The small red salamander nimbly dodged out of sight again. How was it so fast? Barely anything had evaded Laika for this long. But, to be fair, she wasn't shifting, so she was at a disadvantage.
Laika ventured out again and sniffed the roots of the damp, brown tree where she had last seen it. Her brother, Kayos, did the same.
They had been hunting the slithering red beast through the rainforest for some time now, and Laika was getting tired of it. She let herself begin to relax. But as soon as she started to calm down and the adrenaline flowing through her veins began to dissipate, the salamander bounded out of its hiding place and dashed away.
Laika's nose led her through the undergrowth as she followed it. Branches slashed through her fur, and a thorn poked her ear. But she kept going. She dodged a tall pink flower and jumped over a vine. It was so much easier for the salamander to go through all this underbrush; he was so small that he could just rush under.
The salamander slipped into a small rotten log, too thin for Laika to fit anything but her paws into. She turned to see Kayos bound up behind her, and noticed, to her satisfaction, that he was breathing quite hard.
"Where did it go?"
"Into the log." Laika pointed at the decaying brown wood with her paw. "We'll just have to wait for it to come out."
"Hmmm…." Her brother contemplated, a frustrating habit of his. "If we both stick our paws in on the sides, we might be able to get it."
Laika made no response. She would not give her brother the satisfaction of being right.
Kayos stuck his paw in, and motioned for Laika to do the same.
Grudgingly, she obeyed.
The soft, rotten wood rubbed into Laika's fur uncomfortably. She doubted why she was doing this, not for the first time. She should be able to shift if she wanted.
Almost immediately after she reached her paw in, she could tell she was getting close. She could tell from Kayos' face that he could almost feel it too.
Then, much to her surprise, a small red shape slipped its way out of a hole in the top of the log that she hadn't noticed before. She could tell from the bewilderment on Kayos' face that he had missed it too.
Laika yanked her paw out of the end of the log, and lept on top of the salamander, landing with a small squish. She stood up, shook the mud and wood off her legs and stomach, and turned to see Kayos still trying angrily to get his paw out of the log.
Laika grinned. "Can't get your paw out, little brother?" They were twins, but Laika was bigger and stronger, and she made sure Kayos knew it.
Kayos' only response was an ornery grunt.
Two hours later, Kayos and Laika sat down to dinner with their parents, Gaira and Diasute. They were in a one-roomed hut with walls of sticks and a roof of straw, both of which were held together by dried mud. There was no table, as the family was almost always in different forms.
Laika stood on four paws as a silver-furred wolf. Her head was three feet above the ground, and her short black tail swept it like a leaf drifting back and forth in the wind.
Kayos took the shape of a chimpanzee, standing low to the ground, with his furry brown arms hanging at his sides. His face was the only part of him that wasn't covered in short, curly brown fur.
Gaira was in the form of a hawk. The tops of her wings and her back were a dark brown, but on her undersides and stomach she was white.
And Diasute, the twins' father, stood as a mountain goat. He had long, light brown horns, which curled above his furry white body.
Four beds sat together on one side of the room. They were merely piles of straw with one blanket that was placed under the sleeper, and one for on top of them, because no one in the family reliably slept in the same form.
The salamander was on the menu, and Laika spent the meal ridiculing Kayos for it, much to the dismay of their parents.
"I know you have some sort of rivalry, but can't you two get along?" Gaira asked.
"Only if Laika will," Kayos said curtly.
"I was about to say the same to you!"
Diasute rolled his eyes, which was a little terrifying because of his horizontal pupils.
Gaira shapeshifted into a shrew, a significant change from her previous form, and took a bite out of the salamander. All shapeshifters knew that food became more appetizing when they shifted into one of its predators. For some reason, it just felt more natural.
Plus, it filled them up more, similar to how a blade of grass needs less water than an oak tree.
"So, how did your training go?"
Now that they were twelve, Kayos and Laika were expected to go to a place called Malantana Island for the summer. It was a traditional shifter challenge, and if they passed it they would be recognized as fully-fledged shapeshifters. It was an old cultural duty, and some shifters didn't do it anymore, but Kayos and Laika would, starting in three days.
By now it was more of a summer camp for the shapeshifter families that lived nearby. It was slightly more wild than most other summer camps, though, with a month where you had to live in the wild with just a partner and whatever you could scavenge. Unfortunately for the twins, they would have to do it together.
Kayos and Laika had been practicing staying in one shape to hunt for a while, because on the island, you weren't allowed (or able) to change shape between sunset and sunrise, and if you tried, you wouldn't be able to shift at all for the rest of the session, which to Kayos and Laika sounded like complete torture.
"Our training went well, as you can see." Laika indicated the salamander that Gaira was eating.
"But even though I didn't catch it, I figured out how to get it out of the log," Kayos declared.
Gaira started to say something, but Laika interrupted her.
"Yeah, but you were too slow to get it, even after you could get just a few feet away from it."
"I know Malantana Island is supposed to teach you how to survive in the wild, but I just hope you two will learn to get along," Gaira announced, her voice a high-pitched shrew squeak.