"We heard the yelling, Dolanna," Keritanima said quietly. "Is he going to be alright?"

"Yes, Keritanima," she said wearily, tears and smile painting a paradox on her features. "I think that he will be just fine."

"It sounds like he is crying," Allia said in concern.

"It is a long time coming, Allia," Dolanna said. "Never before has he admitted, even to himself, the pain his condition causes him. He has never mourned the loss of his humanity, of his former life. What he is doing now is what he should have done the very first day after he was turned."

Both of them stared at Dolanna for a long moment, then tears formed in Allia's eyes. "My poor deshaida," she whispered. "Even to me, it was as if he accepted it."

"What choice did he have, sister?" Keritanima said with a sniffle. "I know how it feels to be trapped in a life you don't want."

"We should-"

"No," Dolanna said, holding Allia back. "This is not a time when he would appreciate company. Leave him be."

She gave the door a long, searching look, placing her hand upon it as if she were laying a gentle hand on someone's back. "Just leave him be."

GoTo: Title EoF

Chapter 6

There just never seemed to be an end to it.

Tarrin stood on the deck, near the bow, staring up into the clear night sky, up at the four moons. The night was unseasonably warm, with a muggy wind blowing up from the south. The sails had been raised and the sea anchor dropped so that the ship could sleep during the night, with only a trio of watchmen to look for danger and inform the navigator of how much they drifted during the night. They left him alone. They knew better than to bother him.

It had been months since his transformation into a Were-cat, and he'd thought that the trauma of it had been dealt with. But the simple fact of the matter was that he'd never faced it before. The very moments after he woke up had been spent trying to deal with the new body, the instincts. He'd never allowed himself to think about what he had lost, only how to make the best of a bad situation. There had been laments, wistful thoughts, but never did he allow himself to dwell on what had happened. Even when he had time to think about it, the chaos at the Tower always gave him something other to think about. Staying alive had been a very large part of his life since being turned, forcing him to shunt away almost everything except that one simple goal. To stay alive. Part of the acceptance was because of the very instincts inside him. They forced acceptance, had altered his mind so that it seemed natural to him to be what he was. But it wasn't natural to him, a fact that he'd only now been able to face.

He stared up into the sky, and what looked back at him was an image of how he used to be. A very young, somewhat naive boy that had once been very friendly and outgoing, modest and thoughtful. A boy that would spend days wandering the unexplored tracts of the Frontier for no other reason but to see new things. A boy that was much too innocent for his age, whose life had been sheltered more than his parents realized. But he was dead now. There was no way to deny that. Tarrin Kael died the instant that Jesmind's fangs sank into his arm, and the new Tarrin was born. The change had taken time, as the newborn acclimated to new instincts and motivations, but that change was so terribly complete now. He was nothing like he used to be, like the way he remembered. Even if he could go back, to be human again, now it would be a hollow sensation. Too much had happened, had tainted him, and he could never be that way again.

And now he knew it. He'd said it to himself, but maybe some little part of himself wouldn't accept it, had clung to the hope that he could rebuild his life the way it had been. That was gone now. There was nothing left but stark reality, the blaring truth that he was a Were-cat, and that could never be changed. He had been thrown into the inferno, and finally he had admitted to himself that it had burned him.

But there was no comfort in that confession. There would only be the struggle to maintain some shred of his humanity in the face of his animalistic impulses, instincts that made him capable of killing. He'd never believed that animals could be cruel, but in a way they were. They weren't sadistic or evil, but they had little regard for the possible injuries they inflicted on others. The hunter killed to survive. It didn't relish inflicting pain on its prey-it didn't even understand that concept-but it was trained to kill, to inflict pain, from its earliest days. To the Cat, the end justified the means, and that the means may hurt someone else were of no matter.

And he had to live with that. In a way, he didn't have a choice. The Cat forced it on him, had changed him so that that concept of life seemed completely natural. But every time he hurt someone, he killed, it hurt the human inside him. And to isolate himself from that pain, he had buried that part of himself. He had tried so hard to hold onto his sanity, and had succeeded. But to keep from going mad, he had forced himself to sacrifice his humanity, to cast it aside and embrace the animal instincts that were the causes of the madness. He had kept sane, but the cost to him seemed more now than going mad would have been, because at least in madness there would be no feeling of guilt over what he did. Not like it was now. Every life he took brought with it the deep feeling that it was wrong, yet he was totally incapable of stopping himself.

Haley was right. He had truly become a monster. And what struck him hardest was that even now, with his realization and confessions of it, he really, truly, did not care.

There wasn't much left for him anymore. Just his sisters and his friends, and this intangible quest that made less and less sense to him every day. Every time he thought he had overcome what he was, had found a peace within himself, it was stripped away from him, and left him to start anew. This time, it had taken nothing more than an arrogant young man and the word freak.

Sometimes it only took one word.

The wind in his face made it hard to scent the approach of others, but the whispery footsteps that approached him from behind betrayed the presence. By the sound of the slippers and the measure of the stride, he knew it was Miranda. The mink came up beside him and put her hands on the rail, then looked up into the sky quietly. Neither of them spoke for quite a while, simply sharing each other's company. There was little doubt she knew. She was Keritanima's closest friend, and there was nothing Keritanima knew that Miranda didn't find out. Dolanna would have told Keritanima, and Keritanima would tell Miranda. And that put Miranda here. She obviously had something to say, so he simply waited for her to get around to it.

"Are you feeling better?" she finally asked.

"No," he replied in a quiet voice. "Where are the others?"

"Keritanima was very upset, so I put her to bed," she replied. "Allia is with her. I don't know about the others." She put her hand on top of his paw. "There's no need to be alone, Tarrin," she said reasonably. "We can help."

"Not with this," he replied gruffly. "There's nothing you can do, or anyone else." He looked down at the calm water, barely stirred by the lack of wind. "I woke up this morning feeling just fine. Then a single word makes me realize how angry I really am about what happened to me. And then, after that, I stared at myself in the mirror, and realized exactly what was staring back at me. It has not been a good day." He closed his eyes. "I've become everything I was afraid I'd be, Miranda. I'm not a rampaging beast. I'm worse. I'm a cold-blooded murderer, and the real kick is that I don't care. I know what I've become, but I don't care. Isn't that strange?"