Tiger Winter - 2. Meat

Emmett blinked awake and his first thought was to wish that he owned some kind of magical pocket sized toothbrush and that the inside of his mouth didn’t feel furry. Furry was a fine thing for a polar bear, but only on the outside. Ten seconds later, Zeke’s alarm pierced the air and the slender man groaned, reached out and killed the beeping without removing his head from Emmett’s shoulder.

“Good morning,” Zeke smiled at him, then leant up on one elbow and cupped his cheek, “and you’re just as gorgeous in the daylight: awesome.”

“You’re a morning person?” Emmett sighed.

“Only on a weekday big boy!” Zeke jumped up out of bed, took a step and winced, “and I’m gonna be thinking about you all day. You want some breakfast?”

“Yes please. Is there coffee?”

“There will be. I’m gonna take a shower, be two minutes.”

Emmett had expected his lover to smile, be polite, but generally ignore him. It did tend to be the way with one night stands, but Zeke turned from the door, bent down and kissed him quickly.

“I haven’t slept that well in ages.”

Zeke showered and went to make coffee while Emmett had a short hot shower of his own. He shook the water out of his short hair like a bear getting out of a lake and brushed his teeth with the spare toothbrush Zeke had left on the counter for him. He wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror and looked at himself. His lips were swollen, bruised from so much kissing, but other than that his skin was pale and flawless, the way it usually was. He would be glad to get home and shave though. His white stubble was near invisible, but it was still scratchy. He was worryingly thin though, and Emmett knew he would have to pack a decent meal away pretty soon. His body was very nearly done with its fat reserves and his stomach rippled with ultra-defined musculature. If he didn’t eat soon, his body would start eating his muscle mass. Emmett got dressed back into his good jeans and silk shirt and padded to the kitchen, following the soothing scent of coffee.

“Hey you,” Zeke had fried eggs, bacon and made toast, “you take your coffee black?”

“With two sugars,” Emmett accepted the cup with a smile, “thank you.”

“So, remind me what you do?”

“I’m an associate lecturer and researcher at the university. I study migratory animal populations.” Emmett had become very good at explaining his job in a very concise manner that made people not want to ask questions. “Thank you for breakfast.”

“Sure,” Zeke sat across from him at the kitchen surface and smiled warmly, “I’d really like to see you again Emmett.”

Emmett beamed, he couldn’t help it. He knew the eager smile made him look too forward, too keen, but no more so than Zeke’s loaded question. It wasn’t the usual line, one that Emmett had used and had used on him, not ‘this was fun’ or ‘we should meet up again’, statements that inevitably ended with both parties going their separate ways indefinitely. No, he said he wanted to see Emmett again, and even early in the morning, Emmett’s libido stirred at the thought of a repeat performance.

“I would really like that.”

“Are you doing anything Saturday?” Zeke buttoned up his collar as he spoke, and he was smiling happily.

“I think I am now.” Emmett sipped his coffee, leant over the counter, and kissed his lover gently. Zeke smiled, biting his lower lip, delighted with the results of their breakfast.

Zeke left for work and Emmett found himself in downtown Toronto much earlier than he usually was on a weekday when he wasn’t working. Despite eating a normal sized breakfast, he was still incredibly hungry. Emmett doubted his ability to walk around the supermarket without ravaging the contents of the nearest ice cabinet. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and headed in the direction of the thick layered scent of coffee and things being baked. Emmett took an empty table in the window of Tim Horton’s, ordered three slightly different breakfast sandwiches a small selection of pastries and a big coffee. His body was no way near as good at processes carbohydrates as it was protein and fats, but Emmett figured it would keep him going long enough to shop.

He watched the pre-work breakfast crowd come and go, ate his way through most of the shop, and left just as the stores were opening up. His first port of call was to walk into an Old Navy store and buy a ten dollar self-branded t-shirt and nondescript crew neck sweater which he changed into on the street, packing his best silk shirt and leather jacket into the bag before heading for the subway.

Emmett had never needed to buy furniture or furniture style things before. The bookcases didn’t count, because they had been cheap, Scandinavian, and flat packed. Emmett’s old shared house had come furnished, and Emmett had been lucky because his housemates had been disorganised and relaxed enough to allow him to take up half the freezer. The electronics warehouse was closer than the bed centre, and Emmett found himself wandering around the display fridges and freezers, trying to work out which ones would best fit several whole salmon and a side of arctic seal. Even gazing into the cool white empty interiors made him strangely hungry and Emmett ended up picking a decent sized man-height fridge and a deep square chest freezer. Both items would fix easily into the space in the kitchen and the salesperson said they could be delivered before mid-afternoon. Emmet was forced to look his new address up on his phone, and left the store feeling slightly poorer.

The bed was a much easier matter.

“Good morning sir, how can I help you today?”

Emmett grinned.

“I need a bed. Which one is the biggest?”

*

“Garrick two-seven-two.”

“Hey pop.” Emmett smiled into the phone as he pushed the cart up the frozen meats aisle of the supermarket. After buying the bed and arranging for it to be delivered about the same time as the new kitchen goods, he had made his way home to pick up his truck before heading back out to get food. When he had first arrived in the city as a student, his father had gotten him an account at the nearest wholesalers, and it was there that Emmett stood with his phone, staring into a giant chest freezer at a metric ton of dead pig.

“How was the move? Are you all settled in?”

“It went great, thanks. I bought a bed today.”

“Furniture? How grown up.”

“Ah, bugger,” Emmett sighed, “I don’t own any sheets big enough for it. I got a super-king.”

“Well at least you’ll fit,” Emmett could hear his father chuckle on the other end of the line, “so what’s your new housemate like? Is he gonna give you hell for storing a whole butchers shop in the freezer?”

“No, he doesn’t even own a real fridge, pop. I bought one of those too!” Emmett began to tell his father everything about his new companion as he selected a belly of pork and two full racks of ribs. A catering sized bag of good quality sausages followed them into his shopping cart. As he was trying to decide between a large beef roasting joint or a collection of T-bone steaks, his father divined the purpose of his phone call.

“So you called for a box of fish.”

“Dad…” Emmett groaned, “I called to talk to you,” there was a significant pause, “and to see if you would send me a box of fish. Please pop?”

“You know, you could always come back to visit and pick one up yourself. There’s nothing wrong with the Chevy is there?”

“No,” Emmett took both beef items, unable to make up his mind, and feeling gently guilty. He hadn’t been home since the previous Christmas. “Dad, it’s an eight hour drive just to Cochrane.” And that was before getting on a train for five hours.

“Your brother misses you.”

“Pop, please… you know I miss him just as much,” Emmett clenched his fist, fighting the sudden, hot prickling behind his eyes, “I’ll be back at Christmas.”

“Alright, I’ll send you a big package of salmon. Promise me you’ll call more often?”

“Yes pop. Rye and I do talk all the time y’know.”

He could sense his father’s sadness with senses far keener than simple hearing.

“Texts, and this ‘skype’ thing you boys do is not a good replacement for a decent conversation. Grandma and Papa send their love,” he sighed. “Now tell me where I’m gonna send all these fish too. I’ll put them on the train tomorrow. There’s going to be a pick up going south anyway, you may as well be on that.”

The amount of meat Emmett loaded into his truck would have been enough to keep a family of four going all winter. He figured it would last him about a month. He swung by the fish mongers on the way home, because his father’s shipment wouldn’t get to him for most of a week, and Emmett couldn’t live without salmon for that long. He bought a whole salmon the length of his arm and managed to get a large slab of seal meat and blubber to boot. There were a few places in town where it could be bought, and most people assumed Emmett, like others, fed it to a selection of sled dogs. They would probably be horrified to find out he ate it himself.

It was strange to be home alone in the middle of the day. Associate lecturers didn’t really keep regular hours, but neither had any of Emmett’s old housemates, and Emmett didn’t think he’d been in his house by himself for more than half an hour before. It was a slightly surreal and very pleasant feeling. Emmett tuned the television to a cable sports channel for some company, and set about turning his seal into cubes while he waited for the fridge and freezer to arrive.

While seal was good raw, the secret to cooking it was to get the frying pan intensely hot. Emmett let the cast iron smoke gently while he cut the seal and blubber up into two inch cubes. Dropped into the pan, they instantly began to fizz and spit, the surface cooking and caramelising before the fat had a chance to render down. Emmett didn’t do more than throw salt and pepper on them as they cooked and removed each morsel onto a plate as they browned off perfectly. He ate in front of the television, watching without commitment as two American football players began an argument which would probably end with a black eye. The seal was juicy and tender, crunchy on the outside and Emmett chewed contentedly, lying back on the sofa with the empty licked-clean plate on the floor by his feet.

Emmett and his father got along very well. There were always big smiles and wide, warm hugs whenever Emmett went home, but without a doubt it was his little brother Ryley he missed the most. Moosonee had been as good a place as any for a young polar bear to grow up, but since the moment Ryley had been born and handed to eleven year-old Emmett, the small town had felt much more like home. Last time he’d been home, his littlest brother had been sixteen, slightly gangly in a body too tall for his slender width and changing rapidly, and a bit nervous and shy when they had seen people out in town. Now he would be seventeen, and Emmett knew he had changed. He and Rye kept up socially through the epic connective powers of the internet and Emmett knew his ‘baby brother’ had filled out, fast becoming a man. He was star of his hockey team too, age and puberty having brought confidence to his excellent skill set and well-maintained discipline. Emmett hated the idea that by the time he got home, his little brother wouldn’t have time for him.

His phone buzzed as the doorbell went, and while Emmett was directing the delivery guys on where to put the fridge and freezer, he looked down to find a message from the very person he had just been thinking of.

Dad said you rang. Look what I caught last weekend! Miss you bro xx

Below the message was a picture. A young polar bear, unmistakable as Ryley to Emmett, sat on the grass bank of the Moose River, holding a huge salmon between his teeth. The fish was easily as long as Emmett’s torso from neck to groin, and Ryley was grinning like an enthusiastic cub, obviously proud of his prize. Emmett couldn’t help but laugh, and saved the picture before he replied.

At least you’re eating properly. Christmas fishing trip?

He didn’t have to wait long.

YES!!! Please, please, please, can I drive your truck? Xxxx :)

Not a chance :p Emmett shook his head even as he wrote the text. I’ll give you a tour of the house later on, now get back to class xxx

All he got after that was a sulky emoticon, but Emmett knew his brother wasn’t really unhappy with him. The promise of being home for Christmas would have Ryley grinning madly all afternoon.

It wasn’t as though either of them didn’t get on with their other siblings, but although Emmett's sister and other brother were much closer to him in age, he had never felt close to them like he did with Ryley. Their sister joked it was because with the eleven year age gap, being with Ryley gave Emmett a second chance to experience the whole of being a kid and growing up all over again. Even though he was a researcher and academic, and older than them both, Emmett knew he was a lot less serious than either of his other grown-up siblings.

Emmett thanked the delivery people as they left, only to wait ten minutes before different ones arrived with the bed. He left them to the job of building it in his big and mostly empty room and began to pack his stuff away into the new fridge and freezer. He’d only bought one box of his own kitchen stuff with him, and he found an empty cupboard in which to store his frying pan, large roasting tin and the big cast iron casserole dish his Grandma had bought him as a going away present. His collection of herbs and spice jars took up the rest of the space. Most of the cupboards in the kitchen seemed to be empty though there was a whole one containing a shelf of canned water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and a shelf of square green plastic bottles of aloe-vera juice. Emmett regarded them suspiciously: he had not been previously aware that the spiky garden plant could be harvested into juice, especially juice with whitish pulpy bits floating in it, looking like larvae.

By the time Huan-Yu returned from work, Emmett was happily beavering away in the kitchen like he had been doing it for years. The panda wasn’t apparently big on talking, and after the briefest of nods, vanished upstairs before returning again, dressed in another traditional thick cotton robe.

“You’ve made yourself at home I see,” he gestured to the enormous pile of ingredients Emmett was turning rapidly into food.

“Sorry,” Emmett winced inwardly at the comment. He had a habit, he knew, of making himself comfy wherever he was. After all it had only taken him minutes to be as happy in Zeke’s flat as he was in his own, “I left some space in the new fridge if you wanted…”

“Thank you, but no. What I have is fine by me.” As he spoke, Huan-Yu took a bamboo steamer and set it over a pan of water on the stove. He counted pak choi leaves into it, followed by individually picked tiny frond-like mushrooms. “I never heard you come in last night. I hope I didn’t disturb you this morning when I got up.”

“Er, actually, I didn’t come back,” Emmett couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t imagined Huan-Yu’s disapproving glance, “couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping on the floor. I stayed with a… friend.”

“That’s nice. Will you buy a bed at the weekend?”

“Actually I got one already.” Emmett flipped the huge hand-sized chunks of salmon over the in pan, searing them off in a layer of butter.

“Gosh, you are organised.” Huan-Yu began to pick his steamed vegetable out onto a plate as Emmett turned the hob off. “Shall we?”

They sat at the coffee table, Huan-Yu reposed and kneeling on a padded cushion, Emmett crossed-legged on the bare floor across from him, and ate together. The difference between their meals made Emmett picture them as a comedy duo: Huan-Yu’s clean white plate decorated with a dozen leaves and slender fungi opposed his own pair of dishes piled high with a whole fried and filleted salmon, a stack of pork chops, and a dozen thick sausages. Emmett ate as neatly as he could, but still crunched his way through the gristle and marrow of the chop bones.

“You eat this much every day?” Huan-Yu frowned at him over the table, “even the tigers don’t eat as much as that.”

“You know a tiger?” Emmett queried, surprised.

“Friends of the family back home,” Huan-Yu shrugged like it was normal, “my grandfather was friends with the head of their family. They’re sort of like cousins.”

“All those people you call ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ even though they’re not really? My whole town is practically like that.” Emmett smiled. His father and his siblings wouldn’t be the only ones please to see him when he got back. He’d be fending off the moms of everyone he’d gone to high school with; all of them wanting to know about his glamorous life in the big city. Emmett didn’t really have the heart to tell them it wasn’t nearly as magical as they thought.

“Must be nice. You miss it?”

“I miss my family, my dad and my brother mostly. My grandfather retired out there when my dad was just a kid, but we’re from Newfoundland originally.”

“Where the dogs come from?”

“That’s right,” Emmett smiled warmly, “what about you, don’t you miss home? When we you last there?”

“God, not for four years?” Huan-Yu spoke like he wasn’t really sure, “I’m the only son of an only son, and my parents are not exactly what you would call ‘happily married’.” The panda made like finger quotes in the air as he spoke, and Emmett cocked an eyebrow. “Dad’s… absent? I suppose. I mean, he’s in the house and everything, but I’m not sure he’s really paying much attention. I can’t tell if he and mum ever actually loved each other, but they don’t now. I don’t think I’ve seen them hold hands since my high school graduation.” To Emmett’s surprise, Huan-Yu spoke levelly, as though this was to be expected, “they send emails every now and then, but we don’t really miss each other. I suppose you go home all the time to fur piles and bear hugs?”

“Yes and no,” Emmett shrugged, “my parents split up just after my sister was born. I was… six? Dad never told mom he was a bear, and because he kept sneaking out to change she assumed he was having an affair. Then she had an affair and after that… yeah well. Dad remarried, told Fleur, my step-mom, that he was a polar bear, and they had Ryley, my little brother.”

“He’s the one you miss?” Huan-Yu questioned.

“Yup, we’re real close. My sister grew up to be Moosonee and Moose Factory’s only tax and property lawyer and my other brother went into business with my dad. He’s a fisherman.”

“Hence the salmon,” Huan-Yu gestured a delicate lacquered chopstick at the rapidly disappearing orange fish that Emmett was taking apart with his fingers, “try not to leave oily prints on the sofa.” He had finished his dinner long before, and sat watching Emmett between sips of his tea. “Seriously though, you’ve just eaten as much as would keep a whole family going for a few days. Where do you put it all?”

Emmett wiped his fingers on a paper towel and pulled up the front of his shirt. A layer of fat about a quarter inch thick had begun to obscure his perfectly sculpted stomach muscles, and Emmett smiled happily as his supposed ‘gym body’ disappeared.

“Polar bears eat lots, store it, and then wear it away. It is possible for me to work out how much to eat every day, but I prefer this method: pop always liked it because there’s less washing up. My body turns food into fat storage really fast, as you can see, so I just eat one really big meal every three days and live off fat storage the rest of the time.”

“I know most shifter’s have fast metabolisms, but that’s insane,” Huan-Yu frowned, “what do you do if you miss a meal? What if you haven’t got any money left for fish?”

Emmett laughed.

“You always make sure you’ve got enough money left for dinner. Always.” There had been only one time, back when he had been a freshman, that Emmett hadn’t followed his father’s rule of ‘food first: everything else you can live without’. He had ended up in Lake Ontario at four in the morning in his fur, fishing for Chinook salmon under the northern lights. It had been dangerous, but for a moment Emmett had been able to look up at the dance of The Great Spirits and trick himself into thinking he was home. “And I don’t think I’ve ever missed a meal in my whole life, nothing is more important than food.”

His housemate smiled, shaking his head softly.

“And I thought you were going to be one of those guys who loved his body to the point of obsession,” when Emmett frowned, Huan-Yu explained with chuckle, “you’re big and macho, and your biceps are as wide as my torso.”

“Hyperbole much?”

“Not that much. Is everyone in your family enormous?”

“It’s a bear thing.” Emmett gestured with a long chop-bone at Huan-Yu’s long empty plate, “what about you? You’re not, no offense, a super skinny guy or anything. How come you eat so little?”

Huan-Yu shrugged.

“Food is boring,” he smoothed a hand over the front of his robe, pressing at his smooth slightly pudgy belly. The Chinese man wasn’t fat by any means, just chubby, but he looked generally comfortable in his lack of visible muscle. “Panda’s all have really slow metabolisms.”

“I couldn’t live on pak choi and mushrooms. Genuinely, I’d die without protein and fat, and lots of it.”

“Well that mega freezer of yours will keep you full I’m sure,” Huan-Yu smiled, “you can pay two thirds of the power bill.”

“Fair enough,” Emmett collected up the plates before he stood, “I don’t suppose I can interest you in a beer?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Funny, I thought you’d say that.” Emmett paced to the kitchen, removed a beer from the fridge door and opened it with his thumb. He put the plates by the side of the sink and looked at the pile of washing up he had created. “I don’t suppose you have a dishwasher either, do you?” There wasn’t a space for one, and Emmett sighed. He liked to walk into a clean kitchen, but he’d much rather not have to be the one who cleaned it. The polar bear swigged his beer and began to fill the sink with hot water and soapy bubbles.

“So, where did you end up last night?” Huan-Yu relaxed in the doorway. It was the first time Emmett had seen him stand anything other than exactly vertical and precise. Perhaps his new housemate did have another dimension to him after all.

“A gentlemen doesn’t kiss and tell,” Emmett growled silently at his crotch, which was already stirring at the memory of Zeke’s kisses, then his chest, then his delicious smooth cock… Emmett shook himself, “even on other gentlemen. I’m seeing him again on Saturday.”

“You moved into a new house and found a new boyfriend in the space of a single day? Gosh, you do work fast.”

Emmett decided not to comment on the supposition that after one very good one night stand, he was already thinking of Zeke in terms of a potential boyfriend.

“What about you, anyone special?”

“No,” Huan-Yu didn’t sound like it much bothered him, “and I don’t date. I don’t see the point.”

“The sex?” Emmett offered. Surely that was the point to most of the things that any animal, even humans, ever did.

“I don’t really care for it.”

Emmett blinked.

“Huh?”

“It’s an awful lot of effort.”

“But…” the weight of a dozen questions crushed Emmett’s voice. Didn’t he want to fall in love, get married one day and have little pandas of his own? Didn’t he want to share his life with someone? Emmet sighed, and went back to the washing up.

“I’m good to go tinker with my computer, the lounge is yours,” Huan-Yu wiped up the one cup and one plate he had used, and hung the tea towel perfectly crisply, like origami, on the rail handle of the oven. “If I don’t see you later, have a good night.”

“’Night.”

It wasn’t especially late by the time he had finished cleaning up the kitchen, and Emmett sat staring at the blank television screen for five minutes without seeing it before climbing the stairs three at a time to his bedroom. His new bed has been placed with the headboard against the wall and took up much of the room. Everything else was cold lacquered flooring. Emmett sat on the bed, pulled up the internet, and called his brother.

“Emm!”

“Hey little brother!” Emmett waved automatically as his brother’s slightly blurry pixelated features appeared on screen. The connection sped-up and Ryley snapped into full focus.

“Not so little!” the seventeen year old grinned, “pop measured me. I grew another inch.”

“Which brings you up to six-two: you’re still little.” Emmett wished he could reach out and cuff his little brother, hug him to his side and ruffle his white-blond hair.

“No fair Emm,” Rye grumbled, “not even dad is as tall as you.” He reached out and touched the screen with one hand, “your hair…?”

“I cut it after I got back from the last expedition,” Emmett fingered the half inch fuzz covering his skull, “too short?”

“Different,” Rye tugged softly on his own floppy bangs, and suddenly Emmett missed the silken texture of his hair. “Tell me all about your new house.”

“You want the grand tour?”

Emmett held the laptop against his chest and turned slowly to show his little brother his bedroom.

“Where are all your books?”

“Downstairs,” Emmett laughed, “I no longer sleep in my own personal library. C’mon on bro it’s not like I would ever throw any books away.”

“You remember when Logan dropped your Iditarod book in the river?” Rye had been five, and apparently never forgot anything, “I thought you were gonna take his head off.”

“It’s a good book.”

“You got mom to iron the pages…”

“And I can read it fine now… after I had to re-glue the spine,” Emmett admitted.

“You’re hopeless Emm. Let me see the view.” Emmett pulled back the curtain and showed his brother via the proxy of the internet the view across the street. The houses opposite were a lot like his own new abode, soft and calm, painted in muted blue and green tones with tall windows and arched doorways. Most of them had well landscaped postage-stamp front gardens with decorative maple trees and huge fragrant smelling potted plants set on the gravel. “Wow, suburbia…”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s a damn sight better than the city centre bro. You’re near the park right? I looked up your address on the maps.”

“Yeah. Nosey bastard.”

“You know pop still can’t work ‘the Google’…”

“Has he worked out that ‘Google’ and ‘internet’ are not synonymous terms?” Emmett sighed in mock-frustration, “how is he going to cope when you go off to college?”

“He and Logan will have to call sis round e-v-e-r-y time they need to go online. They’ll start writing you letters. Have you seen pop’s handwriting lately? It’s gotten worse. I had to get a new permission slip the other week and force mom to fill it in: I swear it’d be easier just to forge his signature…”

“Rye…”

“I wouldn’t! Calm down big brother, you can’t rough-house me from there. C’mon, continue the tour!”

Emmett sighed and began to carry the laptop through his new home. He talked softly to his little brother, pointing out interesting items and trying to answer Ryley’s questions: a lot of the answers were ‘I’ll have to ask Huan-Yu’. His little brother was fascinated that he was living with another shifter and more perplexed that there was a bear alive who didn’t eat salmon.

“Do they not have salmon in China? I thought they put it in those damn tiny sushi things.”

“That’s Japan. He’s vegan Rye.”

“That’s weird.”

“But he owns a leather sofa.”

“Huh?” Ryley frowned at his older brother. Emmett had perched him on the coffee table so he could return to looking at his favourite sibling. “Isn’t that just a bit hypocritical?”

“Apparently it’s not an emotional thing. He sat there quite happily while I ate dinner.”

“Your usual dinner?” Rye grinned in a knowing sort of manner.

“I even got seal blubber from the fishmonger.”

“Please tell me you’ll cook when you get home? No one fries seal like you do.”

Emmett laughed and prodded his brother’s nose on screen.

“It’s not a big secret Rye: just butter.”

“Maybe I just miss my big bro.”

“Rye, don’t do the guilty thing.” Ryley blinked hard at the screen, doing his best big dark brown puppy dog eyes. “Aww, c’mon, not the face…” Emmett inhaled deeply before he spoke again, forcing his eyes not to get hot and wet. “You said you got taller, did you grow too?”

“Yeah,” Rye suddenly blushed, biting his lower lip, “pop says I’m almost as big as you, but mom reckons he’s exaggerating.”

“Show me then!”

Rye grinned like a kid with a shiny new toy, and vanished as the screen was replaced with his torso, then abdomen.

“One sec.” He stepped half out of view before beginning to divest himself of his clothes, and then there was shuffling as he kicked his desk chair back and out of the way. Ryley appeared, naked and chill looking for a moment before he glowed and went out of focus. It wasn’t the bandwidth having issues though. It was the shape of his body morphing into a healthy young polar bear. He shook himself gently and grinned at the monitor.

“Harroaw!”

“Wow, dad’s right, you’re huge.” Seeing his brother standing there in fur made Emmett miss him even more. He knew that night he would dream of his brother, running across the frozen landscape and teaching him to fish from ice flows in the river. “Let me see your paws.”

A huge black padded forefoot nearly pushed the monitor askew.

“Huurnt.”

“Look at you Rye, you got big.”

“Wroaam hurrnn roal,” Rye demanded.

“OK, OK. Hold onto your fur.”

Emmett stood as he tossed his clothes aside. Just like his brother, all his inner and outer vision was suffused by a soft cold-white light as he shifted, and like his brother, Emmett changed into a large pure white polar bear with jet black eyes and a happy grin.

“Wrooam!”

“Roaal!”

Emmett sniffed the air in his new house with his polar bear’s nose, picking up scents more finely than he had done as a human. The waxed wooden floor held particular interest, and a few moments later Emmett was rubbing himself luxuriantly over the smooth cool surface. Ryley laughed at him, and for the first time, Emmett felt right at home.