A young Coyote winced at the crunch of bone between his teeth, but at least the squirrel died quickly. He retraced his steps through sparse chaparral, buckbrush and manzanita snagging on his fur, until he reached the small cavern he called home. Remorse tugged at his heart as he abandoned the reassuring sunlight for darkness.

“Hey, Ren,” his father greeted. The softness of his voice made it sound like an apology.

“Hey, Pops,” Ren said, voice muffled by the prey in his mouth. He dropped it between his father’s paws.

“Actually, Ren, I think you should eat it. I know it’s not your favorite, but you’ve been looking skinny as of late.”

“But you’re sick…”

He shook his head, smiling. “I’m always sick, aren’t I? You get to be my age, that’s just how it is.”

Ren creased his brow. He withheld the other reason he didn’t want to eat prey—because it made him feel savage.

But, then, so did his hunger.

The crunch of the squirrel’s bones nauseated Ren, but he tried not to let it show. Once finished, he plopped down beside his father. Sickness had tinged his scent with decay, but Ren did his best to ignore it. With his eyes closed, familiar phantom sensations arose: scaly furlessness and something cool and waxy swathed around his neck. As long as he didn’t look, he could pretend these sensations were real.

“You still don’t feel like a Coyote, do you?”

At the question, Ren raised his head and scratched one paw with the other. His eyes darted away but found nothing to distract—just the cavern’s jagged walls and the sun-bleached hill beyond. The dry grass looked like it might crumble to dust.

Ren’s father’s voice softened. “Relax. I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’ve been thinking, if you still feel that way after all this time, then it’s probably just who you are. Really, I wish I’d accepted it sooner.”

Ren leaned against him, sighing. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. You know, if the legends are true, the Verdians don’t stray far from home. There should be a colony around Lily Valley, close to where you saw that lone individual. If you want to look for it, you have my blessing.”

“Well…” Ren scratched his paw again. “I do want to, but I can’t just abandon you.”

His father threw his head back; his laughter reverberated spectrally across the cave and made Ren shiver. This didn’t seem, to Ren, like something one should laugh about.

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Ren saw the irony the next day, when he found his father’s broken body speared by the shadow of the cliff above, blood seeping from his head like tears, fragments of juniper and manzanita hanging from his mangled arm. He must have tumbled on the way down. Ren tried not to visualize it and did anyway.

Later, with the clarity of hindsight and a half hour spent crying, Ren had to admit that this outcome made a brutal sort of sense. Staring at his father’s body, he saw bald spots, sunken eyes, and protruding ribs. If he hadn’t killed himself, his illness might have, which would have been more painful for both of them.

As Ren calmed, the phantom sensations arose once more. Sunlight always intensified them, made him long to shed his fur.

And there was nothing stopping him now, he remembered. Just a few weeks of walking.

He licked his father’s head one last time and set off.

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After days of cresting sun-scorched peaks, Lily Valley felt like a lush dream. Lupins plumed between scarlet-berried wax myrtles; grapevines twined up the trunks of scattered strawberry trees, their fruits’ fragrance blending with the sagebrush underfoot; milkweed and mariposa lily fed kaleidoscopes of butterflies. The foliage swayed synchronously in the breeze, as though it were a single mass.

Something green and coyote-shaped emerged from the brush not a meter away from Ren. He started and turned to face it—then realized that “it” was a “she,” a creature that reified five years of fantasy. An ancient verse shot to the front of his mind:

The sun unfurls on waxen scales and kindles honeyed eyes

and dewdrops cling and sparrows sing upon a mane of vines

her clawless feet tread heedfully ’round sprouting lily leaf

and jade lips part to offer him an everlasting peace

“Is everything alright?”

Ren’s heart hammered in his chest, and his breath whistled through his nose. “S-sorry, it’s fine, I just…” He faltered. “…You must be the queen of this colony, right?”

The look of concern didn’t leave her face, but she answered. “Yes. Did you come here to join? Or are you just passing through?”

“The former. I think. But first, I need water and sleep.”

The queen nodded. “There’s a good place nearby. I’ll show you.”

Ren followed her. Bent grass tickled his belly, and moths danced around his legs. At the northern edge of the valley, a rivulet tumbled down the rocks and into a narrow channel, passing beneath a broad olive tree. A hummingbird’s head gleamed grapefruit hues as it sampled clusters of scarlet paintbrush. The scent of mountain mint cooled the air.

“There you are,” the queen said. “Water, shade, and quiet. What do you think?”

“Perfect.” Ren drank from the rivulet until his stomach hurt, then plopped down beside the trunk of the olive tree. The soft earth cooled his fur. He almost didn’t notice that the queen was still there; her scales camouflaged her against the shrubbery.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked. “Do you want me to lie with you?”

“Uh, lie with me?”

“For company. It must have been a long trip getting here. And you came alone.”

Ren’s pulse quickened again as he blinked back tears. He nodded wordlessly.

The queen’s flank felt cool against his. If she noticed his nervousness, she gave no indication. Gradually, the gentle breeze, and the buzzing bees, and the steady rhythm of her breathing lulled him to sleep.

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Among sparse clouds, pockets of shadow hid from the morning sun. Ren blinked the sleep from his eyes and glanced beside himself. He found a Verdian—not the queen, but one of her drones. They met eyes, and then she licked his cheek.

“Um, good morning…”

She swiveled her head slowly, brown eyes wide, beholding the valley as though for the first time. Then she casually lay her head atop her paws. Ren waited for a few breaths, but she didn’t move.

Cautiously, he rested his head on hers. She sighed deeply, and her tail swished through the grass. Ren kept expecting her to object, to revert to some sort of feral state and snap at him… but gradually, as the sky lightened, and the gnatcatchers mewled in the trees, and the sweet scent of bricklebush floated down the breeze, he relaxed. His chest warmed along with the morning air.

“I see you’ve made a friend.”

Ren glanced up. The queen emerged from the grass with a dead rabbit wrapped up in one of her vines. When she dropped it in front of Ren, the scent made him wrinkle his nose. The drone beheld it with mild curiosity.

“I caught this for you while you were asleep. You look awfully hungry.” She glanced at his protruding ribs.

“Thank you,” he said, and bit into the rabbit. Hunger made it easier to ignore the queasiness from eating live prey, but the act still felt embarrassing. Especially in front of the queen.

“So, did you want to resume our conversation from yesterday?” she asked once he was done.

Ren lifted his head. “Are your lives as easy as the stories say?”

Without hesitating, she said, “Yes. We drink from the stream; we feed on the sun; we shelter beneath the rocks. We want for nothing. Does that reassure you?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“Then what else has you worried?”

Surely it’s obvious, Ren thought. He glanced at the drone beside him, who had been following the conversation with her eyes but showed no sign of comprehension. “Losing my intelligence.”

“Why does that bother you?”

Ren recalled his father’s words. You won’t be Ren anymore. You’ll lose your laughter, your love.

But he already didn’t feel like himself, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, and he’d already lost the last Coyote he cared about. He supposed he could seek out another pack, one that would tolerate his eccentricities. He could keep pretending meat didn’t sicken him. He could ignore the sunny warmth in his heart when he thought of growing scales. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

The queen spoke up, interrupting his reverie. “If you need to think about it, that’s okay. There’s enough fruit and prey here to last a while.”

“Thank you.” Ren stood. “I think I’ll forage now. That rabbit really whet my appetite.” Really, he just hoped some fruit would flush its taste from his mouth.

The queen nodded and turned away. “If you need me, just call.”

Ren stepped forward, then turned back. Before he left the shade of the olive tree, he gave the drone a quick lick on the top of her head. She responded with a nuzzle and a wag of her tail. Her breath smelled sugary, like cream bush.

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Ren spent the next two days observing the other drones—and found there wasn’t much to observe. They spent most of their time lying in the sun, often beside one another. They played occasionally, but if they got up, it was usually to drink or to cuddle with the queen.

As an experiment, Ren approached one of the drones and rolled onto his back, mouth open, tail wagging.

The drone hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and tentatively reached for Ren’s neck. Ren withdrew at the last moment and sprang to his feet, head still low, then nipped at the drone’s legs—she reared up and pounced. For a while, the two dove and twisted. The drone’s strength surprised Ren—she won the bulk of the exchanges—but her gentleness surprised him more: her bites were painless, and she let him spring back up as fast as she pinned him down. She didn’t snarl once, either, and hardly bared her fangs at all.

Once Ren had tired, he shook the pollen from his fur and headed to the eastern side of the valley. Beyond a copse of white alders, a stream plunged from a v-shaped notch into a glistening pool. Dragonflies ferried sunlight across the water. As Ren drank, he noticed a small rock shelter tucked away behind the waterfall. Thinking it would be a good place to cool off, he crept around the bank and entered. Moss and lichen coated the walls inside, and scarlet flowers blanketed the ground, slender petals overlapping like a network of veins.

“I never actually showed you the Verden flowers, did I?”

Ren jumped slightly at the queen’s voice. He peered to his right and made out her figure sitting by the wall, gazing down. Her face looked wistful—was it just the because of the shadows?

“This region is so dry, they’ll only grow in little nooks like this,” she continued. “Where I was born, you could find fields full of them. There were many of us.”

“…Why did you leave?”

“To spread hope. Because others deserve the chance that we’ve had.”

Ren let the splashing of the water fill the momentary silence. “Becoming a Verdian… what’s it like?”

“If you mean the transformation itself… It is uncomfortable. When it happened to me, I felt sicker than I ever had. And I was in pain for most of it.”

Ren swallowed, his throat tightening. “How long did it last?”

“Almost two days.”

Ren let out a shaky breath. “Okay. That’s not so bad. Two days isn’t so long.”

“I agree.” Her gaze solidified as she lifted her head. “It’s nothing compared to a whole life as a Coyote. If it’s what you want, then I know you can get through it.”

Ren’s eyes moistened; he looked away to hide it. The spray beside him cast rainbows across the valley. A pair of drones walked side by side beside the plunge pool, gaits relaxed, almost slack.

“It is what I want,” Ren whispered.

“Then follow me.” The queen’s wet scales brushed against his flank as she stepped past him.

Ren wondered, as they left the shelter, why her pace was so agonizingly slow—until he realized it wasn’t, and he was just nervous. He forced himself to slow down and take deep breaths.

The queen led Ren into the shade of an alder. She gestured for him to lie beside her. Sagebrush cushioned his belly.

“The flowers you saw obviously haven’t fruited yet. For convenience, I’ve taken to storing seeds inside me.” She unfurled one of the vines around her neck and lifted it to Ren’s face. Something thin and black poked out from the tip, like a bee stinger. “You could ingest them, but injection makes for an easier transformation and doesn’t require as many. Is that alright with you?”

Ren nodded shallowly, not trusting himself to speak.

The queen crossed her neck over his. “First I want you to calm down. There’s no rush.”

The queen’s warmth soothed Ren as he silently cried. She smelled of lilac and sage, sweet and clean. Towhees chirped carefree song in the branches above; crickets thrummed sleepily in the brush nearby. Gradually, Ren relaxed. “I’m ready,” he breathed.

“Okay. Give me a moment to find the vein. You’ll feel a little sting—just stay relaxed.” She wrapped one vine around his arm, just below his elbow, and squeezed. With a second vine, she palpated the inside of his forearm. When the sting came, his breath caught, but he didn’t flinch.

His arm ached dully for a moment, and then the queen withdrew her vine. Ren looked at her expectantly.

“All done.” She smiled gently. “You’ll feel the effects within an hour. Feel free to stretch or walk around, but you should stay close to the pool. If you get hot, I can splash water on you. Make sure to drink a lot. If you need anything at all, just ask.”

Ren sighed, letting his head fall. “Thank you.”

She nuzzled the side of his head. “I’d like to thank you too, for trusting me. I promise I’ll keep you safe and happy, just like all the others.”

Ren relaxed into her touch and let himself believe her.

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An itching pain had subsumed Ren’s body. By the evening, it had so exhausted him that he could barely even wince, let alone scratch. He lay on his side, panting, surrounded by clumps of fur. Small jade ridges had emerged all along his body. The queen gently ran her claws along his back, dislodging flakes of dead skin, and licked the blood away from the places that bled.

Ren spent the night in a twilight state, drifting in and out of sleep. Drones made frequent visits, helping groom and keep him warm, and the queen never left his side. By dawn he was lucid again, and his scales almost completely covered his skin.

“You’re beautiful,” the queen said, eyes wet, head pulled back to admire him.

Ren’s attention drifted as he tried to respond. The valley seemed different, as though there were twice as many leaves on the trees. And he couldn’t remember if the towhees’ and thrashers’ songs had been so intricate before, or if the wind had so densely ruffled the water.

He must have been losing his ability to think, but it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like thinking wasn’t important anymore.

Before the queen could comment on Ren’s silence, the sun breached the side of the valley—and Ren gasped. The light tingled sweetly on his scales. His head slackened as a frisson passed through him, sore shoulders relaxing…

“It feels good, right?”

The queen’s voice, though soft, still retrieved Ren’s attention. He beheld her face; her honeyed eyes magnified the sunlight, and her smile shone. He closed his eyes as he approached, touched his nose to hers, and let that touch linger.