If one thing was true about a place like Fayrfeyd, it was that it hardly liked a shapeshifter. Most of the people living in the township were Morph, a very few Kin, and even fewer Kind to speak of. They prided themselves on being 'pure blooded' and that simply meant 'no shapeshifters among us'. But it wasn't true. There were shifters born every few generations. Almost at random it seemed, because no one really kept good records of such things. One decade an elk-family would oust their newest son. Another, a badger-girl had to find a new home far away.

Just shy of two decades ago, it was a lynx family which prided itself upon its newest child, last of three boys, Ralf Lachlain of the Lachlain 'steaders. He was a strapping boy, short like most Lynx but muscular with those long gangly limbs. He was always smiling, that boy. And then one night not so long ago, Ralf lost the ability to stand upon two feet. He dropped to all fours, even lost some bulk in the process. His family were horrified to realize: their Ralfy was a 'shifter.

Though it would really do them no good to do it, the family proceeded to ready themselves to 'lose' their relative. They loved him dearly of course, but ... with the way things were, there was no way they could keep him undiscovered. If they were found out as the family who kept a 'shifter? They'd be apt to lose all their business, and the family was already strapped for work. So they contrived a story of a tree falling onto poor Ralfy, snapping his back and pushing a branch through his face (that was his elder brother's addition, Rory never quite liked Ralfy...) so no one would recognize the body.

Ralf tried to explain that no one ever believed such made-up stories, he was fifteen, he could move out of the way of any tree... And everyone around here - so he said - knew better than to think anyone just up and died suddenly around his age... They all knew it was the 'shifter curse upon a family. People didn't like talking about it, but it was there, none the less.

But though he tried, Ralf was voted down, and cast out of his family home. He was given more than a little comfort on the way out, they had a bit of gold stored up and enough food for him to carry with him for days. Warm clothes, even a bedroll. No one wanted him to actually go out and die excepting perhaps Rory.

So off he went. Fifteen years old and suddenly hated and feared for something he hardly had any control over. For nearly two years Ralf walked away from Fayrfeyd, over heather-field and through misty glade. Up suddenly sharp mountains, that was his first achievement - He could see for miles around from the top of the cliffside, to the west was his homeland, low and grey-green, covered with fog and occasionally spouting tall trees from the mire. To the east though...

To the east, where he tried to keep oriented, were bigger mountains than ever. If the one he'd just scaled was his first, it was hardly the biggest. In fact it wound up being the least of them all.

***

Ralf was popular at almost every town - until nightfall. He cleared out when the sun started going down. He would always be listening, what was the attitude toward shifters? If it sounded bad, he'd leave outright, not bothering to spend his scant money on people who would hate him. If it were a bit more positive, he'd remain and either hide out or get a secure room for the evening.

The farther east he went, things changed for better and worse. He encountered more of his species, small cats that had big hands and short tails. He shared with them his family's name and what little lineage he could recite, fairly safe in knowing that they'd never hear about it. In some towns, the fact that he was a shifter was welcome, it looked like small villages composed of nothing but shifters existed here and there. But in others? Up in these thick mountains filled with heavy evergreens and all manner of large kin? It was a 'burn first, ask questions later' sort of place.

He ran at the first inkling that he'd be unwelcome, of course. But the thing was, he hadn't had any breakfast, nor lunch, nor had he found a place to nest for the night. Where his gear went when he was in his shifted form was a mystery even to the learned scholars chronicaling the world's motion. But Ralf bolted into the woods, where eerie lights played with his eyes.

He was hungry, he heard motion. In a bush, not far from here, by what sounded like a stream. Perfect, something to eat. So he prowled up, having become rather expert at this in his true-lynx form. He could smell it: beaver? The musky odor of a well-oiled pelt, water, wood sap. Yes, beaver. Up late, it seemed.

Without a sound, Ralf sprang. Claws extended, ready to snap at the beaver's leg to break its stride.

((translated from Prey))Aaaaah! Stop it! Don't eat me!

((translated from Predator))Aaaaah! Hold still! Hungry!

Hey- HEY! Wait - wait a moment! You spoke!

Indeed, both predator and prey stopped huffing and puffing, long enough to take a look at one another. The beaver was squat, but rather large for an animal. The lynx, rather leggy. Though they spoke only poorly - and in their 'native tongue' of predator and prey, they could understand just enough to realize they wouldn't be needing to fight one another.

With relief, and with halting, hardly-used words, they established that Ralf was not from around here, and that the beaver lived in the daytime in a small hut (of excellent quality, after all he's a beaver). Ralf followed the waddling beaver to the hut.

Still hungry, Ralf said, his stomach was empty for more than a day now.

Fish, the beaver said simply, nosing toward the dammed up stream. Ralf's hunger got the better of him, he swatted at the fish he saw just below the surface, flipping one onto the streambank and gobbling it down without hardly pausing to breathe.

***

Sorry I did not come even close to finishing this. Clay is an annoying pest that becomes somehow even more annoyingly cute when he's a bird startled by the pair wandering through his part of the woods.