Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

T he bear is going to eat us, the voice inside Penny's head said. Except it's not because it's our mate and everything's okay but it's definitely going to eat us. We should hide. But not from the bear. This is a nice nest. We're safe in it. It's warm. Let's lay some eggs.

If she wasn't crazy, Penny thought, then she was going to go crazy pretty soon. She honestly didn't know what was worse: turning into a partridge, or turning out of a partridge and being naked, or the little voice's conviction that something was going to eat them. Her. "Are my pronouns 'they/them' now?" she asked faintly.

Ashley chuckled, a warm and surprisingly comforting sound from someone who had turned into a gigantic grizzly bear and started Penny's apparent descent into madness. "I don't know what other people do. I think of myself as me, but if I think of me and my bear, it's 'us.'"

"It's separate from you?" Penny whispered.

"Nnnnooooo, but yes? It's a personality of its own. It's chiller than I am. But it's also part of me. When I'm human, it's part of me. When I'm a bear, I'm part of it. If I don't have anything else to do besides bear, it's pretty easy to just bumble along and not worry about anything, but I can still think and plan like a human if I need to."

Penny, remembering the absolute brainless panic of being a partridge, shook her head. "I don't think I can think and plan as a…bird." That sounded ridiculous. "I couldn't even bring my clothes with me."

"You can," Ashley said encouragingly. "It'll just take some practice. I've been doing this my whole life. You just shifted for the very first time."

Clothes are like feathers, the partridge announced. We're naked without them.

"No shit!" Penny froze as the words burst out, then whispered, "You, uh. How do you talk to your bear? You can't talk aloud, right? Or people would think you were nuts."

"I think we all talk to them out loud sometimes, but no, you can talk to your partridge in your head." Ashley was obviously trying to sound calm and reasonable, but the words she was using, in the order she was using them in, were just absurd. "Look, Penny, I know you've got a hotel room, but I think maybe I should bring you back to my apartment tonight. You've had kind of a shock?—"

The goddamn partridge in Penny's mind lit up like a cartoon bird zotted by an electric shock, all buzzy bolts and feathers outlined in blue. WE'VE BEEN SHOCKED?!?!

Penny said, "Oh my God," out loud. "Not that kind of shock." Although she felt a little like the aftermath of that kind of shock, all frazzled and like her hair was standing on end. "How do I make it shut up?"

"Your partridge?" Ashley hesitated. "I don't know if you can. I ignore my bear and sometimes she gives up, but you can't really make it be quiet, I don't think."

"Drumming," Penny said with sudden violence. "That's why I took up drumming. It drowned the damn thing out."

She sank back down into the fluffy coat, trying to hide from the world. Ashley, after another momentary pause, said, "Anyway, so I think maybe you shouldn't be alone tonight, and being around another shifter might help."

Not just another shifter, the partridge announced as if it was revealing something earth-shaking. Our mate .

"Our mate," Penny echoed.

That , at least, felt right. It felt like something she'd known in her bones but hadn't quite been able to believe. Because who could believe it? Love at first sight wasn't something that happened, or at least, not often. Everybody knew somebody, of course. Somebody who had known right away, when they'd met the person they were going to marry. But that was the stuff of fairy tales, even if it did happen once in a while in real life.

Of course, turning into bears was also literally the stuff of fairy tales.

Turning into a partridge, not so much. " Swans , yes," Penny blurted. "But who the hell turns into a partridge? Is it because of my last name?" she demanded. "Is it, what's it called? When your name defines your destiny? My parents are Rich and Mary Beth Partridge so I turn into one? Is that it?"

"I don't think so," Ashley said cautiously. "I think it's innate. Someone in your birth family, somewhere along the line, was a shifter. Probably a partridge shifter, although there are unexpected mutations, sometimes. I know someone who's a giraffe. Just, like, randomly. The rest of his family are red pandas."

Penny's growing distress was temporarily derailed by that, turning into a helpless giggle. "That must have been a shock."

The partridge went BZOT blue in her head again.

Penny had been a shifter for about nine minutes, and she was going to kill the bird in her brain before she reached the tenth minute.

"It was," Ashley was saying with a smile. "The whole family ended up moving to Ireland when he was about six, to work and live at some wildlife park there where he could shift some of the time without drawing attention. Red pandas can sneak around a town like Renaissance pretty easily, but a giraffe stands out. So can I take you home? To my place?"

"Yeah," Penny whispered. "I think you're right, I probably shouldn't be alone. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Honestly, a partridge?"

"There are a huge number of predator shifters," Ashley said as she crawled back into the driver's seat. "I've got a theory that it was a survival adaptation. But there's something to be said for 'small and hides easily,' too, so there are non-predator shifters."

"I like how you manage not to say 'prey species' there."

Ashley grimaced into the rear-view mirror. "Shifters don't hunt other shifters so the whole idea gives me the creeps. I definitely don't think of non-predator shifters as prey species. Do you know anything about your birth parents?"

Penny turned her head to look out the window as they left the parking lot. "Nothing. It was a closed adoption and my birth mother didn't even leave any permission to access medical records. She couldn't have known, could she? I mean, if you knew you were a shifter how could you adopt your kid out into a—what did you call regular people?"

"True humans."

"Yeah. A true human family without some kind of warning?"

"I don't know. Maybe she didn't feel like she had any choice."

"Maybe." Penny pressed her head against the window. The partridge said cold! and she muttered, I wouldn't be so cold if I'd stayed dressed when I shifted, back at it.

The partridge gave an injured sniff. The window is cold.

Oh. Sorry. Oh, God, she was talking to the voice in her head. This couldn't possibly end well. "It doesn't matter," she said out loud. "I mean, obviously I want to know, but I accepted a long time ago that there were things I'd never know. This is much, much, much," she took a breath, " much weirder than the rest of it, but it's still the same kind of thing."

Ashley, quietly, said, "I'm here for you to talk to, if it helps."

"Right. My mate." That came out sharper than Penny meant it to, and she tried to soften her voice. "No, I mean it. My mate. I can feel it now. Or what I was feeling makes sense? It's this certainty, right here." She pressed the heel of her hand over her heart. "I just know , when I look at you. It's actually amazing, and if I wasn't completely freaked out I'd really be enjoying it. I'm sorry to take that away from you."

"You're not." Ashley flashed her a smile in the rear-view mirror. "Everybody says the first little while after you tell your mate about what you really are is weird. We have an extra helping of weird, that's all. I still know in my heart that I'm meant for you, and it's kind of amazing to hear that you know it in the same way now too. Fated mates are supposed to, but…it's different with two shifters, I think."

"Well, an hour ago I had a huge dumb crush and ridiculous plans for a lifetime together even though we've only really known each other a few days across a couple of months. Now I've got a bird in my head telling me it wasn't a dumb crush, it was fate striking like a gong. I feel confident about it in a way I didn't. Even if I've got a talking bird in my head. Oh my god, I'm going insane."

Ashley laughed. "No, you're not. It'll be okay. Honestly, all I can think is you've got the world's strongest willpower and you just squished the partridge down because let's be real, who turns into a partridge? Or anything else, for that matter? But I'm going to get hold of Maggie flipping Ross and have her come over and explain how the hell she knew you were a shifter, and whether she's got any advice for a bird shifter, okay? I'm sure she and Conri are still in town. They can come over tomorrow."

"Yes," Penny said. "Because expecting world-famous professional wrestlers to just drop by and explain everything is perfectly normal."

"Okay, normally I would agree, but in this particular case I think I'm right." Ashley drove them up to a low, attractive apartment complex and came to open the car door for Penny.

The wall is falling! Help! Help! The wall is falling!

Penny froze with one foot out the door. The 'wall' is a door and it opened . How can you know what a window is and not what a door is?

The partridge also froze, everything motionless except its eyes, which darted around like it thought the question might be a trick. A longish silence suggested it wasn't going to answer, so Penny sighed and got out of the car. "If I go have a long sleep, everything will be normal in the morning, right?"

"For some value of normal?" Ashley suggested hopefully. "A new normal, one might say?"

Penny groaned. "Nobody likes that phrase."

"Yeah? Not even when your new normal is being a bonafide rock star?"

"That's different!"

The partridge thrust an image of shining, glittering rocks into Penny's mind. She stared at them—and staring at the inside of her head was an Experience—and then groaned. "No. Not shiny, starry rocks. Rock star."

She had never had the sensation of complete, befuddled blankness filling her skull before. There was a vast, echoing emptiness in which the idea of 'rock star' bounced around and found nothing to connect to. Having found nothing, the concept simply faded out of the partridge's mind entirely, incomprehensible and therefore apparently unworthy of any further contemplation.

Penny, quite clearly, and without all that much to attach it to yet either, thought, Oh, no. Unlike the partridge's dismissal of rock stars, though, that little 'oh no' lodged itself in the side of her mind, waiting for more things to stick itself to.

Ashley was smiling at her. "You're getting used to hearing it."

"I really don't think I am," Penny said dubiously. "But Im going to have to, aren't I?"

"I think it'll be easier after you've had some rest," Ashley murmured. "Come on upstairs. I'll make up the guest bed for you. Yes, the guest bed," she added firmly. "You need sleep and some time to adjust."

Penny wanted to protest, but the truth was, Ashley was right, and she was unconscious the minute she hit the pillows.

"Penny?" A gentle tapping at the door and Ashley's cautious voice woke her in the morning. She had a moment of disorientation, not helped by the partridge yodeling ARE WE LOST?!?!?!?! inside her skull, before she remembered where she was and—belatedly, despite the birdbrain yelling in her head—what had happened.

She groaned. "Not dead. I think."

"Can I come in? I have coffee."

"Oh, bless you." Penny sat up blearily, scrubbing her hands over her face and tugging the oversized t-shirt she'd borrowed to sleep in up to cover her shoulder. "Yeah, come in."

Ashley came in wearing a snuggly-looking sweatshirt over jeans and bunny slippers. She handed Penny a large mug of coffee, and stood awkwardly while Penny slurped down the first sips before gesturing to the bed. "Go ahead, sit. It's your bed."

"But you're using it." Ashley smiled as she sat, though, and tucked her hair up into some kind of twist that looked adorable and exactly perfect for a sleepy morning.

Although she seemed suspiciously bright-eyed and perky, now that Penny was awake enough to really look at her. "What time is it?"

"Eleven thirty. I've been up for a couple of hours. Maggie and Conri are going to stop by around one. I thought we might try?—"

A hopeful flush of heat rushed through Penny and was squashed when Ashley went on with "—practicing shifting with your clothes. I tried forgetting my clothes and getting them back this morning, a few times. I lost one pair of pyjamas and a slipper," she said, lifting her foot to look sadly at the bunnies, "but the second time it worked, so I think I can talk you through it."

"You only lost one slipper?"

"One of them came back the first time I tried to fetch them. It was my favorite," she said, still sort of sadly.

"You have a single favorite slipper…?"

"I'm sure that's perfectly normal," Ashley said with a sniff.

Penny laughed and drank enough coffee that she wasn't in danger of spilling any when she leaned over a bit to bump her shoulder against Ashley's. "It is. Totes normal. Okay, yes," she said more hesitantly. "I think we should try the clothes thing. I'd really like to get that dress back if I can."

"Right." Ashley pressed her lips together. "The thing is, um. I think you're going to have to start naked."

Penny's eyebrows shot up. "I like how this conversation is going."

Ashley blushed and put her face in her hands. Muffled, she said, "Not that I object to that direction, but it's not what I meant. If you shift while wearing clothes, then the ones that will most naturally come back with you are the ones you were wearing when you shifted. So if you want to try to retrieve that dress…"

Penny giggled, caught a glimpse of Ashley's blushing cheeks, and giggled again. "Right. Okay. So talk me through it while I finish this cup of genuinely very excellent coffee?"

Ashley lifted her head, still pink of cheek. "I've been thinking about it all morning. It's hard to even figure out, because I've been doing it since before I can remember, but I think basically what happens is I think of my clothes as part of myself. They're not, obviously, but for shifting purposes, they kind of are."

Like feathers! the partridge said with enthusiasm. If we shifted without our feathers we'd be NAKED. It provided an image of a plucked chicken. Or, Penny guessed, a plucked partridge. They looked a lot alike. Aloud, with a grimace, she said, "Like feathers. Or fur."

"Exactly. Although if we shift naked we aren't furless when we shift, but never mind that, that complicates things. So…" Ashley held her breath. "So really I think you should probably just try shifting naked a few times to get used to what it feels like. You were pretty freaked out last night. With justification!" she said as Penny bugged her eyes at her. "But I think getting a little bit used to what it feels like will help when you try to bring your clothes back."

"Okay, yeah, no, that makes sense. Okay, fine. Starkers it is."