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Mimosa stared at the ceiling. Ten hours of sleep had erased almost all of the exhaustion from the previous two days of travel. She felt fantastic, if still slightly sore, and ready to hop out of bed to face the day. There were just two problems looming over her head.

The first, a mild inconvenience at best, was that one cannot face the day in the middle of the goddamned night. When she checked her phone, the harsh light of the lock screen informed her that the local time was twelve minutes past three in the morning. And now, half an hour later, she still lay in bed. There was no sign of activity from the main house and not a damned thing to do right now. Not that these facts stopped her mind and body from insisting that it was time to be up and active. She might have messed around on her phone or sat in the lounge with a book but for her second and more pressing issue.

Whether it was the general stress from the last few weeks, the more acute stress of the recent air travel, or just her age catching up with her; she could feel the creeping tendrils of her estrus starting to spread through her, four full days before it should have. She grimaced at the plaster and paint overhead and growled under her breath. Her moons were generally like clockwork. Twenty-three days from the last ache of one heat to the first tingle of the next, which lead into three days of battling a biological wildfire and the uterine housecleaning that followed every unsuccessful cycle. She hoped that it might leave as early as it came.

Speaking of coming...

Her growl dropped an octave and she clenched her teeth. It took enormous effort to ignore the thought, but she wasn't interested in debating with her urges. If her arguments didn't stand up against the counter arguments of her burgeoning needs.... No, she didn't need to sour the Cairds' welcome by allowing lust to lead her paws.

Nonsense, snickered the voice at the back of her mind, there are plenty of options. Plenty of soft, warm, twitchy-nosed options. Maybe Alastair or Iz could use some company; or, you never know, Alder and his bunny would be up for--

"God damn it!" she hissed, rolling off of the bed to pace the floor.

The bare pads of her feet hardly felt the cool floor beneath them. Passing the window, she pushed it open further. Even without a stitch of clothing on, she was far too warm. The thermostat on the wall read eight degrees, but that was Celsius. It was probably somewhere in the forties, but it felt like sitting in the August sun. After a few laps of the bedroom, she stopped by her suitcases and stared at them with her arms crossed. A cold shower might do the trick.

It won't be enough, laughed her urges at the back of her mind.

She bared her fangs and grumbled, "It'll have to be."

You know damn well what you really need.

"Yeah," she grumbled, "some peace and fucking quiet."

She flipped one of the cases open with her foot and bent to grab the bag with her bath items. She carried the bag over to the bed and rifled through the brushes and moisturizers in the main compartment for her shampoo. As she grabbed the bottle, the backs of her fingers brushed over the thin fabric that separated the contents of the bag from those of the side pouch. The big cat's nostrils flared with a deep intake of breath. She could feel the rough texture of her vibrator pressing through the material. Her eyes closed and a whimper escaped into the cold, dark room. The tip of her tail quivered over the floor.

"Fuuuuck," she snarled through gritted teeth.

Mim's paw pulled the zipper on the side pouch, almost of its own volition, and reached inside for the toy. The pouch also contained a charging cradle and a bottle of lubricant that was infused with a mix of synthetic hormones and pheromones. The lubricant tube landed on the covers of the bed, next to the shampoo, but the cradle and vibrator accompanied her to the electric receptacle on the wall over the nightstand. She stared with drooping ears at the strange holes in the plastic cover.

She passed a paw over her face and whispered, "Ah, shit."

She'd neglected to pick up an international power adapter before leaving the States. The rechargeable battery in the vibrator might have enough charge to take her through one session, but the rest of her heat was going to be...challenging. She set the cradle on the nightstand and rested the device next to it. Wrinkling her nose, she mulled over the practicality of blowing her battery at the beginning of her heat, when the worst of it wasn't yet on her. A small note next to the receptacle caught her eye as she argued with herself.

"Feeling powerless?" it read. "Check the drawer."

The big cat quirked her muzzle to the side and pulled on the drawer handle out of curiosity. The contents, a power adapter with interchangeable sockets for various regional plug styles and a voltage selector with labels for common regions, made her sigh with relief. She pulled out the adapter and connected it to the receptacle. After selecting the proper plug socket and voltage, she plugged in the charging cradle and was rewarded with a steady ring of yellow light around the base.

"Crisis averted," she mumbled in relief.

Mimosa tossed her toiletries bag back onto the closed suitcase and started to get comfortable on the bed. Her paw reached for the vibrator on the nightstand before a thought struck her. She hopped back off the bed and padded to the window, closing it against the cold night air. The window was thick and well sealed for energy efficiency reasons, but would serve just as well as sound insulation. There was no sense waking everyone in the house with her voice. She closed the bedroom door as well, just to be safe.

Standing by the bed, the puma closed her eyes and took a deep breath to center herself. On the slow out-breath she raised her paws to her face and brushed them gently over her muzzle and cheeks. They wandered up the sides of her head and glided back over her ears. The right paw lingered for a moment, thumbpad circling the short fur at the rim of her right ear, which had always been more sensitive than the other. The puma moaned and tilted her head into it. Her other paw continued down the back of her head and neck, gradually sliding to the front through the transition between the coarse, sandy fur and the fine, cream-colored fur that ran from her chin to her groin.

As she reached the valley between the thick muscle of her neck and the ridge of her throat, her fingers tensed and the claws extended to carve furrows through the soft fur. These meandering parallel lines traced down her chest, where the dull points of her claws met the sensitive flesh of her nipples. Her breath caught as she grazed each of the four small, firm nubs down the left side of her chest and abdomen. By the time she reached the third one and paused to roll it between two claws, her right paw drifted to her muzzle and she began to nibble and lick at the pads. Her palm was especially sensitive to the barbs of her tongue. The dual stimulus generated a steady purr deep in her chest.

Mim shivered as her left paw wandered past her waist and over the sensitive area where her thigh met her hip. She muttered a breathy, indistinct affirmation through the fingers of her right paw before sending it racing down to explore the same region on the right side. She spread her fingers out, running the pads down her thighs and brushing her thumbs over her crotch on the way. The fingers stopped their downward motion at mid-thigh and once again cast her claws forth to rake the skin on the way back up. They eased toward the inner surface of her legs until her wrists grazed the sides of her mound, followed by the backs of her thumbs, followed by the pads of her index fingers which curled to run their claws along the outline of her lips.

Each movement was sure and practiced, like the pads of one's foot falling into the curves of a well-worn stair. She was no stranger to self-exploration, regardless of whether she was under her moon. Times like this, though, every nerve felt raw and exposed. The big cat's knees wobbled and she withdrew her paws from her body to steady herself against the bed. The motion flowed into a smooth crawl that brought her fully onto the mattress, where she rolled onto her back with her head on the pillow. She reached out with one paw to grab the vibrator as her other paw searched the sheets for the lubricant. The nightstand search paid off first and she clutched the toy to her chest. Running her pads over the familiar prickles of the shaft sent a tingling thrill through her that intensified both her purring and the warmth that swelled within her pelvis.

Mimosa's other paw shifted across the wrinkled fabric of the comforter with greater urgency. Judging by the cool bite of the air on her lips, she was more than wet enough to employ the vibrator without lube. If it was just about getting _some_thing inside, she wouldn't have hesitated to bury it in her; but there was a deeper hunger at play that the toy alone wasn't going to sate.

Her right leg bent and she crossed that knee over her left thigh, grinding her sensitive crotch between her legs as her fingers rambled over the covers. She gave a happy squeak when her fingertips bumped into a plastic cylinder. The relief evaporated when the pads of her paw reported to her that the bottle shape and size were all wrong. It was her shampoo.

"Well, that sure as fuck won't work," she giggled as she stretched a little farther and located her goal.

The bottle was opaque to protect the contents from light. The lubricant was a custom formula based upon her hormones, a sample of which she had been obliged to send with the mold for the vibrator, and the hormones from a male puma's semen. Considering Alder's reaction when he realized his privates were not quite so private anymore, she figured it was probably best not to let him know about his contribution to the hormone sample. She grinned as her thumb flicked the cap of the bottle open.

I don't know, she thought. It's awfully fun to see him squirm. Maybe if I leave out a detail or two...

As she dribbled the lube onto the vibrator, she idly wondered if any part of that night had resurfaced in his memory, yet. It had been one hell of a night. Even if the post-coital remorse hit him hard enough require a bottle of fifty-proof and half a bottle of aniseed liqueur to calm down. Considering the snip job he had back in college, it wasn't as though he could have littered her up anyway. She liked to tell herself that that was the only reason she allowed it herself. Allowed, as if she hadn't initiated it. Still, for all his enthusiasm during the act, the poor guy took it hard when his fervor escaped him with his climax.

"Calm down," she had chuckled from the couch in his living room.

The scent of their act mingled with the fragrance of soil, vegetation, and cedar that was a permanent feature of his cabin. He'd received all of Mama's aptitude with plants, whereas Mimosa swore she could kill a plastic cactus. Visiting the cabin, which she did as often as she could, brought with it a sense of recapturing the peacefulness of youth. She couldn't name more than a dozen of the plants, but her nose knew them all. The scent was that of Mama, of Alder, of a deep, comfortable, familiar love; and now there crept through it the warmer, sharper tang of a different kind of love, at once shallower and more profound

Her brother stood at his kitchen table with his back to her. One paw supported his weight as the other shakily poured his second glass of whiskey since he had left her. The neck of the bottle chattered against the rim of the glass in time with his jitters. The harsh clacks of glass on glass grated on her ringing ears.

"Calm down?" he'd rasped, punctuating the question with the echoing thud of the bottle landing on the table. "Mimsy, what the fuck?" He downed the glass in one motion and set it on the table, opting to just take the bottle instead of refilling the glass again.

Rolling onto her side and feeling the warmth of their combined fluids move within her, she watched him cross back into the living room and plop naked into an easy chair. "Yeah," she'd chirped. "We're both clean and you're fixed. It's not like we've set fire to a orphanage or something, Jesus."

With a roll of his eyes, he had pointed his free paw at his still damp crotch and snarled, "This shit isn't guaranteed, Mim! I mean, yeah, the chance that it'd heal and I'd put kits in someone is fucking tiny; but, goddamnit, could there be a worse fucking time than now to find out?"

Her heat had been at its peak and she couldn't have given a damn, and she said as much. "Fuck it, bud. If I do end up with your kittens, I'll make sure to raise 'em to be less annoying than you. At least they'll be cute." She poked the tip of her tongue out at him through a grin.

He'd huffed and taken a long pull from the bottle, setting it down between his leg and the arm of the chair. "Cute, hell. Ah, fuck, Mimsy"--his free paw had tried to rub across his face to mask the tears that were starting to form but didn't quite make it--"if...if I did...if you do end up... Shit, Mimosa, they could be fucking deformed, they could be still born. You could"--his voice broke under the weight of his churning imagination and the tears that could no longer be hidden--"develop some kind of...some kinda fuckin'...thing...during the pregnancy. A condition, I don't know. Jesus fucking Christ, Mim, what we just did could fucking kill you! Why the fuck am I the only one losing their shit over this?"

"Because you're drunk, numbnuts," she had scoffed. "Nothin like that is gonna happen. Now, shut the fuck up about consequences. The only real consequence is that the itch is finally gone and I need to enjoy this feeling while it lasts."

He had wandered back to the kitchen to finish his bottle and fall into a snit that oscillated between grumbling and whimpering. An hour later, after she cleaned him up from the aftermath of his reaction to the sambuca, she bundled him into bed. When he was down, she was left with a silent cabin and her thoughts. With her fires temporarily doused and the warmth of the liquor faded, her unshackled conscience took the opportunity to replay the evening for her.

She'd gone to him to ask him to make the mold and provide a sample for the synthetic hormone. Nothing more. All he had to do was go somewhere private, cast his dick, spunk in a vial, and bring her the results. When he balked, she could have dropped it. Should have dropped it. Instead, she had tried to talk it out over drinks. Her fervor and his distraction at the strength of her pheromones led him to drink faster than he was wont. She'd won. He took the mold kit from her and wobbled off to the bathroom. A curse from the bathroom brought her to the door to jokingly ask if he had whiskey dick and couldn't pull off the job. He opened the door and growled that he was plenty hard, which she could see, but his fumbling paws couldn't control the mold. She'd helped. It took a while for the mold to set and they were left too close with too little to keep their minds from wandering. She asked how it felt and he stuck his tongue out and wrinkled his muzzle. They fell silent, but her body didn't. The enclosed space filled with their scents and her raging biology. At the correct time, she poured cold water over the base of his cock, he softened and the mold came off. The impression was perfect, but her attention kept being drawn to the original.

She helped him wash off and any control either of them might have exerted was lost at the touch of her pads on his bristled skin. He shuddered as the grip of her paws was joined by the nuzzling of her nose and lips in the fur of his neck and chest. The water she rinsed him with was warm and he gasped with the rapid return of his erection. With a purr that bordered on a growl, she had sunk to her knees, but he stopped her before her mouth could find his bare skin. The roughness of his paws redirecting her was immediately offset by the intensity of his gaze and the apology on his lips. She stood and wrapped her arms around him. Whatever the momentary transgression had been, it vanished with the pressure of their bodies against one another. There wasn't even a memory between the bathroom and the couch.

It might have all been a dream, except for the smell of anise in the dark, still room and the sensation of what leaked from her crotch. Alder's words and the pain on his face had returned to her then and it had taken all that she had not to cry alone in his living room. She wrote "Sorry, bud" on a napkin and gathered the things she had brought with her. At some point she had filled the little vial with his come, but damned if she knew when. She couldn't remember driving the two hours back to her apartment in Mesita, but that was where she had woken up the next morning.

Laying in the darkness in the Cairds' guest cottage now, she was surrounded by the fragrance of the lube and imagined that she could just faintly make out his scent mingled with hers again. Despite the drama, a part of her almost wished his seed had quickened within her back then. It was probably the instincts talking, but she thought she might have enjoyed bringing up their kits, even considering the risk. Sure, he was an asshole; but he was her asshole, in so many ways but the one that she really needed right now.

The puma sighed and ran the pads of her left paw over her crotch. The slick, puffy outer lips parted easily beneath her touch. She let all the thoughts about the past drop away and focused on the immediate sensations of the present. The pads of her first and second fingers were immediately soaked with her arousal. They teased along the length of her slit and through the sparse fur between there and her anus. As the pads dragged across her skin and came to rest on the circle of bare, puckered flesh, she felt it contract.

"Mmmm," she purred.

Do that on your own time, insisted the urges at the back of her mind.

In defiance, she slipped farther, letting the fur of her arm drag over her crotch. Her claws teased at the base of her tail before retracting back into her fingertips. Mimosa's fingers closed around her tail, pressing it against the soft pad of her palm. Her arm and wrist ground against every erogenous zone between her legs as her fingers squeezed and massaged the base of her tail. Giving in to the demands of her furious urges, she pulled her paw back, raking her fingers over her slit and dipping a pad between the folds to lightly kiss her clitoris. The smoldering itch flared into a burning ache that tensed the muscles of her pelvis and lower back, causing her tail to twitch to one side without conscious command. A squeal escaped into the echoing room.

A breath sucked in through her teeth as a pad continued to softly nudge and circle the sensitive flesh, deliberately teasing the instincts that drove her to this. The puma exhaled in a slow, rumbling moan. Her other paw clutched at the vibrator, which earned her palm and finger pads an array of tiny dents from the firm yet flexible bristles. The need for something to be in her reached an intensity that she could no longer ignore. Spinning the toy in her paw, she oriented it such that she could hold the base and reach the controls with her fingers and thumb. She brought the business end to rest at the bottom corner of her slit and felt her nerves, already straining for stimulus, reacting to the chill of its touch and to the familiar tingle of the lubricant on its surface.

Still deliberately teasing herself, Mimosa pulled the slick, satiny tip along the length of her vulva, maintaining only the barest contact. An involuntary twitch of her wrist pressed the toy to her clitoris and her voice groaned out, echoing in the enclosed space. She clenched her teeth together and grinned, panting through her flared nose. Most of her wanted to take this slow and savor it, to weave some entertaining fantasy and provide a context for the sensations. She preferred to make the experience more than just the mechanical treatment of some biological drive. This time, however, the voice at the edge of her consciousness would have none of that.

The claws of her feet gripped the comforter as her butt lifted off of the bed and her hips drove up against the matching downward thrust of her arms. Her voice rose quickly from moan to shout as first the smooth tip, then the textured shaft impaled her. Her body remained in the trembling, elevated pose for a moment while her walls adjusted to the intruder. Hips and arm then fell into the practiced rhythm of rolling thrusts that ensured the fullest involvement of the spines. The inward plunges pushed the tip slowly to the deepest corners of her convulsing passage. Each withdrawal went as a series of stuttering pauses that ended with the tip of the toy poised at her threshold.

Mim was thankful that it was too early for anyone to be out and about. Though she desperately tried to control her voice and movements, the grunts and mewling yelps that escaped her would have easily been heard by someone on the lawn. Even the thudding of the headboard against the wall and the loud squelching sounds from her crotch might have drawn the attention of a passerby. Hell, her purr alone must have rattled the glass.

In her state, the feeling of the toy moving in her and the spreading fire of her body reacting to the hormones in the lube might have been enough to carry through, but her thumb and first finger still reached for the control knob. She twisted the speed control to half and was immediately rewarded with a new muted purr whose source was within her, but not her. When Alder had struggled with the thing, trying to shut it off, he had inadvertently messed with the vibration pattern switch and cycled it through to the random setting, where Mimosa was all too happy to leave it.

The puma's limbs were growing harder and harder to control. Her yelps and squeals built into a frenzied chant in whose varied pitch a careful ear could have discerned both pleas and demands. With each increasingly shallow inhalation her nostrils flared. Her free paw clenched and unclenched around the folds of the comforter, nearly in time with the fervent clutching of her own folds upon the object inside her. With a groan, her legs collapsed and her butt landed on the bed. Between her spread legs, her hand still hammered away. Mim's movements transitioned to short, deep thrusts that bumped her fingers against her soaked lips. Although no longer raised, her hips continued their rolling motion.

The fire that started in her groin burned up her spine like a fuse, flaring in her torso with the pounding of her heart and continuing as a wave of warmth up through her neck. Her ears folded back against her head and she snarled between her ragged breaths. Both legs stretched out on the covers and her toes spread out with claws extended. Her belly tensed with the spasms that built below her navel. She was close. All it needed was one more push.

Her paw twisted the vibrator inside her and then gripped it firmly once more. She held the device buried in her and let the mechanism that moved the bristles do the last of the work. That small, wonderful patch on the underside of the toy twitched in tiny circles directly on an area of densely packed nerves on the front wall of her pussy. She could feel the tension hitting its peak and teetering at the brink.

"Ah!" she gasped between breaths. "Fuck! Yes, Alllld--nyuh!"

She clamped her jaws shut to bite off the rest of the name, but that didn't stop the image from appearing in her mind. The dam broke and her climax washed over her with all of the violence and chaos of a flood. She rolled onto her side and drew all four of her shaking limbs to her chest, leaving the still-running vibrator buried in her. Her tail lashed behind her, twitched toward her legs at intervals with the contractions of her pelvic muscles. As her body curled in on itself, the shape of her insides changed and pressed the vibrator against previously unstimulated areas. This rocketed her over a second peak before she was fully over the first.

"Oh, gods... yes!" cried Mimosa before trailing off into a rumbling groan.

The convulsions of her walls forced the toy out of her. It slipped down over the back of her leg to lay buzzing between her fur and the comforter. The vibration caught her in the ticklish spot between her rump and the back of her thigh, and she reached shakily between her legs to grab it and turn it off. Mimosa rolled onto her back again, still twitching and fighting for breath. The big cat's dark green eyes stared through the ceiling for the quarter hour it took her body to calm down.

A paw passed over her face, gently pinching the bridge of her muzzle and rubbing through her whiskers. It may have been cut off halfway, but the word still lingered in her ears. That was what she got for indulging in memories while dealing with her urges. Occasionally calling out Alder's name when enjoying the toy modeled after him wasn't uncommon. Fortunately, she hadn't had that sort of thing come up during many of her sexual encounters with flesh-and-blood partners, since the guys felt and smelled nothing like him. It was only when her last girlfriend had found the toy and used it on her, during a night of alcohol and frenzied passion, that she had inadvertently let her brother's name slip where ears could hear. That had resulted in an awkward conversation and probably contributed to the end of that relationship.

Mim shook her head on the pillow and shrugged to herself. Relationships came and went. Even if she hit it off with one of the Cairds, she'd just be leaving again in a few days. She'd hop another series of planes back to the States and return to the exciting life of an education administrator.

Is it even worth entertaining the thought? she asked herself, knowing full well that when the urges came back she might not be clearheaded enough not to entertain it.

Despite her weak legs, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and swung off of the bed. She slid the window back open to cool down and air out the room, then carried the vibrator to the lavatory to wash it in the sink. She dried it carefully and returned it to its cradle. When the device came to rest, the ring of light at the base of the cradle turned from steady yellow to a slowly pulsing lavender. Half power, I'll be damned. Then she fetched her shampoo and padded into the washroom for a shower.

***

Alder and Cataría sat in the front seats of one of the two sport utility vehicles that awaited some of the few Cairds who had still not retuned home. The puma was less than thrilled to be back in the bubble of Edinburgh's overpowering melange of scents, but hid it well for the sake of his companion. They waited at the train station, parked beside the other vehicle which was occupied by Iseabail and Molly.

"When are they supposed to get in?" yawned the big cat, stretching his arms out over the dashboard.

Cat stifled one of her own and favored him with a shrug. "Some time 'tween eight and nine."

Alder blinked at the dashboard clock. "So we've got thirty minutes, minimum..."

"Aye," she chuckled, "but no making out while we wait. Ye'll make Mols jealous."

That earned a laugh from the puma. "Glad you can make jokes about that, bun. Wasn't quite what I was thinking, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," he said, tilting his head toward the coffeehouse across the street that they had stopped at before departing Edinburgh the last time, "I've got a hankerin' for some java. Want me to grab you some?"

"Christ, yes!" she groaned. "Wonder if the others want any."

She tapped a message to both of her sisters and Alder watched through the window as they received it and answered. The black rabbit next to him didn't even have to read their replies. Their vigorous nods were enough.

"I guess it's unanimous," Alder snickered. "Text me y'all's orders and I'll trot over."

"Alright, tree. Just..."

"Hmm?"

Her nose wrinkled. "Please, don't trot."

He grinned and winked as he exited the vehicle. "Wouldn't even know how."

The traffic was about as hellacious as any other city center. The trickiest part was remembering to look right first, then left. He made it across with only one scowl and horn blast from an impatient driver. The bustle spilled into the cafe, which was packed with a heavy morning crowd; however, the line moved with admirable speed. He was already halfway to the counter when Cat's text with the rabbits' three orders chimed on his phone. There was a television suspended in the back corner of the seating area, tuned to a BBC world news broadcast. The reporter on the screen stood in the darkness before the White House and prattled about some crisis or other. That was the way of Western news services: crisis, crisis, weather, crisis, sport, crisis, crisis, weird or amusing crisis. A smaller video in the corner showed images of a wildfire burning in the night somewhere. Below scrolled blurbs of text on which his tired head couldn't focus.

He yawned again. Wildfires occupied a strange place for him. On the one paw, they refreshed the forests and grasslands, clearing dead brush and releasing vital nutrients into the soil. They were a necessary part of most ecosystems. On the other, he'd lost one cabin and a shitload of possessions in the Lincoln County fires a few years back and wasn't interested in going through that again.

"We'll have more details on this developing story as they become available," intoned the reporter. "Back to you, Maureen."

"Thank you, Nathan," responded the news reader back in the studio. Her monotone carried a hint of Irish brogue, and her countenance bore all the emotion of broken clock radio: a refreshing change from the frenetic posturing of American news broadcasts. "If you are just joining us--"

"Didnae expect tae see ye back in here, love," lilted the ginger tabby behind the counter. He flashed an open grin that gave a brief glimpse of a metal tongue stud. "Nae bunny this time?"

Alder smiled back and shook his head. "Nah, she's waiting across the way with two of her sisters. Soon enough, there'll be a whole mess more of 'em rolling in."

The tabby whistled. "Proper pussy magnet, eh?" His orange-ringed tail flicked behind him and he scrunched his face up in a way that was calculated to look adorable and succeeded.

"Clever wording there, gingersnap. Still have to politely decline. One partner is more than enough to keep my paws full."

"Bugger," the cat pouted. "Worth a shot, though, eh?"

"Never know 'til you ask," Alder grinned. He kept his ears upright, but relaxed; just enough to indicate that the conversation was amusing, rather than discomforting. "If I weren't attached, I'd give you a run for your money."

The tabby laughed. "Alright, sweetie, what can I make fer ye?"

Alder read off the orders and added his own. After he paid for the drinks, he moved to the end of the counter. Following some unseen signal, a coworker took the tabby's place at the till so he could move down to the espresso machine and work on Alder's orders. While the barista worked on one of the drinks, he asked the puma what part of the U.S. he was from.

"New Mexico," Alder drawled, leaning on the pick-up counter.

"Mexico?" grunted the barista. "But, your accent..."

"Uh uh," chuckled the puma. "New Mexico. It's in the United States. Next to Texas and Colorado."

"How close is that tae Yellowstone?"

Alder raised an eyebrow and said, "Pretty damned far, maybe a thousand miles or so. Why? You been there?"

The tabby set one drink on the counter and swiftly moved on to the next. "Love," he tittered, "I've only been away frae Scotland once and that ended with me in hospital in Manchester after gettin' jumped by bunch of Manc cunts who didnae fancy a bender in fishnets on their street. Nah, I wondered if yer home was in danger and ye're gettin' ready tae fly back oot."

The puma grimaced. "Bastards. Of all the shitheaded--hang on. Why would my place be in danger?" he asked, thoroughly confused.

Setting the second drink on the counter, the barista turned back to work on the third. He pointed his chin to the television. "Ye huvnae heard? The big whatsit...eh...super volcano under the park exploded an hour ago."

"What?!"

Alder spun to look at the screen again. Some expert with a PhD appended to his name was droning about prevailing winds with a graphic over her shoulder that depicted the forecasted ash fall. There were two tickers scrolling across the bottom of the screen, one ran brief reports of pyroclastic flows, fires, and estimated death tolls while the other slipped in other random headlines. The bottom corner of the screen showed dark, grainy video of the fires raging across the mountain wilderness, spliced with animated graphics explaining the mechanisms of phreatomagmatic eruptions.

With his eyes still locked on the screen, the puma sank onto one of the stools at the counter. He didn't notice the barista finishing his orders and moving politely away. Something in Alder's face had quashed all conversation from the tabby. The other patrons provided a respectful distance as well.

According to the scrolling text, no reports had been received from the park itself. Attempts to radio park staff had gone unanswered and the mobile networks were dark in the region. Aerial imagery had yet to pierce the layers of ash, gas, smoke, and dust that shrouded the area. As far as anyone could tell, everything within the caldera had been obliterated in the eruption. Emergency networks were in chaos and there was no word of any who escaped before hell literally broke loose. The puma stared at the screen, but after a moment the only thing he saw was the excited face of Rickey Sandoval, flashing the white of his teeth and of the crisp stationery that bore his acceptance letter to join the fisheries team at Grand Teton. Situated outside the southern edge of the caldera, Grand Teton had largely been incinerated by the initial pyroclastic flow. Did any of them have enough warning to be out?

Alder jumped when he felt a pat on his shoulder. When he turned, he found Molly standing beside him. Her frustrated smile vanished at the sight of the big cat's face.

"Alder? Ye awrite? What happened?" she asked in a hushed tone. "Kitty asked me tae come find ye, since ye've been gone so long. The others are here and waiting at the cars. Ye...ye look terrible."

"Sor--" He choked on his dry tongue and swallowed heavily. "--Sorry, Molly. I...got distracted. Something happened back home." He waved vaguely toward the television.

"What's up?" Her ears and eyes flicked toward the screen.

"Um...one of our national parks just decided to relocate across an area the size of Germany, taking bits of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana with it."

"Fuckin' what? ...Ok. Here, come back tae the car. Never mind the drinks, I'll get those. Let's just get back tae the hoose so's ye and yer sister can figure things oot thegither."

Alder's phone rang when the two of them were halfway across the street. It was Mimosa.

"Alder? Did you hear?" Her voice was strained and there were television noises in the background.

"Yeah. We've got everyone together, it sounds like. We're on our way back. How bad is it down our way?"

She grumbled, "No word yet. Everyone I've tied to reach is asleep or not answering. Could the cell networks be overloaded down our way? It can't have done anything that far south, could it?"

"Fuck if I know. Looks like the we'd be seeing a bunch of ash, if nothing else. Look, my reception is shit between here and where you are. We can talk more when we're all back."

"Ok," she agreed. "Hey, asshole?"

He smirked. "Yeah, Mimsy?"

"Love you."

He blinked and splayed his ears. They didn't often say that sort of thing to each other anymore. "Ah, hey now! I'm sure everything's fine at home. Really. And, I love you, too."

They disconnected as Alder reached the car and took his and Cat's drinks. Cataría was not as pissed off as he had expected her to be. Her ears were laid back, but their angle was one of concern rather than anger. Her paws fidgeted with her phone as the puma climbed in.

"I saw the news," she said. "Ye okay?"

He settled into the seat with a weak wave at her siblings in the back seats. Introductions would have to wait.

"Yeah. It's just a shock. I'm sure Mim's place and mine are fine. It shouldn't have done anything that far south. Still--fuck!" He winced as he opened the door again and gingerly pulled the tip of his tail in. Closing the door again, he rubbed his throbbing tail and muttered, "Sorry, guys. Not the best first impression. My head's sorta all over the place right now."

Cat tutted, "Aye. By the time we get back tae the house, there should be more information."

To give the puma something else to think about in the meantime, she introduced her siblings to him as she pulled onto the motorway. Eighteen-year-old Margaret was tall for the Caird brood, about four inches shorter than Alder if his eyes were any judge. Her fur was black with a scattering of white spots that were sparse at her paws but appeared to grow more dense as they climbed her body. They finally collected into a uniform field of white once they reached her ears. The effect was something like an upside-down snow globe, through which glinted two chips of ice. She had her mother's eyes.

Maggie had won four tickets to a resort in Ibiza, Spain during a radio call-in. She and her sister Senga, an entirely white doe of sixteen, were thick as thieves, so it was no surprise that she was chosen to come along. A friend of the family happened to have a holiday scheduled for the same resort with overlapping dates. Caird brothers Aillig and Wallace, fourteen and twelve, were close with the other family's son, so they were invited to take the two remaining tickets. Alder commented on the generosity. He would have thought the girls would bring their own friends along instead.

Aillig, whose fur matched Donna's blue-grey except for his paws which borrowed the paternal black, gave a meaningful chuckle and said, "Fin, that's Finley, the Connors' boy, is a right cunt when it comes tae birds. He's fine on his own or wi' a bunch of lads, but he just goes tae fuckin' pieces around anyone wi' a vag."

"Aye," laughed Wallace, throwing back his black-speckled, white head. "There isnae one he hasnae tried tae pull. He's probably even tried gettin' off wi' his gran."

Senga wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes, blue like her mother' and sister's. "I dunno aboot that, but he is a persistent little arse. 'No' tends tae mean, 'try again in five minutes'."

"These two helped Senga and me stay ootae Fin's crosshairs while we were doon there," explained Maggie.

The carload had a collective snicker at Fin's expense and settled in to a long conversation about the resort, the food, and the sea. The lighthearted subject matter helped Alder keep his mind off of the worries that plagued him. Besides, it wasn't as though he could do anything from half a world away anyway.

***

"...the worst, really the most devastating natural disaster to ever hit this great, great country," droned the President of the United States, his tone about as emotional as an undergraduate geology lecture. "I know that all of our thoughts and prayers are with the people suffering--"

"Says a man who neither thinks nor prays," Alder grumbled from his position, cross-legged on the floor at Cataría's feet.

"--this tragedy--"

"We ain't exactly the prayin' type, either, Assface," his sister said.

He shrugged, "True, but we don't go around claiming that we do or that it's an appropriate substitute for action."

Someone in the room shushed them and the group continued to watch the tele. "--I want the people of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and everyone who is in the path of this thing--whether it's the fires or the ash or the lava--to know that they are not forgotten. But, more than that, I want to make this promise to you, America: the parties responsible for this catastrophe will be held accountable!"

As the crowd on the screen cheered and surged like a wave-tossed mat of rotting algae on the surface of some foul sea, the man at the podium smirked down on them. While he waited for their silence, he made empty gestures at random places in their mass; here a thumbs up, there a fat finger pointed in mock camaraderie. Inside the Caird house, eighteen rabbits sat in front of the television, accompanied by one human, one stoat, and two very agitated pumas.

"'Held accountable' my ass!" Mimosa snarled, probably a little louder than she intended.

"Eh?" squeaked Alastair, who was sitting next to her.

"They mentioned earlier that the region experienced a rise in seismic activity over the last few years. What they didn't say is that the increase correlated directly to the Department of the Interior leasing sections of the park for petroleum exploration." She was perched on an ottoman with her tail lashing ferociously behind her. "Since then, oil companies have been running hydraulic fracturing rigs twenty-four-seven. Same goddamned thing they've been doing to the reservations, the ??åo ch'yyaãn goheç tchièdmõ pieces of shit."

Alder nodded and huffed, "Yup."

Alastair's ears twitched over his head, flicking back and forth between the big cats. "Wha--?"

Cat grunted, "Ralyãshiwan?" She received a snicker and a nod from Alder.

"Pardon?" stammered Alastair turning to her.

"Oh," Mim mewed, dipping her tail and drooping her ears to the sides, "yeah. Sorry, that's something Alder and I have been calling the humans in America since college."

"It roughly means 'fucking bald monkey trying to push its dick into its own ass'," chuckled Alder. Then he threw a grin over his shoulder and added, "Present company excepted, Abs! It's directed more against the infected scrotal sores in the government than humans in general."

Abigail giggled and waved that off. They all turned their attention back to the television.

"...lost massive, massive amounts of machinery and the lives of three dozen oilmen, not to mention area ranchers and park goers who could not evacuate in time. This was a horrible screw-up on the part of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, so I have terminated Secretaries Johnson and Moore, effective immediately."

Mim scoffed, "You appointed them, shit-for-brains. And they only did exactly the things you promised on the campaign trail."

"Furthermore," the President continued, "due to this gross mishandling of our nation's resources and the failure by the National Parks Service and National Forest Service in anticipating and preventing this disaster..."

The fur on Alder's back strained beneath his shirt and his tail puffed up. He covered his muzzle with both paws and muttered something under his breath. Cat reached down and placed a paw on his shoulder

"...issued an Executive Order dissolving both as of the end of the year. The new Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, which I will announce later this week, will tackle our outdated approach to resource conservation and mineral explor--" The television went dark.

"How the fuck did that pompous cunt ever get elected?" Bothain Caird barked, tossing the remote onto a side table.

Alder was already on his feet, heading toward the door and stammering, "Sorry. I need some fresh air."

"Awrite if I join ye, tree?" Cat asked, with her ears downcast.

He stopped and smiled meekly at her. He briefly looked ready to decline, but acquiesced. "I'd like it if you did, bun."

The two took their leave of the group and went to get Cataría's coat and boots. The room was silent for a moment, before the family started splitting into conversational threesomes and foursomes. Alastair got dragged into a chat with Dallis and her partner, who looked like a cross between a rabbit and a old, dirty, cotton mop. Mimosa looked around briefly and felt quite suddenly alone and out of place. Mumbling her own apology, which she didn't think anyone noticed, she got up to step out of the crowded room. When she reached the main hall, she heard a voice behind her.

"Y'awrite, Mimosa?"

Molly Caird walked up beside her and placed a paw on her shoulder. Mim was surprised by the look of concern on the rabbit's face, which equalled the looks that the family had directed at Alder. Since he was familiar to most of them now, their concern for him made sense, but she was still an interloper; she wouldn't have expected it.

"Fuck," the puma muttered through a mirthless chuckle, "I must look pretty rough if you're feeling like you need to check on me."

Molly's ears dropped back and her head cocked with a frown and a little shake when she replied, "It's no aboot how ye look, really. Ye look fine." She took her paw from Mimosa's shoulder and shrugged. "Thing is, yer surrounded by a bunch of strangers, somethin' awful has happened at home, and the one person that ye know here just fucked off. It's got tae feel fuckin' lonely. Noo, if I was alone in a strange place and heard that some huge tragedy had struck, I dunno, Skye or somethin', I'd be shitting mahsel wi' worry inside and tryin' tae make everyone aroond me think I wisnae. Figured something along those lines might be goin' on with you."

"It is nerve wracking. Though, it doesn't look like anything bad has happened down where we live. The waiting to hear from friends, is the hardest bit." Mim glanced around to make sure no one else was around before continuing in a whisper, "I have anxiety problems at the best of times and they just get worse when the moon turns. Shitty circumstances and shittier timing, y'know?" She balled up one paw, drove it softy against her own belly in a mock punch, and flashed a frustrated snarl.

The black rabbit had already noticed that Mim's hackles were raised and her lashing tail was thicker than usual. There had been a subtle change to the puma's scent since she arrived, but that could have been due to a myriad of reasons. Molly took the big cat's paw in her own and said, "C'mon, love. I cannae dae much aboot lava or hormones, but I can at least get ye a cup of valerian tea and see if we cannae bring the anxiety doon a touch."

Her paw was soft and warm on the puma' pads. Mimosa followed the rabbit's lead into the kitchen and watched as Molly filled and turned on the electric kettle, an altogether foreign device to the big cat. One of her long ears stayed trained in the direction of the kettle as she busied herself getting cups and filling two tea infusers with loose leaf tea from a tin. The little mesh balls fell with matching clinks in their respective mugs. When the kettle reached a boil, Molly poured the water over the infusers and set a timer. Occupying herself while the tea steeped, she put things back where she found them. That did not take long, so she turned back to the puma and rested her back against the counter.

"Noo then," she said, "I never did catch what ye dae for a living."

Mim smiled. "The simple answer: I'm an administrator at a B.I.A. school."

"Ok, school and admin I'm familiar with. What's a B.I.A.?" She cocked an eyebrow to underscore her confusion.

The puma eased back to lean against the counter next to Molly, so that they were separated by only about a foot of space. When Mimosa answered, Molly had to tilt her head up to look at her.

"Bureau of Indian Affairs. It handles government interactions with Native Americans. If you want to wax flowery and poetic, it's mission is the preservation of indigenous cultures. I don't think I should go too much into what they really do. Otherwise you'll have to skip the tea and use chloroform to settle me back down." She grunted and shook her head, splaying her ears. An eye roll accompanied her self conscious grimace, "Doesn't stop me from working there and trying to make some sort of a difference."

Molly grimaced and looked down at the floor. "That bad, eh?"

"Pretty much. I used to think that it wasn't a problem for us. Most of the big cat voxipeds in western North America were skipped over by the waves of forced relocation and genocide that native humans and v.p. wolves faced. We lived in places that soft European settlers didn't want. Too high, too rocky, too cold, y'know?" Mim shrugged and continued, "Even when the ore booms hit, the prospectors hardly bothered with puma lands. The few that tried to make trouble didn't make it back out of the mountains to call in the army. Mountains were dangerous places, after all; 'accidents' happened all the time. The rest were content to trade with us for what gold we brought out ourselves. Wasn't like we had any use for it.

"Maybe we would have held on to our heritage harder if the invaders had been trying to rob us of it. Without that negative pressure, we became enamored with their tools and eventually their technology. As time went by and more Old World felids immigrated to the States, a lot of us spread out and sort of faded into the crowd. Most folks don't even think of us as 'Indians' anymore and in most of the important ways, we aren't. Puma tribes in Central and South America retained a lot of their culture, because they lived so deep in the forests and mountains that the governments couldn't oust them. North of Mexico City, our people didn't fare so well. There are only five or six small villages of largely traditional puma culture in North America, but they're all in Canada.

"When we were in college, numbnuts and I realized the importance of the history was taken from us. I took it to heart more than he did and started hanging out with Navajo, Apache, Hopi, and Pueblo students in the hopes of learning something about our ancestors through their folklore. They couldn't shine much light on it. I majored to cultural anthropology with a minor in education and went into the B.I.A. when I graduated. Now I work on cultural preservation and stewardship programs for a school on the Acoma Pueblo reservation. Can't resurrect my lost culture, but I can do my part to safeguard theirs."

Molly had looked back up and was watching her closely. "That's good, though. We dinnae have any trace of whatever culture we once had. It's great that ye can help the ones who still dae hold on tae i-iiiiit!"

Her voice rose to a squeak as the loud ding of the timer interrupted her. Holding her chest and laughing like a twit, she removed the infusers and emptied them into a bin for compost, then quickly washed them and set them to drain. Drying her paws, Molly turned back to Mimosa with a red tint to the inside of her ears.

"Sorry! Forgot about that. I dinnae think I've heard that many words come oot yer muzzle since ye been here," she giggled. "Dae ye take anything in yer tea? Sugar, honey?"

"No," the puma purred, "thank you."

Molly handed her a mug and prepared the other to her liking, stirring in two spoonfuls of honey. They both remained standing at the counter as they sipped in unison. The aroma was oddly evergreen, Mim noted with a smile. She glanced down at Molly out of the corner of her eye and caught the rabbit in an unguarded moment.

The rabbit held her cup in both paws, enjoying the warmth filtering through her fur. There was a slouch to her posture that might have looked relaxed if it did not feel so resigned. Her ears, not particularly focused on anything, were elevated but slightly skewed to the sides. Similarly unfocused, her dark brown eyes stared into some unknown distance with a wistful sort of sadness. The chevron of her nose twitched slowly, without rhythm. As the big cat watched her, Molly returned to the present with a series of self-conscious blinks and a slight straightening of her pose. She looked up at Mimosa, having suddenly realized she was being watched.

"I suppose," Mim said in a low tone, barely above a whisper, "I could turn your first question around on you. You okay?"

Molly closed her eyes and smiled. "Fine, aye. The scent just had me lost in thought."

"Looked awful heavy. Worryin' about someone over on our side of the pond that might have been affected by all this?"

"Nah, thank fuck. There's a friend I've been chatting with for a while. She lives in Pueblo, Colorado, by she's already sent me a message that she's fine. Joked that all the rich cunts'll be skiing on ash for the rest of the winter."

The puma laughed. "Good! Wish our friends would get back to us, too. If that ain't it, though; what is botherin' you?"

The rabbit tutted. "Noo, look here. I'm the one helpin' ye wi'yer shite, no th' ither way roond."

"Maybe," Mimosa said with a shrug of her right shoulder. "What if I said your accent is like music and thinking about something else might help get my mind off things?"

"An' ye're wantin' tae think aboot my troubles?" Her brown eyes rolled before gazing back at the big cat from beneath skeptically lowered eyebrows. "Gie's a break, love. I dinnae even want tae think aboot 'em."

Mimosa smirked and finished her tea. "And yet, the stubborn shits are still bein' thunk about, ain't they?"

"Aye," laughed Molly. "I suppose so."

"It couldn't hurt to talk it over."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Ye soond like Mum. Fine. You'll probably just be bored listenin' tae a dumb kid's drama, though. Just try no tae think less of me than whatever ye do now. I'm tryin' tae be better."

"Cross my heart," Mim muttered, drawing an X over her chest using her free paw. "As for being bored, I work in a windowless office, under buzzing fluorescent lights, surrounded by an ocean of paperwork. It's thrilling just to be able to see and talk to a living person who isn't yelling about funding and deadlines. You'd have to be some sort of supernatural force of boredom to effect me." The weight of her words was immediately diminished by a tremendous yawn.

The rabbit laughed with a brightness and joy that Mimosa hadn't heard from her since she had arrived at the Caird estate. It was the same sort of pure, joyful laugh that Fenella and Cat often let out. "Oh, aye?" she asked, wiping her eyes and cheeks.

"Sorry," Mim grunted. With a grin and a nod to her tea cup she quipped, "Didn't drug me didya?"

The rabbit's reaction puzzled Mimosa. Her long, black ears dropped back and her gaze fell to the floor. With a shudder, she crossed her arms and almost appeared to shrink into herself. Her movement upset her mug and dribbled tea down her shirt. She didn't seem to notice. The puma might have taken it for some sort of nonverbal admission of guilt, but the expression on the bunny's face was one of pain and disgust.

"No!" croaked Molly, shaking her head vigorously. "That's no...I widnae dae somethin' like that!"

Mim set her mug on the counter and took Molly's to do the same. Once those were out of the way, she gathered the rabbit in a hug, careful to avoid the spilled tea, and rubbed her back. Molly half returned the embrace, burying her face against the puma's chest.

"It was just a joke, Mols. I'm sorry."

The rabbit sniffed and nodded. Muffled by Mimosa's shirt she responded, "I know. Ye happened say that right as I was thinking about things I have done that probably weren't as far off that mark as I'd like."

Mim stepped back, but kept her paws on Molly's shoulders. "Look, hon, we're gonna talk but we need to get your out of these clothes first."

"Eh?!" the bunny squeaked, eyes wide and ears stiff behind her head.

"You're covered in tea and honey, Twitch," she chuffed, brushing the back of a paw over the rabbit's cheek and tapping her nose with the pad of her index finger. "Never mind that the shirt might stain; if you let it soak through, that honey is gonna make your fur all sticky." She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue.

Molly giggled, "Oh! Sorry! It soonded like... But, ye widnae have meant it like that."

"Don't sell yourself short, hon," she said with a wink and a squeeze of the rabbit's shoulders. "If you weren't obviously in distress, I might have."

Molly gave a start and her ears stood on end. "Eh? I thought ye were fawning over Alastair?"

"And if I was?" Mim grinned, flashing her fangs. "Alder isn't the only only one who isn't concerned about their partner's plumbing. Difference is: he avoids plural relationships, I don't. Granted, it's been a while since I've been in any relationship, plural or otherwise."

"What... no wi' siblings, though?"

"Yeah, once or twice," she replied with a shrug and an odd twist to her muzzle that the bunny couldn't place. "Long as they're all cool with it. Least everyone sorta knows where everyone's been."

"Jings..." the rabbit muttered.

"Come on," the puma said, nudging Molly. "You change and I'll rinse out the shirt before the stain sets. Call it payback for calming me down."

The pair rinsed their cups, added them to the dishwasher and rushed up stairs to deal with the spill.

***

Boots and bare paws crunched through a thin crust of ice on the snow. Overhead stretched a drab grey blanket that hid the position of the late afternoon sun. Neither clouds nor branches stirred in the still air. There was a cold, diffused quality to the light that seemed to drain the color from everything. Through this desaturated landscape, Alder trudged with Cataría by his side. They passed beneath still branches, where even the accustomed tittering of yellowhammers had fallen silent. The pair's breath formed transient clouds that swirled in their wake as they walked.

After several minutes of heavy quiet, Cataría mumbled, "I know that nothing shakes ye for very long, tree. But, there's a hell of a clood ower yer heid. I wish I knew what I could dae tae help ye."

Alder looked up at the overcast sky and chuckled softly. He wrapped his right arm around Cat's waist and held her as they walked. "The sun's still there; it'll come back out....eventually."

"Soon, I hope. It hurts seein' ye like this. Not used tae ye bein' this dour."

He nodded and shrugged. "Lot going through my head."

"Wannae talk aboot it?"

"You'll think I'm an idiot."

"Alreidy dae," she smirked. "It's part of yer charm. Let's have it, then. I'm all ears."

"Well, a couple of days ago, we emptied your flat and stored your shit to make arrangements for leaving, yeah?"

"Aye..."

"And the real estate lady that your dad set you up with said she thinks it won't be hard to find buyers that could be interested in it."

"Aye...and?"

Alder sighed heavily and stopped. The sections of the woods behind the Caird house had been meticulously groomed as part of the sprawling back garden. Graveled paths reached different features of the grounds. The terrain to the left of the path they walked moved upward, forming a low hill. At the base, a wide stone bench sat beneath a towering Scots pine. Thick roots folded around the base of the bench and spidered away to vanish into the ground. Brushing the thin snow from the seat, he sat on the bench and Cat followed his lead. Now that they were still, they noticed light flakes tumbling onto their clothes and fur.

"Your roots are up, bun. We've got you nearly set to transplant and the sons of bitches have poisoned the soil. I can't see sense in bringin' you home with me when it looks like there'd be no work for you. I can't see you enjoying life, stuck in a cubicle in an office or slinging food at a conveyor belt of obese jack-offs. Knowing that my own job is fucked, there's no way I'd be able to take care of you until we could find something right for you and get you acclimated."

She laughed and smacked his arm with the back of a paw. "Think, mah arse! Ye are an eejit. Yer fuckin' country exploded, yer government caused it and pinned the blame on you and yer colleagues. Noo they're takin' yer livelihood away, and ye're sat here worried aboot me? Jesus Christ, tree! I love ye, but ye're thick as pig shit. Ye need tae be thinkin' aboot yersel."

The big cat blinked at her for a moment and his eyes narrowed. The twitch of his whiskers might have been the wind or a smile that hid just under the surface.

"I don't think you know how much I needed to hear that," Alder muttered with a low, grunting chuckle. He glanced at her sidelong and shrugged one shoulder. "Still, worrying about you is easier, bun. If I try to worry about me right now, I'm gonna run up against a big wall real fast."

She cocked her head. "What's that?"

His eyes turned back to the snowy ground and he explained, "See, tomorrow I'm gonna be forty years old and, for all intents and purposes, unemployed...maybe unemployable. All of my training, education, and experience has been committed to a field that has effectively been killed throughout my country. For the first time in years, I've got a person that I want to be with more than anything else in this goddamned world and I can't in good conscience bring her back with me into the shit storm of the unknown that waits for me on the other side of the ocean...even if she did just accidentally let slip a phrase that I've been looking forward to for a while."

"Hush, ye!" she muttered, folding her ears back to hide the blood that rushed to them. No sooner had they landed against her shoulder, they leapt back to the top of her head and fully faced the puma. She leaned toward him with her brow furrowed and said, "Wait a tick... What the fuck did ye just say?"

"Which? The bit about wanting to be with--"

She grabbed his shirt with her paws and pulled him closer. "No that, ye daft cunt! Yer fucking birthday?!"

He relaxed a bit and laughed. "Oh! Yeah, tomorrow."

"For fuck's... Mim's too?"

He nodded. "That's usually the way with twins."

"But ye never said...ah, shite. Aye, she did say something aboot yer birthdays being near the end of the year, when we found her...your...the thing."

"Did she?" he wondered. "She might have, I guess. I gotta admit, I was a bit distracted."

"Alder, how have ye no mentioned it before?"

He stood and stretched, shaking the accumulating flakes off of himself. "Why bother? The day doesn't really mean all that much to me. I've seen enough birthdays that they've kinda lost their novelty. Y'know."

She shook her head and looked up at him. "Oh, bugger yer novelty! If I'd known, I widae gotten ye something."

The puma leaned down over her and brushed the snow off of her head with his paws. His warm pads traced the edges of her ears, sending a shiver down her back that had nothing to do with the cold. Cradling her head in his paws, he kissed her forehead and rested his muzzle there for a moment. The warm puffs of his breath made two divots in the black fur beneath his nostrils.

"What more could I have wanted, bun?" he whispered into her fur. "I got you."

As she was opening her mouth to call him a melodramatic twat, Cat felt something strike her cheek and noticed a drop of moisture rolling down the fur there. It was too cold for rain. A glance up at his face revealed tears sliding from his closed eyes.

"Alder..." she whispered, reaching out to hold him.

"Bun," he choked, "all I want to do is hold on to you, but I don't know how I'm gonna do that when it feels like everything else is slipping through my fingers."

She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled his body against hers. "I'm no goin' anywhere, tree. I'm right here with ye and we can find some way tae make it wark."

The snowfall increased to the point that they had to return to the house or risk getting their fur soaked. They helped each other dust off once they were inside and made their way to the kitchen for something to drink. Ceit was talking by the kettle with Dallis and a short, scruffy rabbit whose long, chestnut fur hung in matted locks wherever it wasn't covered by clothes that one could only hope were deliberately shabby. Connor had connected with Dallis at art school the previous year.

The exposed fur of Dallis's head and paws was mostly grey with a thin marbling of white. The paws that held her cup bore small stains from the panoply of paints and inks that found their way there during her work as a freelance illustrator. Her bearing was just informal enough that she did not contrast too heavily with her dust mop of a boyfriend. She wore sweat pants and a thin, long-sleeved t-shirt of pale yellow on which she had applied a screen print of a green rabbit skull with paint brushes and pencils clamped in its jaws. Despite her exasperated tone, her ears remained casually upright. Along the inside surface of her right ear was a script tattoo of the family's motto that hung over the gate by the road.

"All right, tree?" Connor asked with his nose hovering over a cup of chai.

An enthusiastic people-person, he'd immediately taken up calling Alder by Cat's nickname for him. While such quick informality might have been a bit grating, it was better than the Bristolian "my lover" that he had used the first couple of times. Connor's accent cut such a sharp contrast with that of the Cairds that it took Alder an extra beat to process the words whenever Connor spoke.

Alder shrugged. "Mostly numb with the odd twinge of barely controlled agony. Otherwise, fine."

"I'm not surprised. Running 'round without a coat or shoes in this." He tilted his head toward the windows. The snowflakes were coming down faster now, fat and wet.

"He's no talkin' aboot the cold, Connie," Dallis grunted, rolling her hazel eyes.

"I know! I was just tryin' to..." he tailed off with a sigh.

"Ah, cut the poor kid some slack, Dal," snickered Alder. "He just wanted to lighten the mood and it didn't come out right."

"Aye," she said with a nose-wrinkling smile and a peck on Connor's cheek, "I know."

Alder looked at them wistfully for a moment, then scratched his neck. He turned to Cataría and said, "Y'know, bun, I think I'm gonna skip the drink and lie down for a bit. My noggin's throbbin'."

Cat took his paw and gave it a squeeze. "Okay. D'ye need company?"

The puma replied with a shake of his head, "Nah, I won't keep you from your family."

Once he left the room, Ceit asked Cat, "Is he gonnae be okay?"

Cat sighed and shook her head. "I dinnae ken. He usually bounces back like a squash ball, but this..." she trailed off into a shrug.

"Bad enough the bloody volcano, but tae lose his job, too?" mumbled Dallis. "He's dae'n well no tae curl up on the floor and greet for a fortnight."

"Aye," muttered the black rabbit, "it's a proper kick in the bollocks. Things were near set for us, an' that. Fuck knows what'll happen, noo."

Dallis set her cup down and crossed her arms over her chest. Her ears twitched over her head and her eyebrows dipped lower. "Yer thinkin' ye cannae gae there wi' the way things are?"

"He is. I know I can manage. If nothin' else, they must have chemist shops ower there. But, he's got a point."

"What's that?" Connor wondered.

"It'd take time tae get wark for me. That and red tape. Him bein' unemployed, we widnae have any income. Cannae run doon his savings hopin' for the best."

"Pity the poor bloke can't just find something here."

Cat's ears flipped upright and she blinked at Connor. "What?"

He shrugged and drained his cup. "I said it's too bad he can't just get work and a place to live on this side of the Atlantic."

"Aye..." the black rabbit muttered, eyes unfocused and narrowed, "it is." Gears turned furiously in her head.

"Alastair wuid be thrilled. He'd probably try tae get Alder in on some research project or somethin'," Ceit chuckled.

The gears slammed to a stop and Cataría frowned, dropping her ears all the way back. Her right paw played idly with the studs in her ear and she grew still.

"Wonder if..." she trailed off into a grumble

Connor, ever loathe to allow lulls in conversation, asked her what was on her mind.

"A lot," she muttered. "Like, a lot, a lot."

"Care to share?" he pressed.

Her eyes focused on him and she smiled. "Mibbe. I need tae sort things oot first. Is Alastair still upstairs?"

"Nup," Ceit replied with a shake of her head. "He's oot in the hot house."

"Well, grand. Guess I'll put my bloody gear back on. Oh! How's Mimosa? We sortae fucked aff and left her wi' a bunch of strangers."

"Fine, I guess? She 'n' Molly went up the stairs in a rush a few minutes ago."

"Eh...? Why?" Cat asked, receiving only shrugs.

Her mind was too occupied to continue the inquiry further. Taking her leave, Cataría went back to the anteroom for her coat and boots. The snow had ceased again, and bits of blue sky peeked through the still-heavy cloud cover. Her soles crunched over the thin layer of flakes that had accumulated on the terrace, leaving sharp prints behind.

***

"...and that's when Mom walks in to find us bare-assed on the floor, fast asleep, practically glued together with half a pint of maple syrup," Mim chuckled, standing at the sink. "Took an hour and a half in the tub to get us separated and all the sticky shit out of our fur. She threatened about a dozen times to shave us both bald!"

Molly cackled from the shower. Through the frosted glass Mimosa could see the rabbit's silhouette moving as she worked lather into the fur of her chest. Despite their intent to tend to Molly's spilled tea before it got into her fur, there they were. The puma kneaded honey and tea out of Molly's shirt using hand soap and bicarbonate of soda, while Molly scrubbed it out of herself.

"Which of ye was mair of a troublemaker?" snickered the bunny.

Mim held up the shirt after a final rinse. "That's done. At least we caught it before it set. Ah...what was that? Who made the most trouble, Assface or me?"

"Aye," Molly chirped as she stepped under the spray again. The white blur of the lather slid toward her feet, tracing her contours on the way down.

Wringing the shirt out and draping it over the shower door, Mim watched the lather slip down to the floor and concentrate at the drain. Her nostrils flared with a sharp intake of breath that brought the strong floral fragrance of the shampoo and the earthy undertones of the wet rabbit's own scent to the forefront of Mimosa's mind.

"Hmm..." she rumbled, temporizing. "I'd be lying if I said it was him."

Molly's bright laugh echoed in the shower as she ran her paws through her fur for one last rinse. She turned off the water and shook her ears out. Taking a thick towel that draped over a rack inside the stall, the rabbit vigorously rubbed the water from her body and head.

Her voice muffled by the towel, she grunted, "We're a right pair o' bad girls then, aren't we?"

"Not sure what you mean?" the puma said, turning away to lean against the wall. She took a deep breath and tried to shake off the scents and the thoughts going through her head, thankful that the rabbit couldn't see her ears redden.

Molly stopped drying and stood there for a moment. "Yer brother didnae tell ye aboot what I tried tae...what I did tae 'im?"

"No?" she replied. "Was it something that embarrassed him? He tries to skip those things so I don't have ammo for teasing him."

The rabbit opened her mouth to speak, but the thought occurred to her that Alder may have decided not to tell his sister to spare her the traumatic memories that the experience had awakened in him. She wrapped herself in the towel and stepped out of the shower.

"Ye can go ahead tae my room," she told Mimosa while bending down to grab an electric dryer from one of the cabinets. "I'm gonnae dry myself proper, so I dinnae get cold. We can talk mair when I'm done. When ye step oot, turn left. Mine is three doors doon on the right."

"Left down the hall, third door on the right," the puma paraphrased.

"Ye got it. I'll only be a moment." While I try to figure out how to talk about this, she didn't say.

Mimosa opened the door a crack and sniffed the air, swiveling her ears back and forth for a moment before stepping out. She didn't want to expose Molly if there happened to be someone walking by in the corridor. The coast was clear, so she made her way to the rabbit's room. Directions helped, but the bunny's scent confirmed that she had the right door. Her paw turned the knob and the door opened on a sparsely furnished room.

The bed occupied the center of the wall on the left side and a large armoire stood open against the opposite wall. There was a nightstand by the right side of the bed and faint glints from the dim windows that she found to be sparks of pale light reflecting off of the smooth, angular planes of several crystal prisms. The wood floor echoed softly with the thumps of her footpads treading across the room. When Molly walked in, dry and dressed in clean clothes, she found the puma turning a teardrop-shaped crystal between her thumb and forefinger.

"Never would've pegged you for a glitter and rainbows kinda gal, Mols," Mim snickered, letting the ornament dangle again from its string.

"D'ye no like them?" Her ears were down, brushing against her shoulders.

"I love 'em. Got one the size of a ping-pong ball hanging from the rearview mirror of my car back home."

Molly's ears slowly ascended as she sat on the edge of her bed. "What d'ye like aboot 'em?"

The puma strode casually around the room with her paws in her pockets. She gave a little shrug and said, "Nothing symbolic, if that's what you mean. They're pretty when the light hits them. When mine swings around in the sun, it kinda feels like a disco in my car. Morning commutes with ABBA are fun as hell."

Molly laughed. "Wish I cuid see that! All the streaks zipping over yer face and you singin' Mama Mia."

"So, why do you like 'em, Mols?"

A cloud passed over the rabbit's countenance and her ears folded back again. Her paws sought out one another and began fidgeting on her lap. The claw of one thumb rubbed through the fur on the back of the other paw, describing slow circles through the black hairs. Her nose stopped twitching for a moment and flared with a long intake of breath, which she let back out as a long sigh through pursed lips.

"It is symbolic for me. When I was younger, I used tae like 'em just because the rainbows were pretty. Hasnae been that way in years, though. They're still pretty, aye; that's no it. I like 'em because I see this boring nothing breaking itself against the hard edges and it's the pieces left that are beautiful." Her eyes, heavy with sadness, turned to Mimosa as she added, "Like, it all becomes beautiful because of the violence; not despite it. Mibbe...mibbe it isnae that I like 'em, exactly. I admire them both, the rainbows and the crystal. I wanted tae think that I was like one or the ither; like I would beautiful because I was broken or because I broke things"

Mim sat on the bed next to Molly and held her gaze, asking, "What do you mean?"

Molly looked away and closed her eyes. "Disnae matter. Point is: I wisnae. I was the sunlight. Just a bland nothing tryin' tae be a rainbow."

"You just let me worry about what matters to me, okay?" the puma gruffed. "I'd really like to know what's got you shitting on yourself like this."

"Y'ever been molested or raped?"

The puma's ears went back and she narrowed her eyes. The tail draped behind her puffed up and its tip lashed across the covers.

"I've come close a time or two," she said icily. "Wha--"

Molly shook her head slightly, sniffed, and spread her paws palm-down on her lap. "Y'ever...done...either?"

Mim's frown intensified and she looked away. Her hackles raised and her tail increased further in diameter. Her answer came just softly enough that the rabbit could barely hear it. "I'd really like to think not."

"Ye're no sure?" the rabbit whispered in a tone that Mimosa couldn't place.

Mimosa cast her mind back to the quit darkness of the couch in Alder's cabin and muttered, "I try not to think about it too much. There was one time, when I was burning to death under my moon, that I got Al--" She coughed and wrinkled her muzzle. "Sorry. A ...uh, lifelong friend drunk, like, really fucking toasted, and we ended up going farther than we should have. I didn't force him to, but it wasn't something that he would have agreed to sober, so..." She breathed a shuddering sigh through her nose and continued, "When it was over and he pulled out of me, it struck him what we had done and he went crazy. He...he was only worried about what would happen to me and the kittens if I were to get pregnant, even though he was fixed. Then he drank more, a lot more. Threw up, passed out. Doesn't seem he remembers any of it."

The puma rubbed the pads of her palms together and concluded, "I don't even know if I want him to or not. He's happy now with his current girl and we still have the same old relationship we always had. We ain't right for each other in a lot of ways. I miss him, though, sometimes. Or...my body does. Or something."

Molly stared at the big cat with wide eyes. "Was it just the heat? I mean, mibbe ye were no in control. I've heard some voxies..." The look on the puma's face made her mumble to a stop.

"Kinda shitty excuse, don't ya think?"

"But, mibbe..."

Mim grunted, "Nah, bun. It can drive you to do some shit that your inhibitions would normally block, but it doesn't make you do anything that you wouldn't already want to do."

They were both silent for a bit, then the puma probed, "So, what's your story, then?"

Molly shifted, then stood and paced the floor. "I was abused by a coach in school. My big takeaway from it was that such things were normal and that it would hurt less tae be on the giving side than receiving. So, I started seeing every man as a potential plaything. Business guests here at home, strangers in a handful of towns up here and down in England, a few mates...a few mates' lads. I went after my sisters' boyfriends and fiancés; anything I could get mah paws on. I managed tae convince mahsel that it was just a game, like. Didnae even see any of 'em as people. They were just things to play with...toys, like. I tried doin' it tae Alder, too."

"Horse shit!" Mim scoffed. "There's no way he would have fooled around on Cat."

"I know," she agreed, "and a part of me knew it then, as weel; but, I still snuck oot tae the cottage early in the morning, while he was asleep. Weird tae think it was only a few days ago. Almost as weird as him forgiving what I did. Playin' the game was one thing, but I got to thinkin' that I wanted tae win, y'know? Wanted him just for me, an' that. Got him in my mouth and he woke up. Grabbed me by the ears and pulled me off him. Bloody hell, he was furious! It surprised me. The other guys were all shocked or happy-like, never angry."

The puma fidgeted and rubbed her paws together. "Yeah. He's weird about blow jobs." On noticing Molly's raised eyebrows, she added, "...I've heard."

Molly watched her for a moment and something clicked from earlier, throwing the rabbit's ears aback. "Fuckin' hell..." she whispered, "...it was him."

Mimosa tried to play dumb, asking, "What was who?" The calm of her voice failed miserably to detract from her splayed ears and nervous eyes.

"The bloke ye got drunk and..." the rabbit's paws gestured loosely before her in lieu of completing the thought; her folded ears burned a furious red. "It was Alder."

Mimosa stood now, too. Her exasperation and laughter felt forced and never rose as far as her eyes: their green pools begged Molly to drop the subject even as the puma said, "That's...Molly, c'mon! That's bullshit and you know it."

"No," Moly mumbled, "it isnae. Ye stumbled on his name and covered wi' some bollocks that soonded close, an old friend who you said was fixed and I've heard from Alder's own mouth that he is."

"Lots of guys are, though," Mim said, trying to sound confident and calm. "That doesn't mean that I...that--"

"Ye did, though."

Mimosa shuffled the pads of her feet on the rug beneath her, claws catching in the fibers, and sat back down on the bed hard, coaxing a complaint from the springs and boards. She looked away from the rabbit with a snarl on her muzzle, though her eyes were sad and her ears were flat to the sides, instead of pulled to the back. Molly could see the hackles straining under the big cat's shirt and the fullness of her tail.

"Goddamnit," muttered the puma, just below a whisper. "Molly..."

"If ye're thinkin' I'll tell someone, Mim, dinnae fash. I'd never. I cannae tell ye that what ye did was wrong or right; I gied up my right tae make those calls." She walked over and hugged Mimosa's head to her chest. "Wi' the things I've done, who the hell am I tae judge ye?"

Mim wrapped her arms around the rabbit's body and buried her face in her shirt. The scent of shampoo, cotton, and rabbit filled her nose. "I guess I understand what you meant about us being bad."

"Oh, pish! Let's call what I said a kindae joke, like. I dinnae think we are, really. At least we know enough tae feel guilty for what we did." The agreement that she expected from Mimosa didn't come. "No?"

The big cat shrugged and sighed through the cloth, warming Molly's fur beneath. "About how I did things, yeah. About the pain it caused him, hell yeah. What I did, though?" She shook her head.

"Why'd ye go fer him anyway?" Molly asked, running her paw over the puma's head. "As beautiful and kind as ye are, ye mustae had yer pick of people to shag."

Mimosa let out a chuckle and mumbled, "That's sweet of you, hon. Would you believe me if I blamed my heat?"

"Ye were right before," grumbled the rabbit. "It is a shit excuse."

The puma snorted and leaned back to look up at Molly's face with a bashful, muzzle-wrinkling grin and splayed ears. "Isn't it?" Swiveling her ears forward, she discarded the humor for a more earnest expression. "I didn't go to his place with it in mind." She briefly recounted the night from the moment she knocked on Alder's door.

"Bloody hell..." muttered Molly, still stroking Mim's head. "There's a part of me that wants tae ask how it was. But...he really lost it like that afterward? I mean, I guess he did wi' me, too; but..."

The big cat nodded and pressed her forehead against the rabbit's body. "Went completely shithouse. As for how it was...I mean, it wasn't bad. I've had worse and I hope he has, too. The booze didn't do him any favors. I was just burning too hot to care."

"Was it really just the convenience, though?"

"What d'you mean?"

"There mustae been other blokes ye could ask for the mold, pumas or other cats, an' that. Why him?"

Mimosa was quiet long enough that Molly almost wondered if she had fallen asleep. She jumped slightly when the puma muttered, "I've thought a lot about that. Back when we were young, he did something for me that I don't think any other guy I've known would have. He set a high bar."

"What was that?"

"An older guy we knew tried to rape me and Alder...stopped him."

"How old were ye?" the bunny asked, softly running her claws through the fur between Mim's ears an down the back of her neck.

"Like, six, I think."

Molly's paw froze on Mimosa's head. She glanced down at the tawny cat and breathed, "He disnae think ye remember that, love."

She snickered and looked up at the black rabbit standing over her. "Oh, he's one to talk! His memory is awf--hang on! How do you know?"

Her paw left the puma's head and subconsciously fiddled with the fur of her dewlap as she answered, "He flashed back tae it when I..." Her ears twitched. "...y'know. When he woke and pulled me aff, there was a quick exchange of words that ended with somethin' I said triggering the memory. He told us--me, Kitty, and Mum--about the whole thing."

The big cat let out a long, "Oh!" She nodded and added, "So that's what he was talking about remembering the other day."

"Aye. He figures whatever yer faither drugged the two of ye with blocked yer memory, too."

"Faither?"

Molly blinked. "Father...yer dad?"

"Holy shit, he really did finally remember. He was pretty fucked up, not just from what the guy did to him but what he did in return, and Mama did her best to make sure he wouldn't be able to recall it right. Me, I remembered before we got into high school." She shook her head and leaned against Molly again.

The puma yawned again, her groan muffled by the rabbit's body. "Seriously, bun, what was in the tea?"

Molly resumed stroking the puma's head and giggled. "Nothin', promise. Valerian root helps wi' anxiety, but it can aye make ye sleepy."

"Fuuuuck. You think? I may need to go lie down."

To both the cat's surprise and her own, Molly leant down and gently kissed the top of Mimosa's head. The puma looked up at her with ears forward and a question in her eyes, but Molly shook her head.

"Ye dinnae need tae go tae dae that. Why bother stumblin' tired doon the stairs and oot intae the cold? Ye can kip on my bed, if ye want. It disnae bother me." She smirked and added, "I swear I won't try it on wi' ye."

A few minutes later, on his way to Cataría's room, Alder passed Molly's door and found it ajar. Inside he saw the his sister and the rabbit cuddled together, fast asleep. They lay atop the covers and, to his relief, were both still clothed. Molly, slightly curled on her right side, lay with her head on one of her pillows. Her left paw rested on Mimosa's right arm, just below the shoulder. The rabbit's right arm stretched beneath Mim's head, and that paw idly moved to caress one of the big cat's ears, which flicked at intervals. Mimosa had her right arm draped over the rabbit's torso, where it rose and fell with their slow breaths. A faint purr reached the puma at the door.

Smiling, Alder softly closed the door and went on to Cat's room.

***

"Al, d'ye have a minute?"

Alastair turned from the seedlings he was tending in the greenhouse to find Cataría walking between the rows of raised beds. Her paw trailed along the edge of one of the beds, claws absently tracing the grain of the wood trim. The white rabbit patted soil from his gloves and slipped them off. They landed with a soft flap on the stainless steel work surface.

"Aye," he said with a nod. "Of course. How're our friends doin'?"

She twisted her mouth and shrugged one shoulder, letting her ears slip backward. "Aboot as bad as you'd expect. Mimosa's still got a job tae get back to, but I bet she's no much better. They still huvnae heard from all of their friends yet. So far, neither knows for sure if they've lost anyone."

He shook his head and leaned back against the bench. "Hell of a thing. Bad enough to see an ecosystem destroyed like that, mibbe losing people, and then learning that when ye get haim yer job'sfucked.... Fuckin' hell."

"Aye, it's fucked our plans right up. He disnae want me tae come wi' him tae the States wi' things the way they are. Dinnae ken exactly what that means for the two of us, yet."

"Shit, Kitty. Thought ye'd finally nabbed a good one."

She waved her paw and told him, "I did. Dinnae fash. We'll figure oot somethin'. I came doon tae ask ye aboot a few things, though."

One of her brother's paws reached up to scratch at his chin. "Oh, aye? What's up?"

Cat settled herself on a pallet of fertilizer bags and asked, "The plants and trees an' aw that over in America: are they much different than Britain?"

He snorted, "Bit of a loaded question for a botanist. Short answer: they share some species wi' us. Why?"

She looked away, seeming to study her paws on her lap. "D'ye mind when Grandad and Dad were talkin' aboot turnin' the family's lands between here and the distillery intae public park, as a kindae tax write-off?"

Alastair's ears swiveled to face her fully and he squinted, replying, "Aye..."

"Think Dad might still consider it?"

"Fuck if I know, Kitty. I huvnae heard mention of it in years." He frowned and asked, "What're ye gettin' at?"

The black rabbit sighed and scuffed her boots in the pea gravel. "I'm tryin' tae come up wi' somethin' tae help the poor cunt. Well, both of us, really. If we got sick of each other and went our separate ways, that'd be one thing. I dinnae want tae lose him tae some stupid shite we cannae control. We've no been a couple for long, like, but it feels as though we have. He fits me and vice versa, y'know?"

"Bit mair than I needed tae know." He thumped the edge of the work surface with his knuckles in a manner that seemed just slightly too pointed to be idle.

"Not like that, ye arse! Y'know damned well what I mean."

Alastair snickered and said, "Aye."

She watched him across the short distance and crossed her arms over her chest. "Were ye serious about tryin' tae put Alder's old paper to a practical test?"

It was Alastair's turn to shrug. "I've talked aboot it wi' one of my professors. We dinnae know when or if it'll ever happen. There's loads of bureaucratic shite tae wade through."

"Would it help if the author of the paper was around tae offer input?"

Sapphire eyes rolled as the white rabbit groaned. His ears folded back and one eyebrow lifted at a harsh angle. "Ye're kindae grasping at straws, aren't ye?"

Cat stood and brushed off her backside. "Mibbe I am. But..."

"'But' nothin'." He shook his head and spread his paws before him. "There's plenty of parks and gardens and aw. If he's as knowledgeable and experienced as it sounds, any of them with openings would snap him up."

"Shite...I didnae think of that."

"Exactly. For fuck's sake, Cataría! It hasnae even been a full day since the thing blew up. Let the panic wear aff first, then make yer plans. Get some sleep or dae somethin' tae get yer mind aff the worry. Have a wank, fuck yer cat, or...somethin'. When ye've both calmed doon, talk tae him and wark it oot thegither."

Cat blinked at him for a moment. He was usually the quiet, unassuming one; it was rare to an emotive response from him. Uncharacteristic or not, he was right. She grumbled but couldn't come up with an argument. She thanked Alastair and made her way back to house.

Her brother shrugged and turned back to his work. He had wanted to get the seedlings prepped for transplant before he had to go back to university. The faint sound of the door above him closing reached his ears as he picked up his gloves. For a while he just stared at the soiled fabric, eventually dropping them back to the work surface with a huff.

He rested his wrists against the grit covered metal and patted it with his fingers. The sharper taps of his claws striking the steel echoed against the walls. With closed eyes and oscillating ears, the white rabbit muttered under his breath, continuing the internal debate that Cat had interrupted. The drumming of his paws ending with a thud as his right paw landed hard. His claws squeaked across the metal as he drew his paw toward him. It reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his phone.

The contact was selected, dialed, and ringing before he could talk himself out of it. A muffled "Hello?" sounded on the other end and he forced the phone up to his ear.

"Eh...hi," he said softly. "It's me. I've been thinking aboot what ye said before I left..."

***

The fur-muffled pads of Cataría's bare feet made barely a sound as she reached the landing on the second floor of the hall. She turned down the corridor that would take her to her bedroom and continued turning over Alastair's words in her head. Quiet sounds from some of the rooms that she passed told of siblings occupying themselves at fuck knew what. The black rabbit hardly paid attention. Try as she might, she couldn't shake the feeling that she needed to do something. She was on her way to join Alder for a lie-down, when the jarring sound of a raised voice from Molly's room brought her back to the present and made her pause in the middle of the corridor.

"--said, did you call me first?" demanded the voice, which was not any of her siblings. "Good...No, you fucking will not. I'm with him, so I'll tell him." The door opened abruptly, admitting Mimosa into the corridor, followed by a groggy-looking but concerned Molly. "Look, Abernathy," the puma was growling, "I appreciate your call and everything that you have done for us, but who would you want to hear it from?...You're _god_damned right. We already made all of the final arrangements in advance. If you're looking for something to do, why not get to work on all of that?...I know, I'm sorry, too. We've had a lot happen too quickly...All right, you too."

Dropping the phone from her ear, she mashed the "end" button with the pad of her thumb and leaned against the corridor wall as the device slipped though her fingers. The clatter of the phone landing on the floorboards echoed harshly in the two rabbits' ears. Molly reached out to the puma involuntarily and grasped her shoulder. Cataría's eyes were locked on Mimosa's. The fury that had disturbed the edges of those green pools subsided with the termination of the call. The lids closed and she took a deep breath.

"That's that, I guess," Mim whispered.

Molly squeezed the big cat's shoulder but couldn't bring herself to say anything. She knew what the call had been about. Cat guessed easily enough. Wringing her paws, she cast a glance down the hallway toward her own bedroom.

"Yer mum?"

Mim's eyes fluttered open, edged with moisture, and she wrinkled her muzzle with a sniff. The tip of her tail sat on the floor as if weighted. Both of her ears drooped to the sides. A nod was all she could manage.

The Caird sisters' ears fell back as they shared a look and whispered, "I'm sorry," in unison. None of the three of them noticed the quickness with which Molly slid closer and wrapped an arm around the puma to comfort her. She probably would have offered a self-conscious denial if someone had seen and mentioned it.

Cat cleared her throat and said, "I think Alder's lying doon in my room. Ye should probably be the one tae tell him."

She escorted Mim to her door, closely tailed by Molly. Black-furred fingers curled around the knob and froze. Cataría looked back at Mimosa with a sad, lost look in her eyes. "Ye cannae catch a break, the two of ye, can ye?"

Mimosa shook her head, sagged against the wall, and rubbed her face with the backs of her paws. They were going to be strong for each other, and she'd be damned if she started this with eyes already wet. The rabbit's paw rested on the knob and she glanced down at it with ears pressed back as far as they'd go.

"Mibbe we should wait," whispered Cat. "It's already so much."

"It's alright, bun."

Six startled ears snapped upright and three heads turned to look back down the corridor. Alder stood just outside the door to the washroom, rubbing his paws over his still-damp face. His clothes were wrinkled from laying in bed; though, his sunken eyes and sagging shoulders revealed that he had derived no rest from it. Water dripped from his whiskers as his muzzle twisted into a mirthless smirk and he shrugged.

"Well, Mimsy? It's finally over?"

Her nostrils flared with a quivering inhalation. Leaning her head back against the wall and nodding, she said, "Yeah."

He walked over and hugged her. The water on his chin dampened her shoulder as he muttered, "We'll be all right, sis. We've still got each other."

Her arms tightened around his back and her claws dug into the fabric of his shirt. Do we? she thought, For how long? Tears were starting to roll down the sides of her muzzle onto his neck. She'd already come to the same conclusion as Cataría. What was the point of going back home when there wasn't anything there but a sister and a bunch of plants? Still, she couldn't bring herself to voice that thought. Pulling back away, Alder cradled his sister's cheeks in his paws and briefly held his forehead against hers.

"Yes, really," he chuckled softly, releasing her and stepping back. "Been through too much together not to stick together through whatever's left." His eyes caught Mimosa's, and even in the dim light of the hall she could see the blood rush to his ears, before he splayed them and wrinkled his nose.

"You little shit..." she whispered. "You do rem--"

His cough cut her off. "Some. It's fuzzy but...yeah. It's fine."

"Fine? That's it? After you... Bud, if we didn't have so much else going on right now," she growled, "I'd..."

He cuffed her arm and snorted, "Nah, you wouldn't. We'll talk about it some other time. Okay?"

"You're damn right we will," she grumbled. "Might as well have a little chat about Al while we're at it."

Alder's eyes narrowed and his ears folded back flat against his head. He almost chided her about calling him that, when he suddenly realized that she wasn't referring to him.

"Ah..." he sighed, looking away. "Right."

They were spared from further mutual needling by Cat clearing her throat.

"So," she said, looking at Alder, "I dunno what aw that was, but Mols and me are feelin' a bit left oot here. D'ye need us tae give ye some privacy--" she didn't see Molly's ears go red "--or are we gonnae do this thegither?" Her sister stifled a snicker and glanced away, also unnoticed.

"Yeah, bun," nodded Alder. "Sorry. Hey, my phone's dead. Anyone know what time it is?"

Cat and Molly checked theirs and replied in tandem, "Quarter to six."

"Time for a drink," huffed Mim, who walked back to Molly's door and bent down to retrieve her phone from the floor, "or ten."

Alder snorted, "I'll tell you which one sounds right to me." He scratched his neck with his left paw, wrinkling his muzzle. "Maybe in a bit, though."

"Tree?" Cat asked with one eyebrow cocked.

The yellow-green of his eyes was darkened by the sad, weary droop of their lids. They narrowed with the raising of his cheeks for a half-hearted smile and he said, "Imagine our talk needs to come first; doesn't it, bun?"

Her nod was almost imperceptible, but for the slight arc of her downcast ears. "Aye, but...mibbe we can dae both at once, like? I--" biting her lip, she wrinkled her nose and fidgeted with her paws "--dinnae ken if I'm ready tae hear it."

"Sure, bun," he said with a soft smile, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder. "Don't worry, though. When I said 'talk', I meant it. I haven't reached any decisions and I need your input as much as my own." He flicked the tip of his tail against Mimosa's leg and added, "Yours, too."

A few minutes later, they were settled in the library. Molly had fetched up a tray of libations and a light snack for the four of them. It was propped on an ottoman within everyone's reach. Mim declined the food and sat forward in her chair with her elbows propped on her knees, rolling her glass between her paws. She was just as concerned about where the conversation might lead as Cataría was. Molly self-consciously nibbled at a chocolate digestive biscuit and watched the other three, feeling uncomfortably as though she were an intruder. Alder left his drink on the tray and sat back in his seat, tracing the outline of a thistle plant on the front of a shortbread cookie with his thumb claw.

"Hey, Mim? What'd Abernathy say?" he asked.

Mimosa's eyes flicked to his, then back to the glass in her paws. The right side of her muzzle quirked back in something caught between a wry smirk and a sneer. "Quiet. In her sleep." The expression settled fully on being a sneer as she twitched her shoulders. "As if she's been anything but fucking asleep."

Alder snorted and blinked up at the ceiling. "What a dick," he grunted.

She took a drink and mumbled, "One we don't have to fool with anymore, at least. The lawyer and the mortuary will handle it from here."

"Well, at least that's one crisis that will handle itself."

Staring at her empty glass, Cat sighed, "So...?"

He leaned forward and rested the cookie on a napkin beside his untouched drink. Leaning back again, he sighed, "So, indeed." In answer to her frown, he shook his head. "I'm on the horns of a dilemma, bun. Seems I've got two choices and both of 'em look to have more cons than pros."

Mim and Cat nodded in sync while Molly anxiously nibbled on a biscuit. The younger rabbit was acutely aware of that she existed well outside the bounds of the conversation. She seriously pondered excusing herself, but worried that she would interrupt. Without even thinking, she suddenly found herself brushing the crumbs from her lips and speaking up.

"Eh...what are they?" She swallowed hard when their eyes all turned to her. "That is, well...it looks like ye all are thinkin' the same thing, but I dinnae see what ye mean."

Alder smiled, "I'm faced with a Clash lyric: 'Should I stay or should I go', y'know?" He snickered and added, "Now that I think of it, that fits. Either way there will be trouble. Just don't know on which side it'll be double."

"Aye," Cataría said. "We can help ye get settled ower here. There's bound tae be wark here in yer field."

"That's what I figured, too" Mim's voice was flat and distant, as if she had emotionally detached herself from the matter. Still, her paws held her glass tight enough that her claws had started to poke out.

"I had a hunch you two were on the same page," Alder grunted, sitting up and reaching for his glass. He took a sip and rested his elbows on his knees. "Lot of unknowns there, though. May not be able to get a visa...or...whatever it is over here. May not be able to find a job. Who knows. You get tired of me, bun, or vice versa, and I'm gonna find myself up one hell of a creek. Besides, it's a damned long way from you, Mim."

"Oh, save it," his sister groaned, setting her glass down and standing to pace the rug. "First of all, you don't have to worry about me, little brother. I'm quite capable of looking after myself." She padded over to one of the windows, where she could face away from him without staring at a wall. "Isn't it the same thing that you were gonna have Cat do? It didn't matter that she'd be away from this huge family of hers, but you can't be away from poor, fragile me. Give me a fucking break." Her last words rasped out as a growl just above a whisper.

The library fell into a brooding silence, broken only by the occasional quiet sniffle from Mimosa and the distant tolling of grandfather clock in the main hall. Molly looked from one puma to the other with her ears laid back and a quizzical frown on her face. That couldn't be all of the options, could it?

"That's no really aw that there is, though, is it?" she puzzled aloud. "There cannae just be two shit choices."

Cat favored her with a sad smile. "What else could there be?"

"Loads!" Molly stretched and got out of her seat, brushing the biscuit crumbs off of herself. "Well, look," she started, "neither of ye need tae be here, eh? Aye, ye could try and find somethin' in Britain, but yer no stuck wi' it. Just like Kitty wisnae stuck wi' trying tae find somethin ower there. There's the continent, for one. But. if ye both wanted tae stick tae yer specialties, what about Canada?"

"No," her sister remarked with a cringe. "I dinnae ken where Paul is living oot there, but I couldnae stomach the thought of running intae'm again."

Molly's ears slowly descended to touch her shoulders and she blinked at Cataría as the seconds ticked by. Her jaw worked beneath the fur of her cheeks and she considered how to proceed.

She settled for bluntness. "Kitty, that cunt's been living in Dunfermline for a year 'n' a half."

"Get tae fuck!"

"Honest! I ran intae'm in Edinburgh back in July. The fuckwit thought I was you at first and almost shat himsel. Before he shot the craw, I yelled at 'im frae cross the shop. Telled 'im, where aw cuid hear, that he'd be a fuckin' cockless jessie if he legged it. Guess he knew from mah voice I wisnae who he thought. Time's no been kind tae him, nor nowhere near as cruel as it oughtae. He's aw fat and half 'is mane's fell oot. Moved back 'cause his dad was ill and his mum needed help. I thought aboot tellin' ye, but Mum said no tae."

Cat refilled her glass with clenched teeth and drained it with a single gulp. "Fucking hell," she hissed, wiping at her eyes, "cuidae bumped intae the wank stain either of the times we were in Edinburgh."

Alder stood and walked around the back of her chair. One paw rested on her shoulder and the other gently stroked the top of her head. "You ok, bun?"

Her nod ruffled his fingers backward through her fur and sent prickles down her spine. "Just a shock, tree. Didnae think he'd be so near."

"Sounds like maybe we need to regroup," the puma said, bending down to kiss her between the ears. "Rather than us each trying to take care of the other, we need to figure out one place on this bitch of an Earth where we can both be happy; together like, yeah?"

"Back tae the drawin' board, eh? Damn." She leaned back and pecked him on the lips.

The rabbit's nose bounced off of his chin as she lunged, wide-eyed, forward and reached into her pocket. Molly and Mimosa flinched at the pained outbursts from the lovers. Beneath the ruckus, the muted vibration of Cat's phone could be heard. She rubbed her nose with her free paw as she withdrew the phone and looked at the screen.

"Australian?" she muttered thickly. "It isnae in my contacts, so it's no one o' mah pals." She pressed the button to answer and raised it to her ear. "Hello?"

The other's couldn't hear anything on the other end of the line, but her confusion was laid bare. Her fingers stopped rubbing the twitching V of her nose and her eyes showed sudden recognition.

"Oh, aye! How are ye, Mrs. Walker?...Sorry, aye, Amelia....Scotland, why?...Aye, he's fine...Because he's here, with me...Missus, eh, Amelia, are ye all right?...I think he said his phone died a little while ago...Are ye gonnae be o--pardon?...Punch 'im? Why's that sae funny?...Aye, one second."

She pulled the phone down from her ear and tapped the screen to switch to speakerphone. "There we go. Can ye hear me all right?"

"Yes, I can," came the response through the phone. There remained a tone of relieved laughter in her voice. "Alder?"

"Yes'm, I'm here?"

"Has she hit you yet?"

He cocked an eyebrow and answered, "N--ow!" as the rabbit reached back and caught him in the chest with a gentle fist. "Dammit, Cat! Okay, yes, ma'am, she has."

A chuckle rolled through the static on the line. "Good! You scared the hell out of us, you silly bugger."

Mimosa walked back over and sat down in her seat with a curious quirk to her muzzle. She nodded toward the phone and asked her brother, "So that's the lady with the daredevil husband you were told me about?"

Sitting on the arm of Cat's chair, Alder inclined his head, still looking at the device in Cataría's paw. "Yeah. Amelia, sorry, that's my sister, Mimosa. She's here too. Bit of a long story."

"I bet," Walker replied. "That's right, Mimosa. Though his daredevilry has been temporarily suspended. I'm glad to hear that you're ok, Alder. When I tried to call you and couldn't connect, I started to worry that you'd been near Yellowstone when things went bad there."

"No, ma'am. We're safe and sound. From what I've heard, things down in New Mexico are fine, anyway. The volcano was too far north to do anything to us, aside from some ash fall."

"Good," she said with a tone of relief. "Still, it was a shame what your government did."

"What's that?"

"Shutting down your national parks like that. I'm sure you're under a lot more stress than what you might have been with the natural disaster alone."

Alder frowned. "Ma'am?"

Walker's voice carried her sad smile. "Don't you work for the parks?"

Cat glanced at him and they shared a look.

"I guess all the activity of the past couple of weeks has got me forgetting things," the puma said. "I don't remember mentioning my work to you."

"You didn't, I'm afraid. But, the symposium that you attended was in another of our hotels and our databases are shared. When I was searching for your contact information to call you, I noticed your employer was listed in your record."

He laughed at that. "Gotcha. Sorry, I was startin' to think I had ended up with a stalker."

"Not quite! Let's just call me a devoted fan."

"Well, ma'am, regardless, I'm flattered that you thought to check on me."

"Have you thought of what you are going to do?"

"We've started. It's fresh enough that we haven't gotten very far with the thinking. We were just sitting down to discuss it, matter of fact."

There was a noise in the background on the phone and a scuffing sound as Walker's paw covered the microphone. They could hear her speaking to someone but the words were unintelligible. After a moment, she returned and said, "Well, I suppose I should leave you to it, then. If you find yourself running low on options, I want you to call us, though."

"Why so?" the big cat asked. "I don't know that either of us would be much use in Australia and I'm not about to lean on you for help just because--"

"Stuff it, mate," the dog insisted. "We haven't even come close to paying you back for what you did. A glass of scotch and a free hotel room aren't equivalent to a life. And never mind about Australia. We only spend a quarter of the year on this side of the Pacific anyway. The rest of the year we live in Canada; it's where Francis was born and where our firm is headquartered. If you two ever consider making a life somewhere other than America or Britain, call us."

"Ye dinnae happen tae know of a place that's looking for a botanist or a wildlife biologist, dae ye?" Cat quipped.

A snort of laughter preceded Walker's response. "Only if one is interested in working with the abos. There's a tribe...nation...whatchamacallit in British Columbia that has eight thousand square miles of forest around their village and is working with Walker Investments to develop a sort of provincial park and cultural centre."

Alder's paw cut off an angry retort from his sister, who was bristling. He kept his voice under control, but allowed a measure of sternness to creep into his reply. "Careful now, Amelia. I know I don't give off the vibe, but I'm an 'abo' myself. I've lived, loved, and worked with more than my share of natives, so that wouldn't be a detractor for me."

Walker's tone softened. "Sorry. Really should be more careful about that. If you think you two might be interested, hop on the internet and look up the...I'm gonna butcher this name, sorry...Nua Shal, no. Nau Sh-- Oh, fuck it! The Kekket River nation. Francis know more ab--"

"The Nua Shi?ao?" Mimosa broke in, annoyance suddenly forgotten. "Are you serious?"

Alder cocked his head at her, and noticed the two rabbits doing the same. The voice from the phone sounded equally surprised.

"Yeah," the greyhound said. "Francis comes close to saying it like that. I can never pronounce it right, but that sounds like it."

Mimosa shook her head, ignoring the confusion on the faces of the others. "Why them, ma'am? You've gotta be fucking with us."

"No? I don't know anything about them, other than where they are and that our company is working with them. Frannie's the one who deals with them. Though, by the look I'm seeing on the smug cunt right now, there must be something he hasn't told me."

Alder waved a paw at his sister. "Care to clue us in, Mimsy?"

Mimosa laughed as she flumped back down in her seat. "Pumas, dumbass. Y'know those enclaves of traditionalist pumas in the Canadian Rockies? They're one of 'em...one of the last five pockets of preserved mountain lion culture north of fucking Panama."

He blinked at her and then down at the phone. "No shit?"

"Really?" drifted up from Cat's phone. Amelia Walker seemed to know just as little as the others. In a muffled tone, she grumbled to someone in the room with her. "Is that why you're grinning like a twat?"

Francis Walker's soft voice came on the phone, light and full of mirth; all at odds with the lifeless bulk that the puma had dragged to shore. His chuckle was free of animosity or mockery. Echoes of Scandinavian and Germanic accents danced warmly around the edges of his voice, calling to mind the voices of the headwaters of the Mississippi and the surrounding ore country Alder had visited decades ago. The puma found himself smiling as he listened.

"Sorry about that, babe" the man snickered aside to his wife. "Oh, man! You're going to kick my ass later, aren't you?" Whether that was true or not, he didn't seem too concerned. "Anyway, Mimosa, was it?"

She replied, "Yeah..."

"You're more right than you probably know. As you said, the Nua Shi?ao--" his pronunciation was about ninety-five percent accurate "--are a nation of voxiped mountain lions who retain their traditions and culture.What tends to be left out of the history books, though, is that they weren't the Nua Shi?ao until around fifty years ago. Before that, they were the--"

"Nã Nthii," Mim finished for him, having long since covered that in her researches. "And they changed because they absorbed two smaller enclaves, the Finàpi and Ser She?a, both whom had dwindled below the minimum population requirements to maintain their status under the Indian Act."

Walker's jovial laugh delayed his response. "Precisely. I'm sure you know why, too."

"Because from the late nineteenth century trough most of the twentieth, the Canadian government forced First Nations children, including the pups of the plains wolves and the kits of the lynx and puma peoples, into residential schools operated by Christian organizations for the purpose of erasing their cultural identity."

The man grunted on the other end of the line. "Yes. Far from Canada's finest hour."

"So," Alder said, rejoining the conversation, "other than dredging up old abuses, where are you going with this?"

"Admittedly, this is going to sound a bit dodgey. I got curious about the guy that saved me, so I did some research on you, Alder. See, when I heard that it was a mountain lion that saved me, it felt...I don't know...karmic, in light of the work that I've done with the Nua Shi?ao. As you can imagine, I've had a lot of free time on my hands lately, so I managed to find out rather a lot. I couldn't find much about your father, but your mother's story is rather interesting."

The two cats traded confused looks and Alder responded, "Not sure what you mean, sir."

"You don't need to 'sir' me, son. Francis is fine," Walker smiled. "I just meant that she must have a wealth of stories regarding her youth. She could write one hell of a book."

"I'm afraid she wasn't in any condition to write her memoirs these last few years. She was in a nursing home until last night, when she passed. Even so, she never talked about herself to us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, guys. I didn't know." He let the words settle on the air for a moment before resuming with, "She really didn't tell you anything?"

"She was from Japan and she spent most of her life working as a nurse, on top of all the side jobs she took to keep us from starving; that's all we know."

"Wow..." They heard his tongue clicking against his teeth as he considered how to proceed.

"Don't leave us hangin', man," said Alder. "What is it?"

"Shit." Francis Walker's voice softened further and they heard the phone click as he switched off the speakerphone and rested the received against his ear. "I'd hoped she would be able to confirm some of the things I found. See, your mother lived in Japan, but she was born in Canada. My researchers traced her adoption to a residential school in Manitoba, a facility run by a Catholic sisterhood that solely housed indigenous voxies. The record there showed her being born to two young Finàpis. Her parents were both in their mid-teens, close to being released from the system and ushered out into the labor force. The sisters who ran the school expelled your grandfather when the pregnancy was discovered. He was forced into a military academy, from which he was discharged due to an undisclosed injury, allowing him to return to his home in the Finàpi nation."

"And our grandmother?" asked Mimosa. She leaned forward, ears perked for the details.

"She would have been secluded from the other residents, if the sisters followed their usual patterns. The records I could find suggest that she did not survive the birth, but who knows? The sisters took the infant and adopted her out to a Japanese couple, one of whom was a doctor at an hospital near the school. They gave her the name Meiko. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the family moved back to Japan. She lived with her adoptive parents in a farming village northeast of Mutsu, at the north end of of the main island and went on to study nursing."

"Huh!" Alder grunted. "Always wondered how a puma ended up in Japan. Guess that solves that. Any of your digging explain how she wound up in the States?"

"Military transfer. She married Albert Sand, a mountain lion from Utah, who was stationed in Okinawa. He was injured in service and given a medical discharge, after which they relocated to New Mexico. Your mother was awarded a divorce not long after she became pregnant. The documents were sealed, but the restraining order she filed against him wasn't. The next year, Albert was sentenced to a ten year stint in prison on forgery charges. He was released after five years for good behavior and then vanished entirely."

"Not entirely," muttered Mimosa, pouring another glass of scotch.

"I didn't catch that."

"Nothing," her brother said in a low tone, eyes focused on the floor. "He died a long time ago. Doesn't matter."

Walker waited a moment before continuing, "And then there's you and your sister. Now, I know it's sudden and things are confused for you two, especially if you've just lost your mother in the midst of everything else going on, but they could use your experience up there, Adler. Mimosa, yours too. Don't answer now, just think on it. Ok?"

The siblings looked at each other for a moment. A conversation's worth of questions and answers played out in seconds through a score of ear flicks and facial cues. Mim looked away first and pursed her lips, resting them against the cool rim of her glass. The left corner of Alder's muzzle tugged into the smirk and light snicker escaped through his nostrils. One paw reached up and squeezed Cat's shoulder.

"Yeah, we'll think about it. The number that came up on Cat's phone...is that where we ca--"

Walker cut in, "It's Amy's mobile. She barely leaves me alone right now, so you can find us both there over the next few days."

Alder wrinkled his muzzle and asked, "It's a lot of trouble for you to go through, isn't it? All of this."

"Don't be a dick, Alder. You saved my ass. All I'm offering is to save yours in return."

The conversation ended with a promise to call within two days and another round of thanks on both ends of the wire. The library fell into a hush as the foursome tried to make sense of all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Eventually, a yawn that started with Alder managed to spread through the other three. They resolved to discuss it more in the morning, when heads were more clear.

***

Between the moss and fallen pine needles, footsteps made almost no sound. The swish and rustle of each boot's travel was further lost amid the greater oceanic sigh of wind through the tall trees. Down slope from the ledge, disturbed earth and silent machinery presented a chaotic scene. The breeze that blew down from the mountains carried a scent of evergreens and mingled it with that of the rich soil, metal, diesel, and grease. Beneath everything there was an undertone of ash. Unseen birds used the remaining light to find their nests and roosts, and call out their farewell to the sun as it descended to the jagged horizon.

Work had been going on for two months, delayed here and there by weather and equipment breakdowns. This sunset brought an end to a day of high tension: the truck bearing cement for the building's foundation had been routed by the dispatcher to a construction site eight hours to the north. The crews had done what they could, but it amounted to so much busy work. Construction could not progress until the foundation was poured. Work had ended a couple of hours earlier and the teams returned to the village for supper.

A figure sat on the exposed stone of the rise, overlooking the building site. Her bare feet swung idly in the air. Black fur ruffled in the soft breeze and the wind of each foot's motion. At the apex of each swing, short-clawed toes splayed, letting the air swish between them. The fur disappeared beneath faded cotton shorts that ended in tatters just beneath billowing side pockets whose holes had long since rendered them useless. Battered, muddy boots sat on the stone beside her hip. Thick socks and the corner of a mobile phone protruded from the yawning mouth of the left one, work gloves from the right. The rabbit's weight leaned back on her arms, spread in an inverted V to the bare paws that sank into cool moss crawling over the stone where it receded into the slope. An ant inspected the rough end of a broken claw.

She wore an old t-shirt that bore the faded poster art for Pink Floyd's The Wall, dirt-streaked and speckled with sap. By some miracle, none of the sticky resin had managed to get on her fur. The thick ruff of her dewlap cushioned the downward cast of her chin as her dark brown eyes flicked over the darkening excavation. Each new trill and titter from the tree line demanded the attention of her ears and kept them constantly oscillating. The twitches of her nose amplified the ash smell.

Two days prior, the ash had been all she could smell. Closing her eyes, she remembered the feeling of the dusty thumbpad tracing curves down from the corners of her nose to her lips. The chanting from the bent old cat that stood over her had sounded stronger and more resonant that anything his half-naked, bony frame ought to have been capable of. When the marks on either side of her nose had been finished, his knot-knuckled paws shook their way up to her ears and applied a dot of ash to the backs of each. She grinned and opened her eyes to the evening once more. It wasn't necessary for her to have participated in the ceremony, but the others had and it left her with a strange sense of belonging that still burned in her chest.

Her ears swung down to hang behind her as she lifted her face to look at the deep blue sky overhead. A bird of prey circled above; osprey, by the silhouette. There was a hint of movement behind her and she tilted her head farther back to see it better. The upside-down puma strode easily down the slope toward her, boots leaving slowly rising indentations in the mould. The cat's shorts and shirt were in no better shape than hers. His paws were stuffed into his pockets, scruffing the fur back at his wrists. A white fang glinted in the fading light as he quirked his muzzle into a lop-sided smile.

"Didn't realize anyone was still out here," Alder said with a laugh.

Cat grinned wide and squinted her eyes shut. "Wha's the matter? There a curfew or somethin'?"

He shook his head. "Nah, just out admirin' the woods and saw a bunny rabbit out in the open. Ripe for any slinking predator to pounce upon." His paw slipped out of his pockets and made wiggly grasping motions in the air, flashing claws.

"Oh, sweet pussy cat," she purred, "ye widnae want tae dae anything rash. What ever would my bloke say if he discovered me ravaged 'pon the groond, unwitting victim of some brute?"

Dropping to sit on the stone beside her, he laughed himself into a coughing fit. When he caught his breath again he said, "He'd probably get a night's rest for once this week!"

"Wanker!" she cackled, sitting up and smacking him on the arm with the back of her paw. "I never hear ye argue."

"As if I would," he whispered low, leaning over to plant a kiss on her cheek. He caught the lingering scent of ash and snickered. "So? How's it feel to be a council-tested, shaman-approved--if slightly odd-looking--Nua Shi?ao puma?"

She kept her ears up, trusting that the low light would hide the rush of red heat that suffused them. "Weird, I guess. It's a whole lot like it felt tae be wi' family back home, but..."

"But?" Alder lay down on his back with his head in her lap. His feet dangled over the side of the stone slab and his tail curled back toward the slope, tip moving in a slow oscillation.

"Mibbe it was the stuff that happened before I met ye, the depression an' that, but even when I was home I kindae wisnae, ye know? It's like the hole was the same size and shape, but the peg was aw fucked up an' cuidnae fit. Two years I travelled, tryin' tae get mah heid clear and find somewhere where I fit, or that fit me. We've been here eight months and..." She shrugged and looked down into the puma's eyes. Her paw rested on the fur between his ears, claws tracing small circles and spirals through the hairs.

Purring loudly, the big cat smiled up at her and said "Welcome home!"

"Aye!" she chirped, bending down for a long kiss.

A flash of pale fire down across the clearing drew Cataría's attention. The edge of the mountain's shadow reached almost to the roots of the trees there. Three figures stood at the end of the path that led back to the village. Mimosa waved from across the broken ground and pointed with a grin to the pair she had escorted to the site. Fenella and Ceit Caird stood out in the twilight like fireflies, their white fur seeming almost to glow with the sun's last tenacious rays.

"Mum! Ceit!" cried Cat, leaping to her feet and almost knocking Alder off of the ledge.

She jogged down the slope, watching her mother wave and noticing that Ceit did not. It seemed odd until she noticed the shape in her sister's arms. Squealing, the black rabbit burst into a full run, leaping over mounds of dirt and rock. Behind her, Alder chuckled and stood. He picked up Cat's boots and followed her at a more sedate pace.

When he reached the group, Cat had already hugged her mother and sister and was holding her niece, a wiggling thing with tiny ears and mottled brown and white fur. Alder set the boots on the ground and wrapped the visitors each in a warm embrace.

"What brings y'all out to the ass end of nowhere?" he asked when finished.

"We're on our way home after visiting Hideki's family and introducing the wean," replied Ceit. She had the countenance of a marathoner who had just broken the tape at the finish line, exhausted and happy all at once. "Mum came along wi' us tae meet his folks and help manage the li'l beast."

Alder glanced at the squirming kit in Cat's arms. Her paws had a firm grasp on one of her aunt's ears and she nibbled on the end with vigor. The puma grinned and reached over, tickling the pads of a foot through the fluffy, white fur that concealed them. The foot kicked without any sign of her being distracted, knocking his paw away.

He chuckled, "I see. What'd y'all decide on for a name? I keep asking Kitty, but she won't tell."

Ceit raised her eyebrows and fluttered her ears. "Has she no? Probably didnae want it goin' tae yer heid."

"Oh?" he drawled, resting his paws on his hips. "And what exactly would have gone to my head?"

Cat rolled her eyes and groaned, "Ah, noo look, he--" She broke off with a yip as the kit clamped down hard on her ear. "Ow! Watch it, Matsuriki! Ye'll have mah ear aff at that rate!"

"Get out..." Alder whispered. His eyes widened and he looked back at Ceit, who smiled.

"Hideki suggested it," she said. "We both agreed that it felt right tae name her after ye, seein' as ye were the one that helped me sort oot my feelings. It took a few tries tae come up wi' something that felt right. At first we were split between Alda--"

"Which," Fenella interrupted, "I thought was a lovely name."

"--and Allie," continued Ceit. "But, we call Alastair that when we're pickin' on 'im. Hideki didn't feel that either of them really fit, and neither did I. We just aboot decided tae skip it, then Hideki goes, 'What was his last name again?' because he's a forgetful twat, and when I told him, he laughed and said it should either be Matsuko or Matsuriki. He says Matsuriki is meant to invoke the strength and resilience of the pine staying green through winter. The folk back home have taken to calling her Riki, for short."

"Matsuriki, huh?" he blinked a few times, thankful for the growing darkness. "Damn, Ceit. I don't des--"

She stopped him with a whack to the chest. "Shut up. If it meant enough tae me that I would want tae, than ye damn well dae deserve the honor. So pack it in ye modest, argumentative cunt."

"Okay," he sighed in defeat, though he couldn't resist one last push, "but it was Cat that--"

"Look, fuckwit, the ink's alreidy dry on her fuckin' birth record. Besides, ye didnae think I'd forget Kitty, did ye?" Ceit crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to the side. "Her middle name's Catarina."

That was good enough for him. Laughing, the puma embraced her again. They made their way along to trail by flashlight, for the benefit of the rabbits. Sixty-odd log-and-stone houses were nestled between the trees, some nearly touching one another while others could barely be glimpsed though the trunks. They spread outward and upward along shallow valleys that snowmelt and rain water had carved into the surrounding ridges. In the center of this haphazard starburst stood the Nua Shi?ao lodge. The huge structure served as a community meeting space, guest accommodation, and government facility.

The north wing of the building also housed a community kitchen, where work was underway by around a dozen pumas to prepare food for a festival that evening. The Nua Shi?ao had hoped that the new cultural center and park would be finished in time for the celebration, but had accepted the delays with stoic grace. Indeed, there were more pressing concerns. August marked the close of a growing season shortened by both high latitude and high altitude. The festival signaled the end of the harvest and the beginning of the pre-winter hunts.

Mimosa explained to Ceit and Fenella, as they all approached the lodge, that the three bands that made up the Nua Shi?ao nation initially had different cultural structures. The more populous Nã Nthii--"Steps of Flame", in reference to the contoured terraces of wheat that still lined the nearby valleys--had adopted an agrarian way of life around two thousand years before Europeans made landfall in the New World. They went as far as becoming nearly vegetarian, aside from fish and domesticated fowl. The Finàpi and Ser She?a--"Green Eyes" and "River's Purr", respectively--remained hunter-gatherers until threatened with dissolution. When the three bands joined together, the united council proposed a new name for the emergent nation. The council assented and announced it to the populace, who agreed in apt unison.

"What was apt aboot it?" the elder Caird asked.

Mimosa grinned and nodded her head to the door they had just reached. Behind it, amid the laughter and clamor of the bustling kitchen, there rose and fell a song in the tongue of the nation, something which sounded very much like ralyãshiwan to Cataría. In fact, they had sprung from the same root language in Asia, tens of thousands of years prior.

"What you're hearing in there," Mim replied, reaching for the door, "is one dialect that was formed by marrying the three original tongues. In their name, 'Nua' is a collective possessive pronoun inclusive of the speaker and the listener: 'our', basically. It gets complicated when you get to 'Shi?ao', though." A wave of singing broke upon them as she opened the door and let them in ahead of her. As she stepped through and closed the door, she continued, "Most English-speakers translate it as 'roar', which is stupid because that word has specific connotations in regard to cats--four-legged and veeps--and pumas aren't capable of that class of vocalization. French Canadian anthropologists tend to translate it as 'voice', which captures the spirit and still misses the point all at once."

Their ears and eyes had difficulty focusing on any one thing in the sweltering kitchen. Pumas wove in and amongst the cook stations and prep areas, narrowly avoiding one another in the careful choreography of those accustomed to working together. The air was thick with steam and the chaotic scents of dozens of foods and spices. Hideki, who had travelled with Ceit and Fenella, was scribbling notes beside an old, crooked cat who laughed and waved her paw, indicating this ingredient or that person and explaining the complicated process as best she could in a language that was not native to either of them. He glanced up and saw the group that had just entered. Beaming, he waved and excused himself.

As he walked over, Fenella asked Mimosa, "What's the real meaning, then?"

The deep pools of Mim's eyes shone with her smile. "In the oral histories, the shi?aol were songs unique to every band. They were sung to identify territory and guide lost children home. Myths tell of one that each person hears when they are called to join the territory beyond life. The three tribes renounced their individual Beacon Songs when they united, and they crafted a new one for the new nation. They resolved to take in any who were lost and accept them as their own, maintaining the old ways without rejecting the ways of others. In the context of a Western nation, you could see their name as 'Our Anthem', I guess."

"Ye soond like it's no what ye hear when ye hear it, though."

She chuckled. "No, Fenny. I latched on to that aesthetic of the beacon; a light to guide the lost home. The song recovers people to a place of safety, and the people recover through the song. It brought together broken people and made them whole again."

"'Our Recovery', in a sense," added Alder, smiling.

Hideki arrived, still grinning wide, and gathered his daughter up from Cat's arms, cooing, "Ma-chan! Ma-chan! Otousan ga kaetta!"

"Learning a lot, love?" Ceit asked with a smirk.

The dun rabbit's ears perched so high on his head that they looked ready to spring off and embed themselves in the high ceiling. "So much!" he yelped. "They are so happy to share their recipes and techniques. I wish I had a year or five to stay and learn everything!"

She bumped his shoulder with her own and grunted, "Tae bad. We got lessons waiting back home that we've already paid for."

"Mmm," he moaned, snuggling Matsuriki, who giggled and grabbed at his ears as they drooped in discouragement.

Alder surveyed the activity in the room and shuffled. "Y'all able to stick around for the festival tonight?"

"Aye," Fenella replied, "We leave from Prince George day after tomorrow."

"Excellent! I get to play host this time!" He turned to Mimosa and raised his eyebrows. "Between our place and yours, we ought to be able to put them all up, yeah? No need stickin' em with the lodge, really."

His sister shrugged and sighed. "No problem for me. Place is godawful empty anyway. Ceit and Hideki can take my spare room with little Riki Tiki Tavi, here."

"Bah! We'll worry about who goes where in a little while. Things'll kick off here in about half an hour, if I remember right. Our place is close, if y'all want to take a load off before the shindig."

They all agreed and left the boisterous communal kitchen. Entering the house that Alder and Cat shared, moments later, was a different assault on the senses. The puma had continued his habit of indoor cultivation, filling the shelves and window sills with a wide assortment of plants, brought across the border after a tough fight from customs. The scent of life and soil was thick in every room. Wide bookshelves occupied much of the wall space, with books on botany, horticulture, North American wildlife, New World voxiped history and mythology, and a few hundred records--on compact disc and LP--fighting for space among the pots. Over the hearth hung the large print of Willa Kenyon's photo of the puma and the rabbit in Sydney. It had happened to arrive at Alder's cabin when they were packing his things. Mimosa and the rabbits all dropped thankfully into seats in the living room, while Alder ducked in and out of the kitchen bringing beverages for everyone.

While she bounced Matsuriki on her knees, Cat caught up with her family. Things had been busy and mobile service was patchy at best in the mountains, so there was much to discuss. Donna's wedding had been a quiet civil ceremony. Neither she nor her husband had possessed the time to plan something more extravagant. It also left more money for the honeymoon, which they were currently enjoying in the Virgin Islands. Izzy was still happily trolling the stars and Sílas had recently joined a program that put them assisting in the same observatory, in exchange for university credits. Frank and Abigail had started looking into adoption.

Cat's university and school-aged siblings had returned to their studies. Alastair had surprised everyone by revealing that he and a classmate in an advanced silviculture lecture had struck up a romance. Fenella showed off a picture of her son laughing with a plump hedgehog. "Susan, she's called," Mrs. Caird told her daughter. "Lovely lass." David stilled worked at the distillery, though Bothain Caird had finally given up trying to familiarize him with operating the forklift.

"How's Molly?" Cat asked, bending down to nuzzle her niece's head.

Ceit sighed and shook her head. "No great. Miserable, really. Her flatmates gave her a hell of a time when she got back tae London. Somehow, they were fine wi' her slaggin' it up all ower the place, but they rode her arse aboot turning ower a new leaf."

Mimosa's head jerked up. "What?"

"Aye. She finished her studies by correspondence back hame," Fenella added. "Went aboot it like a lass possessed, sayin' she needed tae get it ower with. Apparently she'd had a tip aboot a job and she wanted tae hurry so someone else didnae beat her tae it."

"Damn, she never let on to any of it with me," Mimosa grimaced, exposing long fangs. Her ears splayed and she muttered, "I hope the job works out for her. Wish I could help somehow."

Alder sank into an open chair with a groan. "Don't worry, Mimsy. She's a good kid, even if she tries to convince herself otherwise. She'll be all right."

"Still..." muttered his sister, rubbing the pads of her paws together. Whiskers, ears and shoulders sagged and her eyes searched somewhere in the distance beyond the floorboards at her feet. She missed the looks all of the others shared.

Things had progressed quickly since that conversation with the Walkers, more than half a year before, even if time occasionally seemed to drag. Alder, Cat, and Mimosa had decided to take a chance on the unknown, hurrying to conclude their time in Scotland and travel to America. It had taken two weeks to confirm their relationship with the Nua Shi?ao, receive approval to relocate to the village, and settle their limited affairs. Cat's belongings were shipped directly from Scotland, while the two pumas combined the few things they wanted to bring with them into one cargo box the size of a shipping container, leaving the remainder of the logistics to a moving company. Throughout the process, Mim found time here and there to text or call Molly. Their conversations tended to last for hours, always light and trivial, and never failed to leave the puma with a smile. Early on, Mim had let the rabbit know that communication would be a challenge once they arrived at their new home.

Her departure from the Pueblo school was unceremonious. There were friends at and outside of work, but none so close that parting could develop a sense of sorrow, sweet or otherwise. When she reached the Nua Shi?ao village, she threw herself into her work with the nation. It was refreshing to deal with a people who were so different from what she left behind, yet so similar to herself. The eight months since they arrived had been so full, between beginning to learn the language and history of the nation and helping them lay the groundwork for an outreach program, that she had hardly been able to notice the poor access to communication. Now, though...

"Hey, Mimsy?"

"Mmm?" she replied, looking up at her brother.

Alder's questioning look did a bad job of concealing the smirk that played around the corner of his mouth. "Y'ok there?"

"Yeah, just lost in thought," she said, assuming that the smile was the residue of some joke she had missed while zoned out. "What'd I miss?"

Alder opened his mouth to speak, but stopped and swiveled his ears toward the window. The pane was raised to allow the cool night air in, along with the scents of pine, moss, and the mingled aromas of food from the lodge. As a group, the others turned their ears to the new sound that drifted in on the wind. Three strong voices rose and fell together, calling out through the wooded valleys in the language of the Nua Shi?ao. Fenella mused that it sounded similar to the kulokker of Scandinavia, though lower in register. Each of the guest rabbits later would reflect on how, despite being ignorant to the meaning of the words, they each felt an odd lightness within them that seemed to focus in their chest and pull them toward the singers. It was a giddy sensation that elicited an involuntary giggle from Hideki. After about a minute, the pattern began to repeat and Alder stood with grunt.

"Welp!" he remarked with a smile. "That's our cue. Shall we?"

***

Smoke clung to the humid air at a height just above the heads of the gathered animals. It made for a vague, undulating ceiling that glowed orange in the light of three tall bonfires. Nearly all of the village had turned out for the festival, joined by delegations from other nearby indigenous nations. The resulting crowd numbered more than a thousand strong and seethed in slow currents between the wide area around the fires and the interior of the lodge. Alder, Mimosa, and the rabbits watched from the outskirts of the roiling mass as pumas mingled and danced with lynx, wolves, and humans. There were also three elk, whose head towered over the rest of the revelers, leaping and cavorting with the ring of dancers around the largest fire and a few bears who seemed to prefer standing back at the fringes. Drums and pipes rang out from all corners of the grounds.

"Makes you nervous just to look, no?" grumbled a voice off to their left.

A large brown bear in a long, intricately woven, wool robe stood with her back against the trunk of a lodge pole pine and her arms crossed protectively in front of her chest. Her English bore a thick, guttural accent.

"It is a bit overwhelming," Hideki squeaked, getting nods of agreement from the others.

Alder gave the bear a wave. "Evenin', Nunaseg. I'm like you: I breathe better when I can see ground between me and other people."

She laughed loud and nodded toward Cataría. "Maybe you and me keep each other company while bunny wiggle her tail out there. If she bump into Tirkåsqut, they can make ass of themselves again."

"Tirk's here?" Cat cried, scanning the crowd. "I've got to introduce her to Mum and Ceit!"

She led the other two rabbits into the crowd, while Hideki opted to wait at the fringes and look after Matsuriki. Alder introduced him to Nunaseg, a prominent member of a band of bears from the other side of the mountain range. Her band was contributing oral histories and ceremonial items to the cultural center that the Nua Shi?ao were working on. This was true of the parties in attendance from the other non-puma indigenous groups, as well. The end goal was to show the intertwined histories and mythologies of the region's peoples and that which they had all possessed before European settlers, humans in particular, began systematically working to destroy them.

"Japan, eh?" she grunted, considering Hideki over the bridge of her muzzle. "There are g'thenshur, ah...two-leg rabbits in Japan?"

"Yes," he said. "But, almost all of them came from Europe, Portugal."

Bushy brows raised over the bear's dark brown eyes. "Portuguese? Hmm, imperialists?"

Hideki shook his head, explaining, "No, they fled from the Inquisition in the early sixteen hundreds. The human Catholic government suspected most voxipeds of being pagans and cast them out under threat of death." He moved his squirming daughter onto his shoulders, wincing slightly as she grabbed an ear in each paw and tugged on them like reins. "Two merchant ships with every rabbit they could carry sailed to Japan and begged asylum. They renounced their citizenship and adopted Japanese names and customs."

Mimosa watched the crowd as the unlikely trio of bear, puma, and rabbit continued to chat. She took her leave and drifted toward the lodge to find refreshments. Revelers shifted around her in rhythm with the music, flotsam on a wave she wasn't in the right frame of mind to catch. Hundreds of competed scents assaulted her, making both her mouth and her eyes water. The interior of the lodge was, incredibly, even more crowded than the grounds outside. It took several minutes of polite jostling for her to reach the area where the drinks were served.

Waiting for her drink, Mim rubbed the sides of her muzzle, along the dark markings that dropped from the corners of her nose to her lips. She thought about the old expression "so noisy I can't hear myself think" and wondered why she'd never heard a similar phrase for smells. So many bodies crammed together, so many foods, the fires, the forest, the sweating timbers of the lodge, dust at the edges, moss and mud and breath and...

A cup of hot tea was pressed into her paws by the apologetic, young server. He could see by her pinned ears and the sharp twitches of her tail that something was agitating her and assumed that he had not moved quickly enough. Poor kid. Mimosa smiled and thanked him, then took a deep breath of the steam rising from the cup. The aroma helped to clear her mind and settled in her nose to block out the melange of the crowd. She carefully picked her way to one of the walls and edged along until she found the door and popped back out into the open air. The bonfires and dancing occupied an open yard in front of the lodge. Mim sidled around the building to the north side, where there was less light and noise. Leaning against the thick timbers of the building, she took a long sip of tea and leaned her head back with a thump.

She'd been busy enough these past few months that most nights she didn't even have time to eat dinner before she collapsed in her bed or on her sofa. She saw her brother and Cataría infrequently enough to keep her from feeling like a third wheel, but not so seldom that she could develop a sense of loneliness. Rare moments, like now, she reflected on the fact that it would be nice to have someone to unwind with. She pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and glared at the reception indicator. "No Service" shone back at her in white pixels above the lock screen wallpaper, a shot of the lights of Roswell stretched out across the dark desert, as seen from the foothills east of Picacho. She pressed the lock button to darken the screen and slid the phone back into her pocket. That wasn't a view she'd be likely to see again. One of several things that she wouldn't be likely to see again, really.

The puma's muzzle tweaked with an awkward sniff. Memory played funny tricks on you. From time to time, the smoke drifting around the lodge smelled almost like the pinyon logs that used to burn in the little wood stove in the house they'd grown up in. Out of the hundreds of pumas in the crowd, a handful smelled so much like Mama had. She nudged her eye with the back of her wrist and gave a small chuckle at herself. There'd been a couple of times she almost thought she smelled--

"Iina rãla gnef," a slow voice called softly, enunciating with the kind of careful precision that goes along with a non-native speaker.

"Aa, iina rãla," she replied, distracted and tired enough that it took a moment to sink in. "Eh? Ralyãshiwan akån Nua Shi?ao to?"

The speaker snickered. Their voice remained quiet and they switched to English. "Sorry, love. Ye lost me there." Mim's eyes snapped open and she turned to face them. Molly smirked and added with a shrug, "I only managed to get someone to teach me the greetings, so far."

The puma's cup thumped to the soft dirt at her feet and toppled over to slosh its contents across the ground. Her paws covered her muzzle, hiding an expression that was indecent in its intensity and caught impossibly between smiling and crying. Her ears flicked forward and her eyes welled up with joy. Crying out, she rushed over and wrapped the rabbit in an enormous hug before stepping back and giving her shoulder a gentle push.

"No one told me you came, too! What the fuck, Mols?"

Molly's ears drooped back, but her face shone with a happiness that matched the big cat's. "They mustae wanted it tae be a surprise. I told 'em tae say that I'd catch up later. I didnae expect my meeting with the council tae run that long, though."

Mim cocked her head. "The council?"

"Aye! They liked the phone interview that I did two weeks ago, so we arranged tae dae the paperwork in person once I got here wi' Mum and them."

"Paperw--hang on. It's been, like, what...seven, eight months since we've talked? Rewind and start from the beginning, 'cause I'm lost."

"Okay...how far back dae I need tae go? Did ye know any of us were coming?" Receiving a head shake, she said, "Did Alder tell ye that I switched degree tracks and went into anthropology?"

"What? No! Wait...how the hell would he know and not me?"

Molly's ears stayed back and her face drifted from happy to abashed. Her eyes flicked away, showing white at the edges. "Fuck... It wisnae aw supposed tae be a bloody secret, Adler, ye cunt." She slumped against the wall and ran her paws over her faces a couple of times. "Jesus, Mim, I'm sorry."

The puma reached over and stoked the black fur of Molly's forehead and cheek a couple of times. "What for, hon?"

"After ye left, aw of ye, I sat there in my room and thought aboot all the stuff I'd learnt aboot yer history an' that. I'd been floundering at school, y'know. I kept my grades up, but didnae have any interest in any of it. Accounting was just something that I knew I could find a job in. So, when I got back doon tae London I talked wi' my advisors aboot changing majors tae anthropology. That change and the way my behavior changed kindae drove a wedge 'tween me an' my friends. Things got rough, especially when I told them why I changed things up. I had a major bout of depression and went hame.

"Mum helped me through it; as did you, even though I never mentioned my problems tae ye. Just hearing yer voice and laughing with ye took so much of the weight aff. I didnae--" She glanced briefly at Mim, then away again. "--didnae want tae worry ye wi' any of it. Ye were so worked up and stressed oot over getting yer stuff in the States sorted and getting settled here; I widnae have felt right layin' my shit on ye. When I needed someone other than Mum, I talked aboot it wi' Kitty over e-mail, an' expect she probably told Alder. I figured som of it widae foond its way tae ye and I'd talk aboot the rest when things calmed doon. Then ye fell off the radar when ye got up here."

Tawny arms enveloped the rabbit again and Mim rested the end of her muzzle in the soft fur between Molly's ears. "Damn it, hon, you should have said something. Even without hearing all that, I was still worried about you and hoping you were okay."

"Aye...sorry." She wrapped her arms around the big cat in return.

"What all this about the council, though?"

"There's a graduate program in indigenous voxie studies at the university in Prince George. I got accepted into the program and my research is going to focus on the oral traditions of Western Canadian felids. The Nua Shigr...fuck..." She closed her eyes tight and sounded it out slowly. "...Shi?ao, there! The Nu Shi?ao council agreed to let me live in the village and record their histories. Kitty and Alder vouched for me and I thought you had, too."

"They didn't tell me a thing about it," grumbled the big cat. "I'm gonna have to punch that dickhead brother of mine in the--" She pushed the rabbit back slowly, holding her by the shoulders. "Here?! You're going to be living here?"

"Mmhmm!" Molly nodded, smiling.

"Um, bun..."

"Aye?"

Mimosa fixed Molly with a serious gaze. "Y'know how I said in your kitchen that if you hadn't been all distressed, I might have hit on you?"

"Aye," she laughed.

"And our phone conversations got a little flirty from time to time..."

"Aye!" The rabbit's ears swung in a wide arc as she nodded.

"Gods, I hope I'm not about to seriously fuck up, here," the puma muttered, moving her paws from Molly's shoulders to her cheeks. "Do you--"

"--want tae study yer 'oral traditions'?" Molly said in a low, playful tone followed by a nod. "Aye."

That was all the encouragement the puma needed. She moved forward, still gently cradling the rabbit's face, and locked lips with her. Unconsciously, Molly raised up on her toes and found Mimosa's sides with her paws. They held the kiss for a few beats before a sound from behind Molly broke through their reverie. Glancing back toward the front of the lodge, they saw a pair of familiar silhouettes.

"About damn time, you two!" called Alder, applauding. "If y'all don't mind postponing your clam bake, lets gather the others and head back to our place. I think I can finally break the seal on that fuckin' Ardbeg."

Cataría elbowed him in the side and said, "Mols, ye can skip the kiss for me, but I'd at least like tae get a hug from my sister!"

Beyond them, on the dance grounds, the music and singing swelled. A loud chorus of whoops rang through the forest, immediately followed by three columns of sparks that lifted in wavering spirals over the bonfires. The flames of each fire briefly changed colors, bathing the treetops with red, green, and purple light. The crowd's cheers faded as the flames and music returned to normal. As the revelers continued wheeling and dancing over the packed dirt, two rabbits met in a warm embrace in the shadow of the lodge and one puma, wrapping her arm around the shoulder of her brother, whispered a threat of future violence that elicited a raucous laugh from him.