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Lightning

Chapter 1: Trip to the Fair

By H. A. Kirsch

--

At nineteen years of age, Trevor de en Seince was still living in the same house with his aunt, still living in the increasingly-bustling Potterston, and still floundering. Instead of trundling off to the single-room grade school of his country youth, or Potterston's much more spacious three room higher school, the unusually-gray maned wolf now received under-the-table tutoring by a retired Hopsmoth University professor. Instead of being a young and virile teenager, he was now one year an adult and mired in his own ennui and wavering somnolence.

Much of that was the result of having been struck by lightning at age thirteen. He had been furtively touching himself to the thought of his prissy and well-dressed cheetah neighbor Marshall Llewellyn when a thunderstorm sent a bolt of lightning through the ceiling of his home, through the left side of his head, out his foot, and on to destroy various things in his room seeking ground.

A streak of fur on the left side of his face, neck, and upper chest grew back from the burn and came in bright white. It looked as if someone had dumped a streak of paint on him. Trevor's lupine father had made one of his exceedingly rare visits upon hearing of the accident, and the general likened it to Old Era war painting.

Trevor did not like the comparison, as it separated him even further from the wolf. His father was dashing in his uniform, tall and severe and thickened by the spoils of war, and quite a normal gray wolf. Trevor, adopted, was an entirely different species.

Instead of merely being a rare melanistic gray maned wolf, confused for a dog or a wolf or a silver fox, leered at and prodded for his profusely lanky stature and bombastic namesake ruff, chided for living with his aunt; Trevor was now so rare as to be unique. The red haze in his left sight became gray and then dark, while his eye itself turned shocking pearlescent white and sightless. He took to wearing a black leather eyepatch to spare passers-by having to look at his wild, unseeing eye. His white streak was a constant reminder to everyone what had happened to him, the pattern as jagged as the bolt of lightning that had struck him.

At least with his barely fruitful tutoring, he could spend much of his time at home, studying, instead of crammed inside of a stifling schoolroom with washing brats and bakers' children and even better and worse, the legal counselor's son Marshall Llewellyn that lived next door.

"You need to get out of the house," his aunt said, then reached over and closed the book that he was only half studying, with a smack of her hand. Helena was a snow-white arctic fox, small of ear and fluffy of tail, and surprisingly forceful considering her unerringly cute gold-eyed vixen appearance.

"Can you not be so rude? I have to study." He had actually been daydreaming. The harder he tried to study, the harder his mind seemed to force him to daydream, eventually spilling over to sending him to sleep.

She barked and tossed her head back, then started out of the room. "You can learn the secrets of the universe, but if you don't leave this house sometimes, all anyone will ever know of you is that stupid nickname."

Trevor sighed and slumped back in his chair, stung. "Practical Alchemy: Perfunct Permutations and Trite Transformations" stayed closed on his desk. Such a stupid name for a book, he thought. It was the study of chemicals, although the name 'chemistry' scared farm people, and confused city folk who thought a chemist was where one picked up their patent cough medicine.

Helena was not to be dissuaded and stopped in the doorway. "In fact, I have the perfect idea. The fair is in town, and you should take your cousin. I have to work during the day on the bakery thing, and I'm not sure I trust you to sit for her here, what with the last time when you fell asleep. Or the time before that. Or frankly every other time, really." She put her hands on her dressed hips as she recounted, eyes up and to the side in sarcastic remembrance.

Oh no, oh no, Trevor groaned. He started counting backwards from ten, but only reached seven before a piercing cry came from the next room:

"YAAAAAAAAAAAY LIGHTNING'S GONNA TAKE ME TO THE FAIR I'M GONNA EAT EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN EAT I BET THEY'LL MAKE ME A FRIED TOOOOAAAAAAAAAD!" By the final word, Trevor's snowball of a cousin Samantha burst into the room, spun lazily with her fluffy arms out, and then vanished back into her own room making a song out of the words "Fair", "Fried", and "Toad".

"Thanks, Helena, I'm so overjoyed that I can go outside and drag Sam around," the maned wolf groaned, then got up from his chair and sulked about in a circle. _It's going to be hot and noisy and Sam will get into everything and people will stare at me and I'll eat too much fried sugar cakes and have nightmares. _

He nonetheless indulged his aunt, as she was the only thing that kept his life together. He had no idea who his birth mother and father had been, and indeed knew only vaguely that he was from Gale. His lupine adoptive father Callan was only that in title; Trevor even took his family name from Helena and her sister. Callan's absence was mostly a blessing, as he was a boisterous, commanding lout, though also a victim of several legitimate tragedies and the horrors of war.

Callan enlisted in the army at the start of the Caroyan Conflict, married a wolf from the service, and watched in tragedy as she was killed in a raid on command. He barely escaped after injuries. He married again once he had ascended to officer, this time to an arctic fox who was not at all in the service, and she pressed hard for adopting a child. She was targeted in an assassination attempt on his life just weeks after the adoption, and left dull and disabled, kept out of sight in care by a private nurse. Trevor was sent to live with her sister in secret with the aid of a trust stipend. Trevor had met Callan only twice: adoption, and then a visit two weeks after the accident, and he only barely remembered the second.

Sam, on the other hand, was actually Helena's daughter born out of wedlock, and was but six surprisingly precocious years old - born just weeks after Trevor's act of god. She really couldn't stay alone despite her burgeoning independence and unremitting drive towards chaos, so Trevor really had to take her to the fair or make other arrangements.

"Why do you wear a cape? It's summer!" She wandered around his legs like a dullhead housepet.

"I don't like coats." In addition to the simple dark-brown riding cape, Trevor wore an off-white linen shirt, natural leather breeches, and knee-high black leather field boots that laced over the ankle.

Sam squinted, as if unsure he was actually teasing. "Why do you wear an eye patch?"

"You know why I wear an eye patch. Do you want to see?"

"Eewwww! No way! It looks like your eye's full of salt!"

Sam stayed silent and wove a meandering but intentional path around Trevor as they walked.

"Why do-"

"-you always ask me the same questions? We live together, Sam. There isn't a thing about me that you don't know." That isn't really true, though she's only six years old, and probably will forget by this evening...

"I like making you mad! It's fun! Faaaaaair!" she said, bouncing from annoying Trevor to unbridled distraction as they rounded the corner and the makeshift wooden sign came into view. Potter's Clearing had been completely overtaken by carnies and food stalls, and it really was hard to resist so much Stuff in one place. The summer fair drew people from the surrounding farming towns, more and more each year as Potterston itself grew from a village to the cusp of a very small city on account of its location on the trading road that led down through the modest hills into Castleton.

Trevor's initial fear about going to the fair faded when he realized just how many people had come, and how many of them were from completely different towns or even the outskirts of Castleton. A few people recognized him, but Sam was always ready to bound off like a dandelion puff and made for an excellent distraction.

He indulged Sam with some of the more usual fair activities: displays about prize-winning fruits and vegetables, arts and crafts, skill games, and of course, food. There was a fry-man standing at one stall, and he had a selection of game that immediately caught Trevor's attention. The maned wolf bought up three of the deep-fried meaty things on a stick, and surprised Sam with one.

Her eyes went from cat slits to saucers and she slowly tilted her little triangular ears back. "Wow it really exists I wasn't imagining it is it really?" she said, and took hold of the snack.

"Breaded frog's leg. Frog, toad, it's the same thing," he shrugged, and finally succeeded in leading Sam away from the crowdy bustle and towards the less crowded parts of the fair.

Hopsmoth University had set up a science pavilion and it was busy providing eye-popping (if not entirely educational) glimpses of progress.

"Hmmf. You know, they aren't the same thing." She scrunched her tiny muzzle up into the most indignant face she could muster. "They are different specials."

"Species," Trevor said, "Like how you're a little snow fox and I'm a maned wolf. I'm more closely related to a jackal than a wolf, even, and not at all like you." Sam's response was to screw her face up further, and then nibbled at the fried frog's leg, before squealing and gobbling the rest of it down. Trevor had to grab the stick away from her before she ate it up as well as they continued walking. A quarter of the fair space was sponsored by Hopsmoth University in Castleton and was devoted to new discoveries, science and industry, and also an annoying amount of name-dropping of the university itself.

The "mechanics" pavilion was packed with people watching the demonstration of a 'steam drive' operating a saw. It had a big round kettle with drain piping connecting it to a strange sliding thing that turned a wheel. It looked like at any moment, the whiff of steam that spurted out periodically would turn to a stream, and then a fearsome explosion. Instead, it just puttered away. There was a stage presentation showing a large painted canvas and a fearsome device moving across a tremendous wooden bridge, a plume of smoke streaming from a chimney at the front. The pair paused long enough for Trevor to catch that it was something known as an 'omni-train', powered by a much larger steam drive, and it pulled passenger carriages along a metal track. The first such track was being laid from Castleton out into the highlands, and Potterston would be a stop.

While Trevor absently chewed at his own snack and paid equally-absent attention to the rather droning presentation, Sam got up on her tiptoes and snatched the third stick, then scurried a few feet away to feast on her feral throwback treat.

The next pavilion was wowing the crowd with safe but flashy chemical experiments, which Trevor rolled his eyes at. Real chemistry is boring, until it makes a firebomb, he thought. Sam seemed entirely uninterested, and much more interested in figuring out how to clean her teeth with the wooden skewer. She snapped it in half and Trevor fussed for a moment, worried she'd stab herself with it. She then immediately began using the two pieces in her fluffy hands to sword-fight between two imaginary toads, and the maned wolf then worried she would stab a hapless passer-by with it.

The third pavilion featured someone upstaging the college's attempt at attraction. The majority of the onlookers were gathered around an unfamiliar setup, which didn't have the university's regular paintboard logo behind it. Two men stood behind the stall's front wall, and one of them was busy adjusting some sort of hand-cranked machine. The crank attached to a belt that came up over a roller and past a set of metal wire fronds. Those led to a large metal ball on a stalk.

The men were as interesting as the indecipherable contraption. One of them was a glowering hairless cat whose slightly wrinkled appearance was soothed by a pleasant bronze tan and a very snappy green brocade tail-coat and drop-front breeches. The other was a Caroyan lizard in a top hat and what seemed to be a cane in one scaled hand. It was very likely the crowd was there simply to see a Caroyan. They were still exotic outside of Castleton, only seen around in any numbers since the war.

"Now y'all pay attention, this is gonna be my demonstration," the lizard said, in a swampy yet formal country accent. He lifted the cane, showing that it had a large metal knob on the bottom. "Come stand so you see the black wall behind me, there you go, it'll let you see better in th'afternoon sun. Now while I may look quite fancy standing here, I assure you, this is science. This ain't magic, this ain't the hand of Anara, and it ain't an act. Lane, start crankin'."

The tanned cat started cranking away at the handle, yet nothing appeared to happen for a few moments. Then, the rhythmic squeaking of the contraption picked up a strange crackling edge. The lizard slowly leaned in towards the machine, then held up his cane and slowly moved the small ball towards the much larger.

Crack! A blue arc like an enormous dry-weather scratchbolt snapped between the two spheres and the front row of onlookers jumped back. Startled, heart immediately pounding as if in the hours and days after his accident, Trevor closed his eyes so he didn't have to watch. Crack! Crack! Each one had the loud snap of a scratchbolt arc and a faint metallic ping. Even though Trevor had his good eye closed and his blind eye doubly darkened by the eyepatch, he still swore he saw each flash. That's strange, he thought, amidst his attempt to breathe steadily and calm his panic.

"None of you are in any danger," the lizard yelled over the repeated cracking of faux lightning. He moved the spheres closer and the arcs sped up as they shortened. "Lightning is not jus' somethin' that comes out of the sky. It isn't jus' a scratchbolt when you pull on a clean shirt on a cold winter day. It is Energy, and now we can harness it."

Trevor kept facing the display with his eye pinched shut, face twisted as he tried to squeeze back the memory of trauma and calm himself down at the same time. Then, as had happened a handful of times in the past, he inscrutably grew an erection. Thankfully, his breeches were snug in a way that just trapped it uncomfortably under the buttoned front drop instead of tenting it out for all to see. He surely looked no more lewd than anyone else. His ears burned with embarrassment, and he opened his eyes.

The fear of the memory, of something he didn't experience directly that yet hurt him and left him a freak, was replaced by the small sea of people in front of the stage, the lizard and hairless cat, and then a group just feet away. "Half breed!" a snarl-faced wild dog shouted, right into his face. Trevor tucked muzzle and leaned back, bumping into Samantha, who squeaked and spun around.

"Don't yell! Yelling's rude!" Sam squawked at the interloper.

The accuser's right-hand man, a vaguely familiar wolf, picked up the slack. "Careful everyone, Lightning here might attract that... that thing!"

The accuser's left-hand man inched away from the other two. It was Marshall, the cheetah from next door. Trevor snapped his look between all three of them, gave Marshall a confused stare, then focused on the aggressive two. "What's going on, huh?"

"You're a fucking half-breed, that's what's going on! Half-breed and half-blind!" The big-eared wild dog was now drawing attention away from the demonstration of a fantastical machine that could spew small lightning bolts.

"Half breed? What does that even mean?" Trevor growled.

"Yeah!" Sam crossed her arms. "He's abop, adbopted!" She hesitantly sniffed.

"You idiot," the wolf whacked his splotchy-eared cohort in the shoulder. "He's a darkfur, not a half-breed."

Trevor tucked his tail, put his ears back, and snarled. No I'm not! As fast as it had started, one of the ursine fair guards came over and stepped right between the two parties. "You. Out," the black bear growled, then grabbed onto the wild dog's scruff as if he were a pup and dragged him out. The wolf followed, while Marshall seemed to disappear himself in the small commotion.

Bewildered, Trevor took leave before anyone else had a chance to say something to or about him. Samantha tagged along, nearly underfoot as usual."Why'd he call you a half-breed? You're not half of anything. You're like three times bigger than me!"

The maned wolf shrugged. "I went to grade school with that guy, I think. He's a real lout. Drinks too much and starts fights. The wolf seems familiar, too." How can I not remember who I went to school with, Potterston isn't that big, Trevor thought, and wanted to tuck his tail again. "What was Marshall doing with them? He's too prissy for those types."

"I am absolutely not prissy," a voice said, from a bush, unmistakably Marshall. "I just like to dress well. I want to make every impression perfect."

"I hear a kitty! Your daddy's a counselabdor so you're just rich," Samantha sniffed in Marshall's hidden direction after mispronouncing Marshall's father's legal profession. "This is boring. I see one of my friends! Yay Sara I'm coming I got to eat a fried toad I can't believe it!" the young vixen said, and scurried away towards a group of similarly-aged kids being barely corralled by a harried badger.

Why am I hauling her around this commotion if her friends are going around with their day nanny? Trevor sighed to himself, ducked behind the bush, and found Marshall leaning next to a wooden storage cart. It looked disused, not secreted away but abandoned. "What are you even doing here? And with those dogs?" Then he remembered about his erection and looked down. While his pants still kept him from tenting out, for someone who knew what they were looking for, it was very obvious across his lap.

The cheetah shrugged. "I'm not hanging out with them, I'm hanging out around them, it's strictly... you wouldn't understand. Frankly, I hoped I could bump into you. You're much more interesting." The cat's eyes flicked downwards once, twice, and then lingered.

Trevor flipped his ears back, still struggling with the fact that his irritating neighbor was both hanging out with troublemakers and hiding in a bush to abscond with him into a tryst. "What? This day is mad so far. My aunt made me take my cousin here, that lizard guy is throwing lightning bolts like Anara, and now you're here with some crass canines! Looking for me!"

"I don't know what their problem is. You're not a half breed and that whole... that thing is nothing to make fun of," Marshall said, muzzle tipped up just slightly, and wiggled leather-gloved fingers at Trevor's eyepatched face. Then he grabbed Trevor as if to embrace him and pulled the taller canid close. His hands slid down Trevor's back, fussed with the maned wolf's cloak, and slid inside via the tail separation. His fine glove leather squeaked slightly as he pulled on Trevor's rump.

Trevor squirmed and held Marshall at arms' length, though he squeezed onto Marshall's shoulders instead of actually pushing him away. "We can't, you want to do this? Here? After your friends... Someone could see-" Trevor reared back, flabbergasted, but as his shoulders went back, his groin went forward. He looked down and furrowed his brow; the cheetah was hardly small though he was an entire head shorter than Trevor.

"Just be quiet," Marshall lifted off his heels, reached up, grabbed Trevor by the ear, then hissed into it. "It would be worse if I were a girl. You could make child without following the breeding rules. But me? I'm just the pretty boy next door who sees you staring at me and I know exactly what that stare means, and what you're really staring at," the cat said, then started purring. "How come you're so excited?" He flexed back against Trevor's bulge. "I'd be upset if people treated me like that, not hard like this."

Too fast, too fast, the maned wolf thought, but any attempt to grapple with Marshall just came out as sexually charged groping. All of Trevor's fantasies and their furtive actual interactions involved Marshall dominating him swiftly, but the cat was really interested in kneeling down and undoing Trevor's drop-front. "I, well," Trevor whispered back.

"I saw you get so hard, and you didn't realize, and they spotted it and started staring, and well I'm very glad they got riled up because..." He aimed Trevor's now bare maleness at his face and started warmly milking the fleshy hood back and forth.

Trevor looked around in a panic. No one could see into the bush, the knotbrush living up to its name and forming a woven shell that afforded them just the barest room. No amount of fear could make his erection go away; even the slightest touch from Marshall's hand made it throb. The maned wolf covered his face, instinctively clutching over his left eye even though he had no need to block out the light.

Marshall made quick work of him, rubbing his face around the guara's swollen member, washing his rough tongue out a few times to make Trevor stomp at the dirt with his boot. Trevor being a young man, it was hardly a minute before he exploded all over Marshall's muzzle. The cheetah backed off, then wiped his snout and made a show of licking his black-gloved fingers. "Mmm."

"What... what..." Trevor huffed, disbelieving what had just happened. Marshall stood up and gave his chops one last lick. "Why?"

"Why not? Are you changing your mind from all those times before? Now, I must not keep those assholes waiting, lest they think I'm aiding and abetting the enemy," Marshall said, and slipped out from behind the bush and disappeared. Trevor stayed standing, cock dripping into the dirt, for many heartbeats. Then he fastened his codpiece again and emerged from behind the bush, trying to look dazed, as if awakened from a nap.

"Where did you go I wanted to get another frog and you weren't anywhere and I don't have any money and my friends thought I was stuuuuuupid!" Sam squealed, one part tears and four parts foxen shrieking. The ruckus made Trevor flinch and tuck his tail, teeth gritted, any semblance of remaining lust completely obliterated.

"It was hot under that bush and I fell asleep," he lied.

"You're always asleeped! Hmmf!" Sam turned on a heel and stomped away. Trevor sighed and followed, determined to now keep an eye on Sam properly. She returned back to the main fairgrounds, right back to where the lizard and cat kept their demonstration. They were between demonstrations per the signage, and the gathered crowd had now gone on to watch beakers of water turn inexplicably black.

The lizard was busy milling around his equipment, while the hairless cat fanned himself with a baroque hand fan instead of panting like most other furry humanids. While he looked quite sour, he spoke up as Sam skipped up.

"I guess we can entertain questions, huh, Altius?" The cat spoke over to his companion, who was adjusting the guts of the machine, cranking it slowly and poking some metal rod around near the bristling top pickup.

"Demonstrations are every half-hour!" The lizard blindly called, "Experiments are always! What is it, Lane?"

The cat rolled his eyes but wagged his tail. Despite the temperature, he kept it covered by a red silk sheath. "You have this one all to yourself," he said, then wandered out of the way to the side. He then took out a cigarillo and lit it while watching the rest of the summer fair.

Trevor closed his eyes. He could see the sparks still, flickering like blue light in space. Two shapes, one tall and one short, both faintly illuminated, approached the sparks. _By Ferrin, what is going on? _

"Don't be shy, I won't do anything to hurt a lil' thing like you," the lizard said down to Sam, then stepped away and produced a short wooden stool from his caravan. "I'm quite the master of crankin' this thing. Slow for lower energies, fast to make a real lightnin' storm for a crowd of one. Now, what do you suppose will happen if you stand up on that stool and touch the big ol' metal bowl up there?"

Sam, completely reckless, hopped up on top of the stool. "ZAP!" She made a hand-clap that blew away into a free-limbed childish explosion.

The lizard uttered a chuffing sound and exposed a flick of his tongue, the first feral nod he'd expressed yet. "Go ahead an' touch it. Nothin's gonna happen."

Trevor continued to watch, eyes closed, his fear level at only slightly-choked. Nothing happened immediately.

The lizard then adjusted something at the top of the belt-and-feeler contraption with the end of his cane, then started to slowly crank. For a good twenty seconds, nothing much continued to happen. Sam, impatient, stamped her feet and lashed her tail around and put both hands on the ball as if that would change the outcome. The lizard cranked just a little faster, and Sam abruptly perked her ears. Her already plush coat started to separate and lift, fluffing her up considerably where she wasn't wearing her rough shirt and loose play-time pants. A skirt would have been more girlish and yet would have offered much more opportunity for her to get filthy; legged pants let Helena at least try to quickly clean her by stripping her down.

Trevor watched, still eyes closed, as the entire apparatus started to glow blue. Sam's outline grew clearer and clearer, then streamers started to spray off of her static-fluffed pelt, the tip of her nose and ears. He felt a dull sense of expansion, as he so often did when he closed his eyes but was not asleep. I can see whatever that machine is creating! When he opened them, the gravity of the situation hit him deep, and he rushed forward. "Sam, that's dangerous," he said.

"Oh, she'll be fine," the lizard said, stopped cranking, and got out a mirror. He held it up, and Sam squealed with glee.

"Fluffy! I'm so fluffy! I could float away fluffy!"

"There are two sides to this electricity," the lizard said, lazy drawl as genteel as it was showman. "Two... directions." He gesticulated with his hands, green and black and scaly, gentlemanly but so uncommon compared to the other humanids. "Now that's all over you, so each lil' hair, it gets the same direction, and they repel each other. So you foof up. This one usually requires some audience participation, for obvious reasons." The lizard spoke up and looked over to his furless companion, who was facing away and uttered a cat sigh and puff of smoke.

Trevor found himself dry mouthed and couldn't speak, attempting to sputter out some warnings and chidings. He couldn't even step further forward than about ten feet away, heart racing, the same excitement as before but this time entirely on the fear side as he was no longer in need of arousal and was terribly concerned for Sam. He closed his eyes to stop the emotional rush, only to be treated to the same blue and black display of the profound charge turning his cousin into a puff-seed on the wind. I must be going mad. It's the heat. Perhaps I really fell asleep in the bush instead of encountering that spotted brat, and this is a dream. Something's catching up to me, he thought.

The lizard shoved a wooden lever on the crank-and-belt device with a clunk, and the charge rapidly faded. Trevor saw the coruscating blue linework fade back to a faint blue haze. Sam's fur dropped mostly back down, although when she stepped away and off the stool, there was a light snap from her finger to the metal bowl and she let out a bratty yip.

"Now then," the lizard said, and used his cane for its intended purpose, leaning on it to the side as Sam skipped down off of the wooden platform erected by the fair. He turned to Trevor. "You, seem to have come back after those unfortunate mutts caused a ruckus earlier."

"I'm taking my cousin here to the fair. She needs to get her outdoor exercise or she starts chewing things. We've gone around at least four times so far," Trevor groaned, though he grinned into it.

"I don't chew things! Only that once!" Sam frowned, and started ambling around the immediate area as if to prove Trevor's point. Trevor tried to keep an eye on her, but that meant staring off, a tendency that had gotten him jeered at as a flake.

"Back to that ruckus a short while ago. Some unfriendly louts decided to get upset because you were breathing air next to 'em," the lizard said, and got off his cane to prod at the machine. He waved the knobby end about and produced a few leftover sparks that then dissipated completely. "I don't see much about you to warrant that awful bull-shit."

"Well, thanks for the compliment." Trevor stepped closer. On close examination, the cane had a black metal wire extending from it, flatly painted to match the backdrop. "What're you doing?"

"Well, I call it soiling the charge. This electricity is energy, and I'm collectin' it in one spot. Well, everything else around here can take up that energy. If I stick this wire in the ground out behind my little caravan, then I can send all the charge down there so it doesn't build up where I don't want it."

Trevor closed his eyes. The brighter specks of blue were almost entirely gone. Also, he could see two very faint blue blobs off to the side. He opened them; Sam and the hairless cat were talking. This is incredible.

"Why don't you have any fur?" "Why do you have fur?" "Rrgh! I'm a fox! I'm supposed to have fur!" "I'm a hairless cat, and I'm not supposed to have any fur." "We're different spec... species!" "Yep." "Do all of you have no fur?" "Yep." "I bet it makes smoking that cigar stick easier. My aunt says you can light yourself on fire if you smoke. She says that it makes you cough your lungs up when you're old." "Well, I'm not old yet."

"Lane, don't be teasin' over there," the lizard chided.

"Mmh," the cat replied.

The lizard then stepped forward and produced his scaly hand towards Trevor. "Name's Doctor Altius Brasseri. And I heard them call you Lightning, which I just can't let go of."

Trevor groaned and shook his head. "Trevor de-en-Seince."

"There a reason you get called Lightning? That streak on your face? Seeing how spindly you are, I oughta say you're a maned wolf? Never seen a gray one."

"I got hit by lightning when I was thirteen," Trevor began, eye up and to the side as he dredged up the explanation once more. "It went right through the roof of our house, hit me in the face, went out my foot to the window. Now I'm blind in one eye, and weird, and rather dullheadded. I've always been a darkfur though."

"It made his fur go weird! Now he has a streaky!" Sam called out, and instantly swiveled back to her breathless child interrogation of Lane.

"Explains why you looked out of your mind standing there. Only time I've seen anyone do that is when they see someone die."

Trevor winced and looked over to see if Sam was truly listening in. She was busily having a conversation with Lane about grass and the bugs in the grass. The cat seemed both extremely annoyed and yet all too eager to engage. Trevor sniffed as a breeze sent some of the smoke their way. It was plainly dullweed. That explains his attitude, and how he can tolerate Sam, he thought. Trevor looked back. "I'm used to it."

"What made you come over to my little demonstration here? Always looking for feedback on my pursuits," Dr. Brasseri set about tidying up his demonstration area, returning a wooden table to its prepped state of order.

"I already know all about chemistry and physical studies and whatever other science stuff they have over here, and I'm not really much fun for the other fairground stuff. My aunt just wants me out of the house and Sam's a handful."

The lizard popped into a grin and flicked his tongue out through his teeth. "Hopefully we enlightened you a little. I could go on for weeks about what I really do. I would probably bore you to sleep standin' up."

"I'll do that even if it's exciting," Trevor shrugged. "It was neat. I didn't know... you could do that," he floundered the words out of his mouth and scowled, ears back. "We should probably get going. My aunt's probably preparing supper by now. Sam, stop bothering people and come here." Sam was thankfully past the difficult age of saying no to everything, and merely in the age of whining every yes. As soon as she came up, he clutched onto her shirt sleeve and led her off.

--

That night, Trevor lost himself in daydreams while attempting to study his chemistry again. The latest thought was that chemical reactions were similar to maths, and that they could be represented as mathematical equations. Every time he felt as if he was understanding some new concept, he took one look at them and they blended into gibberish symbols. He understood the overall point, while the details and ministrations kept evaporating like mist when the sun came out.

His daydreams were also far too powerful. He replayed the moment of abrupt lustful dalliance with Marshall and found nothing arousing at all. Instead, it made him feel confused and stupid. He had no idea about the cheetah despite having interacted with him so many times. Somewhat forced playtime at first, as children, as Trevor was prone to solipism and Marshall was a same-aged boy with a busily absent father. Later, much more than that, despite the cheetah's sour and stuck-up attitude and tendency towards meltdown tantrums. He wondered if his own attraction was just the other male's reflected back. He wondered if it was only a trick. He wondered if anyone else knew what happened-

To shake the thought, he then thought about what he'd seen at the demonstration. That made him feel far worse inside. For years, ever since the lightning strike, he'd seen strange things with his eyes closed. He kept them to himself, assuming his bad eye and whatever had happened inside his head because of the bolt had simply broken him. Now, the strange things actually meant something. Whatever was happening when Dr. Brassei turned his fantastical machine's crank, Trevor was certain he could see it. That meant every time he saw anything with his eyes closed, he was seeing the energy of things around him. The thought made him want to gouge his eye out, so he got up from his table and wandered into the living room.

Helena was pressing shirts and skirts with a metal steam iron. She picked it up off the stove where it heated, poured water into a hole atop it, and within seconds some sputtered back out before something inside made a clack sound and steam puffed from the underside. She quickly smoothed out creases in one of Trevor's earth-toned cloaks. "I swear, everything is so complicated. Whatever happened to splashing water on a shirt?" She added more water, for another sputter. "Look at this! I assume they had all kinds of junk like this at the fair. Sam wouldn't come quiet about it."

The dark maned wolf sighed. "Sam can't shut up even in her sleep."

"It isn't her fault she makes those noises. The doctor said she'll grow out of it," Helena said, and handed the finished garment to the maned wolf. Trevor nearly dropped it, then lamely folded it. "Oh pay attention, will you? You're going to crease it all over again."

"I don't care. It's just a cloak. It's not supposed to have a shape."

"Well, it shouldn't have a wrinkled shape, in any case." The vixen continued ironing, now moved onto one of her own dresses. Without making eye contact, she spoke again. "Sam said there was a scuffle."

"I didn't do anything. It was some pack of idiot dogs."

"Sam said the neighbor, that twizzly spotty-cat, was involved."

"What is this, a spy report? Do you believe everything she says? What if she said there'd been a toad?" There were no toad-people. "Marshall was just... incidentally... there." Trevor's guts churned and his heart flopped, first as he recalled the incident and tried not to accidentally explain what had happened after the small fight, and second as he suddenly was unsure what word to use.

"Hmmf. Hopefully not. His father works at law with the police and that would be unbecoming. He certainly looks the brat, though." Helena looked his way and cocked one side of her muzzle into a grin. Underneath her fervently exhausted veneer, she never quite seemed to take anyone's side more than the other. "She also said some nonsense about a lizard and lightning bolts." As soon as the words escaped her face, her bushy tail curled about her legs and she tipped her short ears back.

Trevor, unsure of what to do with his own clothing while standing in the great room, set it on the wooden dining table. "It wasn't nonsense. I think he was with the university." He squinted as he remembered; no, there wasn't a university banner. "He had this contraption that could... you know what a scratchbolt is, like when you are working with the dried washing in the winter, or if you slide something on the rug? It made those, except a lot more of them." He could feel his stomach rising into his throat, both terror and excitement. He mentally debated whether to explain what Sam had done, touching the machine and turning herself into a puffball.

"I don't know if I trust those Caroyan lizards," Helena said. "The wars, you know." She sounded as if gamely trying to continue in spite of an emotion.

"I don't think they trust us either. You wouldn't like it if someone landed a ship on your coastline and started attacking you over rocks."

Helena's light expression faded and the black streak on her snout wrinkled. "Trevor, I don't think we should continue this conversation."

He sighed. "I know, I know, your sister, it's just... the whole lot of that stuff seems so pointless. Everyone wants to fight over nothing. Those dogs, they just didn't, they think there's something wrong with me, like I'm affront to the gods or something because what, because, because, I didn't do anything! It was a storm! There might as well have been a tree! And they called me half-breed, and how am I a half-breed? I don't care if I'm the right color, Mister Angelis is white as mica and his eyes are pink and no one calls that rat a half-breed!"

"Barty Angelis is the town barber and honestly, Trevor, the town barber always has a lot of sharp implements at his disposal. You ought to go finish what you were working on. The professor won't let me hear the end of it if you fail another one of his quizzes."

Trevor growled, tucked his tail, and went back to his room to attempt to study and instead fall asleep face-down in his book.