Excerpt: Coyote Tales

From "The Creation"
In the beginning, there was the void. It was chaos, dischordia. The swirling of that which came before danced and played in a limitless space, though that space spanned but a breath and not even that. Her brothers and sisters and all those who came before and after all lived together, reigned in the smallest of specks. She could turn nowhere without seeing another, feeling another, sensing all the greatness of her kind all around her. She was not apart from them, they were all one. They reveled in their joining, though they had no memory of what came before. There was no before them.
They never wondered if there were others. They never wondered if there was more. They never contemplated life, death, beginnings, endings. There were no such concepts. All was chaos, all was Dischordia. No order existed, no rules and no limits. They were only themselves, each other, all things. There was no sadness, no joy, no worry, no anticipation. They knew all, were all, what therefore could there be to worry about? What could they hope for? But nor did they contemplate these things. If she were to look back now, to try to describe that limitless, infinite time, she might call it grey. Or perhaps entirety. But she had no words for it then, a need for words did not exist.
She could reach out with her essence, the best way to describe what has no form or shape, and touch others. As she touched others she touched her own self, for she had no start or finish. Neither did they. They lived as one, and more than one. Their lives were not lives but beings. They were. Discordia reigned in the space between spaces.
Until she began to feel. She felt hot. And thus, order was born.

From "Lydia's Dream"
Silence stretched out between them, and Lydia took a breath to speak again, if only to fill the emptiness, but the old woman--God--beat her to it. “I did leave you. I abandoned you to your wars and your hatred. I left myself behind so you would not die but I did leave.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lydia again.
“I am your God, your Dis, your Diana, your Ashtarte. I am all things to you with so many names your kind and my other children have given me. Some of you sought to make me like you, others to make me more than you, and perhaps all of you were correct.” The old woman drew up, the hunched, pained look falling away from her body. She grew younger, shedding the fragility and growing curvy and sensual with youth. Her face shed its lines and youthened and she seemed fresh and fertile--all but her eyes which remained dark, black, and eternal. “I am Earth. Your kind named me that too, and I accept all your names for you are my children and children must name their parents. You were born of my own flesh and the flesh of my kind, mingled together in the dischordia in the time before time.”
“You are... the planet?”
“What you need to know is that I am your creator, and I can be your destroyer as well. Look, daughter, what your kind have wrought upon my flesh.” She swept an arm up and a hole opened in the blackness, a window. Lydia gasped. They were far above the planet, looking down. Lydia had seen pictures of the Earth but never imagined to view it like this. She grasped for something and the Goddess--for surely she was female--took her hand. The hand felt soft, warm and sweet. Nothing at all like her eyes. Lydia held on and looked at what the Goddess wanted her to see.
Black clouds obscured the Earth’s face almost entirely. Hovering over each city-state, the mass of gray and dingy darkness blocked out the radiance of the sun and hung like a funeral veil over all of Lydia’s people. The sun still shone in the sky--Lydia’s heart leapt with joy to see it--but her people below couldn’t possibly feel the warmth. She saw the oceans receding from the land, creatures dying on the shores for the Goddess showed her as much. She saw her own people starving, dying from the lack of sun and fresh water, though most of them were old and sick or poor, and no one seemed to be paying attention. She saw the plants and animals wilted and weak. Worst of all she saw the ley lines, dim and weak, pulsing slowly and pushing against the advancing destruction, but they did not seem strong enough to manage.
“And you hurt others too, not just your own.” Lydia watched as the Goddess showed her more. She saw other creatures, just beginning to settle into agriculture on far away continents, but their crops kept dying from the poison rain brought from the city-states and carried on the wind. They gave birth to mutated children, died young of easily cured diseases because they did not have medicine but the most basic plants and even those had become sick from Lydia’s people’s damage to the planet.
“This is my message to you, to carry back to your kind. I cannot abide this any longer. I am your mother, Mother Earth and I am your grandmother--a god if you will but the name you call me matters little. Tell your kind they must outgrow their arrogance. I was once arrogant and I have learned arrogance can damage. Tell your people, my lovely children, to return to a time when they worshiped the Earth as goddess, and treated her with dignity. Tell them I beseech them to treat each other with dignity, and the other beings on the planet with dignity. I cannot allow them to continue as they are. Tell them, daughter of my daughter’s daughters. Tell them if they do not stop, they will be Punished.”

From "Kiara's Boys"
Kiara’s chest loosened as she shifted form, a smile breaking through the worry. She loved being in human form, but coyote suited her just as well. With a flex of some internal muscle she had always known how to use, her body began to change shape. Her snout elongated and ears grew until they pointed. Fur emerged from her skin as her clothes fell away in a useless pile. Arms and legs slimmed and shortened into sturdy legs with desert- ready paws. The world around her sharpened and clarified into a carnival of sights, sounds and scents. Her petty difficulties with her bond- mates fell away, replaced with her primal needs--sex, food, worship. In coyote form she could still think and react as a person, but her instincts became stronger and resolved. Coyotes made decisions in a moment, charged by ancient creed and even older instinctual evolution. When her transition was complete, Kiara shook herself out. The stretch and shake started at the tip of her nose and ended at her proud brush tail, held up and out for all to see. As a coyote she was never shy.
Sending a loud “woof” into the deepening twilight, Kiara bounded away on four legs toward the home she shared with her two bond-mates. A light breeze ruffled her dark brown fur, the air redolent with burning wax and creosote. Kiara’s tongue lolled in cheery pleasure, tasting every dust mote that she kicked up as she ran. The first pack members emerged from their own homes--the pack territory resembled nothing as much as a human suburb stuck in the middle of the desert. But unlike human suburbs, they ran their tiny community on solar power and gathered rainwater. Some pack members lived mostly as animals, taking only what Mother Earth gave them. Modern conveniences had always been suspect to Guardians, but younger pack members took care to reduce their carbon footprint and enjoyed the internet and driving as much as any human. Tonight, a Sabbat night, everyone took human form.