governor. It was fenced off from the rest of the park, but the stags simply leapt over it, jerking the chariot abruptly behind but landing gracefully on the other side through some of Flidais’s magic.
› Can you jump like that, little doggie? ‹ one of the stags teased.
Oberon simply growled in response, far past the point of vocalizing. We got out of the chariot, and he barked at them once before I brought him to heel.
» We are after sheep tonight, « I reminded him.
› Let’s go, then, ‹ he replied as the stags snorted their laughter.
» Get yourself ready, Druid, « Flidais said as she slung her quiver over her head.
And so I cleared my head and summoned power through the tattoo that tied me to the earth, drawing strength up from the desert. I fell down on all fours as I bound myself to the shape of a hound.
A Druid’s therianthrophy is nothing like the change of a werewolf, save in the sense that both are magical. One major difference is that I can change shape (or not) at will, regardless of the time of day or the phase of the moon; another is that it’s fairly painless, unlike lycanthropy; yet another is that I can transform into different animals, albeit a limited few.
In practice, I do not stay for long periods in animal form, for psychological reasons. While I can eat anything the animal would eat and not suffer physically from it, mentally I have difficulty choking down whole mice when I’m an owl or eating raw venison as a hound. (We had taken down a doe in the Kaibab Forest a couple of weeks ago, and once she was down, I had walked off and waited until Oberon had had his fill.) So these hunts were for Oberon more than for me: I just enjoyed the chase and that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you’re making someone happy.
But something was different this time when I changed to hound form. My mind felt befuddled, and I was more than a little bloodthirsty. I smelled the sheep scent on the night air, and the nearness of the stags, but instead of accepting this input coolly, I became ravenous and started drooling a bit. It was wrong, and I should have changed back right then.
Flidais strode to the fence and ripped a section of it from the ground with a single hand, whistling once and gesturing for us to run through. We scampered underneath the links and headed for the hills we had hunted before, keeping silent so as not to alert the sheep too early that we were coming for them. There was another fence to negotiate to get into the preserve portion of the park, and Flidais obliged us there as well.
» Now go, my hounds, « she said as she ripped up another section of fence, and as she said it I felt as if I was her hound, not a Druid anymore, not even human anymore, but part of a pack. » Flush a ram out of the hills and bring him to my bow. « And then we were off, running faster than we ever had before, dodging cacti in the weak starlight of a city sky, and I was only dimly aware that there was magic at work here that was not my own. The cold iron amulet necklace, now shrunk about my neck like a collar, should protect me from it if it was sinister, so I did not worry.
It didn’t take us long to find the sheep. They were bedded down in a tangle of creosote, but they heard us scrabbling in the gravel of the desert floor and were already leaping up a nearly vertical hillside when we first laid eyes on them. Our legs spasmed as we tried to make that first leap up to the beginnings of a slope; I made it to a narrow precipice, though barely, but Oberon fell short and tumbled backward into the dirt with a whuff of breath.
› Go around the base and wait, ‹ I said to him. › I will chase them over to you. ‹
› Very well, ‹ he agreed. › Cunning is better than running. ‹
I kept my eyes on the retreating flanks of the sheep ahead of me and kept pumping my legs up the hill. Incredibly, I seemed to be gaining ground on them, and I felt so triumphant about it that I let loose with a
› Can you jump like that, little doggie? ‹ one of the stags teased.
Oberon simply growled in response, far past the point of vocalizing. We got out of the chariot, and he barked at them once before I brought him to heel.
» We are after sheep tonight, « I reminded him.
› Let’s go, then, ‹ he replied as the stags snorted their laughter.
» Get yourself ready, Druid, « Flidais said as she slung her quiver over her head.
And so I cleared my head and summoned power through the tattoo that tied me to the earth, drawing strength up from the desert. I fell down on all fours as I bound myself to the shape of a hound.
A Druid’s therianthrophy is nothing like the change of a werewolf, save in the sense that both are magical. One major difference is that I can change shape (or not) at will, regardless of the time of day or the phase of the moon; another is that it’s fairly painless, unlike lycanthropy; yet another is that I can transform into different animals, albeit a limited few.
In practice, I do not stay for long periods in animal form, for psychological reasons. While I can eat anything the animal would eat and not suffer physically from it, mentally I have difficulty choking down whole mice when I’m an owl or eating raw venison as a hound. (We had taken down a doe in the Kaibab Forest a couple of weeks ago, and once she was down, I had walked off and waited until Oberon had had his fill.) So these hunts were for Oberon more than for me: I just enjoyed the chase and that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you’re making someone happy.
But something was different this time when I changed to hound form. My mind felt befuddled, and I was more than a little bloodthirsty. I smelled the sheep scent on the night air, and the nearness of the stags, but instead of accepting this input coolly, I became ravenous and started drooling a bit. It was wrong, and I should have changed back right then.
Flidais strode to the fence and ripped a section of it from the ground with a single hand, whistling once and gesturing for us to run through. We scampered underneath the links and headed for the hills we had hunted before, keeping silent so as not to alert the sheep too early that we were coming for them. There was another fence to negotiate to get into the preserve portion of the park, and Flidais obliged us there as well.
» Now go, my hounds, « she said as she ripped up another section of fence, and as she said it I felt as if I was her hound, not a Druid anymore, not even human anymore, but part of a pack. » Flush a ram out of the hills and bring him to my bow. « And then we were off, running faster than we ever had before, dodging cacti in the weak starlight of a city sky, and I was only dimly aware that there was magic at work here that was not my own. The cold iron amulet necklace, now shrunk about my neck like a collar, should protect me from it if it was sinister, so I did not worry.
It didn’t take us long to find the sheep. They were bedded down in a tangle of creosote, but they heard us scrabbling in the gravel of the desert floor and were already leaping up a nearly vertical hillside when we first laid eyes on them. Our legs spasmed as we tried to make that first leap up to the beginnings of a slope; I made it to a narrow precipice, though barely, but Oberon fell short and tumbled backward into the dirt with a whuff of breath.
› Go around the base and wait, ‹ I said to him. › I will chase them over to you. ‹
› Very well, ‹ he agreed. › Cunning is better than running. ‹
I kept my eyes on the retreating flanks of the sheep ahead of me and kept pumping my legs up the hill. Incredibly, I seemed to be gaining ground on them, and I felt so triumphant about it that I let loose with a
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