Amber swiveled her long neck, large eyes taking in the world around her. Everything was bright and clear and green. Around her were all the sounds of life, from insects to birds and rodents. She round herself in a forest, one filled with exotic plants and flowers. The forest reminded her of the rain forests of Brazil where she had spent so many months and yet there was something different about it.

Lifting her head, Amber sniffed the air, searching for prey. As a deinonychus she was a deadly and precise hunter. Very few things could escape her claws and teeth in the modern world and that was the way she preferred it. To hunt was to eat and to eat was to survive; this was the reality of the world of the predator. This was a reality largely unknown to humanity.

The scent was caught and Amber turned her head to follow it. It was reptilian, that much was clear. For a moment Amber frowned, puzzling at the strange scent. It was unfamiliar and yet, there was something about it that resonated. Unimportant, in the end, and she began her stalking pursuit of her prey.

Amber didn't know for how long she followed the trail of her prey. The path was winding, through the most lush jungle she had ever seen in her life. Everywhere there were living things, from the amazing giant plants to insects she could hardly even imagine to small rodents hiding in the foliage. Yet, even though her mind told her she had never before seen any of this with her own eyes, there was something distinctly familiar in it.

Almost Amber lost her query as she traipsed through a stream but at the last moment she caught the scent again. This was what made life worth living, the challenge of the pursuit and the death that would inevitably follow. The death of her prey, of course. She was the predator, she was the survivor and would not accept any other conclusion.

It was almost unexpected when her prey finally came into sight. It was a creature a little larger than herself, what she might have been had she been a herbivore. She was not, of course. Despite being able to take on such forms she knew the truth of her own mind. She was a hunter and a killer in reality and that was something she had learned to accept. Talenkauen was the name that came to her to describe the creature many feet ahead of her, although she couldn't remember having heard the name before.

Now that Amber's prey was in sight, she knew stealth was to be her primary weapon of choice. Deadly claws and teeth only went so far and if she couldn't' get close enough to use them, they would prove to be less than useless. She was more than a mere beast, something with the weapons of nature and the mind of a human and all her skills were to be used in the pursuit of her prey. Certainly she was more than merely human.

Ever so slowly and ever so carefully Amber crept forward. Stealth was a skill; to walk in absolute silence so that those with senses just as keen as one's own couldn't detect oneself. Merely human and she never would have even understood such a thing but in her present form she understood all too well. For all the ego humans had in thinking themselves better than everything in nature, there were ways in which they were sorely lacking. No mere human could get so close to the skittish creature as she could and for that reason she felt pride.

When the creature was a mere 10 feet away Amber sprinted. Stealth forgotten, she picked up speed rapidly, her target noticing her within moments. Before she had a chance to process things properly the chase was on and she found herself weaving dextrously between trees and shrubs in a desperate attempt to catch and kill her target. How sweet it would be to have its blood on her lips and tongue.

The hunt was over as suddenly as it began. There was no doubt, really, regarding the end result. Amber was a hunter, designed from top of head to bottom of foot to catch and kill prey efficiently and if her prey was designed to run and flee, mere running could only get it so far. She was a predator with the mind of a human, it was merely prey and in the end that made a difference.

To describe the feeling of claws sliding through flesh was not something Amber could do. It was smooth, so much smoother than one might expect giving the thick scales of her victim. It felt right and that was all she could say with certainty. That first taste of warm flesh was among the most satisfying experiences of her life. Every time the culmination of a hunt occurred, that sense of satisfaction overcame her.

As Amber feasted she didn't consider what her human counterparts might say nor did she consider things from a human perspective at all. While shifted, she was the deninonychus and the predator and only when she shifted again back to human did the human trappings of decency matter. The taste of accomplishment was the taste of warm meet and blood in her mouth. It was not something she was willing to give up, not for anything or anyone.

After the feast it was time to sleep. Lying on the ground only a short distance from the kill zone, the cold was not something Amber concerned herself with. Her feathers protected her from the cold as well as her robes ever had, not that there was much in the way of cold to be protected from. Her hunger sated, it was only then that her mind returned to the strangeness of her present situation. How had she come here to this strange forest that was like and yet unlike the rain forests of Brazil?

The thought left Amber's mind almost as quickly as it had initially appeared. Why did it really matter how she had gotten here? The important thing was that she was here now and in this place she was thriving. Her belly was full, the weather was pleasant and sleep seemed imminent. Later, perhaps, after she had slept would she determine how she had gotten here. Until then it simply wasn't important.

Amber closed her eyes and rested, forcibly shoving down the sense of uneasiness that she couldn't quite let go of. There shouldn't be any reason for discomfort, should there? She was where she was supposed to be and that was all that mattered. Rest did not come as easily as it normally would.

Amber awoke abruptly and with a distinct feeling of unease. She shook her head to rid herself of mental cobwebs and made her way to her feet. Looking around for a threat, all seemed normal initially. Nothing moved within the range of her sight nor could she hear or smell anything that seemed out of place. Still, she knew there had been something that had woken her from her slumber.

As Amber's head swiveled to lay eyes upon the discarded and half-eaten carcass of her prey from earlier she felt ice enter her veins. The carcass was alive. Or at least, the carcass was moving, struggling to make its way to its feet. There were large holes in its flesh where her teeth had torn out pieces in order to be consumed. In places only bones could be seen. She stared at it, disbelieving that what she had laid eyes upon was even possible.

"I am your future." The voice that came from the living corpse was dry, hardly heard even to Amber enhanced hearing. Inside, she felt a sick sense of premonition and a shifter went down her spine. Whatever she was seeing could not and should not be possible. Could it?

"I don't understand." Amber's own voice came out as a growl and she didn't think twice about the fact that she could speak at all. When shifted she should not be able to speak and yet, here she was speaking. It occurred to her, in a sort of distant and dispassionate way, that she was somewhere deeply unusual that went far beyond strange animal and plant life.

The animate corpse began laughing, guffaws getting louder and louder as Amber took a step back in horror. What was it she had created here? What was this thing she had killed and how had it comeback to life? So many questions with so few answers but in her core she knew this to somehow be her fault. How could she be held responsible for doing what only came naturally?

As abruptly as the laughter began it ended, leaving the abomination silently and looking directly at Amber. One of its eyes was missing, a feature she couldn't help but note. "I am your future," it answered, sickly toothy grin spreading across its half-eaten face. "I am you." Once again the eerie mad laughter started up.

Amber could do nothing but stand there shivering until the laughter once again began to die down. What was the message here, how did this...thing have anything to do with her? The words didn't matter, but the sense of their truth did. How anything it said could bear any relevance upon her she didn't know except that somehow it did. Somehow.

Only when there was silence again did Amber speak, as much as anything to end the uncomfortable regard of the unnatural animation before her. "I am nothing like you. I am a hunter, a creature of nature. Natural." They seemed like the right words to say, the difference between what she was and what it was.

Once again the creature smiled, its one eye far too knowing for Amber's sense of comfort. Then again, everything about it went against her own sense of comfort. "Natural are you? Are you quite certain about that?" Yet again the words struck true in ways she couldn't explain and in ways that terrified her deeply. To be unnatural was...something almost too terrible to contemplate.

Amber felt a wash of energy run through her body and she looked down. Before her eyes her feathers began to dry up and fall off and her scales took on an unhealthy grey colour. Fissures began appearing on pockets of flesh and a black ichorous substance began oozing out of it. There was no pain but a sense of deep dread infused Amber's entire being.

"What are you doing to me?" Amber asked, her voice almost inaudible with the horror of the situation. The dead thing before her began laughing again, maniacal and made, refusing to answer any questions.

Gradually the laughter died down and the creature remained staring. Of course it was staring, how could it not with the deformed monster she had become? She was almost as awful to look upon as it was now, half rotted away as she was. This had to be illusion, surely? Something not real? After all, it wasn't possible to remain alive while in this state. Was it?

For what seemed like an eternity the monstrous abomination stood there staring and saying nothing. Finally it spoke, offering explanation to the fate that had befallen her. Whether to trust such a thing or not was the question as how could one trust something that was made up of nightmares?

"You think you're alive but you're not. You think you're natural but you're not. You think a lot of things that are false. You are the monster. You are the abomination. You are the thing that is neither alive nor dead. You steal their bodies for your own twisted ends."

Truth. All of it. Amber couldn't explain how she knew it to be true, only that it was. She was an abomination. It explained everything, from her eyes to the dull colours and cold flesh of her shifted forms. She wasn't a noble prehistoric hunter, she was an unnatural dead thing with cold rotting flesh.