The man stood and was surrounded by a white light. Tinker sat on her haunches, head tilted, waiting for him to settle back down. When the light subsided he was…not a man but an animal. She scented the air and her hackles raised as she scented lynx and wolf. The breeze ruffled his fur and she heard the man’s voice in her head once more.<br/><br/>“~I am not what meets the eye, young one....... And neither are you girl.... We are shifters, both human and animal. Though i sense you have never shifted, you were born a wolf. That is very rare. I was also born in this form. My name is Warren.”<br/><br/>She crawled back to her belly and lay there with her ears pinned back to her head. A shifter? She had heard that word whispered among the pack, especially since Father had been killed. What did it mean? To her understanding, shifters were untrustworthy and held no loyalty to any pack. They were lazy and many of them stupid. The wolf girls had often giggled about how shifters smelled bad and ate disgusting food. Some of the males had remarked that shifter females were ugly with flat faces and bulging eyes. The old females of the pack had warned that shifters often ate their own kind, cannibals. Tinker quivered.<br/><br/>This Warren didn’t fit in any of those categories unless you counted that strong feline scent. He hadn’t tried to eat her and he was certainly intelligent along with kind. She wrapped her tail around her body and lowered her head to her paws.  He lay down next to her, his body much warmer than when he was a human. He pulled her into the curve of his legs and stomach. Tinker sighed. She felt safe. Tears filled her eyes and she began to lick the fur on his arm, grooming him as a way to say thank you for his care<br/><br/>He had said she was a shifter too. Tinker had never seen a shifter in action before even though the public opinion about her father had been that he was a shifter. He had always been wolf to her. Mother was only a wolf, of that she was sure. No one had ever spoken of shifters openly or candidly. Warren had said she was a shifter too. That must mean that she could be human, a female human. She raised her head, pricking her ears to examine the clothes and the backpack that Warren had shed when he shifted. She wondered if she would come with all that when she shifted. How did that happen?<br/><br/>Tinker lay back down and closed her eyes. Warren said she could go with him so she better sleep while she could. Maybe when the sun came up, they would go hunting.