I wore a bear today. It felt wrong to me: large and cumbersome, and I rattled around inside it. I will always prefer my hawkskin — perhaps it is true what they say, and no shape ever feels as right as your first.

I did enjoy the power of it, though. I went to the village on the plains outside and roared at their hunters. One of them soiled himself — oh, I shall be laughing about that for days! I didn’t eat him, of course. Just the other, cleaner one.

But the importance of the first shape. I must remember to put it in my book, if the King ever gives me leave to write it.

 

~from the journal of Wylandriah Witch-feather