Kampala was amazed by what the humans had accomplished during their time on earth. In a way, she thought it was a shame that they had to go. Then again, they likely would not have accepted the Luperci as their brothers in any sense of the word. No, they would have hated them with every ounce of their being. Kam knew very little of their history, but from looking through photo books back home, she had realized rather quickly that they were not kind. Their intolerance for differences was astounding to the young Minnesotan, who had always tried so hard to be nice and understanding, no matter who she was talking to.

In her Optime form with a single rucksack slung over her shoulder, she walked down a lonely street in a town she had been told was Amherst, she struggled to imagine what it was like when the humans had been here. What had they been doing? Were they talking to one another? Were they holed up in their houses reading and writing books? She longed to enter the houses where they had once lived, but she knew that doing so was a dangerous risk. Instead, she merely peeked into the windows of an old shop, attempting to see if there was anything of value hidden inside.

A little disappointed that the place seemed to be mostly cleaned of anything interesting, she continued walking the streets of the ghost town, trying to imagine what it had been like before the virus hit. She had only heard of the even through stories passed down from her elders, and even those seemed like fairy tales. Had it not been for the physical evidence of the humans, Kampala likely would not have believed that they existed at all. But the giant structures they had made had certainly left their existence to be discovered by the Luperci and the other animals that now walked the earth.

She passed a residential district, although the houses were in quite a state of destruction. Many of them had completely collapsed, and the few that hadn’t were likely to do so any day now. Kam had been taught from a very early age that entering the buildings was risky business, so she did her best to stay away from them. Not that she had always followed that rule, of course. On more than one occasion she’d been caught sneaking into the buildings near her hometown, her parents furious that she would even think to put herself in such danger.

When she came to the edge of the decrepit town, she sniffed the air. Somebody was nearby, and, being the curious sort that she was, Kam decided to check it out. When she spotted the four-legged form up in the distance, she briefly felt self-conscious about being in her Optime form. However, shifting back was not something she wished to do, so she proceeded with caution in mind. “Pretty, isn’t it?” she asked, glancing back to the city before taking a seat on a nearby sidewalk curb to lessen the awkwardness of her towering over him. Eventually, there would be no remnants of the humans, and nature would take over.

Kampala often wished that she had been born a human during their golden age. They seemed to have been a powerful force to be reckoned with, and she felt that she would have fit in there. As a Luperci, however, she was stuck being somewhere halfway between a wolf and a human. Of course, she leaned closer to her human half, preferring the dexterity that her opposable thumbs gave her as well as the knowledge that she could gather through reading books. She was unsure whether non-Luperci were able to read, but they certainly would not be able to write without being able to hold a pen, pencil, or quill.

“The city, silly,” she replied, “It’s so different than the wilderness.” And indeed it was different. But differences were what made things beautiful (or ugly, depending on your view), and without differences, everything would be very bland and boring. Kam refused to believe that the city was built with ugliness in mind, and she enjoyed the way the structures were designed. Even though they were crumbling left and right, even that held merit for being beautiful. She felt that even decaying things were beautiful in their own right. One simply had to look hard enough to realize the beauty.

Kam was used to such opinions. She had been ridiculed for liking the human artifacts more than once in her short one year of life, and she had learned that some simply did not like the things that had been left behind. It was a bit disappointing to know that not everybody appreciated them, but she had learned to live with it. “I suppose it is unnatural. But it was built by natural beings, so it can’t be that unnatural, can it?” she asked, attempting to bring some kind of logic into her side. While she was far from a good debater, she did try and shed some light on why she thought the way that she did.

Then again, there was always the argument as to whether or not the humans were really natural. They had changed so much of the earth, often making it less livable even to themselves, without even considering the consequences. They dumped terrible things into the world and did not even seem to care. Eventually, nature found a way to reverse the situation, but Kampala had a feeling that the humans would have kept on doing all those terrible things if nature had not intervened. Still, though, they had fought nature, and that alone took some serious courage. She wondered if the Luperci would ever attempt to do the same things that the humans had. In a sense, they were already working their way toward the same fate.

Kampala felt strange explaining a culture she had only read and heard about in stories. “Humans,” she replied. “They built this city, and most of the other ‘unnatural’ things that are around us. They could not survive the cold harsh winters, so they had to build homes that would protect them.” There were likely other reasons for it, too, but Kampala knew that was one of the main reasons. Why they needed houses in mild climates was beyond her, of course, as they could have easily existed without them. Perhaps they had simply gotten too greedy.

“I suppose they did not care that it was wrong or different. They needed it, so they made it,” she replied with a shrug. While she was no expert on humans, and a lot of her knowledge was likely way off base, she did like to think she knew more than most. It was her goal to learn as much as she could about the creatures that had come before them. They may have been vastly different, but they had shaped the world into what it was up until the Luperci came to be. “Perhaps some of it was convenience, too.” Since the humans lacked fangs and claws, they had to create things to make up for their disadvantages.

“I have no doubt that they played a part in it,” replied Kampala. From the legends that had been passed down from generation to generation, she understood that shortly after the humans disappeared, the luperci were born. It was because of them that she was what she was. And she did not hate them for it. Instead, she embraced it, taking full advantage of what she could do in this form. In fact, she had not gone back to her four-legged form but once or twice since she had mastered the art of shifting. She enjoyed her hands far too much.

A comfortable (at least for Kam) silence fell between the two, and she sat admiring what was left of the city’s skyline. “My name is Kampala, by the way. Do you live around here?” she inquired. While jumping right into pack life was not her idea of fun, she imagined she would eventually find somewhere to settle down. There were plenty of places in this area to do so, and it would not make sense for her to pass on such an opportunity.

Kam shrugged her shoulders. She liked who she was, what she was, and so she felt no hate toward the humans. She found them fascinating on many levels, and she never felt the need to feel anything but appreciation for all that they had created.

The four-legged male introduced himself as Tharin Lupei, and Kampala though the name suited him well. Why, she could not quite say, but perhaps these things were not meant to be explained. “Are they all like, you?” she asked, but then realized that it might come across as rude. “What I mean to ask is are they all unable to shift?” A majority of those she had run into had contracted the ability at some point in time. Most through birth, but a few through either battle or intimacy with shifters. Kam had been born with the ability, though like everybody who was born with it, she had to be around six months old before she could actually take advantage of it. And once she had shifted from her four-legged form to her current one, she had rarely looked back.

The usefulness of her hand was far too good to leave, and she simply enjoyed walking around on two legs instead of four. It felt more natural than four to her now that she had been living this way for more than half of her life.