There was a shuffling sound, and it made Tarrin look up from the fire. Kimmie was standing in the hallway, yawning. Tarrin had always rather liked Kimmie. She was turned, like him, and as Were-cats went, she was rather unusual. She had blue eyes instead of the pattern green, and she wore dresses and acted a great deal more like a human than a Were-cat. But she was a Were-cat, and the fact that she had come out without any clothes on, carrying one of Tarrin's old robes in her paw, made that abundantly clear.

"Oh," she said mildly. "I heard you moving around, but I thought you went back to bed, Tarrin."

"I couldn't sleep," he said, looking at her. She didn't move to cover herself, because she didn't care. Just as he didn't really care that she was unclothed. Kimmie was a very soft Were-cat, without the muscular definition that most females had, and it made her body look much more human than any of the other females. It made him curious to think that Kimmie had been changed so little by her turning, where he and Jula had been changed so much. Her tabby-colored fur clashed a bit with her fair skin, another stark reminder that Kimmie lived in between her two worlds much more closely than Tarrin or the other Were-cats did.

She shrugged into the robe, which fit her rather well, then came into the room and patted him on the shoulder. "It's alot to think about," she said, as if she could read his thoughts. "What, with everything that's happened and all."

"I know," he agreed, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. Kimmie sat beside him, reaching behind her in irritation.

"Do you mind if I cut a hole in this?" she asked.

"I can't wear it anymore. It's all yours."

Nodding with a smile as Kimmie rose up on her knees, Tarrin heard her claw rip the fabric of the robe, and Kimmie's brown-striped reddish tail slid out from behind her, snaked through the hole in the robe. "Thanks. I hate sitting on my tail like that," she told him, sitting back down again.

"I know how you feel," Tarrin said with a smile. "Kimmie, I've been meaning to ask you something."

"What?"

"Why is that you're so much different from me?"

"I really don't know," she answered, seeming to understand the meaning of the question. "Rahnee and some others think I'm a mutant," she laughed. "I mean, I don't look quite like the other females. I have blue eyes, and I never really got rid of my human habits. Rahnee thinks it's a scandal that I wear a dress," she said with a grin. "Since nobody knows who bit me, nobody really knows why I turned out so different than everyone else."

"When did it happen?"

"About twenty years ago," she replied. "I lived on a farm outside Tor then. I was chasing a butterfly across a field," she said, her eyes turning distant. "I wandered into the forest, and I really don't remember what happened after that. I just remember waking up like this." She picked at the front of her robe absently. "My parents threw me out of the house, of course," she sighed. "I ended up running into the forest, and that's when the instincts started to work on me. I was half mad when Mist found me. I must have struck some kind of chord in her, because she accepted me as a bond-child and helped me regain my sanity."

"That must not have been easy."

"No, it wasn't," she admitted. "Mist was very erratic back then. I could tell she was afraid of me, but something wouldn't let her abandon me. It was very nervous for both of us at first." She leaned down on one paw and stared at him evenly. "I realized that she'd kill me if I ever got her mad, so I was always very careful. I came to understand her, though, and even to love her like my own mother. I can't tell you how happy I was when she opened up to you, Tarrin. You made her open up to me, too. I can never thank you enough for that."

"It was for her, Kimmie."

"I know. That's what makes it so wonderful," she smiled.

"I'm surprised you came here, you know," he told her.

"Why?"

"You don't seem like the type, that's all."

"I know," she chuckled. "I'm really not all that great of a fighter, Tarrin. I know that. The others tease me about it all the time, but it doesn't bother me as much as it bothers them. Even though I have the strength and the claws and the hunting mentality, I'm just not the kind to kill anything I don't intend to eat. I just don't have the heart, I guess."

"Then why did you come?"

"Because you needed me," she said with simple logic. "Even though I'm not much of a fighter compared to other Were-cats, I'm still a Were-cat. That gives me certain advantages against humans."

"True enough," he agreed, leaning back a little.

"My turn. What's it like?"

"What?"

"I understand things more than the others, Tarrin. You're both a Sorcerer and a Druid. You're tall as Triana, and you have a sense about you that makes everyone afraid of you. You may be Were now, but you were once human, like me, and I know that it makes you much more human than you look. It must be lonely."

"It would be if I didn't have friends who knew me beforehand," he admitted.

"I'm not talking about just that, Tarrin," she said, looking at him. "I know how hard it was. How hard it is. You're different from the others, like I am. They're nice enough to you, and you know they accept you, but you always feel like you'll never quite be a part of them, like you were once a part of the human culture."

Tarrin lowered his eyes. He had felt like that for a long time, understanding it back when he'd first met Kimmie. He'd told Thean how alien they all felt to him, like he didn't quite belong. Time had buried that memory, but she had excavated that old knowledge within him. "I did feel that way when I first met all of you," he admitted. "But alot has happened since then. This, for one," he said, holding out his paw, where the fetlocks dangled from the outside of his wrist. "It did more than change my body. I actually feel as old as I look now, even though I'm barely nineteen. It's like I've lived a thousand years in the last two."

"Well, from what I heard, you did alot in those years, Tarrin," Kimmie told him with a smile. "That can't help but make it feel like it's been longer."

"It's more than that," he said. "I look at you, and all I can think is how young you are, how young you look. And the truth is that you're older than I am. It confuses me sometimes, because I'll be thinking about how young people are so different, when I'm actually one of them myself."

"You are who you are," she told him. "Whatever makes you feel comfortable is what you should be."

"You should hire out as a sage, Kimmie."

She laughed. "I've just been there, Tarrin. I stopped trying to please the others a long time ago. I found that this is who I am, and if they don't like it, that's their problem, not mine." She looked him in the eyes. "That's what's most important for us, Tarrin. If we don't feel comfortable about ourselves, it upsets our balance, and that makes it hard for us to cope with the instincts. Both sets of them."

"You're right about that," he agreed.

"I tried being the pattern Were-cat female, but I found it wasn't my style," she revealed. "I was born human, and most of me likes to act that way. And that works for me. I know that you're alot different."

He nodded. "I'm a pattern Were-cat," he chuckled.

"Not quite," she smiled. "You still have alot of human in you. I can see it in the way you act."

"I guess I'll never get rid of it."

"Don't get rid of it if you'd miss it," she warned.

"I know."

She laughed. "The others think that humans are so soft and pliable, but they've never experienced the full force of human instinct," she told him. "Natural Were-cats are born with more Cat than human, and it shows in all of them. For me, the human instincts are actually the dominant ones. They're just more willing to work with the Cat than the Cat is to work with the human."