Hit the Ground Running
It takes a while, but Ethel finds, to her eternal frustration, that there aren't a lot of animals that humans can outrun. And she does know this, because Jiso goes through quite a few before they're ready to give up. Cats? No. Deer? Absolutely not. Rabbits? Not a prayer. Dogs? They've tried several, and no such luck. Even the tiny stupid lap-sized dogs can outstrip Gogo at her fastest on two legs. They're at their best when Jiso is an otter, because at least then they can tear across the park at top speed without having to wait for each other. But even so, it looks stupid; otters are built for swimming, not running, and Jiso's gallop looks as awkward and uncomfortable as she knows it feels.
The other option is for Jiso to be small, but that comes with its own problems. He hates having to ride around on her (because again, she's so slow), but running along the ground beside her almost gets him stepped on.
It's frustrating.
Ethel can feel her temper flare whenever they run, because no matter what Jiso is, it's never perfect. He spends a lot of time as a cat or a dog, and no matter how hard Ethel pushes herself, no matter how much she practices, she just can't keep up. It frustrates her, and it frustrates Jiso even more because he wants to go faster. He wants to let go like a racehorse on the last lap and fly, literally or figuratively. But he can't, because when he gets too far ahead, their bond stretches and forces him to slow down to keep from hurting them. Ethel catches up, embarrassed and apologetic, because she's only human and her limits are built in, but Jiso could be so much more. He could be a gazelle or a cheetah, and he could be so fast, but humans are just too slow.
Her classmates are in awe because she's the fastest runner in PE, and she's short so you wouldn't think she is. She can leave any one of her classmates in her dust, and they ooh and aah and vie for advantage of having her on their team in soccer and Capture the Flag. But Ethel sets her jaw and keeps close to Jiso in one of his predator forms and doesn't soak in the praise because they just don't get it. They don't get that it's not enough and she's not sure if it will ever be enough.
Then Ethel's eighth birthday brings a brand-new bicycle, and with it their first glimmer of hope.
She throws herself into learning to ride the thing, with Jiso beside her every step and pedal of the way. He takes to the air on the first few tries, wary of the wobbling handlebars and the way the wheels teeter dangerously from side to side. A hummingbird form is useful; most other birds can't stop and hover and change directions on a dime. But Ethel learns, every day, wearing bumps and scratches and band-aids like medals of honor, until she can pedal in a straight line down the street and Jiso feels okay running instead of flying.
From there, she learns to do so much more.
Something awakens in her as she pedals down the street as fast as she can, with Jiso as a golden retriever pelting alongside her. She can feel wind whipping past her face, she can feel the speed stir in her stomach, twice over because she feels the same coming from Jiso. He's running with her as something that's not a weasel or an otter, and he's not quite full speed yet but it's something. It's more than what they had before.
Ethel pedals faster.
By the fifth grade, she's not as good at running as she used to be. She's sort of given up on running, because she can only run as fast as the fastest human, and the average house cat can run faster than the fastest human. In spite of this, she manages to keep the respect of her classmates, because words spreads fast through the schoolyard that Ethel Kim is an absolute demon on her bike.
She may not be a fast runner, but she's a fast learner, and years of pedaling alongside Jiso, on streets and bike trails, grass and gravel, sand and rocks, has taught her a thing or two. She can change direction, swerve without wiping out, because you have to know how to do that when you bike every day with a dæmon you might run over if you're not quick and careful. (Jiso avoids long tails for a reason.) Not to say that she doesn't make a mistake here and there.
She pays for them when she does.
“What were you thinking?”
Ethel looks away. She can't run away from this conversation, or put a closed door between herself and her mother's angry face, because she's sitting in the backseat of the car with Jiso curled up next to her as a sleek, spotted serval, and her mother is driving her to the hospital.
“Answer me!”
“We wanted to go fast.” At eleven, Ethel can't quite find the right words to explain it. “It was just one hill.” With her arm in a makeshift sling, the argument doesn't hold up very well. But she can't put into words the feeling of wind in her hair and Jiso's fur, the smooth whirring of the bike underneath her, the excitement pounding through her veins and her bond with her dæmon, and the roller coaster tickle in her stomach as they sped toward a downhill drop and let momentum and gravity do the rest.
Ethel just hopes her bike is in better shape than her arm.
Her mother's sparrow dæmon puffs up to twice his size as he stares down disapprovingly at Jiso. “How could you let her do this?” he asks. “You should have known it wasn't safe!”
“It's not his fault,” Ethel protests when Jiso doesn't answer. “He saw the bump, and he did warn me. There wasn't any time to turn.” Jiso headbutts her lightly, careful not to jostle the break.
The cast stays on her arm for six weeks, and Ethel stays off her bike. It's enough to drive anyone mad. Even without the broken arm, her bike is bent out of shape and probably won't pedal straight anymore, and more than anything she needs a new one. Her parents aren't having it, though.
“Take it easy,” the doctors say. “Do your homework,” her mother tells her. And then when her homework is done, the advice becomes “Go read a book.”
It's the best advice that anyone gives her, ever. (Second best, counting look-from-a-different-angle when she's trapped by a madman with no one to help but her dead friend's baby brother.)
Ethel can be a bit of a one-track thinker, sometimes. It's a flaw, and even at eleven she knows she has problems looking at things from more than one angle. She's hungry? She goes to the fridge and eats. There are jerks at school? She throws punches and sits in detention. She wants to go faster? She runs faster. She gets a bike? She turns the pedals, and keeps turning the pedals as fast as she can until “as fast as she can” gets faster. But she's been so caught up in pedaling like a maniac or finding the best trails and biggest hills, that it's never occurred to her that maybe the answer is right underneath her.
She goes to the library and reads every book she can find on bikes.
There are different kinds of bikes for different things, different shapes of handlebars, different materials, different frames. The width of tires makes a difference. There are bikes where you can change gears – and here she's been riding around on that dumb one-speed thing all this time.
Ethel lets herself go without candy and movie trips for a while, and saves up for a new bike. Her arm heals up, and she finds a used ten-speed that's within her price range. She raids her dad's garage, arms herself with library-book knowledge and borrowed tools, and... well, she plays around a little. Jiso takes forms that can hold things, monkeys and birds and chameleons, equipped to turn pages and hand over tools and hold things in place while she fixes them. By the time she's done, she goes faster on flat ground than her old bike ever did on downhill slopes.
She and Jiso hold out hope, though. Maybe he'll settle as something manageable. A dog would be fine – the fastest dog can go forty-five miles per hour, and even then it'd have to be a greyhound. Jiso likes cat forms too, but Ethel's never seen him as a cheetah before. Whatever he is, they hope, maybe he'll be something that Ethel can keep up with.
It happens in the eighth grade, and it's Pamela Rosales's fault, though Ethel is pretty sure that a lot of things are Pamela Rosales's fault, like global warming and light pollution. They've been classmates throughout middle school, and all the teachers know that if they sit together, there's going to be a fight. Pamela thinks Ethel is gross and stupid and probably a criminal, and Ethel thinks Pamela is dumb and vapid and shows off to get boys to like her. It doesn't matter that they're both wrong and that come college they're going to be best friends; what matters is here and now, and Pamela's stupid monkey dæmon giving Jiso a condescending pat on the head when Pamela gets the last word in an argument. She flounces off (actually she just walks away, but in Ethel's eyes it totally looks like she's flouncing) and Jiso changes from a dog to a bird to shriek and swoop after him with his talons out like he's about to snatch him right off Pamela's shoulder. The move is wicked fast, and Pamela's dæmon shrieks, falls off, and takes at least five different forms before Pamela catches him and runs off. Jiso lands on Ethel's shoulder and glares after him, feathers rustling, and that's the last time he ever transforms.
Ethel does her research. The two of them sit in front of the computer with the results, exchange a glance, and burst out laughing.
He's a goddamn peregrine falcon.
The fastest animal – not even fastest land animal, the straight-up fastest animal alive. A bird that could keep up with a freight train and dive like a plane. A ten-speed bike's not going to be enough, and they both know it.
The beginnings of ideas form in her head, that day. They're dangerous ideas, but from a certain point of view they're still good ones. Ideas that will get her in trouble, that will lead to more hospital trips, that will shape her education and career path, that will one day earn her the nickname “Gogo.” Her dæmon is fast. Ethel's fast, too. Just not fast enough.
Yet.