two weeks. I had never told my parents, but my decreasing understanding of what they said to me had been my primary motivation for coming back into human form.
That, and the realization that I had almost stopped caring what they were saying to me.
If I hadn’t had years of Dad’s training in how to be a human, I don’t know if I would have been able to come back to myself.
More clearly than words, though, I had always felt—smelled, tasted—my parents’ intentions and emotions.
I liked to think that their love could draw me back from any edge.
As Dad withdrew and I pulled myself up to shift back to my human form, I considered the implications of my personal history.
Kade Nevala said lamias were feared and hated. Killed on sight, it sounded like.
Without someone like Dad to teach me how to care, how to draw upon my humanity as a balance to my snake side, how might I have turned out?
Cold .
The inner voice spoke with absolutely certainty.
There’s a reason “cold-blooded” is used to describe sociopaths.
I shivered a little as I pulled my pants up over my hips, despite the remaining warmth from the heat lamp and my quickly-warming mammal blood. Without my parents to guide me, I would never have learned to have compassion for the people with whom I interacted every day.
And the children I worked with now? How would I feel about them?
Prey.
I sent up a tiny, thankful prayer to whatever deity might listen to a weresnake raised as a human.
As I opened the shed door and stepped out into the last rays of the sunlight, I realized something important.
I had never actually asked Kade if the murdered girls were shapeshifters.
I had assumed it, but I hadn’t gotten confirmation.
I needed to know for sure.
And I needed to know how likely it was that a shapeshifter was the one hunting them.
If I could imagine seeing them as prey, surely other shifters could, as well.
* * *
“Hey, ladybug!” Mom called out as soon as I opened the back door. She was bent over, digging around in the refrigerator for salad ingredients, judging by the plastic box of baby spinach she held out behind her. “See if that’s still any good.”
I took it from her and opened the lid, peering inside. “You hid it from yourself in the rotter again, didn’t you?”
“It’s called a crisper, smartass.” She came up with a bag of carrots and a single zucchini squash, only slightly shriveled at one end. “Check these, too, while you’re at it.” Pushing her glasses up on her nose and patting her graying brown hair back into place, she peered around the kitchen. “What did I do with the pepper?”
If Dad was the heart of our little family, Mom was the brains—just not in the usual sense. Also a college professor, she was a true intellectual, at least inasmuch as she spent most of her time up in her own head. She always said Dad kept her grounded. Dad joked that her version of grounded was only halfway into the stratosphere. She was an astrophysicist. They had met in graduate school, and she had followed him to the plains of North Central Texas to support his career, rather than heading off to work for NASA or someplace with a good telescope. That’s how I knew for sure that she loved him. And how I knew he loved her? He supported her every summer as she headed off to those fabulous telescopes to do her research, then welcomed her home again every fall when she returned to teaching classes at a local college and to him.
Still in love, after all these years.
Yet another way they taught me about being human.
And for the first time, it occurred to me that Dad’s love of snakes, with their apparent disinterest in him, might have made him Mom’s perfect partner.
Today was a day for all kinds of revelations.
I moved to the sink to check the vegetables, rinsing and scrubbing the useful ones, tossing the rest into the compost bin.
Mom finally located the pepper and began twisting the grinder over the steaks. “How’s work?”
That, and the realization that I had almost stopped caring what they were saying to me.
If I hadn’t had years of Dad’s training in how to be a human, I don’t know if I would have been able to come back to myself.
More clearly than words, though, I had always felt—smelled, tasted—my parents’ intentions and emotions.
I liked to think that their love could draw me back from any edge.
As Dad withdrew and I pulled myself up to shift back to my human form, I considered the implications of my personal history.
Kade Nevala said lamias were feared and hated. Killed on sight, it sounded like.
Without someone like Dad to teach me how to care, how to draw upon my humanity as a balance to my snake side, how might I have turned out?
Cold .
The inner voice spoke with absolutely certainty.
There’s a reason “cold-blooded” is used to describe sociopaths.
I shivered a little as I pulled my pants up over my hips, despite the remaining warmth from the heat lamp and my quickly-warming mammal blood. Without my parents to guide me, I would never have learned to have compassion for the people with whom I interacted every day.
And the children I worked with now? How would I feel about them?
Prey.
I sent up a tiny, thankful prayer to whatever deity might listen to a weresnake raised as a human.
As I opened the shed door and stepped out into the last rays of the sunlight, I realized something important.
I had never actually asked Kade if the murdered girls were shapeshifters.
I had assumed it, but I hadn’t gotten confirmation.
I needed to know for sure.
And I needed to know how likely it was that a shapeshifter was the one hunting them.
If I could imagine seeing them as prey, surely other shifters could, as well.
* * *
“Hey, ladybug!” Mom called out as soon as I opened the back door. She was bent over, digging around in the refrigerator for salad ingredients, judging by the plastic box of baby spinach she held out behind her. “See if that’s still any good.”
I took it from her and opened the lid, peering inside. “You hid it from yourself in the rotter again, didn’t you?”
“It’s called a crisper, smartass.” She came up with a bag of carrots and a single zucchini squash, only slightly shriveled at one end. “Check these, too, while you’re at it.” Pushing her glasses up on her nose and patting her graying brown hair back into place, she peered around the kitchen. “What did I do with the pepper?”
If Dad was the heart of our little family, Mom was the brains—just not in the usual sense. Also a college professor, she was a true intellectual, at least inasmuch as she spent most of her time up in her own head. She always said Dad kept her grounded. Dad joked that her version of grounded was only halfway into the stratosphere. She was an astrophysicist. They had met in graduate school, and she had followed him to the plains of North Central Texas to support his career, rather than heading off to work for NASA or someplace with a good telescope. That’s how I knew for sure that she loved him. And how I knew he loved her? He supported her every summer as she headed off to those fabulous telescopes to do her research, then welcomed her home again every fall when she returned to teaching classes at a local college and to him.
Still in love, after all these years.
Yet another way they taught me about being human.
And for the first time, it occurred to me that Dad’s love of snakes, with their apparent disinterest in him, might have made him Mom’s perfect partner.
Today was a day for all kinds of revelations.
I moved to the sink to check the vegetables, rinsing and scrubbing the useful ones, tossing the rest into the compost bin.
Mom finally located the pepper and began twisting the grinder over the steaks. “How’s work?”
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