Weekly Writing – March 16 2024

Never take another shape too long, they said. Never long enough to need what it does.
Needs shape a thing more than flesh and bone, after all. Needs mould a thing’s mind to satisfy them. It had been wearing that shape for eight days, waiting for the ones outside to grow tired of hunting for it.
It had killed the thing that had lived in the burrow before. It had eaten the thing to satisfy its own needs for as long as possible, to remember the taste of raw blood and gristle and, so, itself.
But even eight days was a long time to have needs. It had taken the thing’s shape, mimicking perfectly the soft skin and nervous folds of the brain, and when the hunters had come, it had told them in the thing’s voice that it didn’t know where it was. It hadn’t seen it. It was innocent of itself.
The hunters had believed it, but they were still nearby. So it had eaten the thing’s carefully-stocked food and slept in the thing’s nest – bed, the shape it had taken said – and slowly, against its own will, it had learned a taste for warmth.
Soft blankets on soft skin. Sweet tastes in crackling wrappers tough to open with blunt teeth. Blunt nails, blunt senses, wrapped in a prey thing’s blunt, dull, comforting world.
The hunt had to move on soon. How long would it take, otherwise, to forget? Would it still know how to take its own shape when it was free again to burst out into the ripe and hungry night?