“How about your name, first?", Daecon asked. "And then you can tell me what you’re doing with my wings there, and after that, I don’t know, how about you tell me what you are and what I supposedly am?

“Oh. Well, I am called Owen. And what I’m doing”, he said as he continued straightening the feathers, “is arranging your feathers in the sun so that they dry faster and so that they dry straight. We must get off this beach and out of sight quickly, before those helicopters come. Normally I’d have expected you to just shake the water off, complete your shifting, and we’d both fly out of here, but now I see that’s impossible.”

“What do you mean, ‘shifting’? Why do you keep saying that, and why is it now impossible?”

Owen finished arranging the feathers and sat down next to Daecon. He sighed, looked at Daecon, and said “This is not easy. I don’t know how to tell you this, and I’m not even sure that I should be the one telling you, but the shit is out of the horse, so they say. It’s too late to not say anything. I will tell you the basics, just what you need to know for now so that you may begin to understand what you are.”

Daecon looked at him expectantly.

“Well”, Owen started, “You... I... We are part of a race of Shape-Shifters. We are closely related to humans but we aren’t quite human. We have certain skills that a human might call ‘magic’, but it’s more complicated than that. We can change our shapes into different kinds of animals and assume their abilities, and we can cast certain charms and spells, mainly for hiding, self protection and also for healing, but it is not ‘magic’, at least nothing like what you would call a wizard’s magic. We don’t use wands or magic words, or cause things to float through the air.”

"Are you kidding me?!” Daecon asked.

A bright flash of light and the man was gone. In his place was the giant eagle. “Does it look like I’m kidding?”

Daecon started to recoil but the eagle warned, “Don’t! You’ll mess your feathers up again!”

Another flash, and the man was back.

“Now”, he continued as he went back to arranging the feathers, “We are born to humans and start out with a human appearance, with the exceptions being that our ears are shaped slightly differently, and we will also frequently exhibit some hair and skin colouring and marking that is rare or non-existent among humans. Heterochromia is common as well."

“Hetero-what?” Daecon interrupted.

“Heterochromia. It’s a condition in which a person has two different coloured eyes. It is quite rare among humans, but very common with us.”

“I have that!” Daecon exclaimed. “My eyes are different colours!”

“They look the same to me”, Owen said.

“Yeah, well, I wear blue contacts because I got tired of people pointing them out”, Daecon said.

“I can see why you’d do that. Humans are notoriously nasty toward things they consider different. Anyway, shortly after birth the humans place us up for adoption, and some of our people, the child’s true biological parents, take the children in. The humans we are born to always place us in certain adoption agencies – this is not coincidental, it’s all planned from the moment the child is conceived – it is placed into the womb of a surrogate that will carry it through gestation and then give it up for adoption, and that woman is ‘guided’ to give the child to us.  It’s a form of magic that is all handled by the elders.”

Daecon took this in and nodded. So far it was starting to make sense, and this was scaring him. He always knew he had been adopted, but...

“Wait. I was an orphan and spent my life in an orphanage. Nobody ever came for me. How come I didn’t end up with your people?” 

“Our people”, Owen corrected him. “I am what you are, and you are what I am. Never forget that. And I do not know the answer to your question. That’s something the elders would have to answer for you. Now, most of us experience our first shift at a very young age, usually before the age of five. It can’t be controlled very well at that young age, so we are guided through the process with our parents and by our elders, and we are taught how to control our shifts. Shifting into our primary animal form becomes as natural to us as walking is for a human.”

 “Primary?”

 “Yes. Our primary animal form is some kind of bird. Most of us master a secondary form as well, as you have seen with my bear. Some even can do a third, and very rarely, even more than that, but for most of us we have two animal forms in addition to our human-like natural form.”

“So wait, you’re saying that I can change into a bird? Like you?”

“You should be able to, yes. In fact, it should have happened without your even thinking about it. But what I don’t understand is how you managed to do half a shift while growing an extra set of limbs. I have never seen this. There have been stories about certain people who could do that in old times, but they were just that: stories.”

“I didn’t try to do it half way!”, Daecon protested. “I didn’t even know I could do this!”

“I know that now, and that’s what worries me,” Owen said. “You seem to have slipped through the cracks. You were allowed to be raised by humans. I’ve never even heard of something like this. Your shifting power seems to be severely underdeveloped for somebody your age, while at the same time you’ve done a transformation I’ve never thought possible. This is going to cause a lot of trouble with our people, I can assure you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because firstly, humans are not supposed to know about us. Over thousands of years we have gone great lengths to keep our race hidden. Your act of flying away from those attackers of yours without even cloaking yourself was noticed. I heard those humans hooting and hollering as soon as your wings appeared. Second, there is going to be hell to pay for the fact that you’re twenty-five years old and were allowed to live with humans for that long, unnoticed by us until now.”

Daecon interrupted, “Cloaking? What the hell is cloaking? And why should they care that I was raised by humans?”

“Cloaking is the art of making yourself invisible to humans. It is a minor spell we cast over ourselves to be unnoticed. While I was flying alongside you I would have been quite invisible to those humans. Cloaking is usually done automatically when you shift, though it is possible to shift without cloaking. I’m proud to say that I’ve never been spotted by a human whilst in animal form.”

“But I could see you”, Daecon protested.

“Yes, you would be able to. Cloaking only works against humans and animals. You’re not human, so you could see me. Those attackers of yours would have seen you but they couldn’t see me. If you knew what to look for you’d have been able to tell that I was cloaked, though. Cloaking alters the way light reflects off us. To humans it routes light around our bodies and renders us invisible, as if we aren’t even there. We can see through cloaking, but the light distorts our image slightly. Anyway, the second issue is the bigger one.”

“Why is that? What does it matter that I was raised by humans?”

“Because, as I said earlier, pregnancies are planned from the start and the child and mother are tracked from conception to delivery. After the birth the surrogate is released back into society and the baby is taken back into our care. Somehow you were lost. Either you slipped through the cracks, a thought that is almost comically unlikely, or, more troubling, you were an unauthorized birth.”

“Unauthorized?”, Daecon asked. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that your birth was not authorized by the council of elders. As I have told you, pregnancies are very carefully planned. They have to be, in order to prevent, well, situations like yours.”

“Wait, why use a surrogate at all? Can’t your... I mean can’t our females just have the babies?”

Owen snorted at this. “You really are new to this world, aren’t you? My dear boy, we don’t have any females.”

“What? Why not? Where did they all go?”

“As far as we know there never was one, at least not as far back as our recorded history goes, which is tens of thousands of years. We are all male.”

“So you just go around knocking up human females so they can have your babies for you? Doesn’t that introduce some human back into your genetics?”

“No! And please, don’t be so vulgar! We impregnate them, but we supply our own fertilized eggs.”

“How do you get eggs with no females?” Daecon asked.

“From ourselves. We are hermaphrodites, we carry both eggs and sperm.”

Daecon had to giggle. “How in the hell do you manage that?”

“You think it’s funny, do you? Just remember, everything I’m telling you applies to you as well.”

“Ohhh, shit. You mean...”

“Yes, I mean that you have both sperm and eggs inside your body, just like I do, and just like all of us do. It’s simple, really. We are very closely related to humans biologically, but our genetic makeup is different from humans in one important way: Human gender at birth is determined by two chromosomes, an X and a Y. Females have two X chromosomes, males have an X and a Y. The mere presence of Y creates a biological male. It is genetically dominant over the X chromosome, so if Y is present at all it is the gene that is expressed. For us, instead of having an X and Y chromosome like they do, we all have two Y chromosomes, there is no X. Now, as I’ve already said, we are all male. That is because even if we ever had a female with two X chromosomes, if we mated with her all of the offspring would carry a Y chromosome from the male parent because we can only contribute a Y, meaning that 100% of our offspring would be male. Females would have gone extinct after the first generation.

With humans half of their genetic information is carried on each of the chromosomes. That means that females have half of their genetic makeup on one X and the other half on the other X. Males have half on the X and the other half on the Y. When the two chromosomes from the parents combine into an XX or XY the genetics of those two halves will determine the child's characteristics. We are similar in that regard, except that half of our genetic information is stored in one Y, half is stored in the other Y. In a human conception, the sperm, carrying XY chromosomes, joins an egg, carrying only XX chromosomes. When those two combine the first cell that forms is carrying one of the X’s from the female and either the X or Y from the male, meaning that there is about a 50% chance that the child will be born male (XY) and a 50% chance that it’ll be female (XX), depending on which gene from the male is used. With us the sperm is YY and so is the egg. All of us carry both an ovary that produces eggs and testicles that produce sperm. Because there is no X, when an egg and semen combine 100% of our offspring are YY, or male.” 

Daecon stared. “Uh... what? That was supposed to be simple?” 

Owen looked at the blank look on Daecon’s face and had to smile. It was the first time a smile appeared on his face since they had met – or at least Daecon thought so. Could eagles even smile? Or bears, for that matter? 

“No, I suppose it isn’t all that simple. Just know this: There are no female genes in our species. We cannot produce female offspring, and we cannot produce offspring at all without the help of human females as surrogates.” 

“That seems awful unfair to the humans though, knocking them up and taking the babies without so much as a thank you.” 

Owen looked scandalized. “What? It’s not like that at all! Yes, we impregnate them and we take the babies, but we only do it to women who wouldn’t want the babies, and they are compensated handsomely for their troubles.”

“You pay them?”

“Well, yes, in a way. We offer them a small amount of cash in order to put the fertilized egg inside them. The surrogates that we impregnate are prostitutes that are usually suffering from cancer, addiction, or mental health issues or any combination of those. Somebody from our reproduction department will approach the chosen female as a 'customer', then cast a harmless spell that renders her unconscious so he can implant the fertilized egg. She will then be brought into our birth facility, which we call "Rehab" because of its similarities to a human drug rehab facility (aside from the birth, of course). She will be kept in a magically induced coma until the child is born after about a month, at which point she will be revived and put under the impression that she had been found unconcious and placed into a health care facility. She will leave cured of all addictions and diseases, and some of our people will watch over her to ensure that she stays healthy for the remainder of her life.

That is the true compensation we offer them, and by far the most valuable: We cure them of any of their health issues in exchange for their surrogacy, and we watch over them to make sure they stay cured. We get a baby, they get a full, healthy life.”

Daecon was in awe. “That, um,  still sounds pretty fucked up. I’ve gotta be honest.”

Owen looked hurt, but his expression relaxed. “No, I suppose, it isn’t ideal. I mean, we do great things for the surrogate, but it’s still all done under a shroud of secrecy. Unfortunately, we don’t have any other options. It’s either that or we go extinct.”

Daecon was processing all of this. “Wait, why can’t you carry the baby yourselves, if you’ve got ovaries and eggs and stuff? Come to think of it, if you’ve got eggs and sperm, why couldn’t you knock yourselves up?”

“We have ovaries that produce eggs, yes”, Owen explained, “but we don’t have a uterus or any of the other things that would be required to gestate a baby. This is one of the reasons we can’t impregnate ourselves. Another reason is that the sperm and egg within a single body are not compatible with each other. No viable cells can be produced unless the sperm and egg come from two different people.”

“Oh, ok. I guess that makes sense. But wait... How do you combine the sperm and eggs of different people?”

Owen blushed and looked away.

“What? What did I say?”

Owen looked back at him, his face a deep red from embarrassment. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already. We combine sperm and egg the same way that humans do. We have sex with each other.”

Daecon was stunned. “What? But you’re all male, you said. Does that mean that you’re all... gay?”

“Yes, in human terms we could be considered to all be gay, but it's not technically ‘gay’ because there is no alternative sex for us. We are all homosexual, though, in the sense that we’re all the same sex and we’re attracted to each other. That would be the reason that you are homosexual as well.” 

It was Daecon’s turn to blush. “What? But how did you know... I never said...” 

Owen smiled again. “You’re one of us. I am what you are, you are what I am, remember? We are all homosexual.”