gotten them out. Touch though, was something there’d been none of for quite some time, and it was the raccoon in him that welcomed it too. By nature he was hardly inhibited and modesty was a slippery concept. He went so far as to stretch out on his belly, the whole length of him and the purring that rumbled up from his chest made no mystery of his appreciation. Suddenly he raised his head again and blinked at her, there was something of comradery in the gesture. ”You’re like me maybe. I can make my home in the wilds but I don’t belong with wild creatures. They don’t know it, but I do. My mother and sister were human. I’m not, but something tells me it’s where I’m supposed to be.” The more they interacted the more Brig realized that the coming Winter would stretch long and lonely in the mountains. He hadn’t felt it before, as much as he did now. With frozen passes and waterways, it would be weeks and weeks of solitude and the quiet of a snow blanketed landscape. If he didn’t venture into civilization soon, something told him that after today, he might feel it more than otherwise. But he sat up abruptly when she began to talk about her new home in Lhavit. His nose twitched and his head cocked curiously. ”You’d let me stay with you?” ”I can see Lhavit lit up at night, it blends with the stars. I’ve never visited a city before.” Truth being, unless settler’s cabins in twos or threes could rate as small villages, then those were the largest settlements he’d visited in his short life. ”I’d like to come. I don’t mind sleeping in a tree or on the floor. And I can help you with your place. I’m good at tinkering, at fixing things. You could teach me about perfumes,” he suggested, but it was plain he wasn’t reasonably sure what those were. ”And I can help you learn about humans.” ”What is your name?” he suddenly asked. But what he was, that took some thinking. How best to explain. ”There aren’t very many of us, I don’t think,” he ventured. ”My father was a Kelvic. My mother said that he was a bear in his animal form, and that he went towards the lights in the north. Kelvics aren’t just raccoons,” he explained, and sat back again on his haunches with as serious an expression as a raccoon could muster. ”They can be wolves or big cats, mice or even birds. My mother told me, that my father said that Kelvics were first made by magic long ago. From ordinary animals. But now we’re born with the magic inside us. No one teaches us how to shift. We just know. I think it, and it happens. It doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t take any time. I could show you, if you want?” he wondered. |