by Jean Johnson
Bemused, he did so. Tava smiled and shifted, as fast and tight as she had shifted just days before. This time, she merely hovered in midair for a mere moment while her clothing and pectoral dropped free, then alighted on his fingers, resting her jewel-feathered body.
“A . . . bird?” Mata asked, looking from her to her husband.
“Not just any bird, but a hummingbird,” Kodan corrected, giving his tiny wife a proud smile. “She has mastered many other shapes, including a stripe-cat—in fact, she’s mastered more than enough to apprentice herself to the Queen, should she ever want to rule.”
Obliging him, Tava jumped off his hand. She landed on four large, clawed paws, her brightly colored feathers exchanged for somewhat duller stripes. The feel of the thick felt under her paws reminded her too much of what she and Kodan had just been doing. Embarrassment warred briefly with pride, until she glanced up at her husband.
The warmth and the approval in Kodan’s dark eyes made her feel buoyant instead of bashful. Buoyant enough, she let go of the tigerish feelings that had shaped her flesh and embraced the new feeling within her. The newest feeling, of all the shapes she had mastered. Bunching her muscles, Tava leaped up and transformed.
Relatively huge wings flapped hard against the air, great sails of striped brown and cream, black and gold. It was an awkward way to fly, and she was grateful to land on the hand Kodan hastily extended beneath her bobbling body. Not that she could see it well, for her vision seemed to be fragmented and fuzzy. Her sense of smell was equally skewed, and every little vibration of sound and breeze made her wings want to tremble. Being a butterfly was even stranger than being an eel, for all that she didn’t have to breathe water.
Mindful of how it wasn’t too wise to stay in a vastly different body for long, particularly the first few times around, Tava crawled awkwardly to the edge of her husband’s hand and spilled her flesh out and down. Between one breath and the next, she re-formed herself as a fur-clad human, and shared the words she herself felt.
“Welcome home to Family Tiger, gentlemen,” she told them, smiling at their awed expressions. Glancing at Kodan, she squeezed the warm hand clasping hers. “I know that I’m finally home, too.”