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For all of the tigress's mistakes and mishaps so far on the island, she was right about one thing: the cow did not last long. The carcass, despite having obviously weighed more than a ton (2800 lbs in fact), was eaten so swiftly that new meat was exposed to the air (and thus flies) and then eaten before the maggots could spawn. By the time that the ground bourn insects like the swarming black ants found it, the carrion was little more than a pile of red stained bones and everyone in the meadow noticed the results.

In the four days it took the 29 remaining canines and one tiger to polish off the once massive cow, all except one had put on at least 50% of their original body weight, almost half, mostly the domestic dogs, had doubled it. Despite the half hearted threats of the Beta and the sincere pleading of the Lab, no one bothered to cut out their diet of Manna every morning the first two days. Only when the gains became more prominent, more disturbing, did the fear grow strong enough to breed a show of willpower here and there. But as the tigress had found, there was still a strong attraction to the dangerous little disks despite one's personal wishes. Thus, on the fourth day, when the "real" food supply ran out, the camp was in more disarray than ever before as some struggled with the withdrawal of Manna in the morning and others simply didn't care; often they went to the point of seeking out extra disks from their hesitant partners. Needless to say, it was becoming easier and easier to pick those particular members out.

The tigress yawned herself awake easier this morning than she had yet in the time she had spent on the island. Last night's dream, so like the ones she had been having for the past five nights, had been especially pleasurable with her luscious male specter - she could no longer think of him as merely a figment of her imagination - paying his nightly visit. She couldn't help but feel at ease as the vapors of her dream-world, so real in its own way to her now, still whirled around her head.

The handsome, and generously built, white tiger had come to her again the night after the disturbing first night; luckily Coyote had not since made a return visit to her nocturnal play land. He still thought of her as his dream no matter how she tried to explain to him, but he forgave her attempts at "dissembling" as he put it. The reason why was very simple, he just could not refuse her barely mobile dream-body. That night he caught for her a tender young buck from which he took only a few measured bite and she ate nearly the entirety at his gentle prodding. The next night it was a wild pig and then the next a swollen, pregnant goat and so on every night; and every night it seemed she woke up a bit bigger, a bit heavier and he grew ever more and more affectionate. Through the nights, the tigress came to believe that he was real, a survivor of the shipwreck and that he was communicating with her somehow through her dreams. Every night, though no longer pressuring him with the reality he refused to believe, she tried to weasel clues out of him that might lead her to where he lived on the island. She sighed as she remembered the long night she had just spent with him, so exquisite, and yet utterly unproductive.

She rolled over on the dry, smooth bark under her, feeling as the fat on her back squished and bunched the excess skin. She grinned and remembered that in this life she was coming ever closer to that form that she had learned to at least appreciate for its own form of beauty over the nights even if she didn't quite feel the same way about thousands of extra pounds of flab the same way as he did... yet. Despite her reservations about extreme obesity, she had to admit that there was something to her own current level of less than subtle plumpness. She rather liked how the weight smoothed her edges, the feel of the skin rippling down her torso as she walked, the gentle waving of her growing wattle under her chin. Her belly had evolved from a quivering swell to a proud paunch that generously filled the cavity between her plumped thighs and swayed to and fro in a motion that she knew for a fact would overtake and redefine her style of walking if its growth were left unchecked. As her torso was best described as an enormous clotted barrel during the night, she was at first surprised how the bottom of her chest began to sag and sway much like her belly; together they formed a long, waving ribbon of striped flesh affixed to her undercarriage. She supposed that it had to have occurred at some point along the path whose ultimate destination she experienced every night, but by then, her chest had grown much wider as well, bumping into and knocking around below the knees on her forelegs. The formation of the thin, sagging ribbon was unexpected, but not nearly so unpleasant as she thought any movement towards that outrageously overburdened form the white tiger so adored must be.

She yawned again, wider this time and felt her chin brush up with the skin bunching and folding on her neck. She knew intellectually that she was closing in on double her recommended weight (she was a whopping 940 lbs now, but her changes didn't even seem that significant compared to what some greedy dogs were experiencing), but she just couldn't seem to muster the reserves to care in the way she might have before. She had certainly changed since coming to the island, and the disquieting part was that she still wasn't sure that it was for better or worse.

At any rate, as the great feline bored of her introspection, there was a new feast of Manna waiting all around her, still more bountiful every day, and her growing abdomen only served to amplify its noisy assertions of its desires. And the tigress obeyed, partly because she was too weak to fight the urge, a fact about herself she had now accepted - though bitterly - but mostly because she was sure, deep down in her gut, that she was coming closer to finding out where the one other tiger on this godless island might be. That fact that he might not be interested in her if she wasn't up to his "standards" filled her with dread, even more than the dread of knowing what those standards were; and so she ate and ate happily. She scoffed at the idea of making herself as large as she was at night, hardly able to walk without assistance, but that was far and away from just a big tummy and wider chest and neck... well at least that's what the tigress told herself.

With the morning faux hunger fading quickly after she had given into it and well over 140 disks nestled inside her cavernous stomach - it was hard not to notice her own growth in capacity, she had taken more than 60 lbs of rather dry red meat off the last of the nearly fully devoured remains of the cow the previous day - she headed into the meadow; she knew it was going to be a lively day, a vague but potent fear had hung over the camp for the last two days and now that was only going to be brought to a head now that the handsome, plump cow was nothing more than an ant covered pile of bones in the jungle now.

At first things seemed much as they were yesterday, tense, but under control. It was even easier to differentiate the different responses to the current crises simply by looking at the assembly. Naturally, the obvious solution presented by the scientifically minded canines of the survivors, many elected to just not eat any more of the Manna which continued to arrive nightly and in ever increasing quantities; but this was easier said than done. While virtually everyone recognized that gaining weight at this unnatural pace was almost certainly not healthy and more than a little frightening, many simply could not help themselves when the morning pangs came around. These individuals formed the fattened lumps, looking at this point like a small colony of seals washed far ashore, spread out around the meadow. To a one, these were domestic dogs, mostly retrievers like the Lab but various shepherds and a hound or two also have become like their pinniped cousins, saturated in blubber and moving rather lethargically around when they weren't lazing about in the sun. The tigress despised them. Despite having gained more actual weight in terms of real pounds than anyone else in the little conclave, the tigress recognized that she had a purpose in letting herself go; these others simply couldn't keep their paws off of the stuff. Or at least, that was her position.

The ones who were at least maintaining some sort of restraint grouped together in clusters around the clearing as they sought the support of the group to overcome temptation. They tossed looks of distain towards the fatter canines slugging their way around them as they scooped up what hadn't been eaten despite the fact that many in the group weren't all that much thinner than those with weaker wills. Of course, they were only too happy to let them remove temptation for them. There were more of them now that abstained from the Manna, mostly those who simply couldn't stand how fat they were becoming. 'Sooner or later all of them will at least try to cut back.' Thought the tigress as she analyzed the situation, 'It all just depends on the point at which they just can't stand to look at themselves anymore.' However, the idea that some of them simply couldn't stop no matter how obese they became was not something that entered into her mind.

The great feline angled, if not to hide herself today, to skim through the least dense parts of the meadow as she looked for her rotund little puppet. On the way, her eye could not resist, no matter how hard she tried, falling on the one individual who remained unchanged since arriving on the island: the crazy striped dog who had spouted nonsense at her now five days past when she was 1/3 less heavy. She remained borderline emaciated as she rocked herself in the sand, staring into space. They say she hadn't eaten a thing since landing ashore and would only take water. She freaked out when a Manna disk so much as landed near her and the most curious part of all was that they said that she alone never woke with the fattening white disks scattered around her. The moment that the tigress's eye fell on her, the tailless dog's head flipped around and flashed her a wide, empty gaze. The tigress shuddered and the fat rippled around her shoulders in response. She wished she had killed and eaten her that day even more potently.

The sagging ribbon of flesh that stretched from breast to groin slithered like a snaky remora as she strode to where the Lab still reposed with his ill-gotten bitch. While the Alpha had been true to his word to attempt to dissuade the others from indulging in the delicious white disks, it was obvious that he wasn't keeping true to the ideal himself. He belly, while sagging only little more than previously, had filled out into a massive barrel, far greater than his pregnant spouse's. The soft pink skin almost seemed to be bursting at the seems, emphasizing the tiny, undeveloped nipples before developing a shallow cleft right before entering his thighs. The soft meats almost seemed to cry out to her teeth; he wouldn't have lasted a minute if he had been left alone with her mother. And yet, his smooth talking, coupled with the threats of the other Betas had convinced the entire hunting population of the remaining wolves to stick with a pure meat diet and that was all that really counted. After the few, still unexplained gains when the cow had first been ripped open, those who had subsisted only on what could be stripped from the bones of the large bovine had not experienced any unnatural gains. They were clinging together with their betas closer to the jungle and while that fostered a dangerous gathering of strength away from the Lab, she couldn't entirely blame him for not seeking their company when his weight made him more exquisitely vulnerable than he had ever been in his life.

The Alpha female, who seemed content to simply let things run their course, looked up at the tigress before the lab. She was, under her grey coat, bulging quite a bit more than was proper for her condition, but she was no hog either. She looked at the massive tigress with only mild interest, her brown eyes held no real concern either for her or for the pretender still using her belly as a pillow. She said nothing and the tigress didn't expect her to; the tigress knew she would probably be the same way if she were expecting and felt an odd twinge in her chest at the thought.

She smirked as she walked forward and kicked the Golden Lab - softly for her - in his great soft gut. The Lab huffed the breath and curled around his bulging middle pathetically because his limbs seemed so small in comparison to the enormous round gut. His eyes flew open and he whimpered when he looked up into the tigress's large, burning eyes. The tigress thought she heard the wolf beside him snickering softly.

"What, what? What is it?" He cried trying to get laboriously to his thick haunches. She stopped him easily with just an outstretched paw.

"What are you doing here sleeping, you lump? You should be with your Betas discussing where we're going to get more food." Said the tigress as she allowed him to rise. She sat, feeling a slight thrill as her own soft paunch met the ground just before she had finished lowering her thighs.

The lab splayed out his legs to accommodate his burgeoning assets and spoke quickly, head low, "Sorry. Let's go." He knew better than to complain about her method of waking him now. He could tell that she, despite her softening appearance, was serious this morning.

She didn't waste any further words on him, though her mind was racing. Of course, the lack of food was, in fact, a real issue - and one that she could identify with readily. She had gotten used to eating until she filled her own expanding stomach every afternoon in addition to the small, but important snack of Manna every morning - but she had no doubt that it would be readily solved by another hunting party; either there would be more cows to be found to the south, or perhaps they could catch an equine unawares in the jungle. No, what occupied the tigress's thoughts were the white tiger's stunning blue eyes, the feel of his paws rubbing down her lumpy shoulders, the tender rasp of his tongue... 'He just has to be somewhere on the island.' She thought, refusing to consider that he might have landed somewhere else, or even - probably - didn't exist at all. 'The question is where and what's the best way to go looking for him?'

The tigress stalked up to the gathered wolves brooding apart from the others near the jungle. Many of the expressions were strained from resisting the tantalizing allure of the Manna for so long. Unlike with the domestic dogs, there was almost no chatter of any kind. They sat - and suffered - in silence. Looking to her fattened partner, she realized that, despite any official position he had, the Lab utterly lacked the ability to control these hungry bright-eyed wolves. She wondered if his usefulness was going to come to an end as swiftly as his waistline had.

She decided to address the pack herself, the three Betas looked at her with hard eyes from the sidelines. Two stood back from the larger one in the middle, her old hunting partner. She wondered if they had formed their own hierarchy; if they had, one or two of them might have to have an "accident" during the coming hunting trip. "I know all of you are hungry, most are scared as well." She spoke loudly, lifting her head and displaying her still lethal fangs. "This is a strange island, but we're stuck here, so you all better get used to it." She snarled and her claws extended into the turf under her; her increased size seemed more intimidating now than pacifying. "The others don't know what it means to resist, to be strong, but you, all of you are hunters. It's high time we got out there and did something!"

There weren't cheers, but many rose and all had the grim determined of those ready to hunt, track and kill. The tigress paced into the jungle towards the mountain before the Betas could react, most followed.

The lab looked on as he watched the last of the wolves jog into the leafy underbrush of the forest and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He didn't appreciate having himself planted so vulnerably before those snarling killers, especially since in the end he hadn't been asked to do anything at all. "At least I'll have a few days of peace." He thought as he struggled to his feet. His barrel-like torso was indeed becoming a significant hassle in everything from walking to just getting up. His heavy waddle caused him to huff and puff on his way back to the safety and familiarity of the camp... well at least in comparison to a pack of starving wolves.

He knew his weight was a problem, and quickly becoming a serious one at that. He also knew that, somehow, the Manna disks were related to it, but he just couldn't understand how those little disks could be the cause of all this weight; and he was just so very hungry in the morning. His massive pink stomach, cleft in two from the ligament near the bottom, waggled in the sunlight, reflecting off the hairless, dimpled pink skin. The Labrador had exceeded three times his normal body weight the previous day and was even heavier now; every pound weighed down on him as he traversed the short distance from the edge of the jungle into the meadow proper. His breath came in long, drawn out rasps and his hind legs cramped from the burden of his massive, distended belly which continually knocked around his knees. His waddle was the most exhausting, keeping his bloated torso swinging back and forth in the manner it needed to for him to move drained the last of his reserves. By the time he reached the comfortable presence of his female, he simply threw himself down on the grass and heaved the barrel of his body back and forth with the force of his pants.

The grey furred timber wolf who was Alpha female spoke finally when the Lab had calmed somewhat, "Where has the tiger gone now, dear one?"

The Lab's yellow furred torso expanded with a great breath and shuddered as he let it out; smooth all over, he resembled something like an overfilled water balloon, flattened by its own weight on the floor. "She's gone to... hunt more." His chest spasmed in a weak, single laugh, "As if anyone here needs more food."

"Indeed..." muttered the Alpha Female, but she said nothing more, letting the lab take his time to recover. It took a considerable amount of time, for his massive reserves of adipose all had to be re-oxygenated after his exertions and he still had but one set of lungs on which the weight pressed with daily increasing force. By the time the Lab's ceremonial mate spoke again, he had wriggled his plump torso deeper into the sandy soil which supported the tall saw grass which acted like a curtain between them and the rest of the camp. He rested on his broad back for the lab had found it was easier to breathe thusly, with less weight on his diaphragm. Her face appeared over his, framed prettily by her large pointed ears and tuffs of white fur on her cheeks against the background of the sky. She said, "Do you suppose that the tiger and all of the wolves will be gone for a while, Lover?"

"'Lover?' She's never called me that before." Thought the lab and a spark of excitement bloomed in his fat clogged chest... and headed speedily southward. The lab's laboured heart began to race just at the thoughts that flashed through his brain in the instants immediately following her query. Despite technically being her mate, she had never actually consummated her part of the bargain on the constant excuse of her condition; although, admittedly she had never refused him simple companionship and had a natural gift for quiet and soothing conversation. He'd do anything to even have a chance at really being Alpha, at least to her (Curiously the complications concerning his own performance at this point never even entered his mind). So he answered a bit too enthusiastically, "Oh yes, my dear! I'm sure all those beasts and bullies will be gone at least as long as they were last time, perhaps longer if we're lucky. The Jungle take them all." He cursed. The Lab rolled over heavily and his mate had the presence of mind to lend a paw to his flank when he became stuck against a small dune in the soil. When he was sitting up, his huge tank of a gut filling all the space behind his forelegs and to the ground, he continued, "We'll have a week or more of peace and quiet on the beach, just you, me and the rest of the dogs, I swear. For while the tigress claims to be out on a simple hunting trip, she doesn't know that I listen to her speak in her sleep." Now the lab chuckled in revealing his hard won secret. "The tigress imagines some lost lover is on the island. I am sure she intends to go looking for him. She might even abandon those wolves in the jungle and then who knows how long it will be before any of them return."

He sat primly before his pregnant mate, puffing out his chest even more than the heavy fat padding already did until he looked like an overfed pigeon strutting himself for a female; which, in truth wasn't far from the mark. The Alpha Female cocked her head lovingly and gently nuzzled the Lab on the side of his neck. "That's just what I wanted to hear." She looked beyond the lab and nodded swiftly to either side of him. Immediately the Lab felt the pricks of sharp teeth on both sides of his fatty shoulders and a furious, higher pitched growled erupted from behind him. A smile spread on the Alpha Female's chubby face. She spoke softly, but with an undeniable firmness that the lab had never heard from her before. "Move quietly or we will tear you apart right here on this beach."

The lab's mouth hung agape. He could not, for second upon second, even grasp what was happening. The engine of his mind seemed to have stalled, and its operator was on a lunch break. His mouth hung agape and his legs threatened to no longer support his massive weight - if he had been standing, he would have collapsed on the spot. When the threatening pins in his left shoulder turned suddenly into a painful bite that drew blood from his thick blubber, he yipped like a three-month old pup and wobbled to his feet, his joints creaking for the strain; his tail was pushed so far up under his rear he thought it might disappear.

The bite only relented when he started moving forward and in his peripheral vision, he saw his two assailants. Both of them were chubby female wolves who had remained behind with the Alpha female; as nurse maids, the Lab had assumed quite wrongly, in case of an early delivery. Despite being of the supposedly docile sex, these maids appeared ready to rip his head off at the slightest sign of hesitation on his part. Both of them showed the typical signs of residency on the island, the one guarding his right flank as they walked towards the shadows under the jungle ahead, was even rounder than the Alpha Female, but neither nearly so heavily burdened as the Lab and both had the grim expressions of killers. The Lab whined softly to himself as he was led away from any who might have noticed his distress. He felt utterly dejected at his mate's betrayal; he hadn't been aware of how he had grown to depend on her company and comfort to get through the stress of being Alpha male - and the stress of being the tigress's lackey and punching bag. He hardly even cared what she was going to do with him; why should he, when literally no one else on the island cared anyways.

His former Alpha female's bushy tail swayed back and forth before him, mocking him; he hated that even now, he found her rear attractive. "Why... Why would you-oomph!" The Lab groaned as he received a head butt to his sagging gut that almost sent him onto his side. His former mate looked back at him with her amber eyes and though he looked up at her with his own watery brown pupils, she turned away again as they entered the jungle.

They marched north-west towards the opposite side of the mountain that the hunting party had left. It wasn't long before the Lab's knees began to ache and his legs burn not with exhaustion but with cramping. However, when he began to slow, one or the other bitch on his flanks nipped at either his heels or his tender paunch and he'd have to jog forwards again; he quickly accumulated several dozen small cuts and bruises on his vast, tender body. When he was about ready to collapse regardless of how he was poked and prodded, the Alpha female barked sharply and all four of them came to a halt. The Lab sank ungracefully onto his belly, whining with the pain of traveling so far and panting. "This is far enough." She said with a note of finality that seemed to hang in the dense jungle air.

The Lab tried to take in his surroundings, but in his condition, it all just looked like one random swath of jungle. The black earth on which he lay was firm and covered with wide leafed ferns, above the canopy swayed in the breeze, all around there was the chatter of birds and the rich loamy scent of decaying plants that made up the jungle soil. Though panting, he tried to get a few words out, "Where-"

A tail slapped into his muzzle, from the left side and the slimmer, more aggressive bitch. She spoke to him for the first time and he wished she hadn't, "Silence, cretin." The blow wasn't that painful, but he kept his head down anyways. The Alpha female surprised him then, by turning around and settling on the ground before him, looking him in the eyes. Her eyes were hard, but the Lab could imagine that there was some fondness that twinkled in the edges. He hoped that she might still yet say something that would soothe him, perhaps saying that everyone had had enough of the tyrannical rule of the tiger and he had to make his own way in the jungle from now on. No such luck. "You do realize just how stupid you were to lead that tiger in amongst us don't you?"

The Lab's throat, raw from the long walk, seemed to glue shut. What else was I supposed to do? She was going to kill me! But another part of himself reminded him that the reason why he had strutted so boldly back into the camp with a tiger by his side had been because he was acting partially out of need to belong once again to the group which had ousted him and also purely out of spite. He realized as the Alpha female rose that he had been utterly foolish, probably fatally foolish.

"This is it, my would-be mate. You have been a good distraction all this time and I hope you will believe me when I say that I am truly sorry that this had to happen so soon and in this way. But the Manna has brought things to a head much faster than I had anticipated." She sighed fondly and turned her snout away. "And let's face it, you just aren't fit to lead. Look at yourself." Her eyes were filled with pity and more than a little disgust as she looked down at him for the last time and the Lab mewled softly; he felt as low as the fattened grub his body resembled.

"Let me have the honor, My Mother." Growled the lupine female standing over the left flank of the Lab.

The Alpha female turned swiftly to face the speaker, her thick neck swaying with the speed of her motion. "The honor is mine and mine alone, and you are presumptuous to ask!" she spoke sharply and the smaller female cringed as if struck. "... However," said the Alpha in a softer voice, "the season is late and I am heavy with my pups and with the burden of Manna, so you may perform the act, My Daughter."

The wolf lowered her head solemnly and no sooner had she finished than the Lab was suddenly flipped onto his wide flank by her tackle. Her teeth immediately ripped into his throat and she uttered no growl as she pulled and pulled until the Lab could feel his own flesh giving way. The Labrador's heart, which had already been racing from the unaccustomed exertion lurched in an entirely unpleasant manner that immediately made him dizzy, stopping for eight whole seconds then cramming fifty beats into five seconds.

The Lab's assassin was completely unaware of this, but she wouldn't have cared in the slightest as she worked at disposing the pretend Alpha. Her face was covered with the Lab's blood from the tip of her nose all the way down her chest by the time she was finished. Bright red blood flowed from the mangled, gaping hole in the yellow lab's throat, spreading in a metallic reeking puddle on the forest floor. The Lab's eyes rolled into the back of his head and his bloated chest finally stilled.

"Go wash yourself in a stream and meet us back at the beach, My Daughter. We have much work to do before he is missed." The Alpha commanded.

"Yes, My Mother." The Lab's murdered deferred before dashing away into forest.

The other two wolves left less than half a minute later, the Alpha female lingering ever so slightly before turning to go. The Lab lay on the forest floor with naught but the stirring leaves and the ants for company as his blood continued to spread across the jungle floor.

By the time the Lab's assailants had finished their errand and returned to the canine camp by the shore, the tigress was far to the south and west, jogging along at the head of her chubby hunting party. Just five days ago, the group had been all but running through the jungle, but now no one was capable of sustaining that pace, the tigress least of all. The striped feline, who had never even attempted to restrain her diet was, as a result, much fatter than most of the wolves in the assembly. While she jogged briskly for the first couple hours, traversing around the root of the mountain which would lead them into the southern jungle where they had found their first cow, her weight began to bear down on her and sap her energy quickly.

The fatty ribbon of flesh on her underside began to feel more like a sheet of lead and the tigress panted more wearily as her strides slowed. Her headstrong jaunt into the forest, whose body language was as loud as a trumpet to most of the canines, ended with a whimper as she was overtaken by the main body of the hunters. The tigress's hot tongue retracted sloppily into her mouth as she swallowed the spittle in her dry mouth and just as quickly it dropped back out, cooling her body in the same fashion as the smaller canines at her side; unfortunately, the hot, moist air under the soaring trees offered no comfort save the slight breeze created by moving forward. The tigress's thighs and shoulders burned from the continued exertion with the added burden of her greatly increased weight and annoying buzzing insects were attracted to the scent of her sweat. Just when she thought she would simply have to drop down in the brush and rest, a small tan dog, whom the tigress hadn't seen hide nor hair of since bringing down the cow five days ago, appeared at her side as if brought on the wind.

"How you holdin' up there, Pretty Miss." Asked Coyote with his same charming creole accent.

The tigress blustered and nearly tripped, "What? ...Where... have you been?" She slowed down and stopped because she literally couldn't talk and walk at the same time. The grey furred wolves moved past despite the largish road block her body made. J-39, the Beta wolf, nipped at a yearling wolf who had paused to watch. Soon the tigress and her much smaller companion were left alone with only the noise of her panting and the shouts of the birds overhead. It was only when she was able to stand still did the orange striped feline recognize the changes in Coyote's condition. While no more pronounced than anyone else who the tigress saw, on Coyote the added fat seemed more a subtraction from his features and it hurt her vaguely to seem him that way compared to her memory of him.

"Me?" answered Coyote with surprise as if he had been asked if he were a green grasshopper. "I can't sit still one place ver' long. You ought to know tha' much 'bout me." Despite his words, Coyote turned a bit sideways as if to hide his newfound belly from the tigress's piercing orange eyes.

"Yes, but where did you go?" Insisted the tigress, shifting her own eyes away from Coyote's plump little body, "It's not like there's anywhere to go on this godforsaken place." 'Except perhaps the strong arms of a white tiger...' thought the tigress and she quivered slightly.

"Oh, you'd be surprised." Said Coyote with a laugh. He stood, looking up at the tigress towering over him and for the moment, his newly swollen gut was forgotten, "I tell you, Pretty Miss, there are some mighty queer sights to see on this'ere island. 'Specially u'nna the leaves where most big folk don't care t'look." Coyote lifted his eyebrows and smiled up at the striped feline.

The tigress listened anxiously, even crouching down onto her expansive belly to be eye to eye with the small tan canine. "Tell me what you saw." She prompted obligingly for Coyote.

"Ah, well, I can't disappoint a lady, no sir." Said Coyote, "Ya see, was two day ago I was walking through the jungle north aways o' the camp and far inland, almost at t'base o' the mountain. The mountain was tower'n over me and I was afeared o' getting' boxed in so's I was fixin' to turn around, but ahead I hears a strange noise, almost like th'sea, so I move forward through some ferns. I don't t'ink you believe me if I say what I saw, but I knows you be seein' strange things on the island too, girl."

The tigress nodded her head slightly as an face clad in sparkling white fur framed itself in her mind. "Tell me what you saw." She said in a quiet voice.

Coyote puffed up his now quite broad and round chest and said, "It was giant... ant hills."

For a moment, the tigress could do nothing but stare down at the little canine, and then she burst into laughter. Fierce, hungry laughter that erupted from the absurdity of Coyote's concerns and from her own very sincere relief. She laughed so hard that she flopped over onto her generous flank, feet kicking in the air; it felt so good to laugh at something, anything, since being dropped onto this strange and frightening place, she didn't want to stop. Coyote sat and frowned; what else could he do?

The tigress's howling brought the wolves running back; they boiled out of the surrounding foliage as if the tiger had shouted a command at them. It was only with their stern, appraising gazes on her back did the tigress finally feel the laughter leeched out of her like being dunked in a cold stream. In a single movement, she managed to rise to her feet, though no one missed the sound of her knees creaking from the strain as she did so. The larger Beta, the one only known as Tau-64 came forward. "Is anything wrong?" He asked gruffly and the tigress knew he'd just as soon see her skinned and hung from a tree rather than follow her if he had a choice. Good thing he doesn't. she thought.

The tigress punished the Beta's impudent tone of voice with a growl as she snapped her massive fangs in front of his long snout. The pathetic canine tried to jump to the side, but his unaccustomed girth turned his graceful turn into a stumble and he fell flat on his flank, tail between his thick thighs. The tigress had a mind to press her heavy paw down on his prone body to further dominate him, but instead withheld her wrath... for now. With a resigned sigh that the tigress used to cover her laugh at the Beta's tumble, she said, "Nothing's wrong. Coyote was just entertaining me with a funny story."

The Beta got heavily to his feet with a huff. He made nothing of his fall and just said, "Well... where is he?"

That was when the tigress realized that the little wild canine had seemingly evaporated since the wolves had arrived. She thought it peculiar that Coyote would choose to leave right when the rest of the hunting party had shown up, but then she hadn't seem him with them when they left either. The large feline rubbed a paw down her snout in thought, but she wasn't going to admit her confusion in front of them; it was her responsibility to be a strong leader. So she stood up. "That doesn't matter." She strode forward, the flabby ribbon down her undercarriage rippling like an eel, "I'm finished with this little break. Let's get to the south side of the island, then we'll find a cow, horse or whatever else we can catch."

The hungry wolves let up a furious war howl as they leapt into the forest. The tigress thought as she ran through the dense green foliage that any prey animals hearing that would do well to take fear into their hearts for they were coming... she was coming.

On the eastern side of the island, within sight of the vast ocean, where the surviving canines from a sunken scientific transport vessel struggled to curtail their own addiction-fed greed, the Alpha female strode amongst the company as she never had before.

Her two Beta-females walked at her round, swaying flanks and showed their curved fangs to any that happened to step too close to their mistress. The Alpha-female, now just plain Alpha - though no one knew that quite yet - walked smugly; she had bided her time long enough. Now was the time to seize control, while the thrice-damned tiger was away. She frowned at the thought, she still couldn't believe that that stupid yellow lab had betrayed them all by bringing her to them in the first place and then even had the gall to have her fight his own battles; it was sickening. 'He deserved more than what he got.' Thought the Alpha-female.

Though now she had disposed of their puppet king, she did not stride brazenly into the camp to announce her "victory," if walking a fool dog into the jungle and murdering him could be called such. No, that was the way an Alpha-male, a real Alpha-male, would do things. The she-wolf, however, had something that a male did not have: a brain.

She looked for those who were not too fat to stand a hike in the jungle and for those without the haunted hungry looks of those hopelessly addicted to Manna. As the Alpha-Female felt her own tummy roll and bounce with each step, she strongly regretted the first day she had ever let one of those devious white crisps pass her lips. One by one, she took the desirables away from the rest and quietly explained the situation. She offered freedom from being ruled by a spoiled, overgrown house-cat and the promise that the hunting wolves would side with her when they returned. She whispered that the Manna was killing them - a truth which was plain to most non-addled dogs - and that many were already lost. She of told how she would rebuild the community with no more bickering or fighting amongst themselves. She wove fantasies of how the tigress was plotting on fattening them all up so she could eat them later when they were helpless and of how they would be no longer troubled by Manna if they simply left with her into the jungle. Fear was so rampant in the camp that the Alpha-Female had them falling over themselves ready to believe, wanting to believe. Even the more improbable notions of coming back later to help those they leave behind, and mumbles of exercise and proper nutrition to the very rotund. The last thing she spoke of in her private conversations was her new name. "A new name for a new future. I name myself Sharyenna and I will be mother to all our people lost on this forsaken island."

No one who the alpha-female chose to spoke to refused her offer... at least until she met the trio the tigress thought of as her science team. It was remarkably difficult to separate the three of them or even get them to change the subject from their science and their inane study of Manna. However, the alpha-female had to have these three for their keen intellects and scientific backgrounds in spite of their blathering and in spite of the fact that the German shepherd named "Einny" - what a ridiculous name - showed more than a few signs of addition to the thing he was studying.

"...After that, we ran a linear regression algorithm on the matrix we compiled using the coordinate data of each disk location that appeared around Bruce, Einny and myself over the last several mornings. You would not believe what we found!" exclaimed the border collie with the large black patch over one eye and ear. She too had not been able to avoid the inevitable gains involved with residing on the island, but her borderline manic personality seemed to have burned the worst of it off her figure.

Sharyenna blinked in the torrent of words which poured from a simple greeting and a few nods here and there. "I don't doubt that for a moment." She said with an exasperated expression.

The border collie continued as if the she-wolf had offered words of encouragement. "There is a pattern to the way in which Manna is placed or grown around us each morning!" She said this as if it were the discovery of a lifetime, "Here look, we drew a picture on a bit of bark over here."

"I really don't have t-" began the she-wolf before having a crude drawing carved into a sheet of bark shoved in her snout.

The collie looked up with eager blue eyes as she explained their latest scientific triumph. "Look here, what do you see?"

The Alpha sighed, and shrugged, "I don't know. Connect-the-dots?"

The collie coughed, thrown off her rhythm, but only for a moment. "Well... sort of, but it's much more complicated than that. See, this big circle in the middle is Einny." Now the rotund German shepherd coughed and looked uncomfortable, "And each of these dots is where we found a disc. We created a grid and mapped the location of each, whether it had a stalk or not and its size. Currently, the working hypothesis is that the bigger a disk gets, the older it is. Bruce has been trying to analyze the minute differences in the chemical structures of each, but the concentrations of phospholipids tends to deteriorate so rapidly for some reason that it is hard to-"

The she-wolf could not bear another tirade into organic chemistry. "So why are the dots connected in a spiral?" she interrupted quite loudly so Betsy had to cease speaking.

"Oh yes. The spiral is the pattern that is observed after we used a matrix and a few equations and Einny's knack for calculations to deduce if there were any patterns to the positions we found. It appears as if the disks are placed on a spiraling path which radiates outwards from the sleeping body. Bruce supports this hypothesis since the crisps near the body appear to be slightly older than the ones outlying the circle." The bid brown bloodhound nodded his head slowly from where he sat behind the border collie.

The she-wolf put her paw to her face. She couldn't care less about the placement of Manna disks. Her only concern was to stop people from killing themselves by gorging on the stuff. The collie was beginning to give her heartburn. "Listen. I'd really like to talk to you about something important. If you'd just come with me for a moment, I'll-"

And now the little collie, who weighed at the most 3/5 of the she-wolf's weight, puffed out her fattened chest, "This is important. We have to understand what is happening on this island in order to beat it. We're getting closer all the time, I know it..."

The Alpha frowned and looked significantly at Einstein. The shepherd was among the largest dogs in the camp. He looked like he weighed more than the round bloodhound and fat little collie rolled together. His massive, round gut was distended past his knees in a similar fashion to the lab's though not to such a great extent as the she-wolf's former mate. Covered by fluffy tan fur, it had probably been fed not only by his own daily share of Manna, but generous helpings from his neighbors as well. The shepherd's massive neck was thicker around than the collie's waist with two permanent rolls at the base forming natural collars; more rolls formed whenever he turned his head. The base of his tail was like a glacier of fat moving ever forward into space, using his tail as support; it was spreading in a thick sheet over his rump and devouring his tail, piling up as his back grew thicker and plumper. She would have a difficult time getting him through the long hike that was to come. More difficult by far, however, would be restraining him tomorrow morning when the Manna came. Though obviously gifted with a spark of great intelligence like the other two dogs, the shepherd's eyes were wide and dilated as he struggled with the hunger pangs that came in the afternoon following a meal of manna. Inside, the she-wolf felt a stir of pity. She knew that the more a dog ate of the Manna, the stronger the pangs, both in the morning and afternoon. And Einstein was eating far more than his fair share.

A thought struck her as she gazed at the German Shepherd and foresaw all the trouble she would have with him in the near future. 'Perhaps I can use him to lend their thoughts to the right direction.' The thought was action as the she-wolf opened her mouth, still staring at Einstein, "Yes, I can see how beneficial your studies have been so far."

The collie's eyes widened as if struck and Einstein turned his head away in shame, his neck rippling and bulging with rolls until they touched the side of his own face and stopped his head from moving any farther. "That... That's uncalled for!" stammered the black and white patched collie before she twisted her head around to Einstein with an affectionate, but worried expression.

The she-wolf pressed her. "I wonder... you say that you collected the positions of all the Manna disks around Einstein in the morning. I bet you had a few problems doing so, didn't you?"

"Well... we... we had to do it before Einny woke up, but-"

"No buts," interjected the Alpha, "Your friend is hopelessly addicted to Manna. Just look at him. Look what it's doing to him!" To the German Shepherd, she added, "Can you even walk anymore?"

That put the fire under the proud shepherd's paws. "I certainly can!"

The collie spoke softly, "Einny, you don't have to prove anything..."

"It's fine Betsy." Said Einstein. The large shepherd took a deep breath and then walked his upper body up with his forelegs. Great sacs of loose flesh bulged and sagged at the shoulders as he worked his limbs and his whole barrel torso shook left and right with the halting, ratcheting motion. Sitting up, he looked even fatter than lying on the grass. His belly filled all the space of his undercarriage behind his front legs and to the ground; it even bulged forward a little under his extensive pigeon chest, forming double humps of fat affixed to his front. He sat awkwardly, leaning forward much more than proper posture demanded and with his hips twisted to the side like a bitch offering her teats to young pups. He leaned forward because he could get his front paws no closer to his rump for the enormous belly jutting forward from his frame and it was for the same reason that he turned his hips, so more of his belly could flow out to the side. He sat on his left thigh, with the right turned upright on the ground. The shepherd was so vast that of the left leg, only the paw was visible from under the gut which suffocated his leg. His sex was entirely lost in that jumbled heap of lard and folds of skin and fur. He took another deep breath and braced himself for the hard part.

The shepherd's eyes squeezed shut in effort as he leaned forward, spilling yet more tawny fur covered fat from between his forelegs. He pushed up with his right leg and fur rasped against the sandy soil as he turn his belly about to bring his left leg into action. The extremely obese canine seemed to strain with all his strength as he slowly lifted his rump off the ground. For the longest time, his belly remained on the ground, fur scraping the dirt and grass. Only when he was nearly up did it finally part from the earth and to the she-wolf, it looked as if it were levitating, held up by the barest unnatural forces and sure to crash back down at a moment's notice. Standing, the shepherd was even fatter than Sharyenna had thought; he was very nearly the late-lab's equal in obesity. 'Undoubtedly he has had far more access to Manna through his research than the average canine.' And she shuddered with the knowledge that he would be even fatter tomorrow even with no further input of Manna. She needed to get him as far into the jungle as she could today before him - and his valuable mind - were all but grounded.

Einstein seemed much more comfortable once his knees locked and he waddled forward to face the she-wolf. He was breathing heavily as he spoke, "I'm... perfectly capable of... walking." From the intense look in his eyes, the she-wolf guessed that he was talking as much to himself as to her.

"And look how much trouble it was for you. You're out of breath doing something you should be able to do without thinking. You're hard-pressed to manage even the most trivial actions because of your weight." She raised a paw and gestured down to the great round gut that hovered above the ground at the shepherd's digitigrades ankles, "And that, is going to be even bigger and heavier tomorrow. Unless I'm mistaken in assuming that you scarfed down as much Manna as you could drag your massive rump to this morning."

The alpha-female stuck an extra-soft point on the shepherd's soft body and his eyes turned watery, though he held back tears for the moment. "I... I'm not myself in the morning..."

The smaller collie dashed between the two larger canines. She put a paw against Einstein's fatty chest as if to push him back a little, but his inertia was so great that he didn't budge an inch. "That's enough! I won't have you picking on Einny in front of me!"

The shepherd grimaced with embarrassment as the collie interjected for him; and rightfully so in the she-wolf's opinion. The German Shepherd was about the same height as the she-wolf while the border collie's head hardly came up to either of their shoulders. Sharyenna turned to the collie once more. "Your friend needs help. I think even he would agree with me when I say this."

"No. Einny just needs... He just..." The collie looked up at the wide, full face of her friend, but he couldn't meet her eyes. His hind legs trembled a bit holding up all that weight. "Einny?"

With a great outburst of air, the shepherd breathed out and his hindquarters slumped to the ground. His belly smacked against the earth and though the soil was too soft to produce much noise there was plenty of fat slapping against fat to produce an audible *clap*. He winced with the pain of cramping in his legs and muttered, "Standing is harder than walking. If I had just been able to stretch my legs a little..." his voice faded out of hearing and the she-wolf had no idea if his excuses continued into his thoughts.

The she-wolf talked to the lame shepherd. "I know it's difficult being so intelligent and yet not being able to control yourself." She looked into his watery brown eyes, "I know you feel ashamed but the fact is it's not going to get any easier. You're going to be even heavier tomorrow and there is nothing anyone can do to stop that." The shepherd looked down at his belly bulging between his front legs. "But you don't have to keep getting bigger. Only you can do it, but I promise I can help. The first step is admitting that you can't control yourself and that you need help."

The shepherd's lips trembled, revealing here and there, his sharp fangs. The collie put a paw against his round flank - probably because she couldn't reach his back - and rubbed up and down; she looked subdued for the first time. The tears finally came, "I... I have a problem. And I want... you to help me."

The she-wolf smiled honestly in her victory, but it was taken as a smile of compassion. She walked forward a couple paces and embraced the bloated canine with her neck and licked the side of his muzzle in a motherly way. "Everything will be fine, I promise." She said and Einstein laid back on the ground, emotionally exhausted.

The she-wolf stepped away and was immediately confronted by a very serious looking collie; her bubbly, excited aura had vanished entirely, leaving a cold, hostile core in its place. "So I remember you saying something about leaving the beach."

"Yes, we can't be here when the tigress comes back. We will hide ourselves in the jungle until I can get our hunters back. Then we'll be strong enough to defend ourselves against her."

She let out a firm sigh and glanced fondly at the beleaguered shepherd for a moment before turning back to the wolf, "He's going to have a hard time in the jungle."

The Alpha looked unflinchingly at the suddenly hard eyes of the collie. 'I better watch this one...' She thought. "I know. I'm going to do everything I can to help him through it. I'm sure that he's a lot stronger than even he himself realizes."

The collie huffed in agreement, "Then I'm going too. I'm going to make sure that you don't press him too hard or hurt him. However, the tigress was fair to us and none of your lies about her are going to convince me that she's a monster."

'...very carefully.' She added to her mental note. "Of course, but you have to understand that I am going to have to press him. He's going to be exhausted and miserable until we get settled and he's going to have the worst hunger pangs he's ever experienced."

The collie looked shocked that she would admit this.

"But it's better that he get through this because it's the only way he'll ever change. He has to want to change bad enough to go through everything that's going to hurt him on our journey." Now the she-wolf looked over her shoulder back at Einstein. She returned and leaned a little closer to the collie. "I think he's strong enough though and you know what?" The collie was putty in her paws, "I think he'll be better for it in the end and I think he'll thank you for being there for him too."

The collie looked like she would begin to weep as well, but instead she nodded sharply and went to lay beside Einstein.

There was only one loose end left. The she-wolf turned to the big bloodhound, "You've been very quiet."

He shrugged, "I didn't have anything to say. This is their business." He gestured with his nose to his two compatriots sitting like a pebble against a boulder on the stiff sea grass.

"Are you going to come along with me, then?"

The big dog blinked, though he never took her eyes off her. He said, "I go where they go."

"Very good." Said Sharyenna. She turned to go, but the deep, gruff voice spoke once more to her back, "Of course if I stayed, I'd soon have no one but Manna addicted dogs too heavy to lift themselves as companions. Strange how Einstein is the only one you've chosen to 'help' today." The hound drew a great draught of air through his powerful sniffer.

'Looks like I have two to watch.' Thought Sharyenna as she continued walking away. She began to worry that the fat shepherd might soon be the least of her worries, but her work pulling the rest of the dogs she needed from the community soon cleared her muddied thoughts. There was still so much work left to do.

The morning of the day that the tigress left the beach to search for her dream lover and the day that the she-wolf began dissembling the camp for departure, the Golden Labrador, the puppet Alpha had his throat torn out and was left for dead in the jungle. Little did the she-wolf know that scarcely half a minute after she hesitated by his body and then left, the lab's body shuddered violently as he drew not his last gasp, but the first of the rest of his life.

His limbs jerked aggressively as life giving oxygen poured back into his body. His head ached worse than the time he had gotten into his owner's hidden case of beer and his chest felt like someone was trying to squeeze his heart until it pulped, but he was alive. It was his fat that had saved him, in more ways than one. His throat was torn wide open and, in fact, began to bleed more profusely once his heart settled into a healthy rhythm, but it was only his vast quantities of neck meat which was torn; his wind pipe had only been bruised in the assault. More than that, however, his heart, overworked already by the long, forced march and his rampant fear, had been thrown over the edge by the stress of being attacked. His heart had gone into arrhythmia and would probably have resulted in cardiac arrest for the morbidly obese canine, but for one life saving event. When his neck was torn, he began to lose blood, which lowered his elevated blood pressure enough to save him. It was still a close call, he lost consciousness and even stopped breathing for almost a full minute before his heart resumed its duty.

The lab didn't know any of this, he just knew that he felt weaker and more sick that he had ever felt in his life. As he lay on his flank, he vomited up a thin stream of bile; the mound of Manna he had consumed that morning was already working its way through his hyperactive digestive system and was beyond recovery. The smell soon drove him to get drunkenly to his feet, despite being very woozy from oxygen deprivation. As he got up, however, pain seared him which was worse than either his head or his chest. His neck stung like alcohol poured over a wound, but more disconcerting was the sensation of the heavy flap of neck fat falling forward over his chest and staining his golden fur red. His neck wound was indeed terrible to look at; his throat had been torn open in a gash four inches across and fifteen long. The five pound flap of fat and skin and fur which had covered his neck before hung from the right side like a hinge and continued to leak blood slowly. To the relatively pampered pooch, it stung worse than anything else he'd ever known. He sat for a long time, unable to move away from his bile for his weight and the way his head spun and he was afraid that he was going to die. The skin on his broad back quaked, but he didn't whimper for he was also afraid of his mate coming back and finishing the job. Why did bad things always happen to him?

By the time the sun was high in the sky, the worst of the bleeding had stopped, though it continued to ooze out of him from the very large area of the wound. His head and his chest had finally stopped hurting as well. The lab realized that he was right back where he started, he was an exile once more, only this time he was more than three times as heavy as he once was and he now had a gaping neck wound as well. 'At least there's no tigers.' He thought grimly.

The more he thought about it, however, the happier he was that he was free of the tigress. That small happiness, however, was filled with the dread that she might return at any moment on one of her capricious whims. That the tigress would return, subdue the Alpha-female and demand that he take over his duties as Alpha-male somehow brought out more terror than the thought of the she-wolf simply returning and finishing what she started.

...Either way, he needed to get far away and fast. The Lab looked down at his massive torso and how thin and pathetic his legs were in comparison and felt like he should just lie down and die. From somewhere within his clotted chest, however, came a flush of strength, the desire to live. The lab had never been appreciated once in his life and he didn't want to die this way, thrown out in the jungle like so much litter. He resolved himself to get at least as far away as he could; if he still was hunted down and killed in the process then at least he tried. He would not lie down in the dirt and die like the loser everyone thought he was. But which way would he flee?

The tigress had gone south, around the mountain. He assumed that the she-wolf had gone back to the camp to rule the rest of the dogs to the east. The mountain blocked the way west. Therefore, he had only one direction left: North.

Knowing his propensity for cramps, the lab spent some time walking his upper body up with his forelegs and then back down until they felt warm and ready to go. He lifted his big belly and massive rear with his hind legs a little bit then eased back down slowly, never once parting the skin of his belly from the turf. He was panting at the end of it all, and while his legs burned, they didn't hurt with cramps. Hopefully, they would carry him at least couple miles before he had to rest. He heaved himself up one last time, his back creaking for the exercise. When he stood, it was bowed to the ground in a stretched "U" shape as the weight of the lab's middle pulled it earthward. No matter. The lab rocked his middle to the right and began waddling northward at a steady rate as fast as his paws could carry his massive frame.

It was late in the afternoon when they found it. The keen noses of the wolves led the party to the sickly sweet smell of early decay. By the time that all of the canines had caught the scent, the tigress was in no shape to steer their course, the long trek had caused her to run entirely out of steam. Besides, the pangs were gnawing at her insides demanding that she satisfy fulfill her gluttonous appetite as she had for the last week. The possibility that meat lay nearby, even from a carcass almost turned her paws for her. And what a carcass it was.

Turning the party around and heading south-east to follow the scent through the jungle, the tigress thought that she was going to run right through the soles of her pads and she was sure there would be nothing left of her thighs, but jelly. At almost 1000 lbs, not even the will to show leadership was enough to keep the tigress at the head of the pack. As the most obese member of the group, she fell steadily back and back, until she was the very last. She followed the pack by the sounds of their barking ahead, unable to match their pace or their stamina any longer. She still hadn't seen Coyote since he vanished that morning. Despite feeling at the edge of her limits, the moment she laid her eyes on the carcass, new strength flooded her limbs as saliva poured from her lips. She pushed her way forward through the excited mob without care, she was dominated by her senses as she took in the sight of it and its pungent odor.

It lay under the brilliant red flowers of a cockspur coral tree whose delicate odor mixed with that of the massive body under it. It was another cow and from the smell of it, it had been dead for about a day. This cow, however was as different from the one they had all feasted upon for the last week as the Golden Lab was from the timber wolf, Tau-64, she stood next to now. It had somehow managed to grow out of all reasonable proportion. The tigress was astounded at what was possible on this island, even in her wildest dreams, she had never seen a creature so obese.

The cow lay on its side, but its swollen flanks towered above even the tigress's head. She would have had to stand on her hind legs to get her forepaws on the highest slope of the massive dome of flesh that sat over the animal's abdomen. However, even that would have been impossible for the cow spread out in every direction farther than she could have reached. Its hide was a genetically recessive white with specks of brown or black here and there. The body, however, resembled nothing so much as a puddle of half-melted vanilla ice cream. The belly, a solid slab of fat that was higher than the chest on most of the wolves, stretched out unbelievably far, past the hooves despite the fact that it wasn't even standing. It was difficult to believe that this was one single creature, it was more like this cow had swallowed three or four of its fellows, but the evidence was right there before them. It was impossible to know if this cow was also double muscled, the fat was feet deep everywhere on its body. The limbs were almost obscured by fat coming down from the shoulders, chest, upper legs, thighs, brisket, hips and rump. Of the cow's head, only the snout was visible, even the eyes had rolls of fat covering them. Rolls and folds bulged tightly against the strained hide everywhere on its upper body. Past the shoulders, the animal was smooth and round, the hide was hard pressed to grow fast enough to cover her unnatural, Manna-fed growth. And under the acres of visible hide, heaps and heaps of delicious fat awaited. Enough for the tigress to literally swim in.

Her paws flew to her middle as her stomach erupted in a painful growl that rattled her rips; she had to squeeze her eyes shut against the pain, pain she knew of only one way to cure. Wolves were already worrying at the outlying fat below the barely visible hooves of the immobile creature. The tigress pushed her way in, knocking one wolf who wasn't quick enough to the ground. Her long canines cut long gashes through the meat and she pulled away an eight-pound prize. She gnawed the cool gristle for a long time, savoring it as it squished between her teeth. It was firmer than the previous cow's, more dense and something about the flavor called to her like no other food did; no other food except Manna.

As the tigress swallowed and began to rip another chunk away from the carcass, other hungry wolves pressed in around the wound she had made, pulling the edges, making it bigger, heedless of propriety. She let them be for now. She knew that they had all had enough of holding back the hunger... well the wolves did at any rate.

From the front end of the cow, a junior wolf who had spent the time sniffing and licking at the foam encrusted snout of the dead beast perked his ears and went directly to his Beta, the medium sized white wolf whose number was Rho-15, and spoke urgently into his ear. The white wolf then came up to the tigress whose only concern at the moment was filled her belly with as much cow as she could possibly fit down her gullet. It took several long minutes of coughing and finally less than subtle prodding to get the feline's attention. When he did, the tigress almost swiped his head clean off his shoulders for being distracted from the orgy of her glut. Red ran all down her throat and plump chest, the smell of spilled blood, having driven away the song-birds, made the jungle eerily quiet. But the Beta wolf spoke up anyways, "One of my wolves, a bright one, he says that the cow died of thirst."

The tigress snarled, she couldn't care less how the cow died. If she hadn't already consumed two dozen pounds of fatty cow, she probably would have let the Beta fill the remainder of her appetite; she was still sure that not every Beta was going to make it back to the camp. However, she sighed as she acknowledged to herself that the cause of death was at least a little important to know before scarfing down the cow's rich bounty.

The white furred Beta backed away warily at her initial rage, but the tigress softened at least a little and she said, "And why does it matter if the cow died of thirst?" She stole a glance over the body once more. It was difficult imagining the cow as a live creature rather than an edifice that happened to be made of meat. But she could readily see it laying here, unable to budge an inch to get to water, all the while being fed more and more Manna which only enhanced its thirst. The cow must have died a gruesome death indeed. The tigress put the thought out of her mind.

The white wolf shook his furry head, "I don't know. I just thought you should know. You've spoken with some of the smarter dogs on the island. Would it matter at all?" He asked the question earnestly and the tigress now noticed that he had no red staining his chest. The tigress frowned. The Beta had obviously been waiting to see the results of the feast before partaking himself. A thought tugged the corner of her mind at the wolf's words. However, she didn't let it take root. "Of course not. It's not like she was poisoned. It's perfectly safe to eat."

The Beta nodded submissively, he looked like he longed to go, but he asked one more question. "What are we going to do with this cow? How can we possibly get it to the others?"

The tigress released a hearty laugh, "If they want some, they can very well walk down here and get it." This elicited a rowdy bark of agreement from the other male wolves present. The Beta still looked unsure so she added, "And if they're too fat to make the hike, well, then they don't need any of this fine beef anyways." More barking, more cheers and the wolves flowed past the tigress and began tearing at the cow with renewed energy. Their teeth clacked as they rent and tore, snapping up chunks of fat from the carcass as if the meat were inexhaustible. They really did eat like their namesake and the tigress could only watch for a moment before she dove in among them like a shark among a school of piranha.

Hours later, the tigress crawled away, her belly straining within her and making it difficult to draw deep breaths. She was filled with meat in a way that would have been impossible for her when she landed on the island. Somehow she tucked away over 75 lbs of flesh, almost a week's worth of food previously. She settled on the rock littered ledge of a small stream for though her belly was filled so thoroughly that it hurt constantly, she was in desperate need of water for she had had little chance to stop and drink the gallons that the Manna demanded from her. She was forced to sip little by little, with her head over the ledge, taking breaths intermittently and trying to decide when she could fit just a little more inside of her.

By the end of it, she wouldn't have been fit for standing, let along walking. By unspoken agreement, the pack had decided to stay here for the night. She rolled on her broadened back so she could breathe easier and rubbed her belly. She could feel the massive round mass under her ribs through the heavy padding of fat that layered her abdomen. A tiger in the wild, she knew - at least theoretically - could eat a hundred pounds of meat in one sitting from her prey, after which she would fast for several days - or weeks - before, hopefully, making another kill. The tigress had been eating similarly from the old cow, but she certainly hadn't fasted a single day. So she knew, as she kneaded her own fat belly, that inside roiled and churned meat from yesterday and the day before, perhaps even the day before that as well. She tried thinking of the numbers and guessed that she had over 150 lbs of meat stored inside her prodigious stomach, waiting to be fed into the fires of her metabolism, waiting to be turned into more tigress. She rubbed and massaged her painfully swollen gut and as she did, she felt something new. It wasn't painful, far from it, it felt good in a strange new way. The feeling swelled up like a heat from below her belly button and caused her skin to tingle. She closed her eyes and relished in it. The more she thought about how much meat she contained within her overinflated stomach and how it was going to make her even bigger and flabbier, the more intense the feeling. She had never experienced anything like it.

The tigress, though she knew the basic mechanics, had never actually been exposed to a male tiger before - outside of her dreams that is - so she was startled when her nether regions became wet and moist and sticky. Her head spun, she wasn't sure what was happening to her. She would have bolted up right, but her recent meal weighed too heavily on her. She decided not to linger on the strangeness of the sensations which had flooded out of her, leaving her feeling like she had been dunked in cool water. When she rolled over to sleep, however, a small face met her eyes as it peered out of the shadows of the surrounding jungle.

"Coyote?" said the tigress to the glowing pair of eyes and she managed to heave her upper body upright, leaving her belly and hind legs sprawling across the ground.

"Aye, It's me, Girl." Said the eyes as they stepped closer. Coyote didn't sound quite himself. It was almost as if he were unwilling to simply step up to the tigress and greet her.

The tigress shifted a little bit more upright despite the discomfort to her belly. "Well come on out of the shadows then. I haven't seen you since you ran away this morning!"

He didn't step any closer, in fact the tigress thought she caught a glint of teeth through the gloom, "When you laughed at news I almost died t'get!"

"Died?! What are you-" she tried to ask, but Coyote threw the words at her first.

"The ants! They have big ol' towers built inna side o' t'mountain. Taller than trees. They keep pouring outta th'sides of it. More and more, millions and millions. I dunno how deep underground it goes."

"Ants..." she said, pleading with Coyote, "They're just ants."

Coyote almost seemed to shake in the shadows, "Don't you tell me they just ants! Before I knew it, the ground was covered with them. Big'uns, biting in'ta my paws, my legs. I barely got away."

The tigress struggled heavily to her feet, her belly seeming to weigh even more than usual on her. "Coyote, I'm so sorry. I didn't understand."

She tried going to him, but his shadow melded into the gloom and when his voice came again, it was from a different direction. "No." he said flatly, "I already be forgivin' you for that. What I can't forgive is what you been doing all these days I been gone."

"What?" cried the tigress to the night, "What have I done?"

"Don't think I don't know, Girl." How the tigress longed for him to call her "Pretty Miss" again. "I have ways of knowin'. I seen you stuffing yourself with everythin' you can get your paws on. Eatin' three times more than anyone else. Suckin' down Manna like they was saltines. Look at yourself! It's like you're tryin' to make yourself a thanksgivin' turkey!"

"That's not true!" the tigress shouted, but she had trouble keeping a straight face.

"Don't you lie to me, Girl! When I saw you last day, I couldn't believe how fat you got; no better than the seal-dogs on th'beach. And now I catch you fishin' with dynamite, rubbing your gut all the while!"

The tigress had no idea what he meant by fishing, but she said, "No, Coyote, No. It's not what you think. My stomach was just hurting, that's all."

The voice seemed to come from farther away now, but the tigress was in no shape to follow it. "I have a nose, you know. You can't hide da truth. I can smell the smut all over ya. Girl, you dun lost yourself in a new kina forest and there ain't no way for me to lead you back."

"Please Coyote, come back. I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was doing, I'm sorry, just come back."

It was so long before Coyote answered, that the tigress thought that he had left. She was walking heavily back to the stream when his last words came to her, "You gonna find yourself inna new world o' hurt if you dun stop this nonsense. She tol' me it comin'. It's comin' and when you too fat to help yourself, that'll be when it'll get you too. Best of luck, Pretty Miss. You gonna need it."

The tigress whirled around to his voice, but she saw nothing, not even with her night eyes. She tried desperately for almost an hour, following his cleverly crisscrossing scent trail, listening for the tiniest sounds, but her legs collapsed under her before she so much as found even a hint of him. The impact hurt her belly so she rolled on her side and laid as is. She shed tears for the second time on the island. The only friend she had managed to make on the island was disgusted with her weight. 'No he was disgusted by the way you enjoy it.' A mocking voice taunted in her head. She shook her head and held it between her paws. As if to match her mood, thunder blasted through the heavens above in ear splitting crashes like a titanic battle between immortals. Less than a minute later, it was as if the island had turned sideways and the sea was crashing down around her so dense and heavy was the rain. The tigress wallowed in it.

Before she knew it, she felt a surge of anger rising in her, but not at the rain. 'Who the hell is he to judge?! He's gotten fat too! He has no ground to judge me; me, the tiger. He's just a little mutt who doesn't know his place! He'll see, next time I see him, I'll teach him what the pecking order is!' she thought furiously to herself. It was better to feel the anger than it was the grief and she fed her sadness into it, her loneliness. Better by far that Coyote was a self-righteous prick on his high horse than a friend who could no longer bear to see what his friend was doing to herself... Better by far.

The night was long for others besides the tigress. However, while she dealt with - in her own way - her emotional baggage, two others had to deal with baggage of a much more physical sort.

The German Shepherd with a magnificent mind had spent most of his life from the time his eyes opened for the first time under the tutelage of the lab faculty's brightest minds. He was special in a community of special animals, he had been chosen to receive extensive education and training that would have matched any Ivy League university. It was an honor and a privilege to work along with humans rather than just be studied by them; he felt, in the lab, almost as if he were an equal among those who were responsible for his creation. As they shared the secrets of their god-like works, so too had one German Shepherd felt almost god-like in their presence.

Einstein collapsed face first in the mud. He was so exhausted, he could not even put his paws forward to spare his face from the impact. All of his more than considerable weight behind him served only to drive his entire snout into the wet goop like a nail. His tears of agony were lost in the rain streaming down from above. All four of his legs hurt so much from the demanding - for him anyways - pace the alpha-female set that he didn't even care about the muck and filth coating every inch of him, though he was normally a very fastidious canine. He felt like he had forty or so pounds of mud stuck to him, but in his head it knew it was an illusion; it was his own fat that was stuck to him, his own fat that had dragged him down into the mud countless times so far on this trice-cursed "hike," his own fat which had brought him and his friends here in the first place.

'Still, even if it is my own fault that I'm here, that she-wolf is a banshee.' He thought miserably to himself. Bubbles arose from the mud in front of his eyes where his snout was buried and the muck invaded his nostrils. All the while torrential rain fell from the canopy everywhere like vertical streams, washing away ferns, bushes, even saplings and turned the ground into a pig's wallow for as far as the eye could see in the gloom. Thunder boomed overhead constantly and deafened him to the words and shouts of his compatriots around him... all except one however.

As the Shepherd dog worked his front paws against a root under the surface of the clinging slush to lift his nose clear so he could breathe, a harsh voice shouted in his left ear. "Get your fat ass out of your sty right now, we're not stopping until dawn! Move it!" The alpha-female punctuated the last with a head butt to his engorged flank; he hardly felt it, but knew it for a warning of teeth to come if he didn't move, and quickly. Einstein gasped as he brought his snout free, clumps of mud and goodness-knew what else dripped from his chin and over-stuffed jowls. He tried weakly to get to his feet, his belly and chest were so low, they couldn't even clear the water even while standing. He didn't know how he would be able to do it once again.

Teeth pinched a spot on his round flank which was already bruised from an earlier assault and Einstein cried out even as his legs somehow managed to jerk himself upright; it hurt three times as much as the first time she had bit him there an hour ago and there were now plenty of sore spots to choose from all over the vast area of his hide.

The voice of the alpha female mellowed until it was almost kind, "Good, now keep moving, we need to get as far as we can tonight. Remember, you can rest as much as you need to tomorrow."

Einstein moved his stiff, hurting legs once more as he waddled through the muck. The forest was out of focus, his friends beside him were out of focus, after a time, even the alpha-female and her motivational techniques were out of focus. It was as if his ears were stuffed with cotton and thick, plastic goggles were over his eyes, but he kept his feet moving. The she-wolf drove him hard, he wasn't at the very tail end of the procession as he had expected. No, she kept him near the front, kept him at his labor and allowed no leniency due to his weight. It seemed like she was at his side even more than his friend Betsy who he frequently lost track of in the rain and the gloom.

He continued to stumble frequently, his gut often making an enormous splash in the water or mud they were traveling through and spreading out like a pontoon to his left and right. It was humiliating, no one else, as far as he knew, was having nearly as hard a time as he was. And yet... and yet every time the Alpha shouted at him to get his gut off the ground or to move his ass, he did. Every time he felt sure he wouldn't be able to get up again, sooner or later, he'd find himself rising. Walking, while still painful, became automatic, it felt like he couldn't stop even if he wanted to. He rocked his flanks side to side drunkenly, making room for his hind legs to move forward against the squishy wall of his belly. His thighs were spread out awkwardly for his belly's girth as well as the thickness of the thighs themselves and the right side of his hip began to flare and burn after a while. His heart was racing in his chest almost as much for the pain as for the actual exertion. At the very least, he was free of the hunger... for now.

Einstein honestly didn't know what kept him going. Later that night would be a scarcely remembered nightmare for him. The only thing he knew for sure was that he didn't want to bed in two feet of filthy water. But there was also something else, he really didn't want to be a mindless dog in a seal-like body, thinking only of sating his hunger, a slave to the food source he had initially thought would save them all. His weight had finally started coming between him and his friends; the way they looked at him when he ate all of the disks they threw away even after consuming all of their own... he couldn't bear the looks. He hated what he had become, how he felt hindered by all his bulk and the way his fur brushed up against things that should have been far from his body. He was simply too large. He felt like he was stuck in a massive suit he couldn't take off; he no longer saw himself in his reflection and that scared him even more than the way his heart raced when he walked and sometimes lurched strangely even while resting. A hike in the jungle could only do him good. Sitting on the beach and thinking constantly of Manna certainly had done him nothing but harm so far. He had to believe that the she-wolf could help him. He had to believe in her, because he had nothing else to believe in.

Less than a mile south and east from where the German Shepherd labored at the unforgiving claws and teeth of the alpha-female, the Labrador wandered through the rain and the dark. He was struggling too, but, unlike the shepherd, he had no one to push him up when he fell. No one but himself. Sight and scent of him hidden by the rain, the Lab made his slow, laborious progress in the muck ridiculously close to those who might kill him on sight. He moved, slowly, methodically, each step was a careful calculation to avoid slipping and a heavy fall which was painful at his size to say the least. His breath came in great raspy draught and sometimes the fattened canine felt like he was breathing as much water as air. He was tired, but at least he went at his own pace and stopped to pant furiously here and there as he made his escape at a snail's pace through the unfamiliar and often frightening jungle night. Despite his apparent slowness and frequent breaks, he made decent progress for though he was a good deal heavier even that the shepherd and did not share his keen intellect, he didn't dwell overmuch on his situation nor did he have the burden of broken pride.

There was one other thing that helped the Lab forget the pain in his four legs: the pain in his neck. The flesh flap still dangled heavily from his neck and as the water poured down from above and ran down his neck, it turned pink as it left his throat. The rain was actually a relief for the struggling dog and he went out of his way to waterfall openings in the canopy to let the cold water drench him for it eased the stinging of the wound at least momentarily. He knew vaguely about infection and that leaving his throat open like that was a bad idea, but his thoughts were centered simply on getting as far away as he could, far away from anyone who wanted to hurt him; Besides, he hadn't the slightest idea how to treat such an extensive flesh wound.

He made a drunken path through the jungle vaguely north and wound up wandering east towards the shore. The Lab didn't know that, however, it was just enough trouble picking up his feet. His expansive yellow hide was black with mud up past the widest point on his round, low-slung flanks. So far, the rain constantly sheeting down kept his fat back clear as it rippled and shook with his movements; it jostled left and right above his hips and shoulders with its own inertia as he plodded along and swung his belly counter to his steps. He could feel the mud grinding in between his thick thighs where they rubbed as he walked, and it congested his altered sex. His weight wore on his muscles and joints like a concrete sweater. More than two out of every three pounds he contained within himself was fat and fat did no work in helping him on his way. Eyes bloodshot with the stress of the day he slumped bottom-first to the mud.

His soft pink, mud-covered gut hit the ground long before his knees finished folding and welled up against it in a massive roll until his could feel the pressure of it pushing not gently against the backs of his front legs. He rotated his hips as far as they would go to help alleviate the press of his gut. From above, the rain poured down and each drop sticking his wide back made a little crater in the soft skin before splashing away in a fine mist; the Lab could feel the rain on every inch of his back and it was impossible not to realize how he had tripled his girth since landing on the island. The fact that he was fat didn't weigh on the Lab's mind, however; he's always been "fat" it was just a part of who he was. Only the fact that he was so drastically hampered in his escape was a concern. The Golden Lab would have liked nothing better than to have been alone on the otherside of the island, far from anyone else... and free to gorge on Manna as he pleased. 'Sweet, delicate crisps. Beef kibble, the meaty kind that makes its own gravy...' His mouth watered at the thought.

But instead, he was nearly rooted to the spot. Better almost to have been left with broken legs. He might as well have been crawling away. His chest burned as he fought to catch his breath and his ribs ached with pulling in such big breaths. Oh, how his legs pained him! They hurt worse just after stopping than how they felt on while he was walking. Water dripped from the Lab's forehead into one of his eyes and he shook himself by instinct. He immediately forgot about the pain in his legs.

The hanging fold of fat and skin on his neck pulled and jerked on the wound, nearly paralyzing him with pain. He yelped, but immediately cut off the sound in fear even as fresh tears leaked from his eyes. More red leaked down the mound of his chest as fresh scabs broke with the movement. All the Lab could think of, though was if anyone had heard him, or if there was even anyone around to hear him. The jungle seemed suddenly darker and closer about him, as if eager to swallow up a plump little morsel like himself. The wind kicked up and he heard something fall in the forest near to his left. The Lab was instantly on his paws and moving away as fast as he could; which amounted to an odd lolloping jog like a cross between power walking and skating.

He moved for another hour in the darkness before the sensation of exhaustion once more overcame the cloud of fear that hung about him like a vile miasma seeping from his fat brimmed body. He slid down forward, letting his well padded chest break the fall after which the entirety of his wide undercarriage struck the mud a moment later; the next morning, the trees all around where the Lab had landed would have a coating of up five feet up their trunks from the ground. He barely had the strength left to lift his head and his thick, heavy necklace of rolls. He'd been running purely on adrenaline for the last quarter hour and he was at his limit.

He struggled for several seconds with both his left legs and managed to roll the doughy mass of his body onto its side. Shining circles appeared on his exposed flank where the rain drops cleared away the mud. His neck flap lay carefully onto of the soil, fur-and-skin-side down, but while the rain fell upon it as well, there was nothing he could do to keep fleck of mud from landing on the exposed meat of his neck. The Lab, however was beyond caring, he could do nothing else but sleep. That night, though drenched and lying in a pit of mud, the Lab felt as though he were sleeping on the softest of pillows.

That night he dreamed long and deep. He dreamed hands were holding him, real human hands. They were gentle, they didn't pinch or prod, but lovingly supported him and his great bulk. They set him in a soft, comfortable place where he could be safe at last.

Darkness.

The Lab twitched and jerked trying to get them off of him. His paws extended and folded against his fat deepened chest and his sagging, pink belly cleft like a female's between the nipples. He could feel them all over him, their little feet, but a force held him down, he wasn't even able to roll over, he was helpless as they crawled all over him. 'Am I finally too fat to move?' he thought in a delirious panic. It was the ants, he could feel them, could feel them biting at the wound on his neck. They were biting the edges of his exposed meat, they wanted to open him up to get the rest of his meat! He wouldn't let them get his meat, it was HIS meat! But he couldn't move, he couldn't move...

Darkness...

The tigress was alone in the jungle and it was not raining. A leaf drifted down from the canopy above and landed with uncanny accuracy on the tip of her black leather nose. She shook her head and immediately felt the luxurious heaviness of the folds of fat and fur which draped from her neck all the way down to her plump, round brisket. A smile spread on her face when she realized where she was.

The forest of her dreams seemed less a dream now as a second island on which she lived during the night. An island which had only two occupants perhaps, but - aside from herself - she couldn't have imagined a better partner to be stranded with. The smell of the jungle around her was rich and loamy, ripe with distant flowers which bloomed year round. The area in which she found herself was fairly open, the ground lined with ankle high sprouting ferns. It seemed like an isolated cloister in a vast, green-roofed cathedral, the trees rising high out of sight like fluted columns all around her. The air was still, cool and very quiet. She sucked in a draught of the mildly perfumed air, the forest and its sights and smells were as vivid as waking life, yet its calm and stillness imparted a surreal quality that was hard to describe.

The sensation of weight came upon her only slowly as she laid there in the bed of greenery, breathing deeply of her calm, special place, waiting for the person who mattered most to her now. With each heavy draught of air, her sides expanded and she could feel the blubber at her extreme left and right shift minutely against the ground, the fur brushing against the thin mat of new leaves; the area on the ground occupied by her tummy was formidable to say the least. Collosal quantities of adipose stretched her flanks, more than one and a half times the weight of an adult tiger to both the left and right of her rib cage. The striped markings of her hide were distorted on her heavy "expansion" regions. All along her torso, her stripes, black and golden and white, were more than double their original width as the skin was forced to stretch over her expansive frame. Against the virtually unchanged stripes of her arms and legs, the tigress thought the ones on her back almost comical, like someone had done a photo-edit of an old picture of her.

From the base of her flanks, a dome of lard rose to cover her back. It was a smooth, shallow curve, and it was so thick, it was round even over her shoulders where there should have been a dip between her shoulder blades. In fact, her fatty back rose like a hump all the way to the base of her neck where the three or four rolls straddled it like inner tubes. The two fat fronts collided ungracefully and without coordination so when the tigress moved her head, rolls would often be obliterated and replaced by uneven folds, valleys and hills in the rich fat behind her head.

The more times she came to this place and the more she lived as a royally obese feline, the more she felt disjointed from regions of her own body. The inability to see more than her front paws, chest and some of her belly had left her feeling like her body had become so massive that parts of it might as well be in another world of their own. She could fee that her belly pushed her frame up such that her hind legs more or less dangled from her hips rather than supported her. Lying on her stomach, she could feel her paunch like a balloon between her thighs, though she could touch the ground with her knees - but only one at a time by leaning her hips left or right. When she scratched at an itch with the limited range of motion of her hind legs, the sensation came to her as if from a distance. What was one tiny part of her hide compared to acres of skin elsewhere on her body? The vast regions she had no way of reaching seemed especially distant so that when something touched her somewhere on the high mound of her back, she was momentarily confused as to the exact location, and sometimes she even doubted if she had felt anything at all; her extensive hide had a way of sometimes twitching by itself in odd places especially where she was the biggest. The tigress who occupied this expanding body every night simply had trouble keeping a coherent image of just how big she was.

But more than just her volume and the expanse of her body, the tigress was aware that that volume was filled with dense, heavy flesh. Her weight was like a presence of its own, an inescapable sensation that never faded and was beginning to define her full body image more than her own limited capacity to even see herself. She could make herself tired just by lifting her head up and down. So much loose blubber dangled from her neck that it could hardly be called a neck. Pounds and pounds hung in lumps and folds like a necklace for feet from her chin and down her throat. The only support came from the shelf of her brisket where the biggest clumps of fat at the base of her neck found a perch. Her weight pressed down on her chest and sapped what stamina she had left. In a rapidly escalating process, her weight made more and more demands of her body in the effort it took to move while at the same time hindering her ability to get air and thus sustain the strength she needed to shift her bulk - last night, the tigress had felt like she was at the tipping point; she had walked just for the amusement of the white tiger, not for herself and it had exhausted her to her core.

More than the extra effort to breathe, however, her weight made her feel sluggish in ways that had nothing to do with the effort it took to move her limbs. Her heart always beat over-fast for the activity she was doing, sometimes speeding up for no reason as she simply rested. Sometimes she just felt off, slightly ill in an indefinable way; she would imagine her fat seeping into all of the mechanisms of her body, clogging the gears and making everything work a little more slowly, a little less efficiently. Even her thoughts seemed sluggish and dull when she was not aroused by something engaging (usually the white tiger or food).

Only her digestion seemed to be working at above average capacity. Sometimes her stomach felt like it would expand to fit an entire cow in one sitting and she never experienced heart burn or any kind of indigestion. Also, no matter how full she felt after gorging, she would feel the stirrings of hunger again within only hours. Sometimes her hunger felt like a dark abyss over which she hung by a thread. When food was put in front of her, she plunged into the blackness, losing all sense of herself, leaving only the desire to stuff her gullet behind. Eating wasn't even a particularly pleasurable act, it felt more like a compulsion and sometimes the tigress worried that she carried at least some of that single-minded mentality even into the waking world.

All of these thoughts passed through her mind before she even bothered to twitch a muscle. She found that as her weight increased, she had to become more cerebral if only out of necessity. Still, everything was still and quiet, and by the angle of the shafts of moonbeams streaking here and there through the canopy, the moon hadn't even budged from its corner of the sky in this timeless place. She sighed as she knew that the dream was waiting for her to make the first move.

As she set her paws to the turf, she knew that it was the way things were so idealized and scripted here that defined it from the waking world. Sometimes it was annoying to be powerless in the face of a greater, invisible force - like now - but that force also seemed to hold her in its favor for some of those scripted moments had been oh so pleasing thus far. 'I might as well get it over with.' Thought the tigress, but she still hesitated, remembering how hard it was to just get up last time and knowing without a doubt that she was even bigger now. She used to try sitting up and then lifting her hindquarters, but she had long since grown too heavy to utilize that approach. Her hindlegs along weren't enough to lift the massive weight of her belly and bulky hindquarters. Instead, she had to struggle with all four paws at once. It was more work and often required more than one attempt before she could lock her knees into a standing position, but it was the only way she knew how to do it anymore.

All four paws set firmly against the soil, the tigress strained with her thighs and shoulders. She rose quickly at first, but as more flesh drew up from the ground, the harder it became to keep moving. Under her blanket of fat, her muscles bulged and tightened to straighten out her limbs and her back bent down, creaking as it supported the weight of her middle. More flesh was parted from the ground with the gentleness of a lover's kiss and the apex of the slopes of her flanks shifted and dropped lower as the curvature of her sides changed. Oh, but she was a heavy girl now! A two foot wide strip of flesh remained on the ground from chest to crotch and her legs were still just over half bent, when all of her strength seemed evenly matched by the sheer quantity of her mass pulling her down. She stopped moving. A moment passed, and then another as she hovered, about ¾ of her bulk being supported by her legs. She let out the monumentous breath she had been holding and slumped back onto her gut, causing her frame to slosh back and forth, liberally moving her body against her control. It was five minutes before she felt able to try again.

This time she set her stance wider, determined to walk her legs closer together to get her past her stopping point. She strained and pushed against the irresistible force of gravity, feeling ridiculous that she could possibly be this big that getting up would be this much trouble. Her paws sank into the firm turf from the sheer force she was exerting against her own mass. When the moment came, she lurched to the side a little to try and bring one of her hind legs up. It worked the first time, but on the second step she lost her balance on her microscopic center of gravity. Like a falling redwood, the ground seemed to approach in slow motion and then she hit the ground with so much force that if something sturdy like a leg -or a neck - had been in the way it would have broken. As it was, the pliable fat of her left flank absorbed the worst of it, but she still hit it hard enough to bruise. She landed halfway on her flank and halfway on her belly and she was so fat that she remained in the position, her fat sculpting itself into a stable platform under her. Ten more minutes passed before she righted herself with much flailing and jerking of her right legs. She tried again and again. She tried first getting her front legs locked and then the rear; her hind legs gave out and she wound up sitting instead of standing. She tried getting up while rolling, hoping that the momentum would help her onto her feet, but she couldn't get her torso rolling fast enough by herself; she was like a cylinder made of putty, the bottom always flattens itself out against the ground. Then she tried rocking side to side, much to the same result. Her legs seemed so thin and weak compared to the forces her bulk demanded of her. She knew that she at least wasn't so fat that her belly would touch the ground with her legs fully extended, but her legs felt as weak as a kitten's compared to the huge mass of her body. The more she failed, however, the more determined she was to finally succeed. To prove that she could beat her own weight, that she was master of it and not the other way around.

Trying to use momentum, she learned was useless, her balance was so small, it was like trying to hit a mark the size of a postage stamp. She went back to just forcing herself up. She closed her eyes and drew upon the fiery desire within her, drew upon the anger that she had gone to sleep with. She saw Coyote's face, his once charming smile was now a smirk. He laughed at her predicament and alternately looked at her with pity and disgust. The desire to get to him, to tear that self-righteous look off his face with her claws was insuppressible. She slipped her right hind leg forward against the dirt without lifting it and her great cleft belly finally parted from the black soil. Soon she felt the knee slid into its locked position, followed a moment later by her left hind knee. Pushing with all her might against the ground with her forelegs, she straightened them out as well. She was standing! SHE WAS STANDING! It felt like an even worthy of jubulous celebration. Her titanic weight was under her control after all, she was not at the mercy of it. With the might of her will, she kept her thousands of pounds of excess and greed from collapsing to the ground. She was still in control of her life.

What she saw when she opened her eyes very nearly made her fall back to the ground. The white tiger was standing before her in all his sculpted perfection. Moonlight hit him, and it seemed like his hide was weaved with diamonds for the way it sparkled. He wore a look of intense desire on his face. "What a performance! You, my delightful vision, deserve a reward for all your hard work.

The tigress blanched, Had he been watching her the whole time? She tottered forward a couple steps, not daring to lift a paw more than an inch or two off the ground. Her great paunch dangled like a cow's udder between her hind legs, bouncing and striking her feet below the ankles. The huge mass of her belly seemed to be a magnet drawn to the iron plate of the earth. How hard it was to keep them separated! It was a job which was simply not possible for any extended period of time.

However nice it felt to have her belly parted from the earth, to let the skin and fur breathe and not be compressed against a surface, when the white tiger touched his whiskers against her cheek, the strength went out of her legs and she slumped down. Somehow, she doubted she would be getting up again. She laughed sardonically while trying to catch her breath, "I'm so.... Glad I could... provide you with... an evening's entertainment."

He looked at her with incredible fondness and shook his head, "You fill me with happiness every time I see you. I simply can't help myself."

The tigress's frown melted, just as he said, the sight of him put her at ease, as if the whole world was right just if he stayed by her side. Right on cue, her belly rumbled noisily, echoing in her cavernous vastness and only increasing the noise. She said her line, "So where is this reward then? Can't you see I've exhausted myself?"

The white tiger grinned and sped off, his bounds were long and energetic, but hardly stirred the leaves as he passed. His passed away to her left and though the tigress tried desperately to follow his shining form with her eyes, the fat rolls of her neck soon stopped her head from turning any farther and he crossed the vertical horizon of her own golden striped flank. The absence of him was like a hollow in her heart and she pined for him despite knowing full well that he would be returning shortly. In that time, her hunger only grew until her stomach was a vast, painful void in her middle, an empty core of her being which cried out to be filled with anything, or everything.

She heard him coming before she saw him, from the sounds of dirt and crunching leaves, he was dragging something, something heavy. Her mother would have been horrified, but she could not keep the drool from leaking out both sides of her jowls and staining her white throat and chest grey. The smell of fresh meat made her more aware of her surroundings than ever, heightening her senses, but at the same time obliterating any coherent thought. She knew only her hunger and her only desire was to get as much meat down her gullet as possible.

She strained forward impotently against her own weight grounding her as the white tiger dragged a freshly killed horse to her. It was a mare with chesnut fur, stained dark near the neck where the white tiger had held her in his death grip. For a precious moment, however, the tigress gawked at the sheer size of the mare. The horse was morbidly obese. She had flanks rounder than that of a dairy cow - one found off the island that is - and her belly sank just as low. A massive clotted neck and broad, dipped back seemed to only swell the rush of saliva from her mouth. That the white tiger could drag her by himself only heightened his desirability as a male provider. But couldn't he drag the horse to her faster?

The moment a forleg came within reach of her paw, the world ended in a whirl of teeth, blood and rich, succulent meat still warm with past life. She wasn't even aware of eating, all that mattered was that keeping the stream of chunks of meat down her throat continuous and unabating. The white tiger looked down on her all the while, not even bothering to take even a morsel for himself. Occasionally she looked up at him as a kitten would and he beamed down at her, gesturing for her to eat even more. She was bloated and sick, but as long as there was food in front of her, she just couldn't seem to stop herself from tearing off just one more bite from the ruined carcass. When the meat pressed at the back of her throat threateningly and it was difficult to breathe in more than shallow pants, the white tiger gently rolled her onto her side. Her mouth hung open limply, spreading red tinged saliva on the ground. Her jaws ached from crunching bone and gristle.

Paws ran up and down the smooth, round slopes of her tummy, pressing hard to massage her. A soft, meaningless tune that seemed hauntingly familiar filled the air as the white tiger sang and soothed her. She could not help an answering purr that rumbled out of her and complemented the song perfectly. She thought perhaps she recognized the song he was singing, but she couldn't remember from where. Only that her pain became a muted background noise and her mind was filled with safety and security mattered.

After a long time, he stopped singing and she stopped purring. As long as she didn't think about her over fullness, the pain no longer bothered her. "How is it that I can be in so much pain and still feel comfortable with you by me?" she asked idly.

"We were meant to be together. I'm a part of you and you are a part of me, it's nothing more than that."

They were silent for a long while, the tigress lying on her massive flank, the white tiger lying at her back with his forepaws on her shoulders, tenderly kneading the fat. The tigress's thoughts turned once more to the previous evening and the strange things she had felt before Coyote's disastrous arrival. "I think I finally understand a little how you can like... well, so much of me."

"I've told you before it's as natural as breathing. But tell me how you understand now."

"I was so full earlier and I was rubbing my belly with my paws," The white tiger's paws suddenly became a little firmer and she felt the tips of his claws against her skin, "It felt strange, but good. I never felt that way before, but all I wanted was to fill myself up even more. The thought of being even bigger seemed like the best thing in the world in that moment."

"Of course it is my dear. I want you to keep getting bigger too." He nuzzled her firmly with his snout, he felt hot against the length of her back.

"You don't understand, I felt it, really felt it for the first time today. It was strange, and I got moist... you know... down there. That's never happened before"

The male tiger chuckled and rubbed his chin on her forehead. "That's how it's supposed to feel! Seeing you this fat and thinking of you even bigger makes me feel the same way... well almost."

The tigress's thoughts turned back to half-understood feelings when she had been accepted into the breeding program and when she had later been dropped out to make the doomed trek to America. She would have had cubs... but before that, she would have had a male tiger for the first time. The feelings seemed to swirl around inside her, all mixed together, the desire to be a mother, the fear of birthing, the pride of being a fit parent, the need to teach her young ones. But under all of that was a darker undercurrent, something she had not quite realized was there. Being so near to the white tiger helped her recognize it as a new kind of hunger. It was desire, but it was also loneliness, a void which she had grown up not recognizing until it had faded away almost entirely. She knew the mechanics of the act in a theoretical way, but she had never seen it as more than a perfunctory act, a means to an end - the scientists had certainly never treated it as more than that. But now, now more than ever she wanted the white tiger and wanted to show that need in a new way.

"Can you... show me? Teach me how you feel?"

His breath cam heavy and hot against her ear, his musk intensified, saturating the air he breathed. His grip on her tightened, "Are you sure?"

The tigress swallowed and shut her eyes. He was pressed against her skin, but she wanted him even closer. "...Yes" she breathed, "Show me how you love this body of mine."

And without another word, his hot, pungent body was removed from her side. She felt the lack of him as if a chunk of her had been torn away, but in a moment, his strong paws were on her belly, pushing her bulk with his great strength. Without even helping, he rolled her onto her opposite flank, the blood rushed to her head as she was momentarily on her back and made her feel even more heady. With his help and a push of her legs, she was once more on her belly and he was behind her, on top of her. His solid body was still like nothing as much as a feather on her back. She was so broad that he stretched his paws forward onto her shoulders rather than to her sides as had been described to her. The feel of him made the need grow in her immediately. She felt all of her own bulk around her like never before and the knowledge that he desired every inch of her made her ready for him. Her hind paws scrabbled against the dirt with the longing desire that twisted in her nethers. If her fat hadn't rooted her to the spot, she would have been wriggling like an eel.

His paws dug into her back fat and he lowered his head down to the nape of her neck as he made his approach. She was impatient, she wanted him, needed him. His hind legs squeezed what they could of her chunky hips and finally, as her raised tail lashed the side of his stomach, he slid in. It was and wasn't like her imagining. The feel of him was like a key which unlocked and released all of the tension she hadn't even know was inside her. It felt so right. But then he drew back and it hurt. She yowled with the unfamiliar sensation, and though he had a vice like grip on her, he didn't really need it; her fat kept her pinned as much as he needed. Still she tried to whip her head around as much as she could by instinct, to bite a perceived attacker, but the male tiger griped her firmly by the neck. His mouth was filled with her plentiful neck fat and he squeezed until she relented her attack and slumped forward. "Relax," he whispered after he let go of her neck, "It gets easier, and so much better. I'll be gentle."

The tigress groaned and moaned intermittently. Her head was ablaze with conflicting sensations. The pain everytime he drew his barbed member out made her want him to stop, but at the same time, instinct wanted him to continue. After a time, the pain became less and she breathed huskily as they began to rock together. She pushed forward and back with her legs in time with him, getting him even deeper. It hurt more, but at the same time it felt even better, like the pleasure and the pain were two sides of the same coin, insperable. He was an iron clamp on the vast, doughy bulk of her body, he was only able to grasp a small portion of her, but the skin all over her tingled and was alight with sensation. She wanted wanted there to be even more of her, more skin to tingle and sway with him. His claws began to dig into her like spurs and he thrusted faster, but she felt even better in response to the pain. She was getting tired from pushed and pulling her bulk, but he was doing more than his fair share of the work; he began to feel like a heating element clutched onto her back. Her paws dug into the earth as the pleasure welled up in her, seeming to drown her. Clenching and unclenching her digits, she moaned and pushed, getting him further in until it seemed like he would begin to prod her vast swollen stomach still gurgling within her. She was vaguely aware of him moaning too as he rode still further up on her back, pulling himself up with his front paws. He struck her side, sending a rippling all across her body and then did it again, but she was hardly even aware of it. Heat like liquid fire seemed to course though her body and explode continuously like falling stars in her head. She was caught in the grip of pleasure so intense it was painful, she couldn't seem to breath, and she wanted him to stop, but stopping was the very last thing she wanted him to do. He held her there for an indescribably long moment, until she thought she would simply collapse onto the floor into a puddle of liquid jelly.

The sensation passed and his thrusts slowed. He was panting. Coming down off that high was like falling. Her skin twitched as if with chill all over her body. The pleasure faded far more rapidly than she wanted. "My goodness!" she exclaimed, "You are a god!"

He licked her ear, "And you are my goddess. Never forget that."

She struggled to catch her breath, her heart was like a jackhammer in her chest, "You are... a very good... teacher."

He purred and slapped a paw to the soft fatty side of her belly, "And I have a lot more to teach you." He taught her the rest of the night until she thought she never wanted to leave this place or his side again. However, the end inevitably came and as the sun's first rays struck the tigress, like a vampire, the white tiger evaporated from existence.