Page 26 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

Ashley looked down at the woman in her arms. The very, verynakedwoman in her arms. Penny's skin was already turning blue from the cold, her shoulders covered in goosebumps. The rest of her probably was too, but she was crunched up in Ashley's arms, shivering, and there wasn't much else visible as she huddled against Ashley's warmth.

Ashley's brain sputtered and so did her voice, a short series of attempted explanations that didn't get any farther than consonant sounds in the back of her throat. Then she managed the one word that really mattered: "Car."

It wasn't easy standing up with a small ball of woman in her arms. Her bear said,I could help!, but Ashley shook her head as she staggered to her feet. It wasn't Penny's weight that wasa problem; it was just that sitting cross-legged with someone bundled up against her was an awkward way to start, and the fact that she really, really didn't want to put Penny down in the snow. After a couple of attempts, she managed to scramble to her feet without dropping her poor shivering mate and hurried to the car, saying,I think shifting to a bear underneath her is more than she could handle right now,apologetically to her bear.

The bear rumbled a reluctant agreement as Ashley managed to get the car door open and to not-quite dump Penny into the passenger seat. "Hang on. I've got winter gear in the trunk." She closed the door, turned the car on with the remote starter, and got the coats, snow pants, and boots out of the car's trunk before crawling into the driver's seat. "Okay. Here you go. It's going to be fine, Penny. C'mon, let me help you get these on."

Penny was balled up in the passenger's seat as small as she could go, which was pretty small. Ashley tilted her away from the seat enough to drag the coat around her shoulders, and all of a sudden, in a scramble, Penny pulled it on and yanked the snow pants on before balling up in the seat again. "What happened to myclothes? What happened to me? What happened toyou!What's goingon?"

Those were all excellent questions, and Ashley barely knew where to start. She said, "This isn't typical," in a sort of high funny voice, and Penny's head popped out of the hood to yell, "Youthink?"

Ashley winced and Penny's expression crumpled into near-tears. "I'm sorry."

"No. No, baby, it's okay. It's, this is insane. This must be insane for you. Look, do you think we could crawl into the back seat? I think maybe you need some hugs while I explain this and it's hard to hug across a gear shift."

Penny, with a sniffle, said, "This is an automatic," but crawled into the back seat over what was, in fact, not a gear shift at all. Technically it was the storage compartment between the two front seats, but it had been a gear shift in Ashley's first car, and apparently she still thought that's what that space should hold.

That was probably more than she needed to explain to Penny right now. Especially since there was quite a lot else to explain to her. Ashley crawled into the back seat after her, and offered a tentative arm to hide in. Penny, wide-eyed and obviously stressy, shook her head, and Ashley nodded gently. "That's okay. Okay. First, you're a shifter, Penny."

Penny, hollowly, said, "'Yer a wizard, Harry,'" and shivered. "What does that mean? I'm a shifter. What does that mean? You turned into abear."

"I did. I'm also a shifter. But I grew up knowing I was one, and you clearly didn't. That's…" Ashley took a deep breath. "That's very unusual. But we'll come back to that, okay? One thing at a time."

Penny's high-pitched laugh filled the car. "Sure. Right. One thing at a time. What happened to my clothes?"

That was as good a 'one thing' to start with as any. Ashley gave her mate a weak smile. "Usually when we shift, our clothes come and go with us. Anything touching our skin. Glasses, earrings, clothes, shoes, whatever. But it's something we learn when we're babies, like being potty trained, so we don't have to think about it when we're even just a little bit older. You've never shifted before, I guess, so you don't have that practice. So your clothes are…" She winced. "Gone."

"But I rented that dress!" Penny's voice rose even farther. "Can I get them back? If I, I, if I shift again and, and I don't know, call them? Will they come back?"

"I don't know," Ashley said slowly. "When young shifters forget their clothes, that's it, they're gone. But I don't know that a toddler could understand the idea of going to get the clothes they left behind."

"Well, could you?" Penny demanded.

"I—I've never tried. I've never forgotten my clothes. I can try. But not here, I can't shift in the car, I'll explode it." Ashley laughed out loud suddenly, all too aware it was the wrong moment, but reminded of something. "Poor Bill, he shifted in a Honda Civic once, and he'shuge. I mean I'm big but he'shuge. Now he drives a monster truck because he's afraid of getting stuck like that again."

"Bill is a bear, too?" Penny's voice shot up again. "And Gwen knows? And didn't tell me?"

"Well, we don't…" Ashley smiled with consternation. "We don't usually tell people who aren't…intimate…"

"You told me! We're not intimate!" Penny hesitated. "Yet?"

This, Ashley thought, was much, much more difficult than just telling a regular true human about fated mates. She said, "Yet," a little faintly, and tried to figure out where to go from there. Penny just sat there, staring at her with huge eyes, looking so lost and afraid and confused that all Ashley wanted to do was pull her close and promise it would all be okay. "Look, I'm just going to lay it all out, okay? This is way more complicated than I expected and we'll figure it all out, but let me at least tell you why Iwastelling you, because…I think I should," she finished awkwardly.

Penny made a small gesture that more said 'okay, whatever' than showed any enthusiasm for the idea, but Ashley couldn't blame her. The poor drummer had just turned into a partridge, for God's sake. Adults didn't just randomly discover they were shifters. Usually that kind of thing hit at puberty if they didn't already know, and that was hard enough.

"Okay. Intimate. Um. So I'm a shifter, and one of the things about shifters is when we meet the person we're meant to be with, we know right away. We call it fate." Ashley hesitated. "You're my fated mate, Penny. Usually our mates are either other shifters, who know about it already, or true humans who have a shock to get over, but they adapt very fast. In this case…" She wet her lips. "In this case I don't know why you didn't already know you were a shifter. I don't even know why I couldn't tell you were OH MY GOD, Maggie Ross knew!"

Penny shrank down into the seat, all wide eyes and confusion from within the over-sized winter coat. "Maggie Ross? What does she have to do with…" Her eyes closed and after a heartbeat she said, "She was the swan. The gigantic swan?"

"I don't know how she knew!" Ashley half-yelled, struggling and failing to bring her voice down. "But sheknewwhat the hell how didsheknow about my fated mate whenIdidn't maybe it's because she's a bird shifter oh mygod! Oh my God! Okay!" She clutched the sides of her own head, trying to calm herself. "Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. The thing is, shifters can usually sense each other. But shifters also usually know they're shifters, so…I don't know, Penny. Maybe that's why I didn't know right away you were one. I've never met an adult shifter who had never shifted before."

Penny wailed, "This is very weird!" and pulled the hood even farther up over her head, until she'd disappeared into it entirely.

Ashley sank down into the warm seat and sighed agreement, then crept her fingertips toward Penny, hoping to offer some comfort. After a few long seconds, Penny's own fingertips emerged and laced through Ashley's. A bubble of relief popped in Ashley's chest and she whispered, "It really is going to be okay, Penny. I'm sorry I freaked out. This didn't go how I imagined it would."

A thin giggle came from within the parka. "Imagine how I feel."

Ashley sat up again and carefully snaked her arm around Penny's shoulders, tugging her closer. The drummer slowly tipped over until she was pressed up against Ashley's side, completely hidden within the winter gear. Ashley, softly, said, "I'm not sure Icanimagine how you feel. Which is why me freaking out was really not helpful."

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