She!

Chapter 1

Perhaps you'd think that I was unbelievably unimaginative. I prefer to think of it as fully exploring my particular condition before moving on to another. Remember also that once I have become, I can return to my earlier forms quickly and easily. Thus the variety has always been there. Just not in this new form.

I don't know how old I am, if that's important to you. Old. I know that. But time had little meaning to me until fairly recently. Many of my days were spent only in responding to circadian cycles and not to the dials of a clock.

You might say I'm a single entity evolutionary being.

If you don't know what circadian cycles are, you can join my understanding. I didn't know the shortening and lengthening days and nights had a name until fairly recently.

What are my earliest memories? What was I? I can't tell you. First, I'm not sure my being at the time has a name and, if it does, I don't know it. After all, when you are a limited being, it is very difficult to know yourself. There are no mirrors for the tiniest of creatures and, if you see another like you, there is no way you could recognize the reflection except by the biological attraction or revulsion.

Suffice it to say that I spent my time eating and growing. If others like I was then have a reproductive cycle, I never participated in it. I doubt that it was a particularly noteworthy sexual act.

I do have memories of crawling on multiple spindly legs. I have found that size somewhat useful since and have re-used it. Here, then, a bit of explanation is useful.

When I revert to earlier forms, my mind remains intact. Since I have lived for a period in one body before moving on to something else, I know what is necessary to live as that being. However, since I carry a memory of other shapes and sizes and experiences with me, it is impossible to totally return to the feeling of being that earlier creature.

Thus, I know that I was once a spider, because I know what a spider is now. But at the time I was one with all my being, I knew nothing but eat or be eaten.

Certainly, sex as an arachnid was not the main selling point of the form. I had two opportunities to partake in reproductive activities and both times narrowly escaped being my offspring's first meal or my sexual partner's next.

I've flown through the skies on at least two separate occasions. I mean lifelong occasions.

Once I was a butterfly or moth – I'm not sure which – and, again, did little but look for food. At least that mating was a little more enjoyable in retrospect. It was just badly needed – required actually -at the time I was doing it.

The other time, I was a small bird of some sort. In comparison to the sheer joy of flying, sex as a bird was rather trivial. Again, at the time, it was necessary but no more so and little more pleasant than searching for food.

It seems my life experiences, as I call them, are more or less up to my choosing. My NEW life experiences, that is. Maybe I'm just easily bored.

What happens is that one day I am doing something completely in character with the body I'm inhabiting. I see some other life form and have a pang of jealousy, you might call it. As I think about it over some time, I lose the characteristics of my current being and edge into that new being's realities.

Now that sounds pretty foggy. I'm sorry. It's my best explanation for what happens.

What happens, in quick and easy terms, is that I think about being something else and everything shifts until I am that other thing. A strong desire and bang, there I am. The time doesn't really matter but it's always a significant period of my current body's life term.

I was once some form of bug with an entire life cycle of a few days. But I spent much of one of those days thinking about being a lizard. Similarly, at one time I was a particularly quiet form of sea turtle and, I'm relatively sure, lived for many decades. I spent most of one year thinking about being a shark before that came to pass finally.

You see what I mean?

Interestingly, I've learned two things as I've reached higher development levels. First, my new body is invariably just post-pubescent. I'm sort of born a teenager, in other words, although, of course, this has no meaning in terms of a spider that lives a single warm season. The second is that time I spend in reversionary bodies, like temporarily being a bird to feel that wonderful exhilaration of flying for a few hours, does not subtract from my current life.

From experience, I know this to be true since I was once a very short-lived bug, reverted to being a spider for several days, and came back to the bug at the same stage of development I'd left.

That's another interesting thing, by the way. I have died in my bodies. In nature, it is a natural consequence of lifestyle. I have died of simple old age a few times and found myself reverted immediately to my previous form. Once I died in several incarnations, each reverting through all the others to the last stable creature. That was unpleasant enough that I try to alternate particularly enjoyable, and long term, life spans with less enjoyable ones so my reversion is only one back.

I have died violently a few times only to find myself reverted to an earlier form and much shaken by the experience. Luckily, reversion through those suddenly terminated lives, do not revert to the point of the death. It's not like going back in time. Rather the reversion is to the age at death.

Thus, if I was a healthy but stupid teenaged mule deer shot by a hunter's arrow, my next reversion would be to a healthy, stupid teenaged mule deer with enough knowledge to keep from being shot by another hunter's arrow and far in that previously successful hunter's future.

You see why I have difficulty saying exactly how long I have lived. I suppose I could sit down and remember parts of all my lives and what part of my development I was in at the time I moved on to something else. But the exercise would be difficult and, I think, totally unnecessary.

And there is another interesting point. You might think, from this so far, that I got tired of being a turtle and became a shark, tired of a shark and became a fast swimming tuna, tired of being a tuna and became a crocodile. I did those things, of course. But I was also a wolf and when I became old and grey-necked, I became a young, virulent wolf and took over the pack I had previously left to others. I was a whale for a very very long time and then became a younger whale and continued that wonderful existence. Actually, I have no idea how many times I've a whale or a deer or a bird or some form of dog or cat. I particularly like those forms.

In all cases, I am a stranger. It's not like I go around taking over other beings' bodies like some kind of vampire. Also, I am not always born to these bodies as the strongest and most virile. Frequently, I've found myself to be among the weakest. But, as they say, breeding tells.

Since I carry the knowledge of several lifestyles and many lives, I can use my intelligence to succeed where others of my size never could.

Also, when you know you will only revert to a previous life form if you die, you can afford to be very brave when the need arises. However, I'm not stupid about that either. I told you how unpleasant it is to die violently. Perhaps it's more unpleasant for me than for most, in fact. Not that I'm going to revert back through that violent end but just that the memory of agonizing death stays with me forever.

As I don't shift around through time, I also don't shift around through space. In other words, if I decide to be a bird, I'm going to be a bird right here, not somewhere far away in the world.

Sometimes, since the transitions are often slow, crawling around as a part crocodile, part bird, is a distinctly unpleasant activity. Therefore, I often chose to shift from a long-lived animal to a short-lived one as an interim step to another form. Since the new short-lived form cannot sustain a long transition, it tends to be abbreviated in the transfer from long to short. Then, since the short-lived body cannot sustain itself for long, the transition to a longer term life is very rapid. Far more so than the other way around.

With more intelligence, I have now chosen the shortest term life forms I have experienced, a form of virus that lives only a few hours, as an interim step to any other. I'm sure that I've seemed to almost wink out of existence only to be replaced by a totally different being. Actually, it takes a minute or so. (Now that I have access to timepieces I know that).

That change has been enough to send the fear of the gods into an attacking predator when a meal disappears into a hole and a larger predator reappears a moment later.

As I said, it hasn't always been this way. At one time, I changed slowly from one creature to another and spent days trying to live my dual lifestyle. Since almost every being has some kind of predator, some of these slow changes had very bad results. I quickly learned what things I could change to without making myself so vulnerable that I was killed. It also made me very secretive during these times of vulnerability.

Perhaps I'm even the stuff of mythology. I'm sure that someone seeing a bird changing to a lion would think of the griffin.

I also had to carefully watch the change from a water life form to a land form. I remember the consequences of trying to change directly from fish to deer once. I died miserably, drowning in two environments.

It encouraged going slowly from one element to another and staying in that element for as long as possible before changing back to the other. Therefore, I swam in the oceans for many many years after translating from animal to amphibian to fish. And stayed land-based for a long time before transmuting back into the water again.

Of course, I told you that I can return quickly and easily to any form I have enjoyed before. It was never as if I was unremittingly tied to the water or to the land. There does seem to be some limit on how long I can remain in this state.

After a relatively short time, I seem to tire very quickly and become weaker and weaker. In nature, weak is never a good condition. And, if I'm killed in one of these short-term incarnations, I die in my current life and revert. Just the simple dislocation of this makes it unpleasant without the dying, which makes it unbearable.

Needless to say, I avoid overstaying in a short-term form.

I told you about transforming from a meek rabbit being chased by a coyote to a bear chasing a coyote. Well, that's what I'd been thinking about anyway when I talked about a predator chasing prey into a hole and a bigger predator coming back out.

You can see the uses for the short-term incarnations, can't you? Well, it's made me almost impossible to kill. One second, I'm a cowering rabbit and the next second a grasshopper moving out of harm's way. One second, I'm a deer running from the forest fire and then a hawk flying quickly away. One second, I'm a silvery tuna and the next a very directed whale.

Bottom line, I haven't died of anything but out-of-the-blue accidents in centuries.

A very long time ago, I tried being a man for the first time. I spent a relatively short time doing that. I hated my fellows' fear and craven attempts at survival in a body ill-made to do that. I was too frequently cold or hot and always, it seemed, hungry. It wasn't one of my favorite incarnations and took a very long time to retry.

Of course, I recognized the spark of intelligence that has set man above most of the other animals of the world now. But I found that type of intelligence of little value in any other life form.

But man grew in his use of intelligence and, after an extended period in the oceans, I returned for an extended period on land and found mankind in dirty cities. The cities totally disgusted me but intelligence intrigued me. Though ill-directed in most cases, it seemed to be more seeking and expanding than even the much better directed and greater intelligence of the whale.

As a man, I became a great shaman to my village. I could frighten when I wished. I could save lives in many ways with my knowledge and my abilities. Any under my protection, could not be harmed. I would not allow it. And for their part, they worshiped me for it. It was a long and happy life.

I ended that time in the way of the shaman, turning myself into an eagle and flying away before choosing another incarnation.

With human intelligence and experience to draw on, I found life in many of the other forms vastly easier. Thinking ahead to consequences was the primary benefit. Recognizing dangers and pleasures was another.

Some animal incarnations were vastly boring to me now. The simple and continuous pursuit of food was numbing. But after a difficult experience, surely I craved this mindless pursuit of the simplest basics. And even this lifestyle was made easier by knowledge and anticipation.

The next time I had the urge to be human, I found that the conglomerate of human thinking had produced much of interest. Art, music, plays, great works. It was interesting to explore and to share the knowledge of these thinkers. But, at the same time, men had created the worst of its institutions. War was sought and fought with mindless fury.

Even my time as a shaman for a primitive village had not prepared me for this.

And if war were not enough, man had also created slavery, shifting his work to the shoulders of those he could control. These twin barbarities, drove me back to the oceans for many lives. On the way back to the ocean, I took a diverting side trip to an island where I translated from man to bull over a normal period. It proved to be a diversion when several men saw me in translation and could not understand my rage at their interference in my life.

As an animal, I follow the nature of animals. All those of us alive on this planet do the same whether we know we are doing it or not.

Though I sometimes spent a life as some type of herbivore, enjoying the speed and freedom and restfulness of that lifestyle, more often I was a predator. I flew as a raptor. I ran on soft, silent, and powerful paws. When I sought society, it was often to hunt with a group. I had no compunction about killing and still do not. That's the way of nature.

My human experiences only gave it a different direction than most of nature. Nature's killing is usually for food. Occasionally it is for the pure joy of the hunt and the kill itself. Being a man gave me another reason. To destroy the designs of evil.

Evil. An interesting concept. In nature, there is no evil. Evil is a concept that can only be applied to man as a description of man. Evil comes from man's ability to anticipate and therefore determine how to perform it on another man or on nature. How to enslave. How to wage war. How to steal what belongs to another.

With a special perspective and the objectivity of never truly belonging, I could identify evil easily. My determinations could never be tainted by patriotism or religious belief or home and family. If I had not, by personal nature, been a killer, I would have made the perfect judge for I could always perceive the evil by the smell and foul taste of it.

And I was always willing to use any necessary means to ferret out evil if it wasn't self- evident.

Was I effective? Perhaps sometimes. Identified, nothing could stop me from killing with sword or dagger or tooth and claw. If the evil was too large for me alone, I could lead and guide and motivate. Perhaps I supplied the heart to great warrior kings but I was never king.

Like nature, I preferred to kill simply, efficiently, with as little danger to myself as possible, and quickly. Stealth served the end much more frequently than any other form of death dealing. Yes, I did kill on occasion to provide a greater example for those who were only thinking about taking up the banners of evil. I could kill publicly in a way designed to get the greatest notice and, I hoped, have the most effect.

With all I did in numerous lives as human and animal, I am only one. I believe I had an effect where I acted, but I could only act in the spot where I was at the moment.

Love? you ask. Yes. Much of nature is love. Love is beyond the functions of reproduction and societies and self-preservation. And I felt love many times, though never at the lowest rungs of nature's ladder where it has no place. And I was loved many times – loved by mates and offspring and even groups.

Sexual activities are participated in at all levels, of course, in some form. However, these activities are anticipated, enjoyed at any time, and truly creative only in humans. There is no such thing as recreational sex anywhere but in humans and occasionally whales or great apes.

Sex makes the experience of love, though love is certainly not required, an entirely different experience than it is in any other creature.

These two things – love enhanced by sex and sex for the sheer fun of it – have drawn me back to being human more than any other reason.

I said you would think me unbelievably unimaginative. After all, I have never before been a human female.

I have been female before. A female black widow holds unusual status in her society, for instance. I've even been female in animal societies which only barely tolerate their female members most of the time. I did this to feel the wonder of giving birth, primarily.

I told you that I am covetous to the extreme. I make my choices of next life by watching something I think it would be interesting or illuminating to be for a time.

Since my first time as a human, I've tried many lives, unnoticed before, only out of intellectual curiosity. I'm the only being alive outside of the whales, who knows their migratory patterns. I'm the only being alive outside of several types of birds, who knows their homes. I'm the only being alive who knows the lifestyle of the shark. I'm the only being alive who even knows several forms of life exist in the deep oceans and in the microscopic world.

Since I take my pleasures this way, why would I want to be a part of a beaten, deprived, usually ignored, and weak entity? I've always seen women in this way.

If I wanted to be kept or to bear offspring or to be thought beautiful or to be worshiped for my gender, I could choose other animal kingdoms. The lion male is kept by his pride. The gestation period for a vole is only a few weeks and the offspring are almost immediately on their own. Many of the male bird species are very beautiful. The queen bee or ant is worshiped and catered to, though I found that to be a mind-numbing life.

Oh, I saw human females I admired in my time as a human. But the male lives had all the advantages and none of the downside.

So my choice of being a human female now is a real sign of the times. For the first time, I believe now I can enjoy a female life. I can dismiss all the downside of human female life and participate in society in whatever capacity I choose. Thanks to contraception, I don't have to accept pregnancy and birth and child rearing for 20 years as an inevitable result of sex. Thanks to the new norms, I can work in any human capacity I wish. Thanks to new moralities, I can do with my body as I wish, taking advantage of being a sexual being, without worrying about being stoned or imprisoned or shunned on any scale.

I can be shaman again if I wish. I can lead from the background as I never could before.

I can be huntress since weapons require only will and training and not enormous strength. If I wish, I can search out and destroy evil from a perspective never allowed me and from a cover that few would suspect.

I have waited many lives for this opportunity. Know that I will take full advantage.