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."
Now he was mad at her. He'd built up a perfectly acceptable reason to hate her, and she'd managed to destroy it with that one eloquent sentence.
They travelled for the rest of the day moving in a southerly direction, through virgin forest that had probably never known the footsteps of man. Tarrin listened to Jesmind during those times that she spoke, describing the trick of willing the change into cat-shape, and warning him in advance about how the change would affect his body and mind. When he wasn't listening to her, he was watching her. He had to admit that he was fascinated by her. He was used to dealing with strong women, but his mother was nothing like this. Every move she made was like a demonstration of her power, and she carried herself as if she owned the world. Every little move she made was a clear symbol of her dominion. She was strong, wise, authoritative, and she knew it. But on the other hand, her movements and some of the looks she gave him were not overbearing, but interested, curious, compassionate. She was a woman of strength, but she didn't beat him over the head with it. She was content with herself and her life, and that fact was obvious in her demeanor.
"I'm starting to think I have a hole in my shirt," she said bluntly after a time.
"What?"
"You're staring at me," she told him. "If you didn't notice, that makes our kind a bit uncomfortable."
"Sorry, just seeing what it looks like from the outside," he told her.
"The same as it does on me," she said. "Except for certain differences," she added as an afterthought, motioning at her breasts.
Tarrin looked away from her, wondering at the wild changes of attitude he'd felt towards this woman just since the morning. From hate, to distrust, to suspicion…and now to the first inklings of respect, and even a bit of trust. He trusted this woman, he discovered. In very many ways, he was a child, and almost instinctively, he was reaching out to someone that he thought could make everything better, someone to quiet the fears, someone to put an arm around him and guide him. Jesmind represented that person, he realized. She was that person, the only person, that could help him make sense out of the chaos that had become his life. Her sincere regret and resolve to help him had helped break down the anger he'd felt for her just that morning, allowing him to look on her with new eyes.
And look at her with new eyes. She was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. And he was starting to dread having to disrobe in front of her.
"The cat is strong when we carry its form," she told him later that day, after his long contemplation of her and his situation. "The longer we stay a cat, the stronger it gets. Expect to have to take a lesser role concerning some of the instincts when in that shape. But for you, I think it will help, because those things that try to affect your mind now will be much clearer to you when you allow them to express themselves, instead of bottling them in."
"I hope so," he said sincerely.
"Have you been having dreams?"
"Yes, but I can't remember them," he replied.
"They do go away, in time," she assured him. "They're your mind getting used to the instincts. As you settle in with them, the dreams will get weaker and weaker, until they go away." They stopped for a moment next to a huge oak tree, that was on the edge of a small clearing that was dominated by a fa
llen log and a large carpet of moss. The light was starting to dwindle. They had walked all day. "This looks like a good place to stop," she said. Then she pulled the strings of the laces on her white shirt.
"What are you doing?" Tarrin asked.
"I'm taking off my clothes," she told him with a steady look. "You do the same. Chop-chop, I want to get you through this at least once before sunset." And with that, she pulled the shirt over her head.
Tarrin made himself look. In just a moment, there wasn't going to be anywhere on her that would be safe to put his eyes, and he wasn't about to fuel her amusement. She stared right at him as she pulled her long, thick red hair out of the neck of the shirt, and he returned her gaze with the same calm. He did well, right up until she unbuttoned her trousers. He looked away right as she pushed them over her hips, working on the laces of his own shirt.
"Look at me," she commanded. "It won't do you any good not to look. You're going to see me, no matter how hard you try not to."
He met her gaze shyly, and she smiled at him. It wasn't an amused or malicious smile, it was one of compassion. "I know it makes you uncomfortable, but the quickest way to get over that is to meet it head on," she told him. "Don't look at my face. Look at me, all of me. I'm not embarassed, so you don't have to be either."
She stood there calmly as he did as she said. He looked at her. From toes to the top of her hair, he looked at the muscular form of her body. He noticed that her muscles were very defined, but not overly developed. She did have a washboard stomach, but it gave her a very slender waist compared to her full hips, and the muscles in her back heightened the seeming smallness of her middle. She even turned around slowly for him, allowing him the full view. He noticed how shapely her backside was, even with the white-furred tail sticking out of the top of it. Just like his own tail, the fur on her tail stopped right at the base of it, with no fur anywhere else. "Just one thing, Tarrin," she said. "Looking is one thing. Touching is altogether different."
"I didn't even think of it," he said sincerely.
"I didn't say it was bad," she said huffily. "I just said it was different."
"It sounded like you meant it was bad," he grumbled.
"Then I'm sorry," she said. "But touching is the same for us as what looking at a naked woman does for a human male," she warned him. "It goes for you as much as it does for me. Believe it or not, I think you'll find that standing there with no clothes on isn't half as bad as you think. Even with me standing here. But the instant I touched you in a place you considered to be intimate, well, let's just say that it would give you a different reason to blush."
He blushed anyway, pulling off his shirt.
"The same goes for me," she said. "I don't recommend you putting your paws on my more sensitive parts, unless you want to fend me off with a stick."
"I find it hard to believe that," he said with a sniff, unbuttoning his trousers and steeling himself for the act of disrobing in front of her.
"It's been a long time since I've had a man," she warned bluntly. "Believe it or not, human women get the same urges as human men. Well, among my kind, females get that urge even more often than human men, and we're not afraid to go after what we want." She crossed her arms, waiting deliberately. "I'm being nice to you because you're still unfamiliar with what's happened to you, but if you'd have been any other male, we'd be-"
"I thought you didn't want to talk about it," he said through gritted teeth. In one fast, jerky move, he whisked off his trousers, and stood there, self-consciously, under Jesmind's appraising eye. "And why is that?"
"Is what?"
"Why do the women, um-"
"Oh, that," she said. "Because there are seven women for every man."
"What?"
"There are seven females for every male," she repeated. "So we have to share." She put a finger to her chin, staring at him in a way that made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. "Turn around," she ordered. he did so, gritting his teeth. "My," she said. "My, my, my."
"What?"
"You've got a very handsome body, Tarrin," she complemented.
"Can we get on with this?" he asked plaintively.
"You're ruining my fun, do you know that?" she said with an evil little smile.
"I'm glad one of us in enjoying this," he growled.
"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.
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