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Mostly because of reading The Tiger and the Wolf, of course.
At one point, a character who is a snake shifts into being a very small snake (because snake people can be any snake instead of being just one snake species, for reasons) and eats a very small meal, explaining that he can go quite a while on one meal like that. Presumably in this universe, shifting ("Stepping" with a capital S) doesn't have a large energy requirement, but what isn't made clear is whether or not he could have gone a long time like that if, for reasons of speed and stealth, he wasn't staying a snake nearly all the time during their flight. Could he eat a teensy meal and then be a human for a week or two? Or does it only work if he's a snake and working at speed of snake digestion?
And what if he had eaten something that wasn't good for him? Our main character is a tiger and a wolf (duh) and it is my understanding that humans can eat a lot of foods that those animals can't. Like chocolate. If she were to eat chocolate as a human, and then shapeshift right away, would it make her sick? Or, if she accidentally ingested it as a wolf, could she avoid getting sick by becoming human? If a horse eats a whole lot of grass or hay, and then becomes human, do they have a stomachache? What if our aforementioned snake had eaten a human-sized meal, and then turned into a little bitty snake? Where does the food... wait, that's a dumb question, I can answer this one. The food goes the same place his extra mass goes, and I guess that applies to horses as well. But all the other questions are still valid.
At one point, a character who is a snake shifts into being a very small snake (because snake people can be any snake instead of being just one snake species, for reasons) and eats a very small meal, explaining that he can go quite a while on one meal like that. Presumably in this universe, shifting ("Stepping" with a capital S) doesn't have a large energy requirement, but what isn't made clear is whether or not he could have gone a long time like that if, for reasons of speed and stealth, he wasn't staying a snake nearly all the time during their flight. Could he eat a teensy meal and then be a human for a week or two? Or does it only work if he's a snake and working at speed of snake digestion?
And what if he had eaten something that wasn't good for him? Our main character is a tiger and a wolf (duh) and it is my understanding that humans can eat a lot of foods that those animals can't. Like chocolate. If she were to eat chocolate as a human, and then shapeshift right away, would it make her sick? Or, if she accidentally ingested it as a wolf, could she avoid getting sick by becoming human? If a horse eats a whole lot of grass or hay, and then becomes human, do they have a stomachache? What if our aforementioned snake had eaten a human-sized meal, and then turned into a little bitty snake? Where does the food... wait, that's a dumb question, I can answer this one. The food goes the same place his extra mass goes, and I guess that applies to horses as well. But all the other questions are still valid.
