Danislav looked pissed when he answered but saw that Janna was looking confused, and Boris had chosen to remain a bear. He had some idea of why. Boris had been born and raised a Were — he just changed, he didn’t think about it. Danislav may have been born a Were, but it had taken him years to figure out how to turn, to the frustration of both himself and Boris.
“Watch this guy while I’m gone. If he moves, eat him.” He said to Boris, as much as for the intimidation effect as anything else. Boris was by far the largest bear anyone had seen, easily more than eight hundred kilograms, about twenty percent bigger than the maximum Siberian bears were considered to reach. The only natural bears that might close in on his size were the largest Californian grizzlies or the occasional Kodiak.
He walked off a short distance and said “I can guess the problem. You don’t know how to change, right?” Janna nodded mutely. “One of the things Boris doesn’t really understand is the mechanics of it. Once I figured out how to transform I tried explaining it to him, but he’s done it for so long that he can just do it when he wants. For him, it is all instinctual. He knew I was a Were when he adopted me from the orphanage decades ago. Probably born that way. When I was a teenager, and he was trying to teach me to change, he was stumped too. It has been centuries since he first did it and the first time is always the hardest. Oh, and before you start sparring with him, go for a run.”
He rubbed his ribs “It won’t take you long, but your first half hour or so you’ll be clumsy as hell. So don’t try to spar with him then. You will get hurt if you do, and he’ll blame himself. Neither of you would be to blame of course, but he still will blame himself.”
“He raised you? Why would he do that? I mean I can understand him getting a lone Werewolf child away from ordinary kids, but why didn’t he just hand you over to the pack?” Janna asked
“I’m not sure he knows himself. He’s not like most other werebears, though. Traveling with him I’ve met a few, and they tend to be loners, through and through. Some wolves are that way too. While he might appreciate a few days, even a week alone, there is not a driving need for constant solitude within him. After that he gets lonely. Being pack leader and as feared as he was after the Great Patriotic War, perhaps he just wanted some reliable company.”
Danislav continued “If you like what you are wearing I would suggest that you get undressed. If you stay in those clothes, they’ll be wrecked when you change. Oh, and after you change, a lot of animals will be skittish around you. The predator scent lingers for a time. I don’t know of a were that doesn’t like changing every so often for the hell of it. I’m sure there are some, but it is a lot of fun being an animal.”
He looked to the sky and then back down, “The key is to really want to change. Once you manage to transform there is a kinda switch in your mind’s eye that you can just flick. Then you change. No mystical clap-trap. It’s that simple.”
He turned and headed back to the container. He did not need to see a beautiful woman that his father desired naked. No sirree. At best he’d be seeing a potential stepmother naked. Ick. At worst he’d start falling for her. He didn’t want to cause that sort of tension between Boris and him. He respected the man who had raised him too much to risk it.
Janna stood there for a couple of minutes considering everything that Danislav had just told her. She was plunging into a world of which she had only seen the edges. Well, she had friends in that world already. People who cared for her. First, there was Boris. He had been treating her differently, as if she was emerging from the shadow of his past to a real person in the here and now. And there was Danislav who was treating her as if she belonged and that there was truly a place for her in their world as well. A group that wanted her for her. Not for the skills and tricks she had picked up and learned over the years. Her. It was as if for the first time in her life she understood what family meant. Even if it was a strange conglomerate of a family.
She truly wanted to belong. To do that she had to figure this out. She slowly started undressing, focusing on that desire. She heard Boris lumbering up behind her. Quietly she said. “If I figure this out, please let me try and enjoy the form for a bit first.” She didn’t turn, didn’t look at him, but she heard him lie down. After she had finished undressing, she closed her eyes.
She didn’t notice when Boris rose and moved around to get a better view of her body. It was spectacular. He estimated she had gained an inch or so. With her still in recovery, it was hard to tell what she’d look like an end result. She was healthy now, though. Still underweight, but not looking like a walking skeleton with a thin layer of skin and muscle over the bones. Seeing that she was improving gave Boris a level of calm he hadn’t achieved in a week.
Her focus tightened, and she found the switch that Danislav had talked about. With trepidation, she flicked it… and nothing happened. She cursed out loud but all that came out was a bear’s roar.
She opened her eye and saw she was standing as a bear. Standing felt uncomfortable so she lowered herself to all fours, both stunned and exhilarated by the transformation. She was extraordinarily large for a female bear, taller than normal and at least seven hundred and fifty kilograms in weight. She had brown-grey fur and was similar to Boris in body shape and markings. If she were thought to be a normal bear, a zoologist would describe her as belonging to the Siberian subspecies of brown bear. Though smaller than Boris, the difference in size was not as large as in nature — instead, it was closer to the difference in size in their human forms. Her form would still need to finish filling out but that would come in time. Her muscles would strengthen, and she might still gain a bit more weight.
The world had more scents and… her train of thought was interrupted as she failed to coordinate the movement of all four legs. Her back paws tangled each other, propelling her into a hard fall onto her face. In the back of her mind, she thought she could hear a chuckle. She turned in irritation and stared at Boris, who was facing away from her. Huffing at his back, she started to climb carefully back onto her feet when he turned to look over his shoulder at her. With a challenging roar, he began to run.
Concentration and precise movement were abandoned in her response to the challenge. Scrambling without thought to her feet, she wrenched her body back up and into the exhilaration of the chase. His scent clearly showed the path he traveled, and as she gained confidence, she picked up the pace. Within an hour she was fully confident in the form but was still trailing Boris. His path had formed an arc around their camp, but he was still well ahead of her. The air had a faint metallic scent on it as she got closer to him. When she found him in the clearing, she saw that he had run down a deer. With surprising dexterity, he had also gutted it and put the stomach and intestines in one pile with the offal dumped separately.
He stood his ground, rose to his full immense height, and roared a challenge at her. She knew that he wanted to spar with her. The scent of blood and fresh meat excited her, and she wanted to get past him to the prize displayed on the ground. His plan on how to train her was obviously well thought out. He knew the nature of Weres from hundreds of years of study, Janna doubted he was challenged with how to engage her bear form.
For the next hour, she tried to get past him as her hunger and frustration increased. His defense of the carcass and her desire for the food pushed her into trying to maul him with her claws, attacking him from either side to no avail. Eventually, she saw him come in a little slowly with one of his forepaws, and she swung back out of its path and bit it. Hard. He backed off and let her pass.