The yak was not angry.
That was the thing people missed about yaks. A yak did not need to be angry to ruin your afternoon. A yak only needed to be startled, and then whatever was in the yak's line of fire had roughly three heartbeats to be somewhere else.
The dog was not somewhere else.
A small brown mutt with one floppy ear and one upright ear and a tail that seemed to belong to a different, happier animal, sitting in the dust of the paddock directly in the path of a yak that had just been stung on the flank by a bee.
The farmer shouted. Orim Barleyfoot, Pandaren, older than grandmother's back fence and half as patient, straw hat that had seen eleven summers. He had mentioned his eleven yaks in the first sentence of their conversation and which eight he hated by the third.
The yak lowered its head. The dog blinked up at it.
Mei Lin was across the paddock. Too far to run the ordinary way.
Her legs went wrong.
That is the only word for it. Longer first, then four of them, then shorter and covered in something that was not her fur but was, somehow, also her fur. The paddock blurred sideways. She hit the dog with her shoulder, which was not a shoulder anymore, and they both rolled into a ditch full of last week's rainwater. The yak thundered past above them, still startled, still bee-stung, entirely uninterested.
The dog shook himself. Looked at her. Tilted his head. Tilted it the other way. Whined once, like he wanted to ask a question and could not remember the word for it.
Mei Lin was a wolf.
Grey fur and storm-pale eyes and paws that were definitely paws and a tongue that was, alarmingly, doing its own thing. She tried to say something reassuring. What came out was a soft whuff. The dog accepted this. He was generous that way.
Above the ditch, Orim Barleyfoot's face arrived. He looked at the dog. He looked at the wolf. He took off his straw hat. He put it back on. He took it off again.
"Where'd the Pandaren go."
The wolf wagged her tail. She had not meant to. The tail had opinions.
It took her several breaths to change back. Not because the shape was hard to leave. Because the shape was comfortable. Her ribs did not know yet that they were supposed to be ribs. Something in her shoulders was enjoying itself and did not want to give the fur back. She closed her eyes, thought about her tea kettle at the Shrine of Seven Stars, and felt her legs remember.
She climbed out of the ditch on two feet. Wet. Muddy. The dog climbed out after her and shook himself all over her knees.
Orim Barleyfoot was still holding his hat.
"That," he said, with the slow dignity of a man who had seen a great deal of nonsense in eleven summers of yak farming, "was a dog rescue I will be telling my wife about for the rest of my natural life."
Mei Lin bowed. Wiped mud off her chin. Grinned at him.
"First one's free."
— Mist