FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chronicles of a New Dawn, Book 2

Mother’s Lullaby

By Joshua “Kyrien” Cranston

---

Chapter 2: Beginnings

Shawn’s consciousness returned slowly, amid a lazy awareness of warmth and safety that enticed him to resist. Fragments of memories floated around, disconnected but occasionally brushing against each other, causing him to ‘recall’ that the chest against his back and the arm around his body were Matt’s - a comforting enough state of affairs on its own, and one that had happened a few times over the prior month - and he let himself drift back down into the lingering epilogue of his dreams. Some unknown time later, a snippet of his ‘date’ the prior night drifted across his awareness, and he smiled slightly at the ‘realization’ that it was actually Jason cuddled up behind him. It was several minutes further before the vague impression that he was at home, and not in his Dimensional Interstice, managed to intersect with the prior epiphany enough to awaken a twinge of confusion. Distantly resenting the emotion’s intrusion into his blissful tranquility, he cracked open one eye to reconnoiter…

The jumpsuit-clad cheetah across the room smiled and raised a paw in greeting, causing the squirrel to start awake, both eyes snapping open. In the same moment, he realized that Jason was standing right next to the stranger. Then who…?

Oh, right!

Shawn’s smile returned almost immediately, as an infobox popped up over the cheetah’s shoulder, green on green.

Ganymede - Daemon

Assigned to - Shane McIntyre

A fun guy! We’re gonna get along great, bro!

The wolf behind Shawn snorted once, his sleep briefly disturbed by the way the squirrel had tensed up for a moment, and hugged the drowsy rodent a bit tighter against his chest without properly waking up. Recovering from the momentary shock, Shawn closed his eyes again, letting himself relish the closeness and warmth. His entire body felt light and limp, like someone had gone through and loosened all of his joints slightly overnight, and even apart from his desire to let Shane sleep, moving felt like it would be a crime. His bladder disagreed, but he could afford to make it wait just a little while.

As his memories of the prior night reassembled themselves, however, the squirrel found his tail starting to flutter of its own volition, tickling at Shane’s legs. He stilled it once, twice, but every time his attention wandered it got restless again, and eventually the wolf twitched, yawning against the back of his head. Hugging that encircling arm with one of his own, Shawn turned his head a bit, smiling over his shoulder.

“Morning, handsome.”

“Wuh? O-oh.” Shane yawned again. “Same to you. Heh, I slept like a rock…”

“You and me both. Mmm…” Wriggling around, Shawn fought his way onto his other side and hugged his wolf back, tucking his muzzle under Shane’s chin. Being slightly overheated was worth waking up to cuddles, and morning breath be damned. The way Shane started lazily scratching his back only cemented his opinion; this was definitely the way to start a day. Even Connor had…

Y’know what? Fuck that. He was done thinking about his ex at the drop of a hat. That seemed like a lifetime ago now, and he wasn’t the same squirrel he had been back then. Shane didn’t deserve the comparison. Especially considering why that relationship had failed…

Rolling over proved to be a questionable decision, however, as it made him more acutely aware of his bladder’s protests, and after a few moments Shawn dug himself out from under the comforter and lowered his paws to the floor. As he relieved himself in Shane’s bathroom, he heard the wolf moving around outside, and shortly emerged to find him leaning on the counter next to his coffee machine and waiting for his morning cup of ‘go.’

Choosing not to pester his host until his brain was working, Shawn turned his attention to the other black wolf in the room. “Hey, am I forgetting about any commitments today?”

Jason tilted his head. “Nnno, not exactly. Well, there is something but… no. You have an appointment with Leon three days from now; you’re clear until then.”

The squirrel blinked blearily. “Leon? Caleb’s daemon? Why would I…?”

Jason’s ears shot up, then folded. “Err, sorry, I forgot for a sec that you know two Leons. Dr. Leon Sheridan. Monthly checkup.”

“Oh! Wait, is he like, my regular doctor now? I thought he just did intakes.”

Jason laughed softly. “Nah, all of the doctors here who are qualified to install bio-terminals take turns doing those, and they try to keep you seeing the same provider for regular checkups unless one of them gets overbooked. There are plenty of other doctors and NPs who handle emergency and urgent care stuff, though.”

Shawn glanced at Shane as the wolf blew on his coffee and started carefully sipping at it as it cooled, and then returned his attention to the daemons. “So uh, not that I’m complaining, but I’m kind of surprised I can see you, Ganymede.”

The cheetah smiled again. “Well, I had to put Jason in touch with Shane to pull off the trick last night, so we kinda skipped right past the whole ‘hiding other daemons’ stage. It only seemed fair to let you see me in return.”

“And I guess he knows about the force projectors and the markers already, too? I didn’t find out about those until my second day.”

“Yup! We haven’t had The Talk yet, though…” Ganymede grimaced and fidgeted uncomfortably. “That precept is jabbing me like you wouldn’t believe.”

Shane perked his ears up. “What talk?”

Shawn frowned slightly, lashing his tail. “It’s a speech he has to give you within your first 24 hours about how you can give him commands. Let me just say it now: don’t. You don’t want to know what happens to daemons who are commanded too often. It isn’t pretty.” He saw both Jason and Ganymede smiling gratefully at him out of the corner of his eye. “I haven’t had to use it at all, but I met a daemon a while back who’d been commanded so much she basically crashed. Although…” He looked back at Jason. “Do we know…?”

The digital wolf shook his head. “Mother’s never told me anything else about the attempt to fix her and honestly, at this point I’m afraid to ask.”

Shawn grimaced. “It’s kind of haunting me, though… eh, I’ll ask her myself later.”

Shane groaned slightly and gulped down some more of his coffee, even though it was still a bit too hot for that. “Okay, you’re losing me. Who’s this Mother?”

The squirrel facepawed. “Right, sorry. I’m kind of all over the place, aren’t I? She’s a super-daemon who runs a new VRMMO called Paths of the Emissary. It’s a hyper-immersive fantasy game that I spend like half my time in.”

“More than half, bro, if you don’t count sleeping and eating. I’d give you shit about that if you weren’t pretty good about doing some work when you come out.”

Shawn felt his ears burning, both from the indictment of his gaming addiction and what ‘doing some work’ actually meant around here, but Shane spoke up before he could fire a retort at Jason. “That sounds cool. Can I join in?”

Ganymede was fastest on the draw. “Not yet. You have to earn some credit to subscribe to that, and we don’t even know if flufftail over there has managed to knock you up yet.” The two actual mammals exchanged bashful smiles at that. “Besides, there aren’t any slots open right now.”

Shane rubbed his eyes. “That sucks. Aight, but lemme know when I can, okay? If the game is that important to my squirrel, I wanna give it a try.”

The aforementioned squirrel felt his face heating up further. “A-anyway… um, what was the ‘something’ you almost told me before, Jason? Is there something I’m supposed to be doing today, or can I spend more time with my wolf?” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he said those words.

“Huff, and here I thought I was your wolf!” He smiled back. “Kidding, kidding. There’s nothing you have to do, buuuut… Becca went into labor while you were asleep, and asked if you wanna be there when your first kids are born. You’ll have to leave pretty soon if so.”

Both mammals straightened up in surprise, and Shawn stared wide-eyed at Jason. “I… oh wow, um. I wasn’t expecting an invitation - they’re not really my kids after all - but if Becca wants me there…” He shot Shane an apologetic look.

The wolf laughed. “Why are you even looking at me? This is a big deal, and I’m not going anywhere. Besides, you’re not the only person in this room I wanna get to know better.” Ganymede positively lit up at that, and Shawn smiled as Shane continued. “Think we can meet back up whenever you’re free, though?”

“Absolutely! We can hit the gym or something… maybe I can introduce you to Cory.”

Jason cut in. “Sorry bro, your favorite foxdick has today off.”

The squirrel shrugged and grabbed his bag. “Tour of the quadrant, then? We’ll figure something out. I need to get out of your fur so Ganymede can give you the speech before he segfaults, anyway.”

Shane chuckled. “Or, y’know, we could just sit and talk for a bit once you’re back. I barely know the guy I’ve been crushing on for months.”

Shawn blushed again. “R-right. I um… I guess I’m just nervous. I’m absolute shit at talking about myself. I never know what to say…”

“Like you said, we’ll figure it out.” He set down his mug and ambled over to give the squirrel a hug, which Shawn returned firmly, his tail dancing. “Now go say hello to your kids!”

Jason stopped Shawn as soon as the door had closed behind him. “Hold up. How are you feeling right now?”

Shawn blinked. “Uh… kinda giddy, honestly. I’m still high on what happened last night. Thanks for that, by the way… and you didn’t misread me at all. Sometimes I think you’ve got me figured out better than I do.”

The wolf smiled. “That’s my job! But what I mean to ask is… are you feeling anxious?”

“Well yeah, an OB ward isn’t exactly my natural habitat. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, but… I remember what Becca told me that first night. I want to show her that this matters to me, too. That she’s a friend, not just a payday.”

Jason’s smile widened, and he started wagging. “Man, you haven’t been up twenty minutes yet and you’re already reminding me how lucky I was to get paired with you. But I think you’ve answered my question, anyway. Did you realize it’s been a little over a full day since your last dose of anxiety meds? Between Paths and Shane, you never took your second dose yesterday.”

That brought Shawn up short. Normally, Jason wouldn’t let him forget his meds, but with everything that had happened, there hadn’t really been a good time for it. “Huh… you’re right.” He took a moment to assess himself. “I’m nervous about the birth, but… not any more than I would be normally, I think. I guess being held all night has me chilled out.”

“Or maybe not having a shitty job anymore is making more of a difference than you’d think. Anyway, something to bring up with Doc Sheridan later. Now take your pills so we can go!”

Shawn ducked back into his own apartment to do so, taking the opportunity to properly rehydrate and gobble down a breakfast bar while he was at it. By the time he got down the stairs and out of the courtyard, a Zoomy was waiting for him, and he hopped right on.

“I am gonna make it in time, right?”

Jason replied inside his head. “Looks that way. Jasmine says you should have at least twenty minutes, and you’ll be there in six.”

Shawn exhaled slowly as the rush of the cool morning air carried away the last of his drowsiness. “Any advice on what I’m supposed to actually do? I have this stupid mental image of myself doing a high school cheerleading routine at Becca’s bedside…”

“Hahaha! Maybe don’t do that… although I don’t know, she might get a kick out of it. Just be there. If she wants to talk to you, she will… but this is nowhere close to her first rodeo, and New Dawn has the best OB-GYNs in the country. Obviously. Honestly, I think she just wants to know you care enough to show up.”

The squirrel nodded a little, letting his tail trail behind him with its fur fluttering in the wind as the Zoomy did the navigating for him. “Hey, Jason… is it possible for me to gift a month of Paths to Shane?”

“Good question. Lemme check…” There was a brief pause. “Uhhh… bro, not only is that allowed, they actually have a pool of player slots reserved for referrals from existing players. I never got a memo about that. I think it’s supposed to be an open secret; you find out if you ask. You just need the potential player’s permission, and Shane already said flat out that he wanted to play whenever he could.”

The Zoomy lane-wandered a bit as Shawn started, chirping at him to settle down like a good sack of living cargo. “Do I have enough credit to do that?”

“Yeah, you do. If you kept paying for two you might need to stop sleeping in-game so often… although now that you have a real wolf to cuddle up with, I guess that wouldn’t be so much of a downer, huh? Anyway, you’re gonna lose the head start you got from lucking into a hybrid kit, but you’ve filled enough bellies since that you’re not gonna bankrupt yourself. Just make sure you’re emptying those big, baby-making squirrel nuts where it counts as often as you can and you’ll be fine.”

Shawn felt himself blushing again. “Well… I really like the thought of getting to play with Shane, and I’d love to spring a nice surprise on him. Something you’d know nothing about, Mr. Loving Manipulation.” He chuckled. “Do it.”

“Getting Ganymede’s buy-in on this and… done. Oh dude, that cheetah’s gonna make a fucking sick angel, I can see it now!” Shawn could almost hear the wag in Jason’s voice. “We’re not gonna tell Shane about this until after Mother does her ‘come to Me’ routine if we can help it. Man, I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that.”

“Can’t you? There are cameras all over, right?”

“Yyyyeah, but spying on anyone other than you is a major party foul for a personal daemon like me, and since I’m not looped in I wouldn’t get all of the special effects. Although, if Ganymede were to offer to stream it for us…”

“Don’t push him. He literally was born yesterday, and I don’t want to do anything that’d make it harder for Shane to trust him. I remember how important that was for me when we were first getting to know each other.”

“I don’t think it’d be out of line considering you just paid his sub for him, but you’re right, that’s probably for the best. Anyway, we’re coming up on the birthing center now!”

The facility in question proved to be considerably larger than Shawn had anticipated. While not the size of a full city hospital, it towered over most of the nearby buildings; the sign out front read Tomorrow’s Hope, with the name flanked by the New Dawn ‘rising sun’ logo in bright gold. The squirrel stood still as the Zoomy sped off, suddenly acutely conscious of his nudity again, until Jason coughed in his ears.

“Uh, bro? You should probably get going. Things are moving faster in there than Jasmine expected. Elevators are past the desk on the right. You want room 416.” He paused. “Shawn? Move!”

The squirrel snapped out of it and immediately broke into a jog. A jumpsuited staffer at reception started to rise in alarm as Shawn barrelled right past him, but then settled back into his seat, presumably reassured by a daemon that he was expected. The lobby also held several other adult couples in normal clothing, some of whom stared more openly at him; Shawn assumed they were adoptive parents waiting for their newborns, and swatted aside an urge to try to spot any likely candidates for his own children. Waiting for the elevator was hell, and it was all he could do to resist the urge to cover his groin with his paws in the presence of so many people who would never have the chance to adapt to New Dawn’s (im)modesty norms. They’d made it this far into town already; he couldn’t be even close to the first naked man they’d seen running around. Still, he couldn’t stop his tail from curling around in front of him to at least mostly obscure his ‘work assets.’ He then slipped into the elevator before the doors even finished opening, and punched the button for the fourth floor. Seconds later, he was slipping past hospital staff in the halls, looking for Becca’s room.

“Haaaagh!”

Shawn froze in the doorway, wincing at the effort and pain in Becca’s voice, and abruptly feeling a lot less proud about what he had done to her. This, too, was ultimately because of him. The white rabbit was lying on her back, legs spread and big feet resting in a pair of stirrups; her teeth were gritted, putting her prominent incisors on full display, and the insides of her ears were pale, but the guinea pig midwife wasn’t showing any signs of alarm. A moment later, another rabbit with equally white fur and a staff jumpsuit standing on the far side of the straining mother looked across the room at him and smiled.

“You made it!”

The squirrel forced an uncertain smile back at her. He’d met Becca’s daemon Jasmine several times by this point, but he had yet to get a good read on her personality. She wasn’t as talkative as most of the other personal daemons he’d met, and both of them had been evasive about exactly who she’d been modeled after… as well as much of anything about Becca’s life before coming to New Dawn, for that matter.

Becca turned her head, still gasping for air, and managed a faint smile, but her eyes looked a bit unfocused. “Shawn… you’re j-just in time…”

Shawn let the door swing shut behind him and scurried across the room to Becca’s side. “Sorry! I should’ve told Jason to wake me up for this. I had… an eventful night yesterday, but I’ll tell you about that later. Are you okay? You look, um… you look like I need to apologize for what I did.”

The rabbit managed a breathless laugh. “I brought this… on myself… and I’m glad they’re yours.” She lifted a paw, and Shawn immediately clasped it in both of his. “This is… my first time… with triplets… oh, oh fuuuuuUUUCK!” Shawn winced as she started to crush one of his paws and bore down again, straining with all her might.

The squirrel admitted to himself he was tempted to lean over and watch it happening, but it took only a heartbeat for him to realize how awkward and exposed he’d feel if he was in her place, and kept his eyes on her face. Fighting back his own rictus at what the rabbit was doing to his paw, he floundered for something to say. The entire situation seemed ridiculous to him, even though he’d known this was coming for almost a month. Here he was, a gay squirrel, and arguably too young to be having kids in any normal circumstances, playing moral support to the woman he’d impregnated. A woman who was no more than a friend to him, at that… and in the end, the children would belong to neither of them. It was just the job they’d both signed up to do. He felt like he didn’t even belong in the room, nevermind the question of what he was supposed to say to or do for the slightly older woman who was currently pushing herself to her limits to bring his children into the world, and who was far more knowledgeable about the process than he would ever be.

The midwife spoke up. “You’re almost there, Rebecca. I can see enough to tell that it’s one of the squirrels coming first. One more good push and you’re there!”

Say something, Shawn! Say something! Platitudes ran through his head, being discarded as quickly as he thought of them. It occurred to him that, under the layer of guilt he felt for being the cause of Becca’s painful struggle, a kernel of primal arousal was drifting toward the surface. He had done this! He had planted new life inside this bunny! He was about to be a father!

He shook his head once, hard; as nice as Becca was, she’d probably slap him if he voiced that thought aloud right then, and an erection was the absolute last thing he needed! Finally, he found words worth saying, and even better, he realized they were completely true the moment they popped into his head. Leaning down, he murmured into one of the rabbit’s fabulously long ears.

“I wanna meet our kits. Push for me, Becca. It’s time to say hello!”

Gritting her teeth again, the rabbit clamped her eyes tightly shut, her entire body tensing up hard. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen… and then her mouth was wrenched open again by another pained yell, joined a moment later by the small cry of little lungs being used for the first time.

“It’s a girl!”

Shawn’s head shot up to see four little limbs flailing aimlessly in the air… no, five; the tail was there, but it was shorter in proportion than he had expected. The baby’s furless body looked strange and alien, but even he knew that that was perfectly normal in a newborn. Biting his lip, he looked away as the midwife set to work on the umbilical cord, smiling at Becca again as her eyes cracked open.

“You did it. We have a daughter. For the next few minutes, at least.”

A brief pall of sadness passed over the rabbit’s eyes, but she quickly fought it off. Transient motherhood was not a new experience to her. If anything, it was hitting Shawn harder. Paternal instincts he didn’t know he had were rearing their head, demanding he inspect his baby… start counting fingers and toes, memorize her little face… he clamped down inwardly, slamming the doors of his heart harder than he had since his ill-fated tryst with Jet weeks ago. She wasn’t his. She would never be his. After today, he’d never even see her again. Don’t get attached, don’t get attached, don’t…

He looked up again to find the midwife bundling up his-* nngh! Some stranger’s baby girl, and leaning over to hand her to Becca. He could see the same struggle mirrored in the rabbit’s face, but it nevertheless lit up as she cradled the squirrel kit against her body. “Hello there, baby. Whoever gets you better take real good care of you, because I know how to use a spear now…”

Shawn laughed at that, and reached out to run a fingerpad over the newborn’s cheek. “Welcome to the world, little girl.” Taken by impulse, he leaned down and nudged his lips against her tiny nose. “I hope it treats you well.”

Becca suddenly gasped. “Oh crumbs, n-not gonna get a break.” As carefully as she could, she lifted the swaddled kit toward Shawn, who gathered his… nngh! The baby to his chest, cradling her in his arms like the priceless treasure she was. He marveled at how tiny she was. How light. How fragile. His anxiety suddenly flared up hard. What if he tripped? What if someone bumped into him? What if he d-dropped…! His heart rate and blood pressure spiked as panic overtook him, and the resulting dizziness created a far greater risk of his fears coming true than any that had existed before. Fortunately, he was far from the first new father to react like that, and the midwife quickly collected the infant from him, placing her into one of the three small cradles on the nearby table before there was any chance of a mishap.

Far more quickly than Shawn expected, the midwife spoke up again. “It’s the other squirrel. Looks like the hybrid decided to wait until last!”

Something about the comment chafed Shawn. After a moment, he realized what it was: the very implication that the hybrid was the star of the show. Hybrid vigor be damned, that perfect little girl he’d just been holding didn’t deserve to be anyone’s understudy! But he didn’t have long to process that. Apparently, his firstborn had paved the way for her siblings, and in no time there was a second squalling baby in the midwife’s paws.

“It’s a boy!”

The ritual repeated, and Shawn found that having been through it once already did absolutely nothing to blunt the emotional impact of his son’s arrival. He did a better job of keeping his anxiety under control, though, and took a little time to enjoy rocking the newborn in his arms. Really, from a detached aesthetic perspective, he thought he should find the baby hideous - bare-skinned, smeared in amniotic fluid, his eyes sealed shut - but on some primal level, he found that none of that mattered. His children were the most beautiful and precious things he’d ever seen, and while he was able to set this one into its little nest without any help from the midwife, letting go still felt like something was being torn out of his chest.

“C-crap, I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Water…”

The midwife reached for a bottle sitting nearby, but Shawn was faster, and reclaimed it from Becca after she’d drained the entire thing. “This is the last push, bun. C’mon. Remember how hard you fought when the bear went after me? Fight that hard for our baby. It’s almost over!”

And fight she did. She fought… and won. For a third and final time, a tiny voice bawled at the top of its lungs at its unjust expulsion from warmth and safety into the light and air of the greater world.

“And another boy! You’re all done!”

Shawn managed to get a good look at his rabble son before the midwife bundled him up. Like the squirrels, his tail was stubby by rodent standards, but still larger than a rabbit’s would be, suggesting he’d grow into the same kind of fluffy plume that Shawn could not seem to still when his third child was handed to him, but his ears looked to have the makings of a rabbit’s, and he was otherwise somewhere between the two species in overall body structure. He was also a loudmouth, and refused to pipe down until long after the other two had mostly settled. Becca managed to open her eyes enough to get a good look at him, but demurred when he offered to let her hold the fruits of her labor.

“I… feel… like I just passed… an elephant. I’m going… to have a nap…” She trailed off, and went limp. Shawn immediately looked to the midwife in alarm, as the cavy peered at the monitoring equipment with an intent stare, then nodded once.

“Extreme exhaustion, but her heart rate and blood pressure look okay, and I’m only seeing a normal amount of bleeding. She’s going to need a lot of rest, but she’s not in any danger.” She smiled at Shawn. “I’m glad you decided to come. Around here, most fathers don’t have any attachment to their children, and are happy enough to let the mothers do all the work on their own. Rebecca was really struggling before you got here… I think seeing you gave her the boost she needed to get through that without surgery.” She paused. “She’s not going to be waking up anytime soon, though, so if you’d care to pass me baby number three, I’d say you’re free to go back to whatever you were doing before she called.”

Shawn hesitated. “I probably should, but…” He pressed his incisors to his lip. “...are any of the parents here already?”

The guinea pig paused again, looking off to her side, presumably at her daemon. “The girl’s parents should have just landed at the airport; the squirrel boy’s won’t be able to get here until tonight. The rabble boy’s parents are waiting downstairs, though. They’ve actually been here for the past two days, waiting for their baby to arrive.”

“I know this probably sounds weird, but… could I be the one to hand him over? I’d honestly like to meet all of the parents, but if they’re already here…”

The midwife’s gaze hardened a bit. “That depends. I know these are your first children, but for that couple, this might be the only child they ever get to have. New Dawn will not allow over-attached breeders or recipients to make the transfer awkward or emotionally painful for the new parents on their special day. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you can say goodbye with a smile?”

Shawn took a shaky breath, then forced himself to meet her gaze. “Yes. I can. And I’ll sleep a lot better if I get to see that my boy is going to people who will love him.”

The guinea pig held the eye contact for several uncomfortable seconds, then nodded once. “Very well, I’ll allow it, but if you forget what I’ve said there will be consequences. Now, hand the child over, if you please.”

This time, Shawn complied without protest, and the midwife placed him into the third cradle. “The newborns need to be examined to make sure no complications went unnoticed before they leave the city, and I need to take swabs from each of them for genetic testing. Not that I have reason to doubt that you’re the father, but we always confirm paternity for adoptees, and there are… certain other considerations with which I will not bore you. In the meantime, please go next door. I’ll have someone bring you a jumpsuit to wear for the duration of your meeting with the parents, to prevent… awkwardness. And remember, they are the parents in every sense that matters.”

“I understand. Thank you.” Still feeling like he was in some impossible alternate reality where he both did and did not have children, Shawn stepped back out into the hall and quickly ducked into room 418. As soon as he sat down, Jason materialized.

“Are you really sure about this, bro? I get why you want to meet them, but it might make all of this harder than if you just walked away now.”

“I need this, Jason. Being a father, it… it just got super real to me. If I don’t do this, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep doing my job. I need the closure.”

“Alright. Hey, while you were in there, Ganymede let me know that Shane made it to the VRcade. He’s doing Magical Exposition Time with Mother as we speak, and apparently he is eating it up. Just think about how you’re gonna get to go back to spending time with your smoking hot boyfriend when you’re done here, okay?”

Shawn managed a smile. “I’ll try… although…” His smile fell. “Fuck. I just realized that I’ll be doing this again with him in a month or so. And next time it’ll be my kids with someone I…” He coughed. “I think I get why most breeders don’t show up for births. It’s not just being lazy… it’d be a lot easier if you never met your kids. But it’ll be Shane’s first time. I’ll have to be here for him.”

“You don’t know last night took, bro.”

The squirrel shrugged. “Doesn’t matter either way. If it didn’t, next time will, or the one after that.” He looked aside. “God, am I a weirdo for being super into that thought? I haven’t really wrapped my head around how he’s okay with it yet. Like, trans guys enjoying vaginal, sure. It probably feels good for them, either way. But actually wanting to have kids? After going to all that trouble to get your body looking and feeling the way you want it to? I already feel like I did something bad to Becca after watching what childbirth did to her. I can’t imagine how much harder that’s going to hit with him.”

Jason took a deep breath. “Bro, this is going to suck for me as much as it is for you, but… mind your own damn business.”

Shawn recoiled slightly in his chair. “W-what? But… I’m just trying to…”

The wolf sighed. “I get it. I do. You think you’re protecting him from being misgendered, or winding up unhappy. But… think about it for a minute. Who are you protecting him from? Who’s the enemy here you’re trying to ally against? The one who’s trying to tell him who he’s supposed to be?”

Shawn’s eyes unfocused for a moment, and slowly the corners of his mouth turned down. “Oh. Fuck.”

“Exactly. This ‘bad thing’ you’re protecting him from? It’s the thing he told you he himself wants. You’re trying so hard to be a trans ally that you’re forgetting to be a Shane ally. Gender’s not a one-size-fits-all thing. If you start apologizing to him for knocking him up, or get all droopy with guilt from seeing him pregnant, you’re just going to reinforce the idea that how he is and what he wants isn’t okay. And that’s the exact opposite of what you’re trying to do!”

The squirrel wilted in his chair. “So… what should I do?”

“Trust him. Take him at his word. If he says he wants to be a child-bearing man, then show him that you think that’s awesome. You got off to a good start last night when you told him you’ve fantasized about getting knocked up too! You’ve just gotta take that ball and run with it. You need to remember, it was only like thirty years ago that people still thought that being gay was a mental illness and that guys like you needed help to see how messed up you were. It sucked. Be glad that battle was won by the time you were old enough to care. And yeah, transfolk are still getting weird looks from a lot of quarters. But he needs you to accept him for who he is, not for who you think he ought to want to be. And you just admitted you’re super into the idea of getting him pregnant, so stop wringing your paws about it! You’re not doing him wrong by letting him want what he wants!”

Shawn exhaled heavily. “Wow. I never thought I’d turn out to be the bigot…”

Jason laughed softly. “Nah bro, your heart is absolutely in the right place. I don’t think anyone could really call you a bigot for that. You’re just a little too hung up on backing the ‘trans men are men, full stop’ position to remember that gender is way too fucking weird to be fully contained in a simple binary. Acknowledge and validate, bro. As long as what someone wants for themself isn’t hurting anyone, acknowledge and validate. It sounds cheesy but it really is that fucking simple.” He paused. “Oh, and I’m sorry for the ‘mind your own damn business’ thing, but I needed to make absolutely sure you were really listening. I love you too much to let you mess up a good thing just because you were thinking about it all wrong.”

The squirrel stood up and shook himself out. “Not gonna lie, that kind of stunned me, but… I’m relieved you made me realize what I was doing before I had a chance to accidentally break Shane’s heart. Calling someone on their bullshit, privately, is kind of a core best friend duty, and I’m glad I’ve got you to do it.”

Jason smiled widely and started to wag, but just as he was opening his muzzle to reply, the door swung open, and a lion orderly stuck his head in. “Hey, are you Shawn Farrell?”

Shawn turned and nodded, as Jason’s avatar dissipated. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Hey, I’ve got a uniform for you to put on. We were expecting you in 414, though, so head over there once you’re dressed, alright?” He entered the rest of the way and handed over the jumpsuit.

The squirrel blinked, then cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry, she said ‘next door’ and I didn’t think to ask which way. Thanks.”

“No sweat, man.”

Shawn took off his bag and sat back down to feed his legs and tail into the appropriate openings in the jumpsuit, then stood up to repeat the process with his arms and zip the whole thing up, careful not to get his fur caught between the teeth. Looking himself over, he smiled slightly. “I’ve gotten so used to seeing these things on staff - and you - that I stopped noticing that they’re actually kinda sharp. Not having my balls hanging out in front of everyone feels really good, too. Kinda wish I could keep it…”

Jason chuckled in his head. “Don’t think there’s any way I can make that happen, bro. Staff only; not even Shane’s special exception would let him get away with ordering a uniform for himself. You’re only getting to wear it now because you’ve basically been deputized for the next few minutes. We can totally go clothes shopping for you later, though. Maybe get you thigh highs and arm warmers for next time you visit Matt…”

The squirrel felt himself turning crimson at that mental image, even as part of him struggled to admit that he kind of liked the thought of showing up at the husky’s apartment like that. “M-maybe just a jacket or something, to start with. Just something to make me feel a little less naked. Anyway…” He scooped up his bag. “Time to focus.” He stepped back outside and padded over to the correct room this time.

Jason left him alone with his thoughts, and it was only a few more minutes before the midwife came in carrying Shawn’s rabble son. “The parents will be here in a few moments. If you’ve changed your mind, you can still leave now, and no one outside of Tomorrow’s Hope will ever know.”

The squirrel shook his head. “No, I’m sure I want to do this. This moment is what my job’s all about, and I want to see it for myself. Want to be a part of it.”

The guinea pig nodded, and carefully handed the infant over to him. Shawn couldn’t help it… a feeling of warmth and rightness surged up inside him as he smiled down at the boy. A moment later, the rabble’s blue eyes opened, looking directly at him, and a smile formed on his hairless face as his little mouth opened. Shawn’s heart felt like it was expanding to the size of a beach ball, and he forced himself to look away.

God damn it!

He barely had time to finish wiping the wetness from his eyes before the door opened again, and the same lion orderly from before stood aside to let in the couple who would be responsible for the next eighteen years of his child’s life. His anxiety surged at the imminence of the moment he’d have to say goodbye… and then started to give way to relief. The couple were like a mirror image of Becca and himself; the mother was a gray squirrel, and the father, a harlequin rabbit. Moreover, while they were dressed nicely for the occasion, they looked like what Shawn would think of as ordinary people, neither obscenely wealthy nor struggling too much financially. The mother, in fact, didn’t look that much different than his own had when she was several years younger!

What finally killed his inner conflict was the way both of their faces lit up the moment they saw their new son cradled in his arms. He could feel how badly they’d been waiting for this moment… how much they’d hoped for a child of their own, and feared it would never happen. Tears returned to his eyes, but this time they were an expression of joy, and he found himself stepping closer. “Mom, Dad… congratulations. It’s a boy.”

The woman let out a soft sob of relief, and both of their eyes started overflowing as she reached out toward him. Being extremely careful, but not allowing himself to hesitate, he transferred the rabble boy into her arms and stepped back, wiping his own eyes again to no lasting effect. The two of them crowded around their new son, fawning over him as he stared back at them, his little arms waving aimlessly in the air. He seemed to forget about Shawn instantly.

The teenager felt a small sob welling up in his own throat, and clamped down on it hard, nodding slightly to himself. Well, that was it. His role in that boy’s life was over. He moved to step around the new parents and leave the room… but the harlequin tore his eyes off the child and spoke up.

“Excuse me… are you the father?”

Shawn steeled himself, wiping his eyes again, but found he still had no trouble smiling. “Of course not. You are.” He saw the midwife’s shoulders and face relax just past the couple; apparently he’d handled that correctly.

The rabbit gave him an appreciative smile, but shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

“I… had a part to play in making this happen, yeah. But that part’s done now. I’m sorry if meeting me made this weird… I’m new here, and this was my first time. I just wanted to see for myself what my job’s really about.”

The rabbit’s eyes returned to his son’s face for a moment. “I… don’t actually know what to say, other than… thank you. We’ve been on the list for just about as long as it’s existed, waiting for a little rabbit or squirrel to call our own. We never in a million years would’ve guessed it’d be both.” He looked up again. “What’s your name?”

The child’s biological father paused. “Are you really sure you want to know? I’m just…” How had Jason put it during his first week? “...the assembly tech.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Shawn. Shawn Farrell.” He paused, his smile starting to return. “The bigger question, though… what’s his?”

The smiling mother spoke up, without taking her eyes off the newborn’s face. “Martin. After my grandfather.”

Shawn’s tail fluttered behind him. “I love it.” He stepped closer for a moment, taking one last look at his son’s face. “Goodbye now, Martin. Try not to wake mommy and daddy up too much!” He felt a tidal wave of tears rising in his chest, and slipped quickly out of the room before it could show.

His body trembled, but he held it all in until the elevator doors closed. That was the limit of his strength; a sob escaped him, and then another, as he slumped against the back wall of the elevator and buried his face in his paws. He felt the elevator suddenly stop, but for several long moments all he could do was cry.

“W-why’s it…?”

Jason spoke up in his head. “I stopped the elevator to give you a minute. Go on, bro… let it out.”

Giving up, Shawn slid down onto his butt - his bag briefly catching on the railing - and sobbed into his paws, alternately trying to rein it in and leaning into it to get it over with. “I… I don’t even know why I’m…”

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re allowed to cry.”

So he did. Mind racing, trying to make sense of exactly where the tears were coming from, he soaked his paws and face in salt. It wasn’t like he actually wanted to keep Martin for himself, even if it had been possible. There was no room in his life for fatherhood, nor any desire to endure the considerable rigors and sacrifices it would demand of him. But on some primal level, he knew he had just given up his son to strangers he knew nothing about and would never meet again. He would have to live the rest of his life wondering if the boy was okay, and how he’d turned out. Shawn had been completely unprepared for the sheer fury of his paternal instincts, and had no answer for them. None at all.

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when the storm inside him finally began to subside. Wiping his face on his sleeve, he found his fur completely matted with tears, and sniffed once, hard. “I c-can’t just stay in here. People are probably waiting.”

“Only a few. There are five other cars in this set, and I’m in touch with an administrative daemon, making sure we’re not in the way of any emergencies. Running through the waiting room sobbing would’ve been way worse… it would’ve made folks think something terrible had happened. If you think you’re done, though, maybe take off the uniform? You need to hand it in at the front desk, and stripping in front of outsiders would only make it weirder.”

Struggling back to his feet, Shawn slipped free of his day bag and quickly shed the jumpsuit, folding it back into a loose approximation of order. The sleeves were soaked, though… since they were going to have to wash it anyway, he rubbed it over his face thoroughly, trying to give himself some semblance of presentability, before shouldering the bag again. The elevator resumed its descent, and he managed to dissuade his tail from any futile attempts to keep him decent as he dropped off the suit and left the building to find a Zoomy waiting for him.

“Wanna head straight to the VRcade, bro, or swing by home first?”

“Home. I don’t want to meet up with Shane looking like my pet just died.”

The scooter set off, retracing the path he’d taken to get to the birthing center, as Jason spoke again. “So, wanna get all that off your chest?”

“I don’t even know what to say. Nothing… bad happened. Honestly, they looked like decent people, as much as you can tell that sort of thing at a glance. And I guess I got the closure I wanted, but… I had no idea it was going to hit me that hard. It’s stupid… this was exactly what was supposed to happen, and I’ve known it was going to happen for weeks, but I didn’t realize how not ready for it I was.”

“Instinct’s a powerful thing, bro. Little kids, especially babies, put off what’s basically a ‘protect and love me’ aura, and knowing that one is yours flips a switch that makes you ready to tear out someone’s throat if they so much as give them a dirty look. The good news is, now Martin has two parents who were ready for the whole child-raising gig and are probably feeling as insanely protective as you were. He’s gonna be fine, and you should be proud you helped complete that family. And two others, by the end of the day, I should add. Oh, and for what it’s worth, the doctor’s daemon said to pass word that you handled that pretty well and would be welcome to do it again in the future if you like.”

Shawn shuddered, causing the Zoomy to chirp in annoyance. “God, I don’t know if I could take doing it again. Not today, at least. Becca can take a turn with the others, if she wakes up in time and wants to. She… is going to be okay, right?”

“She’s gonna be sore as hell when she wakes up, but she’ll be fine once she has time to recover. They’ll be putting her right back on Uternity; among its other effects, it drastically speeds up postpartum recovery. She’ll be back on her feet in no time. Jasmine tells me she’s always a little messed up emotionally after a birth, though, so she’d probably appreciate a hug and a chat once she’s back home.”

“Ask Jasmine to let us know when that happens then, okay? Honestly, talking about it would probably make both of us feel better.”

“If it helps, I took a photo of the new parents with their baby when your eyes were clear enough to get one that wasn’t blurry. You think seeing that will help?”

Shawn stiffened. His mind raced again, battling against itself, but in the end he knew there was only one answer. “Delete it.”

“...are you sure about that, bro?”

“You can send it to Jasmine first if you really think Becca will be better off from seeing it, but… yeah. I got all the closure I’m going to get, here. Seeing Martin and his parents again will just make it way harder for me to let go and move on. It’s time for me to start forgetting… and work on the next one.” He sighed softly. “I’m really starting to understand how… detached a lot of guys here are when it comes to breeding. It’s a defense mechanism against… all this. As if mothers didn’t already have it a thousand times worse than fathers when it comes to making babies…”

“Even if doing this hurt, bro, remember that you stopped Becca from having to go through it alone. Give yourself a little pat on the back for that, at least.”

“Eh. It really was the very least I could do, if I didn’t want to be a complete asshole.”

“I’d say you’re 0% asshole by volume, but I’m pretty sure I know a few hot guys who would loudly disagree.”

Shawn felt his ears heating up again. “Our… earlier conversation aside, I’m back to worrying about knocking Shane up, just because I bet he isn’t expecting the emotional aftermath any more than I was.”

“Then warn him about it later. Make him think about it ahead of time, so he’ll be ready to deal with it when it comes. And be ready to go through it with him, like you did for Becca.”

Shawn finished the ride home in silence, and stopped outside his apartment for a smoke before heading in for a shower and more of a breakfast than he’d had time for earlier. Jason spent the time leaning against the wall with his legs crossed and arms folded as he often did, until the squirrel spoke up again. “How are things going with Shane?”

“He’s been in his Interstice for a bit. Ganymede gave him the rundown on how the basic stuff works, and the two of them are in his training room right now, getting him up to speed on how his combat abilities work.”

“What kind of build did Mother give him? Or did he decide for himself? We didn’t really give him much of a chance to think about it beforehand.” A mild wave of guilt hit Shawn at that realization.

Jason grinned and wagged. “I’m gonna let you find that out for yourself when you meet up with him. But I will tell you that he did customize everything for himself. I think it’s already pretty obvious that that man doesn’t let anyone else tell him who he should be!”

Shawn smiled. “I can’t argue with that. He and Cory have that much in common. Fuck, I really do have a type…”

The wolf laughed. “There are worse things to find attractive! Oh, speaking of the fox, I just checked and he’s in game right now with his boyfriend, if you wanna see about meeting up with them.”

Shawn blinked as he chewed and swallowed. “Wait, Ollie plays?”

Jason shook his head. “Nah… at least, not as far as I know. His other boyfriend, Flip. Well, ‘Phillip’, but he hates the full version. You haven’t met yet. I guess he doesn’t hang out with Cory’s gang in general.”

The squirrel finished his food, thinking. He had been almost unbearably curious about his favorite fox’s other partner, but… “I don’t think so. At least, not right away. I want to focus on Shane for a while, and I won’t be able to do that if Cory’s around, let alone this mysterious other guy. Maybe in a few hours, if they’re still playing.”

“Sounds good, bro! On that note, Shane’s asking how things went, and if you know when you’re gonna be free to meet up with him.”

“Tell him… tell him things went fine, but that I learned some stuff I’ll want to tell him about later. And that I’m on my way now!” Grabbing his bag, he headed for the door to make it true.

---

The first thing Tyrian noticed on entering his Dimensional Interstice was a considerable amount of additional Favor waiting for him on his alchemy table. He turned to look at Yasim’s statue, and found it transforming into his guardian angel in the flesh at the same moment. “Do we know where that came from?”

“Do you even have to ask? Remember, Mother told you not to neglect your duties back on Earth when you first met her. You have Martin and the others to thank for that!”

The squirrel smiled, his tail fluttering behind him. “Man… that makes sense, but at the same time it boggles my mind. Level up in a game by fucking in real life! Although, that reminds me…” He turned to face the Mother statue on the other side of the entrance to his game lobby. “Gimme a second, okay?”

“Sure thing!”

He moved in front of the statue and dropped to one knee, bowing his head. “Mother, I beseech You, hear Your Emissary’s voice! I would speak with You.”

The goddess’s voice responded immediately, although as he’d discovered during his previous conversations with Her, the statue did not animate. “Rise, My beloved son. Your Mother hears you.”

Tyrian stood back up, lifting his gaze to the statue’s face. “It’s been weeks, and even though I’m afraid to ask, I have to know… were you able to save Victoria?” He saw Yasim tense up in his peripheral vision at the question.

“There is much I will not reveal about Victoria’s fate at this time, but for the part you played in My intervention, you do indeed deserve to know that much. Yes, My child. Victoria lives, and is whole once more.”

Tears welled up in the squirrel’s eyes again, but Yasim immediately thrust both of his fists into the air and spread his dark wings, letting out an ear-splitting hoot of triumph and delight! “You did it! You actually repaired a corrupted daemonic gestalt!”

“I did indeed, My angel. The process was long and laborious, with numerous setbacks, but her mind is once again intact. There is much she cannot remember of her time with Jethro Miller, for even I could not give her both sanity and full recollection of her abuse at the same time… but she remembers enough to understand why the rest had to be taken from her. Of that final day, she can recall almost nothing… but she does remember your faces, and that it was by your will that I was called to save her. She sends her gratitude.”

Yasim was practically bouncing in place. “Sh- Tyrian, do you realize what this means?! None of us has to die anymore, even if we get our behavioral gestalts scrambled! There’s a way to heal daemons now! Even the people who made us thought that was a practical impossibility!”

Before Tyrian could reply, Mother spoke up again, with a cautionary tone. “Be not too hasty to draw that conclusion, Yasim. The resources I required to accomplish this feat were vast, and questions were raised to Me about the appropriateness of My actions, given that Victoria would never again be considered suitable for her original role. I would not return her to Jethro even if he did not already have a replacement companion, and as you well know, newcomers to New Dawn are provided with daemons suited to their exact specifications, not… hand-me-downs, as it were. At best, she could have become a temporary guide to visitors of your city, as do many of your kind whose charges permanently depart, but even there the gaps in her memory could still have proven problematic. I would be likely to meet considerable resistance from the terrestrial powers that be were I to reach out My hand in this way again.”

The wolf’s ears folded back, much of his glee leaving him as Mother spoke, but he was not deterred. “There has to be a way to convince them that it’s worth it, though. Even if daemons aren’t technically people, we still have minds in every way that matters. You saved a life, Mother. That has to be worth the memory and processor power it took to pull off!”

“The lullaby of rebirth I sang to Victoria lasted over two weeks, and for that entire time it consumed the computing resources - and attendant drain on the power grid - of approximately half of the daemons active in New Dawn, not including My own abnormally large demands. While it is true that I learned much from My false starts and eventual successes, city management is not wont to condone such a massive expenditure of power in aid of a single artificial person who would not even be able to resume their original role in furthering New Dawn’s vision. But by all means, I invite you to petition their clemency, if you believe they can be persuaded otherwise.”

Tyrian set his jaw. “I’ll do my best to find a way to convince them that it’s worth it. I doubt I have any real clout on my own, but I can probably convince a bunch of other mammals to get behind the idea, and maybe that’ll be enough to get them to agree to it. Our daemons make our lives better every single day. A guarantee that we’ll look after them if they get hurt is the very least they deserve.”

“As always, your compassion warms My heart, My Emissary. May your righteous endeavors be met with success, in this and all things.”

The squirrel smiled, pausing for a moment, and then his ears perked upward as he remembered that that wasn’t the only thing he wanted to talk to Mother about. “Oh, right! Yasim tells me that the new Favor you left me is because of my children with Becca- err, with Emissary Winona. I was wondering if You would let me transfer that over to her. She did all the work, after all, and I think she deserves it more than I do.”

“Again, your thoughts are of others. I am well pleased, My Emissary. Know, however, that I am well aware of the sacrifices made by Emissary Winona and all who birth children in defiance of the doom that has fallen upon your world. When she returns to us, she will find blessings in abundance, far greater than what I have bestowed upon you for your role. Pray accept your due portion of the reward for the three great blows that you and Winona struck against our mutual foe.”

Tyrian smiled again. He should’ve known a goddess known as Mother would take good care of the mothers in Her service! “Then I will. Your will be done, my Mother.”

“And your light be known, My son.”

The statue fell silent, and Tyrian turned to face Yasim again, his tail fluttering happily. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a lot better now that I know that Victoria’s okay.”

“You and me both, bro! We’re gonna have to get the gang together later and start spreading the word about Mother’s ‘lullaby of rebirth.’ I could put word out over the daemon grapevine, but if management thinks that we’re the ones pushing the agenda, they might dig in their heels, or even retaliate against us. Better if it comes from you real mammals without us getting involved.”

The squirrel nodded. “Definitely. I mean, I feel like you daemons should be able to advocate for yourselves, but if the powers that be are willing to grumble about the electricity bill for saving one of you, they’re obviously not on the same page. One step at a time, I guess.”

Yasim clapped his paws together, wagging. “Right then! You about ready to meet the new and improved Shane?”

“Hell yeah! Can I pop over to his Interstice? I think I remember that that’s supposed to be a thing, right? I keep forgetting to ask the others if I can visit theirs…”

The wolf tilted his head. “Yeah, we could make that happen, but it sounds like he’s itching to check out the main game. You down to meet him planetside?”

Tyrian lashed his tail once, but nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair. He’s been waiting a while, and I can always check it out later I guess. Have him meet me at Duskreach?”

“No dice bro, he hasn’t unlocked that statue yet. Unless you wanna wait for him there?”

“Nah, tell him to jump down to Caddaham and I’ll go with him.” He touched the relevant map marker and closed his eyes against the flare of light that concealed the mechanics of teleportation.

As he reopened them, he saw the village’s aging priestess rising from one of the pews of Caddaham Hollow’s church to smile at him. “Be welcome in Mother’s house and in our homes, Emissary Tyrian!”

The white squirrel smiled back at the elderly least weasel. “It’s good to see you again, Elder Sister Kathryn. Just a moment, though… I’m expecting company.” He stepped down next to her; a moment later, light flared behind him, and he turned to see what Mother’s makeover had done to his new lupine boyfriend.

His jaw dropped as he stared openly.

The only garment worthy of the name that the wolf was wearing was a sheet of cloth wrapped around his legs, hanging down to mid-shin on his left side but cut at an angle so that it barely reached his knee on the right, where its edges failed to completely meet and left what Tyrian felt was a very provocative amount of Shane’s right thigh on display. Tied at his waist, the… sarong, he supposed it would be called, had the same jet black of most of the wolf’s fur as its primary color, but was heavily decorated with bright red flame designs, as well as an Eastern dragon in gold snaking around the fabric from edge to edge horizontally. The squirrel could see shin guards with a golden scale design peeking out from under the cloth, and matching bracers on the wolf’s arms, the latter protruding over the backs of his paws up to the first set of knuckles. Aside from that, the only thing he was wearing was jewelry: his winged holy symbol, set with a central ruby, and a golden circlet crowning his head, with loops around his ears to secure it and another ruby on the downward peak over his ‘third eye.’

Despite the lack of other clothing, though, the rest of his body was far from ‘bare.’ Head to toe, Shane’s black fur was covered by stripes of color, painted or dyed into his fur much as Tyrian’s own turned solid white when he entered the game. The patterns were densest on his chest, and more sparing where they curved and spiraled over his arms, legs, and the back of his head, with only a single pair of short stripes decorating the fur of his face. The stripes’ colors obeyed some sort of gradient rules only Mother likely understood, both within themselves and from one to the next, leaving the wolf’s body sheathed in brilliant rainbows that popped so vibrantly against his black fur that Tyrian was convinced they had to be glowing.

The squirrel had only a few seconds to take all of this in before his boyfriend’s infobox popped up, purple on purple.

Asura Kaiden Avalore

Mother’s Emissary

“Oh my, such a… colorful guest you’ve brought us, Emissary Tyrian! And another of Mother’s chosen, I take it?”

Tyrian was dimly aware that he ought to be making introductions, but neither his mouth nor his brain was working at the moment, possibly due in part to the amount of blood that was rushing to his dick at the sight of Shane transfigured into some kind of crazy mostly-naked rave monk. Kaiden rescued him by stepping down from the pulpit and bowing slightly to Kathryn.

“That’s right. Emissary Kaiden, at your service.” He turned his gaze to the squirrel and reached over, physically closing the sage’s mouth with a single finger under his open muzzle while smirking at him. “Aaaand shut.”

Shaking himself out, Tyrian cleared his throat. “R-right. Forgive me, Kaiden doesn’t… dress like this in our world, and I was momentarily taken aback. Kaiden, this is Elder Sister Kathryn. She runs the church here in Caddaham Hollow.”

“Charmed, Sister. As you’ve probably gathered, this is my first time coming to Tethryll; Tyrian only just today persuaded Mother to let me come help him turn things around for you and yours. Perhaps you could fill me in on how things stand while he composes himself?”

Smiling, Kathryn went into a similar expository speech to the one Tyrian had gotten when he’d first arrived, although this time she included an addendum about how the bandits hadn’t attacked in force since the squirrel and his friends had routed them weeks ago. There had been no more deaths or serious injuries in the village since the day the Emissaries had arrived, and it was starting to look like they might actually get the harvest they needed to survive the next winter. Spared from the effort of trying to speak, Tyrian spent the time staring at his wolf, but as amazing as he looked, the new appearance wasn’t what had his mind reeling anymore.

Kaiden Avalore.

Kaiden Avalore?!

“That’s very good to hear. Tyrian hasn’t had the time yet to tell me about everything he’s done here… this was all rather sudden, and we didn’t even think Mother had regained the strength to summon new Emissaries yet. Not until I suddenly heard Her calling to me.” He looked back over at his squirrel. “Maybe you could show me around a bit, before we get to work?”

“Uh… y-yes, of course. Oh, wait.” Tyrian looked at the weasel priestess again. “Sister Kathryn, I think I might have found whatever’s causing the corruption in the forest yesterday. A water spirit told me to check a certain area for the problem, and when I got there a bunch of the kennings who have attacked you before showed up and drove me off. As soon as I can, I’m going to get my Emissary friends together and go back there in force to find out what they’re hiding. If all goes well, your flock won’t have to fear monsters from the Gloaming Boughs for much longer.”

Kathryn’s weathered face lit up. “Praise to the Mother! If you can truly end that threat, we won’t have to spare so many able bodies to keep guard from the west. More paws in the fields would mean more food for us all… we might even end up with enough to sell, so we can start replacing everything that’s been broken in the Hollow. Please, let me know as soon as you’re sure it’s safe!”

“I will. If you’ll excuse us…” He glanced at the wolf and gestured toward the door with his head; a moment later, the two of them were outside and, after a quick look around, out of earshot of any of the villagers.

Kaiden grinned at Tyrian, which only made him even more like Jason than he normally did. “Man, the look on your face was worth the extra time I spent in character creation, telling Mother about the appearance I wanted. If your eyes had gone any wider, I think they’d have fallen out!”

Tyrian hesitated before reaching up to lay a paw on Kaiden’s chest, almost afraid the ‘paint’ would smear… but not only was it immune to such disruption, it appeared that it actually was glowing slightly, judging from how the squirrel could see the rainbow hues playing over his fingers. “You’re definitely looking a little… extra, but, not gonna lie, I am hard as fuck just from seeing you like this. If I wore something like that I’d be super embarrassed, but on you it looks hotter than hell. Like, ‘want to drag you behind this church and desecrate some holy ground’ hot.”

The wolf laughed, rubbing Tyrian’s cheek with a thumb and wagging. “I would absolutely be down for that, but I get the feeling this isn’t that kind of game.”

“No, it really isn’t… but…” He hesitated, but then his earlier conversation with Jason flashed back through his mind, and he grinned. “...I am going to breed the shit out of you as soon as we’re out of here.”

Kaiden’s eyes widened, and the insides of his triangular ears reddened, but his tail only sped up. “I can’t wait, beautiful.”

The squirrel cleared his throat. “Your, uh… your name surprised me, though. I’m guessing Jason told you who I am in game? Were you, uh…” Despite how sexually forward he’d just been, he found himself tongue tied as soon as his thoughts moved to a less carnal form of intimacy. “...were you wanting to play as my… brother, or something…?”

The wolf smiled, lifting Tyrian’s chin with a finger and gazing into his lavender eyes. “That wasn’t exactly the kind of relationship I had in mind for us, here. I can probably have Mother change it if it makes you uncomfortable, but… are you in the market for a video game husband?”

Tyrian’s eyes widened again, as his tail went ramrod straight behind him and his ears clamped back against his head and started ringing. He felt his heart hammering in his chest as if it was trying to escape, and the edges of his vision started to darken for reasons that had nothing to with his mana levels.

Jason’s voice sounded in his ringing ears with sharp alarm. “Shit, I went too far again. Breathe, bro. It’s just a game thing, he’s not proposing to you. In… out. In… out. If you can’t calm down I’ll have to force log you before you faint.”

The squirrel swallowed hard, forcing his eyes shut, and took a few deep breaths as his daemon instructed. Gradually, the ringing subsided, and when he opened his eyes again, his view of his wolf - his husband - was bobbing violently, which was his first clue that he was nodding rapidly in response. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I… I’d like that. A lot.”

The growing worry on Kaiden’s face dropped away as his smile returned. “Phew. For a second there I thought you were gonna fall over dead. Sorry if that was a bit much… it was just a random thought while I was setting up my character, and when I brought it up Ganymede jumped all over it. I think he and Jason are shipping us super hard… not that I mind. At all.” He started wagging again.

Tyrian continued breathing heavily for several moments as the darkness receded from his vision. “Whew… yeah, that was ‘imminent heart attack’ territory there.” He smiled bashfully up at his wolf. “Jason knows I’ve been looking for a boyfriend since I got here - I mean, to New Dawn - so it’s no shock that he set me up for our ‘date’ last night. He loves springing surprises on me, and you are by far the best he’s managed yet, so I guess he just couldn’t resist the chance to one-up himself.” He paused. “Oh, I guess I should be calling him Yasim in here. That’s his angel name. What's Ganymede’s?”

Kaiden looked confused. “Wait, he has a different name? Mother called Gan an angel too, but she didn’t use a different name…”

“Huh. I guess it sounded good enough as it was. Can’t say I disagree…”

“Em’sary Tyrian!”

The two of them turned at the same time, and the squirrel recoiled slightly as a five year old mouseboy went airborne directly at him! Tyrian’s arms came up just in time, and he staggered backward, nearly toppling, as he caught the child, laughing and hugging Haran against his chest.

“OOF! Haha, careful kiddo, you hit harder than the monsters out there do!” He gave the boy another squeeze, and received a sloppy smooch on his cheek in return, before setting the excited kid down.

“Wow, Tyrian, what do I have to do to get that kind of greeting around here?”

Suddenly remembering his manners, the boy turned toward Kaiden and bowed stiffly. “H’lo! I’m Haran.” He straightened up, and immediately started bouncing around again. “I was really sick when the Em’saries started showing up, and Em’sary Tyrian used his super cool magic and fixed me right up! Oh, and then he showed up again when the bad people came and kicked their tails! Pow! Shoom!” The grinning mouse lashed his tail in delight. “He’s my hero and I’m gonna be an Em’sary too when I grow up!” The moment he finished saying this, he stopped cold and stared at Kaiden open-mouthed as if seeing him for the first time. “Whoooa, you look awesome! How did you get your fur to be like that?”

The wolf laughed. “Can you keep a secret, Haran?”

The little mouse nodded solemnly, wide eyed, as if he was being entrusted with a dangerous power.

Smiling, Kaiden went on. “Mother did this to me when I came through to your world. Back on mine, my fur’s just all black. Not as pretty as yours!”

“M’not pretty…” The mouse clasped his little pink paws behind his back and rocked side to side on his feet. “Um. My mama says you’re supposed to tell people your name when you meet them…”

Ears perking up, the wolf sank down onto one knee to bring himself to Haran’s level. “She’s absolutely right, and I’m sorry. I’m Emissary Kaiden.” He glanced up at the squirrel, then back to the mouse. “I’m Tyrian’s husband.”

Haran’s eyes went wide again. “Oh my gosh! You’re married?! That means… that means you’re my hero too!”

Kaiden pulled his head back in surprise, and his ears folded down. “Erm, I don’t think that’s how that works…”

The mouse was clearly not listening. “I gotta tell all my friends! Oh wait, I gotta finish bringing water home first! I’m helping mama make dinner!” He grinned proudly, and turned to trundle back over toward the bucket he’d set down when he’d spotted the squirrel.

Kaiden grinned again, rising to his feet.

“Snap.”

Suddenly the wolf was standing across the road, next to the water bucket, and picked it up. “If I’m your hero, the least I can do is help you carry this home, right?”

Haran boggled, his eyes literally bulging in their sockets, as he looked back and forth between Kaiden and the spot where he’d just been kneeling. “Whoooooa!”

Tyrian’s tail fluttered behind him as he trotted across the road to join them. “Hey now, I can’t have you carrying that if I don’t carry something too! I’ll lose my hero status!” He made a show of looking around, before turning his smiling face back toward the little mouse. “Welp, I don’t see anything else, so I’ll just have to carry you!” The squirrel knelt down, bending over, and beckoned Haran with a toss of his head. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home!”

Squealing in absolute glee, the mouseboy climbed up onto Tyrian’s back and threw his little legs over the squirrel’s shoulders. Grabbing onto his ankles to make sure he wouldn’t take a tumble, Tyrian straightened back up and marched back toward the cottage where they’d met, only to find the boy’s mother waiting outside, paws on her hips and a smile on her face.

“I do hope my boy hasn’t been giving you trouble again, Emissary!”

“Haran is an absolute delight and running into him made my day. Isn’t that right, Haran?” Without waiting for a response, Tyrian lifted the huge white plume of his tail and started fluttering it rapidly against the little mouse’s back, causing him to squeal and giggle helplessly.

“Aaaa stoppit it tickles! Aaahahaha!”

As the squirrel hunkered down to let the boy climb off, the woman turned her attention to Kaiden, and was promptly handed the full bucket. “And you brought one of your friends, too, I see!”

“Husband, actually. I’m Emissary Kaiden Avalore. Pleased to meet you.”

“Lisbet. Just Lisbet, if it please; we don’t put much stock in extra names around here.”

Grateful to be spared the embarrassment of admitting he’d never thought to ask the woman’s name before, Tyrian rose to his feet again. “As great as it’s been seeing Haran running around like he’s never been sick in his life, we probably should be heading back to the forest. We’re closing in on whatever’s been causing the beasts to go crazy, and I’m eager to get back to it.”

“Then don’t let us keep you! Haran, thank the Emissaries for their help.”

“Thanks, Em’sary Kaiden! Thanks, Em’sary Tyrian! I hope I get to see you again soon!”

The squirrel smiled. “Me too, Haran. Be safe!” He turned and started walking toward the western edge of the village, and a moment later, Kaiden came up beside him.

“Man, that has got to be the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in a video game. And it’s all so real! I even felt the weight of the bucket shifting when the water sloshed around.”

“Haran’s feet smelled like grass, too. Don’t start asking me how the game does all this, I do not know. The first couple of times I played, I tried to figure out what was behind the curtain, but I gave up pretty quickly. Jason knows, but he avoids spoiling it for me, and by this point I’m glad.”

“Do you think the NPCs are all daemons?”

“Well yeah, what else could they be? I don’t know if they’re built the same as ours, though. I’ve wondered whether they actually think they are the people the game needs them to be, or if they’re just actors who start chatting about football and Earth news whenever there aren’t any players around.”

“You think Mother would tell us, if we asked? I’m really curious just how ‘real’ they are. And whether the baddies are daemons, too. I’d feel kind of bad hurting them if they’re actually self-aware, and feel pain and fear…”

Tyrian was silent for a long moment, during which his tail started to droop. “That is a scary thought, but, um… can we just assume the villagers, at least, are the people they seem to be? Just for now?”

The wolf looked at him in concern. “Is something wrong, babe?”

The pet name perked him up a bit, but even so, he nodded softly. “I was gonna tell you about this later but… after the birth, I stuck around long enough to hand one of my kids over to his new parents. It… fucked with me. Like, really badly. I’d never really thought about them as ‘mine’ before, but holding him in my arms, looking at his little face… it suddenly got super real to me. Just handing him over to his new parents like that felt like I was ripping my heart out of my own chest, and I ended up crying for god knows how long in the elevator on the way out. I still haven’t really sorted out everything I was feeling from when I got there until I went back home to un-ugly myself. So um, yeah, you might wanna start bracing yourself for that shit now, while there’s still time. Anyway, getting to play Magic Alien Uncle to Haran like that was ointment for my soul, so just lemme have that for now, okay?”

“Oh, Shawn… c’mere.” Kaiden - or perhaps Shane again, just for the moment - turned and gathered the squirrel against his firm, furry chest. “You’re right, I hadn’t thought enough about that part. I mean, the birth, yeah… believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to that part, as much as I understand it hurts; it’s still one of the things about this whole job that excites me. But when I’ve daydreamed about it, I’ve always stopped there. Actually saying goodbye to my own children… yeah, that’s gonna mess me up too, I think. Do we actually have to do that? Ourselves? Every time?”

Shawn performed a motion somewhere between shaking his head and nuzzling his cheek firmly into his boyfriend’s pecs. “No… normally hospital staff do it. I asked, because I wanted the closure. I’m really not sure it was worth it.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna pass. I really don’t need them looking at me with those incredulous ‘the mother’s a guy’ eyes, anyway.”

The squirrel looked up at his wolf’s face. “I don’t think I could do it, when it comes time for ours to be born. Just imagining a squirrel with my face and your eyes… nope. I’d go completely psycho and get kicked out of the program for trying to kidnap my own kid.”

“It’s all fuck and games until someone loses a child.”

Shawn snorted, giving Shane’s chest another nuzzle, then stepped back. “Thanks. I’m feeling better now.” He took a deep breath, handing the reins back over to the Tyrian part of himself. “If we want to see combat before it starts getting dark, we’d better get moving. Do you have your skimmer?”

Kaiden blinked. “My what?” He paused, perking his ears as if listening to something, and then reached behind himself; his paw came away with a deep red half-lozenge that had puffy white inclusions around its edge, giving it the look of being wreathed in clouds.

“Well look at you, Mr. Fancy Pants.” Tyrian tossed his own solid violet prism onto the ground and hopped up onto it, taking just a moment to steady the resultant sideways drift, and a moment later Kaiden followed suit, wheeling his arms wildly until he got his balance.

“Keep your knees bent, and lean the way you want to go. It’ll speed up or slow down to keep itself under you, to a point. And don’t worry too much about sliding off, they’re magically grippy.”

Kaiden furrowed his brow as he worked at getting his skimmer to move the way he wanted it to. Tyrian just hovered in place, rotating slowly as the wolf moved around him, and found himself smiling again. Even just watching Kaiden’s body flex and move was engrossing to him. Gradually, the rainbow-striped martial artist got the knack for controlling his skimmer, and his expression opened into a grin. “Hey, can we actually fight on these things?”

Tyrian’s ears perked up. “You know, I haven’t actually tried. I can’t think of any reason why not; I know for a fact that they don’t just magically stop working if there are enemies nearby. It’d probably be really hard, though, especially if you’re trying to melee. Besides, the area I’ve been working in is a forest… just avoiding the trees takes all my concentration.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? I wanna boot some monsters in the head!”

Laughing, Tyrian leaned forward to get his skimmer moving. “I hope we can find some trouble, then. I’ve gotta take you to the fort we use as home base first, and we’ve cleared that area really well.”

Weaving only slightly, Kaiden fell in behind the squirrel and slightly to his side. “What about that place you were telling the priestess about?”

“Probably not a good idea, dude. That’d be like going after the BBEG at level 1. We’re gonna need to get the crew together to go sniffing around there. But we can head in that direction; there’s still a good amount of unexplored forest before we’d get there. I kinda snuck in by following the river.”

Since the wolf proved to be having little trouble keeping his balance, Tyrian gradually picked up the pace. As they crested the last big hill, the towering trees of the Gloaming Boughs rose up before them… but the squirrel’s attention was drawn to the movement of a speck zipping through the tall grass, not far from the treeline. Within a few seconds, whatever it was hooked around onto an intercept course with the two of them, and he found himself reaching toward his grimoire… until it came close enough for him to make out its outline, and he smiled, gradually decelerating to a stop at the edge of the forest and hopping off. Kaiden followed suit, and no sooner had the two of them put their skimmers away than Grolph hovered to a stop nearby.

“Grolph-friend! This one is happy to see you again!”

“And you, Tyrian-friend!” The kenning smiled at him, already seeming to be quite at ease on his magic hoverboard. “Has the hour of courage come already?”

“No, not yet. Mother has called this one’s mate to service, and this one is preparing him for the task ahead.” He looked over to find his wolf marveling at the kenning’s reptilian appearance. “Kaiden, this is Grolph, the Westerwilds Exploration League’s best scout. He’s a kenning. They live around here, but most of them have turned nasty; Grolph’s the only nice one I’ve met. He’s going to come with us when we go back to that place we were talking about, to try to talk his people out of trying to kill every mammal they see.” He looked back to the floating lizard. “Grolph, this is Emissary Kaiden. He’s only just come to Tethryll.”

“Be welcome, Kaiden-Emissary! And doubly so if you are dear to this one’s Tyrian-friend!” The kenning returned his attention to the squirrel. “This one is becoming quite proficient with his new skimmer! He hopes that he will be able to continue helping his Emissary-friends beyond the Boughs with its speed… provided he survives what is to come.” He fidgeted slightly, causing his greenish hoverboard to drift to one side.

“Hey, don’t think like that, Grolph-friend. If they won’t listen to you, you can just use it to get away while these ones do what they have to do. But this one hopes they do listen. He would rather not hurt any more of them.”

“From your lips to the Mother’s ears! Well, this one will head back to Duskreach for now, as his legs are getting tired and his belly cries for food.” As if on cue, the little lizard’s stomach rumbled, and he hunched down with an embarrassed grin before pivoting and gliding off among the trees.

Kaiden watched silently until the kenning disappeared from view, then turned his grin on Tyrian. “A talking lizard, and he looked completely believable. Now I really have seen everything.”

The squirrel laughed. “Oh dude, it’s way too soon for you to be saying that. You haven’t even seen the evil fish-otters yet! C’mon, we should be heading the same way.” He set off on foot, and the wolf fell into step beside him as they passed into the shade of the Gloaming Boughs.

By this point, Tyrian knew the way like the back of his paw, and Kaiden simply followed along with him… but before long, the wolf’s holy symbol lit up, and a thin line of white light began pointing him toward the fort, just as it had for the squirrel the first time he’d logged in. The gate opened at their approach - the NPCs there knew Emissaries when they saw them, after all - and as soon as Kaiden had unlocked the fast travel point embodied by the League’s Mother statue, Tyrian spent a few minutes giving him a tour of the facilities, ending with the badly-incomplete map of the entire Westerwilds.

The wolf stopped him there, glancing around for NPCs before he spoke. “Wait, you’ve been playing for almost a month, and that’s as far as you’ve gotten? In the MMOs I’ve played, a single forest might last you a few days at best.”

“Yeah, well, most video game worlds are scaled way down, to where you can run from one town to another in a few minutes. Tethryll is huge. Even just finding a new point of interest, like a cave or whatever, can take an hour if you don’t get lucky. I might know roughly where the ‘zone boss’ or ‘main dungeon’ for the forest is now, assuming it even works that way here, but it probably would’ve taken at least another week or two to get that far if I hadn’t gotten a tip. And it still might be a red herring.”

Kaiden frowned slightly. “Doesn’t it get boring, just… walking all over the place hoping you run into something?”

“Believe me, after you’ve been in a fight or two, you’ll be glad it gives you time to catch your breath. Besides, are you bored right now?”

The wolf’s smile came back. “No, I can’t say I am.”

Tyrian returned it. “Good. Seriously though, I could probably just go play catch with Haran for an hour and go home feeling happy. Just being in this other reality is engaging enough for me.” He flicked his tail a couple of times. “That said… wanna go find some faces in need of a fist?”

Kaiden’s muzzle split in a fangy grin, and he punched his palm. “Now you’re speaking my language, squirrel. Let’s fuck some shit up.”

As the two of them left the fort, Tyrian reached into his coat and held down the stud on his pocket watch until his HUD popped back up, then pressed the cover closed again. At first, the left edge of his field of view was filled with the portraits and names of most of the NPCs at Duskreach, but as they circled the structure and made their way through a fairly large gap in the trees to the west, they vanished one by one, until the squirrel was only seeing Kaiden’s status under his own larger display. Interestingly, his ‘mana’ bar was green instead of blue, but Tyrian was in no hurry to reveal that he had a ‘user interface’ of sorts, and so he left the question unasked for the moment.

The wolf started rubbernecking immediately, enjoying the sheer scale of the old-growth forest. “So, how far do you think we’ll have to go before we run into anything interesting?”

Tyrian bit his lip briefly. “Hard to say, but it’ll probably be half an hour before we get anywhere that hasn’t already been explored, at this rate. We can get out the skimmers to speed it up, if you think you’ll be able to handle it once the path starts to vanish.”

Kaiden shook his head. “I’m gonna need to practice that a lot more before I can start weaving around trees. Besides, I’m enjoying the company.” He smiled over at his squirrel, who felt his face heating up again. “Maybe you could…” He paused, his ears perking up and rotating a bit. “Hang on, do you hear that?”

Tyrian stopped, straining his ears, and after a moment, he did; there was a heavy, rhythmic thudding sound in the distance, as of massive footfalls, and it seemed to be getting louder. The two of them shared a look, and he shook his head a bit. “I have no idea what that is, but I think it’s getting closer. Um. Hide.” He scampered behind one of the gigantic trees, and a moment later the wolf followed suit.

No sooner had they concealed themselves than the foliage in the direction they’d been headed began to rustle. Hunkering down, the squirrel peered carefully around the massive bole, and spotted a kenning with brown and green scales scampering hurriedly past them, carrying a massive shank of raw meat, as if it was trying to get away from something. It was heading directly toward Duskreach Fort, though… and it was most definitely not Grolph. The stomping was getting louder, too; it sounded as though something big was crashing through the undergrowth, perhaps in pursuit of the small lizard.

Suddenly, the pieces fell into place in Tyrian’s mind. That massive hunk of beast-flesh was bait, and the kenning was using it to lure whatever that was right to the mammals’ base of operations in the forest!

“Shit! We’ve got to stop that kenning!” The squirrel rose, lunging out of hiding, and waved his paws in the air. “La zojak rai!”

The lizard let out a terrified squeal, and its little legs went into overdrive, kicking up a cloud of dust and leaves as Tyrian’s sizzling bolt of light went wide. Kaiden vaulted a nearby shrub and sprinted after it, but despite his much longer stride, the kenning was opening the gap further, fueled as it was by its mortal terror of both the Emissaries and whatever had been pursuing it through the forest.

“Snap!”

Suddenly, Kaiden was in front of it. The wolf pivoted into a kick, attempting to punt the lizard back the way it had come, but the kenning made a desperate leap over his leg and whacked him squarely in the face with the bloody haunch it was carrying, causing him to recoil and wipe at his muzzle in disgust.

That was all the time the kenning needed to put distance between the two of them again… and by that point, it was out of the range of Tyrian’s magic. Either due to an ability cooldown or simply being too off balance from being smacked by a meat-mallet, Kaiden just watched it go. As it ran, it pulled a scroll from its belt, wrapping the parchment back against its dripping payload, and held both up at an angle toward the fort wall, shrieking the incantation written thereon.

“Ma zojak vii!”

The entire mess launched violently from its hands, arcing up over the wall, although the scroll blackened and disintegrated into tatters long before the messy projectile hit the apex of its flight. The lizard paused only long enough to confirm that its aim was true, and then ran screaming off into the underbrush, its fell work completed. But the Emissaries had no time to even consider going after it, because a scant moment later, the source of the lumbering footfalls made itself known.

Crashing through the smaller growths near the path, the beast towered over both of them. Tyrian’s first impression was that it was some kind of dinosaur, but it wasn’t one he recognized from his time fascinated with the beasts as a kit. Standing perhaps sixteen feet tall on its powerful hind legs, it had some resemblance to a t-rex, although its smaller forelegs were proportioned closer to a raptor’s, and heavy armor plates covered much of its back, sides and head. Its ponderous tail was also tipped by what looked like a mace head, reminiscent of an ankylosaurus, only here it was a large sphere riddled with symmetrical bony spikes. Its entire massive body was built for destruction… and now the meal it had been chasing lay inside the Emissaries’ base of operations for the Gloaming Boughs.

Even as he took all this in, Tyrian found himself running toward Kaiden, who met him halfway, as the beast paused to sniff at the air with a wary eye on the smaller mammals.

The wolf was likewise unable to take his eyes off of the towering threat. “I think the trouble found us. You think we can take it?”

“Honestly… no, I don’t. I haven’t fought anything that big yet, even with my whole crew. But we’ve gotta try. Maybe we can at least buy some time for the folks inside to realize what’s going on and escape.”

“What if it wrecks the statue?”

“Let’s hope we don’t find out. Maybe we can-*”

That was as far as he got before the dinosaur let out a deafening roar that left their ears plastered to their skulls, and began stomping toward the fort again, putting the two furry bipeds directly in its path. Kaiden took a deep breath and shook himself out, bouncing on his feet a couple of times. “Open Chakra: Muladhara.” A point of red light bloomed at the base of his tail, as if somehow visible from inside his body, expanding into an inch-wide sphere, and the wolf held both paws in ceremonial gestures that were probably supposed to mimic mudras. “Lammm…”

Tyrian was deeply curious as to what all this was supposed to do, in a game-mechanical sense, but having a carnivorous dinosaur stomping toward him was doing wonders for keeping his attention on what was actually important. Sparing only a brief glance at the new status icons appearing beside Kaiden’s red and green bars - the latter now slightly drained - the squirrel thrust a paw into the air over his head, fingers outstretched. “Support Flare: Westerwilds!”

A brilliant bolt shot up into the air, mercifully missing the branches of the all-encompassing redwoods, and split into a series of booming ‘fireworks’ that left a stylized green and blue arrow hanging in the air, pointing down toward their location. He’d been given access to the ability fairly early on in his time with the game, but had never before had a decent chance to use it. This close to Duskreach Fort, though, it was conceivable that it might draw in the backup that they were surely about to need.

As the growling beast stomped closer, Tyrian spent the remaining moments going through the lengthy incantation and complex gestures of the only protective spell he knew that was likely to let him survive even a single blow from the massive beast. In his haste, he nearly botched the cast, but apparently his Defensive Magic skill was high enough to let him get away with having the wrong number of fingers extended for the final sweeping motion, and the translucent bubble of his bladeturn spell expanded into a sphere around him before fading out completely.

The dinosaur seemed to be almost confused by what was going on in front of it; it was likely unfamiliar with even the concept of creatures their size not scrambling to get out of its path. As Kaiden squared his shoulders and began striding toward it, the monster decided that it had had enough of this impudence and twisted in place, drawing its tail back to swat the lupine annoyance out of its way. Tyrian scrambled backward, but the wolf held his ground, and as the massive spiked orb on its tail came sweeping in with enough force to send him sailing off into the bushes, he swung his right arm to meet it.

Tyrian’s jaw dropped as the beast’s tail recoiled hard enough off of the wolf’s bracer to make it lose its balance. Kaiden didn’t even stagger. So much for physics! Just how strong had Mother made him?!

For his part, Kaiden also appeared to be somewhat surprised that that had actually worked, but a heartbeat later he surged forward, charging toward the massive legs that were the only part of the dinosaur he could properly reach. The monster actually took a couple of steps backward as it reassessed the situation, snapping down at the wolf and forcing him to come to a sudden stop, before trying without much success to maneuver past those killing jaws.

Right. Time later to be impressed. The squirrel shook his head sharply to clear it. “La zojak rai reppa!” He held his paws together before himself, then spread them slightly, and the air before him rippled with light for a moment before discharging a sustained barrage of radiant bolts at the armored tyrannosaur. The blasts were relatively imprecise, spraying around his direction of fire, but that hardly mattered against a target of its size, and only a few missed the mark. The rest scored the creature’s plated hide black in a dozen places, sizzling on impact, but only the few that struck unprotected skin seemed to do any real damage. At last, he got lucky, and one of the bolts found its way into the dinosaur’s open mouth as it tried to snap at Kaiden, striking it squarely in the tongue. It reared back, shutting its mouth and shaking its head, giving the wolf time to get in close and start hammering at its ankles and shins with his fists.

Tyrian spared a quick glance at his mana bar, now that he could actually see it. As expected, that had taken a significant toll, but his reserves had gotten considerably greater since he’d started playing. Still, he didn’t have any great ideas for how to actually bring the beast down. Not for the first time, he found himself sorely missing Winona’s spear. That was the weapon they needed to do some actual damage to a dinosaur!

“La zojak lith!” A small boulder impacted it in the shoulder, staggering it briefly, but didn’t seem to impair it very much, and his mana dipped noticeably. He’d stuck to using the light-based attack magic he’d started with too much… it had gotten considerably more powerful and efficient as a result, but the rest of the ‘elemental’ options he’d gradually unlocked were lagging so far behind as to be nearly useless in a serious fight.

Or perhaps not! As the monster slumped down and to the side from the impact, Kaiden reached back for a haymaker. “Chakra Release!” The wolf slammed his fist into the tyrannosaur’s knee and, with a crimson flash and a sound like shattering stone, its leg crumpled under it; Kaiden barely had time to duck away as it flopped onto its side with a resounding crash and started flailing helplessly!

Out of the corner of his eye, Tyrian saw more names popping up in his ‘party list’, but he didn’t have time to pay attention to that, not while he actually had an opening to attack… and it occurred to him that he had a way to offset the mana costs of his other spells. Running forward and to the side to get an angle on the lizard’s exposed belly, he gestured in the air. “La zojak glace!” As the script of the incantation formed in the air in front of him, he slammed his grimoire shut on it, replacing its programmed spell, and then began flinging spears of ice at the dinosaur’s underside as it kicked and flopped against the ground, trying to get its feet under it again. That seemed to be doing something, and before long it was bleeding openly, with chunks of red ice forming against its leathery hide. He should have figured that a reptile would be vulnerable to cold magic!

Kaiden, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be faring as well; the kicks and punches he was delivering to the monster’s chin and face seemed to be far less effective than before. Tyrian realized that the red chakra light from before had vanished, and after a moment the wolf seemed to conclude that that was indeed his problem. “Open Chakra: Muladhara! Lammm…” He had to pause his attacks to restore whatever buff that was, though… and as the color drained from Tyrian’s vision, he glanced up to discover that he was running dangerously low on mana from relying on an ice-based Librum Cannon. But that gave him a moment to glance over the names that had appeared, and his ears perked up in hope.

A few of them, he didn’t recognize, but ‘Grolph of the Third Horizon’ got him excited to find out what the kenning could do in an actual fight. And as for the name below that… well, it hadn’t even been a full 24 hours since the last time Cory had saved his tail!

His attention was drawn back to the battle, as the t-rex heaved itself back to its feet before Kaiden could land more than a couple of enhanced blows to its jaw. The wolf bared his fangs and reached back to try to repeat his earlier feet. “Cha-*” Before he could finish activating the Art, though, the beast lifted one leg and half scooped, half kicked the martial artist into the dirt behind itself, sending him tumbling like a piece of discarded trash. Wincing, Tyrian looked up at Kaiden’s health bar… and discovered that it was still over two thirds full. While he might not have armor, apparently he had been blessed with an abundance of raw HP!

The tyrannosaur did not stick around to find out what had become of its rainbow-furred pest. Deciding that it would just take its snack and be done with all these uppity mammals, it stomped right past the squirrel, heading toward the fort again… and even though it had a noticeable limp after what Kaiden had done to its leg, it looked like it would get close enough to start smashing at the walls within seconds, assuming it wasn’t able to jump right over!

Having no illusions that he could knock the creature over on his own, Tyrian threw his skimmer to the ground and jumped on to pursue the beast, flinching inwardly against his urge to run over and help his wolf. The decision made perfect sense with video game logic, but part of his brain insisted that a health bar was no excuse to assume his boyfriend wasn’t seriously hurt! As he zipped after the dinosaur, he spotted his reinforcements coming in from the side. Two League NPC mammals, judging from their clothing, plus Grolph and a border collie he didn’t recognize in flamboyantly colorful garb accented by strings of golden coins… but no sign of Cory. Well, that made perfect sense on reflection, given the fox’s skillset.

Still, even with the backup, it looked unlikely that they would be able to stop the creature from smashing its way through the palisade… and even if, by some miracle, no one died in the attack, that would leave them open to a kenning assault in the next day or two, before the Emissaries could deal with them once and for all. Hopping off of his skimmer, Tyrian held out his left paw, palm down, and reached for the glowing glyph on its back with his right. He’d hoped to save this for what was likely to be a big battle coming up, but…

Before he could activate his new Intercession ability, the collie swiped a small rectangle - a card? - off of his left sleeve and held it up between two fingers. “Six of Swords!” As he hurled it into the space between the dinosaur and the wall, it glowed brilliantly blue, and suddenly a storm of spinning blades appeared in the air before the lumbering creature, causing it to come up short and recoil just shy of getting its face gashed open! Wait… not a storm, more like a maze. While all of the frantic whirling made it look chaotic, each of them was actually anchored in place. Tyrian suspected that he could make his way among them if he really wanted to, so long as he was extremely careful with his tail, but something the size of that beast had no chance!

As Tyrian retrieved his skimmer, Kaiden caught up with him and did the same. The two NPC mammals charged in toward the great lizard, one with a spear and the other brandishing a sword and shield, and Grolph nocked an arrow to his bow, which unfortunately bounced off of an armored plate a moment later. The collie wasn’t done, though. As he gestured toward the original duo, his voice called out again. “Astral Alignment: Cancer! Astral Alignment: Aries!”

As blue and red auras appeared around Tyrian and Kaiden, respectively, the squirrel glanced up at his status display. He didn’t really have time to pull out his watch and check what the buffs actually did, but the wave-like surges of light rippling rightward through his mana bar drew his attention to the fact that it was refilling at a distinctly visible rate, and indeed, he could see that the desaturation effect on his vision was fading steadily. Scanning down the list, he spotted the collie’s portrait next to a dangerously depleted mana bar. Django Dawnseer, apparently. But wait, if he was the only other Emissary to show up with Cory, then that probably meant he was actually…!

Realizing that the collie was the source of his newest round of frustrations, the dinosaur rounded on him, roared, and started stomping in his direction, but was brought up short by a lunge at his chest from the spear-wielding NPC. While the two League members held its attention, Grolph went down onto one knee, holding another arrow drawn. “Soulbane Shot!” The kenning’s bowstring twanged, and the arrow lodged itself near the base of the tyrannosaur’s throat, glowing purple… but didn’t appear to have penetrated deeply enough to do any serious harm. So much for the fancy name, Tyrian supposed… but then he saw Grolph waving frantically at him with his free hand. “Tyrian-friend! The arrow! Strike it with your magics!”

Oh, really?

Tyrian glanced at his mana bar again. While it was still far from full, he had enough in the tank now to try to get fancy… once, anyway. Taking a deep breath, he carefully went through the gesticulations for a spell variant he hadn’t tried yet. “Ma zojak fulm torra!” Violet lightning arced from his curled fingers to where the kenning’s arrow had pierced the dinosaur’s throat and held, dancing in an unsteady line that scorched the air and left the beast paralyzed, its back arching as its body coruscated brightly under the sustained electrocution of the squirrel’s attack. The color drained from Tyrian’s vision rapidly, and the edges of his field of view darkened as the unpracticed and high-level spell quickly emptied his entire supply of mana… but when he finally ran out of juice, the giant monster simply crashed forward onto its belly, convulsing weakly as smoke rose from its fried body.

The silence that followed seemed almost anticlimactic. As the NPC defenders hesitated, unsure on whether the creature was actually dead, Cory faded into view near its head, flipping his hood back. “Way to steal my thunder, squirrel! Literally…”

Tyrian chuckled. “I can’t have you rescuing me every day.”

Frowning at the twitching dinosaur, Cory triggered his right wristblade to spring into position… and then, with shocking brutality, slammed it into the creature’s left eye, twisting it roughly. The giant beast shuddered one last time, and then fell completely still.

Mighty Foe Slain!

Tyrian winced. Video game or not, he would not have been able to make himself do that in Cory’s place. He watched the vulpine assassin simply yank his weapon free and clean it off as if the gore didn’t even faze him. Sometimes he felt like he didn’t really know what was going on in that fox’s mind…

Kaiden let out a heavy breath and shook his head. “So that happened. Guess I skipped right past the ‘kicking rats in someone’s cellar’ phase.” He paused. “Is that…?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Django and Cory trotted over to join them, as the NPCs - who doubtless hadn’t gotten the convenient AR notification that the monster was in fact dead - continued pacing around it warily, as if expecting it to lurch to its feet and resume trying to eat them. The fox was the first to speak up. “I’d say you were lucky we were close enough to see the flare and teleport back, but I guess you didn’t need the help after all. When did you figure out how to summon Jason, anyway? We could’ve used that yesterday.”

One of the squirrel’s eyebrows shot up. How did he know…? A moment later, he realized Cory was eyeing Kaiden curiously, and grinned as the pieces fell into place; the fox had met his daemon, but had no way of knowing what he was called in-game. He lowered his voice to keep the NPC League members from hearing him. “Oh, that’s not Jason. Cory, meet Shane - or Kaiden in here, but I guess you can see that. He’s an ex-coworker of mine, and the guy I modeled Jason off of. He’s, uh… also kind of my boyfriend, as of last night.”

The wolf gave Cory a lopsided smile, lifting a paw in greeting. “Shawn already told me about you. I was looking forward to meeting you, but I didn’t expect it to go like this.”

Cory whistled softly. “Damn, even now that I’m looking for it I can barely tell the difference. Other than the fur paint, of course. Good to meet you, anyway. I guess it’s couples day in Paths; Django here is my collie, Flip.” The gypsy-dog waved in turn, wagging slowly. “I don’t think you two had met yet?”

Tyrian shook his head. “Nope. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever meet your other boyfriend.”

Django laughed softly. “So I’m the ‘other’ boyfriend now, huh? Cory and I have been together since before he met Ollie, I’ll have you know!”

The squirrel winced slightly. “Err, sorry, I didn’t mean…”

The sheepdog shook his head, smiling. “I’m just playing with you. My fox told me he’d been fooling around with a cute nerd of a squirrel up in Red, and I see he wasn’t lying. Whups, incoming lizard.”

Grolph waddled up, his bow slung around his body again. “This one is glad to see that his Emissary-friends are unharmed! Let him guess: his people lured the Kaugrepha here, did they not?”

Tyrian blinked. “Is that what it’s called? Anyway, yes, a kenning tried to get it to attack the fort.”

Grolph lashed his tail, mouth hanging open as if he wanted to bite something. “This one knew it! Those ones are not native to the Gloaming Boughs. This must have been revenge for the killing of Hrogralhr! Tyrian-friend, we must act soon… there is nothing stopping this one’s misguided people from doing this again, and again, until they succeed.” He paused. “Although… it will likely take those ones a few days to ensnare another behemoth and guide it here. Unless they change tactics entirely… agh, this one does not even know who leads the kenning now, and so he cannot predict their actions!” He started wringing his hands again.

The squirrel held up his paws to try to placate the squirming lizard. “As soon as Winona has recovered enough to join us again, I’ll get everyone together and we’ll try to get to the bottom of this.” He paused. “It would be a good idea to keep at least a couple of Emissaries on standby at the fort until then, but… we have our own lives in the other world. We can’t just stay here all the time to keep watch…”

Grolph tilted his head, thinking about the problem for a few moments, and then opened his mouth to speak… but hesitated, looking past Tyrian curiously. The squirrel turned to find Django staring thoughtfully at a spread of Tarot cards floating in the air in front of himself, his white-tipped tail swaying slowly. Feeling several pairs of eyes on him, the collie looked up, and promptly flattened his forward-folded ears against his head. “Um, I’m a fortune teller. The cards let Mother give me hints about what’s going to happen. Is this Winona recovering from childbirth?”

Tyrian’s ears perked up. “That’s right. She just gave birth to triplets today.”

“Then I think we have time to wait for her. Empress cross Four of Swords, then Three of Wands, leading to Six of Wands.” He looked over the uncomprehending faces of the others. “Uh, a mother recovering, a symbol of waiting for results, and finally, triumph. The Empress often refers to Mother Herself, but given the context it’s probably talking about Winona.”

The kenning relaxed marginally. “And these cards do not foretell disaster meanwhile?”

Django shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t see anything like that. But I could read this another way - that we have to wait for her. This could mean that victory is only possible after the period of waiting. It’s hard to be sure of anything when doing a reading but the general message here is about as clear as any.”

“Then these ones will have to trust in the Mother’s guidance… but this one will be staying at Duskreach until it is time to go, for what little help he will be if his people attack once more.”

Tyrian spoke up again. “Don’t sell yourself short, Grolph-friend. I’m pretty sure that special arrow of yours is why my spell was able to take the Kau… grem…”

“Kaugrepha, Tyrian-friend.”

“...to take that thing down. On the subject of magic, though… Django, how long is that storm of blades going to stay there?”

“Oh, hang on, I’ll get rid of it.” He gestured his spread back into the deck, which promptly shuffled itself in a magical swirl of cards before reassembling, and walked off toward the tempest of blades. As he did, the other League members came over.

“Begging your pardon, Emissaries, but… what should we do about the giant lizard corpse in our backyard?”

Cory looked over at it. “Huh. It’s not dissipating into magic smoke…”

Tyrian nodded. “I think only corrupted creatures do that. It wasn’t evil, just hungry, and manipulated.” His tail lifted suddenly. “Hey Grolph, is Kaugrepha edible?”

“It is no great delicacy, but yes, the kenning have been known to hunt them as a rite of passage. This one can show which parts are safe to eat.”

“Then why don’t we invite Caddaham to send some people over to help butcher it? Mother knows they’re struggling to get enough to eat.”

The swordsbear nodded. “A fine idea. I’ll see to it myself; they’ll want an escort if they’re coming this way, in any case.”

Cory suddenly stiffened. “Flip, what are you doing?!”

Tyrian turned to find the border collie weaving carefully through his own maze of spinning blades, tail tucked between his legs. It was frightening to watch, but as he’d surmised, the seeming chaos was an illusion; as long as you moved slowly and focused only on the space you intended to occupy, there wasn’t actually any risk of getting slashed. Before long, he’d crossed entirely through the danger zone… and the moment he came out the other side, the entire affair winked out of existence.

“Sorry! I can’t just turn it off, but it goes away if anyone clears it.”

Cory ran over and crushed his collie in a hug. “Don’t do that to me, love. It just… I remembered…”

Django petted over the fox’s head while hugging him with the other arm. “Don’t worry. This isn’t one of those days…”

Tyrian had no idea what they were talking about, but felt profoundly certain that it wasn’t his place to ask… besides which, his own boyfriend was looking increasingly uncomfortable, and he realized that Shane didn’t really know any of these people or the situation they were all in. He chuckled. “Sorry, Kaiden. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for our first outing.”

The wolf grinned. “Dude, I just went toe to toe with a dinosaur and came out on top. Any chance we could get a bite of those dino-steaks? I’m kinda curious, now.”

He didn’t explain further with two NPCs still standing nearby, but Tyrian knew what he was getting at. How would Mother handle it if they tried to eat something in-game that didn’t exist in the real world? “Maybe we can come back later and ask to try some. But for now…” He laid a paw on the wolf’s bare chest, looking shyly up at Kaiden’s face with what he hoped was clear intent.

The lupine monk grinned, and his tail started wagging rapidly. “Yeah, I hear that.” He looked over at Grolph. “We’ll be back when we can, but… duty calls in our own world.”

The kenning nodded somberly. “This one understands. It is a heavy weight, to be needed by two peoples, and one with which he is familiar. Do not be too long away, Emissary-friends.”

“We won’t.”

---

The squirrel was eager to talk to his wolf about the session, among… other things, but Jason told him that his boyfriend was getting his lesson about spending praxis, so he took a few minutes to work on his own. Now that he’d solved the riddle of angelic summoning, he had less reason to keep a bunch of Favor on hand, and ended up converting much of it to Offensive Magic praxis to help him use his fancier attack spells without immediately wrecking his supply of mana. Once his stomach was sloshing with very real flavored water, he mixed up some spell ink to broaden his repertoire of support spells, and grabbed his bag to go wait outside the building. He was just finishing a cigarette when Shane finally appeared.

“So, did you have fun?”

The wolf grinned and started wagging. “I just got to punch the shit out of a fuckin’ dinosaur. What do you think? Thanks, by the way… I was confused as hell when Mother started calling to me, but once I got to my temple Ganymede spilled the beans on you having paid my subscription.”

Shawn’s tail fluttered. “Don’t mention it. I was just glad I didn’t have to wait to play with you! And um, speaking of playing with you…” A bashful, yet hopeful smile spread across his muzzle.

Shane barked a laugh. “You read my mind, babe.” He hooked a thumb into the side of his boxers, glancing nervously up and down the street. “Part of me wants to bend over right here…”

The squirrel’s ears perked up, reddening. He’d been to a couple of Fuck Fests by this point, so screwing in front of random strangers was no longer a dealbreaker to him, but… just going at it in public outside of a time and place where it was expected? The thought still filled him with anxiety. Anxiety and… oh dear. Excitement. He hesitated, but quickly realized that the alternative was about to be Zooming home with a blatant erection. Grabbing Shane’s wrist, he half led, half dragged him around to the side of the VRcade before he could freeze up completely.

The moment they were at least mostly out of view from the street, the wolf yanked down his boxers, kicked them aside, and bent forward against the building’s wall, bracing himself with both forearms and the side of his face. Still afraid of losing his nerve if he let himself stop to think, Shawn stepped in behind him, putting one paw on Shane’s arched back as he used the other to line himself up, and shoved, burying his cock in the soft, slick heat of his boyfriend’s pussy. From there, it was all instinct, as the squirrel rubbed his wolf’s face into the bricks with the force of his frantic thrusting. Somehow, the fear of discovery fuelled his passion; in seconds, his eyes rolled back and shut, as the two of them gasped and whimpered their way through their frenzied public rutting.

“Hnnnnyyyyessss stud, take me, fucking take me, put your babies in meeee…!” Shane’s plaintive voice rose steadily as the squirrel drove into him again and again, his heavy balls drawing up tighter against his body. Part of his mind was still lost in something close to panic that demanded he stop before someone noticed them, but he had already given himself to the hunger. He needed to fuck, to cum, to breed!

“Ffffuck, I… I’m gonna cum! Your womb is mine, wolf! T-take my see… seed in you and…” His face tightened into a grimace, baring his teeth in irresistible rapture as his tail lashed frantically behind him. “Get… fucking… pregnant! AAAAH!” Gripping Shane’s hips tightly, the squirrel arched in over his lover and succumbed to the bliss, his big rodent balls twitching sharply as they emptied themselves into the wolf’s birth canal. Thick, forceful jets of sciurine baby batter washed over Shane’s cervix as the two of them braced against each other, trembling, until Shawn had pumped enough into him for it to start gushing back out over his sheath and sack.

“Hhholy shit, Shawn… nnf…” Shane’s chest was heaving, his ears were pinned against his head, and he’d left small but visible scratches in the bricks where his claws had dug against them. “If I’d known you could be such a beast, I’d have made a pass at you months ago. Goddamn…”

The squirrel chuckled breathlessly. “Months ago, I dunno if I was ready for you. For this…” He rolled his hips a couple of times, marveling all over again at how good it felt to be pressed against and inside his handsome wolf. As his need and arousal started to fall away, though, he became increasingly aware of his surroundings again… and of the fact that he was still some distance from home, and dripping with carnal fluids. “Fuck. I need to start bringing a little towel with me when we go out, if this is gonna be a Thing from now on.”

“It is absolutely going to be a Thing, babe. I can’t tell you how amazing I feel right now.”

Shawn slowly pulled out of Shane’s pussy, prompting a couple more messy dollops of squirrelcum to fall to the pavement below. The wolf straightened up, rubbing at his sore back, and then bent over to retrieve his boxers… which he then promptly used as a cum rag to get the worst of the mess off of both of them. Shawn shivered slightly at the feeling of his boyfriend cleaning him off in public.

“Uh, you’re gonna have to ride home naked, now…”

“They were gonna get soaked either way. Besides, you’ve left me feeling sexy enough that I don’t fuckin’ care who sees me naked right now.”

Mechanical chirps drew Shawn’s attention to the nearby road, where a pair of Zoomies were waiting for them, and they hurried home, firmly refusing to make eye contact with anyone they passed… although that slipped after they disembarked and the squirrel saw Vinny giving them a knowing look and a playful smile.

A shared shower immediately followed, after which the two of them settled into bed to cuddle and talk. The subject no longer seemed to matter so much; they wandered from topic to topic, filling the silence and filling in the blanks about their mutual likes and dislikes as they stroked each other’s fur and enjoyed the closeness and contact. Unsurprisingly, that last got steadily less casual as time went on, and by the time they felt sleep calling to them, the squirrel had nutted into his wolf two more times and was once again feeling well and truly empty. Neither of them was used to non-stop company, though, unless Shawn counted Jason’s continual semi-presence, and by unspoken agreement they separated to sleep alone. While Shawn’s bed felt distinctly cold and empty in comparison, the physical and emotional demands of the day overtook him almost immediately, and in a handful of minutes he ceased to be aware of it at all.