by Mel Todd
With a bit of exasperation, she put the coordinates in a map and started searching. After an eternity of searching, a name popped up and she found a news article referencing that it was pending zoning with construction planned for a new Department of Defense research laboratory.
Why does anyone want to build something there? I mean a lake in Pennsylvania? Hidden Valley? Sounds like someone is stealing from a food company. Give them a year or two to finish researching the lichen and no one would care anymore. Not like you can't build it someplace else.
That was the only thing she could find, though a few articles mentioned some nasty behind closed door committee arguments about it. She didn't care.
Sitting back in her chair, she bit her lip and stared sightlessly at the screen.
I still don't get why this was worth threatening me or breaking into my apartment. Whatever. It's done. They can't do anything now. Go home and maybe see if you can still shift.
The thought that she'd lost the ability had teased at her and she didn't know if that would be good or bad. That last few weeks trying to pull off a miracle had not even given her time to think about anything else. Signing out, she rose and headed to the door only to slow her steps as she saw Chuck looming there, his gaze intent on her.
"Going somewhere?" he said, and she could hear the sneer that plastered across his face.
"Yes, going home." She answered coolly, even as she hands tightened into fists.
"Bit early isn't it?" His mocking tone made her hands clench even tighter.
If you get fired, you can't follow up on the protection act and finish what few tests you have left. Besides, he's the lab manager not your boss. He can make your life hell, but he can't get you fired unless you DO something.
"Yep. Joy of salary." she pasted a smile on her face. "Besides with the three patents I filed last week, I'm pretty sure no one has an issue with the hours I work. And last time I checked, you were the lab manager not HR." Cass had to bite her tongue not to mention how much he enjoyed that benefit.
Chuck shrugged. "True. Enjoy the benefits while you can, they won't last forever." He pushed himself off the door jamb and turned to walk away. "Women like you always take what someone else earned and don't realize the chances they've been given."
She blinked as he walked away.
What in the world was he talking about?
Confused and tired, she headed home. She let the news play for a few minutes but after hearing they still didn't know where the cop and the kids were, she shut it off. Right now she didn't want to think. Home safe, she stood in her apartment and inhaled. It smelled the way it had when she had finished cleaning last night, like hers.
Her skin all but crawled and she needed to be something other than her. Dropping her clothes into a careless pile on the floor of her bedroom, she reached and found the wolverine all but leaping towards her. She found herself snarling at the cologne scent that reached her so much sharper in this form whereas in her human form it had been almost unnoticeable.
Hiding from herself and confusion, she let the animal guide her. She ended curled up in a ball under her bed falling into a deep dreamless sleep.
11
Nature Calls
Shifters seem to fall into two categories, there is the first group that grabs this ability with a passion and it becomes an active part of their life. Then the second group shifts once, might tell a trusted family member about it, then never shifts again. Concern is that the estimated numbers may be off seriously if there is a much larger subsection of people that never reported their changes. What if the actual amount is closer to ten or fifteen percent? Not everyone changed on the same day. Could there be latent shifters waiting to come out only if the human desires it? It does raise questions about reporting as at this point it is voluntary. Other countries such as North Korea or China have made it mandatory. ~ TNN Shifter Report
Waking up human and naked under her bed, set the tone for her day. Starting with whacking her head on the bed frame, taking forever to wiggle out, and shut off her annoying alarm. Realizing she was starving as soon as she thought about it made for a bad start.
She grabbed a bunch of food at a drive through.
I do believe this is the first time I've ever been grateful for fast food. Golden arches for the win.
The food disappeared at a rate that would have alarmed her but now she just ate as she drove, saving the extra-large latte for her office work.
Heading for her computer she called up to see if there had been anything new that came in. As the primary botanist on staff she would get specimens to look at, see if there was anything she could see that struck her interest. Most of the time it was interesting plant extracts and a large amount of what she did went toward beauty products. Demeter had contracts with a few major cosmetics companies to pass on anything that looked interesting when it came to skin care. The lichen had been unusual in that it led to medical research which was one of the reasons she had enjoyed it so much.
A new fungus had been found and would be delivered this afternoon for her to cultivate and set up to start seeing if it had any uses, edible being number one. She marked the lichen complete and set up an order to move it to a special green house that kept plant samples viable. This one got flagged with 'growth' and 'expansion' so the nursery would know to cultivate it until orders came to the contrary.
Just because she needed to check, she followed up on the journal articles and wavier but they all looked fine. The articles could take weeks or months before they were accepted and who knew when they would get published.
Chill, you did what you could.
The bubbling frustration of finding something that might be really impressive but not being able to follow up on it ate at her. But she'd known when she'd signed the contract that all she got to do was the initial review and testing. If there was something worth more time, someone with more experience and time in the lab than her would get it.
With a sigh as she tried not think of the sound of the digitized voice, that she'd still known was male, she headed back into her routine and ignored the world as best she could. The rest of the week, while not boring, didn't have the excitement of the lichen. The fungus seemed to be a standard basidiomycete type, edible, with no unusual characteristics. She was bored. Boredom let her mind drift to the wolverine and wanting to play a bit. At lunch one Friday she looked up what areas were open up in the Sierra Nevada's.
At the height of summer people often escaped into the mountains but the Sierra's covered a huge amount of space. Since she didn't want a camp spot but a place isolated enough where she could play, it didn't take her long to find a spot she thought might work.
Saturday morning, dressed in tennis shoes, shorts, a t-shirt, and with a backpack full of food and some necessities, she jumped in her car and headed on up. Cass didn't really do camping, preferring the comforts of civilization, but she just needed to get away from people. Surely where she was going, there were no camping areas so she figured she could find a quiet place.
She spent the three hour drive up into the Sierra’s listening to music and just enjoying the drive, refusing to think. This was not an experiment. It was a chance to be herself. Well, her animal self, though that idea still struck her as odd.
Oh, please who am I kidding, of course it is me experimenting. Maybe this is my wild side?
She snorted at the unintentional pun. Doing drugs in high school or college had never attracted her and the years of schooling to get her doctorate hadn't left much extra money to do anything really wild. But her school loans were almost paid off and she didn't have any other debt. So, at twenty-eight that put her in a pretty good spot.
Maybe I am going to have a bit of fun. Not like any animal is going to bug a hundred plus pound wolverine and the odds of me meeting another shifter are low. I mean, 2%. That means out of every hundred people I know 2 of them might be shifters.
The pep talk made her feel a bit better as she approached Bowman Lake.
Most people went to Lake Spaulding or the Emerald Ponds. But she just wanted something that would be less populated and something her hybrid car could get to, which meant no rough logging roads.
Bowman Lake had a lot of camping and picnic areas, but if she drove up past the main area there were turn offs and areas where she could park that wouldn't have many people around. She passed one or two that had other vehicles, mostly looking like people going fishing, until she found a spot half way up the lake with no one in it.
Parking and getting out of the car, the clear cool air felt like a benediction across her face. A deep breath and the scents she'd never been able to notice before swamped her senses. The wet fishy smell from the lake, the sharp cleansing smell of pine, the rustle of leaves surrounding her, and the lap of water from the lake all registered. It felt oddly right, and she shook her head.
Don't go falling for the outdoors, it always takes it out on you.
That comment had been proved a dozen times by the time she reached an area far enough away that she felt the odds of running into anyone were slim. Her legs were covered with scratches, two bug bites, a scratch across her face where a branch had caught her, and her hair tangled from other branches.
"I hate nature and it hates me." She muttered. "Should have stayed home and read, drank wine, and enjoyed my day."
Even with the scratches though she still wanted to try being an animal outside and see what her body could do. But in the future, she'd probably pass. Nature sucked.
Sighing with a mixture of annoyance and anticipation, she hung her backpack on a broken branch about chest high and started pulling out things. First jerky, which she shoved in her mouth and chewed on it while she pulled out a silicone baking sheet and dropped it on the ground. She carefully stripped putting each item of clothing in the bag, the last thing she wanted was bugs in her clothes. One of her professors had horror stories about the ants in the jungle and she developed a healthy respect for anything with multiple legs from those stories.
It took her a few minutes, and she kept flinching, jerking her head to look around at every sound, but soon enough she stood naked on her silicone baking tray.
First thing is to see if there is another animal there that I can change into.
She didn't risk speaking aloud, no sense in drawing attention, not that she could hear anyone. Instead she thought about one of the animals she'd seen on the video and went to see if there was a cat which had the most variety of shifters; cheetah, lions, jaguars, cougars, even extinct ones, though there were more people that turned into wolves.
Trying to keep the idea of a cat in her head she reached and slammed into a wolverine that she swore growled at her. She almost lost her precarious balance on the small square. Shaking her head, she tried again and looked for a wolf, though a cat would have been cooler. Again, all she found was an annoyed wolverine, and how a wolverine could radiate annoyance when she was the animal in question made her pause and laugh at herself.
Cass tried very hard to think through how she could change into any animal and why it was a wolverine as opposed to a cat or wolf or bear, but her mind just hit the wall of 'it isn't possible, so what is there to figure out'. That left her with the wolverine.
Okay, so I get to change into a wolverine. Still pretty cool. But I wonder why this animal instead of others? Well why change at all, but whatever.
With that she quit holding her animal at bay and let it flow into her feeling the soft burn as her body flowed into this new shape that didn't feel as strange as it once had. A vague feeling of annoyance washed through her and was gone, which felt even odder as if she was annoyed at herself for being herself. But before she could really figure out what it meant or analyze the dissonance, she couldn't feel even a whisper of it.
Frustrated she turned her mind outwards and stopped, stunned at the information that her senses could take in. She'd expected the smells, though there were so many she wanted to start investigating to map them all to their sources, to learn what each smell represented. Hearing was way up there too, but what really grabbed her was her fur. Each breeze ruffled it and she realized she could sense things, plants, branches, the silicone mat, touching, behind her hair and it means something.
This didn't happen in the house? Why not? Oh yeah, no breeze, no AC and when I ran into things I wasn't thinking about it, plus I focused on other things, but this. Oh, wow.
Cass stood, her eyes closed, and absorbed the world around her. It was so much richer, more nuanced than she'd ever thought.
After an eternity and yet too soon, she opened her eyes and waded into the underbrush. After all, she wasn't here to stand like a loon and she had no desire to still be up here once the sun started going down. That meant now.
With abandon she learned her claws were wicked at digging and had more fun than she wanted to admit digging up huge holes in the soil and scaring at least three mice half to death. Blundering through the underbrush, making so much noise she winced, something else noticed too.
The warning shake of rattles filled the air, and she froze, an instinctive reaction from a part of her mind she didn't access much.
What is that?
Inch by inch she moved her head until the still vibrating tip of the rattles caught her eye and she focused on the coiled snake watching her with deadly intensity.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
Cass hated snakes. Not just didn't like them, hated them. They creeped her out, how they moved with no legs and the very idea of swallowing prey whole and digesting it made her want to throw up.
Run away, no don't move, run away, it'll strike.
Her mind raced in circles as she tried to figure out what to do. As she started to panic, the snake moved. Cass reacted by jumping backwards, then snapping forward as the snake's strike missed. Her long sharp teeth sinking into the neck of the snake behind its head. The movement was so smooth and fast, the snake never had a chance to recoil from its strike. The blood filled her mouth as the head fell on the leaves, making an odd crunching sound even as she swallowed. Her body reacted to the taste and feel of the blood sliding down her throat.
Oh gods, that tastes good! But why?
She felt off balance as she tried to figure out what had just happened. Her body moved, attacked, killed, in a fluid motion that spoke of experience. Experience she didn't have and certainly not in killing animals.
I'm eating it!
As she'd been fighting with the inner turmoil, her body had been delightedly munching on the snake and not much was left. Cass waited for the horror and nausea to hit her; after all she'd just eaten a raw snake.
But nothing came. It tasted good, her animal body enjoyed the protein and couldn't find any horror.
How different am I as an animal?
Shaking her head, which felt oddly good, and ruffling her fur she headed down along the lakeshore, making sure she knew where to come back to for her clothes.
Everything seemed bigger, wilder. She lost herself in just exploring a world she'd never paid enough attention to from a different perspective. Animals were everywhere, she'd never realized before. Oh, she'd known, and could quote stats, but how many of them lived around her that she never noticed came as a surprise. Insects too. They were everywhere.
Time lost all meaning as she sniffed, listened, followed trails, and just existed. The stones and twigs didn't hurt her paws, and other than her nose, the insects didn't bug her, even if her human side still had her skin crawling with the idea of living with that many bugs in her fur.
She glanced up and realized more time had passed than she really expected to spend and she started making her way back to the large rock that marked where she had her stuff. She swam a bit in the lake, but she discovered that while she could swim, her body seemed really dense and she got tired quickly. Besides, getting too far out and then coming back to human unexpectedly could be really bad.
She froze as she approached the area, hearing voices.
Oh shit, if they
see me they'll either freak out at seeing a wolverine or find my stuff and think something happened to a hiker. Oh shit, what do I do?
No matter what, she was screwed but she couldn't get home without her keys if they took her possessions assuming they belonged to a missing person. Taking a deep breath, she shifted. Human came reluctantly as the animal slid away and she found herself in not quite waist deep water. She started splashing around making noise as she headed closer to where her stuff was.
That drew instant attention and she sank down even as she cringed at the feeling of the lake soil between her toes. She refused to think about the various life forms that lived in lake water, things that hadn't bugged her in animal form, but now all the various biological creatures that could be coating her skin made her want to gag.
I definitely like the outdoors more as a wolverine. This human stuff sucks but overall, I like my apartment.
Part of her felt an odd feeling of sadness that this is all there was to it. She could turn into an animal yes, but she couldn't do anything with it. Not really.
"Hey, you, what are you doing there?" Two men and a woman stepped on to the rocky lake shore, one of them in a ranger uniform.
Great, this is what I was worried about.
"Swimming?" She said trying not to be too sarcastic, but what did they think she was doing in the water.
"Why didn't you respond when we called for you?" The young woman demanded. "We got really worried. We stopped our day to go find a ranger." The woman, about twenty-five with blond hair in a pony tail, had a petulant whiny tone to her voice as she crossed her arms and glared at Cass.
Did I ask you to do that?
The thought almost slipped through her teeth as words, but she managed to bite it back. Instead she forced a smile to her face.
"Guess I didn't hear you. I've been swimming around."
"Ma'am, can you come up here and talk to us? I'd rather not be shouting." The park ranger, an older man with an annoyed expression.
