Copyright 1998, Lyka. This story may be copied for personal use so long as the author's credits are kept, but may not be posted, archived elsewhere, otherwise distributed or sold without the author's permission.

The small black she-wolf's pads scraped on bare rock and rubble and sandy earth. There isn't much grass in the mountains above Los Angeles, except in spring.

Lyka, in full wolf form, wished for the feel of that spring grass under paw, but it was August.

She could smell only the traces of passing human hikers from the trail miles away. The only other sounds and smells were of the land: a jay's scream, the rustle of a chipmunk, the musky-sweet odor of a doe that passed this way a few hours ago. No blasting of human stereos like at Crystal Lake. Not even the roaring of cars and motorcycles traveling Angeles Crest Highway. Above her, the Jeffrey pines reared against a sky clear of the brown taint of the city's smog.

It had taken her more than an hour of driving to get here, pushing her aging motorcycle over the humans' ubiquitous asphalt and smog to reach Angeles Crest Highway, then along its twisting two-lane spine to reach the lower treeline.

It wasn't verdant land, but it was wild land. One-fourth of Los Angeles County is undeveloped -- the Mojave Desert and Angeles National Forest, thousands of square acres of chaparral-covered hills rising into the wooded San Gabriel Mountains, where the Chumash used to spend their summers hunting mule deer.

Lyka sometimes felt what seemed to be their spirits here, but they were only faint echoes.

Some tribes had legends about the animal-people, mostly weregrizzlies. One was still living in the 1930s, nearly a century after the last true grizzly was killed in Los Angeles County.

On other days she'd hiked the chaparral slopes at lower elevation in her human mask. Usually it was during the early dawn hours, when the day's unrelenting heat was just beginning to build. Even then, the slopes were a sea of dry brown vegetation, with only occasional small animals and birds by day-- and, of course, the ever-present spicy smells of the artemisias, white sage and black sage.

Lyka had never roamed this part of the Forest before. It was near Mount Baaden-Powell, with spectacular views of the surrounding mountainsides.

The silvery-white glow of the full moon drenched everything with its own shade. Lyka appreciated the ethereal, unearthly beauty it made with the arid forest, letting the light soak into her, washing away the stink of three weeks living with the human mask.

Of course it would all come back when she returned, but for now, it reminded her of her dreams of the Wild Times when most of the Earth was still unchanged, unsullied.

Except the mountain underneath her didn't seem to welcome her.

Every were cherished their connection to the Earth. A hackneyed, New-Age term, Lyka thught, but what it really meant was the animal-person's feeling for the magic and the mood -- yes, mood -- of the land they lived in.

Mount Baaden-Powell felt old, vast -- eternal. And female -- yes, distinctly female. Phrases like "Earth Mother" took a real meaning with such a presence.

The mountain was sleepy, barely aware of most human trespassers. She was aware in a general way that the people who once dwelt on her for months every year no longer came, that there was a change in the humans walking upon her, that the ones doing so now were not as old or as fully in tune and harmony with the land.

For a mountain, that wasn't unusual.

The mountain was aware of Lyka, in a sleepy, vague sort of way. Roused out of her sleep by the black she-wolf roaming her slopes, sensing a different presence from the human hikers.

"Who/what are you? What are you doing here?" was what it felt like. Not entirely approving of this unusual visitor.

No matter how much she reassured the mountain she meant no harm, that she would not drop so much as a single candy wrapper on it, the mountain wouldn't warm to her.

It wasn't strong enough to make her turn back, but it put her a little on edge.

Maybe she'd bed down in that shallow wash a mile away. She'd try a good ritual, set things right.

She heard a rustle from several body-lengths away, behind a clump of sugarbush, downwind.

Lyka whirled, shocked any creature, even a deer, could come so close to her without her sensing it. The bear emerged from the sugarbush.

It padded on all fours out of the bushes toward her and stopped, regarding her from small black eyes. She took in its heavy build -- burlier than a black bear's -- and then the pungent smell overcame the distance between them and the wind direction. Grizzly-man.

The bear-man rose on its hind legs, towering over her.

"What are you doing here?" he growled.

Lyka recovered from her shock.

"Who asks? I smelled no scent marks." She wished she felt as confident as her words. A grizzly could take a whole pack of wolves any day.

The bear's form flowed and changed. Where once stood a bear-man, now stood a fully human man. A naked man, with hair that was dark even in the moonlight. Something that looked like a small medicine pouch hung at his throat.

"Who are you?" he asked again.

Lyka answered. "A werebeast, like yourself."

"Not like me," growled the bear. "This isn't your place."

"I have broken no law," Lyka defended herself. "You haven't left any scentmark."

"This was my grandfather's territory."

The man shapeshifted back into bear-man form, his shape blurring smoothly in the moonlight. The bear returned to all fours, breath blowing audibly through his large nostrils. The sight, sound and smell reminded Lyka of LoveBear and other weres she'd known. Something tightened in her. She recognized it as sadness and let her breath out in a sigh.

He turned back toward the bushes, ambled back into them, leaving his words hanging in the air between them, stronger than if he had debated her.

She could hear his departure, moving through the manzanita along the ridge. His passage didn't stir the mountain the way hers did.

She thought of staying, but the thought made her feel...empty.

The breeze shifted, bringing her a faint smell of dry sands and rocks -- the Mojave, some dozen miles away, treeless and arid.