I tested the spear in its back, jostling its wound. Again, there was no reaction.
It was definitely dead.
I crouched beside it and had begun to untie my pouch when suddenly its horns softened and melted into a river that flowed past its head, puddling like an oil slick on blood.
I snatched my pouch from its matted hair.
The shape of its head began to change.
Webs and talons vanished.
Matted locks became hair.
I stumbled backward, shaking my head. “No,” I said.
It continued to change. Slate-gray skin lightened.
“No,” I insisted.
My denial had no effect. It continued to transform. Height diminished. Mass decreased. It became what it was.
What it had been all along.
I began to hyperventilate. Squatting, I rocked back and forth in a posture of grief as old as time.
“No!” I screamed.
I’d thought I’d lost everything.
I hadn’t.
I stared at the person who lay dead on the floor of the forest.
The person I’d helped kill.
Now I’d lost everything.