Different Eyes | Page 2

Four
The Culmination of a Cat​

By the time Alisha stopped the car, Salem’s limbs ached, her whole body was exhausted, and her belly had churned itself into a nausea she feared would never subside. Still, the car had stopped, and that meant they had arrived! Alisha surely wouldn’t take her back to the shelter now. When Alisha got out, Salem jumped onto the back seat to peek out of the window after her, stomach still lurching. There were cars. A shop? Was Alisha getting food?

Maybe. Definitely, she could smell food. But now there was also an awful smell of petrol. The vile taste of fuel in the air pushed her over the edge.

Vomiting was never pleasant, but relief always followed. There was also the relief of having arrived at Alisha’s destination, Salem not realising what a gas station was or that humans might stop for petrol on long journeys. Unsurprisingly therefore, when Alisha came back from the gas station Salem was sitting on the driver’s seat, looking up at her expectantly. When she spotted the stowaway purrloin in her car, she reacted only with a raised eyebrow. Salem had expected a yelp of surprise, at least.

“So,” she said, grinning as she did. “I guess you wanted to come with me after all. Hey, I won’t tell Jamie you’re with me if you don’t.”

She winked at Salem, and Salem winked back, although since she couldn’t do the little cheek motion or tongue click she was really only blinking with one eye. It made Alisha smile, though, so it was good enough.

Alisha took a minute to clean up Salem’s mess with minimal grumbling, before taking the driver’s seat again. As Salem waited from her spot in the passenger seat, her previous concern with whether Alisha would take her back to Jamie was succeeded by a concern with whether she could go back to Jamie. She hadn’t wanted to. She still didn’t. But she still felt uneasy at the thought that she’d already travelled too far to go back.

The journey from that point on was gentler on Salem. Alisha drove more carefully knowing she had a pokémon riding shotgun, and the passenger seat let Salem watch the scenery go by. Salem spent a lot of time with her front paws up on the dashboard, wide-eyed at the speed of passing trees, signs, vehicles. From time to time she would spot a pokémon in a passing car looking at her and barking, or a wild one travelling on foot beside the road.

Alisha spoke up soon after Salem had her chance to rest.

“So, kitten. You must have really wanted to try something new, huh?”

Keeping her eyes on the road meant Alisha couldn’t look round at Salem to read her pokésign. Instead of signing, Salem miaowed, trying to communicate her desperation and hopes and fears all in one sound.

“That bad, huh?”

Oh! This human was smart. This was good!

“Well, you sure look banged up, I have to say. You must have been out on the street a while, I’m guessing. That’s a yes? Okay, well, you’re not hard to figure out, then. You didn’t get on so well with your human, you didn’t get on okay as a stray, and you didn’t feel happy at the shelter either. Here’s the thing. I’ve got another way for you. If you want it.”

Alisha told Salem about the future that she’d offered the other shelter pokémon, rephrasing things as she went if Salem had any trouble following the explanation. Salem listened attentively, mewing in acknowledgement with each promise. The deal was this: Salem was being offered a new home, along with other pokémon ill-suited to their previous lives. She would be asked to work hard in return, maybe fight battles if she could do that, and she couldn’t turn back once she’d made her choice. What’s more, there was another condition, one which Salem thought was a miracle, not a sacrifice, once she was sure she’d understood. Alisha explained it carefully, building up to the reveal like a hunter stalking quarry.

“I’m sure you want to evolve, one day, Salem.”

She gave an affirmative miaow.

“Maybe you’ve dreamed about it. Changing who you are so completely. Permanently. It must seem terribly exciting.”

It was exciting. Even scary. But it was something she had long aspired to, originally to be stronger on a journey with Laura, but lately just so she could be less vulnerable. To fight other pokémon for resources. Maybe even humans.

“Humans aren’t much like pokémon. Humans don’t have your strength, and humans don’t evolve. There’s no bright light when humans become adults. They change only with age, which is a slow and gradual process that nobody can avoid. You’ve spent your whole life expecting that bright light. Maybe longing for it. Perhaps you’ve longed to be human, too.”

Salem miaowed, quieter this time. That was truer than Alisha could know.

“It’s not impossible, you know.”

Alisha let the thought sink in for a few breaths. It was a strange thought. Perhaps Alisha was only being figurative. Humans did that all the time, Salem had learnt. They were on a long stretch of road now, with many other cars. Salem found herself trying to follow the green blur of roadside trees, which whipped past her field of vision faster than was comfortable for her neck to track. It occurred to her that she had finally left Laura’s city for the first time, and it hadn’t been together. How would the world be different now?

“I knew a zorua once,” Alisha continued at last. “A pokémon very much like you, Salem. She liked to talk, even though signing is difficult, and people don’t pay attention, and she knew she couldn’t ever think the way humans think. She just kept wishing she could. Sound familiar?”

It did. As familiar as hunger, as familiar as the moon.

“She had hope, though. She knew that when she evolved, she’d become a zoroark, and stand on two legs, the better to sign. Of course, even that wouldn’t be perfect. But she’d got this idea that if she wanted it badly enough, she could evolve into a human instead. If she just imagined it hard enough when the time came, she’d be engulfed in bright light, and in a flash have not only hands and fingers but a person’s voice, so she could talk to her human friends properly for the first time. She thought about it all the time. Have you ever had those kind of thoughts, Salem?”

A soft rumbling showed her admission.

“Well, that zorua got her wish, eventually. That’s what we’re doing for the pokémon who agree to our offer. We’re making them human.”

Silence. Then her heartbeat, the sounds of cars and wind and the engine noise all at once. She had to remember to breathe.

“Well, it’s a close enough thing, anyway. They’re hybrids, to tell the truth. Part human. Part pokémon. They may as well be human as far as I’m concerned. They keep all their abilities and much of their original appearance, but they have the shape of a human, and the mind and voice of one too. That makes them people the same as any human, in my opinion.”

Once again, Alisha allowed Salem to digest the idea. The thought fluttered in her stomach like nothing ever had.

“It’ll be tough if you agree to it. The actual change itself is pretty distressing to go through and there’s no way to turn back if you regret it, but it’s a chance to be different, to be better, to have an incredible life. I’d make that choice if I were a pokémon. Would you go for that, Salem?”

She miaowed earnestly, several times for emphasis. Alisha laughed gently, and said she wasn’t surprised. All Salem could think of was what Alisha had said — “the voice of a human.” She would have a proper voice. A human voice. Alisha didn’t say anything else, just turned the music up on the radio and left Salem to her thoughts. Many breaths later, when the sky was growing darker, and the car had travelled countless spans, Salem thought of the questions, “why would you do this for me?” and “are there many others who have done this?” and “how is this possible?” These were questions she didn’t know how to ask. Alisha answered one for her at least.

“It’s a lot like evolution, just slower. Someone found a way to trick a pokémon’s body so that instead of evolving normally, it becomes part-human. I don’t understand how it works any more than you do, but it works. It does take several exhausting days and growing to ten times your body weight is a huge strain, so we’ll just make sure you’re asleep for as much of it as possible and you’ll just wake up afterwards with a new body. You might not even remember any of it, if you’re lucky.”

Salem already felt lucky. Lucky enough to make up for all her months of pained survival, every scratch and bruise she’d sustained in fights over food and shelter, even the loss of Laura’s devotion. She would do anything, anything at all for this.

Alisha tried to talk a few times later in the trip, but Salem found her attention sliding off anything that Alisha said. It was too ordinary — the weather, what their destination was like, how tired she was — nothing about the shock that was her chance to become human. So instead of speaking to a silent Salem, Alisha sang along to the radio. Salem didn't recognise it, and music was mostly just an arrangement of sounds to her, but Alisha was singing with enthusiasm, and Salem enjoyed hearing that.

Later, she slept shallowly on the passenger seat as they sped along the motorway, comfortable in the evening darkness. The winter sun had died before they had even reached their destination.

Alisha woke Salem from dreamless sleep with a gentle nudge, so she stirred, got to her feet and put her paws up on the dashboard. The car pulled in through a security gate and into a large bare-earth car park, past which she saw a broad, squat building complex, surrounded by vehicles and ringed by a network of dirt roads. Further away, fences secured the area. She could have scaled them easily if not for the spooled barbs at their tops. Beyond the complex and to every side, deciduous trees sprawled across a craggy landscape for a great distance, such as Salem had only ever seen in her imagination or on Laura’s television programs. These forests felt both dreamlike and inviting to her.

Alisha got out, and retrieved her things from the back seat. Salem caught the unique scent of new pokéballs from her bags. Would pokéballs still work on her after she evolved into a human? Or a “hybrid.” That was the word Alisha had used. Salem didn’t know that word, but she could infer the meaning. She made an experimental series of swipes with her paw, trying to combine her signs for ‘pokémon’ and ‘human.’ Clawing motions for [POKÉMON.] Tapping her head for [PERSON.] One paw at her temple then slashing downward; [HUMAN-POKÉMON.] That would be her, soon. Her heart and lungs accelerated in anticipation.

“You coming, Salem?”

She chirruped her reply, and bounded up to Alisha, who led her inside one of the buildings. Part of her wanted to know what was in the other buildings and if she’d get a chance to explore them. And the forest, for that matter! Only part of her, though. Almost all of her was fixated on what was about to happen. That is, if she didn’t have to wait long. Would she have to?

They entered through double doors, and Salem scented tracked-in soil and mud, cleaning products, dozens of separate humans, and the tang of new pine furniture. Something else, too. That same peculiar smell she had detected from Alisha. She half-guessed, half-hoped that it was the smell of hybrids. Alisha waved to another human behind a desk, who waved back idly from behind a computer monitor.

As the two humans discussed things Salem didn’t know about in words she didn’t understand, she looked about the room, studying it. She wanted to at least explore if she had to wait to ‘evolve’. There wasn’t much to catch her eye, however, so she stared at the doors that led to the rest of the building, waiting for them to open. She’d been sat still practically the whole day and now her chest was thumping and her breathing was rapid; she would shoot off the first chance she got.

“...called Salem, she was at the shelter too…”

Just as Salem turned her attention back to the discussion, a door swung open for a human coming out, and Salem took the opportunity to rush past their feet and into the corridor beyond. She was grateful to see that several rooms along the length of it had windows for her to look into. She leapt up to each of them in turn, hoping to catch sight of a pokémon who’d become human or even the way in which they were transformed.

She had no luck with the two nearest rooms. The first was occupied by a dozen or so human staff, working at computers and therefore completely mysterious to Salem. The other was unlit and not in use, but she noted stacks and stacks of crates and boxes inside. When she scrambled to perch on the third window’s lip, however, she could see that leaning against the inside wall with their back to the window was a figure with a mane of sand and charcoal unlike any human hair, yet belonging to a fully clothed humanoid nonetheless. They must have heard her jumping up and scrabbling for purchase, because they turned around to look at her, and for scarcely a breath-span, Salem could see red eyes, a protruding charcoal horn, and sandy fur. Not skin. Fur. A hybrid-!

“Salem!”

She lost her grip on her perch and landed heavily on her paws. Alisha towered over her, hands on hips, but she was smiling, not frowning. Salem signed a small apology to Alisha and tried to get her excitement across with frantic mews and gestures.

“Hey, I’m excited too, but you can’t go charging round the place unsupervised, and it’s late already. We gotta get some rest. Don’t worry, I literally just put you down first on the waiting list, just because you were such a sweetheart today. You’ll get your chance tomorrow, okay?”

Tomorrow-! If only tomorrow could be now! But there was no hurrying the sun and moon. Salem would have to wait after all. Even the thought of a single night’s wait was painful!

She miaowed loudly, and signed [HUMAN-POKÉMON! FOUND!], but Alisha didn’t get the message, and lead her elsewhere in the facility. Alisha had a room of her own, and invited Salem to spend the night there. Naturally, she accepted — although, what else could she have done? It turned out Alisha didn’t have proper packaged food manufactured for pokémon consumption, but she did have the contents of half a tuna sandwich and some suitable treats. Good enough. Salem accepted, and although it took her some time to calm down, she eventually had the most restful sleep she’d managed in many moons, curled up on the corner of Alisha’s bed.

In her dreams, she was human. She stood on two legs and her paws were hands. She was walking in a forest that went on forever, when she saw her own face in a clear pool of water.

She looked something like her normal self, and something like Alisha, and something like the hybrid-person she’d spied before. She turned to look at Alisha, standing beside her, and Alisha’s face seemed to be a reflection of her own. She smiled, and felt what it was to smile. Alisha smiled back. She opened her mouth to speak-

-and Alisha was stumbling out of bed, seemingly unaware of Salem nearby.

Salem miaowed a gentle but resentful greeting. Then, when she remembered — today! It was today! This was the morning of the day she would become human! — she voiced a chirruping, lively token of her excitement.

“Good to see you, cheeky kitty,” mumbled Alisha.

Alisha calling her that wasn’t the same as Laura calling her that, but it was still faintly pleasant.

Every breath that Alisha took to wash and dress herself was a breath that Salem spent miaowing, pacing or otherwise fussing. Alisha poked gentle fun at her, called her a silly cat. This reminded her of Laura, and so she stopped agitating so much and tried as hard as she could to be patient. Her patience would be worthwhile. Alisha had a plastic-wrapped bar of something for her breakfast, and when Salem signed [FOOD] she wagged her finger, saying “sorry, kitty, but no solids before the morphing process. Strict rule.” So, no food for her, for now. This, too, would be worth it.

Everything would be worth it.

So, were they going to where she would be transformed, immediately? Not quite.

“We have to give you a little checkup first,” cautioned Alisha. “It won’t take ages, I promise.”

Alisha led Salem through the corridors of the facility, and past several human and pokémon staff, but she didn’t get another glimpse of any hybrids. Alisha spotted her looking around, guessed why, and asked if she’d like to meet one. Apparently it was normal to offer ‘candidate pokémon’ (that was her!) the chance to speak to a hybrid before going through the transformation themselves. Salem accepted with eagerness.

They carried on to the clinic for the ‘checkup’. Alisha passed Salem over to the staff and went to arrange the meeting she’d promised. True to Alisha’s word, the checkup didn’t take all day, but to Salem it may as well have lasted a moon. A veterinary nurse looked her over for injuries, illness and the like, and was kind enough to explain what she was doing as she did it, for Salem’s benefit.

Her temperature was taken, as was a blood sample (against her loud objections) and her microchip. She didn’t realise in that moment what the value of the lost microchip was, being more concerned with the indignity of having her blood taken. No cat would realise the implications of removing such a thing, and nobody would bother giving them an explanation.
Eventually, Salem was pronounced ‘in surprisingly healthy condition, considering’. She was given some tablets for nutrient deficiencies, which she swallowed only after an extended squabble, and allowed to continue on her way.

The small lounge where they were to meet a real, actual ‘pokémorph’ was a cosy place. It had a variety of different chairs, stools and sofas, apparently because comfortable seating standards were different between hybrids. There was a water cooler, a little tray of treats (which interested Salem somewhat) and a small squeeze-toy filled with catnip (which interested her enormously). This was surely all in the pursuit of her comfort! Salem went for the treats, only to be shooed away by Alisha. No solids!

While Salem played with the catnip toy, Alisha sprawled herself out on a sofa, lying on it sideways with one leg over the arm and the other hanging over the side. “I let the staff know I’d like to let you meet Church. He’s our resident ‘retired’ morph, we like him to say hello to new candidates and tell them about what they’re signing on for before they take the plunge.”

[WHAT?]

“Oh, uh, Church is a hybrid. A pokémon-made-human. His job is to meet pokémon like you, so you know what it’s like.”

[THANK-YOU.]

“No problem, kitten.”

They didn’t have to wait long for Church to knock on the door — Salem had yet to tear open the chew toy. The arrival of a [HUMAN-POKÉMON!] was far more important than catnip, however, so she sat straight up and batted the toy away, curling her tail around her paws neatly. Alisha jumped to her feet to get the door for the incoming guest, holding it open as he entered. He moved slowly, deliberately, as if each step was a choice carefully made. Alisha helped him into an armchair.

He struck an imposing figure, at first glance. He was tall, broad, and his head was crowned with enormous black horns, but as Salem watched his tree-trunk limbs move, she noticed a hesitance in his steps. Everything about Church was striking, but nothing so much as his being absolutely covered in fur. Salem had imagined hybrids to look like humans in thick coats, in her naivety, but his off-white and woolly fur thickly obscured all skin. It was especially startling to see fur where human skin would be most visible, around his neck and face. His facial fur was accented by dark markings around his eyes as if he were wearing eyeshadow or a bandit’s mask, Salem preferring to think of it as the latter.

“It’s okay, Salem,” Alisha was saying, wrongly assuming that Salem was alarmed rather than transfixed. “He’s a big teddy bear. You can come over, come say hi.”

She did, creeping up to him like she would an unfamiliar human. He leaned down, seeming like nothing so much as a tree bending in the wind as he did so, and reached out a hand for her to sniff. His hands were hands — human hands! They were furred hands, hands where the middle two fingers had the receded remnants of cloven hooves, but hands all the same. His scent was more like plants and earth than anything. Not as if he’d been rolling in a field, but as if he had been made from a grassy hill dug into the shape of a person and brought to life. He had a short mane of what Salem was sure was some kind of scrub grass, which smelled not entirely unlike a freshly mowed lawn.

As she continued to scent him, taking in the familiar and the strange all at once, he bent down to sniff her in return. With each intake and exhalation of air he made a kind of blowing, roaring snort, like any number of large mammals on the nature documentaries Laura used to watch. Salem at last detected a signature smell both like and unlike human scent and the scent of human things — the familiar smells of uncooked vegetables, and of cotton clothing.

At last, she looked up from his outstretched hand and examined Church’s appearance. He gazed back, as attentive to her as she was to him. His face had a sloping bridge higher than any human’s, and ended in the same sort of soft, leathery black nose as Salem’s. Above that high bridge were the roots of those grand, backward-curving horns that looked like nothing so much as a pair of bike handles. Church wore a pair of cargo shorts, which revealed his legs as still being hoofed and bent like a normal gogoat’s, changing only enough to support his humanoid frame and not to become perfectly human. An orange sleeveless jacket was open to bare his torso and grassy mane; it was bizarre to see something so human framing something so wild.

Seen as a whole, Salem could barely register Church as a real creature. He was like a forest beast out of a children’s book, or something from an urban myth, yet his clothes were the sort of thing Laura’s father would wear in the garden on a summer’s day. If she focused on the jacket, he felt human. If she focused on the horns, he became a pokémon. Hands; human. Hooves; pokémon. It was hard to reconcile the conflicting aspects of his appearance so that she could recognise him as somehow both, but neither. Only his scent seemed perfectly ‘both’, between human and pokémon. She signed her word for ‘hybrid’: [HUMAN-POKÉMON.]

To her surprise, he signed [human-pokémon] back to her, more fluidly than her of course but nevertheless using the same approximate gestures. He repeated the gesture experimentally, and again, until he had comfortably mastered it with a flair Salem could only dream of.

[I am a human-pokémon, yes. Hello, little one. I am-] he signed, and then he used one she didn’t recognise, placing his hands flat together as if in prayer. ‘Church’, she guessed. [It is my pleasure to meet you. I hope that you are well, and comfortable in this place.]

His pokésign was easily the best Salem had seen in her life. Not the throh from the day before, not Laura, nobody had the confident and perfect signing that this gogoat hybrid could manage. Salem missed a breath, stunned.

Alisha replied for her. “Church, this is Salem. She’s a purrloin who snuck into my car while I wasn’t looking, I guess because she was desperate to come with me rather than get adopted out. Could you tell her a little bit about what happened to you?”

“Yes,” said Church. His voice was deeper than any human’s and yet he sounded perfectly human to Salem. “I would be glad to, Alisha. Salem, is it? Welcome, Salem.”

Oh, how Salem wanted that voice for herself. Any voice at all, so long as she could speak her name.

Church told Salem who he was. He was once a riding mount for a human named Shannon Church and her companion for many years. He’d had another name back then. She had died as people often do, of an illness he had not understood, leaving him in the care of her relatives. Where Shannon had understood him perfectly, now he struggled to be heard. Nothing was the same. He had spent too long being that woman’s singular partner. Eventually Shannon’s brother let Church leave for a pokémon sanctuary. He did not belong there either, without purpose as he was. One day, a human very much like Alisha turned up. They made him an offer. He took it.

“It was hard, Salem. Understand this. I chose to become what I am because I could no longer be what I was. I took an entire moon to consider my choice, and it took longer for my body to change. It was gradual, and it was exhausting. Even painful. Do you understand this, little cat?”

[YES,] she replied at once.

Church stroked his chin with a massive hand. “Be careful, Salem. I believe you should take as much time as I did to be sure of what you want.”

Salem was already sure. And as best as she could, she said so.

[I’M HUMAN-POKÉMON. YES, SOON. I AM.]

The effort was tremendous, but Church seemed to comprehend perfectly.

“Alright, Salem. You seem very sure of yourself. I hope you will be as comfortable with your new body and mind as I have become with mine. It was nice to meet you. I trust that when we meet again you will tell me about yourself. Alisha- I am tired now. Please.”

Alisha thanked Church and helped him to his feet. Once she’d let him through the door, she gestured to Salem, who jumped down from her spot to follow her elsewhere.

“You ready now, kitten? All decided?”

[YES!]

She signed so forcefully that she almost tripped herself in doing so. Alisha laughed to herself, and lead the way.

Their destination was a white-tiled room with metal equipment and furnishings. Several beds, though not nearly as plush as the beds Salem was used to. A row of empty glass cylinders reaching from the floor to the ceiling. A small collection of humans and a short pink-and-cream pokémon following the instructions of another human, whom Alisha went to speak to. Salem did her best to listen attentively to the conversation — this was the conversation preceding the most exciting and singular event of her life! — but she only knew a tiny portion of the words being used. Still, she tried to memorise the sounds used, hoping to understand them later, as a hybrid.

There was some bickering between Alisha and the others, and Salem caught her own name. There was gesturing, and raising of voices, and “no, no, absolutely no.” Her breath died in her lungs as she feared that she might be being turned down for this, she would never be human at all, that they might send her back, send her home! But they did not send her away, even though Alisha seemed to have lost the argument. Instead, Alisha lifted her onto a bed and patted her head gently. Her breath returned with a purr.

“Looks like you get to do this the old fashioned way,” Alisha told her. That didn’t mean anything to her, but Alisha spoke so gently and with such confidence, that the fluttering of her heart ebbed at once.

Another human brought a sheaf of papers and a pen. This was what Jamie had had Alisha do — to give a ‘signature.’ She and the white-coated woman with her explained various things to Salem, carefully, but with growing impatience on the part of the stranger. Alisha admonished her more than once for this. Salem listened carefully as she was told about what was to happen. Some she already knew from Alisha or Church, and some she couldn’t understand, but there was something new — it was going to hurt. First when they pierced her skin to make her evolve, and then for days afterwards as her body changed. It would be slow. She would struggle to survive. A machine would even have to do her breathing for her.

[YOU - HELP?] she signed, hoping Alisha would understand.

“I’ll be here the whole time, Salem. I’ll do anything to make sure you make it through, okay?”
Okay. That was okay.

Salem had already struggled to survive for moons before now. If she could be human at the end of this new struggle, if Alisha would stay by her side as she gradually evolved — she would do it. When she thought about the choice, she found she’d already made it long ago, before she knew she had a choice to make.

Salem miaowed her assent and soon enough, Alisha presented Salem with a small black pad. Alisha held her paw to it, and her pads came away sticky and damp.

“Put your paw to this paper when you’re ready, kitten,” said Alisha. “That proves you understand what you’re about to do as best as we can explain to you. It gives us permission to change you.”

She didn’t hesitate. Her paw pressed the paper firmly enough to crease, and the print smudged a little as she pulled away. The woman she didn’t know took a wet wipe and cleaned her paw pad. It was unpleasant, but she wanted the ink gone and so she tolerated the sensation.

“Sorry about this,” she caught Alisha saying. Sorry for what? But she trusted Alisha. She didn’t question this.

“This might sting a little,” said the other woman.

The humans who were still strangers to her prepared a tray of small devices. She recognised the shape from visits to the pokémon centre. These objects were ‘injections.’ Was that the method? One injection and she would evolve? Not quite, it turned out. One of the humans — a man smelling only of disinfectant and not of his history or his life — took a trio of syringes and brought them to her side.

Alisha’s voice from behind him: “Try to relax, Salem.”

She did, even as this human took a buzzing razor and shaved away a patch of fur on her foreleg, held her paw firmly, and applied a syringe to her vein. She knew she was being given her dream, but still she growled through her clenched jaw at the intrusion. It only hurt as much as a warning nip from another cat, but it was all she could do not to tug away. She wouldn’t spoil this. She wanted this. She dug her claws into the bed sheet so that she wouldn’t scratch the man in a panic. He did this again with the other two injections with Salem mewling and growling the whole time, but by the time he’d found a vein for the second, she was already starting to feel different. Not different in any ‘human’ or unfamiliar way, but in the all too familiar sensations of nausea, thirst, and desperation to sleep.

She looked around for Alisha, and tried to sign for water, but she couldn’t raise her paw to her mouth. She licked her lips in vague distress. Alisha’s eyes were somewhere else. Salem turned to see what she was looking at: the other human hooking something into her skin. Not an injection this time, but something else — a transparent, flexible tube, through which ran a pale, translucent fluid. She wanted to make a miaow, just a small one, but the thought never made it from her brain to her lungs. Her mouth opened wide, but Salem could not make a sound as she fell into oblivion.

This was the moment when her story as a cat ended. The moment when the story of Salem the hybrid began.

Salem’s last thought as a purrloin was not fear, but hope.

She hoped that when she woke up, she could thank Alisha with real words.

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