Archive for October, 2009

In honor of awesomeness and a bit of creepiness for the death of the sun, I give you The Raven by Omnia:

I’ve been mindspewing creature-designing and worldbuilding ideas in preparation for writing Oh, The Inhumanity!, and I think I feel the tiny little flicker of a would-be rant guttering in my chest.

See, I have a pet peeve. Non-humans should be non-humans. In science fiction and fantasy alike, most of your non-humans are what I would consider humanoids – symmetrical bipedal races with human-parallel physiology and psychology. Some different clothing, a bit taller or shorter (or skinnier or wider – hi, elves and dwarves), pointy ears, colorful skin, and an accented version of the common tongue, and voilà! You have a humanoid. We, as human readers, can relate to the humanity of the race and its individuals, while (hopefully) appreciating the differences in body and culture.

That’s fine, that’s cool. That’s a distinct class of non-humans that are purposefully similar to humans for very understandable reasons. They’re the easiest to work with in fiction and most relatable for our audience.

When a book introduces a giant quadrupedal predator who still thinks like a civilized, social human, I get my hackles up. C’mon, guys. They aren’t human. Give them a difference. Let’s broaden our minds, shall we?

Imagine, if you will, a human being born with a set of animal behaviors and instincts. This is still a human in body and will be raised as a human, in human society, but its base instincts are some animal instead of evolved monkey. This person – we’ll call him Bob – is inherently, innately, undeniably inhuman. If he’s a tiger, he’s going to have to balance social tendencies from his human rearing with completely antisocial tendencies from being a lone predator. There will be immutable qualities in the core of his psyche that are not human.

Imagine, if you will, a humanoid born into a human society. Even if she’s raised as a human, she’s going to have different base instincts and behavioral tendencies, as well as some moderately different physiological needs, depending on her specific race. Even though she will be effectively multicultural, she won’t lose her innate inhumanity that is her birthright as a non-human. She’ll likely experience internal (and possibly external) conflict over her adopted culture and her instinctual heritage.

Now, imagine a humanoid culture in its infancy. This species is now at the apex of their physical evolution and progressing into civilization and probably technology. For the sake of this example, say they have never met humans – they’re in a secluded land, or on a different planet. They don’t have our monkey instincts; they have their own. How differently would they develop, even if they have human-parallel bodies and neurological structures, when their core is unshakably inhuman?

Do I really need to ask you to imagine how different a non-humanoid race would be from us?

A Korat is not human. They do not have opposable thumbs; they do not stand on two legs. They have fur, claws, sharp teeth, and a predator’s set of movement-oriented senses. A human can gaze into a sunset and marvel at the incredible masterpiece of color and light; a Korat will look at a sunset and notice far less of the stationary detail. A human will see a blur of dull color in the underbrush and wonder if he imagined it; a Korat will watch a rabbit run and be able to count its strides out of the corner of his eye without even focusing. A human has different social needs than a Korat, different emotional and instinctual reactions to pain and fear and anger and sadness, and different ways of expressing himself. A human may react to danger with noisy aggression or cowering fear, while a Korat may react to the same situation by becoming completely still, alert, and poised to move – without any emotional investment.

Even when I find inhuman non-humans in fiction, I often find cases of human-envy. We are humans, so it’s natural that we’re human-centric. But Korats don’t pine for opposable thumbs or a bipedal gait. Korats don’t wish they were technologically advanced. In fact, Korats are Korat-centric – surprise! – and have a lot of racial pride. They like how their species is, and they don’t feel any inclination to become less like a Korat and more like anything else.

Humanoids certainly have a strong place in fiction, but I’d love to see more non-humanoids take a shining role with their differences and, yes, their incomprehensible alienness.

Have you ever created a non-human race that was truly inhuman? If not, why?

Of all the people in the world, a fiction writer seems to be one of the least qualified to tell you to live in your body. Especially one who works as a computer geek. I spend my work and play hours on a computer, sitting down and trying to avoid numb-butt syndrome by stretching every now and then. I type 119 words per minute without any particular effort. I can tell when a graphic-in-progress in Photoshop is a pixel or two off. I’m a certifiable dork.

Who am I to ask if you’re present in your physical flesh?

(Well, I’m A, but if you’re here, you know that already, right?)

Since we’re asking questions, how about this one: If you’re writing any sort of physical motion, how will you describe how it feels if you haven’t lived as a spine-flexing, muscle-contracting, blood-pumping body?

Everyone knows that writers can and do write things they haven’t personally experienced. “Write what you know” is a common adage, seemingly in contradiction to our immense imaginations. Take them both in moderation and consider this: how different would a short story about drag-racing be if the author had never even gotten his driver’s license? How would you write about a long cross-country journey if you’ve never walked through the woods? Sure, research and second-hand stories are great, but do they really replace personal experience?

Stephen R. Boyett wrote a great article about The One True Thing. He writes fantasy, but he gathers as much real-life experience pertaining to that fantasy as possible, so that he can include genuine details that make the unbelievable a little more real. Tiny things like road signs, the oft-overlooked decorations on large buildings, and that one tree that juts up from that hill over there when you’re driving down the highway. As a result of these True Things, his readers can suspend disbelief all the more easily.

And, really, can you write a story without ever having a physical body moving?

Are you present enough in your own skin to make it believable?

Give me the one true thing. The sudden rush of heat following a sharp pain; the sensitivity of your fingertip when a long nail is suddenly chopped short; the itch of a necklace chain on your collarbone. Make me believe that your character is just as alive as me – even if he’s the farthest thing from human you can get.

Live it, and let your stories benefit from your life.

I am a private person. I have locked and filtered my livejournals in the past and used an alias to firmly separate my name from my online presence. I’m still taking measures to keep that alias separated from this online presence, although anyone with some Google-fu could figure me out fairly easily. (No, that is not an invitation, thank you very much. I’m still talkin’ here! Put the search engine down and step away slowly…)

I’m a marketer, among other things. I understand personal branding, which is why my alias is so hard to cleave cleanly. I’ve been online since 2000. My fiction and worldbuilding is spattered all over the place, cohesively branded as me and mine – but I don’t link that name to this one.

I’m a bit of a weird person. A freak, if you will. I’d rather not have my legal name associated with my personal quirks, especially when it comes to employers and coworkers wandering the internet and potentially discovering too much. (I’m not talking about anything illegal or sexual here, just so you know.) I am not mainstream when it comes to religion and spirituality, to interpersonal relationships and humanity, to worldview and philosophy, or to hobbies and interests. I am a perfectly functional adult who leads an awesome life and does some good for people, and I certainly don’t lie about who and what I am, but I also don’t blatantly advertise it in settings where people might not want to know that I have sworn by the Flying Spaghetti Monster before.

Starting this blog and taking the first step towards professional authordom is making that balancing act increasingly difficult. I’ve showed a coworker this site (she asked about conlangs!) and put this site’s design on my resume, so I have a vested interest in blending personality and professionalism. All the same, I refuse to not be me. I’m a writer, for godssakes, and my eccentricity and imagination are absolutely vital to any success I have in storytelling.

At this point in my life, I don’t think conformity is worth it for me. Certainly not here, as a fiction writer, and not really in the 9-5 workforce, either. I’ve come a long way, and I’m done apologizing for being my own person. I’m living my life my way, and I love it – and if I can serve as proof that it can be done, maybe more people will follow their hearts and put away the plastic masks so many of us wear. I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I’m not, and I’m not afraid of whatever results my individualism earns.

This ain’t your mama’s fiction, kids, and I ain’t your typical author.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.

“What is that?”

The grey-furred Nila looked up, no expression crossing his flattened face. Yellow eyes sought the origin of the inquisitive voice, but the forest greenery was thick and concealing. He drew his brows low to express disapproval. “It is a drum,” he answered flatly, four-fingered hands stilled on the wooden carving. He had been binding the head of the drum, made of Leasheas hide, to the mouth.

“What’s a … drum?” the voice asked, carefully pronouncing the new word. “What’s it do?”

The Nila identified the general direction of the speaker and shifted his position to face it, black claws carefully resuming the tedious stitch-and-wrap. “A drum is this,” he answered impassively. “It makes noise.”

“Wood and skin and–” There was a pause, then the faint sound of sniffing, “–gut-rope? How does that make noise?”

The Nila sighed. He really had no need to humor his invisible watcher, so he stayed silent and completed the very last bindings. Tufts of silver and violet fur still ringed the edge of the drumhead, and the wood had been carefully carved to preserve the grain-patterns. Even the gut-rope had been skillfully braided. He allowed himself the smallest of smiles as he drew a dyed leather strip from the pouch at his hip and wound it about the waist of the small drum.

“What’s that for?” the voice pestered.

“Do you not have anything better to do?” the Nila countered peevishly, removing a few strings of braided cords from the same pouch. These were decorated with teeth, claws, and feathers, and twined in the weave were long hairs from the same Leasheas that gave its skin for the drum’s head. The wood’s rich red-brown color was well-complimented by the silver, violet, and deep blue of the decorations.

“Not really,” the voice responded. It sounded cheerful, and a few leaves whispered a warning of movement. The Nila looked up as the speaker poked its dark face through the canopy, a fanged grin stretching open a long, sleek muzzle. “I noticed the reek of Leasheas blood. Tell me, did you actually eat it?”

“It was a sacrifice,” the Nila replied, frowning up at the black Korat. “We do not eat sacrifices. Its flesh was burned.”

“Food is scarce on the best of days, and you don’t eat what you kill?” The Korat snorted, nostrils flaring wide. It descended to a lower bough, the sturdy branch five feet thick, then sprawled languorously. “Even if Leasheas are sentient, no sense in wasting meat. You could have at least left it for the Chitters or something.”

The Nila huffed, then lifted the drum reverently to study it from all angles. It was a good work of craftsmanship, and he was proud of it. Far better than his first two.

“Why do you even need a noise-maker like that?” the Korat asked conversationally. Its blue eyes remained trained on the Nila below.

The Nila didn’t reply, shifting his weight on the log that had served as his workbench. He had to lean forward, his ankles pressed against the rotting bark and his knees jutting out, and his tail got in the way and bent awkwardly upwards–but he managed to settle the drum between his knees and hold it there with his legs alone. It was a good fit, a good solid feeling – not too heavy, not light enough to be fragile.

“That looks uncomfortable,” the Korat commented from thirty feet above. “I didn’t know your tail could twist like that. Your tail is short and fat – I don’t think you’re supposed to–”

The Nila slapped the head of the drum with one flattened hand, and the resulting bark of noise silenced the Korat. The forest was too dense to allow an echo, but the sound was satisfyingly loud nonetheless. The Nila allowed himself one more tiny smile, then lifted his yellow gaze to the lounging Korat.

The Korat blinked down at him. “Uh,” it mumbled, looking uncertain.

The Nila flattened his other hand in the same way, careful to keep his claws from piercing the head, and slapped the drum three times. Left-right-left. The last note was the deepest, and it rang a shade longer than the other two. He curled one hand and extended his long thumb, then slapped the drum with the side of his thumb. It produced a deeper, shorter note when he struck the center of the head, and a lighter one when he struck near the rim.

“Hey,” the Korat said, drawing its limbs beneath its body into a crouch, “do that again.”

Feeling pleased enough with his work to oblige, the Nila repeated the notes. Short-short-long, deep-light. He kept his right hand flat and alternated the slap with the thumb-strike from his left hand. Short-deep-short-light-long.

The black Korat stood on its branch and swayed, as though it were going to topple. The Nila eyed it, then repeated the rhythm. The Korat seemed to be moving in time to the beat. “That’s catchy,” the Korat said, its muzzle creasing in a grin. “Keep it up.”

The Nila continued to drum as the Korat began to dance.

Myself, I really do prefer comedies.

This post is the seemingly-inevitable warning, from one writer to anyone else who stores their creativity in digital format, to back yo’ shit up.

Until this summer, my only flashdrive was one that I’d gotten with my first computer in 2000. It was a whopping 32 MB, and I used it sparingly at best. When I started moving around between Colorado and Nevada, between laptop and desktop and this-other-top computers, I decided I really needed something a little heftier. I picked up a 4 GB flashdrive and named it Switchblade for how it folded. I loaded it with all my writing – novels, WIPs, short stories, brainstormed ideas – and plenty of other day-to-day stuff, including the home study supplementary videos for my martial arts practice. It was awesome.

It was so awesome, in fact, that I deleted most of the documents – including all the writing – from my desktop harddrive.

I can hear the round of facepalms from here. You know where this is going, right? But there’s a twist at the end.

I was converting two new computers from Vista to XP Pro in the office and using my external harddrive and Switchblade to assist in the data transfer between old and new machines. I left Switchblade plugged in while clearing and recreating partitions for the fresh OS install. Somehow, I nuked its partition, too – and now it can’t even be reformatted and used again. The entire flashdrive is dead, dead, dead.

Last night, I discovered/remembered my folly in deleting the “Writing” folder from my computer. I had a moment of white-noise shock, then denial, then a hot shower, then resignation. (A hot shower is an integral step in the cycle of acceptance, after all.) I sat down before my dinky little monitor and began taking stock.

Well, I had almost all of my recent-and-decent stuff from the last five years archived on my various past livejournals. I had even converted it all to .php pages in preparation for putting it on my personal site. Okay, not too bad.

I looked further. The few longer, not-formatted-for-web works-in-progress (like my past NaNovels) had been uploaded to my server, since I’d been making efforts to HTMLize them to add them to the aforementioned site. Okay, good there, too.

Into Fang Wood, which was the primary cause for my primordial oh-god-no terror, was saved in my email. I had all sixty-plus thousand words of the story itself, although I’d lost almost all of the intensive brainstorming and plot-building that I’d done over the summer. But that was okay, too, because it’s still fresh enough in my head to be rewritten with minimal flubs and gaps.

Despite the situation trying its best to be a tragedy, I had probably only lost 10% of my work – mostly the stuff I had deemed unworthy of being reworked and/or shown to others. The good stuff I did lose can be replicated fairly easily. It was a minor accident instead of a cause for kicking myself repeatedly in the tailbone.

I got lucky. I am, however, going to take this as a very firm warning and be more zealous about protecting and backing up my work.

Take this story as your own warning, too. Don’t risk losing years of work just because you don’t want to bother taking five minutes a week to save your files to a different computer, email them to yourself, upload them to your website, or keep them on a disk.

(Maybe someday I’ll figure out this curious little feeling of liberation and relief that came even before I realized I had the bulk of my good work safely ferreted away in online nooks and crannies.)

I have a veritable history with NaNoWriMo. I began participating in 2003 and, with one exception, have won every year since.

In 2003, I had written only one novel before; it was The Dark Wars, an unfinished Young Adult story about the most memorable and violent time in Lavana‘s history. It spanned five spiral-bound notebooks – yes, I had written the entire thing by hand. But, in 2003, I was a fast typist, and my NaNovel was done on computer. It was entitled Seeker, a story about two gay boys in college trying to find themselves and finding each other instead. (Shh. It wasn’t a real romance, I swear.) While I got 50,000 words on the story, the plot arc was far from complete. This would set the norm for all NaNovels to come.

In 2004, I wrote Outcast, my first Korat-only novel. I got 80% finished with the story arc by the time I crossed the 50k finish line, which was the closest I’d come to completing an entire novel in my life. I even skipped ahead and wrote the ending scene (which, sadly, I later lost). Outcast followed the story of a lone striped female as she never stopped running for her life, even when she encountered three people who actually didn’t want to kill her.

In 2005, I wrote The Panthera Walkers: Peace as part of a Panthera Walkers trilogy (the second book, might I add – the first and third unwritten). Set in Ykinde, TPW:P chronicled the story of the growing Walker tribe and their aid in trying to establish peace between Lupos and Avans – trying to end the Elderwar – and how nothing is ever as black-and-white as it seems. I had a lot of trouble that year and took a major plot detour, then had to write feverishly to catch up and cross the finish line – at something like seven minutes ’til midnight on the last day. It was nuts.

In 2006, I failed. I did participate, and scanning back over my personal journal for November, I wrote that I’d gotten 21k on something. For the life of me, I can’t remember what it was, so I’m inclined to think it was a bunch of false starts and half-baked stories. My only excuse was that two great friends of mine were visiting for two weeks from Britain, and I was out and about with them almost every day they were here. (Sure, I was working full-time, too, but I’d been working every November except for 2003 – and in 2004, I was taking a few college classes as well as holding a job!)

In 2007, the miracle that was The Demon-God of Jubagh came to pass. By the time November rolled around, I’d already finished Book One; that year’s NaNoWriMo saw Book Two and half of Book Three completed before the 30th, and the rest of Book Three finished before the December holidays. I’ve already discussed TDGoJ previously on here (see the above link), but let me tell you – this was the first (and so far only) time I’d truly, totally, 100% finished a novel. I was gleeful.

In 2008, last year, I struggled to pick a direction for the first week or so. I first veered towards an anthology of myths and stories of Redwood, sidifir oerri, ageless mother of the Koratian race. I thought I could do two novels in one month, since I was on part-time at work and would never have that much free time ever again, so I tried to do a story about animetals on Ryarna in that world’s equivalent of the Wild West. Both petered out within days, and then – thanks in large part to some brainfodder and a great friend being a sounding board – I got inspired to do Into Fang Wood. I flew past the finish line, half-crazed and gibbering from the chaos of trying to wrangle that story in a month. (Later, of course, I found out how big it wanted to be, and I quailed, and then I began outlining…)

In 2009, this year, I have something very fun planned. The incredibly tentative working title is The Ghost In The Machine. (Asimov, I salute you, sir.) Set in the Gurhai universe, it will feature three corata, shapeshifting mammalian predators, who find themselves on Ryarna by chance or by fate. They encounter an impossible thing: a feral, instinct-smart herd of motorcycle-like wheeled vehicles that are, apparently, bound to and powered by animal ghosts. It’s illegal to fuse a ghost to anything but an animetal shell, however, and these wheelers are meant for personal transportation alone – not animation. Not only do the corata have to survive the largely-without-fleshy-animals desert, they have to figure out how to survive increasingly restless, doggedly stubborn aniwheelers.

It’s going to be so much fun.

Fellow WriMos, what are you planning for this lovely November?

Image credit to RoboSeek.com.

Ryarna is one of the more famous worlds in the Gurhai universe. It is one of the five most magic-rich worlds in the universe, as well as one of the five top technological worlds. The native race are the rarra, who govern the world through the Bardic Collective, a loose guild of bards who keep the peace between rarra, alien visitors, and disembodied spirits that are drawn to Ryarna’s dense magical atmosphere. Ryarna is heavily settled and civilized; because rarra are carnivorous and only protect their important food sources, the world is ecologically simplistic, much of the terrain dry and dusty due to industry and animetal traffic. Ryarna is a hotspot both for magic-workers who wish to train and mechanical tinkerers who wish to study rarran technology; there are many docks and plenty of trade and visitation from other races.

Rarra are bipedal, thin-furred predators who are slightly taller on average than humans. They have almost rabbit-like faces with a single, slender horn on their brows, long and expressive ears, and an upswept mohawk of fur along their skulls. Rarra have short-fingered, paw-like hands and large, clawed, talon-like feet; their legs are powerful, capable of impressive leaps and kicks. Gifted with magic and an inclination to tinker, rarra have melded magical power and steampunk mechanics into a highly-functional, highly-bizarre assortment of machines, robots, vehicles, and tools. Most rarran bits and bobs only work on Ryarna or another high-magic planet, but the mechanical designs are often adapted by other races (notably buthines) for use on normal- or low-magic worlds. All rarra are trained to use some form of magic, and most are educated in a hands-on mechanical trade or a design-oriented engineering field.

Animetals are known throughout the civilized universe as bizarre miracles. They are mechanical animals, comprised of a spirit (usually the ghost of a creature that wasn’t ready to die) and an articulated robotic shell (designed and made by rarran engineers and inventors). The spirit and shell are fused via rarran bardic magic, so that the spirit powers the shell and ‘dies’ when the shell dies. Though they are clearly robots and possess no feathers, fur, scales, or hide (or anything simulating those), animetals behave and live as animals, though some have unusually high intelligence, occasionally approaching sapience. Animetals can be varying sizes, colors/patterns, and animal types. They’re designed to never need actual maintenance, using the fused spirits to keep the shell in working order; heavy damage requires rarran mechanics to repair, however. (There are theories that, given enough time, a spirit can repair even considerable damage to its shell. However, that is a feral attribute and not one easily observed by rarra.) While some animetals have been made on a smaller-than-life scale – a large hunting cat weighing only ten pounds, for example – most animetals are 1:1 or set to a larger scale. Typical animetal shells are made on a 2:1 scale, while custom/display-only/rider shells are often made on a 3:1, 4:1, or 5:1 scale. Large, intelligent animetals are paired with a trained rarran pilot for use as soldiers (S-class animetals, typically with an internal cockpit set in the head or chest) or transportation (T-class animetals, often with an external cockpit and a tow-hitch for a bus or blimp). Animetals have largely replaced “fleshies” in Ryarna’s ecosystem, barring key species to keep the flora healthy and the rarra fed.

Not amusement. Not entertainment. Not a brief little flicker of happiness.

I’m talking joy. That effusive, overwhelming feeling of delight and pleasure that makes it impossible not to smile. The kind of emotion that brings a little mist to your eyes because you are just that happy. Elation that lifts you up to the tips of your toes because you feel so light and free. Pure bliss.

I’ve heard it called passion before. But passion has a different flavor – thicker, redder, more driven and focused. Joy is liberated from any kind of ambition and sense of progress. Joy blows with the wind, gusts into you to fill you up until you’re flying, and can be exhaled in one breath if something – internal or external – takes your mind back to what some people call ‘reality’, where worries and stressors and problems dwell.

Personally, I’m not a fan of a ‘reality’ without joy. Mine includes it. Mine thrives on it.

On the long drive to work this morning, as I was waking up, I decided to eschew the thoughts of the stress that’s plagued me lately. I’ve run into a lot of unexpected issues at work; J is sick with H1N1; money is always a concern (especially after a summer of not working); and we’re probably going to be moving in a few weeks – if my job proves stable. I’ve had all of that and much more on my mind, but today, I chose not to dwell on it.

Instead, I fired up the ole cauldron and began simmering ideas.

I thought of Into Fang Wood. I thought of the upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which is looking to be epic. I thought of the directions I want to take this blog, the people I want to reach out to and connect with, the kind of awesome geofiction resource I hope to create with Oh, The Inhumanity!. I thought of past creativity and future potential.

And I felt that joy bubbling up just beneath my collarbone, pulsing in my lungs.

Creating is my passion and my joy. What’s yours?

I will protect them, the wolf had said to the human. That was before she learned what Retka thought of the tahori. He called them monsters, raging mindless beasts whose prowess was destruction and battle. He had said that, and she had stopped walking, turned to look at him with flashing eyes and bared teeth, fangs longer than his fingers– and he cowered back, surprised and afraid.

He didn’t realize the white wolf was the monster he’d been raised to hate and fear. She stopped before she could snarl and snap at his face.

Yagir hadn’t had her hesitation; he swung hard and sent the half-tache stumbling backwards, a hand clutching at his chest where the blow had landed. She had to take the human’s collar in her teeth to keep him from lashing out again, and the fabric of his vest made a curious ripping sound.

Yagir spat and cursed, but with a wounded namiccian still holding fast to the wolf’s back, he couldn’t spare the time for a shouting match, let alone a fist-fight. He swore one last time at Retka, then turned back and kept walking; the wolf let him go and followed, her jaws tense. Without anywhere else to go, lost in the middle of uncivilized wilderness, the half-tache trailed them.

Retka didn’t understand until he met Dienn, a man who gave the namiccian a quiet, dark place to recover. Yagir snarled a few words in the language Retka didn’t know, then stalked off, trailed by the giant wolf. Dienn pulled Retka aside and spoke softly.

Yes, they knew Retka was half-tache. Yes, they also knew he was half-tahori, though Light only knew how they figured it out. Yes, they understood that Retka had been raised as half a person, shunning part of his heritage. But no, they would not let him continue to spout such lies.

They weren’t lies, Retka insisted. They were truth. Dienn just didn’t know – he’d never met a tahori, after all.

The white wolf returned, then, and sat within touching distance, gold eyes watching them calmly. Dienn pressed an open hand against the wolf’s thickly-furred chest. Yes, I’ve met a tahori, he said. So have you.

Retka still didn’t understand until he looked at the wolf – really looked, saw the fine whiskers and the proudly erect ears and the glint of more-than-animal intelligence in those frightening yellow eyes.

When he reeled backwards, Dienn caught his sleeve and kept him for running for his life. This is a tahori, the human said. This is an inlanlu tahori. She saved your life. How monstrous is that?

I don’t believe you, Retka answered, his heart climbing into his throat. Tahori are shapeshifting demons. This is just a wolf. This is just–

And the wolf leaned back on her haunches, and Retka’s vision seemed to blur as though Dienn punched him in the side of the head, and by the time he could focus again, there was a woman standing where the wolf had been.

Dienn let go of his sleeve. This is a tahori, he repeated. This woman is your worst nightmare. Terrifying, isn’t she?

She still had yellow eyes and a white tail, but she looked like a human in every other way. She could have even passed for a tache, although her hair was brown and not black. She gave him the same level, unreadable, impassive look that the wolf had given him.

She isn’t terrifying, Retka lied, unable to look away from those eyes, those predator’s eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘she’s just a girl’ because, no matter how human or tachian in appearance, every inch of her was still wolf – and if he said that, she would rip his throat out with her falsely-human teeth.

As though she could smell his fear, the tahori smiled at his lie, no warmth reaching those wolf eyes.