Reparation
After the badger left, Lyal put an arm around Lyris' shoulders and squeezed her close, and she put an arm around his waist. He could feel her trembling slightly in the embrace, and it worried him. The stress of being on the run was bad enough, but she...
Delivery
Lyal still leaned against the wall of the shower, his breathing quick, feeling better both for the steam of the shower and the equally steamy treatment his sister had just finished providing. She knew exactly what to do to thrill him, to tease him, to...
Dinner
Lyal's keen hearing caught most of the conversation between the badger and the meerkat. _Truest words are spoken when thought unheard._ It was an old lapine saying that he hoped was true. It was also a saying brought out when one of his species began...
Regrets
The back door to the spa banged open sharply, and the old badger looked toward both ends of the alley before running to the dumpster to check all around it. Finding nothing, he looked up to the other end of the alley, where he saw the meerkat from the...
Our First Noel
As the calendar rolled inexorably toward what those in the United States refer to as "the holiday season," I found myself anticipating it - for the first time in years - with joy instead of dread. It's a time of year when every breath taken seems to...
Definitions
The lyric "it's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday" floated through Barton's mind as he tended to yet another customer. As was usual for a busy day, the three rental stations were active with their various clients and dressers, and conversation was...
Lunch
Barton's brain froze at what he saw before him. Underneath the smell and undernourished body was a young gray male rabbit who had been forced to grow up, far too quickly, in all the wrong ways, in the worst possible conditions. The milk chocolate eyes...
Revelations
_The Getaway_ had only failed to open on time twice in its long and respectable history. Once was due to the horrifying weather of Hurricane Sandy cutting just a wee bit too close for comfort, and even then the store only opened late. The other...
Choice
Perhaps the hardest thing that Barton ever did was to force himself to pretend not to care too much. The young rabbit would have a tough enough time trusting him not to turn them in to the authorities, much less believe that he actually wanted to...
Throwaways
The morning light stole in, as it always did, eventually, even after such a long and frightening night as Hallowe'en. For the young female rabbit crouched down behind a dumpster in the filthy back alley, the real terror was just beginning, again, as...
The Ambassador
_See how we measure feelings from a distance... See how we measure people into zero... -- October Project, "Be My Hero"_ The footman opened the rear passenger door of the stretch limousine, and I made a particularly graceful exit courtesy of the...
Story Scene -- "Why Not?"
Reasons, I had come to realize, have polarity, like electricity. There is a "why" pole and a "why not" pole, and they are quite proper opposites. The "why" pole attracts, providing you with reasons that tell you to do something, to make something...