Tinker lay close to Warren and despite her exhaustion, couldn’t sleep. She wondered about this shifting  of which he spoke. Not only spoke of, but actually did, she reminded herself in awe. So, if she was a shifter, did that mean she would be a female human? She raised her head and listened to the night sounds an owl hunting.<br/><br/>A female human? She thought again with curiousity. She had seen some of those, from a distance. Unlike the human males, they didn’t seem to have any fur on their faces. How did they stay warm, she wondered.  Then she thought of the human fur that Warren had shed when he shifted. She wondered what hers would look like, although she thought the blue fur and the lumpy black fur were anything but lovely.<br/><br/>She stood up and circled around again, adjusting herself closer to the lynx shifter. She buried her nose in his fur and found that his acrid feline scent was now comforting. With her nose covered, she hadn’t even realized it was cold until she had nuzzled down, Tinker fell asleep.<br/><br/>In her dreams she heard her mother’s voice,<br/>“You should teach her.” And her father’s “I chose to remain a wolf for a reason. I won’t have my offspring bound by such a curse.” And her mother saying once more, “It should be her choice. She changed once when she was just a pup and you reprimanded her. No wonder she has never attempted it again.”<br/><br/>Tinker yipped and shuddered in her sleep. Wolves didn’t use words but used pack speak, but in her dreams she heard word and understood words. She was gripped by fear, a fear more profound that even becoming an outcast. Finally, toward dawn, she fell into a deep sleep, breathing in unison with the shifter at her side.