NOTE: This chapter has been split into two parts in order to fit within Tapas guidelins for episode length. This is the first of two updates. Be sure to keep scrolling for the second part!

ANOTHER NOTE: As of 12 July 2024 this is a rewrite of the rewrite. I was never satisfied with the "Biology lesson" chapter because it came off as... well... a biology lesson, and did not seem like something that Owen would have told Daecon on their first meeting. I have now redone it so that Daecon gets a basic lesson on the physiology and reproductive habits of the Shapeshifters but not the whole biology. 

The man who was a bear let out a deep sigh as he continued straightening my feathers.

“I am called Owen”, he said, “And what I’m doing is arranging your feathers in the sun so that they will dry faster and so that they dry straight. We must get off this beach and out of sight quickly, before those helicopters come. Normally I’d have expected you to just shake the water off, complete your shifting, and we’d both fly out of here, but now I see that’s impossible.”

“What do you mean, ‘shifting’? Why do you keep saying that, and why is it now impossible?”

Owen finished arranging the feathers and sat down next to me. He sighed again and said “This is not easy. I don’t know how to tell you this, and I’m not even sure that I should be the one telling you, but the shit is out of the horse, so they say. It’s too late to not say anything. I will tell you the basics, just what you need to know for now so that you may begin to understand what you are.”

I looked at him expectantly.

“Well,” Owen started, “You... I... We are part of a race of Shape-Shifters. We are closely related to humans, but we aren’t exactly human. We have certain skills that you might call ‘magic’, but it’s more complicated than that. We can change our body shapes into different kinds of animals and assume their abilities, and we can perform certain charms and spells, but it is not ‘magic’, at least nothing like what you would call a wizard’s magic. Aside from the actual act of shape shifting our magic is mainly used for hiding, self protection and also for healing. We don’t use or require wands or magic words, nor do we cause things to float through the air or appear out of nowhere.”

"Are you kidding me?!” I asked. This wasn’t quite a Hogwarts letter, but as far as I was concerned it was close enough. Magic! Real magic! And I had done it myself, even though I didn’t know it!

A bright flash of light and the man was gone. In his place was the giant eagle. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

Even though I had already seen it, this startled me. I shouted “Holy shit!” and started to recoil.

The eagle quickly warned, “Don’t! You’ll mess your feathers up again!”

Another flash, and the man was back.

“Stop fucking doing that!”, I said. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something?”

“Sorry”, Owen smirked. “I forget that you’re not used to seeing that.”

“It’s OK”, I said, my heart now returning to a normal beat. “Now tell me more about these shapeshifters.”

“Well”, he continued as he went back to arranging the feathers, “As I’ve said, we are similar to humans but we are not human. It’s not just our ability to change shape and use magic – we are biologically different as well. We are born with a human appearance, with the exceptions being that our ears and teeth are shaped slightly differently, and we will also frequently exhibit some hair and skin colouring and marking that is rare or non-existent among humans. Heterochromia is common among us as well."

I snickered a bit at this: I was pretty sure that there was nothing ‘Hetero’ about me. I had to ask, though: “Hetero-what?”

“Heterochromia. It’s a condition in which a person has two different coloured eyes. It is quite rare among humans, but very common with us.”

“I have that!” I exclaimed. “My eyes are different colours!”

“They look the same colours to me”, Owen said.

“Yeah, well, I wear blue contacts because I got tired of people giving me a hard time over thm”, I said.

“Yes, that makes sense. Humans are notoriously nasty toward things they consider different. Anyway, although we are not human our race depends on humans in order to continue existing.”

I was getting curious now. “Why would you require humans? And if you require humans, why do you stay hidden from them?”

Owen continued: “The second part of your question is the easiest to answer: We stay hidden from the humans because we are different from them. As you have just pointed out with your eyes, humans are intolerant towards those who are different. We are stronger and smarter than them. It is in their nature that they would view as a threat, and so they would destroy us if they knew about us.”

This sort of made sense to me. I experienced it first-hand growing up, and they didn’t even know just how different I was. Hell, I hadn't even known. “Ok, so if you’re stronger and smarter, why do you fear them? Can’t you just… I don’t know… kill them or something if they threatened you?”

Owen gave me a serious look. “One on one, yes, we can easily defeat and kill a human, or even a small group of humans. We are stronger, heal quickly, and are much more resilient than they are. They have the advantage of numbers though. There are eight billion of them on this planet, and about one million of us. They outnumber us eight thousand to one. Humans are notorious for bickering with each other, but they are also quite capable of banding together when they are threatened from the outside. We could do a hell of a lot of damage to them, but we could not defeat that many. It’s far easier… indeed, it is far safer, for magical beings to remain hidden.”

I acknowledged this sad truth, but I had more questions. “Ok, so why then do you need humans to keep on existing?” I asked.

“That is a far more complicated story”, Owen said. “Our biology is such that although we can conceive our own offspring we lack the physical ability to carry the fetus to term. Once the embryo has grown for more than a few days it is no longer viable for us to gestate it. A human female surrogate is required to do so. Once a shapeshifter couple conceives, the embryo is transplanted into a human female who is placed in a trance and taken into our care. She is kept with us under this trance for a month while the fetus grows into a baby. After the birth she is returned to human civilization and the baby is returned to its biological parents.”

“So how do you recruit these female surrogates if you stay hidden from humans? Surely they would know something was going on. Her family would miss her.”

“We choose our surrogates carefully. This requires a great deal of planning and the use of very complicated magic. We will locate a suitable female, usually a prostitute or drug addict but always a street person (to ensure that she will not be missed by friends or family during her absence), place her under our charms, and bring her into our colony for the gestation period. She will be surgically implanted with the embryo, and while under our care our healers will take care of any illness, disease, or addictions that she may have had. Once the pregnancy term is over and she gives birth she will be returned to society with no knowledge or memory of her time with us. She will not know it yet, but she will be free of any of the vices and diseases that she had before the pregnancy, and she will be monitored by us for the rest of her life to ensure that she remains healthy and happy.”

This was all sounding wrong to me. “So how can you force a woman to have a baby and her not have any memory of it? That’s a pretty big thing to forget!”

“Shapeshifter babies are very small at birth, only a little larger than a chicken egg. The birth is painless and damage free for the surrogate. We implant her with a memory that she had blacked out and spent the month in a rehabilitation facility. She will go on to lead a healthy and happy life, and we get our baby.”

I was starting to feel disgusted by this thought. “So basically you’re saying that you find some poor woman, slip her a magic roofie, and force her to have your children? That is fucked up, man!”

Owen looked hurt and let out a long sigh. “Look, I know it isn’t ideal. We don’t like using unwilling surrogates. We compensate them extremely well, what with curing their ailments and taking care of them for the rest of their lives, but at the end of the day, you are correct: There is no consent on their part and that is morally indefensible. Unfortunately, as long as we have to hide from humans that is how it must be, and until human nature changes we will have to remain hidden from humans. The alternative is our extinction.”

Still irked by the whole thing, I said “You know what? Truthfully, I’m surprised that you haven’t gone extinct already. Having to use a human host makes you little more than parasites.”