Shapeshifters were peculiar creatures. They had a concept of family, yet husbands and wives did not live together. Each took on the appearance of a human and played a different role.
Shapeshifter children were raised collectively by the tribe. They were smaller than hamsters at birth, so female shapeshifters barely changed in size from pregnancy to delivery. Within a year, a shapeshifter child would grow to the height and weight of a seven- or eight-year-old human.
At that point, it was time for them to live independently.
Why were shapeshifters so obsessed with living in human form?
Emotions.
Love, hatred, grudges, greed, anger, obsession... Human emotions were indispensable food to shapeshifters. The more intense they were, the more delicious they tasted.
Tiyata was a special shapeshifter. His only food was—
Suspicion!
And he was not limited to humans.
Thus, wherever Tiyata went, conflict and discord always followed.
Gradually, Tiyata no longer transformed merely to feed. He toyed with humans in the palm of his hand.
He believed himself to be a god!
More than a month ago, Tiyata arrived in Storybrooke. In the forest, he encountered Thompson, who was about to hang himself.
He transformed into Thompson.
He told Thompson that he was one of the incarnations through which a deity wandered the mortal world.
Thompson knelt before Tiyata and wept bitterly.
He spoke of his unfulfilled ambitions.
It turned out Thompson had not come to Storybrooke willingly. He had been pushed out. His personality was less gentle than cowardly.
When he heard that his ex-wife had remarried and would no longer allow him to see his son, Thompson had somehow wandered into the forest, his neck already inside the noose.
Thompson believed this was God's mercy.
Tiyata was stunned. He had probably never expected someone to believe so utterly