FSE

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Waking up that morning was almost painful. The absence of a feet thick coat of fat was a void that left the tigress feeling unprotected and un-buffered against the world. The reduction of weight allowed her to breathe easier, but it was a left-handed gift because during the night, her weight had made her feel more secure against the tiger's brute force. Without it, it was almost like she might be blown away at any instant. But most of all, she missed him.

He had rode her all night eliciting within her orgasm upon building orgasm until she thought her head would explode. He rested only when she could take no more and was already mounting her again the moment she was ready. She never knew what it was like to be with such a loving partner, she never knew what it was to be complete. Waking had been as though a lasso had been thrown around her waist which then pulled her away from the white tiger by her side. Pulling her from him had been like ripping some tangible, vital organ from her chest.

So distraught was she over the loss of her lover and the loss of the thing he most desired about her, she hardly even noticed the vast difference between herself now and yesterday. If she had been in a proper state of mind, she would have been shocked by the difference. As it was, the only difference she cared about was between her immobile dream self and the real world where she was parted from the white tiger.

Only one thing was strong enough to pull her out of her rout: hunger. Manna lay about her sleeping area on a small rise she had chosen to be out of the worst of the wet. Unlike the previous days, however, there was a much smaller quantity this time and nearly all of the little disks had stalks attached. Her nose snuffled at the damp, moist crisps, but only for a moment before her tongue stretched out and began snapping them up one by one. The familiar action set her mind at ease and she calmed herself further with the promise that she would find the white tiger wherever he was and then she would never have to wake up again.

It was only as she bent and stretched to get all of the Manna that she realized that she was not quite back to her previous self. It was a strain to recall exactly how big she had been the previous day, but below being absurdly enormous, she never recalled being quite this rotund. Little did the tigress know that she had gained over 200 lbs in the night, bringing her weight to a total of 1190 lbs. She was well over twice as heavy as she had been when she landed on the island and a 500 lb cat being twice as heavy as she should be was quite a bit different than a 50 lb dog being twice as heavy. Outside of her fantasies, the tigress was now quite remarkably obese. A massive round belly prevented her from cleaning her hindquarters which were nearly black with mud. Fat obscured all of her skeletal features on the blocky, rectangular profile of her torso. The skin felt drawn too tight all over her "waist" and shoulders where she had grown the most. She bulged almost like a water balloon. This was one hunter who was beyond prey that wasn't already dead or even more massive than she was.

The meal of Manna was nearly insignificant, the tigress was used to a lot more. However, she knew it didn't really matter anyways, there was a huge cow carcass just waiting for her nearby. She decided to fill her tank before resuming the search for her elusive lover; she'd search the entire island if she had to.

It took extra effort to get going, her joints creaked in protest as she lifted herself up. The tigress hardly paid it any mind. She knew that when she finally found her lover, she'd undoubtedly undergo more expansion than she could dream of. He wanted even more of her and she wouldn't be satisfied until he was satisfied. She no longer cared how massive and immobile he wanted her, she desired him more than even the ability to walk.

So she walked with her pregnant sides back the way she had wandered off the previous evening. Her belly hung low between her knees, the remora which had stretched from chest to crotch had filled out, becoming heavier and wavering less. A round gut like a bowling ball above it, tilted left and right firmly as it was still half filled with partially digested meat. She opened her mouth to pant with the work of shifting her bulk and she welcomed it. Compared to last night, she was practically dancing.

The sight of the wolves huddled together in discussion away from the cow's carcass was enough to break her train of though and plans for the day. Every one of them had become obese overnight; some more than others. Whereas before, most of them had only been overweight, now every last canine sported a dense, heavy coat of fat as well as a big barrel belly. The Betas were the worst affected. The largest one, Tau-64, looked like he would fit in the Golden Lab's weight category. He wasn't quite up the Lab yet, but his grey furred belly was so stuffed with lard that it hung below his fattened chest. Their voices were low and urgent.

"...supposed to do now?"

"Everything we eat makes us fatter."

"The cow was supposed to be good to eat."

"We're doomed, the island is cursed."

At that last comment, there was a sudden ruckus in the assembled wovles as the white furred Beta hopped - one really couldn't have called it a pounce - on top of the doomsayer and dug his teeth into his fatty neck. "None of this doom talk!" he growled between mouthfuls of thick neck fat and fur. The smaller wolf twisted and squirmed under the Beta as he drove down on him with his great bulk. Wolves stood up and backed away instinctively forming a circle around them almost instantly.

The tigress knew this was the part where the pinned wolf would submit to the Beta wolf by going limp after which all transgressionswere usually forgiven by submissiveness. However, this wolf seemed to be crazed and he continued to fight against the heavy bulk of the Beta stradling him. "The island is cursed!" He shouted, "We're all doomed! Better to go drown ourselves in the ocean than THIS!"

The white Beta, who was either going easy on the paniced wolf or perhaps lacked the energy to sustain the fight recieved a kick in his unaltered puppy-maker from his subordinate's flailing limbs. The white furred wolf yelped and fell heavily to the side, landing with a *thump* that the tigress could feel in the pads of her large paws. As he lay groaning on his wide, soft flank, the wolf he had been grappling with dove through the thinnest part of the crowd of canines and, blood still dripping from his neck, ran into the jungle howling.

The biggest Beta, the one who had been with the tigress when the rhino attacked back when the world was much less strange, made to run after the fleeing member of the pack. However, his flanks rippled and his belly bounced crazily to and fro and against his hind legs as he tried to build up speed. The one whose lab number was once Tau-64 was so fat that he could hardly manage a jog let alone the run he was trying to force on his body. If his heart was willing, the weight of his expanded body was simply too much to overcome and he winded himself almost as soon as he started by trying to move against the flow of his heavy assets. He set his fat ass heavily down on the green foliage under him and panted harder than the tigress had ever seen him, meanwhile the howling became more and more distant; the tigress wondered if the frenzied call was heading towards the ocean...

The tigress decided was the time to step out of the tall ferns in which she had observed the fiasco. Eyes turned fearfully towards her as the brush shook and gave way to her widened profile; stems pressed firmly against her sides as she pushed her girth fowards. She feigned ignornace of the preceeding, giving a great, toothy yawn as if coming straight from sleep. Not caring to stand any longer than she had to, the tigress set her large rump down, feeling the large fatty lump of cellulite hanging from her undercarriage first touch the ground and then be squished by the firmer round mass of her belly proper. Her hips twisted as she let herself down further, her hind legs stretching out across the ground as well as allowing her tummy to flow over her right leg on the ground; it covered it past the ankle with squishy folds of white fur. The tigress found that she had to open her mouth and breathe more heavily for the exertion of simply getting up and stepping across the small clearing.

She looked significantly at the winded canine and the white wolf who still lay with his tail tucked in a mild daze on the ground. She started to ask, "So what's going on-" She was interupted by a loud rumbling that echoed through the clearing. She looked towards the mountain through the gaps in the canopy before she realized that the source of the disturbance was her own belly. Pangs fueled by the heavy scent of cow's blood that still hung in the air from the nearby carcass began to rise like a tide of weighted hooks trying to pull her stomach to the ground, but she ignored them... for now.

"What's going on here?" she repeated, still pretending to have no knowledge of the runaway wolf. But her question, and her plan to spring her hidden knowledge of the Betas' failures on them at a time of her choosing, might as well have fallen on deaf ears. What the tigress had assumed were stares of attention and deference were in fact, the gawks of humans at a carnival freak show. Their eyes burrowed into her soft flesh, everyone - except the white wolf who was still currently residing in his own little world of hurt - was staring at the massive, bloated figure she had developed overnight.

It was hardly surprising. A gain of 200 pounds had significantly altered her appearance, shifting the large feline from merely obese to another weight catagory altogether. With an excess of nearly 700 lbs, the tigress was remarkably wide, especially when sitting since her engorged flanks bulged as they pressed against the ground. She looked like a huge furry mass of striped flesh plopped onto the ground as if from an ice cream scooper. Her neck was largely as wide as her shoulders once were and proud curves of fur and fat spilled down under her chin to rest on the protrusion of her brisket. A gut that was still half full of digesting meat from her carnivourous gorging liberally filled the space under and between her legs past brimming. In fact, the tigress's front legs were bent slightly outwards at the elbow to better accomodate her bulging tummy. The tigress was possesed of a truely grand belly for it dominated her visage even for those viewing her from behind. Her flanks spread widely in a smooth, uninterupted expanse of her striped coat all across her back. It seemed almost like a tapestery in its breadth and smoothness. Her belly overflowed the confines of her thighs at the hips forming a deep crease where the belly met the leg, conquored it and spread yet wider in its quest to make the tapestry even wider. Little wonder the wolves were rendered speechless.

The tigress remained clueless as to the reason behind the wolves' collective silence until the heavily fattened Beta finally caught his breath and staggered to his feet. If he emphasized with the half ton plus feline, his face didn't show it, but he did break the silence. "Well... I guess everyone here is in the same boat."

Turning her head to look at the Beta as he trundled his bulk to a new seat off the the side, the tigress wanted to snap at the comment which was too familiar and not nearly reverential enough for the tigress's tastes. However, given the circumstances, she kept her tongue sitll for the moment.

The white Beta took advantage of the pause as he rolled gingerly onto his belly and sat up, "Well, it's pretty obvious now that the cow made us like this."

The tigress rotated her head the other way to look at the white furred wolf, "And why do you say that exactly?"

The canine wilted under her gaze and relocated his eyes to somewhere between the ground and the tall, straight trunks of the trees surrounding them. "Well... I mean... We've all gained weight, but me and him," he gestured with his nose to the heavily obese Beta wolf, "have seemed to have gained more than most others. We were talking about that earlier, you see... and then you come over and..."

He seemed to lose his train of thought and if her bottom weren't so heavy, the tigress would have gotten up and moved closer to better loom over him. As it was, she just sat there and tried to intensify her glower as well as appear intimidatingly large rather than just soft and plump. "...And?" the tigress prompted, drawing out the sylable.

The white white shook his head, but continued, "And I took my rightful share as Beta as did Tau-64 and Sigma-39. I ate until my sides were about to burst, and he," again he gestured with his nose, "ate even more than I did... And you..." The tigress continued to stare at him for a long moment before the wolf realized she wanted him to speak the words. He squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for instant death. Everyone knew not to talk about a female's weight, especially if that female happened to be several time larger than you, "You ate at least three times as much as he did and now..."

"This. Yes, I think I noticed this morning." The tigress finished for the relieved Beta

"But why? It didn't happen last time." asked the morbidly obese Tau-64.

"Well, actually it kinda did."

Heads turned towards the new speaker. It was the last Beta wolf, Sigma 34. Though smaller than the other two, due to being a Eurasian wolf rather than a grey or tundra wolf, he was more densely muscled and possesed of a rich coat of brown, white, and grey speckled with black. Of course, the more subtle effects of his ancestery were lost in the lumpy expanse of his newfound weight.

The tigress was interested enough to turn herself around towards the small Beta; but not quite enough to actually lift her great bulk. She walked to the side with her front legs and rotated her rump awkwardly on the ground by shaking and lurching with her hips and thighs. "What do you mean? How did it 'kinda' happen?"

The smaller wolf paradoxically withstood the glare of the tigress much better than the white wolf; perhaps he was used to dealing with larger opponants. "I remember that when the cow was first dragged to our camp near the shore and my wolves were allowed to partake in the feast," The tigress very humanly raised an eyebrow at the emphasis on the possesive. As one of the two Betas who had not joined the first hunt, Sigma-39 had donated his underlings to swell the party's numbers under the leadership of Tau-64. Despite the fact that all of canines had worked together to bring in the cow, it was the big Beta who had reveled in the vast majority of the credit and, more importantly - for wolves at least - the honor. Of course Tau-64 and the wolves who lived under his guidance had had the privilage of first meat; after the tigress had her share of course. The smaller Beta appeared to still be annoyed at the slight to him and his own. Sigma-39 continued uninterupted, "A number of them were noticably rounder the next day. I just thought that they had been sneaking Manna when my back was turned, but then I was quite a bit heavier myself. And despite what you all might think I know that I at least haven't had a single disk since we learned what that devilish stuff does!"

Most of the wolves looked away or to the ground at the Beta's outburst. The two other Beta's remained impassive, but their eyes were haughty with incrimination. However as the tigress looked closer, she could see the slightest tinge of what might have been guilt in the corners of them, the heaviest Beta wolf in particular.

The small, chubby Beta continued his explaination, "On that first day, I noticed a lot of gaining around the beach, but then Manna was so new and I knew most of the dogs on the beach were too weak-willed to resist it. It didn't occur to me then that the unexplained weight could have been caused by anything other than Manna. I even began to think that my own increased weight might have been some residual effect of the disks I ate that morning. At any rate, the gains stopped after the first day so I stopped worrying about it. But now... Now I think the first cow must have been like this one."

A comment came forth from the crowd, "This isn't like that at all. Look at us!"

The white wolf also looked down on the idea as he lifted his long nose slightly into the air, "Indeed, these... effects are so much more exagerated than anything I remember happening that first day. How could this be the same?"

There was silence for a long pause. The tigress's mind wrapped itself around the conundrum almost against her will since it was important for her to remain above the converstation especially since she felt the strength of her command wavering at the sight of her extreme obesity. However, things she had spoken about with her "science team" as well as things she had observed flashed through her mind and she had the sensation that they were not random images, but rather a set of jigsaw pieces that she only had to put together to see the answer. 'Is this how those mutts on the beach think?' she wondered idly to herself as talk of densely coiled lipids and hydrogenation surfaced to her mind like a message in a bottle surfacing from the depths of her unconcious mind. She remembered scraps of the highly technical discussion of possible metabolism routes the Manna might undertake. LDL's, HDL's, lipid transport vesicles, none of that made sense to her, but she remembered how the German Shepherd - What was his name again? something iritatingly cute - mentioned that it made more sense for the super high density lipids to be transported to fat cells and then expanded rather than expanded in the digestive system and then transported. The cow appeared in her mind, and her belly rumbled again just at the thought, so enourmously fat it couldn't budge an inch to save its life. She could easily see it stranded there day after day, too stupid to stop eating the manna which got it in the predicament in the first place. the tigress could feel the sting of thirst on her own tongue, she remembered how Manna seems to suck all the water out of you. 'The cow died of thirst...'

The wolves had already restarted the conversation by the time the tigress had fit together all of the puzzle pieces. They were arguing back and forth about the differences between this cow and the last, none wanting to believe that the incredible stroke of luck in finding the cow had led only to an inedible food source.

"I believe I know the answer..." the large feline in the center of the crowd spoke uncharacteristically quietly.

The large Beta shifted his bulk with a grunt and twisted his large fluffy ears towards her. "What was that?"

The tigress cleared her throat and sat up as straight as her plump torso would allow. "I know why we've all gained weight eating the cow." Eyes fixed on her and this time they were in curiosity and not startlement. "It is the cow's fat." she said with authority despite the fact that she had no way to confirm her hypothesis aside from her observations, "The Manna has a difference kind of 'fat' inside it. The kind that expands with water which is why it makes us so thirsty after we eat it." Several glances averted in private shame, but they couldn't stay long from the tigress as she continued to speak, "But even when its expanded, its still a different kind of fat than the normal kind in our bodies. I think that when we were eating the cow's blubber the first time, not all of it had been made with Manna; I think it was already pretty fat to start with and it had only been three days since we landed on the island. But still, it had gained weight since we washed ashore and when we ate that fat that she had gained eating manna, we took those strange lipids into ourselves."

The morbidly obese Beta began to shake slightly and for a moment, the tigress thought he might start weeping, but then she saw his hard eyes and realized that he was shaking, not with grief, but with anger, "Damnit!" he exclaimed, "We might as well have been scarfing down the blasted Manna! Fuck! I didn't know!"

The white wolf was slightly more subdued, but his face was strained, as if he didn't want to accept the truth. "But there is such a vast difference between what happened at the beach and what happened here. All of us have put on at least 20 pounds, some even more than that." he said with a heavy glance at Tau-64.

The tigress nodded grimly, her face set in a scowl; however here features were twisted not from the realization but from the mounting hunger pangs that were rapidly transforming her cavernous stomach into an aching void. "You gave me the answer to that yourself before we even started to eat."

Deadly eyes turned to the white wolf and not a few teeth were showing from the round faces of the assembled group. The wolf stammered, "I.. I... I don't know. I don't remember saying anything l-like that."

"Ah, but you did." said the tigress, relieved to have those hurt and angry eyes off her for a moment, "You said the cow died of thirst."

"What does that have to do with anything!" the white Beta nearly shouted. "And besides, I... I didn't say that. No, it was Zeta-2 who noticed that and told me about it."

The tiger's frown deepened as the Beta offered up his younger charge to the potential mob of fattened canines. As long as there was the slightest chance that there had been foreknowledge of the incident, there might be a call for retribution. The tigress decided to prevent the in-fighting before it had a chance to take root. "I believe that as the cow sat there, eating manna and getting fatter, its fat sucked all the spare water out of its system. But since it didn't die right away and kept on eating more manna, more and more of it got stored in a denser form in its fat. That's why the meat had such a different texture and tasted... differently. I just now put two and two together. There was no way for anyone to have known."

The white Beta sloached with relief as did his subordinate after a hateful glare at his superior.

The biggest Beta nodded grimly as he took in the Tigress's analysis of the situation. He did not waste time disputing the details when what the tigress said so nicely pieced together the phenomenon which had been occuring. He said, "Well, at least we understand what happened now, and that tells us what we have to do now.

The tigress covertly kneeded her bulging belly with a paw as the pangs ripped through her torso, the pain spreading tendrils larger than the already vast cavity of her stomach. It became difficult to concentrate and think clearly. She felt almost as if her skin were a shell made of glass which was struggling to contain a vacuum; if she didn't find something with which to fill that vacuum shortly, surely the glass would give way and she would implode upon herself. 'Damn this Beta for talking, just shut up so I can get some more of that cow!' she thought to herself. But at least part of her was still listening to his words and what he would say would not please her, not one bit.

The tigress's insides felt like they were breaking into pieces in the storm of her hunger. It was impossible to ignore the scent of blood and fresh meat from the cow which was only just out of sight of the tiny clearing in which she and her hunting party of wolves now sat. That meat which had tasted like no other meat she had even had before and, she knew now, was infused with only partially processed Manna called out to her and brought on the hunger which normally didn't infect her until the late afternoon. But that damn wolf just had to keep talking, had to keep her away from the carcass and her enhanced, primal urge to fill her gullet.

"...what we have to do now." He said. The tigress might have provided the needed question, but she was rather preoccupied at the moment. The large Beta continued, "We're just going to have to strip all the blubber off of the cow and eat only the red meat and victuals."

Ears perked up and eyes brightened all around. The solution was so simple; the other wolves eagerly embraced it, clinging to the idea in the midst of the hopelessness which had threatened to drown them only so many minutes ago. Only one voice raised opposition to the plan despite the fact that several wolves had already stood in preparation for the butchery ahead, but in a way, it was the voice that mattered most.

In her agitated state, the tigress saw any impediment to her immediately shoveling several dozen pounds of dense gristle into herself as an obstruction to the proper course of things. "None of you are going to touch that cow until I've had my fill!" she boasted while sticking out her round chest proudly. It would occur to her only much later that if she had simply waited to eat what was stripped away from the carcass, she could have prevented what was to come.

The expression on the rotund Beta's face, and indeed several other wolves as well, could not have been more flabbergasted than if the tigress had suddenly sprouted wings. The tigress sat fidgeting in the silence that followed. She took it as approval of her command and started to rise. Her flabby tummy had just started to drag across the ground as she rose when the big Beta found his voice. "You... you can't be serious. After everything you just said... You're going to eat more of the cow's blubber?" His head shook in his confusion, "But you'll get even fatter than you are already!"

That warm tingling that the tigress had learned so much about the previous night came to her again at the Beta's affronted outburst. Her rump hovered for a moment in her indecision - should she think about what she was doing? - but her weight was too great to remain halfway. Straining, she rose to all fours, committing herself to action; her hunger was too strong to deny. At the same time, though she didn't feel like discussing her change in personal preferences regarding her appearance. The Beta's comment also reminded her of the one thing more important than finding dense, fattening food: finding the white tiger somewhere on the island. She waddled up to the still seated grey wolf. "What I do is of no concern to you." she growled threateningly. She whirled her head around to the rest of the wolves in general and roared, "Nor to any of you!" It was a little difficult, but she managed to back up a few paces to address the crowd. "I don't have time for all of you to strip the blubber off the cow either. We have more important things to take care of. We're leaving as soon as I get what I need. Anyone who wants some of that cow better get it now because I'm not waiting."

Perhaps it was the intensity of the need in her bloodshot orange eyes or the way her tail lashed back and forth. It might have been the way her cavernous innards rumbled and echoed incessantly within the enormously expanded confines of her torso or the way spittle slowly dripped from the side of her snout. It might have even been something about the way she smelled. But in any case, the smallest Beta wolf found the strength to come forward in front of his much larger fellow Beta still seated on the ground and stand up to the tigress's madness. "If you gorge yourself like you did last night, you'll hardly be able to walk tomorrow. Have you even stopped yourself from eating Manna?"

The tigress snarled and came about to face Sigma-39 standing in front of his larger rival who was pleading with his eyes for him to stop. Four-inch fangs showed as she spoke, "You should learn to still your tongue before I add you as an appetizer to the menu."

The smaller Eurasian wolf stood his ground, however, against the tigress's fury and the fearful whispering of the big Beta behind him. The one once numbered Sigma-39 said, "Can't you see that you're addicted? You're going to wind up like the cow you want to eat so much. You need help."

A warning snap of her jaws made the wolf hop back into the blubbery wall of Tau-64 behind him. He would have had to retreat still further if the tigress's reach hadn't been so whittled away by the hundreds of pounds dampening her movements. "I am not addicted!" Her heart began to race with the excitement premature to the actual action and-oh how her belly cried out to be sated with blood and meat. "We're leaving the cow now, we have to keep moving!"

"You led us out here to find food and now that we have, you won't let us take the time to butcher it the way we need to for us to stop getting so obese. What is so damned important?!"

The tigress had had enough of the impertinent little wolf. She pounced, howling, "I NEED TO FIND HIM!"

Her bulk was impossible to lift in 20-foot leaps she used to be able to perform, but the insubordinate wolf was practically in front of her. Her legs tensed and extended in a hop barely longer than a single body length forward; she could feel her dragging belly almost until her hind paws left the ground. But the once supreme hunter had lost so much of her speed. It took almost two seconds for her to defeat the inertia of her own bulk and get moving with deadly velocity. Luckily for her target, he was not nearly so encumbered by excessive mass. The slimmer wolf dived away; however, the much bulkier wolf behind him was not so lucky

Despite her lack of grace, half a ton of large cat was a deadly projectile even without the teeth and the claws. As the smaller brown colored wolf sprang away, the wolf who had led the initial hunting party with the tigress and the one who ran down and successfully herded the first cow almost all the way to the beach was hit full in the face as she rocketed forward. As much effort as it took her to get moving, it was almost as hard for her to stop. She tried and failed to correct her course for the fleeing canine and wound up hitting Tau-64 first with her shoulder before the rest of her mass followed. She collapsed full on her side with enough force to elicit a cry from her. Initially pancaked against the ground under her rib cage, she continued to slide forward until she was vaguely aware of the lump of wolf somewhere under her huge, bloated torso. She tried to get to her feet as quickly as possible to spare her unintended victim, but it still took a while as she was sore all down her right side from the impact. It wouldn't have mattered anyways, the Beta's neck had snapped when her full weight had first smashed him against the ground.

When the tigress finally managed to get her striped bulk off the ground, the obese canine lay with his head twisted and laying flat on his flabby chest; blood oozed out the side of his mouth. The tigress rounded on the Eurasian wolf who was standing to the side, panting from his near escape from death and looking at his crushed companion. The tigress was even more out of breath, "Look... what you... made me do."

"Me?!" the Beta shouted, "You would have killed us both anyways. You have no concept of how big you are!" The wolves under Sigma-39 had gathered to him when he narrowly escaped the tigress' attack and a slightly older one to the Beta's right spoke, but not to the tigress, "She doesn't care who she kills!" Indeed, the tigress's stance said that she was ready to try again at the small Beta's life once she recovered a little, "I've had enough following this over-stuffed lunatic!"

Another voice rose from a different direction and surprisingly it originated from the remaining white Beta wolf, "I've had enough of this fatass cat as well!" More cries of "Crazy!" and "Addict!" followed and the circle of wolf followers seemed suddenly like a ring of deadly predators all armed with sharp teeth.

The tigress's posture became more defensive and she snarled threateningly; this was exactly why she wanted to rule these mutts and not be rivals with them. The jeers subsided quickly as the pack coalesced in front of her, replaced by growls snapping teeth, or even worse, silence. Almost instantly the situation the tigress had been fearing since she saw the looks in their eyes this morning bloomed and brought forth its rotten fruit. The large feline knew that this was beyond recovery. The wolves drew closer, pressing the advantage of having already surrounded her and testing her reduced mobility as she was forced to snap and swipe with her claws. But the situation was completely untenable, not only could she not reach as far as she used to, but her acres of flab made her a huge target. She received nips on her belly and hind legs and even fattened wolves were able to dance away before she could bring her attention to her attackers behind. In only a few seconds they would descend upon her in a mob.

The bites on her large belly trickled her own blood down on the soil of the island for the first time and fed her flight instinct. She turned to run inland and before she even knew what she was doing, she sank her long fangs into the flank of the broken Beta she had killed with her own massive weight. Carrying the fattened wolf in her jaws like an overgrown pup, she plowed through the thinner ranks of wolves to the side and began to flee deeper into the jungle.

She made slow progress with her bulk, but her pursuers were similarly encumbered. They harried her unprotected flanks and hind legs and she intermittently waddled and jogged in a slow motion chase through the jungle. The thought of stopping to rest did not occur to her, she had to keep going or else succumb to the treasonous wolves behind her, and still she carried the Beta for all hope of returning to the succulent meat of the cow had evaporated. Only the fact that the wolves still feared her and didn't want to press the attack kept her from being overrun immediately. She managed to give at least three wolves bloody snouts as a reward for attacking too enthusiastically. However, for the most part the wolves kept their distance, trotting beside her just beyond sight through the trees and most of the time she'd receive new bites to her sore and bloodied flanks in swift attacks from one or two wolves at a time before they fled back out of reach.

The jungle became a blur of green as she trundled onward, it was impossible to keep track of where she was going. Several miles into the chase, the tigress was able to slow down as the wolf attacks became less frequent and in diminishing numbers. It was around that time that she realized she was being herded away like nothing so much as a simple-minded cow. She saw the same three or four wolves each time as they came at her from behind, or from the left or right to nip at her legs and keep her moving. She wanted desperately to chase them away, but she was so tired, she could hardly keep her paws moving, and she was still too uncertain about the actual number of wolves to stand and fight. Seemingly beyond her limits, she somehow covered another mile in exhaustion so complete she was unable to turn and face her assailants when they came to bite her rump or thighs. Her head thumped with her pulse like a vice squeezing her brain in time with her rapid heartbeats. She saw the world as if through a red filter. And then suddenly the trees around her stopped moving and it took almost a minute for the tiger to realize that she had stumbled to the ground. The fat Beta made a lumpy cushion under her chin. She expected more attacks to make her rise and continue, in fact her hind legs continued to move and twitch in the soil as if trying to continue the chase. However none came. She was alone in the middle of the jungle. Alone.

She did not sleep, but after a time, when her heart was no longer threatening to burst out of her ears, her mind wandered aimlessly and without memory... and her mouth began to move. Later, after the rest of the day had passed, it would seem to the tigress that the very birds of the island were mocking her. Their calls of "Fatass!" and "Addict!" echoed to the very mountain and back. As if from a daze, she came to with a mighty belch and she licked her blood stained paws. She seemed heavier than ever as she grunted and strained to her paws to escape the birds' taunts. She realized she felt nauseous as well, and dangerously bloated; probably a result of the stress of her beleaguered flight through the jungle. However, it was better than the searing hunger pangs and she was getting used to feeling bloated anyways. At least she had nothing to carry - in her jaws anyways - anymore; in fact it was hard to remember what she had been carrying for so long, it probably wasn't important, in fact, she figured she must have dropped it at some point; otherwise it would be with her now. She should have known those wolves couldn't be counted on, now she would have to continue her search alone. ...But maybe it was better this way. He was too special to share with some piffling, flea infested canines anyways. She would have probably needed to eat them all anyways when they found him... yes eaten them all, while he watched her. These pleasant thoughts and others kept the tigress's mind occupied as she worked her weary paws to carry her deeper into the night.

The light filtering down from the canopy came in bright shafts as the sun hung high overhead. Misty tendrils remained in the shadows under the great boughs and the trickle of water which was still draining away after the terrible storm could still be heard. The myriad and uncountable jungle plants and insects still seemed bent under the terrible weight of water which had blasted the island, but as always, life would thrive even more vibrantly after receiving the gift of fresh water. At the moment, however, the sun, newly released from the captivity of the passing storm beat down with renewed energy on the island. Under the canopy, the lingering wet transformed the forest floor into a stiflingly humid sauna.

From the canopy far above drifted down a brightly colored butterfly of yellow and blue. It fluttered as it drifted inexorably downwards, its wings damp and too heavy to propel even its tiny body back into dense layer of interlacing boughs and branches that had ever been its home. Near to the ground, the butterfly managed to halt its fall on a solid, if slightly damp perch; at least it was warm. The butterfly slowly flexed its beautiful colored wings open and close and again, trying to work the moisture out of the delicate membranes as well as the fur on its tiny body. However, its perch was not quite as stable as it had appeared on the way down. The surface under the butterfly's six stick-like feet shifted and quaked, but all the while it continued to open and close its wings for there could be no escape until it had dried itself. The black perch was connected to a tan colored edifice which towered over the tiny flapping creature. Slowly, even as the shifting became more severe, two cracks appeared in the oddly shaped edifice and spread wider, revealing the moist spheres under the surface. The German Shepherd known to some as "Einstein or just 'Einny'" opened his eyes and looked down at the butterfly on his nose.

Awakening that morning after the storm was akin to surfacing in a pool filled with floating chunks of glass. The intense pain in his limbs from the endless walk through the wet and the night made him immediately want to sink back into unconsciousness. In fact, that was precisely what he had been doing for the last couple hours, but at long last, his mind refused to be shoved back below the surface and simply had to come bubbling up despite his own wishes. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, however, was enough to make him forget about the pain in his four legs, at least momentarily. The butterfly had to be the single most handsome thing he had ever looked upon in his nine years of life. Upon its wings, opening and closing for him it seemed, was painted a mosaic of dazzling complexity. In the eyes of the dog trained from close to birth for scientific aptitude, the designs made a fractal, that is an image composed smaller, self-same images which ever reduced in size into infinity, all in the brightest hues of royal blue and gold. He was entranced by the butterfly and how the images seemed ever so minutely different each time the wings reopened.

The dog would have happily continued to stare at the marvelous little creature, but after a time, it walked, still wavering its wings, down the length of his long black snout. When it reached the tip of his leathery nose, it began to flex its wings as if in preparation for flight and the shepherd dog lifted his head slightly. However, powder fell from the wings of the little creature into the gaping nostrils of the dog supporting its frail body and, quite against his will, Einstein felt a sneeze mounting. His large fangs were exposed when he opened his mouth for the in draw of breath, but he shook his head left and right trying to get the creature to fly away before surely his sneeze would destroy the tiny thing. But it did no good, the butterfly was still too weighted down with water to take off and then the dog could hold it back no longer.

AAAAAA-Choooooo! Einstein trumpeted in the middle of the quiet jungle. When he was able to open his eyes, the butterfly had been obliterated entirely and his ears sank in disappointment and guilt at his misdeed. But wait, there was the bright little bug, just a short distance away where it had been blown by the hurricane winds produced by the dog. It danced awkwardly on the air, falling more than rising and Einstein held his breath for the outcome of its epic struggle. Finally, it found a new roost on the side of a tree where the sun shined and had already dried the bark.

Einstein put his large head back on the still damp ground. The unpleasant sensations of his own body, happily forgotten for at least a moment, returned to him. Fully awake now, Einstein wallowed in not only the purely physical misery of his overworked and aching muscles, but more subtle sensations which caused him mental anguish. With each breath, his incredibly wide flanks rose and fell and the shepherd dog was constantly reminded of the vast volume in space his body occupied as well as the added difficulty in drawing each breath. Compared to how he had been when first washing up on the island, Einstein felt remarkably slow and restricted. His mind wanted to get up and explore the surroundings in which he found himself, but he remained on the floor because of the effort he knew it would take to rise... if he could still rise. But more than anything else was the elusive sensation of his own massive weight. It pressed down on his chest, on his belly, his shoulders, his legs and his neck. Fat clung to him on every inch of his body, holding him down like an anchor. But the grip was inescapable for the chains existed under his very skin. He was imprisoned by his weight, but, he knew intellectually, his weight was allowed to imprison him because of his uncurtailed greed. And as anyone who has ever had a bad habit knows, knowing something intellectually is far different than being able to act on that knowledge. 'It's going to take more than a sneeze to get me going again.' he thought ruefully.

With some effort, but not demanding effort, the shepherd dog managed to roll his mud slathered body over and then over again until he was laying belly up in a shaft of hot yellow sunlight. It was sticky and humid under the canopy, but the canine hardly paid it any mind being coated from head to toe in still-wet and sticky mud. He panted and rested the top of his head on the ground while his pink tongue lolled out in front of his left eye. Rolling all the way across the uneven jungle floor, leaving a flattened avenue of wide-leafed greens behind, was exhausting, but the shepherd was too frightened to try using his legs. the prospect of being literally too fat to walk filled the shepherd with such dread that it was easier to debase himself in such a fashion than risk losing the comfort even of uncertainty. Tiny cracks came to the dog's fine ears as the mud baking on the wide, smooth expanse of his engorged belly baked and dried in the sun. Likewise, other, earthy sounds and smells came to the canine as temporary streams and trickles ran their course and stopped before soaking into the ground; as plants buried in mud lifted themselves from their tombs to once again face the sun; as mud everywhere shrank and creaked when the water lurking inside was summoned forth by the sun to once again be drawn into the air whence it came. In the midst of the glory of nature, the Shepherd dog, having finally breached well past the 200 lb mark in a single night from the previous morning's binge of Manna rolled over onto his side with a grunt and, lifting his tail, ungracefully broke wind.

Einstein was still rolling about slowly, drying himself and breaking off chips of dried mud when his dear friend and partner in the scientific arts finally came upon him. The energetic Border Collie named Betsy by the staff back at the lab in New Zealand, practically bounded up to him despite her own hardly untouched figure. "Cripes!" she exclaimed in an unusually out of breath voice, "I've been looking for you all morning. Jeez, you're covered all over with mud. Haven't you bathed yet?" If she was out of breath for her jog, that didn't prevent her words from tumbling out of her mouth at a mile a minute.

"I've been a little preoccupied, this particular morning, Betsy." managed the much larger canine. The round-bodied shepherd was lying on his side when she happened upon him and he grunted as he strained with his left shoulder and hip to heave himself onto his belly. God, I am so heavy! he thought with the effort of moving all of himself; his flanks took the opportunity to spread widely out to either side of the inflated canine while the plentiful skin of his sparsely furred tummy met terra firma once again. Betsy was either being polite or was blissfully unaware of his plight. Somehow, Einstien managed to suppress a self-satisfied sigh of relief with the accomplishment of his task in righting himself and in the cessation of his massive body's movement.

However vapid she seemed at times and though honestly possessed of an attention-span ranging between that of a goldfish and a fruitfly, Betsy was far from ignorant when it came to her friends. This was evident in the way she sidled up to Einstein's plump flank, touching the smooth, round expanse with her own smallish nose softly, tenderly. When she spoke, it was like she had dove into the hidden corners of his mind and pulled squirming forth, his troubles and fears, "Gained more while you slept, Einny?"

The shepherd dog did not react except by letting his head swivel forward again when he stopped watching her as she continued her circuit around his obscene bulk. Standing, the top of Betsy's head would have come right below his eye level; lying on the ground, she should have towered over him. However, the shepherd dog was so filled with excessive fat that sitting on the thick mattress of his belly, his inflated back was almost too tall for her to see over. It was manifestly embarrassing to have Betsy here to demonstrate once again the alterations in his dimensions. He felt a paw lifting his snout up and looked into Betsy's soft blue eyes. "It's perfectly alright. You don't need to feel ashamed."

Einstein took his snout back from her gentle grasp and looked away, out into the jungle. He noticed the blue and yellow butterfly was nowhere to be seen. He took a deep breath, "I know how I look, Betsy. I can feel how disgustingly huge I've gotten. _ _ You don't need to lie to me to comfort me." His voice was far harsher than he meant it to be, seared by the pain swirling in his mind.

Einstein looked up into Betsy's unwavering smile. Her eyes, bright as always seemed to exude compassion that even the down-in-the-dumps shepherd was unable to disregard. She looked at him intently, "When I say you don't need to feel ashamed, I mean it. Don't you dare start accusing me of lying... even to soothe you." Her eyes took on a slightly different light as she hesitantly said the last, but she continued before the shepherd could analyze it further. "The mushrooms, Manna, as everyone seems to be calling it now, is a bizarre, almost unearthly sort of organism. It's also a terrible plight on this island." She patted the large round expanse of the white furred belly which was a little more than even with the collie's plump chest. "No one, No one, has been able to escape the effects of the stuff. That is why I say you don't need to feel ashamed and why it is true."

Einstein wanted desperately to believe her, but at the same time, he couldn't forgive himself for what he'd allowed to happen, what he'd done to himself. Einstein snorted, "Look at the difference between the two of us. We all had the same Manna around us every morning, but I'm three times bigger than you! I... I can't control the hunger. The only reason I'm not stuffing my face right now is that there's no Manna around... and the worst part is that I want there to be more Manna. I can't stand not having it." He turned his head away after making his confession, unable to meet her eyes. "I'm pathetic." he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

Betsy cocked her head in both concern and thought for her best friend, but in the end, she had no more words of sagely advice to offer. She simply moved forward and rested her head against the shepherd's fattened neck. She stayed by his side for a long while as bird calls began to fill the jungle as they returned from their hidden nocturnal hiding place belated by the recent storm. Einstein clung to the embrace like a life preserver.

Finally Betsy got to her feet, heavily and lacking much of her old speed and grace. "Come on, Einny. You've had enough time for moping about. The first thing you need is a bath. That she-wolf is setting up a new camp near a nice rocky stream."

Einstein fidgeted, resulting in shaking the whole of his mass like a Jell-o dessert. "I... I haven't..."

"Haven't what?" asked the black and white dog.

"I... errr... haven't tried standing yet." admitted the shepherd dog sheepishly.

"Posh!" said the collie and stuck out her tongue. "You must have walked 20 miles last night! You can get up and walk a dozen feet to the stream."

The previous night was a dark blur of pain and never-ending mud and the harsh demands of the she-wolf for Einstein, and the fattened canine could hardly believe his friend's estimate of the distance they managed to cover. But the feel of his bulk spread all across the ground reminded him of the reality of the situation. "Betsy... I'm heavier now... and not just a little. I'm a lot fatter now than I was last night. I don't... I don't know if..."

The border collie didn't let him finish his stuttering sentence. With quite remarkable speed for a dog slowing down with the weight on her, she charged forward and grabbed his right ear in her teeth. "Come on!" she shouted playfully out of the corner of her mouth, "No time for worrying, just get up!"

"Ow! Ow!" cried the much larger dog. "Stop!" he tried to turn his head and get his own teeth into play, putting his four paws on the ground in the process, but she was too fast for him, dancing out of his reach as she continued to tug.

She pulled harder still, really yanking his ear, "You're gonna lose it if you don't get up soon!" she shouted and moved to the left, dragging Einstein's head along for the ride. His hind legs dug into the soil with his too-slow lunges, propelling his whole body forward on its mat of soft flesh only to be drawn back as if on a spring. God, did it really feel like she was trying to rip his ear off! She growled like a pup a quarter her age as she tugged and pranced left and right, left and right as if her weight didn't wear on her at all. It was an infectious energy that only a dog would understand. In the way that a puppy can get even a 12-year old senior up and running after a squeaky ball, seeing Betsy abusing his ear like that stimulated the grossly obese shepherd even more than the pain in the same appendage. With a grunt, flesh parted from the ground for the first time that day and einstein "frolicked" with a few clumsy steps before he even realized what he'd done.

Betsy giggled with joy at seeing Einstein on his feet, releasing the captive ear at the same time. He tottered a bit on his legs which seemed hilariously small and skinny for the oval shaped bulk of his body, and they both were panting. The huge, furry mass of Einstien's belly reached almost to his raised, digitigrade ankles and the scant fur had been spread so thinly that on the dark, mottled skin of his underbelly his male nipples showed plainly, but that didn't stop him from errupting in breathless laughter which broke the silence. It was a good laughter, like the release on an over-boiled kettle. It errupted out of him, a force he would have been powerless to stop even if he had had the slightest inclination to do so. Despite black and tan flanks which flowed so generously out to his sides making him literally more than twice as wide as his compatriot and despite the fact that his back was so padded with fat that the uppermost rolls on his shoulders were even with the top of his head, and despite the fact that his legs were shaking with the effort of just standing, Einstein took a couple clumsy, stiff-legged steps forward and, too stunned to see it coming, took hold of Betsy's left ear. "Let's see how you like it!"

"Ah! Get off me, you lummox!" laughed Betsy in real pain, but even realer happiness.

Just over 20 miles north and west from the eastern shore of the island where a small group of escaped lab canines had once made - and in some cases still were making - their residence, there was a small stream flowing down from the very large mountain in the center of the island. It was one of many small rivulets which fed the mangrove forest further to the east where it dominated - and even slightly expanded the island into the shallow sea - the north-eastern corner of the island. The stream was larger than most, however, never sinking below the ground and flowing brisk enough in several places to wash away the dark, rich tropical soil, leaving a solid rocky bed of swift moving water. It was one of these places that the she-wolf had decided to make first camp.

True, it was not very far away from their original home, but then again, distances had to be reconsidered given the island's unique effects on its population. Twenty miles might as well be clear on the other side of the mountain where the fattened seal-dogs left at the shore were concerned; the she-wolf was confident that they would not have stragglers attempting to join them any time soon, if ever. There was also the consideration of the one lame member of the group, the one seal-like dog Sharyenna had chosen to bring along both for his scientific training and for the leverage his... situation gave her over the other two potent thinkers.

For all the annoyance of their unfortunately independent thoughts, the she-wolf was able to recognize a valuable resource when she saw one; as long as she was able to control the resource that is. At any rate, that shepherd, that Einstein, would be far too lame to move any great distance until he had shed a significant portion of his greasy, sickeningly expanded fat. The more indebted he was to her, the better, as far as the she-wolf was concerned. As long as she remained a guide and a mentor in the shepherd's eyes, the other two shouldn't be overly tempted to challenge her authority, not that any one of them had shown much inclination towards leadership back on the beach. However the fact that they had been able to accrue so much data and information concerning the effects of Manna as well as to formulate some pretty sound theories, gave them quite a lot of power over the remaining canines even if they didn't realize it. Sharyenna intended to monopolize the power within the group shortly.

Despite the fact that the she-wolf planned on eventually moving clear to the north side of the island, she had spent a great deal of time after they had stopped moving dictating how the camp should be formed. Assisted by her two Betas, she had had bigger and more elaborate nests built far enough up the banks of the stream to avoid flooding. Rather than allowing everyone to build their own primitive nests - often little more than a flattened patch of grass - she'd insisted on shelters roofed with wide, water shedding leaves and cobbled together using bits of wood placed together the best they could over dens dug into the ground. With the previous night's howling bitch of a storm, it was mind-bogglingly easy to convince the rest that they needed sounder shelter... and get them used to following her orders. Luckily, the hike, though miserable for everyone, had not been nearly as exhausting for the vast majority of the traveling dogs and wolves as it had been for the poor, bloated shepherd. Though that quiet bloodhound fellow didn't show his faces until late in the day - and neither the collie nor the shepherd showed up at all, though she didn't really expect to see the wide load again that day - he provided invaluable help in forming layered, slightly angled roofs on top of the dense rather than simply placing wide leaves over them. Despite arriving late in the day, the fact that he was able to form a much more water resilient roof for the structure proved to the she-wolf that she was correct in taking the effort in brining along the smarter, but less easily manipulated canines. The she-wolf didn't think it a coincidence, however, that only one of the odd trio showed up, and even he was rather late; in her experience, braniacs tended to vanish around the time that actual work was required.

As a result, after more than half of the long tropical day had passed, when the she-wolf "insisted" that they take the rest of the day off - some slackers were already starting to wander off on their own as it was - they had a complete shelter capable of fitting five, assuming they slept huddled together, as well as two more partially dug. It was a shame that their creators had not endowed them with opposable thumbs, for no one was capable of tying the kinds of knots required to lash sticks together and form a real slanted roof. A flat roof would undoubtedly leak, but at least that bright female collie had weaved the leaves together to at least direct the water to one side of the shelter, where perhaps a trench could be dug at some point. At any rate, a dug-in shelter offered far more protection against future storms and would, hopefully, bring forth a greater sense of community among the group.

The pregnant she-wolf was pleased as she surveyed her tiny little settlement. As primitive as it was, it was far and away past simply living exposed like wild animals back on the beach. Small groups were sleeping together with the ease of honest work written on their faces, dog and wolf together for virtually the first time since they found themselves on this strange island. What a difference teamwork and more than a little fear could do in such a short time. Though it would undoubtedly be a couple weeks before the shepherd dog lost enough weight for them to make the final trek to the other side of the island, the she-wolf could begin to plant the foundations of their collective future right here and right now.

Sharyenna, Alpha Female, decided that to win over the hearts and minds of her fellow canines would take a certain measure of subtlty. With a quick flick of her head in opposite directions, she sent her Betas on their ways to "talk" with isolated canines sleeping away their weariness in the jungle. She, the Alpha, would take on the small group taking relief from the heat in the cool earthen den of the newly dug shelter.

Inside, where the deeper soil provided relief against the prevalent heat under the canopy, the Alpha female observed four dogs panting and drowsing, eyes half lidded. Her wide, round belly rocked side to side as she managed the steep, crudely dug ramp. Ears perked as loose dirt slid down the slope. At the unmistakable sight of her, one asked, "What are we going to do?"

The speaker's eyes were searching, fearful, willing to hear and believe anything which would comfort him. The Alpha female smiled, "We're going to stay here for a while, then we are going to move on. We're going to etch out a new life for ourselves. One where we'll help each other survive instead of fighting each other. We won't have to be afraid anymore."

"But how will you-"

"Shhh..." interrupted the wolfess oh-so gently, "Call me Sharyenna, Mother Sharyenna, my son."

If there was any hesitation to follow the verbal command, given its strange nature in assigning spoken names, it was quickly belied by the warm smile and cheery confidence exuding from the pregnant wolf's visage. The dog repeated his question, "Sharyenna... Mother Sharyenna, how will you do it?"

She beamed and if possible, her smile became even wider and more inviting, the dogs facing her drowned in her eyes, hanging on her words. "It is simple. I will guide us all, knit us all together into one group who helps each other. I will be Mother to us all as well as the pups growing inside me."

There was no discord, no argument and no disagreement whatsoever. The dogs simply sat there and absorbed her words like sponges. Shayenna was proud of her good, mindful children already as she filled thier heads with their golden future.

Bathing was a taxing exercise for Einstein, but luckily for the morbidly obese shepherd dog, his friend Betsy did most of the work after he had hauled his great bulk into the cold and swiftly running water. The hard rocks were deeply uncomfortable against his soft flesh, but the water flowing down from the mountains heights without the benefit of the previous night's storm was reinvigorating in the stifling sauna conditions of the jungle floor. The water flushed the filth away from his excess of skin and betsy splashed water on his back where the water didn't quite reach. In the water, the oppressive sensation of weight was removed from the shepherd at least partly, and it was a gift to be able to pretend at least for a little while that his obesity was not the sole defining element of his life now.

In the water, Einstein was able to laugh and talk with Betsy like they used to. He splashed her and swam energetically besides her and for a time, everything seemed right. The water, however, really was quite cold and they had to depart soon after Einstein was free of mud and thoroughly drenched. It was when he had swam to the side of the stream and set all four paws on the rocky bottom of the stream that the realization hit him.

Einstein didn't know why it had never really occurred to him before that moment. Perhaps it was the sheer unreality of the situation; who could imagine an island where an addictive mushroom would cause its eater to grow to preposterous proportions? Whatever the reason, it was not until that moment that it hit him that he was going to have to learn how to live as an obese dog. And not just obese, startlingly gargantuan and barely able to support his own weight! Whatever hope had lingered in the back of his mind that he might suddenly wake and find the whole affair to be a lucid and horrifying nightmare or that the weight was just temporary or might reverse itself as quickly as it had come died as he felt the weight increase on his paws as he dragged himself out of the water. And the weight continued to increase until the muscles in his shoulders and haunches bulged and strained at the weight taxing them despite the fact that all the canine was trying to lift was his own wreck of a body.

He tottered forward a few steps before collapsing at the base of a wide trunked tree; his belly slapped very audibly as he let his legs give out under him, not being able to coordinate a more graceful repose. The neck fat bulged under the canine's chin as he sought to catch his breath. The border collie who had left the water before himself was out of sight, but Einstein couldn't blame her. Being around him constantly must be depressing.

But then, as if summoned by his questioning mind, the black and white canine appeared from behind a stand of tall, wide leafed shrubs. "Einny, I thought you were going to stay in the water a while longer. I sure am glad that you managed to get out of there by yourself." her smile was soft and knowing, but strangely not pitying. It was almost as if she understood he had "special needs" like blind dog or one with three legs rather than a self fed, obese hog of a dog.

Einstein managed a sarcastic laugh as he knew already that she did not care for his "moping." He said between pants, mouth agape, "I sure hope... I can get out... of a stream... by myself... or I'm in... trouble next... time it rains."

"Oh posh." said Betsy happily, "You'll float." and the she-devil had the audacity to wink at him, but Einstein took it in stride. He'd never known Betsy to dote on him like this in the past nor be so... friendly. They had ever been close business associates, friends by the virtue of their respective positions as the cream of the crop of the lab animals in New Zealand; all they had ever talked about before had been either scientific figures and theories or their different staffs of human caregivers or the odd snippets and speculations of human society they had been able to glean in their years of life in the lab. Now she was acting very peculiar, as if the problems he had brought on himself were her responsibility, but no, not just that. She was acting as if she wanted to really get close to him.

The thought was alien to Einstein. His brain immediately concluded it was some sort of Nightingale Syndrome. He was a bird with a broken wing and she wanted to fix him. The theory fit, so Einstein was able to move on with his thoughts, but in the back of his mind lingered the possibility that a relationship with a companion he had known since he was 4 years old could not be summed up so neatly with a textbook psychology example. Understanding and the diagnosis for Betsy's new behavior flashed through the shepherd's mind in a moment. As Betsy drew closer, he asked, "Where did you go that you would risk stranding me in an icy cold stream?"

At first her eyes widened, but then she saw his smile and soon reciprocated, "Oh, I was just eaves dropping on that she-wolf." Einstein's ears perked in attention, "She keeps going on and on about our future and how she's going to build us all into a nice little community, but apparently forgets to mention how exactly she's going to do anything that she's promising." She took hold of Einstein's eyes with her own, "I'm worried that some dogs are getting too caught up with her talk. And I really don't like how she keeps insisting everyone call her 'Mother Sharyenna' ... as if having a belly full of pups makes her better at making decisions."

"Well, mothers do tend to look out for the future of their offspring slightly better than the average person." pointed out the shepherd dog who had his own mixed feelings regarding the she-wolf.

"It just gives me the creeps, all this pomp and circumstance she's creating. It... it almost has a religious feel to it." Her eyes lost focus for a minute as if looking into her inner eye, but she came back and said, "The last thing we need is for everyone getting all superstitious. We have real problems like what the tigress is going to do when she finds out almost all of us have abandoned camp."

"Urgh..." groaned Einstein as he clenched his paws to his great, bulging middle. "And finding a real source of food." His belly erupted in a long churning growl that was even more painful than it sounded. "God, I'm so hungry." whined the big shepherd who even paled with the pangs; the gums exposed in his snarl were a pale pink.

Betsy looked to the ground at her side and sighed. "I'm hungry too, but I guess its worse for you, huh, Einny. I've been off Manna for almost five days now." She moved closer until her soft side was against his round swollen flank. She licked the side of his snout even as she could feel the vibrations emanating from the vast food processing machinery buried in the core of the obese shepherd. "Don't worry, it gets easier after you've been off the stuff for a while.

Einstein closed his eyes in pain, if he had had working sweat glands, his forehead would have been drenched by now. "I... I don't think I can take it. I need-"

"You don't need anything." snapped Betsy with a click of her teeth. "Luckily you've already made it 24 hours and it'll be until next morning at the soonest before you're tempted again. And who knows maybe the stuff won't even turn up. It didn't last night."

'But we were moving all last night.' thought the shepherd glumly, but he kept his snout closed for the moment. He just wanted to keep looking at the wide hopeful grin on Betsy's face so close to his own.

Einstein slept on the open ground that night despite Betsy's requests that he be allowed to sleep in the new shelter. Pragmatic as ever, however, Einstein could understand the reason why - he took up enough room for three dogs - despite the discomfort in sleeping at his size. As he allowed his breathing to slow, he'd have panicked visions of his massive weight pressing the life out of him as he lay on his side, back or belly. Whichever way he tried, there was still that sense of weight on top of him, thought admittedly, it was less intense than it had been that morning. It took a long time for him to sleep, but sleep he did for there was no long march ahead of him to shield him from what would surely be waiting in the morning. When he finally stopped stirring, he dreamt of an endless line of shiny, iridescent beetles marching into his open, salivating mouth; an army further distending his massive, round body, but at the same time eating him from the inside out even as he continued eating them.

The German Shepherd woke with a gasp and a racing heart. His long pink tongue rolled out of his mouth as he panted in the gloom under the canopy. He could hear birds flapping in the treetops and some of the early birdsong so it must have been morning despite the dimness under the boughs of the great trees all around. That was as far as the shepherd's mind got before his train of thought was hijacked by his long, powerful nose. That sweet, enticing aroma like brown sugar on the most succulent and savory red meat underlaid with an exotic spiciness the lardy canine had never known before arriving on the island: Manna. The smell overrode the signals in his brain, seemed to bypass his conscious mind altogether in activating his salivary glands, awakening his growling gut, and forming one powerful emotion: Desire.

The need burned in him like an inferno; to be without manna caused him physical pain. Any thoughts about reducing the size of his more than generous waistline were washed away in that instant his nose recognized that tantalizing and dominating odor. And he hadn't even seen them yet.

The noise from his grinding stomach echoing in the interior vastness of his king sized abdomen caused nearby birds to scatter. His nose snuffled rapidly seemingly unable to get enough of that captivating scent. His eyes dilated in his excitement and the physiological response of his addicted brain. However much he might regret it later, and however much he would hate himself for it, Einstein was ready to devour every last white, crunchy disk around him, even if it meant crawling on his heavy, bloated belly like a newborn pup. His wild eyes searched the ground about him for the white circles that he so desperately needed.

His fat laden heart literally skipped a beat when he could find no trace of any glorious Manna anywhere in his immediate vicinity.

"Looking for breakfast, Chow-hound?" said a voice.

Einstien turned and saw the she-wolf, she who had named herself Sharyenna, sitting plumply on the roots of one of the great trees which dominated this part of the jungle. However, he hardly gave her a second glance. It was the gleaming white pile at her feet which drew the shepherd's attention. "My Manna..." muttered the German Shepherd and a long string of saliva dripped from the side of his mouth.

"Yes, good job. Most of the ones I left on the beach are incapable of speech when in the throws of addiction." Said the she-wolf calmly. Her tail lightly brushed the pile next to her and caused a disk near the top to slide down an inch or two; Einstein's eyes followed the tiny movement.

The shepherd planted all four feet on the ground and pushed himself forward a few inches, never mind the abrasiveness of the ground on his soft tummy. Had he possessed the proper presence of mind, he might have tried standing, but of that he was incapable as all that filled his head was the need to get closer to the delicious mound near the she-wolf. ...But it was so far away with him only able to scoot mere inches along the ground at a time. "Give it to me... Please." The demand turned into a plea mid sentence and the fully grown shepherd dog whined like an unfledged pup.

Einstein was still groping along the ground feebly like a still-wet whelp when the she-wolf suddenly stood, her rounded middle jiggling with the motion. "You have to get a hold of yourself!" She growled and then suddenly surged forward.

She came so fast that even had the obese german shepherd not been in an preoccupied state of mind, he doubted he could have reacted in the slightest. She grabbed hold of him by the ample skin and fur dangling from his thick neck which was currently wider than his waist ought to have been. She twisted her head and really dug those long fangs that were gifted the unaltered ancestors of Einstein's breed into his soft, fatty neck meat. The stab of pain cut through the fog of his mind in a way that words alone could not have. Einstein groaned, but now, at least, his attention was on the she-wolf and not on the nearly glittering pile of white, crunchy disks; some dim part of him realized that this was a good thing.

Muscles spasmed under the dense layers of accumulated fat reactively as the shepherd flinched at the sudden attack, sending a huge ripple all the way down his barrel-like torso to the huge fatty pad which sat on top of his hips and devoured a portion of his bushy tail. His limbs flailed instinctively to ward her off, but with the adipose straddling his body and limiting his mobility, his efforts were utterly ineffectual, pathetic even despite the fact that the she-wolf was hardly in prime condition herself. Einstein was reminded in that moment of his preposterously excessive weight. He was helpless as he struggled with his grounded bulk, hardly even able to reach the she-wolf with either limb or fangs of his own to ward off her assault. He felt like a beached sea creature as he twisted and squirmed on the ground, his attempts to rise thwarted as easily as he might turn over a turtle. Also like a stranded whale, Einstein had to contend with not only his opponent, but his own massive bulk. He ran out of steam in hardly a minute while she simply stood over him and held him down; warm rivulets of his blood began to trickle down his neck from where her four fangs punctured the soft hide.

Einstein's voice changed from groans and growls to whimpers as he realized the futileness of his recalcitrance. Letting himself flop onto the soft damp soil of the jungle floor was a relief after all the expended effort. His heart was racing and he felt like he could hardly catch his breath despite the abundance of adrenaline flooding his system; an unpleasant mixture of exhaustion and heightened agitation that was fit to completely frazzle the shepherd's nerves. Nevertheless, Einstein knew he could do nothing against her, on the ground as he was, any advantage he might have had in weight was only added encumbrance pinning him to the floor. So he whined and did not resist her bite, laying back on the floor with his tail between his legs. "Please, I submit..." said Einstein, though his body language really made the words unnecessary. "I... I'll do anything you want..."

The she-wolf's eyes seemed to light up with an inner fire. Rather than placating her, his actions seemed to send her into a rage. She growled menacingly from the base of her throat, a primal sound that resonated within the marrow of the shepherd's bones. Einstein felt a trickle of something warm between his ham hock haunches. Einstein yelped as she bit down harder on the roll of fat she held between her teeth and then shook her head vigorously back and forth. Einstein could feel the skin and connective fat tissue tear as she opened up two deep gashes. And just as suddenly as she had came, she released him again, walking nonchalantly off to the side where she sat on a great, gnarled exposed root. She waited for Einstein to stop his screaming.

And scream he did. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced despite the wound hardly being applied to anything vital. Growing up in a lab, being mentored by civilized humans with limited contact with the other test animals hardly prepared one for the harsh reality of physical conflict. He was a dog of the mind, his concerns lay with the enlightened approaches to mathematical theory and the scientific process. His system was utterly shocked by the brutal nature of the damage to his own flesh. Einstein could neither flee nor fight, and not just because of his disability, his mind was frozen and could simply not move beyond the towering obstacle of the pain which stole his breath away and made him writhe on the bare soil in the dim light filtering down from the canopy above.

But it could not last forever and the she-wolf proved that she was at least as patient as she was cruel. Einstein was left panting and quivering on the ground as the bleeding from his neck slowed, leaving behind a dark stain on the ground as well as as red and matted fur on his lower neck and plump chest. The first thing that Einstein saw when he was able to focus on anything beyond the pain from what appeared to him as a savage wound was the Alpha Female. Instantly his mind seethed with anger at the injustice of the sudden attack and Einstein was determined to confront her. However, just as powerful was the fear which had initially paralyzed him and continued to hold him down as firmly as his excess 150 pounds. Her eyes, those steely, cold and distant eyes looked down on him, superior and Einstein knew that despite all the things he knew and the nimbleness of his mind, she was entirely justified in doing so. If annoying, Einstein was a quick learner, however. Placation had infuriated her and despite still having no idea as to the reason for the entirely unjustified attack, he knew he needed to try something else.

Venting his boiling rage, even ever so slightly, ranked first in priority over his possible responses, "Why the hell did you do that?" He asked after righting himself onto his belly - which required a few failed attempts of rocking his huge frame and kicking his legs into the air. He would have raised his head higher if the movement hadn't agitated the gashes to his dangling neck fat.

The grey furred bitch was annoyingly aloof after the incident, looking off into the jungle as if nothing more interesting had happened than a pat on the back. "I was getting your attention..." She turned her dead glare back to him and all of a sudden Einstein's legs were unsteady under him once again almost causing him to wilt and roll back onto his side at the mere sight of those cold, glassy eyes. "... It worked didn't it?"

Einstein slouched, but didn't hang his head because it hurt his neck. He was upset at the vicious tactics she had used, but he had to admit that she had taken his mind entirely off that gleaming pile of pure white deliciousness still sitting beside a far tree away from the she-wolf. Just thinking about it, however, set his belly to rumbling again inside him and only the desire to avoid being attacked again enabled him to not simply forget about the pushy she-wolf and get on with his muchly desired gorge.

He made his throat to form the words rather than risk staring any longer at the devious pile of collected Manna. He had to take a couple deep breaths before he started, however; it was more difficult that he thought it would be. "That's... sure one fucked up way of doing it." Einstein wasn't normally one prone to cursing, but saying the forbidden word felt good, so he did it again, "I'm fucking bleeding here!"

"A terrible necessity, but believe me when I say that if there were any alternative, I wouldn't have done it."

Einstein didn't believe it for a second. Those eyes of hers were a predator's eyes. The German Shepherd was sure that liked exercising some of her primal instincts here on an island where there was no prey and all too many human civilities lingering on what were at their core, wild animals. But he didn't contradict her. His eyes flicked again to the pile of Manna; he could smell their delicious alien odor over the metallic stink of his own blood.

The Alpha Female caught the glance and an angry growl rose once more in her throat as she sprang to her feet. Einstein's head lowered almost to the ground as he fixed his eyes straight on her. The anger seemed to leech out of him into a puddle on the floor under him. She remained standing and took a step closer towards him. Einstein suddenly didn't feel so brave anymore and regretted deeply his exclamations.

The she-wolf, the would-be ruler in charge of those who were fleeing the tyranny of the tigress back on the beach sighed and snorted in disgust. "You might think yourself superior in your intellect, dog, but you're just a spineless jellyfish under all that... jelly." She smirked at her pun; it was ugly on her savage, bloodstained face. She turned her profile towards Einstein and he took the liberty to straighten up a bit. As she spoke, she looked off into the woods, as if regarding the green inferno all around, including the pile of Manna which she had stolen from Einstein. "You do know why I brought you alone out of all the other behemoths I left on the beach right?"

At first, Einstein thought it was a rhetorical question, but as the seconds mounted, he forced himself to speak, although his throat had clamped almost painfully tight. "Obviously it's because you find me so attractive." It was hard to say who was stunned more by the words, Sharyenna, or Einstein himself.

The corner of her mouth lifted, showing the sharpened pre-molars which had left over a dozen scratches alongside the two gaping wounds in the shepherd's neck. "Don't get snarky with me, dog." She used the word again as if it were an insult. "All that blubber will do little to protect you."

Einstein swallowed the last of his rebelliousness. Now was not the time for a smart tongue. "I... understand... Sharyenna." Her wroth seemed to diminish slightly at the use of her declared name. Einstein relaxed a little and found it easier to breath. At last his fat laden heart began to slow its reckless pumping. "I... er... have certain skills that others don't posses." said Einstein trying not to be overly prideful despite the fact that such had been his normal state for the majority of his life.

"Good." said the she-wolf. She turned those predator's eyes back on Einstein and he wished she would have just continued looking out into the forest. "And is your brain working well enough to follow the implications of that statement?"

It really wasn't that hard to think. Einstein was used to teasing out answers from abstract problems. That was his strength. He didn't have the vast factual database that Betsy possessed nor the analytical tools of Bruce, but he had been trained in something much harder: problem solving. Despite the pain, despite the stink of his blood, and despite the ever present call of the Manna just a stone throws away from him, the answer came to him in the span of a few deep breaths. His heart had slowed almost to its normal pace by the time he answered, "I... need to make use of my skills, otherwise I won't be of use any longer."

"And..." The Alpha Female prodded.

"...And..." The german shepherd swallowed again, all of a sudden his mouth went terribly dry as the thoughts ran through his head like leaping rabbits. "You'll leave me behind like the others."

"Exactly." said the she-wolf who then thankfully turned her cold gaze away from him once more. "I'm certainly not going to pull around dead weight if you have nothing to offer me in return... And keep in mind that you have an awful lot of dead weight."

Einstein grimaced, feeling almost as down as he had when he had awoken to his current state the previous morning. He turned his forepaws inward a little and felt the heavy weight of his plump brisket against his pads; they cringed a little in disgust. When he looked up, suddenly the grey and brown she-wolf was close, right in front of him in fact. Einstein flinched and turned his head away, fearing another attack. His paws pushed against the soil in the old, effortless way he used to be able to rise. He was far too heavy to do this, however, without tediously sitting up and then staggering to his feet by leaning forwards and using his upper body mass to lever up his heavy midsection and hindquarters. Instead of fangs, however, a paw met his snout and turned his head gently back around.

For the first instant, he didn't recognize here. There was a different wolf here, with softer features and wide brown eyes like his own. Then Sharyenna spoke, "You know that I am doing this to help you right?"

The ache in his thick neck begged to differ, but Einstein bit down on the smart remark waiting in his throat.

"Answer me this before you say anything else. Do you think that anything I could have said would have kept you from crawling towards and then eating that entire pile of Manna? Is it possible that biting you was the only way to get your mind off those foul disks? Think about it. Your still bleeding and yet I can see the way your eyes keep turning to that pile."

The words cut into his mind like a knife, piercing his mental defenses. The words circulated through his consciousness like a broken record. The tune resonated within him because he knew immeditately that everything she had said was true. He nodded slowly and she continued.

"You would have gone to that pile before even addressing your wound. Even if eating all those disks meant that you would later be unable to rinse those cuts or even care for yourself. You know this is true."

Einstein said nothing. It was indeed true.

The she-wolf got up - rather heavily - and walked a fair distance away, almost passing behind a nearby truck and out of sight. "And if I left now, what do you think would happen? Tell me now. I want to hear it."

That look in her eyes was back, not hostile this time, but deadly serious. Einstein was convinced that if he didn't answer her now, she would truly leave him there to his own devices. His eyes turned again to that savory pile of disks. The way his mouth watered, the immediate hormonal response he received by laying his eyes on it and giving the pile his full attention with both sight and smell. He couldn't think of a better way to deal with the pain of his neck than scarfing down a dozen or two of those crunchy flavor changing disks out of the largish pile of perhaps 180 pieces. But he knew he would never stop at that. He wouldn't be able to, nor would he want to. "I... I..." Einstein turned his eyes back to the wolfess and received the unspoken directive to continue, "I wouldn't be able to stop myself. I'd eat every last one of those disks."

Shayenna moved back a little out from behind the cover of the tree trunk. "Good. I'm glad that you realize the truth. Your doing better than I expected."

Einstein frowned, a human expression that was translated oddly onto his dog face. "Expected..." he repeated blandly, "So you mean to say that you had this all planned out?"

"Of course," the wolf freely admitted, "You can't possibly imagine that I could have allowed you to get anymore obese." She took a moment to look at his wide, round frame critically and made sure that he saw her looking at him that way. "You are at the edge. I can do nothing for you once you're unable to walk on your own. As it is, you've already forced me to stall our migration to the north side of the island much closer to our old home than I would have liked." She gave him a sidelong glance and spoke with deadly seriousness, "And don't expect any of us to stick around if that bloated striped feline happens to find us here. I doubt she will, but I will not wait around and sacrifice all of us if you are unable to keep up." Her face softened a bit, "I don't mean to be brutal, but that is the truth of the situation."

Einstein thought that being brutal came rather naturally to her, but said nothing. His mind was whirling with too many other thoughts to be glib.

She came back and sat in front of the still prone shepherd. "I do promise to do everything I can to ensure you succeed, however. I am simply making you aware of the consequences should you fail."

Einstein, despite knowing his addiction was adversely affecting his life, did not like being spoken to in such a manner. Of course he knew what the consequences were! He had thought of little else the past week ever since his mobility had started its rapid decline. He had to rebut her in some small way; she was making it seem that he was a lost cause and that the only way out was through her. The likeness of her version of reality made it difficult to completely resist her spin on the situation, however. "My friends would not abandon me." he said, and then added, "And without the three of us, you'd lose all of the higher education available on the island."

The she-wolf frowned at his rebuttal, however slight. Perhaps she was not used to her subjects talking back. "I think you overestimate the value of your so-called 'higher education' in a survival situation such as this. Your fancy learning certainly did not stop me from tearing open your neck." Einstein's front teeth clacked together almost audibly. "And besides, would you really ask that of your friends? Should you eat yourself so big that you can no longer move; should that thrice damned tiger return to place us all once again under her heavy paw, would you really ask your friends to remain behind and forsake what might be in their own best interest simply to look after you for no other reason than that you couldn't stop shoving Manna into your fat face?"

Her tone was sharp, but her words ripped right through Einstein, cutting to the bone. He could see it in his mind all too clearly. Himself an immobile lump, Betsy and Bruce remaining behind while the others continue their trek northward. Then would follow the degrading nursemaiding, water having to be dragged to him on waxy leaves, his bottom having to be splashed and cleaned and his leavings dragged away. He could beg them to leave him, but they wouldn't, and he wouldn't truly want them even if he had the capacity to force them to go. Whatever chance of finding real food would be gone, there would be only more Manna which would make him even more dependent as his torso grew and grew. And eventually Bruce and Betsy would have to eat the Manna also. What would then happen when they were unable to care for themselves let alone him? It was a nightmare scenario, but it had the dangerous taint of truth and Einstein knew just how easily it could come to be. A tear fell out of his right eye and down the side of his snout, quickly followed by another. His left eye was almost too watery to see out of. "No." He said simply, "I don't want that." He was tired, mentally now as well was physically. He adrenaline was spent and he was tired of resisting.

Einstein thought he saw a smile creep onto the she-wolf's chubby face, but it was gone before he was sure. "Good. I am relieved that you still care about your friends. What remains to be proven is if you care about them more than your addiction."

Of course he did! Einstein thought, but he said nothing, the fight had gone out of him, he just wanted the she-wolf to get on with what she came here to do.

"Einstein." His eyes came up as she used his name for the first time; he wasn't sure if he liked her calling him by his name, "I want you to succeed, I really do and I want you to know that what I ask of you, I ask for your own good. I think you've now realized you have a problem and that it is harmful not only to you, but your friends as well. Now you need to start doing something about it." She gestured to the white pile by the tree with her nose. "I want you to go over there and bury every single one of those disks."

Einstein's paws shook as he looked at the pile. He didn't want to go anywhere near it. He knew what would happen if he did. His mind raced desperately, "I thought the idea was to keep me away from Manna."

"No." she said flatly. "That accomplishes nothing. Especially since it is impossible to keep you away from something which appears miraculously every morning. No, you will do as I have instructed everyone else to do. You will bury the Manna."

Einstein grimaced even as his belly churned inside him, eager to get closer to the odiferous food source. He couldn't trust himself, not near so much delicious, yet devious food. He fumbled, "Why don't you bury the pile? You could do it a lot more easily than I could!"

Sharyenna's face remained placid despite Einstein's increasingly frantic tone. "This is your addiction. You must conquer it alone. I can not do this for you."

Einstein's heart was beating too quickly again. His elongated and more flexible pads clenched and unclenched. He just wanted to leave. He needing a long cold drink.

Sharyenna did not wait through his hesitation. She got up and went back to the far tree. "I've now told you what to do if you really want to change. I've no more words for you. I'll leave you to your decision."

As she turned to go, Einstein was terrified that she would leave him... leave him with himself. "Wait!" he barked. She turned her head, but for once, he had no more words to follow. He could only look at her with plea in his eyes.

She sighed and shook her head. "You must do this and do it alone. I will know if you have not buried the pile and believe me when I say that everyone will know if you cheat. Every one of those disks you slip is another pound you will have to wear on your body. Just how many more of those things do you think you can take? I wish you well."

And with that she was gone. The last thing Einstein saw was the swish of her tail, grey on top and white underneath. And then he was alone. His eyes turned to the pile of round white disks which seemed to call to a barren and parched part of his soul, offering refreshment at only the greatest of costs. Einstein walked himself up on his forelegs and leaned forward to get heavily to his four stiff paws. His neck sluggishly dripped thick, dark blood from the lowest point of his fatty protruding chest. Slowly, he waddled towards the pile of Manna. This morning it smelled strongly of roast beef, seasoned with onions and garlic and carrots. He inhaled deeply and his paws moved a bit faster...

"We are lucky that that we didn't dig any closer to the stream." Betsy remarked to the surrounding canines as she inspected the interior of the crude shelter which had been hollowed out the previous day. Her nose twitched as she detected the excessive moisture in the soil which betrayed the closeness of the ground water. Everything about how this shelter had been prepared reeked of haste and inexpertness; the small statured - but now far from scrawny, unfortunately - border collie was sure that she could have done a much better job if she hadn't been away with Einstein while it was being constructed. But then Einstein did really need, now more than ever.

Her feet had begun moving towards the entrance of the shelter which was really just a pit with leaves covering it when the question came. "Why exactly is is a good thing that we didn't build it any closer to the stream?" Betsy turned back, her mind fumbling; her thoughts had already skipped ahead of this lecture to something far more important in her view. She looked at the speaker who turned out to be some sort of mix between a labrador and... something else; his fur was mostly brown with splashes of white on his throat and chest. Betsy wasn't the best at identifying breeds.

"Well... you can tell that the ground water is too close to the surface." She said because she couldn't remember the dog's name; come to think of it, she wasn't particularly good with names either. "The next time it rains heavily, this whole place is going to fill with mud. It might even collapse altogether."

The brownish dog who had spoken looked uneasily at the spotted female to his side and many of the others who crowded the small room looked uncomfortably at the floor. Betsy couldn't understand their unease. She was simply stating a fact, would they rather they remain ignorant and continue sleeping in uncomfortable and unsafe conditions? She railed against the whole idea. This was a mild tropical island! The was hardly any need for shelter except for during storms. A much more sensible idea would have been to construct emergency shelters in the hills and simply sleep on the ground in the jungle much as they had been doing since landing ashore. But then the fools had already been digging their hearts away at the soft jungle loam when she and Bruce had left their unfortunately mobility-challenged partner to see what the rest of the canines were up to. But then she was getting ahead of herself again. There was the much more immediate problem of simply surviving on the island with its utter lack of foodstuffs which were not detrimental to one's wellbeing.

She was suddenly seized with worry about Einstein - despite the fact that the sky was hardly light out and the fact that Einstein was rarely prone to awakening before the sun started filtering down through the canopy nowadays - and was eager to be off out of the pit she had been wearily conned into sleeping in late last night.

"But Sharyenna herself told us to dig here." said the brown dog, calling Betsy's attention back to the here and now; she hated that and couldn't understand how others' thinking could remain so stagnant all the time.

"Well then this 'Sharyenna' was wrong. And really it's not even necessary to have these dens in the first place." said Betsy dismissively. She'd heard that the wolfess had chosen a real name for herself, as if that set her apart from others. Betsy herself thought the name overly ostentatious. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, however, the atmosphere in the tiny earthen room changed... becoming darker.

The hackles on the brownish dog rose and he wasn't the only one. He said, "How dare you question Sharyenna's judgement! She's done more for us than anyone else."

"She took us away from the tigress!" another voice shouted.

Betsy was baffled. When had the discussion turned to a question of the she-wolf's leadership. Had she zoned out again? "Look, I didn't mean any insult, but digging these dens here is a bad idea. When it rains again..."

The brown dog, who Betsy suddenly noticed was much larger than herself, spoke over her, "If Sharyenna says that this is a good spot for digging dens, then its a good spot. I won't listen to anyone contradicting her."

Betsy sighed frustratedly. "If you just look at the evidence, you can smell the water..."

The brown dog let out a fierce growl and strutted forward. Other dogs followed close behind him in his wake. "I don't want to hear anymore of your excuses, science freak."

"Science freak...?" The words tumbled from her shocked mouth. Stunned more at the [nonsensicality] of the insult than the actual insult itself. That was when the bigger dog lunged. Betsy ducked,sheerly by instinct, as teeth lashed by her, just overhead; it helped that he wasn't exactly moving at his fastest, not with all the extra weight around his middle. Of course, Betsy herself wasn't in the best of shape; nobody was as far as she knew. However, the brown dog's assault was only the first hiss of steam in a room ready to boil over. Emboldened, others in the tiny den came with their own teeth, catching Betsy on the shoulder, her plump flanks, but especially the base of her tail. Bites to that spot were a canine equivelant to a mark of shame, symbolizing expulsion from the group. Luckily symbolism was all it was, these dogs had not the power to send her out of the group by themselves. Also fortunate was the fact that Betsy's tail head had developed into a thick, fatty pad. The bites still hurt... a lot - Betsy was not in any form a rough houser by nature - but at least they weren't hitting anything vital.

It took a surprisingly long time to escape the den. In the midst of the dervish of fur and fangs, it seemed that she had been thrown into the bottom of a pit. She could not find the exit and the other dogs' teeth kept finding her more and more, pinching her rump and just as often breaking the skin in other places. The collie would have liked to say that she gave as good as she got, that she fought the good fight, but that was certainly not the case. She was running for her life! She wasn't a fighter and by the time that she raced up the ramp and into the sunlight, the dogs in the den were laughing at her. She'd never been so scared, nor so humiliated in her life.

Alone in the forest, Betsy's plump body quaked as she struggled to catch her breath. She was uncomfortable and felt almost unbearably filthy with the dirt and blood - all of it hers - matting her fine, usually billowing coat. Tears streamed down her muzzle leaving white tracks down one side and black on the other. However, they were not caused by sorrow, but rather rage. Hot anger boiled inside her, so much it made her shake with it. 'The fools! Those Imbeciles!' she ranted silently, _'They ask for my help and this is how they treat me?!' _ She couldn't believe how events had so swiftly turned, being run out like nothing so much as a loathsome alley cat. But more, she couldn't understand it.

She replayed the conversation in her mind. The smell of ground water, the risk of flooding, and then the name: Sharyenna. The She-wolf. Why would those dogs have been so protective of her? To not even allow what they perceived as an insult to her... What on Earth was going on. What had the wolfess been saying to those hounds? What had she been saying about Betsy herself? This was a puzzle which was not unraveling itself neatly, but one thing was clear. The she-wolf was sitting in the middle of this like a spider on a web. 'I'll have to remember to be more careful in the future.' She resolved, 'Time has come to get my head out of the clouds and pay more attention to what's going on. Who knows what could happen the next time...' But the moment of strength and resolve could not last indefinitely, and Betsy knew that one did not change their nature on a whim. She sighed and got up, ignoring the aches all over her body. She made herself a resolution she knew she could keep: to jump in the stream and wash all the filth off of her.

As she was about to set off, however, she heard the soft patter of paw steps further out in the forest. Betsy froze stock-still as the sound grew louder. Whoever it was, it was heading directly towards her. 'I should run.' she thought but she couldn't. Her muscles were locked as if with seizure. 'Some combination of exhaustion and the battering I just received no doubt.' thought Betsy harshly, her mind always analyzing the situation. 'but just as likely it is phycological in nature.' However, knowing what the problem was and having read of such things happening to victims of trauma and finding a course of action were two entirely separate things. And the foot steps and rustling of leaves only grew louder.Like a deer caught in the alien glow of headlights, Betsy was held still and unable to help herself. Unable to escape another beating... or perhaps worse.

The leaves of a tall fern rustled and a large form appeared. Betsy flinched in anticipation before the familiar scent found its way into her sensitive nostrils. "Bruce!" she cried and at once rushed over to the dark brown bloodhound, paralysis forgotten. "I'm so glad it is you." Somehow tears once again found their way into her eyes.

"Betsy. What on Earth has happened to you? You look a wreck." said the bloodhound as sat down on his haunches and sheltered the smaller collie under his thick neck.

Before she knew what she was doing, Betsy was sobbing against Bruce's bulk, the whole story bubbling out of her at nearly hysterical speed. Bruce just sat and listened the whole time, not saying a word but really listening as he was wont. She cried until she spent herself against the bloodhound's softened chest and she was grateful for his presence and his silent understanding. At the end of it, Betsy felt drained and relieved at the same time.

Bruce finally heaved a deep sigh and then spoke in his deep, bloodhound voice, "I was afraid something like this might happen." Moments passed that felt like minutes to Betsy before he elaborated, "I've been keeping track of how much power Sharyenna has been amassing within the group. You should be more careful about what you say in front of the others from now on."

"Don't call her that." said Betsy suddenly.

"Who?" asked the bloodhound as his long dark ears raised, "The she-wolf?"

"Yes. Just don't call her that name." Betsy shut her eyes and leaned against Bruce's well padded flank. She couldn't couldn't exactly say why, but she decided in that moment that the she-wolf's self declared name no longer existed to her. It was a small form of defiance, petty even, but it was a start.

Bruce nodded grimly as he supported Betsy. "She's gone from the ground in this, Betsy. And she's been very thorough."

"What do you mean?"

"Every single canine in our little group either the She-wolf or one of her betas has hand-picked; including us by the way. She's been playing off their fear, making them believe that only she can pull us all through this."

"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed Betsy, she couldn't help herself, "She doesn't understand the situation any better than any of us."

"Well, that's not the way most dogs see things now, Bets." Bruce gave the heavy border collie a sidelong look, "And maybe she does understand the situation better. Look where she is and where we are. She understands enough to gather power for herself."

"Oh, I don't have time for your sideways talk, Bruce! We need to do something about this."

The larger bloodhound brought his head down until the whiskers on his chin were brushing the top of her head. "And what exactly do you propose we do?"

Betsy felt like she was about to burst, "I don't know! We have to fight this somehow. We can't let her win like this. Damn! I wish I'd realized what was happening sooner..."

The collie felt like she might start sobbing again, but Bruce put one of his large paws on her shoulder. "It was all very sudden, the way she seized power. I think she's been planning something like this for a long time."

"Maybe from the start." Betsy concurred.

"By the time I realized the extent of her influence myself, it was already too late." admitted Bruce.

"But why didn't you say anything?"

"Bruce shrugged. "There was nothing to be done. I did not feel the need to burden either you or Einstein... though perhaps I should have." he added glancing significantly at Betsy's bruises.

Einstein. The name reminded her. Where was he, that great, huggable shepherd dog? The last time she'd seen him, he was with...

"Shit!" exclaimed Betsy as she scrambled to her feet.

"What?" asked a puzzled Bruce.

"I completely forgot about Einstein!"

"I'm sure he'll be..." started Bruce, but Betsy was already trotting away. The collie couldn't believe she had forgotten Einny. Goodness only knew what that Alpha Bitch was doing to him.

Bruce called out again after her as she turned around the trunk of a tree, "Maybe you should wash up first!"

The black and white patched collie emerged from behind the tree and sped off in the other direction. Then she was gone.

It seemed like hours since he'd started...

Einstein really didn't know how long he'd spent digging. The sun was fully out now somewhere above the canopy, but it was still nearly impossible to tell the time though Einstein had started before dawn. His breaths came in ragged gasps and always he was painfully aware of the extra weight on chest. But he'd just kept his paws moving. Lying on the ground in front of his hole, belly spread out to the sides like a stick of melting butter, the shepherd dog clawed at the dirt with his paws. Normally, he would have stood and sent the soil flying backward between his hind-legs, but Einstein simply couldn't stand and dig at the same time. He'd tried at first, but his tiny center of gravity inevitably defeated him and he'd stumble. Once he'd fallen painfully on his fat engorged flank with the force of his 200 lbs; he did not want to repeat the experience. Anyway, even for the few seconds he was able to maintain his balance, most of the dirt he pulled up bounced off his low hanging brisket and back into the hole.

So he laid at the side of the hole and ground away until it was full of loose soil. Depending on exactly how exhausted he was at the moment, he might try standing and spasmodically tossing away dirt with both forepaws in a motion resembling that of an inchworm (good to go). Or he might try getting up and moving to a new position around the rim of the hole (feeling alright). Or he might just sit there and slowly nose out the dirt with his snout (dead to the world). It all would have been so much easier if his legs could have bent like a human's (thumbs would have been nice too...), But alas, he lacked that flexibility in his forelegs.

Einstein took constant breaks between digging, which obviously was necessary, but were disdained anyway by the morbidly obese canine. This was because while he rested, there was nothing to distract him from the reality of what he was doing. When the scent of Manna filled the shepherd's nostrils, it seemed that only the plain inertia of his grossly expanded body stopped him from getting up and fulfilling his real desire.

His forelegs burned and ached with cramps and he couldn't ever seem to quite catch his breath. His heart was racing and the big dog would lurch slightly on the occasions that it decided to skip a beat. A mouthful of crunchy, flakey disks seemed more and more what he needed to make the pain stop.

Finally the hole was as deep as he could reach with his forepaws. It was wide enough around to admit his helgs as well as his head. Sloppy piles of dark earth stood all around it, but Einstein didn't care; it would soon be filled in anyways.

The morbidly obese canine rolled slowly onto his wide back and stared up into the canopy as his broad, fatty chest and belly heaved with his pants. It was very easy to lay on his back now and with all the extra padding, it didn't bother his spine in the slightest. Being on one's back was not a position a dog usually cared for - since it represented complete submission - but to Einstein, however, it was fairly comfortable and he could breathe a little easier. Humans, he recalled, rested on their backs all the time... He was dawdling he knew. As difficult as digging as simple hole at his size had been, the real challenge was looming before him, as inescapable as quicksand drawing him down. Einstein had not, in fact, dug the hole adjacent to the pile of gleaming white Manna crisps. Indeed, it was on the opposite side of the tiny hollow in which he'd spent the night. The reason was simple: Einstein could not bear to be any closer to them.

Even at a glance, the pile swelled into a mountainous alter in his eyes, calling to him, begging him to let himself have some small pleasure for all his trouble. 'Surely one or two from the pile would be fine.' Einstein's brain offered, 'The pile would not be diminished and none would be the wiser. After all, Sharyenna is only looking for if I buried the pile at all. I deserve a reward for-"

'No!' Einstein forcefully derailed that train of thought as he clenched his eyes shut. It was too tempting, thinking like that. The She-wolf was only trying to help him, he knew - even if her methods were rather brutal; though on the other hand, she was a wolf. This was not some trivial task she'd assigned him - she could have completed as much herself in five minutes - this was a ritual. Einstein had to face his addiction and overcome it.

He flopped his head back until the crown of his skull rest on the earth under him. "But it's so hard..." he muttered to himself. Opening his eyes, he saw the green airy landscape of the canopy ahead of him, almost as if he were standing on a high hill and looking out at a foreign wilderness. Creatures lived and died up there - he knew from books and the television - without ever touching the ground... though perhaps not on this particular godless island. A colorful bird, all reds and blues with a splash of violet plumage on its chest came briefly into view and disappeared back into the branches with a shrill call. Its fellows answered in every direction and Einstein became aware of other bird calls as well. It was a veritable din, it had simply been forgotten as he'd accustomed himself to life on the island. 'Why birds?' thought the very rotund shepherd dog, 'Why nothing but birds high in the trees?' If the jungle answered, Einstein couldn't understand it.

When he could no longer stand lying on his back, Einstein knew it was time. Laboriously, he rolled over onto his belly. Like a jar half full of molasses, he turned slowly, his bulk both getting in the way and keeping his momentum forward. Einstein was starting to get used to the deformation of his body. Against the ground, his torso always flattened out, no matter if he was on his side, back or tummy. It felt strangely stable, that extra bulk spreading out and holding him down. The sensation was similar to lying in sand, except it was his skin and bulk conforming to the shape of the ground and not the other way around. Einstein was more aware of the features of the terrain under him - the thickness of the grass, the stalk of a fern, the presence of even the smallest pebbles - than ever before. 'Small consolation.' huffed Einstein as he struggled to his feet, muscles aching and weary for all the exercise earlier. All this weight had cost him in return for this new perspective was his mobility and, in turn, his independence. Einstein would have traded one of his legs to be trim and muscular again. However a small part of him wondered if he would have ever stopped to look at the forest before or to notice a single butterfly were he able to move about his business freely. Stopping to look at the world... was that such a bad thing?

Einstein shook his head to clear the conflicting thoughts from his mind. He needed absolute concentration now if he was going to succeed. but when he finally found his feet and turned to face the tormenting heap of Manna, he discovered that his challenge had developed a new complication.

Betsy sat beside the huge pile of Manna and watch Einstein labour to his feet. She was downwind of him and decided to let him see her when he turned. 'Such a big pile!' thought the collie. 'Whatever is causing this must favor those already addicted to the stuff. That's at least twice as much as I found this morning.'

It took Einstein a long time to get going, especially since after a few false starts he paused to rest for a few moments before trying again. It was painful seeing him so debilitated... yet, at the same time she couldn't keep her eyes off him and his rippling body. the sight of Einstein was fascinating in a way that he had never been before and Betsy couldn't quite place the reason why. Of course his physical change was obvious, but Betsy just didn't know why she never got tired of looking at him nowadays. Perhaps it was some sort of horrid fascination of looking at all the pain and trouble her old colleague was going through now, but betsy didn't think that was the case. Watching Einstein... felt somehow right.

He froze when he saw her looking at him. Despite watching his every move, she was somehow caught off guard by his stare. She had to speak first, so she blurted, "Hi Einny!"

"Um... Hi Betsy." He shyly turned his snout away. "Um... Were you... uh, watching me?"

Betsy burst out in nervous laughter that was met by Einstein's blank stare. "Uh... Don't be silly, Einny." She said after she'd recovered. Lord, if only my heart weren't beating so fast! "What have you been doing this morning?" she asked, intent on changing the topic, but her mouth kept on going. "I'm so sorry about not being here earlier. I should have stayed with you last night, but I got talked into staying in one of those new dens they build and this morning I was just talking about the ground water seeping in and they chased me away and it was terrible." The terror she had experienced that morning seemed to come back in a flash and instantly tears were once again washing down her snout. 'I thought I was done with this!' she thought miserably as the story poured out of her at a breakneck pace.

Einstein waddled up to her, but she noticed how his eyes drifted more than once to the white pile beside her. Standing next to her, he finally noticed Betsy's ruffled hair poking out at odd angles on her rump and shoulders as well as the air of blood about her from her still fresh wounds.

"Jesus, Bets!" Exclaimed Einstein, huffing for the short trip up to her before plopping his expansive backside onto the ground with an audible thud. "What's... happened to you? Slow down... a bit and... tell me what happened."

This was all wrong. She had come here to make sure Einstein was all right, not to be comforted about some foolish incident. Betsy took a deep breath to steady herself. "I... I'll tell you about it later." She said, looking at the shepherd dog's bog pigeon chest rising and falling in front of her. Einstein looked unconvinced so she changed the subject, "Really, I've got it under control now. Hey, what've you been doing? What's that hole over there?"

Einstein seemed like he might have pressed the issue more, but when she mentioned the hole, he immediately went on the defensive.

Leaning back and putting a dirt stained paw behind his head - Betsy could not help but notice the way his king-sized gut still did not part from the ground - he said, "Oh... that's just a little project. Sharyenna wants us all to start burying our Manna. It seems sensible and it only makes sense that I do my own share..." The shepherd's eyes darted between the ground, the canopy above them and back to the plump border collie in front of him. Cracking a nervous grin, he said, "Got to pull my own weight after all; heh." He gave a weak laugh and slapped the side of his prodigious paunch with his paw as he lowered it.

Betsy wasn't fooled, something about this really bothered Einstein, but she couldn't immediately answer because the sight of his jiggling belly distracted her. "Einstein, you shouldn't have to... I mean, it's probably too hard for..." She couldn't bring herself to say the words to his face.

"It's alright." Betsy could tell it wasn't alright. The shepherd continued, "I managed. Sharyenna herself said she's going to help whip me back into shape."

'Sharyenna! That was the second time he'd mentioned that vile bitch's name.' Betsy realized. 'Was that wolf tangling herself in this too?' Betsy felt violated that the the-wolf would take charge of her best friend like this, but also, there were stirrings of violent envy at the way Einstein spoke her name. She said aloud, "Einny... I don't think it's a good idea to be taking advice from the she-wolf. She can't be trusted."

Einstein cocked his head and looked at her quizzically. "I don't see why not..." Betsy was about to reply with a torrent of words, but he turned his snout away and looked into the forest. When he spoke, Betsy could tell it was difficult for him. "Bets... Betsy. I know you mean well, but you have to understand..." His nose fell and the big shepherd dog heaved a sigh, "I can't keep keep going as I have before. The she-wolf told me that I am at a crossroads and she's right. Bets... I can hardly walk anymore; I'm so heavy. You don't know what it feels like. I get out of breath just standing up and my heart beats too fast all the time."

Einstein gave the pile of Manna disks sitting besides the heavyset border collie a long, hard look. "If she hadn't stopped me this morning, I would have eaten all of that. If I had, by this evening, I'd probably be too big to get up at all." Betsy felt a stab of pain to her heart as he said this. "I owe Sharyenna not only for this morning, but for bringing me along in the first place. But more than that, I owe myself better than how I've been treating my body lately. I'm sure that she has selfish motives in helping me," Einstein's shoulders rippled with another heavy sigh and then he looked her straight in the eyes. "But I don't care. Sharyenna has promised to get me back into working shape and I believe her." He broke eye contact again and looked at the ground. "If I get any fatter, I'm useless to everyone."

Einstein had just laid open his heart to her, she knew. She had had no idea how much pain he was in from being so large. It was a shock, though she shouldn't have been surprised really. It was probably because she'd gotten used to picturing Einstein at his super obese size; it had become normal for her and by extension, somehow she had thought that it was normal for him as well.

"Don't say that." Said Betsy, and she meant more than the big shepherd's final statement. "You're not useless and you never will be as long as you have your clever brain."

Einstein laughed harshly. "Apparently not clever enough to avoid getting this." The German Shepherd proceeded to grasp his belly on both sides with his forepaws. It's breadth was amazing to behold, protruding as far out as his deep, fatty chest. More impressive, however, was its width. Fluffy, tan fur spread in a veritable sea left to right almost further than he could reach with his paws. From the broad rolls overflowing each thigh to the ground and even pushing up at his fat congested chest, his belly was a monolith devouring simply enormous volumes where there should have been only negative space. Betsy struggled to not stare longer than appropriate. Einstein seemed a bit thrown off that his presentation hadn't had quite the desired effect.

"Anyways, I can't keep doing nothing, Bets. It's come down to the line for me. Sharyenna is the only one who can help me."

Oh, how desperately Betsy wanted to tell him that she could help him! But now wasn't the time. At the moment, he was full of conviction in what he thought was his only option. She asked instead, "What has she asked you to do?"

"I already told you, I just have to bury me... Manna."

He looked a little too long at the pile and suddenly Betsy thought she knew what the real situation here was. She would need to draw the reluctant shepherd out of his shell a little more though. "That's not just it, Einny. Something's bothering you about all this." She said.

"I... It..." Einstein sighed and shrugged, staring deeply at the Manna. She could feel vibes of pain and pent-up frustration coming off of him like heat. He wanted that Manna so badly, it hurt.

She put a paw against him and he turned to look at her. "It's alright. It's an addiction, a simply physiological response. It's not going to just go away."

"But it has to , Bets. I need it to." He shook his head. "I can't take any more of this weight."

Fear glimmered in his eyes, more than what he had mentioned so far. Betsy just knew that the she-wolf had told him something. Again, she cursed herself for leaving his side and allowing that lupine bitch to get her claws into him. In that moment of realization, rationality abandoned her. Everything the she-wolf said or did was tainted. Nothing coming from her could possibly be good in anyway. Thus, a new plan of action became clear to the border collie.

"Einny... Einny..." she cooed quietly, pressing the side of her face against his soft, yielding shoulder; she could feel nothing of the bones, only round planes of flesh layered under the skin. "You can't just go cold turkey like this. You have to take things one step at a time."

He pulled back from her, but only a little; his heavy rump was still firmly planted on the ground. "What are you saying?" he asked.

Betsy smiled, it was easy, she knew she was doing the best thing for Einstein. "I'm saying that how you're doing this is not going to work. You have to ween yourself slowly or you're going to get frustrated and resort to bingeing." Betsy turned and reached down to the white pile next to her and picked up a single disk. Holding it with its flakey edges and slightly spongey center - the smell of pork surrounding it - the border collie was reminded that she'd only had half a dozen pieces within the last week and absolutely nothing else to eat at all. In fact, the last time she had allowed herself a disk had been more than 48 hours ago now. She coughed and handed the disk to Einstein who recoiled away from it as if she had offered him a glass of anti-freeze.

"No, Betsy. I... I don't want to." He said meekly, but he didn't rise or really move any real distance away, scooting his lumpy rear an inch or two over the dark, forest soil.

"Sharyenna is wrong." It felt good to say that. "This is you'll learn to master your addiction." His eyes turned to her, pleading, but for what, exactly, she wasn't sure. "Please, Einny. It's alright." She brought the disk closer to his face. "It's alright."

When the Manna was a few inches away from his snout, Einstein suddenly whipped his mouth forward and snapped the disk from from Betsy's paw, nearly taking a few digits with it. Betsy pulled her paw back, frowning with the stinging pain where Einstein's large fangs had struck it, but she didn't admonish him for his reckless seizure.

"Sorry." Einstein apologized anyway. The disk seemed to have evaporated once it entered his mouth.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for." Said Besty. She looked to the ground where the large pile still lay. Betsy took one of the disks for herself and popped it in her mouth. The bursting juice of fried pork washed over her waiting tongue at the same time she received a too-intense glare from the German Shepherd seated in front of her. She forced her voice to be nonchalant. "Come on, lets get this pile in your hole and then you can have a few more." Betsy got up and left to forage for a couple of wide leaves to drag the loose disks on. By the time she returned from the jungle, the irrational anger had faded from the fattened shepherd's eyes.

They worked, taking the leaves back and forth between the pile and the hole, and to his credit, Einstein did his fair share. Afterwards, when the hole was close to full with its gleaming treasure load, Betsy told him to eat nine more. This time, Einstein - who by this point was panting quite heavily - didn't argue. After he had polished off the disks one by one, Betsy added, "Tomorrow, we'll go down to eight, and then six and so on." However, Einstein only nodded without looking at the small collie.

He had taken the disks greedily, and indeed seemed a different dog entirely when he was eating. But afterwards, he seemed rather drained than renewed. He let out a long breath and said, "Let's cover it up." As they worked, neither dog suspected that they were being watched.

The wolfess, hidden in the brush of the jungle had watched the whole affair as she had been instructed by her Alpha, Sharyenna. When the hole was completely covered, she turned and stalked quietly away from the two obese dogs. She had some interesting news to report.

"Hey, Hey!"

...The Earth was moving.

"Einstein!"

...Someone was calling his name.

"Wake up!"

Einstein came awake with a shock, eyes shooting open with a sharp intake of breath. "Gah!" exclaimed the shepherd, heart racing. Einstein rolled over to face the dog shaking him, paws held defensively, only to see a familiar face. "Oh. Bruce..." Einstein panted, "It's only you."

The bloodhound sat back on his haunches; he like everyone on the island had been unable to escape the effects of the Manna. His distended belly touched the ground where he sat and the wrinkles on his face and snout had thickened into tiny rolls of short, rich brown fur. Relieved to see his old friend, Einstein sighed deeply and heaved himself onto his wide belly. "Don't... scare me... like that!"

Watching his very round friend pant and quiver on the ground, Bruce only grinned. Chuckling, he said, "And if I thought there was anyway else to wake you, I would have, but you were dead to the world."

Now Einstein laughed as well, "Well... Betsy gave me a pretty strenuous workout yesterday." Bruce's eyes went wide, "You didn't... with her?"

Einstein's pricked ears twisted in confusion and it was several seconds before he knew what Bruce was talking about. "Wha- ...oh! Oh, no!" Einstein stammered, "I'd never... It wasn't... like that!" The shepherd gulped another huge breath, "She got me up and running around with her... or in my case waddling, I guess." He huffed a short laugh, "then we spent the evening swimming. I... It's not like that... between me and her." Einstein fumbled and Bruce only looked on with a knowing glance.

"Whatever you say, friend."

Einstein frowned at Bruce's levity. Lifting his head and shuffling up on his elbows slightly, the shepherd brought his face almost level with Bruce's. "And where have you been all this time, eh? You have no idea what I've been going through!"

Bruce cast his eyes aside, "I've been back to the beach. That's also what I came here to talk to you and Betsy about." Einstein's ears lifted in curiosity. "Those we left behind... they are not in a good way."

Bruce proceeded to tell Einstein about how he had traveled back through the jungle to see what the remaining dogs - fully half the number of canines on the island - were doing un the wake of the Lab's disappearance and the Alpha-female's subsequent departure. Apparently, the she-wolf's predictions were not far off the mark. Nearly to a one, the domestic dogs she left behind had "grown so fat they could no longer walk." Fortunately most had had the presence of mind to settle under the cover of the jungle. Several had even camped by the side of the pools further in the jungle, though the ones with unlimited access to water have already grown to even more massive proportions. "I do not exaggerate when I say that the least of them are twice your size Einstein."

The shepherd dog opened his eyes wide and nearly fell back on his bloated chest. 'Twice my size?!' he thought. Considering the severe handicaps his own size inflicted and his subsequent plan of action to relieve his friends of the burden he was already, it was difficult to imagine being of even greater size. But he kept these thoughts to himself and let the bloodhound continue. "But not everyone was so foresighted or fortunate."

Again Einstein balked, 'How could dogs that must weigh in excess of 400 lbs be in any way 'fortunate?''

"There are several dogs who have let themselves be caught exposed out on the sand dunes."

"I see how that could be a problem." Nodded Einstein. He had to admit that he had not thought about being caught in the open and unable to walk. The more he thought about it, the more dire the situation seemed.

Bruce emphasized the point. "It's more than just a 'problem.' Two dogs have already died." Einstein was shocked. They'd only left a few days ago. "Caught in the open without any water or even drippings from threes... And they're still eating all that manna. It sucks the water right out of them."

Einstein could see it all too clearly now. Especially since most dogs still did not understand the connection between manna and their increased thirst. They would not be able to resist the temptation. The shepherd shooed his head. "They'd be better off eating salt."

"I did my best to help a couple of them into at least a little shade, but..." Bruce sighed and looked away. Shaking his head with an exasperated expression, he said, "But they're too heavy! Some of them are so big, I can't even budge them!"

It was unusual to see Bruce so worked up, but Einstein couldn't blame him. Who knew how many of those dogs left behind were doomed to die? The she-wolf's "solution" was borderline barbaric, but then what were they rest of them expected to do? Cater on dogs who did not have the willpower to stop themselves from fattening into immobility? Dogs like Einstein? It was impossible for Einstein not to insist that their situation was entirely their own doing, but he also knew, from yesterday's experience that he was exactly like them and their fate was ultimately his own. Which is why he had to leave and to join them as well. "Look, Bruce." Said Einstein, "There's nothing you can do for them. It's best for everyone if you just leave them behind." ...And leave me as well... Einstein added silently.

Bruce frowning, sighed, "I know that..." and then the bloodhound looks straight at Einstein, 'But they are part of us. The wolves are all off doing their own thing. But they are dogs, like us, back there on the beach." Bruce's hard glance at Einstein's belly conveyed even more meaning than his words.

"I... know." Said Einstein, "The situation is bad but we have to think about survival now. There are... hard choices to be made." Einstein couldn't look him in the eyes as he said the last.

Bruce grunted an affirmative. "But the dogs' immobility is not the reason I returned now. I, at least, had been expecting that much." Then Bruce got an odd look in his eyes, almost fearful, "Many of the dogs, especially the 400 lb ones near the pools, are complaining of ants."

Einstein cocked his head. "Ants?" was all he could say.

"I know, I know." Said Bruce, waving a paw in the air. "But there are hundreds of them coming out of the jungle. The biggest dogs are almost helpless and these insects are of a species I've never even heard of before."

Forgetting his imminent departure and even the scores of manna disks around him which had appeared overnight as always, Einstein's scientific curiosity was awakened, "What did they look like?"

"Very large. About four centimeters long. They're covered with black hairs and a single red strip around the thorax. They don't appear to have stingers."

Einstein thought for a few seconds. "How big are the mandibles?"

"More than big enough to leave bite marks all over those dogs, I assure you," said Bruce, worry in his eyes.

"No, I meant relative to the body. Did they stick forward, like soldier ants?"

"Hmm... no." Bruce decided, "Their mandibles weren't very big, fortunately. One dog, some sort of terrier, she showed me her belly. There must have been over a hundred ant bites. You have to understand: for some of these dogs, just rolling over is next to impossible. Once the ants get on them, there is a lot of skin area where it's impossible for them to reach, and there seem to be more ants around every day."

Bruce didn't need to explain so thoroughly, Einstein understood exactly how difficult such a predicament would be. When one was immobile, even the tiniest predator becomes dangerous. "Well... at least they are notDriver Ants or Siafu."

"Si-what?" asked Bruce.

Einstein waved a paw from the elbow. "Siafu, a very organized and aggressive ant species in Central Africa. Very nasty. They swarm the jungle floor by the millions. Some people claim they have killed human infants or otherwise incapacitated humans."

Bruce's face was dark as he frowned. "Well, how doe you know these are not Siafu? The could be gatherers with small mandibles."

Einstein pushed himself up a little more on his elbows, wishing that the huge mass of his body was not holding him down like the dogs they were speaking about. "Well, no siafu grows to four centimeters, except the queen and siafu move in a train across the ground, guard ants on the sides like a living fence and a constant stream of ants in the middle like a freeway. Even when they swarm, they stick together. Gatherer ants wouldn't be out by themselves."

Bruce still looked uneasy. "Well what if they were scouts?"

"Siafu don't scout. No species of army ant does. They fan out and eat anything that gets in their way." Einstein scoffed, "Why are you so hung up on this ant thing anyways? Even if it is a new species... We shouldn't be in any danger. There are no other mammals on this island. They won't see us as prey."

Bruce shook his head solemnly. "I'm not so sure..."

The shepherd cocked an eyebrow, "Why not?"

"Well... you don't know... but I felt like-" Bruce was interrupted as a dog came forward out of the brush. He was an irish setter mix, long chestnut fur matted with twigs and leaves for the abuse the jungle inflicted. Obviously he was quite overweight.

"Hey there." He called as he nosed his way past the shoulder-high ferns.

Both the German Shepherd and the Bloodhound stared at the new comer. After exchanging looks, Einstein said, "Er... Hello. Can we help you?"

The setter trotted briskly forward with a happy nonchalant gait. "That's fine, that's fine. No need to bother." The dog started nosing about the scatter manna, which immediately made Einstein's hackles rise; they'd been forgotten with Bruce's arrival and their conversation, but not anymore. "I'm just here to scoop up your manna." Both Einstein and Bruce were startled, but the setter just chuckled as if it were a joke. "Looks like I got here just in time, eh, pal?" he winked at Einstein. The shepherd was not at all amused.

"What are you doing here?" asked Einstein, shuffling uncomfortably onto his side as the setter continued nosing about the scattered white disks around him.

"Why, I;m here to collect your-"

"No. No, I meant why are you collecting my manna."

It might have been the mild stress on the word "my" but the setter straightened up, looking at Einstein in surprise, "Seriously? I really don't think you need anymore." The frown distorted the usually happy look the setter sported as he looked with rather obvious disgust at Einstein.

The shepherd was about to diffuse the situation when Bruce got to his feet. His more muscular bulk was intimidating compared to the gangly setter. "This is my friend here. My very good friend." Bruce's display might have been more effective if he weren't about 50 lbs overweight, be he got his point across.

"I didn't mean anything..." stammered the setter.

Einstein spoke up before Bruce could become anymore defensive. "Can you just tell us why you're here for the manna?"

The setter shrugged after sitting on his haunches, as if the answer were plain. "Well, Sharyenna wants us to gather all the manna into one place now. There's been too much thieving going around with people burying it on their own." The setter leaned to the side and scratched a matted ear. "That thieving bitch is going to wish she hadn't dug up all that manna before."

Einstein cocked his head in confusion. But then he shouldn't be surprised, both he and Bruce were far out of the loop were news about the other dogs was concerned. "Um... so there was someone stealing manna?" the shepherd probed.

"Not just stealing it for herself, though that would have been sickening enough." Again that nasty light filtered into the setter's eyes as he looked at Einstein. "She was tempting folks with it. It's hard enough without someone throwing the stuff in our faces."

Einstein was dubious of the dog's story. "Why would anyone do something like that?"

The setter got up and began assembling the scattered manna disks into a small pile. "I don't know why. Manna makes dogs do crazy things."

A muscle in Einstein's left eyebrow twitched every time the Irish Setter picked up and deposited another white, savory disk. It was difficult to watch him do it, but at the sam time, Einstein was grateful. If neither Bruce nor this setter had arrived this morning, it was simple to predict what would have happened. Then it would have been only a day or two until Einstein's situation was the same as those left behind.

By the time the setter was nearly done, Einstein was panting and felt hot, but remained silent. Bruce asked "So what exactly is the she-wolf panning to do with all the manna?"

The setter began to fold the pile into a portable bundle using a wide waxy leaf. As he worked, he said, "I don't know. I just do what I'm told." He knotted the crude bundle and winked at the two dogs, however, "If you ask me, though I'd say that Sharyenna is going to get rid of it. And I don't mean burying it." The setter chuckled again and Einstein was relieved when he began to move away, even if he was left with the hollow gift of hunger in his bloated belly.

Bruce, however, stepped after the departing setter. "Mind if we tag along? ...To see the thief?"

The matted setter shrugged, "Suit yourself." Another look at Einstein, "But I'm not slowing or stopping for breaks." 'Damn that bloodhound!' thought Einstein. He needed to get away.

Bruce leaned down to the reclining shepherd as Einstein spoke quietly into his ear. "Bruce, is this really necessary?"

"Trust me. I have a bad feeling about all of this."

Einstein shifted his bulk uncomfortably. The last thing he needed was a long hike through the jungle in the opposite direction he intended on traveling. "Well, you go on then Bruce. Me and Betsy can meet up with you later." The shepherd lifted his head slightly, looking around the tiny glade where he and Betsy had spent the night. 'Where has that collie girl gone to, by the way?' he wondered silently.

But apparently Bruce was not to be refused. He walk over to the bigger prone dog and gave Einstein a rough tug on his thickest neck roll. "Come on Einstein. Now isn't the time to separate. Some more exercise could hardly hurt you, you know."

"Pheh!" spat Einstein, miserably foiled and getting up. "You can say that all you like, but you don't-"

Bruce wasn't even listening, the hound already moving ahead after the setter. All Einstein could do was bite off his rude comment and follow. Bruce was as stubborn as a mule when he got an idea into his head. To preserve what was left of his dignity, he waddled forward as best as he could after him. He resolved to see this supposed criminal and then make his get away, sparing Bruce and Betsy from his eventual, manna-addicted fate. Einstein would have to make sure to find a source of water...

Einstein clamored his way heavily through the brush behind Bruce towards the main camp. Puffing already, the shepherd said, "Remind... me why... we are... doing this... again?"

Bruce replied, "I just have a feeling..."

Betsy would never forget the taste of jungle soil for as long as she lived. It seemed her tongue was coated with it, as was indeed the case. Even after scraping her tongue across her teeth, the taste remained, lingering far longer than the almost surreal flavor of manna.

Betsy's gut grumbled as she bent her neck forward and suck liberal quantities of water from the stream. She was full to bursting, but she couldn't help it, her throat was incredibly dry and parched. Naturally she knew why this was the case.

Four-hundred Fifty-seven. That was how many disks had composed the pile and now distended and sat uneasily in her belly. Betsy hadn't intended to count them, but her mind had retained the information anyway like a black box on a crashing airplane. Four-hundred and Fifty-seven.

The border collie raised her head and released a massive belch, air escaping from her gulping of the water. It was wet, unsatisfying and tasted like decomposing manna. Betsy dunked her head in for more. She had no choice.

Betsy kept telling herself that she couldn't believe that they'd forced her to do this. But no amount of disbelief changed the horrible bloated feeling in her belly or her unending thirst. It was now late in the morning and besides the gastrointestinal distress, Betsy could not avoid noticing the ultimate effects of the manna as well. As Betsy squeezed water into every available nook left inside her stomach, her abdomen swelled slowly over the hours. However, the border collie knew that it wasn't water weight. Absorbing the densely folded lipids of the manna at implausible speed, Betsy had gained fully half of her previous weight already and, she knew, the growth was not going to stop any time soon. But perhaps the worth part of all, like Einstein, Betsy feared that she was now addicted to the terrible foodstuff.

Like a hand reaching in and gently stroking her brain, Betsy had felt the pleasure of eating manna. Her hunger had been sharp for the days of either total fasting or the occasional treat of one or two disks here and there. Gorging had felt perfectly natural after the long abstain from food and all the rationality that Betsy could muster did not make it taste any less sweet... at least at first.

The she-wolf had gone beyond merely allowing Betsy to stuff herself, of course. She had been made to consume far more than her natural capacity, even to the point of forcing her to lap up liquified manna when she inevitably vomited. It was a horrific night that, just hours later, Betsy could scarcely recall. It was all a blur and the collie was grateful for her brain's natural response to trauma. She gulped down more water which seemed to flow over the desert of her throat without reaching it. Her belly churned inside her, the muscular walls stretched tight over the mass of manna passing through her. Betsy was tired of swallowing and tired of having her front paws and chest wet from the edge of the stream where she lay. But perhaps worse than the physical stress the manna was imposing on her was the presence of the she-wolf.

Most of the spectators had either wandered away or been given assignments of some sort. But the she-wolf remained watching her from her perch beside the stream. Betsy could see her cold predator's eyes on her fatty body. It was obvious that she enjoyed watching Betsy struggle.

When noon was fast approaching and shafts of sun were diving down and filling the stream with pretty sparkles, the belly pain was mostly gone, but Betsy could tell that she was still growing rapidly. Especially around her middle where she could almost feel her skin growing taut over the expanding flesh. She was going to have some monster stretch marks... If it weren't for her constant need of water, and the watchful gaze of the she-wolf, Betsy would have tried escaping while she retained at least some of her mobility.

As Betsy was thinking of how she might manage a distraction of some sort, however, several dogs came as a group out of the jungle and into the camp. They laid down many leafy bundles before the she-wolf. Sharyenna grinned and rose from her stony throne. "Looks like breakfast is here."

Traveling through the jungle was never easy, especially when one had an empty belly and was carrying triple his natural weight in fatty bulk. Einstein huffed and panted, waddling as fast as he could just to keep up with the less encumbered dogs who were not even moving very briskly.

After a while, Bruce slowed his pace to come even with the struggling shepherd. "Are you doing alright?" he asked.

Einstein bit back a caustic retort. 'It's just the pain in my hip.' He reminded himself. "Just... fine." He muttered from between clenched teeth.

The Irish Setter was already far ahead and out of sight. Bruce alone kept them on the scent trail. "I'm sure it's not too much farther now." Bruce encouraged, bumping Einstein's flank with his nose. The shepherd's low slung back creaked with the swinging weight of his belly. Einstein grumbled under his breath, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as she continued hauling his fat hide through the tall brush and trees.

Bruce was the first to burst through the ferns at the edge of the clearing where the camp was located. However, the bloodhound stopped suddenly and Einstein, who couldn't quite put the breaks on his collected momentum, slammed into him. "Hey Bruce! What d'you think you're d-" And then Einstein saw her too.

A group of snickering or silent dogs was formed around two figures near the water's edge. One was obviously the she-wolf, the Alpha-Female. The other had a familiar coat of black and white. "Betsy...?" muttered Einstein uncomprehendingly as he witnessed the wolfess towering over his friend's prone form. The longer he watched the scene, the wider his eyes grew as he sat stock still on the outskirts of the primitive camp. The she-wolf wore a grim expression as she hunched over Betsy who appeared to be eating wads of leaves.

No, she was eating what was in the leaves, and Einstein could smell exactly was nestled inside each bundle; his own belly yearned for the sweet manna. Her belly swollen and round, the undisguised fear and pain in her eyes, the bite marks still red and oozing on her flanks and rump, Betsy was utterly transformed since he saw her last evening. The sheer randomness of this malicious act was the most disturbing part of it all. 'How can she be doing this?!' cried Einstein mentally, 'She's supposed to be helping us!' As baffling as Sharyenna's capture of Betsy was, however, part of Einstein remained unsurprised. He'd spent more time with the she-wolf than any of his friends; he knew what she was like, the wolfess was unable to completely hide her true nature. But still... Betsy?

"Stop this!" the call rang out over the crowd and even the she-wolf paused and lifted her head. Fatigue forgotten, Einstein was on his feet and shuffling forward. Dogs parted before his bulk as the shepherd made his way through the assembled canines. He was panting again when he plopped his padded read on the ground by Betsy and the she-wolf and once again, Einstein cursed his huge size. The shepherd mustered up a growl as he turned to the she-wolf. "What the hell are you doing to Betsy?!" he demanded.

The voluptuous she-wolf remained calm in the face of Einstein's growls and raised hackles. "She has transgressed our laws and subverted my authority. She deserves to be punished."

Einstein couldn't believe what he was hearing. Betsy hadn't done anything wrong... had she? Cruel fancies flitted through the shepherd's mind. False affection, feigned friendship, illusory advances. How could it be?

But no. Einstein had known Betsy for too long. She was his friend - and maybe more - she couldn't be responsible for any sort of coup. And besides, what the she-wolf was doing to her was... disgusting. Einstein didn't wish his fate on any other dog. The shepherd's chest heaved with more than just fatigue. "You have to stop this. We can talk things out."

The wolfess grinned. "I don't have to stop anything." Suddenly the press of dogs all around seemed very thick. "This one-" she indicated Betsy with a flick of her grey snout, "was caught handing out manna. This is just punishment, to feel what it is that she is tempting people with. You of all people should appreciate what I'm doing."

Suddenly Einstein knew what this was about. The she-wolf had obviously caught him and Betsy the previous day. But the she-wolf's reaction as completely uncalled for; that was his own weakness, not any fault of Betsy's. "This isn't justice." Einstein said savagely despite the glares from the surrounding dogs - Where was Bruce? Einstein thought with mild alarm when he failed to find the bloodhoud among the crowd - "This is torture. Let her go. She's had enough."

"Please..." Einstein turned and his heart dropped into his stomach to see Betsy struggling to speak. "Einny..." The collie spoke between heavy, pain laden breaths, "Don't..."

The wolfess cuffed the round collie sharply with her tail across the snout. "Silence!"

That sent Einstein over the edge. Growling, the shepherd lurched forward clumsily, putting his bulk between the she-wolf and Betsy. The touched his nose to Betsy's, "Come on, let's g-"

A bite to his lumpy rear elicited a yelp from the shepherd and all at once there seemed to be three overweight dogs on top of him. Einstein's legs buckled under the additional burden.

"Tsk, tsk. And after everything I've done for you." Muttered the she-wolf with a grimace of false disappointment. Raising her voice, she said, "See what length manna addicts are driven to to feed their habit? See what she's done to this shepherd?" Barks and shouts rose all around, the dogs dancing to the she-wolf's tune.

"Betsy is just a scapegoat!" Einstein cried, "You're just using her to secure power for yourself, you bitch!" the shepherd cursed, using the more contemporary meaning of the word. He grunted under the weight of the dogs holding him down and the she-wolf only grinned down at him.

"So you claim. But I think that a clear manna-addled canine such as yourself would say just about anything to protect his supplier."

"This isn't her fault! I'm the one who can't control myself." Einstein struggled, but try as he might, his limited strength was not enough to shake off the other dogs; he couldn't even turn his head around to bite the terrier mix sitting on his shoulders. "Please..." Einstein at last pleaded, "If you're going to punish anyone, punish me. I am the one who has transgressed. Let Betsy go."

A sadistic smile spread on the pregnant wolf's face. "Very noble of you... But I plan on finishing what I started."

Einstein's mouth was agape. 'What is she trying to accomplish by doing this to Betsy?' he wondered, agog at the situation.

The she-wolf lowered her head to Einstein and spoke, but still loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Don't worry, my dear. She won't be able to hurt you anymore."

The shepherd became incensed, "You bitch!" he roared again. But the weight of the plus-size dogs on his back was too much. The Alpha-Female moved back towards the rounded collie. Scooping several disks into a paw, she thrust them into Betsy's mouth, which she open in response to a threatening growl form the she-wolf.

Einstein wriggled and squirmed to no avail, he was too weak, too obese to help. Pawful after pawful, the she-wolf rudely shoved the disks into Betsy's mouth which she dryly swallowed; a dull cow-like light pervaded her eyes as she meekly submitted to each offering. Einstein started barking madly as tears began to run down Betsy's cheeks. The racket was such that Sharyenna had a length of jungle vine wrapped around his snout.

"Ah, that's better." Said the she-wolf casually as Einstein was silenced. The shepherd looked long into Betsy's watering eyes. She looked away as the she-wolf came upon her again. Einstein did not look away as the horrid ritual recommenced, he wanted to make sure that he remembered what happened this morning.

Betsy's tummy continued to swell throughout the coerced feeding. The collies eyes became glazed when the bundles were half gone and Einstein hoped that she was at least escaping from the situation. However, each time her mouth opened, she ate with what struck Einstein as too much ease. He could tell that Betsy's stomach was pressing on her diaphragm when her breath became short. And yet she continued to down the disks presented her, and more worryingly, without obvious signs of distress. "Hold on, Betsy." Einstein urged, muffled as he watched.

When the pile was fully consumed, Betsy looked like a fully gorged wolf after ripping apart a fresh kill. However, Einstein, who had seem her plump, though still decently trimmed figure mere hours ago, could see the new fat already bulking up her flanks, back, chest and tail head. Howe he longed to speak to her, to let her know that someone cared.

After Betsy was left lying on the ground, panting shallowly and in a daze, the she-wolf finally turned her attention back to Einstein. "And what am I going to do with you...?" she wondered aloud. With a curt laugh, she chuckled, "Well, at least shortly, you shouldn't be the fattest dog on the island any more."

Einstein's glare could have melted lead.

Then the she-wolf adopted a more business-like tone. "Well, it seems my rehabilitation has failed." The wolfess sighed as if with great disappointment. "What a pity, I' sorry I couldn't help you." Eyes flicking upwards, she gestured with her snout to the dogs piled on top of Einstein, "Pi-seven, Gamma-six, let him go." And the two overweight dogs finally began to move, allowing Einstein a breath of fresh air untainted by the tang of unwashed canine. "You too... er..."

The terrier-mix looked at the she-wolf with obvious anticipation.

"You too, Psi-18." Finished the she-wolf with a small sigh.

With a smirk the fat canine who'd been sitting on Einstein's neck and shoulders departed. The shepherd was relieved to be able to lift his head, but continued to stare at the she-wolf. Einstein wasn't foolish enough to believe in the success of any sort of attack on her now... but he wished that he was. With his forepaws, he sat up, though his wide, deep belly was still mostly on the floor. He didn't know what the she-wolf was up to, so he sat silently with the ligature still around his snout.

The she-wolf looked casually out across the stream as if impatient now for this ordeal to be over. "Well... needless to say, you're now banished. We have no room for addicts here. Feel free to make your way back to the beach or anywhere else on the island." With an odd tittering growl, she summoned one of the other female wolves, a beta, to her. She said to her compatriot, "Take those vines off of him and see him out... and don't be rough with him." She added with deadly seriousness. To Einstein she said, as the other wolf freed his mouth carefully with her teeth. "You've been through enough today, haven't you?"

Einstein carefully stretched his jaw, eyeing the beta wolfess near him who, while not as nearly obese as he was, was equal to him in stature. With an urgency in her eyes that was unmistakable, she nosed him roughly in the shoulder to signal it was time to go.

Einstein began laboriously getting up, but before he was forced out of the camp, he had to ask, "What are you going to do with Betsy?"

For a moment, the elaborate play act seemed to drop away. The she-wolf had won and Einstein had lost, but there was no shame in it and the she-wolf was not one to be maliciously cruel to those she had fairly defeated. "She will remain with us until we leave here either tomorrow or the next day. She'll be useful in disposing of our manna problem while we are here."

Einstein's face was a stone mask as he heard that what had happened just now was destined to be repeated the following morning. He would have liked nothing more than to have sunk his fangs unto her throat, but now was not the time. He let himself be led away, but he stole a glance back to Betsy who was now either asleep or unconscious. Her belly was visibly larger than it had been fifteen minutes ago. With aching joints creaking as she moved, Einstein moved into the brush and lost sight of the dog who he loved.

The Tigress waddled through the jungle on the south side of the island, many miles from the she-wolf and all her associated drama. In fact, all of the other inhabitants of the island were far from the Tigress's thoughts, even her erstwhile companions who had forcibly ejected her from their company just a day ago. All but one that is, that is, and he sported a glorious coat of white covered with striking black strips like hers.

She was determined to find her dream-love and she was equally certain that he was somewhere on the island, calling to her via her dreams. He didn't believe it, not yet, but when he saw her, when he saw all of her, they could both be happy together, forever. And there was a lot to look at, now that the Tigress thought about it a moment. She'd allowed herself to bloat to a new level of obesity, all in the sake of pleasing the male tiger's lusts and preferences. She was not nearly so large as her dream-body now appeared nightly, but he would forgive her her shortcomings, when he saw her in waking life. The Tigress licked her chops. She hungered for the pleasure he had shown her in her dreams. She wanted to hand over her virginity to him a second time, this time for real.

Some of the cuts and bruises she had received while the male wolves had herded her away were still bleeding, particularly on her belly, where more of her skin had been able to get between their cruel fangs. Tired of carrying her bulk through the thick woods, the Tigress paused to rest when she encountered a stream flowing south from the large mountain looming to the north. Not being a feline to mind the water, she immersed herself in the flow, letting the hurt flow out from her body in the fast moving water. She soaked for a while, only her head above the water. The only thing that marred the scene was the gnawing hunger.

She'd discovered that she'd devoured the fat wolf last night when she passed him. Even so, her stomach complained with powerful pangs that seemed to expand outwards, almost hurting her back with the sharp longing. The manna that had faithfully appeared that morning hardly slacked the burning need for food. The cow had been a huge boon, she knew. She wished she had fought harder to claim it from the pack of bloodthirsty wolves. The Tigress sighed with the seeming hopelessness of her situation. Some affirmation in her warped thoughts decried that he would come to her when she achieved a suitable size. But without a food-beast of such massive proportions as the cow, the Tigress was fated only to grow at the rate Manna alone was able to provide. She had no fatty flesh to gnaw on and consume, filled with the distilled and processed essence of the Holy Manna, easily converted into fresh flesh to fill and distend her frame.

How she longed for him to stroke her soft blubber! She needed his touch and reassurance even more than she needed her morning ration of white tasty crisps. It didn't matter if soon her body would be too heavy for her to lift from the ground. Everything would be alright, if only she was able to find him, or he her.

She splashed the water in a tantrum with her broad, powerful paw. The heavy fat on her shoulder rippled as she did so. She'd rested an hour in the supportive water and she was loathe to get out despite her desperation. Walking was really becoming burdensome with her low hanging gut and bovine flanks. When she finally was drawn to continue her quest, she made her way to the opposite bank. However there, she paused, looking down stream. Then she went back to the former shore and looked downstream again. Then it hit her.

"I've been here before..." he said aloud. Her voice was a little more husky now for the density of the fat surrounding her windpipe. It took her a minute to recall where she had seen this place before. Excitement filled her as she remembered. "Horses." She stated and then eagerly made her way down the stream, skipping along over the rocks in the middle like a striped hippo and moving far faster than she could have ambling on land.

The land rose on her left. The tigress remembered that the herd of horses had been sheltered by a gorge to the south of their grassy prominent and by this stream to the west. She had stumbled upon them by accident the last time and been separated by a gap that would have tested her jumping ability even when she had been fit. Now, however, she planned on taking the equines by surprise. "It's been sometime since I last saw them..." thought the Tigress as she strolled lazily down the fast stream, guiding her buoyant body and pushing off against rocks under her to speed her along. "Maybe they've put some more meat on them by now. One or two ought to get me big enough to bring him to me..."

The single mindedness of the Tigress lent a power to her strokes and the coming death-rush. She hungered to spill blood, to rip and tear, and then to eat... and eat and eat.

As she came around the last bend, the tigress kept low in the water, struggling to keep her back submerged as much as possible. However, it turned out to hardly matter. The tigress's eyes widened as she took in the abode of the intelligent equines on the island, or rather the ruins of it.

The horses had moved on. That much was apparent immediately. The grass was cropped to the turf and the area trampled. Small vestiges of intelligent survival linger here and there; a length of knotted vine, a bent over palm frond providing a modicum of shade, a few bits of decoratively carved wood. She could not immediately tell how long they had gone. However, she didn't really care for what she saw immediately ahead of her consumed all of her attention.

Three massive mares. There was no way else to really describe them. They were simply massive. The bulk of the trio of equines put to shame that of the immobile cow. They rested on their wide bellies, their forelegs in the stream to provide them access to water. But really, only their hooves were in the water. Their torso's were so vast that they literally lifted them from the ground. The mares' rear hooves were barely brushing the ground for the size of their bellies. They rested their wide necks on their fatty briskets, it looked to be an effort to even reach their muzzles into the water anymore. The mares were over a dozen feet apart from each other, however the tigress could tell even from here that their wide flanks which sprawled over the ground touched. They had weary expressions on their long faces.

The Tigress was shocked at what she had found and not just because this was exactly what she had been looking and longing for. "Could they have possibly taken their entire tribe's distribution of manna? To keep the others from gaining?" It certainly seemed possible given the sheer size of the three equines. The Tigress did not spend too much time philosophizing on the mares' possible sacrifice. All she felt at the sight of them was hunger.

The panicked, naturally, when they saw her. They neighed and kicked when she dragged her heavy body, sopping wet and dripping from the water. However their efforts had little effect other than to jostle their own fat. While the tigress studied them, trying to find the best place to start, the one on the right managed, in its flailing, to slowly flow over onto its side, though honestly, the result seemed more due to the prearrangement of her bulk than any actual effort on her part. It continued to flail and nicker, two legs buried completely under a colossal gut as it gasped for breath. Quite suddenly, the fallen mare's free legs went stiff, though she continued to toss her head as much as she could against her thick, heavy neck. Slowly the legs bent down to rest at an odd angle against her protruding undercarriage. When the Tigress looked down to see the mare's terrified face, the right eye drooped while the other was shining white with fear. Her head tossing then turned into feeble convulsions as her pupils rolled back into her skull. The lard filled horse was having a stroke.

The tigress pursed her lips in disgust and looked at the remaining two mares who sat silently by each other, their flanks touching despite the wide gap between their 'torsos.' "I guess that just leaves the three of us." Said the tigress.

In the end, the mares accepted their fate. All three were older matrons and related as much that all three of them had stayed behind to die. The third had apparently not been as prepared for death as her two betters. The tigress could have chosen to dine first on the mare who'd suffered a stroke at the sight of her and her gleaming fangs. However, the tigress, upon viewing the state of the mares and remembering the hassles of immobility from her dreams made the prudent choice to start with the two who were still close together. The Tigress, even then, didn't imagine herself moving very far once she finished off one of these proud behemoths. It was some work, lifting their heads as they struggled and bit at her in their last moments, to bite and rend her way through more than a foot of fat covering their sagging necks to loose the big arteries. She did one, and then the other, letting them bleed their life's blood into the stream, turning it pink. It wasn't precisely the way her instincts told her to make a kill, more like a human slaughterhouse technique, but in the end, these mares' fates would be the same as any food beast.

The Tigress would certainly fulfill the promise she had implied in killing them. She did not intend for a scrap to go to waste...

"I'm coming..." she thought with desperate happiness to her absent lover as she sank her teeth into fat filled brisket, ripping off a chunk as large as a small mellon and swallowing with her reduced gag reflex. "I'm coming..."