“I can’t imagine that, really,” Pauline confessed. “I like having a home, being in the home, taking care of it. But I also just...” She struggled to explain.
“Just?” Carlos asked softly.
“In the mornings,” Pauline said, “I make myself a cup of coffee, and I take it outside. And I look at the whole vista around me, the trees and the mountains. If I can swing it, depending on the time of year, I watch the sun rise. Even in the winter, I’ll step out for just a minute and breathe in the air. It’s like I’m soaking in the mountains, and that gives me the strength to get through the rest of the day.”
“That sounds lovely.” Carlos eyes were far away. Imagining doing it himself?
“When I was living in the city, I’d step outside and there’d be people and cars and concrete, and—” Pauline shook her head. “I couldn’t do it. I need the mountains around me.”
“A lot of people around here seem to be...connected to nature.” Something in Carlos’ voice made her look at him. He had a careful expression on his face. “Sort of a family thing. Lynn and Stella have it, and so do the men who were in my unit.”
Pauline smiled. “You’re talking about shifters.”
Carlos grinned. “You cracked my code.”
“I did.” She set her fork down and leaned back in her chair too. “Yes, I’m a shifter, too. An owl.”
His eyes widened. “An owl. I’ve never met an owl shifter before.”
Pauline shrugged, a bit uncomfortable at his sudden scrutiny. “There aren’t too many of us. A few around here. My dad was one, too.”
“But not your mom?”
Pauline shook her head. “She was afraid of heights.”
Carlos laughed, surprised. “I guess that wouldn’t work out so well.”
“Nope.”
The laughter faded, and Carlos looked at her consideringly. “So you fly through the forests here?”
Pauline nodded. “I try to get out a few times a week.
It’s refreshing.”
“A few times a week,” Carlos sighed. He looked...wistful.
“It must have been hard to shift, in New York City,” she said tentatively. “I mean—you are a shifter as well?”
“Oh, my manners,” he said, looking a bit flustered, and she bit her lip to hide a smile. “Yes. A tiger.”
A tiger. “Oh,” she said on a let-out breath.
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I just—I feel like I should’ve been able to guess,” Pauline admitted. “I can’t imagine you as anything else, now.”
Carlos smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment, thanks. And I can’t imagine myself as anything but a tiger, either. Even though you’re right: it was almost impossible to find time and space to shift, in my old life. Between the sprawl of the city and the demands of the job...” He shrugged. “I managed it every month or two, usually.”
Pauline felt cold. “I can’t imagine only being able to shift every month or two. I think I’d go crazy.”
“I got used to it,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t shift much as a kid, either—we lived in New Jersey, where there’s not a lot of open wilderness, so we were mostly confined to little woods, with my mom constantly watching for people.”
“That sounds really hard.”
He hesitated. “I didn’t think so at the time—it was the most exciting thing I got to do. But now, looking back...I wish we’d had space to run.”
“Kids need space to run,” Pauline said firmly. “Whether they’re shifter kids or not. Shifter kids just need different kinds of space.”