when i'm a coyote, it's just me. feels natural, feels very much like myself.
coyote isn't quite a theriotype, i think. i may change my opinion on this in the coming years but in the last couple i've been fairly sure it's not a theriotype. but the feeling is incredibly similar in shifts, and was part of the driving force behind me mostly abandoning 'type differentiations (kintype vs. paratype, etc) and adopting more shapeshifter/polymorph-centric labels for myself.
the point is, in that form i am a coyote. the same way i am a kestrel or a bobcat whether shifted or not.
but i also have a wolf form. and that shift feels... i don't want to say unnatural, but certainly not typical to me. i know a lot of wolves. a lot of wolves. i've grown up with and around them, was raised by one, my partner is one, and many of my best friends are wolves. many of the people i follow or am mutuals with here in the tumblr alterhuman community are wolves. a lot of the people i know are or have been wolves at some point.
my best friend has made jokes about me being the sole fox/coyote in a big pack of wolves before, and he's right.
in fact, it feels like wolf was a form i adopted specifically to blend in with my wolf friends and family. it's a form i can take, and with practice it's become second nature to me. but in the beginning, it felt very much like i was trying to fit into a coat (or bodysuit?) that was entirely too big for me. it was a similar form to what i knew, sure, but it wasn't quite the same and the difference was hard to put a paw on.
in time it got easier and now wolf is as natural a form as coyote or kestrel. but even though i am whatever form i take, wolf still feels slightly different, in a much greater way than the coyote is slightly different. wolf feels more like a mask i sometimes put on to better fit in with the people around me. sure, i'm a wolf when wearing it, but only on the outside. as soon as the mask is off, the wolf is gone.
