Shapeshifter's Struggle

Prologue: Learning to Live

"No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow." ~ Euripides, Greek Scholar

Logan Ross was five years old the first time he Shifted.

He was playing in the yard. He loved to play in the yard. His mother was teaching him how to be gentle with the neighbor's puppies. Whenever one jumped into his lap, Logan had to freeze and move very slowly. He would watch the puppies all day. They were old enough to be away from their mother, but they were still very young.

That day, in the yard, he froze to watch the puppy playing with a ball in fascination, just like he always did. But this time, there was a tingling that ran across his skin. He ignored it and kept watching the puppy. Until the puppy seemed to grow larger and move upwards. Logan turned to look back at his mother, watching from the deck. His mother's face was twisted into a mask of shock and ... fear?

Logan ran towards his mother. But instead of the two-legged, five-year-old boy run he was used to, he used his arms as legs. He looked down at himself.

He was a dog. 

Logan jumped into his mother's lap and wanted to cry. Only, as a puppy, he couldn't cry. As he thought about crying, he felt the tingle run across his skin again. He was human and could cry. So he cried.

Ever since he had started Shifting, Logan's family moved constantly. They owned an RV, and toured the countryside. Logan had visited all of the 48 states by the time he was nine. He liked the warmth of Texas, the sun in Florida, the snow in Ohio, and the mountains in Washington. Sometimes, they'd stay for a while. A couple of months, at the most, like they did in Oklahoma. Logan didn't really mind all the moving, usually. He had his mother and his father, what else could he need?

Sometimes, he'd run out into whatever local forest and Shift into a dog. He would prowl the forest all night in his dog-form. Sometimes, he would change into a cat and wind himself around the legs of their neighbors, especially the old ladies that seemed so lonely. Sometimes, he was a sparrow or a cardinal and would fly up and try to see his RV among the many parked in the lot, and there were always a lot.

He was out flying the day his life changed. His favorite forms were the birds of prey. Logan loved to soar for minutes at a time without ever flapping his wings. He loved the feel on the wind in his face when he suddenly dove towards the ground a hundreds of miles an hour. That day when he came back from flying, his RV was burned to the ground. All that was left was the smoky charred remains of his entire life sitting on four melted wheels. His parents had still been inside. 

When he ran back towards his home, the police caught him. He cried for his mother and his father, but the nice man in blue told him that they were gone. The man had a strong grip and wouldn’t let go of the writhing boy in his arms, even a boy desperate to prove them all wrong and find his mother and father stumbling out of the smoky ruins. 

Gone. Just like that, his home burned to the ground. No explanation given. No culprit caught. But Logan didn't need the police to tell him why his home had been burned to the ground. It was what his parents had been running from since the first time he Shifted. His parents were dead and he was only nine years old.

They'd been after Logan. 

*~*~*~*

The police shipped him to his uncle's in Montana. This uncle he'd never met didn't want him; but he and his wife put Logan in a room and used him to babysit. His three small cousins liked him, but only because he gave them piggyback rides and told them stories. They liked best the stories of flying over mountains and wading through rivers. Stories full of adventure. But he never told them about Shifting.

He learned that nothing was the only safe thing to say. His aunt used him for the chores he hated, but Logan never said a thing. Day after day, he washed dishes, cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed stairs. He rode his bike to the grocery store to pick up milk and eggs and came back to cook them before the cousins went to bed. 

When he was eleven, it happened again. He was with his aunt, helping pick up his cousins after school. When they arrived back home, the house had been ransacked. The furniture was ripped and slashed with a sharp blade while the TV lay in a shattered heap on the floor. All the curtains had been pulled from the windows, the stuffing from all the beds strewn across the room. 

In the middle of the living room floor, words had been slashed into the carpet. "Beware." Aunt Susan didn't know that Logan was a shape shifter, but she figured whoever had done this wanted Logan. After all, Logan was the only new thing in their lives. And her husband’s sister had always been strange and, in her mind, a little shady.

At the end of the week, Logan moved out of Uncle Tom and Aunt Susan's house. He was shipped to another aunt and uncle, this time on his father's side of the family.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Julie were nicer at the beginning. They lived in rural Tennessee and both worked part times before coming home to their favorite TV shows. They were older than his father had been, but didn't have any children. They tended to forget Logan was there for days entirely. He learned to fend for himself, what he hadn’t learned from Aunt Susan. He still didn't speak unless it was absolutely necessary. There wasn’t really anyone to listen. 

At the age of fourteen, his enemies found him again. Three years in one place was a record for Logan, but it couldn't last. Of course it couldn’t. The mysterious “they” had broken in while his uncle was at work. His aunt was in critical condition at the hospital.

Logan ran away.

He couldn't bring himself to cause more trouble for any family members, if he even had any that would take him. Logan ran into the forest, Shifted into a wolf, and ran. He ran and ran until his legs wouldn’t carry him any farther. He slept, drunk from a little stream, and kept running and running. 

For four years he lived in the forest. He looked like a wolf, ran like a wolf, and ate like a wolf. As time went by, he forgot what it meant to be human. Things like clothes, electronics, and cars held no meaning. Words ceased to hold meaning or value. Rarely did he Shift back into human form anymore. He'd gone wild.

One day, his privacy was invaded. While he had run wild, the world had expanded. There were people in his forest now. And people reminded him of what he was, of the human he'd forgotten. For three weeks, he watched the people. Then he finally decided to join them. Just not this particular group of them.

He headed for the city. Along the way, he would Shift into a "nicer" animal, like a Golden Retriever, and go into the subdivisions. Sometimes a nice family would feed him something while they tried to find the owners of the beautiful dog. He watched the people, reminded himself of human interaction, human behavior. 

After a few days, he'd leave again. It took him almost three months to make it to the city at his slow pace, but he wasn't concerned. Once on the streets, he was faced with a new problem. Food. People in the big city didn't feed stray pets. Sometimes he could find a nice old lady with some extra bread crumbs as a pigeon or a sparrow. 

Two months after he arrived in the city, he found JT. JT also lived on the streets. He showed Logan how to find enough food to eat, how to stay warm, how to survive. JT was, however, somewhat limited because the half-starved boy he had found didn't speak. Logan lived like JT had taught him for eighteen months. In all that time, JT never heard him say a word.

Of course, I didn't know any of this when I found him.