Welcome to Gaia! ::

He stepped slowly, lightly, taking in his surroundings. He'd need to remember this path, for it was the shortest between his room and the main school building. Or at least he thought so. Hm.

Something caught his eye. He knew what bears were, and that girl was obviously a bear. Forest kin.

"Excuse me," he said, pointing on large claw her way, "but do you know where you are going?"

It was a vague question, but he didn't notice.

Chase tilted his head at the little bear. So it was a strange question, and she'd given a strange answer. "I suppose." He wasn't exactly agreeing, rather musing over her words. Was she trying to bring up a philosophy topic, or was she lost?

He watched as she lifted her hand. What an odd little bear.

"Deer do not. I am not a deer." His parents had made very sure that he knew that. There was pride in what they were. "Deer do not eat meat. Usually."

Which brought him back to his first reason for stopping her. "Do you know your way around this school?" He'd just ask the question in a different way.

Chase raised one eyebrow.

"Antlers," he said. "Hooves and tail. But Claws and Teeth, too. I" There was special emphasis on this word, "am not a deer. I look like a deer, but I am not one."

He sighed then. "What are you? A bear?"

"I," he said the word very slowly. He said most of his words slowly. "Am a Wendigo. Better than a mutant deer."

He pointed at her again. "And yes. You do look like a bear. But that does not mean you are one." His family's greatest stories talk of looking like one thing, or another, and being neither.

"And," he went on, clearly as an afterthought, "the bear I knew in the forest was much bigger and scarier than you." He'd been something out of a nightmare, an old soul, and Chase had loved his scary forest tales best of all. "But you do resemble him. In a way."

Chase let out a long breath. It wasn't a sigh, just an exhalation. "I am a Wendigo. A monster that shapeshifts and fools silly, hungry folk in the mountains." That's how his father always said it. Well, he always said more, but Chase didn't think now was the time for a proper story.

But then he smiled. She was amusing, this little bear. "I did not say that. But you are small. And not as scary as Old Bruce. But he was old, and well practiced at being scary."

He looked her up and down. Though he was looking down the whole time. "Where are you from? The forest?"

"Uummm," the polite sound of hesitation was slow as his other words, perhaps slower. "No." He was not a mutant deer. But this little bear seemed set on it. It would only get worse if she ever saw him when he wore four feet and not just two. For he very much looked like a mutant deer then. He sighed and told himself she could believe whatever she wanted.

"Bruce," he said, leaning down to look her in the eye, "was huge and black and great yellow eyes." Chase's claws came up and wriggled them, making a show of things as he opened his own eyes wide. "His teeth were bigger and he drooled constantly. And he had extra eyes on his chest that would look every-which-way. He told me himself he was born of a nightmare." Then he blinked at her and stood up again.

"The human world? How so?" He'd never met anyone from the human world before. Even his grandfather, who had supposedly gone there a lot in his youth, didn't speak of it much. Lots of trees, was all he'd ever really said.

"A scary bear." He really had no idea if Old Bruce was a mutant or not. "And I'm not a deer." He said again, rather quickly.

"But," he found himself very intrigued by her origins. "If you were born there, how are you here?" He was practically gawking at her. Didn't bears come from the pumpkin patch?