He’s flustered and pink and adorable.
I sit carefully in the camp chair he intended for me. It creaks under my weight but holds. He sinks into his own chair opposite,still staring at me with the intensity of someone watching a rare solar eclipse.
I pick up the fork.
This time, it feels more or less proportionate.
He seems weirdly pleased by that.
“So,” he says, in a tone that suggests he’s desperately trying to act normal, “this is your human form.”
“Yes.”
“And you can switch between them.”
“Yes.”
“And you do that… often?”
“Less often than you’d think,” I answer. “It’s inconvenient. Clothing is required in most human spaces, and frankly, shopping is a nightmare.”
A startled laugh escapes him. “I imagine so.”
We start eating.
I’m in the middle of deciding whether it would be rude to tell him the mushrooms are particularly good when I feel it—that familiar, infuriating shift in the air that meanshehas arrived.
A soft scrabble sounds at the edge of the clearing. Then a gray blur darts into view and hops straight onto the table like it’s been personally invited. The squirrel.Thatsquirrel. The one who’s appointed himself my shadow, my auditor, and apparently my public relations nightmare.
Elias’s face lights up instantly. “Hey,” he says, delighted. “It’s you again.” He laughs, warm and unguarded, as if this is a charming coincidence and not an ongoing campaign of harassment.
I lock my jaw. “Do not,” I say flatly, without looking at either of them, “feed him.”
The squirrel chirps, loud and pleased, then scampers across the table with zero hesitation and launches himself onto my lap. Onto the towel. Onto my bare, human thighs. I freeze so hard Inearly lock my knees. The squirrel settles in like he’s found his throne, tail flicking smugly, tiny paws clutching a stolen piece of food as he begins to eat. Elias makes a startled, choked sound that is absolutely the beginning of laughter.
I glare at him, a flush crawling up my neck. “If you say one word,” I warn, teeth clenched, “I will shift back and pretend this entire evening never happened.”
The squirrel chitters triumphantly and flicks his tail directly against my stomach, crumbs falling onto the towel like an insult. I do not move. I do not breathe. I endure.
This is what I get for lowering my guard. This is what I get for sitting down. This is what I get for letting a human see me like this at all.
Eventually, the squirrel loses interest—either bored by my refusal to react or satisfied with his victory—and springs away into the undergrowth. I release a breath, straighten the towel with what dignity I can salvage, and pick up my fork as if none of it happened.
The food is very good. The meat is tender and flavorful. The vegetables are delicious. The potatoes are soft and buttery. I tell him so, and he beams like I’ve just written him a glowing performance review.
As we eat, the questions return.
He wants to know if all sasquatch can shift or if it’s unique to certain lineages. How old I am, how old I can get. If the blur is connected to the shift or something separate. If I always live in this region or migrate.
His enthusiasm is relentless. It should feel invasive—these questions poke at the edges of things I’ve kept secret for centuries—but somehow, when Elias asks them, it feels more like being invited to walk through a door I usually keep locked.
Sometimes I answer vaguely. Sometimes I say, “That’s a story for another day.” Sometimes I give him the truth.
“Yes, most of my kind can shift.”
“No, we don’t all choose to.”
“Yes, the blur is instinctive. It reacts to human perception.”
