Talm-Dai Silvermine

Winter was coming. Talm-Dai could smell it. She could feel it. Even far underground in the darkness of her mines, or surrounded by the heat her forge, the coming of winter put a chill, an ache, deep down into her bones. It made her want to yawn and curl up in a pile of furs. It made her want to turn up the heat of her forge and focus on the glowing metal. It made her want to go out and hunt, bring in as much meat, wild grains, and late nuts as she could, to prepare for when the snow began to fall and blanketed the world in silence and sleep.

As Talm-Dai Silvermine was not exactly a bear-- not entirely, anyway-- she did not need to hibernate. She still usually holed herself up underground during the winter, anyway, taking fresh food only from those who cared to venture outside for her, from among her part-time assistant miners and smiths. Most of them were rodent-shifters, with the occasional lizard who dared hours without sunlight, or a wanderer canine like a Vulpyr, one of the homeless wanderers who would, for the use of a cavern and a fireplace, exchange news and food from the outside world. Winter was a time when all Fleshshifters needed some form of cover, not just the massive, bear-like Ursael.

Despite the inclination to sluggishness and isolation-- or perhaps in part because of it-- Talm-Dai always looked forward to winter. She could work on some carvings, or read a few books, or simply be lazy and stare into the fire for hours on end. Some days she would venture outside to trudge, bear-formed, through the snow, slow and steady, admiring the beauty and calm of it. During the winter, everything was peaceful, everything was quiet, and-- best of all-- she knew she would see none of her own kind, for they would be as slow and sleepy as she. Perhaps even more, with larger bodies to drag through the freezing winds and clinging snow, and less reason to try to, since they would be snug inside their dens with family and friends.

Talm was working at her forge, smelting out the impurities within her latest batch of silver mined from farther a thick, new vein below in the cave system, when she caught the first wisps of approaching winter. She paused to scent the smoky air and smile. Her current associate and assistant, a wiry, bright-eyed, sneaky-faced rat shifter named Tavarez, looked at her in askance; she didn't often smile, particularly not when wearing her half-bear form.

"I smell snow," was all she said in response to the quizzical look.

"Snow? Already?" Tavarez sniffed, looking around with an expression that might have been annoyed. "How can you smell snow from all the way down here?"

"I'm an Ursael," Talm replied, voice calm. "You're a rat."

"Rattai," Tavarez corrected stiffly, with the "proper" Fleshshifter name for one who shifted to a rat-form.

"That, too," Talm nodded. "Rats don't hibernate, and bears do."

"You hibernate?" Tavarez exclaimed, surprised.

"Not exactly, but I do tend to hole up underground."

"And sleep?" the rat said, eying her curiously.

"Some." The bear-- larger by half than Tavarez, despite not being anywhere near the size of her fellow Ursael-- nodded. "But mostly just resting, reading, and working every now and then, when I feel like it."

"Not snuggling up with your bear-ish family?" Tavarez wheezed with a grin.

"I haven't seen my family since I was a cub," Talm shrugged, rolling her great shoulders.

"No friends? Neighbors? Annoying boy-bears who come around to flirt? A sweetheart?"

Tavarez hadn't been helping her long, and it showed. "I live by myself and work by myself, Tavarez," Talm told him. "Other than occasional assistants like you."

"Seriously? I thought you Ursael were all about family and friends and stuff."

"Some of us are." Talm shook her head a bit and turned to pour the molten silver carefully into a cooling plate suspended in water. "Just not me."

"Why not?"

Maybe she'd have to find another assistant, perhaps a mouse-shifter; the mice were helpful, but didn't ask nearly so many prying questions. "Because I don't feel like it."

"That's not true," Tavarez countered slyly. "I know it's not."

"I'm not a people person, Tavarez." The silver billowed up steam, and Talm carefully stopped pouring before the shreds of other metals she'd burned out managed to follow it.

"That's not really true, either," the rat chuckled. "You'd be a fine people person if you tried. You just don't try. I wonder why." Since that wasn't a question, Talm-Dai didn't bother answering it, and Tavarez shook his head at her. "You'd be happier with some friends," he told her, but when she ignored him, he just shrugged and offered her her gloves, instead of further un-asked-for advice.