BODYTHOUGHT

"Alll-right! Bring it in, everybody, bring it in."

Students meandered in from across the beach, in various shades of mismatch between head-to-toe flannel, backpacks, and flip-flops. The caller was an elk-man in a beat-up tee and jeans, his head wrapped in steel-grey. Sunlight glinted off the lake behind him, dancing with warm wind that joyfully ran up to the beach, ruffling through Roxanne's thick white fur. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the sand soft and thick beneath her bare hindclaws.

"Welcome ... to your second-to-last class." Aleric Stronghorn greeted them with a grand sweep of his lanky arms. "Big things on the agenda. But first! We need someone to ground us in where we've been this semester. What in the stars have we been talking about for the last two months?"

A scruffy snow leopard raised xer hand. "Well ... it's been a lot of going out and running around, then talking about how animals like us evolved for that."

"Good! Yes, we've been talking evolutionary theory, but also bringing it down to us and how we live. Because all this cramming for tests, and squinting at screens--it's not in line with how our specieses evolved! Anyone else? Yeah, Castor?"

A wallaby in a blinding-white jacket nodded. "You also pointed out that that messes with, like, how we think. That going out and working with your body--that helps you think. We're better at--or, like, supposed to--learn like that."

"Good, yeah." Stronghorn said, then his eyes caught on something behind them. Roxanne turned, and the sandy slope leading down from the path, she could make out a very familiar black-and-tan shape. "Ah, and right on time, here's our guest for today."

Even from a distance, Roxanne knew that self-assured stride, those tall deer-ears, the dark veil pinned to them dangling back over her neck. Her mother was dressed more formally than usual, with a proper button-down (in black, of course) though still unbuttoned far enough to show the geometric eye-shaped charm around her neck. She approached the group with a wave. "Mornin'. You already introduce why I'm here?"

"Getting to that!" Stronghorn slapped the leather-bound notebook in his hand. "So, getting out there, working with your hands, paws, anything you got now--that can shape your learning more than anything. But it also shapes you. What makes you you?"

"Memories?" Roxanne offered.

There was a moment's pause, then other students started pitching. "Experiences?" "Genetics?" "Personality?"

Stronghorn pointed to the chocolate lab who had offered that last one. "What do you mean by, 'personality'?"

"... uh, like, the way you, like, think about things? Or ... how you respond to them?"

Stronghorn snapped his fingers and pointed. "Response. Natural reactions. And where are those encoded?"

When no one moved to answer, he continued, "What happens when you react to something--when, say, there's a crying baby on your flight? What are you doing?"

"Tensing up?" "Covering my ears?" "Complaining?" "Also crying?"

"Exactly. All of that--it's all happening in your body. You're experiencing this thing, and it's coming out in your body. The same is true with memories--we talked about this last week with Lakefin & Johnsfriend, how the language we put stories in is felt as a whole-body experience. Your experience of the world is whole-body, because you are a whole body--what makes you you is defined by your body."

"But!" he held up a hand. "As some of you have--repeatedly--pointed out, we haven't been bound to our ancestor's flesh for thousands of years. There's evidence of shapeshifting practices as old as written language--older, depending on which archaeologists you're willing to fight. So that's what we're going to get you into today. And that's why we're so lucky to have a real expert with us. Inky is one of if not the most talented shapeshifter on the continent."

The deer-woman smiled quietly, and gave another little wave. Roxanne rolled her eyes.

"So! The floor is yours, mage. What do we need to do for this?"

Inky rubbed her palms together. "Right. Could everyone form a circle? Hands linked, please."

"You don't have to participate but you're missing out if you don't!" Stronghorn called out, as he took one of Inky's hands and one of his student's.

A couple kids stood back, but most reached out for eachother. Roxanne hesitated for a moment, but ultimately took her hands out of her hoodie pocket. The snow leopard who had spoken first today--Cath, if she remembered correctly--shot her a grin as xe linked hands with her.

"Now," Inky began, speaking slow and calm, "You're going to have the best luck if you close your eyes. Regardless, this is an exercise in thinking. Think about what it feels like to be free ... unbound, light. We're going to focus in on a specific image--like you're running through a forest, or a field. Somewhere you can feel the air rush past you. Where you're running fast enough where you're less stepping and more bounding, breaking free of the earth with every beat. Now, bring in a little pride in yourself. Stretch up your neck. You can't be brought down. Feel that confidence stretch up past your neck to build a pair of tall, spiraling towers atop your skull ..."

The prompt dragged on. Roxanne tried her best to concentrate, but she'd always struggled to keep her attention too long on body stuff ... other thoughts kept flashing out of the darkness behind her eyes. What was that guy shouting about in the distance? What was she going to write for that damn essay tonight? How late was the dining hall open again? She nearly missed when Inky cut her monologue with one forceful word, "Now!"

Her eyes opened just in time to catch a few flickers of shadow from around the circle. She looked down quickly first--nope, she was still the same. Cath met her glance as they both looked at eachother at the same time, and shook xer head with a half-smile. Only about a third of the group had changed, now looking around confused from about two feet lower and on all four hooves.

Stronghorn considered the group. "Hmm, perhaps 'free and confident' were not the most relatable feelings for college students."

"Hey, it's something most furs have felt, at least once." Inky argued, "It's just not as effective trying to work with a whole group at once ... or when everyone's thinking about how soon they can go home."

Stronghorn snorted. "Fair enough. Alright, everyone, try not to get too distracted by being a small savanna-dwelling mammal ... we can probably put you back before we're done. But first! We're gonna get you moving!"

The game was simple enough; those that hadn't shifted were assigned the role of "lion", and told to tag as many gazelle as they could. It may have sounded easy, with nearly twice their number, but their fellows found their new feet fast, and took off with it. Roxanne wasn't even particularly dedicated to the chase, compared to her teammates (especially that wolf who kept making wild crashes into the sand), but she was quickly panting and covered in sweat ... which the heavy clothes really weren't helping with. Regardless, she grit her teeth through another couple minutes, then Stronghorn called time with only about four gazelle tagged.

Roxanne crashed down immediately, letting the cool wetness of the low beach soak in all down her back. She could hear the gazelle being gathered for another hippie mumbo-jumbo "find yourself" circle that wasn't even worth pretending to pay attention to. Her thick dragon's tail flicked irritably through the sand, carving long arcs through it. She'd probably be finding grains in her fur for the next week ... but that was some of the fun of being out here, wasn't it? The way it stuck with you. Roxanne closed her eyes and listened to the water.

"All-right! Let's circle back up, please! What did we learn out there?"

"Gazelle are shadin' fast!" someone called out, which spurred a small chorus of hollering.

Even Stronghorn laughed. "True enough. What about our gazelles? What was it like out there?"

Milo, the lab from earlier, put up his hand. "Not that different from running track in highschool. Including being chased by like twenty other kids."

"Hmm, interesting! So, put your hand up if you were gazelle."

Nine hands went up.

"Now, put your hand down if you don't consider yourself an athlete."

Seven hands stayed up.

"Alright; now, for the two of you who put your hands down: did you find being a gazelle still spoke to you? And how?"

The first, a viscacha with dyed-blue fur offered, "I think it was more the self-confidence aspect. Like, that there's all these problems out there, but I can absolutely get away from them if I need to. Maybe not a literal runner, but like a life-runner, I suppose."

The second, a shrew in plaid flannel, shrugged. "I think I'm just good at feeling small and preylike." His friends snickered around him.

"So there we have it." Stronghorn clapped one beat, then continued, "All of our successful transformations today weren't really a transformation at all ... these folks already had those parts inside of them. And of you all, our non-shifters ..." He pointed around. "I'd be willing to bet that you didn't stay because you were distracted. You just already know who you are, and it's not a small savanna-dwelling mammal. Am I right?"

"Seems right to me." Cath whispered to Roxanne, bumping xer shoulder into hers.

What in the stars does xe mean by that?

"This is actually a pretty old idea," Stronghorn continued, "Even back in the ancient empires, we had Wilma Windwhisperer writing in her instructional texts that the sky's art is to bring out the truest self; or Zane in the most famous play in the Friid language saying there be no god's embrace that could stave my heart from sighting on yours. We are who we are! There is no magic spell to change that."

Roxanne put up her hand. "But ... if shapeshifting changes the body ... doesn't it, by your own logic, change your mind?"

"It does!" Stronghorn said with an excited skip of his hand, "But in the same way we're all able to change; small steps one way or another. It can't take out who you are, but it can shuffle it around a little. If we were to cut open Milo, for example,"--the lab furrowed his thick brows as Stronghorn gestured over his head--"while he was a gazelle, we would have found something much more like his anatomy as a dog-man than like a wild gazelle."

Stronghorn stepped back to the gap in the circle. "Ultimately, we can run with ideas, build new characters around ourselves ... but you can never put on a character that's not you."

Oh. OH. Roxanne briefly considered the wisdom of making a rude gesture at her mother. "So what you're sayin' is, there is no 'faking it until you make it'. If you're there, you're there."

"Exactly. For better or for worse, you are your body, and your body is you. And for those of us on the older side, that often turns out to be for the worse ..."

Stronghorn continued on, but Roxanne's attention slipped as Cath nudged her again. Xe were standing close enough behind her to nearly have xer snout on her shoulder. "I could've assured you of that. There's no part of this that could be faked."

A shiver shot through her, along with warmth thicker and richer than any sunlight. Gods, she could have melted into a puddle of gold right there on the sand.

She let out a heavy outbreath. Yeah. That's right. I'm me.

In her mind's eye, she could already see the hands being thrown in the air about the kitchen table next week.