In the wild, I was a predator.
Most were larger than me...even stronger than me. But I was different. I had wits, and those will carry you farther than the most powerful muscles and the sharpest claws. Brute force in no match for the power of the mind, and the ones who use it the best are kings.
I was different even from most of my own kind. It was the first lesson I remembered learning. My mother told me this from an early age, but there was no need to tell. I could see it, even then. We never claimed our own for food, but they feared us anyways. The others always steered clear.
The deadlies predators were the man-things. They had wits, as well. They did not live in the wild, but but they often came. And when they came, nothing was safe. They brought their machines and took prey, not with muscle or claw...but with fire and sound. Many of the largest tried to take man-things as prey...a few succeeded, but most were killed before they were even close. We stayed away from them.
My mother kept a secret from me for a long time. She told me that she did this because I would not have understood. We were more different from our kind than I had known, and there was a reason that we had wits that the others didn't. But something had changed in the world, and she said she could no longer keep it hidden. I had a right to know, so she showed me.
The change in the world permitted my mother to take on another shape, and she showed me how to change myself as well. It was a lot of effort at first, but each time I did it, the change came easier. Soon, I could change with no more effort than it takes to think.
It was the shape of the thing I hated most: Man. I will admit that it has it's benefits, but there are definate drawbacks that took some time to adjust to. It was uncomfortable to be in my new form in the cold, and I couldn't run as fast. But we made tools, and those made life easier.
One day a man-thing came, and my mother spoke to him. I was suprised that she knew his words. I didn't understand them, but I could still tell that they knew each other. After they spoke, she spoke to me.
She said that things are different than they were when she was my age. The world of the man-things has grown, and dominates everything. For me not to know how this world works would be dangerous, so I needed to go into their world and learn of it.
I left with the man, and stayed with him as he showed me some of this world. He showed me that I could not take prey in their world, and taught me of things like money, cars, and cities. The best thing he taught me before I went to explore this new world was combat in my other form. I aparently had a talent for it.
In the wild, I was a predator. Here, I am nothing.
The world of the man-things is complicated. Life is hard here, even for the most skilled of them. For the new-comer, it's all but impossible. The man who took me from the wild had given me some money, but it didn't last long. And with nowhere to stay, there was no shelter from the constant noise and glaring lights. There was no night time in their world, and they never slept.
When my mother said that I wouldn't understand, she was right. And I still do not understand.
