The Questing Game

Exactly where they had been before he left it.

"I can do it again if you want," he said to Henri's flabbergasted expression, crossing his arms and looking down at the dark-haired youth.

The look of surprise didn't last long. It was quickly replaced with open hostility. "I do not know what witchcraft you worked to let yourself do that, but I will not be party to it," he sneered. "I will not shame this fine circus by displaying a freak!"

He didn't say anything else after that. Tarrin's manacled wrist struck him squarely in the temple, and he went down in a twitching heap. Tarrin whipped his paw around, flinging a little blood that was on the manacle onto the stu

"I-Is he dead?" one of the girls asked in fear.

"If I wanted him dead, he'd be laying in two different places," Tarrin said in disgust. This was a monumentally bad idea. He turned and walked away, leaving Henri to bleed on the deck as the acrobats, and most of the ship's passengers, looked on in silence.

There was going to be fallout, he was sure of it.

Tarrin laid on his narrow bunk in cat form in the darkness, a darkness that was not dark to him, staring at the blank wall. From their viewpoint, a total stranger comes aboard, then whacks a respected member of the circus for what most would perceive to be no provocation. Nobody would talk to him now, not that he really wanted it, but what was worse, the accusation would be there in everyone's eyes as he moved around. He could tolerate the silence, but not the fear. That had been what had driven him so crazy in the Tower, the fact that everyone walked around in utter terror of him. He had been aboard the ship for less than a day, and already he had given them something about him to fear.

And the part that would get him into the most trouble with the performers was that he had no remorse at all. He'd do it again in a heartbeat. That little punk had openly insulted him, even after he'd been so blatantly warned what it would cause. But he did it anyway. All the blame sat on Henri as far as he was concerned.

And it hurt. Tarrin could tolerate many things, but not being called a freak. He would probably feel different if he'd been born Were, but he hadn't. More often than not, he felt the freak, and to hear someone say it so openly had stung him more deeply than even he realized. Henri's statement had struck at Tarrin on a level that most verbal abuse couldn't reach, and it was a miracle that he didn't take the little arrogant ass's head right off after he said it. He had no idea what had held him back, but something certainly had. He had no explanation for it.

The door opened, and Dola

"Change," she ordered in a calm, sober voice. He sat up and did so, then sat down cross-legged on the bed from the squat in which he had appeared after shapeshifting. "You disappoint me, Tarrin," she said bluntly. "Renoit is starting to second-guess his agreement with us. I explicitely promised him that we would cause no mischief, and you break that promise on the very first day. What defense do you have for this attack?"

"He called me a freak," he said in a savage hiss, anger boiling up with frightening speed, the Cat awakening from its dormant place in his mind at the smell of that anger, curious to see if it was something in which it should intervene. "He was being really snide and snotty, insulting both of us. Then he called me a freak. I just couldn't take it anymore."

"I see," she said, her tone slightly hostile. "I see that it was not enough justification to strike him down. Had I not healed him, he would have died."

"Like that means anything to me," he grunted, looking at his feet.

"And that is precisely my problem," she told him in a tone that made him look at her. "I had hoped that it was the trauma that had turned you this way, that your ferality was a condition of your circumstance, but I see I am wrong, and Haley was right. You are truly feral. And there is no more hope for you now."

She stood up, looking down at him with eyes that had absolutely no emotion in them. "You will confine yourself to your cabin during daylight," she ordered. "You will not interact with the performers. You may only come out at night, and even then only in cat form."

"You're grounding me?" he said incredulously.

"No, I am isolating you," she replied, turning her back to him and walking towards the door, then stopping beside it and turning to face him. "You have done enough damage, Tarrin. Now I must contain it, and contain you. Were it not for the seriousness of our mission, I would drop you off at the nearest land and let you go, but I ca

"I ca

"How dare you pass judgement on me!" he suddenly roared, snapping to his feet by the bunk and glaring at her. "If anyone could understand the way I feel, I thought it would have been you! They were warned not to be hostile to me, Dola

"Do you think I like being like this?" he said in a shrill voice. "Do you think I like knowing that killing a man means as much to me as picking a burr out of my tail? Do you think I like seeing the fear in people's eyes when they look at me? I've lost everything I used to care about, and all I had left was my friends. And now I'm losing them too!" Tears formed in his eyes as he stared accusingly at Dola

"Tarrin, I-"

"Get out!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"

Wordlessly, Dola

Outside the door, Dola