As we run, we sing.

Children sing, Savahcat says, because it is the only art the grown-ups allow to us. My friend is like that, always finding the bad in things, always deciding whatever portion given is by circumstance the least and worst. Well, I sing because the song is in me and struggling to get out, swelling my chest, thrumming in my throat, cracking open my jaws, twisting my tongue in a surge of breath, a joy too large to contain within my flesh.

For tomorrow the fur will come off; tomorrow, we will grow up.

Savahcat sings with me, although a darker sort of song, a counterpoint melody to my soaring glee. Still, we run abreast, matching pace as our paws grab the ground and fling it behind us, hurtling over the rain-washed gullies and forcing our way through the bristly, sage scented brush. We dodge the scorpions and other night-crawlers emerging from their hidden burrows, leap upon looming boulders, gasping in the thin air and laughing as we climb higher and higher, seeking the height of the mesa.

After all, tonight will be the last night we can run like this. Adults don't run around, they walk tall and serene and graceful on two legs alone, their beautiful hands free. Even though I am eager to grow up, I know some part of me will miss running wild, swift as a moonshadow in the cool night.

Finally, we reach the summit and pause, gazing out over the world. Down below, the valley where the families live is drowned in a pool of darkness, but up here, teetering on the cliff‘s edge, we can still see the last streaks of copper outlining the horizon, low clouds reflecting the settled sun. We flop down beside each other, sending up a choking cloud of dust. My tongue longs to unfurl, but grown ups don't pant, and I am feeling very grown up tonight, almost as if any moment I might rear up on my hind legs, my fur and tail falling away like autumn leaves, my fingers unfurling like the petals of a flower.

But then again, grown ups aren't covered with dense fur. Their entire smooth, sleek skin radiates heat. I give in to biology. My stupid tongue flops out and spills an embarrassing amount of foamy spit.

Watching me, Savahcat's own dripping tongue lolls, flews tightening in the closest expression children can make to a smile. Despite what my friend insists, I doubt the adults ever meant to deny us smiles, or laughter.

"So grown up, you!" Savahcat teases me, as always. We doesn't speak grown up words, of course. None of us do. None of us can. The adults didn‘t think speech was required. After all, who would want to hear the thoughts of a child, with our undeveloped, uneducated brains? But we've found a way of communicating amongst ourselves with gestures, whines and hisses and little grunts. Its a secret we keep from the adults, passed down by the older kids, and we can have entire conversations right in plain sight of our teachers. It is a delicious little illicit thrill.

"Soon," I reply haughtily, and roll over to expose my thin-furred belly to the cooling night air. "Not soon enough. I wonder what I'll look like."

“Can we change the subject?“ Savahcat sighs. "You'll know tomorrow. Isn't that soon enough?"

"But it's fun to think about," I insist. My mother is blonde, my father a redhead. I have seen them through the playground fences, at a distance, lovely and remote. What color would my hair be when all this thick grey fur molts away? And when my snout shrank into a real face, will I have her sharp chin, his aquiline nose, her broad shoulders, his freckles, her arched eyebrows, his strong, slender hands? I leave the school grounds for the first time, teetering on my new legs, will they be pleased with my appearance? Will I be male or female?

Whatever gender I turn out to be, I surreptitiously hope Savahcat is the other so we can be together outside the fence, maybe even live together and have children of our own one day. Children aren't supposed to think of things like that, but my feelings aren't sexual. Can't be, since neither of us has gender yet.

Somehow, though, I've always been drawn to strange little Savahcat, who has no other friends. Maybe at first our friendship was pity on my part, because I am soft-hearted, always the one helping tortoises across the road and trying to put baby birds back in their nests. But even if that was how our friendship started, it has since become much more. Savahcat is a complex person, unlike any of the others, and I find myself endlessly fascinated by the thoughts than came percolating out of that brain.

Even so, sometimes my friend can be quite annoyingly odd, like now. How could anyone NOT be excited about the adulthood rites? The rest of the children could do nothing else for the past few weeks but converse in whispered speculation. We know it will happen, but that is all. Our teachers have much more important things to educate us about, and even if we wanted, we couldn’t pester them with questions. Why bother questioning? It will happen. That’s all we need to know. We children don't even know what prompts the change, for it is some kind of magic or technological mystery only known to the grown ups.

I say as much out loud.

"How could I not be excited? Because of this!" Savahcat holds a paw out to me, flipped up so I can see the underside. Almost, if I squint, I can see in its shape a tightly clenched fist. What will be fingers are bound together by thin skin, like the sealed eyelids of a newborn puppy. The outer surface of the not-quite-fingers is thick and tough as leather, and talons sprout like ivory thorns from the joints of the knuckle. They will be shed, of course, like milk teeth, when we grow up.

"It's a paw. So what? Just like mine. Just like any child's."

"That's my point!" Savahcat claws at the dry ground, then snorts in frustration at my denseness and gets up to pace in a tight circle. "Doesn't it bother you at all, Nahailoke? We can't speak, so we can't talk back to them. We can't hold a paintbrush, so we can't make our own art. We can't type, so we can't write our own stories. We can't pluck guitar strings or work a saxophone keys or bang on a piano, so we can't make our own music! We have nothing, nothing of our own except what they see fit to give us."

I still didn't understand what there was to be upset about. "Because we're children," I say, shaking my head as if a persistent fly buzzed around my ears. "Adults know what's best, otherwise they wouldn't be adults."

"They get to tell us everything, and we sit there like passive vessels to receive it," Savahcat continues bitterly, as if I hadn't spoken.

"How else are we to learn?"

"How else are we to be our own people? By the time we grow up, we're just little copies of the adults because we've never had a chance to do anything ourselves!"

"Is that so bad? Why do these things make you so angry? Obviously the adults are doing something right. If we tried to do our own things, make our own rules, we might mess up and ruin things."

Savahcat lets out a brief groan, almost a howl of mocking frustration.

Getting angry - for I don't like being thought of as a fool - I snap, "You really think it was better in the old days when children were just fragile little homunculi that could be easily hurt and broken? Would you like to spend the first fifteen years of your life as a half-made thing, being able to speak but not able to make sense, with hands but no co-ordination to use them? I sure wouldn't."

I bound up on my four paws, my long tail swishing back and forth.

"Look at us, Savahcat! We're strong and fast and powerful. We don't break bones just falling out of a swing or down stairs, and no bad adult could force us to do damaging things, like in the old days. Do you know what children were like back then? Of course you do, you sat through the same lessons I do."

My friend won't look me in the face, turning as if to retreat down the mountain, but I leap to block the path and lift my lips in a snarl. I am not angry, even if that’s what it looks like. I am afraid for my friend, and desperate to make myself clear so finally, perhaps, Savahcat can be content, happy, at peace. Tonight, especially, this feels very important to me. We are not near the edge of the cliff, our paws are planted firmly on solid ground, but it feels as if I am about to lose my footing and go hurtling helplessly through empty space. Fear roughens my voice into a growl.

"Back in the old days, kids wasted their learning years playing silly games. They worried about their clothes not being as nice as other kids. They worried about sex before they were ready for it. They took drugs and drank and sassed back and shot people with guns. I'd hate to live in a world like that, wouldn't you?"

To even think about it was terrifying. My gray fur, the same as every other child's, stands up along my spine and bristles around my neck at the very thought.

"Why do you always have to be so contrary," I demand. "Why do you have to make things so hard for yourself?"

"You learned your lessons well. You'll be a good grown up, Nahailoke." Almost in a whisper.

I cock my head, confused, but Savahcat says nothing else.

I try to nuzzle my friend to soften my words, but Savahcat turns away, and my snout only brushes empty air.

Finally, I shrug. "See you tomorrow at the adulthood ceremony," I say uncertainly. I wait a few moments for an answer I sense I wouldn't get, then begin to walk slowly back down the path to the darkened valley, my paws oddly heavy and my heart stormy with confusion.

It will all be better in the morning, I tell myself. Then Savahcat will grow up along with everyone else in our age group, and with fully adult wisdom will see all these doubts are just a child's foolishness.

We're not a different species, children and grown ups, no matter what we look like. One used to be the other, one will become the other. Tomorrow, Savahcat will be able to pick up a paintbrush and play the piano and write and speak. What our teachers told us all along is right. What the adults do to children is done out of love, to protect us. Not to make us less than human!

What kind of a monstrous people would transform their children into mute animal shapes for any other reason than because they absolutely had no other choice?

A chilly night breeze ruffles my fur. Even to my child’s night-seeing eyes, the path seems darker as I walk it without Savahcat by my side. Coyotes yip, far out in the desert, crickets whirr, and owls call softly. My ears turn and twitch without thought, tracking the scuttle of night geckos across the shifting sand. The air is sweet with the scent of growing things. I will miss this.

I leave the rim of the canyon and enter the valley proper, and for a moment the shadows close over me and it is as if I cannot breathe.

Which is silly, of course. Silly, childish fears, inconsequential child-thoughts. We tell each other ghost stories in our kennels at night, stirring up primal fears the grown ups would only laugh at. About the naughty children of the dreadful old days, who grew up into bad, bad adults. About the disobedient children of today, who sometimes were so awful they were never given the adulthood rites, and who stayed always wordless quadrupeds.

I pause, one hind foot hanging in midair. That couldn't be . . . could it? I never heard of such a thing happening in real life, but if it did would the grown ups tell us?

I've never questioned the grown ups. Children don't. Maybe I'm more grown up than I realized, despite fur and tail and all.

Across the desert I hear Savahcat's voice lift, as if angry at the universe, demanding answers from the stars which are just beginning to wink on in the purple-black dome of the heavens. Eccentric, quarrelsome, questioning little Savahcat, who was never happy being a child. Would my friend be any happier as a grown up? Or perhaps, not want to grow up at all?

My muscles tense, my bones quivering with the need to move. My tail curls up under my belly like a stepped-on snake. I suck in a deep breath, and launch myself into a headlong gallop back along the uphill path.

Running, I sing along with Savahcat, whose voice is already beginning to fade in the distance.