Chapter 4

Redwood is a relatively private facet. Great Uncle Ian lives there with his family, but it is mostly undeveleoped. Its often used for family vacations and retreats, but the great central jungles are off limits to most folks, as this is where the Green Men live. They aren't really men of course, though they are humanoid. They're tree dwellers something like orangutans, with long arms with huge hands and feet. The Green Men have opposable thumbs on all four limbs and move through the upper canopies of the great jungle with silent efficiency. Their minds are cool and deep and very focused on the trees and the space between them. They are the masters of a very finite infinity.

I came to Redwood because it was where Grandpa Andy first mastered the art of shape-shifting. It was here, running through the woods at the edge of this nameless lake, as I was running it now, that Grandpa Andy first learned to take the Light and the Dream Stuff and use it to remake himself. I had done that, was doing it as I ran. Easy shapes in rapid succession. Wolf, tiger, deer, elk, moose, wildebeest. Shape-shifting was a skill I was going to need. I was going to need it in ways that Grandpa Andy hadn't thought of, so I practiced shifting. The problem was that I was still looking for a wrinkle to it that I couldn't explain, even to myself.

I knew and understood some practical limitations to what I could and couldn't do with shape-shifting. Unlike mom, I couldn't 'become' a river, as she could. Unlike dad, I couldn't 'become' the rock. Those kinds of transformative magics were limited to Arbor, or other mostly hypothetical places that offered the same sort of supporting underlayer of 'magic' that Arbor had. So I ran and I thought and I let developed and developing senses 'taste' the Light, the Dream Stuff — everything they could.

When the morning light began to grow enough to see the trees on the other side of the lake, I ran to the water's edge and dove in, shifting into Hurlon shape as I sank beneath the surface. The lake was deep, and thinking was something easy to do when being Hurlon. I let myself sink towards the bottom and contemplated the Light, gravity and Teddy Seville.

Theodora 'Teddy' Seville was a fellow freshman and a cheerleader. She had been after me to try out for the squad and I loathed the idea. Fortunately, making it on the cross country team had preempted such thoughts for now, but she seemed determined to draw herself into my world, which I was reluctant to allow, or worse, drag me into her world, which I most definitely wouldn't allow.

"Skye, you've got to come to the freshman dance. It'll be a blast, and you'll have an excuse to get a new dress."

"I have lots of new dresses already," I answered with an air of distraction. I was pretending to be absorbed in the reading assignment for our history class.

"Sure, but this is an excuse to get another one," Teddy said with a low laugh. "We could go shopping together. I know all the best places."

"Just the two of us?" I asked, looking up.

"Well, I'd thought we could go with Kestra and the girls," Teddy said with a pout. "but we could go alone, if you'd prefer."

"I just have problems with the thought of being in the middle of a bunch of giggling freshmen girls, flitting from store to store like a little flock of mindless twits," I confessed. It was true too, that was something I really did not want to see myself doing.

"You're such a social dweeb!" Teddy said with some displeasure.

"I admit it, I am," I put the book down and looked straight at her. "you know my reasons, and I appreciate that you've been willing to make allowances for it, but c'mon Teddy. I'm not going to change just because you keep asking. You're asking me to take my brain and put it on hold. I like you, but I'm not going to transform into yet another mindless zombie school girl anytime soon, not for you or anyone else."

"I know," She admitted finally and settled back herself. I picked the book back up and again pretended to get lost in it.

The problem was — my problem was — I found myself attracted to Teddy Seville, and that was new for me. I'd never found myself attracted to a girl before. I had expected smooth sailing during my time at Bret Hart High, but this revelation had definitely disturbed the waters.

I had discovered that I could be physically attracted to the opposite sex when I was eleven. I'd met a couple boys in the intervening years who I had felt that attraction to, and had adjusted to this new aspect of growing up, I thought. The Teddy factor was something I was still struggling to adjust to. Because I am who I am, I had to reassure myself that these new thoughts were truly my own and not the result of some form of coercion.

The Hurlon form really is good for thinking.

Teddy and I did wind up going shopping for new dresses together, just the two of us. I wasn't so much a product of Arborian fashion that I couldn't appreciate the clothing, and I had some sense of what looked good on me and what didn't, but Teddy seemed to like to push the envelope towards the provocative. The mutual fashion show that swirled around our finding and trying on a variety of dresses had caused my titillation meter to rise several times.

"Too short," to one dress Teddy suggested I try.

"Too translucent," to another.

"How about this one?" Teddy asked about one she had tried on.

"I dunno Teddy," I stuttered with some genuine shock. "Too 'I-wanna-get-laid'?"

Teddy watched herself as she spun around in front of the mirror in it.

"Yeah, but man we'd set the dance on fire if we showed up in a matching pair of these," she said with what I took as an intentionally evil laugh.

"And how!" I said, more thinking out loud than replying, while an image of the two of us standing side by side, wearing that dress played through my thoughts. I think I let some of what I was feeling reach my face then, because I watched Teddy's face change as she watched mine. Hmmm. "But we are not going to be going as a matched set, Teddy. I don't care whose sensibilities you want to tweak."