It's like you've never even met me before

There was a line about this, warning people away from being too curious and getting themselves hurt in their recklessness. A saying that Leticia should have taken to heart considering it applied directly to the kindred spirit she shared this life with. Curiosity killed the cat. But no warning was going to keep Leticia away from the mines. What was the harm in a little look around? 

At first, the smell was annoying at best. But no matter how much she held her breath, whatever was in the air was still reaching Leticia. And that feeling in the back of her head was familiar. An itch that came right before she lost control. A feeling too close to the one that had sent her spiraling into a panic on stage. 

She couldn’t do that here, she couldn't do that again. Leaving Wicked’s Rest and starting over? There was no place else that Leticia could disappear into. This was it. The last stop. If she went anywhere else, how would her mother find her when she finally came home? 

Leticia’s feet started moving at the same pace as her facing mind. And just as quickly, she had run into the woods. A familiar scene was replying in her head. Fleeing from New York. Transforming. Loss. Every sound and smell was overwhelming, but the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs pulled her focus. “Who’s there?” She called out, a drop of desperation in her voice. “I can hear you!”

Funny how a bad smell was perhaps the first thing to really make him think of turning around and leaving town. The thought didn't linger for too long, mind you. But the stench did start to feel horribly inescapable this past week or so. It felt like it clung to Luis' nose just to torment him anywhere he went and tainted the taste of food and drink as it did so. Whenever it seemed the humans around him no longer smelled it, he found himself quietly cursing his own sense of smell being so much sharper than theirs.

Tonight, the mingled, though distant, smell of both the Death Pit and the foul stench of the mines had found their way into his normally safe bedroom, leaving him unable to sleep and instead wandering off towards the pines in search of a hopefully quiet and most importantly untainted place to at least sit down.

By no fault of his own, his plans would change drastically. 

As Luis wandered, countless unspoken frustrations bubbled to the surface of his mind. And it felt like the smell was only getting stronger. 

The next thing he knew, he realised that the jaguar was no less agitated about it all than he was. Maybe?

By the time he'd quite realised his tight grip of self control, held for years and years and well trained as it was, had slipped, his mind was growing a bit more distant and hazy.

Alongside, his skin was by now coated in a layer of fur, and sharp fangs dug into his lips where he nibbled at them in a nervous habit.

Maybe he would have welcomed it as familiar and comfortable, had it not scared him. Terrified him even.

What if someone saw him like this? Why had he shifted without thinking about it? And why couldn't he stop it and just shift back now?

He found himself briefly thinking back to what he'd overheard from behind closed doors as a kid. That his affinity for spending his time half-shifted might mean he was a danger to everyone.

And that was the last thing he really thought about before the complexities and overthinking of his mind slipped out of his grasp.

What had been something inbetween feline and human morphed the rest of the way to a large spotted golden cat. Foreign to a land so far north. All instinct, driven by all that same frustration, fear and shame, some of which he couldn't grasp or explain now even to himself.

Restless could barely begin to describe how the jaguar acted now, trotting and galloping in bursts between the tall thin trunks of pine trees. Uninterested in mice or hare, but the scent of a person proved ample to catch his attention.

Cautious still, perhaps. He moved slower now, stalking towards a scent that was so so vaguely familiar.

Not slowly enough to avoid being heard, clearly.

The pine forest offered little cover.

The shouting would be answered by a growl, and a short roar. A fairly universal signal of 'get out', under threat of a charge from where the cat stood half-crouched, eyes trained on Leticia.

The shape of the stranger came forward into the small clearing in the woods, and Leticia was hit with a wave of familiarity. She couldn't place it, but as the balam gained more power over her body and control slipped through her fingers like fog that couldn’t be held, the smell grew stronger. It wasn’t her mother; it wasn’t her father, but it was someone. 

Leticia brought her hands to either side of her head, gritting her teeth as the pounding in her head got louder and harder. The warning growl of the other balam did nothing to calm her racing mind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, thinking of music and melodies, anything to calm herself down and give her a new focus. The thought of music coupled with the balam clawing its way to the surface - her only thoughts were of New York. 

The grief of her father, the isolation she had forced herself into because of the threat, the humiliation of exposing her form like that on stage - she blinked. And she was gone. 

In Leticia’s place was a jaguar, black of color, the same coat as her father’s. The spirit’s eyes made contact with the other, claws digging into the ground, marking it as hers. Growling low in response, the spirit circled the other. She had been here first, the growl reminded. They should be the one leaving. As she walked in a circular pattern, she slowly got closer. Silently demanding for the other to yield first. 

The golden jaguar showed no sign of backing down, the proud creature that he was. Gold and obsidian fur was parted in places with scars, marks of old encounters that had stayed even when the body had changed so dramatically. Mirroring the other's motion slowly, waiting for the opportunity to strike and force the intruder out.

But there would be no fight. The two weren't alone, evidently. The snapping and crackling of footsteps across the forest floor was proof of that - as did the human exclamation that came from the same direction. There was no good reason why a mighty beast should care so much for something as common and fragile as a human, but amidst the jumble of emotions in the jaguar's mind was still fear of them. A sense of great danger.

Leaving his rival alone, he'd instead leapt suddenly for the lone human behind himself with a furious roar. 

Watching as the other moved, the dark jaguar stilled when the sudden noise interrupted their dance. Her head eyes moved from the other to the human that now entered their area, and in the intensity of the fog that clouded her mind, there was no protective spirit to be seen. Instead, there was anger. She moved forward, roaring at the other, demanding to be heard. To be respected. This was her home, and she had no intention of sharing it with another. 

The invading human was of little consequence. She lunged as the other jaguar did, not aiming to kill, but to wound as a warning. It wasn’t about saving the human, the low growl that she released in response to the human screaming was proof enough of that. This was about proving a point. This was her forest. Her humans. Her home. 

The golden jaguar was caught off guard by the attack, lashing out with claws with reckless abandon to fight off the temporarily ignored rival.

There was something more important. He needed to chase the human before it could get him killed.

Worrying about how to communicate the danger properly would normally be far from consideration.

Why would a jaguar need to make such things understood to another, not even one of close family?

But then again, his body had also found itself shifting already. Rather than a whole feline, he now moreso resembled a strange almost human-shaped creature. Like a jaguar version of a sun bear.

Just enough for Luis' human mind to creep back in faintly.

The jaguar, however, did not feel so keen on backing down from the fight outright. Leave he shall, but not as a coward.

The jaguar took the attack with pride, thrilled at the newfound attention. This was a fight worth having. This was what they were looking for in the trees. The human was still stumbling through the brush nearby, but the jaguar had one focus in mind. There was territory to be protected, she had never had to share before, and the other felt invasive. 

But the other started to shift, the jaguar lowered her head to the ground, her eyes focused on the partial creature. A low growl emanating from the back of her throat, a warning once more. Was this supposed to be a surrender? She huffed loudly, annoyed that the fight was seemingly over before it began. Even the bear had more bite than this other jaguar. 

The desire to not harm the other jaguar grew stronger, meshing together with the opposite instinct to fight in self-defence and for pride into a confusing, muddied mess of emotions. Frustration, aimed inwardly, bubbled to the surface.

All the while, the physical signs of this struggle were clear - the almost jaguar shook itself before aiming to spring forward, only to instead leap sideways. Its form was unstable, failing to settle between returning back to fully jaguar and shifting to be more human once again.

They'd almost never properly faught for control. Not insofar as they could remember. That quarrel of emotions and impulses wouldn't last very long.

He regained his own proper feline form and lunged forward properly, to grapple head-on with the black feline. Only to seconds later find himself rapidly changing to a largely human shape and freezing in place. Mouth open to shout, though nothing came out.

The other came toward her and for a moment, she was excited. This was what the spirit had wanted. A proper fight to use up the energy that continued to buzz in her mind. The fog at the corner of her mind fed into the craze, propelling her forward as the other jaguar made his move. Preparing herself, she lowered her head to the ground, eyes locked on the other form until it wasn’t.

The other jaguar was replaced with a human figure now, and the balam growled lowly. DIsappointment and frustration thrumming through their veins. She approached the human slowly this time, head still low, ready to leap at the sign of any sudden movements. Her claws would be the last thing this human saw if they continued to toy with her.

Luis stayed rooted in place despite the angry panther's approach. There was no reason to be scared of his own. His mind was still muddled and confused, an urge to snarl back and intimidate was still there. An urge to chase the human from before was still there. 

It was hard to gather words together, but he did.

"We have to leave. You have to shift. If they find you here, they will kill you!"

And they'll kill me too.

In a way it was stupid to care, and not just leave for his own safety, or whatever.

It was stupid to yell at someone that, in the moment, was stronger than you.

He still had fangs and fur, and claws, but Luis' ill-advised compassion proved stronger than his self-preservation instinct right now. A fact he now felt both proud and furious at himself for.  

The balam paused in her movements, the words weren't recognized by her ear, but the posture alluded to a warning. The other was standing their ground now, and she was left with little more than confusion. A new kind of cloud fogging up her thoughts. 

Each step was accompanied with more words that the balam didn't understand. Maybe the words didn't entirely matter? Their intent managed to make their way into the jaguar's mind. Something stirring inside of her that wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Just... unusual. 

The other spirit rarely tried to force her way back into control, which made the sensation even more uncomfortable than it already was. It felt less like claws and more like pleading. The balam shook her head, trying to shake the feeling from her mind. But the pressure persisted. And slowly, the balam gave way to Leticia. 

It hadn’t really occurred to Luis to question how well a jaguar might even understand his shouting in English. In hindsight he might feel dumb about it, but now, now he stood momentarily convinced it could work.

And he wasn’t entirely wrong. That much was clear when the black jaguar in front of him began to shift. One of their problems was, though only somewhat, resolved.

“Oh, thank gods. Okay. We need to. We need to get out of here. Quickly. We were seen. And I don’t know how long we’re safe here for. Do you have anywhere to go?”

Luis’ tone was fairly flat as always, and his body language didn’t betray much more. But his speech kept pausing as his mind raced. And he started to pace in circles somewhat.

Where were his own clothes, if he had any hope of finding them at all now, for one. The same for the stranger as well, of course. They couldn’t just traipse back into town naked.

The words assaulted her mind before she had time to fully process what was going on. Leticia blinked a few times, the world around her slowly coming into view. Her fingers dug into the ground, trying to center her mind as the balam kept stirring inside her chest. The wind, the grass, the trees — she tried to focus on each piece before standing up. 

When was the last time she woke up without remembering how she closed her eyes? The voice cut into her thoughts and Leticia looked toward the man. “Uh,” looking up at the sky, Leticia tried to gauge the directions. Geology, like most sciences, had never been her strong suit. “This way, I think. I’ve got a friend near Darling Lake. She’ll help, she’s—“ Not human, was the first thing that came to mind, but even knowing that this stranger was like her, she wasn’t willing to out her friend. “She’s good. She won’t judge.” 

"Alright."

Luis agreed without a thought to the proposal.

Only to then stare down at his arm, still covered wholly by marked fur, the way the rest of him was. What he agreed to caught up to him quickly, and he wanted to take it back. He couldn't afford the risk of letting someone else, another stranger, see him. Not like this. But he'd already agreed, and he hardly had any other choice.

Not like Luis had much of anyone to turn to. For the most part.

"Does she know? You know, about balam. Or should I. Hide that?"

His pacing slowed to a stop, though now he didn't really look at the stranger, trying to be considerate of both of their current circumstances.  

Diverting her eyes, Leticia scratched the back of her head. She felt like she should apologize, whatever the balam had done to him had been her as well, hadn't it? But he was like her... maybe she didn't have to say it. Maybe he just understood.