After two weeks, I grew resigned to the fact that I'd remain a minotaur forever.
Ferus and I roamed the realm. We journeyed to snowy highlands in the north, the swamplands in the east, the arid plains in the south and we
never stopped. He taught me to hunt, how to read the landscape, how to sharpen my horns on tree bark and how to roar. In return, I taught him
how to speak better, how to start fires, how to make tools and weapons. We grew to depend on each other.
After a few years, I almost forgot I ever was human. I grew used to my body, to eating meat raw and shedding my winter coat in the warmer
weather. I forgot all about television and the internet, taxicabs and tarmac. I was thankful for the trees and the wind and the sky.
We met other minotaur from time to time. Normally in clans, they didn't like us very much. They would spit and call us abominations but we didn't
care. We had each other. Or Ferus would simply call them some of the new words he'd learned from me and they would get confused.
I didn't know how long minotaur lived but a lot of time passed and my body grew to what Ferus told me was middle age. This was the prime of a
minotaur's life, when he was the strongest, the most rugged. I felt powerful and dangerous. I had truly become the beast Runt had made me.
By then, I thought I'd seen the last of the Imp. I thought I would live out my days and die a minotaur, with Ferus.
I couldn't have been any more wrong.