Shape Shifter Quotes

Ano snorted in a very unladylike and elkish way.

George didn't do quiet or subtle. His big paws kicked up rocks as he stretched into his own version of a freight train.

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ...We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

Lysandra's smile grew. "I like your fangs," she said sweetly. Aelin choked on her grape. Of course Lysandra did. Rowan gave a little grin that usually sent Aelin running. "Are you studying them so you can replicate them when you take my form, shape-shifter?" Aelin's fork froze in midair. "Bullshit," Aedion said.

That damn gaydar thing came with instructions in Japanese, so I can't figure out how it's supposed to work.

If fate is a shape-shifter, then loves is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It´s your best day and then your worst. It´s your most hope and then you most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed- a boat upon the water on the most dangerous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.

Fate is a shape-shifter. It is the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think something is one thing, but then it´s another.

... As Lorcan stared down at Lysandra, his blood-splattered face impassive. "Out of the way, shifter." Lysandra had held up a slender hand- and Lorcan paused. The shape-shifter pressed her other hand against her stomach, her face blanching. But then she smiled and said, "You forgot to say 'please.' " Lorcan's dark brows flattened. "I don't have time for this." He made to step around her, shove her aside. Lysandra vomited black blood all over him. Rowan didn't know whether to laught or cringe as Lysandra, panting, gaped at Lorcan, and at the blood on his neck and chest. Slowly, too slowly, Lorcan looked down at himself. She pressed a hand over her mouth. "I am-so sorry-" Lorcan didn't even step out of the way as Lysandra vomited on him again, black blood and bits of gore now on the warrior and on the marble floor.

But friendships are mercurial. They're shape-shifters. I've learned to allow them to fluctuate and take new forms. I love my friends; that's all that matters.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

The natives have a way of putting it themselves: “the real world behind this one,” they call it, suggesting that what we see and understand of the surface world is but a façade, which they are capable of navigating beyond. And so it is that in living among them, such things as shape-shifters, talking bears, men turning into birds and flying, all seem somehow plausible.

Wretched unfair, it is,” he remarked. “Of the three of us, I’m the one who’s always collected the rare and unusual, yet you two managed to snag the world’s most unusual women. First you, Crispin, with the only living half-breed, who then turned into an even more unusual vampire. And now you, Charles, have bagged a shape-shifter. Thought you were joking when you said Denise was the kitty. I’m simply green with jealousy

Do you know the rest?"Doug asked me expectantly. "What?The Achilles was a dysfuctional psychopath? Yeah I know that." "Well, yeah, everyone knows that. I mean the really cool part. About Thetis and Peleus." I shook my head, and he continued, professor-like, "Thetis was a sea mymph, and Peleus was a mortal who loved her. Only, when he went to woo her, she was a real bitch about it." "How so?" "She was a shape-shifter." I nearly dropped the book. "What?" Doug nodded. "He approached her, and she turned into all sorts of shit to scare him off - wild animals, forces of natures, monsters, whatever." "What... what'd he do?" "He held on. Grabbed her and wouldn't let go through all of those terrible transformations. No matter what she turned into, he just held on.

A quick and brutal fuck from behind usually served as an effective reminder of where you stood in the pack hierarchy.

What? Was he raised in a barn? Didn’t he ever learn how to close a door? Amateur shape-shifters…No manners whatsoever.” – Sasha “Do we need to get you a Midol before we go?” – Sundown “I’m not that easy to soothe, cowboy. My peeves are on a cellular level.” – Sasha

That movie we saw tonight really freaked me out." Her brows rose incredulously. "I'm a ghost, you're a shape-shifter, you live with a cursed vampire, and a zombie movie freaked you out. Honey, I love you, but that's a bold-faced lie. What gives?

Support Imagination. Read a book.

Grief is a shape-shifter, it defies logic, sneaking up on you when you least expect it and leaving you empty-handed and hollow when you go searching for it.

When I first heard Twilight was a book about vampires that sparkled in the light and shape shifters/wolves eager to assist the vampires, I thought, Finally, a metaphorical book dealing with politicians and lobbyists.

Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract; grief tasted like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. Grief was a shape-shifter, and invisible too; grief could be captured as reflection in a twin’s eye. Grief heard its death sentence the morning you both woke up and one was singing and the other caught the song.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer—from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

Eat dirt evil doer!

Locking eyes with a shape-shifter was aggressive. Very aggressive. One generally didn't do that unless one wanted to fight. Or fuck.

They said the shape-shifters fucked with the enthusiasm of animals—if they didn't devour you with the enthusiasm of one first.

Shape shifters were on the pages of a book—a really, really good book—not beside her on the bed in broad daylight.

All the experiences in your life- from single conversations to your broader culture- shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you've been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry- and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint.

Frank rose, tugged at his shirt, then didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. At one time, I would have been used to such nervous behavior from mortals I encountered, but now, it took me a moment to realize Frank was still in awe of me. Perhaps, being a shape-shifter, Frank was more willing than most to believe that, despite my unimpressive mortal appearance, I was still the same old god of archery inside. You see? I told you Frank was adorable.

She had performed as a shape-shifter with no sense of identity.

Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through life without scars. No way!! It's a friggin' emotional boxing ring, and either you go one round, four rounds, or forty rounds, depending on your opponent. And by God, if you opponent is you...you will go forty. If it's God, you'll barely go one because Big Daddy has a rope-dope down! He's a shape shifter. You think you're fighting him, screaming, punching, begging him for help. And he leaves you with...YOU.

I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shape shifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and thing suck. I am pressed so hard against the earth..

The presiding spirit of Welsh history has been the shape-shifter Gwydion the Magician, who always changed his shape and always stayed the same.

I believe you are familiar with my stance on handcuffs, shape-shifter. Particularly when you’re the one wearing them.

It doesn't matter if you're human, or a shape shifter, women always get the bad end of the bargain.

Fate's got a fucking sick sense of humor. Fate is a shape-shifter. It's the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think its one thing, but then its another.

I laughed in disbelief, the sharp sound rebounding down the corridor, the echo eventually replaced by the flat, continuous drip of water against stone. First vampires, witches, and shape-shifters. And now this. This is what Alice must have felt like when she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

Jules: Emma? You haven't said anything since we left the church. Emma: You're in love with me. Still. Jules: What are you talking about? Emma: I thought you didn't love me anymore. But that isn't true, is it? Jules: Why are you saying that? Why now? Emma: Because of the church. Because of what happened. We burned a church down, Julian, we melted stone. Jules: What does that have to do with anyhing? Emma: It has everything to do with. You don't understand. You can't. Jules: You're right. I don't understand. I don't understand any of it, Emma. I don't understand why you suddenly decided you didn't want me, you wanted Mark, and then you decided you didn't wnat him either and you dropped him like he was nothing, in fron of everyone. What the hell were you thinking ... Emma: What do you care? What do you care how I feel about Mark? Jules: Because I needed you to love him. Because if you threw me away and everything we had, it had better be for something that meant more to you, it had better be for something real, but maybe none of this is ever real to you ... Emma: Not real to me? You don't know what you're talking about, Julian Blackthron! You don't know what I've given up, what my reasons are for anything, you don't know what I'm trying to do ... Jules: What you're trying to do? How about you did do? How about breaking my heart and breaking Cameron's and breaking Mark's? What, am I missing someone else, some other person whose life you want to wreck forever? Emma: Your life isn't wrecked. You're still alive. You can have a good life! You kissed that faerie girl... Jules: She was a leanansidhe! A shape-shifter! I thought se was you! Emma: Oh. Oh. Jules: Yes, oh. You really think I'm going to fall in love with someon else? You think I get to do that? I'm not you, I don't geet to fall in love every week with someone different. I wish it wasn't you, Emma, but it is, it'll always be you, so don't tell me life isn't wrecked when you don't know the first thing about it!

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

Anger, while it lasts, so blinds the heart that it is unable to discern the truth. It is a kind of enchanter, which can transform human nature. Anger is a shape-shifter, as stories tell us, for it strips people of their reason and totally changes their appearance, and transforms them from a human into the likeness of a beast.

What if your ménage fantasy became possible? Two gorgeous hunks, one dark and surly, the other blond and bright, lived to please and sexually fulfill you? What if you burned with passion like a cat in heat and only these two alpha males could satisfy you? What if you found out they were shape-shifters and so were you?" ~ Eliza ~

So what’s all the fuss?” he asked instead. “Where’s all the shit coming from?” Dean told him. He tried to make it concise, using flash words such as “fire” and “conspiracy” and “big freakin’ shape-shifter,” and told Roland, too, about Miri and Robert and Kevin. The red jade. “You’re both fucked,” Roland said. “Seriously. I’ll start arranging the funeral now.” “I want a happy boss. Where’s the positive reinforcement?” “Buried with Pollyanna in my backyard. Which is where you’ll be if you don’t play your cards right.

I never claimed being peculiar was easy," she said after a moment. " There are many unpleasant and difficult things about being one of us. Learning how to negotiate a world of people who can't understand you and don't want to--that's probably the hardest bit. Many find it impossible and retreat into loops. But I never saw that for you. You've got a really special talent, and I don't mean your facility with hollowgast. You're a shape-shifter of sorts, Jacob, able to move easily between worlds. You were never meant to be tied to just one home, or one family. You'll have many, like your grandfather did.

He'd watched the world change around him, civilizations rise and fall, and although he could have anything, anyone, he wanted her.

For a breath she wished for a shape-shifter’s heart so she could shed her skin and weave herself into something else, the music or the wind, and blow across the world.

It was amazing how a shape-shifter could spot their mate from their scent alone.

Books turn people into time travelers, shape shifters, body switchers, mind readers, and immortals, and therefore books are the last great alchemy of our age.

The witch is notorious shape-shifter and comes in many guises. More than anything, though, the witch is a shifting and shadowy symbol of female power and a force for subverting the status quo. She is also a vessel that contains our conflicting feelings about female power: our fear of it, our desire for it, our hope that it can and will grow stronger despite the flames that are thrown at it.

Also…” Blitz scrutinized Alex. “The bag needs to change sizes, which means I’ll need to dye the thread with the blood of a shape-shifter.” Alex’s smile melted. “How much blood are we talking about?” “Just a little.” She hesitated, maybe wondering if she should bust out her garrote and substitute the blood of a dwarf and an einherji.

Google is a shape-shifter, but each shape harbors the same aim: to hunt and capture raw material. Baby, won’t you ride my car? Talk to my phone? Wear my shirt? Use my map? In all these cases the varied torrent of creative shapes is the sideshow to the main event: the continuous expansion of the extraction architecture to acquire raw material at scale to feed an expensive production process that makes prediction products that attract and retain more customers.

Humans. You’re too quick with labeling what you don’t understand.

He wore tight red slacks and a white shirt. His body, I could see, was impeccably shaped.

Contemporary writers use animal-transformation themes to explore issues of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and the process of transformation...just as storytellers have done, all over the world, for many centuries past. One distinct change marks modern retellings, however, reflecting our changed relationship to animals and nature. In a society in which most of us will never encounter true danger in the woods, the big white bear who comes knocking at the door [in fairy tales] is not such a frightening prospective husband now; instead, he's exotic, almost appealing. Whereas once wilderness was threatening to civilization, now it's been tamed and cultivated; the dangers of the animal world have a nostalgic quality, removed as they are from our daily existence. This removal gives "the wild" a different kind of power; it's something we long for rather than fear. The shape-shifter, the were-creature, the stag-headed god from the heart of the woods--they come from a place we'd almost forgotten: the untracked forests of the past; the primeval forests of the mythic imagination; the forests of our childhood fantasies: untouched, unspoiled, limitless. Likewise, tales of Animal Brides and Bridegrooms are steeped in an ancient magic and yet powerfully relevant to our lives today. They remind us of the wild within us...and also within our lovers and spouses, the part of them we can never quite know. They represent the Others who live beside us--cat and mouse and coyote and owl--and the Others who live only in the dreams and nightmares of our imaginations. For thousands of years, their tales have emerged from the place where we draw the boundary lines between animals and human beings, the natural world and civilization, women and men, magic and illusion, fiction and the lives we live.

It’s drier than I thought it would be.” “That isn’t saying much,” the shape-shifter griped, wrapping the waterlogged coat more securely around her frame. “We’ve absorbed enough water to be classified as vernal pools.

Timur." She whispered his name. Knowing she shouldn't. Unable to stop herself. She waited until his blue eyes lifted to hers. "You're not a psychopath, nor are you what your father tried to shape you into. You're...extraordinary.

(Dude, how come the Greeks don’t get a goddess of chocolate? No fair.) The Maya also have shape-shifters, demons, magicians, giants, demigods, and an underworld that may or may not be accessible from the back of a local taco shop.

You and I are not like normal humans. We’re known as the Chosen and possess, how should I say it? We possess abilities that would be thought impossible. Think of, I don’t know, think of shape-shifters, illusionists, seers – like me.

How many times in my life will I just ignore everything that I once had—once was—to become someone new? Is there any part of me that’s actually…me? Or am I nothing more than a shape-shifter, becoming whatever I need to be to survive?

Blake shook his head. “You have to see that a naked woman running around in a forest would have to raise questions with anyone who happened to see it.” “Questions about that woman’s sanity, or theirs?” she asked. “Both,” Blake said.

A tear slipped from eye, as I stood helpless beside Kiran. “They have done nothing wrong, except fight for the freedom you have stolen from them, from all of us!” I shouted back, unable to stay silent when my friends stood at his mercy. “I give you freedom, the freedom to live your life as you please,” Lucan challenged, tilting his chin with pride and sincerity. “I ask nothing of you, except for your loyalty. I am the king, it is the least of what I deserve,” Lucan turned to address the kingdom, his argument ringing through the air. “Then why is it only your bloodline that is allowed immortality?” I argued, taking a step forward. “Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share true immortality? Are you so scared of a people that realize they don’t need a king?” I turned to face the crowd too, hoping to empower them with my words.

She understood now why so many members of her kind died so young. It was possible to squeeze an entire lifetime of living into a single day: to live more, to feel more, in the span of twenty-four hours than most did in eighty years. Shape-shifters lived in a world of color and brightness, of heightened senses. They felt everything more intensely, and so they lived their lives more intensely—anything to make their hearts pound harder. Life could be like a drug. But how does one wean oneself off life?

The artist is often misunderstood because, stepping outside himself and holding most details in great tension, he's about as complex as a shape-shifter; or a head with faces on all sides, but not necessarily in the negative connotation as one being two-faced usually implies. For instance, to be misunderstood can mean to be improperly deemed a troublemaker when that is not one's true intent: you see, to troublemakers, the artist knows that the peacemaker may seem like a troublemaker; therefore he may, whether in honesty or in jest, at times, present himself as a troublemaker for perceptual, artistic flair. But then to the artless peacemakers, because of this they will interpret him as a troublemaker. This is why the artist has so few allies. To the troublemakers he's a troublemaker, yet still the peacemakers a troublemaker.

offending either Bernie or Jim. First he would hand to whomever opened the door the big woven basket of fruit, flowers, and candies that Professor Louisa Bourbonette had arranged as their wedding gift, and then keep the conversation focused on what they had thought of Hawaii on their

This is beautiful." Eugenie ran her fingers along a massive mahogany sideboard, on the top of which rested a red velvet sash with fine embroidery on it and, on top of the sash, a silver dagger. That little vignette was Jean Lafitte in a nutshell. Refined gentleman and renegade. Velvet and violence.

As of February 2022, it has been four years since my diagnosis. And I wouldn’t describe myself as healed from complex PTSD. I wouldn’t even say I am in remission. I’ve learned that the beast of C-PTSD is a wily shape-shifter. Just when I believe I can see the ghoul for exactly what it is, it dissipates like a puff of smoke, then slithers into another crevice in the back of my mind. I know now it will emerge again in another form in a month or a week or two hours from now. Because loss is the one guaranteed constant in life, and since my trauma reliably resurfaces with grief, C-PTSD will be constant, too. Rage will always coat the tip of my tongue. I will always walk with a steel plate around my heart. My smile will always waver among strangers and my feet will always be ready to run. In the past few years, my joints have continued to rust and swell. I cannot transfuse the violence out of my blood.

I said we’re not the same. Here’s why. All my life, every day, I’ve wished I was someone else. I’ve wanted to be Kate, or Sarah Jane Smith, or Amy Pond, or anyone really. But you’re a shape-shifter, you’ve been lots of other people—and you want to be me. I think that makes you a much better Petronella Osgood than I am. I think I’d like to be a better version. If

Today was “ananthropomorphic day”: once a month, the gods got to take a holiday from humdrum humanoid shapes and look any way they wanted. Since most gods are versatile shape-shifters and/or have god-awful taste in clothing, this meant that temporary blindness or at least a good headache was lurking around every corner. It was meant to boost morale. It usually sank his.

For the record," I do not desire your body. Not that you're hideous or anything, far from it. Even with those scars, your chest is really nice, and I like your legs because they aren't scrawny, and you have nice shoulders and naughty bits, but I've never been one to put physical attributes ahead of more important things." "Such as?" He had his hands on his hips when he asked the question, which just made me want to giggle again. "Intelligence, a sense of humor, and oh yes, not being a mythical creature." I swallowed another giggle. "Not that it wasn't a cool form, but still. I like my men without the sort of baggage that must go with being a shape-shifter." "Is that so?" One eyebrow lifted. "Yes." "Then you will not like this." He pulled me against him, his mouth moving into place on mine, his breath hotter than I could have imagined. And then he kissed the very wits right out of my brain.

Lysandra had finally shifted back into her human form—and true to her oath months ago, her once-full breasts were now smaller. Despite what awaited them in the private dining room at the back of the inn, Aelin caught the shape-shifter’s eye and smirked. “Better?” she murmured over Evangeline’s head as Darrow’s messenger, Aedion at his side, strolled through the crowd. Lysandra’s grin was half feral. “Oh, you have no idea.” Behind them, Aelin could have sworn Rowan chuckled.

All the experiences in your life – from single conversations to your broader culture – shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you’ve been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry – and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint.

What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars. No way!! It’s a friggin’ emotional boxing ring, and either you go one round, four rounds, or forty rounds, depending on your opponent. And by God, if your opponent is you . . . you will go forty. If it’s God, you’ll barely go one because Big Daddy has rope-a-dope down! He’s a shape-shifter. You think you’re fighting him, screaming, punching, begging him for help. And he leaves you with . . . YOU.

So, the first question we must ask ourselves is, what is a boggart?” Hermione put up her hand. “It’s a shape-shifter,” she said. “It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.” “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Professor Lupin, and Hermione glowed. “So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears. “This means,” said Professor Lupin, choosing to ignore Neville’s small sputter of terror, “that we have a huge advantage over the boggart before we begin. Have you spotted it, Harry?” Trying to answer a question with Hermione next to him, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet with her hand in the air, was very off-putting, but Harry had a go. “Er — because there are so many of us, it won’t know what shape it should be?” “Precisely,” said Professor Lupin, and Hermione put her hand down, looking a little disappointed. “It’s always best to have company when you’re dealing with a boggart. He becomes confused. Which should he become, a headless corpse or a flesh-eating slug? I once saw a boggart make that very mistake — tried to frighten two people at once and turned himself into half a slug. Not remotely frightening. “The charm that repels a boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing.

The beauty and challenge of long-term relationships is that you change and shift at different times in different directions, side by side under the same roof. Most often, these changes are subtle and you’re subconsciously adapting all the time to the constant but gentle shifting of another human being that you’re so connected to; like two shape-shifters battling to coincide, for better or worse. Remain who you are while they alter, or change with them. Inspire them to go in another direction, gently push, pull, mould, tear at, nurture. Wait.

rock Moore Brock has enough on his hands as alpha bear shifter and Lieutenant of his firefighter rescue team, handling a serious case of dangerous fires around the Reno-Sparks , Nevada area. Family has always come first, and when his mother phones him with a cryptic message, he knows something's up. It's another reason he's hesitant to take the next step with Sky, the shapely, captivating and feisty bombshell he wishes he could one day call his one true mate ... if only there weren't so many barriers and secrets standing in their way. Somehow, all those hurdles start to seem small when

The inorganic world out of which life has emerged and into which, in season, it falls back, possesses the latent capacity for endless ramification and diversity. A few chance elements which appear thoroughly stable in their reactions dress up as for a masked ball and go strolling, hunted and hunter together. Their forms alter through the ages. They are shape-shifters, role-changers. Like flying lizard or ancestral men, they run their course and vanish, never to return. The chemicals of which their bodies were composed lie all about us but by no known magic can we return a lost species to life. Life, in fact, is the product of singular and unreturning contingencies of which the inorganic world disclaims knowledge. Only its elements, swept up in the mysterious living vortex, evoke new forms, new habits, and new thoughts.

I encounter forms of this attitude every day. The producers who work at the Ostankino channels might all be liberals in their private lives, holiday in Tuscany, and be completely European in their tastes. When I ask how they marry their professional and personal lives, they look at me as if I were a fool and answer: “Over the last twenty years we’ve lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we’ve realized they are illusions, that everything is PR.” “Everything is PR” has become the favorite phrase of the new Russia; my Moscow peers are filled with a sense that they are both cynical and enlightened. When I ask them about Soviet-era dissidents, like my parents, who fought against communism, they dismiss them as naïve dreamers and my own Western attachment to such vague notions as “human rights” and “freedom” as a blunder. “Can’t you see your own governments are just as bad as ours?” they ask me. I try to protest—but they just smile and pity me. To believe in something and stand by it in this world is derided, the ability to be a shape-shifter celebrated. Vladimir Nabokov once described a species of butterfly that at an early stage in its development had to learn how to change colors to hide from predators. The butterfly’s predators had long died off, but still it changed its colors from the sheer pleasure of transformation. Something similar has happened to the Russian elites: during the Soviet period they learned to dissimulate in order to survive; now there is no need to constantly change their colors, but they continue to do so out of a sort of dark joy, conformism raised to the level of aesthetic act. Surkov himself is the ultimate expression of this psychology. As I watch him give his speech to the students and journalists, he seems to change and transform like mercury, from cherubic smile to demonic stare, from a woolly liberal preaching “modernization” to a finger-wagging nationalist, spitting out willfully contradictory ideas: “managed democracy,” “conservative modernization.” Then he steps back, smiling, and says: “We need a new political party, and we should help it happen, no need to wait and make it form by itself.” And when you look closely at the party men in the political reality show Surkov directs, the spitting nationalists and beetroot-faced communists, you notice how they all seem to perform their roles with a little ironic twinkle.

So what did you and Landon do this afternoon?” Minka asked, her soft voice dragging him back to the present. Angelo looked up to see that Minka had already polished off two fajitas. Damn, the girl could eat. “Landon gave me a tour of the DCO complex. I did some target shooting and blew up a few things. He even let me play with the expensive surveillance toys. I swear, it felt more like a recruiting pitch to get me to work there than anything.” Minka’s eyes flashed green, her full lips curving slightly. Damn, why the hell had he said it like that? Now she probably thought he was going to come work for the DCO. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, not after just reenlisting for another five years. The army wasn’t the kind of job where you could walk into the boss’s office and say, “I quit.” Thinking it would be a good idea to steer the conversation back to safer ground, he reached for another fajita and asked Minka a question instead. “What do you think you’ll work on next with Ivy and Tanner? You going to practice with the claws for a while or move on to something else?” Angelo felt a little crappy about changing the subject, but if Minka noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. And it wasn’t like he had to fake interest in what she was saying. Anything that involved Minka was important to him. Besides, he didn’t know much about shifters or hybrids, so the whole thing was pretty damn fascinating. “What do you visualize when you see the beast in your mind?” he asked. “Before today, I thought of it as a giant, blurry monster. But after learning that the beast is a cat, that’s how I picture it now.” She smiled. “Not a little house cat, of course. They aren’t scary enough. More like a big cat that roams the mountains.” “Makes sense,” he said. Minka set the other half of her fourth fajita on her plate and gave him a curious look. “Would you mind if I ask you a personal question?” His mouth twitched as he prepared another fajita. He wasn’t used to Minka being so reserved. She usually said whatever was on her mind, regardless of whether it was personal or not. “Go ahead,” he said. “The first time we met, I had claws, fangs, glowing red eyes, and I tried to kill you. Since then, I’ve spent most of the time telling you about an imaginary creature that lives inside my head and makes me act like a monster. How are you so calm about that? Most people would have run away already.” Angelo chuckled. Not exactly the personal question he’d expected, but then again Minka rarely did the expected. “Well, my mom was full-blooded Cherokee, and I grew up around all kinds of Indian folktales and legends. My dad was in the army, and whenever he was deployed, Mom would take my sisters and me back to the reservation where she grew up in Oklahoma. I’d stay up half the night listening to the old men tell stories about shape-shifters, animal spirits, skin-walkers, and trickster spirits.” He grinned. “I’m not saying I necessarily believed in all that stuff back then, but after meeting Ivy, Tanner, and the other shifters at the DCO, it just didn’t faze me that much.” Minka looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re a real American Indian? Like in the movies? With horses and everything?” He laughed again. The expression of wonder on her face was adorable. “First, I’m only half-Indian. My dad is Mexican, so there’s that. And second, Native Americans are almost nothing like you see in the movies. We don’t all live in tepees and ride horses. In fact, I don’t even own a horse.” Minka was a little disappointed about the no-horse thing, but she was fascinated with what it was like growing up on an Indian reservation and being surrounded by all those legends. She immediately asked him to tell her some Indian stories. It had been a long time since he’d thought about them, but to make her happy, he dug through his head and tried to remember every tale he’d heard as a kid.

Even when I’m writing about shape shifters and magical lands, I’m looking into my own heart.

The city had fallen, his parents had died, no shred of their old lives would be left by the shape-shifters, but there were still lords galloping around on horses that could uphold the old rules. The destruction and desperation had afforded Alistair a few moments of freedom to practice magic, but now he would go back to the life of poverty and misery and powerlessness that he had been born to.

One more interesting tidbit about Jörmungand: it is the offspring of Loki, the Norse god of mischief, and an evil giantess. Sadly, I must admit to once trying to fathom the logistics of the monster’s conception (Loki being only the size of a man), only to remember that Loki, a shape-shifter, could easily accomplish the deed. Even more horrifying, though, is to imagine the birth process of such an endless snake. . .

You will come to understand that what is sorcery and magic to you is only the forgotten laws of the universe." (Irusan, the shape-shifter)

One of his chief strengths was his ability to observe, assimilate and then reinterpret,” said Dez Dickerson, who played guitar with Prince from 1979 to 1983. “So, with every engineer he worked with, he was observing and assimilating recording techniques. He was also observing and assimilating songwriting techniques and stuff that was freely happening inside the band. And all of that influenced him and he became a shape-shifter—he became great at assimilating these techniques and reinterpreting them in a way people didn’t recognize. And that became the genius of Prince.

What of a tale from Adarlan instead?” All eyes had turned to Nesryn and Falkan. The shape-shifter winced. “I’m afraid mine are rather dull.” He considered. “I did have an interesting visit to the Red Desert once, but …” He gestured as much as he could to Nesryn. “I should like to hear one of your stories first, Captain.

I name you Shriker. Shape-Shifter. Mighty Hunter. Your master has betrayed you. And through his betrayal man’s best friend becomes his worst enemy.

Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you’ve been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry – and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint.

Caitlyn had always thought that shape-shifters were hunky men with rippling abs, ready to transform into snarling alpha wolves at the slightest provocation. But somehow her shape-shifter ended up being a decrepit old man who kept losing his teeth and turning into a fuzzy fruit bat.

As the sentient book began flipping through pages all by itself, I focused on Eddie and my dream about Poseidon. The pages finally riffled to a stop, and the book lay open to a page decorated with swirling blue and aqua waves around the edges. At the top of the page swooping gold letters spelled out "Nereus." Baffled, I quickly scanned the page. According to the book, Nereus was a figure in ancient Green mythology. He'd been a Titan, the only one who'd avoided getting sent off to where the gods had sent the Titans after the war. He was the father of the Nereids and some dude called Nerites, who looked suspiciously like a Hippocampus. He was a shape shifter with the power of prophecy, who'd aided heroes such as Hercules. He

Lysandra had held up a slender hand—and Lorcan paused. The shape-shifter pressed her other hand against her stomach, her face blanching. But then she smiled and said, “You forgot to say ‘please.’” Lorcan’s dark brows flattened. “I don’t have time for this.” He made to step around her, shove her aside. Lysandra vomited black blood all over him. Rowan didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe as Lysandra, panting, gaped at Lorcan, and at the blood on his neck and chest. Slowly, too slowly, Lorcan looked down at himself. She pressed a hand over her mouth. “I am—so sorry—” Lorcan didn’t even step out of the way as Lysandra vomited on him again, black blood and bits of gore now on the warrior and on the marble floor. Lorcan’s dark eyes flickered. Rowan decided to do them both a favor and joined them in the antechamber, shutting the queen’s bedroom door behind him as he stepped around the puddle of blood, bile, and gore. Lysandra gagged again, and wisely darted to what looked to be a bathing room off the foyer. All of the men and demons she’d wasted, it seemed, did not sit well in her human stomach. The sounds of her purging leaked out from beneath the bathing room door. “You deserved that,” Rowan said.

Lysandra’s smile grew. “I like your fangs,” she said sweetly. Aelin choked on her grape. Of course Lysandra did. Rowan gave a little grin that usually sent Aelin running. “Are you studying them so you can replicate them when you take my form, shape-shifter?” Aelin’s fork froze in midair. “Bullshit,” Aedion said. All amusement had vanished from the courtesan’s face. Shape-shifter.

Grief is a shape-shifter. It defies logic, sneaking up on you when you least expect it and leaving you empty-handed and hollowed out when you go searching for it.

Everything else is easy to fix if you make a mistake. Wrong house, wrong job. But choosing a mate… or having fate choose one for you… that is the biggest decision of your life. It shapes who you are, who your children will be, and how you live your life.

The Nix were shape-shifters. Sometimes they appear as beautiful women, sitting combing their long blue hair, their voices luring sailors to death on the jagged rocks. Sometimes the Nix is a man playing a violin, a wild tune that the traveller must follow at his peril. The Nix can even appear as a horse, a brook horse it’s called in Scandinavian legend, a beautiful animal, snow white or coal black, that appears in the water by a ravine or a waterfall. If you climb on its back you can never dismount and the horse will gallop away to the ends of the earth. On dark nights you can hear the horse’s hoofbeats, steady and relentless, carrying its rider to hell.

In the domain of shape shifters, dwelling brings vulnerability, as their ever-changing nature defies prediction. Amidst their enigmatic transformations, one must embrace the uncertainty and find strength in adaptability

Was he crossing his fingers behind his back when he promised to be with my mother for richer and poorer, till death do us part? I doubt he’d see it like that. He was just doing what I’d watched him do time and time again: saying what he knew the person he was with wanted to hear. Better to lie and be liked than be hated for telling the truth—that’s his general approach to life. He’s a shape-shifter, my father. A people pleaser. Until he gets caught out. Able to be anything anyone needs him to be. Apart from a decent dad or husband.

Each of us has a beast roaming beneath our skin, roaring to get out. While your Tamlin prefers fur, I find wings and talons to be more entertaining.' A lick of cold kissed down my spine. 'Can you shift now, or did she take that, too?' 'So many questions from a little human.' But the darkness that hovered around him began to writhe and twist and flare as he rose to his feet. I blinked, and it was done. I lifted the iron poker, just a little bit. 'Not a full shift, you see,' Rhysand said, clicking the black razor-sharp talons that had replaced his fingers. Below the knee, darkness stained his skin- but talons also gleamed in lieu of toes. 'I don't particularly like yielding wholly to my baser side.' Indeed, it was still Rhysand's face, his powerful male body, but flaring out behind him were massive black membranous wings- like a bat's, like the Attor's. He tucked them in neatly behind him, but the single claw at the apex of each peeked over his broad shoulders. Horrific, stunning- the face of a thousand nightmares and dreams. That again-useless part of me stirred at the sight, the way the candlelight shone through the wings, illuminating the veins, the way it bounced off his talons. Rhysand rolled his neck, and it all vanished in a flash- the wings, the talons, the feet, leaving only the male behind, well-dressed and unruffled. 'No attempts at flattery?' I had made a very, very big mistake in offering my life to him. But I said. 'You have a high-enough opinion of yourself already. I doubt the flattery of a little human matters much to you.' He let out a low laugh that slid along my bones, warming my blood. 'I can't decide whether I should consider you admirable or very stupid for being so bold with a High Lord.' Only around him did I have trouble keeping my mouth shut, it seemed.

A breeze announced his arrival- and I turned from the table toward the long hall, to the open glass doors to the garden. I'd forgotten how huge he was in this form- forgotten the curled horns and lupine face, the bearlike body that moved with feline fluidity. His green eyes glowed in the darkness, fixing on me, and as the doors snicked shut behind him, the clicking of claws on marble filled the hall. I stood still- not daring to flinch, to move a muscle. He limped slightly. And in the moonlight, dark, shining stains were left in his wake. He continued toward me, stealing the air from the entire hell. He was so big that the space felt cramped, like a cage. The scrape of claw, a huff of uneven breathing, the dripping of blood. Between one step and the next, he changed forms, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the blinding flash. When at last my eyes adjusted to the returning darkness, he was standing in front of me. Standing, but- not quite there. No sign of the baldric, or his knives. His clothes were in shreds- long, vicious slashes that made me wonder how he wasn't gutted and dead. BUt the muscled skin peered out beneath his shirt was smooth, unharmed.

They were Fae like us, but not. The ears, the grace, the strength were identical, but they were shape-shifters, all of them. Each capable of turning into an animal. And each, even in their humanoid body, equipped with elongated canine teeth. It was a puzzle—enough of one that my mother paused her warmongering. There were two types of Fae. From two seemingly unconnected and distant worlds. These new Fae bore elemental magic, strong enough to make Pelias wary of them. They were more aggressive than the Fae we knew—wilder. And they answered directly to Rigelus. It seemed, in fact, like they’d known Rigelus a long while.

They were Fae like us, but not. The ears, the grace, the strength were identical, but they were shape-shifters, all of them. Each capable of turning into an animal. And each, even in their humanoid body, equipped with elongated canine teeth.

Racism is a shape-shifter. It is not the same thing today as it was yesterday, and it will not be the same tomorrow or ten years from now. That’s shorthand for the academic definition that describes racism as a ‘multi-dimensional , highly adaptive system that ensures unequal power and distribution of resources among racial groups.’ The group that controls he levers of paw and distribution of resources weaves the interests into the gears of that system.

Fear is a shape-shifter. It manifests in dozens of different ways. Loud shrieks, righteous wails, angry denials, moans, nervous tics, tapping feet, even nail biting.

Prejudice is a shape shifter. It's very agile in taking forms that seem acceptable on the surface.