I scanned the shoreline. It had been five days. Five interminably long days. If I found Torren I was going to beat the hell out of him for scaring me like this. Before or after I kissed him, I was no longer sure. Five days. Dammit.
I didn't even know what form he was in. He'd shifted on his own, with no elders present to guide him, no one to talk him through it or run with him in fur or scales. He was a damned fool.
There was a reason we weren't given the spell for shifting until we hit eighteen. It wasn't just the elders being selfish or not trusting us, or any of the other things he'd muttered about, in the nights we'd spent hanging around outside the meeting hall when we were kids.
It sounds all cool and romantic, doesn't it? Hey, you can become a cat, or an eagle, or any other damned thing you please, with just the right blood in you and the right spell on your lips. The reality is different. I turned eighteen first, and found out what it's like to have the spell flay you open and remake you. How hard it is to find your human thoughts in a brain filled with scent and sound. How vital that other man at your shoulder is, the first time you stagger up on all four feet and shake your head and the world is remade.
But I couldn't make him understand. He didn't believe me when I talked of the risks and the pain. He thought I was trying to make him feel better for having to wait.
Then he stole the spell. I felt him shift.
Five days. I'd patrolled the shore most of that time, all of the nights and some of the days, any moment I could spare from the masquerade of daily life. A lot more than I should have, according to the elders. I was going to flunk out of my classes and Father would not be pleased. Father could go to hell.
I didn't even know if I was in the right place, but this was where Torren always came when the wild moods were on him. He would talk about swimming as a dolphin, playing as a sea otter, or just soaring the sky as a frigate bird and never touching land. These were the creatures he'd studied in preparation. The ones he'd observed in life and dissected in death. His preparation and his obsession. I should have known when I passed the threshold to adulthood that he would not bear to be left behind.
He would be here. He had to be here. I would stay here until I found him.
And yet I almost missed him. I would have discounted him as just another seabird, ill or oil-slicked, huddled in the crevice in the rocks. But as I passed by, the bird looked at me. A hint of Torren green lurked in its eyes.
A moment later I was on my knees on the sand. “Hey there.” My voice broke and I steadied it to a calm whisper. There was very little left that was human in those eyes. “Hey, sweetheart. You came back.”
The gull stared at me. For a moment it just blinked, and I wondered if I was wrong. It was an ordinary Western gull, white head, grey wings. Nothing spectacular or romantic about it. Nothing like the choices Torren had whispered in my ears, half encouraging, half envious, before my first shift. But then it ducked its head in an awkward un-birdlike motion, and I was sure.
I stuffed my arm through the handles of the plastic bag I'd been lugging around for days, to free my hands. Carefully, murmuring “Hey, Tor, you idiot, you crazy fool, Tor, my Tor,” I reached for the gull. The bird's head swiveled back and forth, watching my hands as they came around him. He pecked at my thumb, drawing a little blood.
That was okay. Good even. Blood draws to blood. I smeared the crimson droplet on the white feathers of his cheek and he closed his eyes and let me cup him in my palms. Beneath the feathers, he was light as a ghost and I could feel the trip-hammer of his heart. I lifted him gently against my chest.
I stood, glancing around. By all right and law, I should bring him home. Torren belonged on the floor in the center of the meeting hall with the elders bringing him back to himself safely. But I thought of him opening his eyes to Elder Corbin's frown, and Elder Drew's cold steel gaze, and I couldn't do it. There's a moment when you come back from a shift that your human self is vulnerable. I didn't want Torren to face that moment with them.
I cradled the gull against my shirt. He made a small harsh sound, and I rubbed my cheek over his head. “Don't worry,” I whispered. “I have you. It'll be all right.”
I knew a place. It was sheltered by the jagged rocks of the beach, visible only from the air unless someone forced their way through the narrow gap between the stones. Not really safe, not half safe enough. But this was our private place on the coterie's privately-owned beach and I was willing to take the chance.
I carried Torren with me, tucked up under my chin for space. When I reached the familiar gap in the stones, I slipped in sideways. The space barely fit me now. A little more bulk and I would have to shift to a smaller form to get into our childhood refuge. A thread of my sweater caught on the rough stone, pulling out in a wisp of grey. I felt a moment's ache for the children we had been, here in our pirates' cave, our bears' den, our eagles' eyrie. When I reached the little center crevasse with its cool sand floor I set Torren down.
He settled onto the sand as if too tired to stand. I stroked his feathers with a finger, soothing him in gentle rhythm, wondering how to begin. I could say the spell for him, but he needed to have it in his mind, the words and the sense of it. Our myths are full of the stories of shifters who sank too far, fell into the beast and were lost. Like Gareth the grey wolf whose wife found him and brought him home, who then killed and ate their children on his own hearth as his wife screamed. I had liked those tales much better when I wasn't in the damned wife's position.
I began to talk to him. I kept my voice soft and slow. I reminded him of this place, of our younger selves. I called him Captain Hook, and Bru, and a dozen childhood names. And then I called him lover. I told him again of the night we found each other as more than best friends. And as I talked, my voice hoarse and uncertain, I saw the green in his eyes grow stronger. Until finally he stretched his neck toward me and tapped his beak on my wrist in three solemn strokes.
“Torren,” I said, “Are you in there, you son of a bitch?”
He tapped me again, a little harder than necessary.
I winced. “Okay. I can do this. We can do this. I hope. Because if we can't I'll have to take you back to Elder Drew and he is not happy with you.”
Torren shook his bird head rapidly.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I'll say it, Tor. But you have to follow. Run it through your mind. No skips, no missed words, with your human goal in your mind. Think about last week. Me in your bed and my mouth you-know-where. You need to be human if you want to do that again.”
Tor's beak dropped open a little, almost a smile, and he ruffled his shoulders and stared into my eyes.
I cleared my throat and began. The spell starts easy, like reciting poetry. But then it gets harder, harsh, like the words are glass in your throat ripping you open. And I'd never done it like this, for someone else. I said it for Torren, as I clung to the rags of my human self and pulled them together when they wanted to fall apart.
On the sandy floor of the niche, Tor flattened, head dropping, beak touching the ground. He squawked, as if stabbed, and then groaned in a sound no natural bird has ever made. He spread on the sand, his body flowing like thick oil, congealing in a pool of formless dross. My Tor. I shut my eyes for a moment, but I had to watch. I needed to know.
The last words are the hardest. Your mind resists them. I said them for Tor, loud and clear and with force of will. And he came together there, collapsed at my feet. A human boy on the threshold of manhood. Light brown hair and fair skin and those sea-green eyes. When I was sure it was safe, I let my knees give way and gathered his naked body in my lap.
His skin was cold. He blinked his eyes at me, and it was almost as if things were reversed. Those were Tor's green human eyes, but they gazed past me blankly, as if the sense of him was just a glimmer in their depths.
“No you don't, you bastard,” I muttered. I rubbed his back, stroked his arms, chafing his trembling muscles and dry cool limbs. I dug into the bag I'd brought for a shirt and jeans,
wrestling his limp body into the clothes. He didn't fight me, but he didn't help much. I buttoned his shirt and then tugged the jeans together. I'd touched him before, often enough, but there was something odd about tucking him safely away from the zip. “You could do this yourself,” I grumbled. “Less chance of ending up singing soprano.” I slid the zipper up carefully, and his hand landed on mine for that last inch. That was something.
I pulled him back into my arms, wrapping myself around him. I kissed his neck, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. “Come on, Tor. Talk to me.”
He grunted and moved slightly, stiff and uncoordinated in my arms. “Bayl'r?”
“Yeah, it's me. You rat's ass bastard.” I let my growl hide the hovering tears. “What the hell did you do?”
“Baylor.” There was a thread of satisfaction in his voice. “It is you.”
“Yeah.” For a minute we just sat there. His back was to my chest, slowly warming. His hair was in my mouth. My legs were wrapped around his, as we sat on the cool damp sand. Nothing in my life has ever been better than that moment.
Eventually he said, “Walk?”
“Huh?”
“Need to walk.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
I stood and hauled him to his feet. He swayed, looking around with a bobbing head and blinking eyes. I guided him out of our refuge and onto the beach. He walked oddly, a few rushed steps and then a pause, arms out for balance. He stared up at the sky again and again, as if looking for something unseen. I put my arms around his stiff awkward frame, and kissed his cheek.
“It's okay,” I said. “It takes a bit of time. Your body still wonders if it should walk or fly.”
“Yes.” He leaned into me and put his hand over mine on his arm. “Weird. Getting better. Thank you.”
“I love you, dumb ass,” I said. I crooked my arm around his neck and kissed him again. “Come back to me all the way.”
It took several more long minutes before he felt human in my arms. Slowly he softened, and his eyes came back to earth. Finally he sighed, and kissed me back. “Baylor. God, I messed that up, didn't I?”
“Damned right.” I wanted to yell at him, but somehow the feeling of holding him as his body found its humanity again had put my heart in my throat. There was no room for the anger. I tugged him down on the sand beside me. “Sit here for a bit. Let me hug you.”
He leaned back in my arms, wholly human now. “It wasn't what I thought.”
“Why did you do it?” I whispered in his ear. “You're only two months short of your birthday. Why the hell would you sneak off and do this?”
“I felt it,” he said. “Every time you shifted. I felt it like a creeping in my bones, like a ringing in my head. It called to me, until I had to follow.”
“What the hell?” I pushed him away enough to see his eyes. “You felt me shift?”
“Oh yeah,” His eyes went a little dreamy. “Burning through my skin.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “Only lifemates can feel each other...” I let the thought trail off. Because I knew he was telling the truth. Because the reason I knew what he had done, where he had gone five days ago was because I felt it, burning through my skin.
“We can't be,” I said.
“Why not?” Torren looked at me with those green, green eyes. “Why not?”
It wasn't that he was a boy and I was too. Shifters don't care. When form is fluid, how can it matter what shape your beloved wears? But he was just seventeen.
“You haven't had your quest. For that matter, neither have I. We're too young. Anyway, you've heard people talk about finding their lifemates. They talk about how it came on them in a thunderstroke, in a lightning flash, that this was their other half. I don't remember anything like that.”
“You don't want it to be me?” His eyes filled with tears.
I kissed his eyelids, hopelessly besotted, tasting the salt. “No, Tor, I've prayed it would be you. But how can we be that far already?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter how? All I know is, I feel you, here inside.” He put a hand on his chest. “Maybe sometimes lifemating isn't a lightning stroke but a rising tide. I've for damned sure drowned.”
I took a breath that rattled in my chest, and another, no easier. Then I said, “Me too.”
His mouth was dry and stale from five days as a gull. I'd never tasted anything better. He kissed me like he owned my breath. When we finally broke apart I was panting, and he was smiling.
“Now you have to face the elders,” I said, a little nasty, because it seemed unfair that I was more shaken than he was.
He grimaced. “Not going to be a good thing.”
“No. Although if we're really lifemated...” I thought about it. “They might cut you some slack, if it was my shifts that drove you over.”
He shrugged and leaned against me again. “I'll live. It's not my first time to have disapproving elders pouring scorn on my head.”
True enough; most of our supremely bad ideas had been his, although we'd shared the consequences. “Never for anything this serious.”
“I imagine I'll be scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets for a couple of months. They'll get over it.”
“I hope so.” I put my face against his neck and closed my eyes. I would worry enough for both of us.
“So,” Tor said speculatively. “If we're really lifemates, then you'll presumably get to come on my first sanctioned shift.”
“Assuming they ever let you shift again.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “They will. Eventually they will. So when they do... wanna be a dolphin?”
I might have known not even this, not even five days a gull and the wrath of the elders hanging over him, could dim the spark in my man. “I'll think about it,” I said. “Now we have to head home. Are you hungry? We could stop and get something. Did you eat at all while you were a gull?”
“I'm not sure.”
I made sure I was watching his face as he searched his memory. I'd done a gull once, for practice, and I remembered it. As he thought, an expression of distaste slowly became panicked nausea. “Don't ask,” he choked. “Holy hell, gulls are disgusting from the inside.”
I kicked his ankle as we headed up the beach. “Aren't they? They eat anything. Rotting garbage and dumpster french-fries and dead fish...”
He jerked away from me and began walking faster.
“And eviscerated rats and road-kill...”
He hit a run, his bare feet kicking up the sand.
I chased after him. “And sun-melted mayo on decaying fun fish...”
He's an inch or two taller than me with longer legs, and he put them to use as we sprinted for the parking lot. But I kept yelling after him.
Hey, he may be my lifemate and my beloved, and the hottest damned thing walking around on two legs. But he'd left me alone for five interminable days. I owed him one.
####
Behind Door Number Two...
~Picture prompt: In a very narrow brick-walled alley, a young man stands with his back to the bricks, face tilted up. He's not looking at the sky though—his eyes are closed—because above him, bending to kiss him, a second young man is comfortably braced between the walls, six feet off the ground. The ease of his pose shows that climbing like this is nothing new for him.