Chapter Text
Consciousness comes to them in bits and starts. Not that they were asleep, but the realization and the awareness were slow to come to the forefront of their mind. There is sight and touch, mutteled into one vague idea of the present. The child feels the ground beneath their bare feet, smells the cooling night air, and is hyper-aware of every inch of their body. A body that feels incorrect around them; a body alien from what they remember. It’s pink and fleshy, with hands ending in long thing fingers that have short, blunt nails at the tip. Inside their mouth, their tongue runs over flat, grinding teeth at the back and pointed ones at the front.
As this awareness solidifies, the world is sharper yet less vibrant than they remember. It smells and sounds less complex, a flattening to them that makes the child's breath hitch. In the same moment of awareness, even in the darkness of the night, the world is more colorful and sharper than the child has words for.
The child closes their eyes, trying to remember, to think of why they are here. Who they are and what they are doing, to grasp at anything that might be real inside their mind. A memory of a soft, warm place comes to them, a furred body keeping them warm during the night. She had gentle, intelligent eyes and light fur with a dark stripe down her back. She was much larger than the others that came with them, the others that were like her and the child. Though they had dumb animal-like eyes, dark and only running on instinct.
They remembered that when she brought them here, she had also changed into a humanoid form with a soft body, warm eyes, and hair matching her fur. Before she left, she touched their cheek with her hand and placed fur around the child's shoulders, similar to the one draped around her own.
The child touches the fur and feels the clothes underneath. They are made of rough cotton fabric, meant for a person many times the child's size. Inside one of the pant pockets, the child finds a smooth riverstone. It's dark gray with a tan stripe running through it. It's larger than the palm of the child's hand, but it feels good to run their fingers over the surface. It feels important to keep close, but in the same way, a waking dream is important. As they worry their fingers over the rock's surface, it helps them feel more present, making the world less of a dream around them.
With this shaping of their mind, the child actually takes in their surroundings for the first time. Not too far off, there is a town they remember being told to avoid at all costs. That place is filled with people, and people are dangerous to creatures like them. However, as the child looks down at their pink hands, they are unsure if that statement is true anymore. The town itself consists of a few dozen buildings along a dirt road, with several more homes and buildings dotted further away from the center. Those homes have pastures and animals, chicken coops, and pig sties. However, at the center of all of it is a small train station, more of a platform with a small shelter and a bench than anything fancy, but it is clear that that train is the lifeline of the town.
There is a sound of motion behind the child as they gaze at the town. They flash around as fast as lightning, bearing their teeth and lowering themself, ready to run. They see one of the smaller houses they saw at a distance on the other side of the town. However, the word 'house' is a bit of a stretch in this context; it’s more like a shed in size, darkly painted and decaying with age.
Though the child pays little mind to the building, standing in the doorway is a human—a human man whose expression changes many times in a few short seconds from confusion to surprise, fear, and anger, then settles on a neutral, sad resolve. The man is tall and lithe, with more hair on his face than his head, a rough brown-orange that’s patchy in texture. He has dark brown eyes, dark circles underneath, gaunt, ruddy cheeks, and a rough red nose.
In return, the man takes the child in. The child is also thin, with gaunt cheeks, lacking the baby fat one would expect someone their age to have. Their hair is the same red-brown as the man's, and one dark-brown eye also matches the man's. The child's other eye is a glowing gold in color. For the man, as he stands over the child, there is no denying the family's resemblance.
As the two stare at each other wordlessly, the child's nose wrinkles as a wave of sour-burning smell washes over them. It's not the burning wood fire keeping the house warm but a harsh, rancid smell that makes their eyes water and their noses run. It is like the smell rotting berries give off, but a thousand times stronger, rising from both the man and billowing out of the house. The man seems to come to his senses, shaking his head. He raises his hand to his face and lets out a long, drawn breath, hitching at the end. His voice is low, almost gentle, but gravely at the edges. “I was wonderin’ when you’d show up.”
There is a hollow sadness to the words the child does not understand. A complexity to the situation that the child is not privy to. However, the man steps back, opens the door further, and gestures with his hand. “Ya can come in… unless ya want to sleep in the cold.”
The child hesitates, looking past the man into the fire-warmed building, and feels something stir inside of them. It's a feeling similar but not the same as the one they remember from their den, of safety and warmth, where their protector lives, and where they are fed. It's not a feeling for exclusive coyotes or humans but a feeling given to most mammals, that feeling of home.
But how can this place be home? The child silently asks themself, I don't know this place.
Their eyes flick up to the man, who shrugs and starts to close the door, and panic sets into the child. They bolt past the man into the building and are enveloped in that bitter-burning smell alongside that of decaying plant matter, human, and roasting food. They skid to a stop in the middle of the room, and with heaving breaths, they look around wide-eyed. It’s diminutive, just large enough to fit its few amenities: a large bed, a wood stove of drawers, and a table with a single chair.
That chair is quickly filled by the man. With a heavy sigh, he runs a hand through his thinning hair and looks at the child with tired, sorrowful eyes. The man looks at the table where several bottles sit; they’re all different shapes, colors, and sizes. The man picks up one and then another, giving them a slight shake before raising one of them to his lips. The child watches as the man's throat moves with each swallow; a drop of amber-colored liquid pools at the corner of his mouth before it's wiped away harshly. The man breathes out and looks back to the child, saying, “I am really sorry kid.”
Once again, the child feels like they are missing something, some information that everyone else just happens to already know. Their tongue feels heavy in their mouth, and the questions at the forefront of their mind feel too vast for them to articulate. So instead, they make a small wounded sound at the back of their throat-- not unlike the sounds they made when they had their old body. The man nods, then sits back, explaining, “Ya’ don’t deserve a pa’ like me. M’ sorry for that.”
“Pa?” The word feels odd inside the child’s mouth, but it is a word nonetheless.
In response, the man, Pa, snorts sharply and bitterly. The child flinches at the sound. Pa tiredly rubs his eyes and asks, “Yeah, yer ma’ ever talk about me?”
The child takes in the question, chewing on their lip, unsure how to navigate this situation. They reach into their pocket and touch the stone as they gather their words. “no, ma din’t talk much at all, not like this.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Pa nods, "do you have a name, kid? Or do I just call you pup?”
The child blinks owlishly at Pa, wracking their mind; there is a name there. Something their mother did ‘call’ them in the same way they used any words. A memory surfacing: the child had fallen into a creek thinking they could swim it, and Ma' had had to pull them out before they drowned. Their fur grew icy at the tips, but Ma' was always warm; she could the summer's heat into her fur no matter how harsh the winter. She had chided them like so many times before, her voice frustrated but not angry, a tone only a mother's voice can hold. "man-son you must learn to listen to your insticts, not your mind as it wanders like a human's."
"Man-son," The child says to Pa. "that's what Ma' called me."
“Manson?” Pa repeats with a chuff. He leans forward towards the child, extending a hand. “My name is Felix, Felix Durham.”
“Felix,” Manson repeats another alien word in their mind and mouth. They look at the outstretched hand for a long time, unsure what to do with it. Instead, they take their own hands and touch the fur on their shoulders. Pa’s expression changes as his gaze shifts down and stops somewhere at Manson’s chest. Pa reaches out sharply toward the kid, and Manson flinches back harshly. Pa freezes, but his burning gaze lashes up to Manson’s face. “M’not going to hurt ya. You just got somthin’ there.”
Manson touches their chest, where their father’s gaze had rested. Behind the pelt and pinned to the clothes beneath, they find a rough piece of folded paper. It takes a moment for Manson to unpin the note with their unfamiliarly dextrous fingers. However, once unbound, Manson looks at the letter. Whatever magic changed them and gave them language, it did not give them the understanding to decipher the swirling lines of writing. Manson feels as if they are looking at a ghost when they gaze at the unfolded paper, a memory of a thing they do not understand.
Felix snaps his fingers, the loud, sharp sound startling Manson from their bewilderment. Pa-Felix holds out an expectant hand with an impatient expression. Manson hesitates but carefully places the paper in their father’s outstretched palm. Pa looks at the paper for a very long time, his eyes methodically going back and forth across the page. The paper dimples where he holds it between his thumb and fingers, and it creases more the more he reads and rereads, his expression turning from carefully neutral to bitter and starkly angry by the time he balls up the paper and tosses it into the low-burning wood stove with a loud swear.
A bitter, remorseful feeling washes over Manson as they watch the paper smolder and catch at the edges. They distantly hear their father speak but do not care to listen anymore. Instead, Manson watches the fire for the rest of the night, though they are guided to the bed at one point. They curl up on top of the rough blankets and watch the fire snap and crackle. They hear their father move about the cabin, and eventually, he ends up asleep in his one chair, head tilted back and snoring loudly. They leave Manson by themselves with an ache that reaches down to their bones, a deep loneliness that they feel themselves curl into, their eyes growing heavy and sleep finally taking them at the cresting of dawn.