FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

_I guess that this amounts to my first foray on this site. (First foray anywhere, really.) Comments, critiques, and flowery praise may be accepted, but certainly not expected. (Seriously, go in with low expectations. Like, reeeeeally low expectations. However low you're thinking, go lower.) On second thought, the flowery praise probably will be met with less acceptance and more bemused silence. _

I'm not trying to be an author, just trying to get ideas out of my head. __That said, I'm publishing the story below under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If someone wants to share it or sees elements that they want to run with, I'm fine with it: as long as they don't profit from it (fuck knows I'm not profiting from it) and they attribute back to me. [Along the same lines, if anyone sees excessive similarities between this and other works (within reason), bloody tell me. I'm not out to rip someone off.]

Enough of that, carry on below. Enjoy or...you know...don't.

The sound of boots crunching over broken concrete and distorted steel reinforcements was largely lost in the ambient cacophony. On all sides there was the clatter of rubble as shattered bits of buildings playfully chased one another down cracks and crevices in pursuit of gravity. Somewhere underneath the new landscape, the horns of a handful of automobiles played a tuneless fanfare to usher the sun behind the horizon once more. A betting pool had opened up among the rescue teams regarding how long it would take for the batteries to run out.

Search efforts had been going on for two weeks. The current evening crept in to banish a day of high tension; the last day of search and rescue. Sunrise would open the phase of search and recovery. At some vague point after that, it would just be clean up, then rebuilding. That was the thing about earthquakes and other disasters, eventually you just couldn't really tell that they had happened. Not unless you looked inside yourself.

A figure sat silhouetted against the reddening western sky on a tall hillock of rubble that had once been a block of flats. His short stature was emphasized by a heavy slouch. Tawny elbows, streaked with grit, grease, mud, and blood, rested against knees whose trouser legs had worn through, as had a great deal of the fur beneath. His boots, crusted with mud, were rooted to the ground beside his discarded work gloves; a point of stillness above which every limb trembled slightly. The past week had taken its toll on the puma. His whiskers were drawn back against his cheeks, and his dark ears folded back against his skull. The tip of his tail twitched at odd intervals, resting against the ground.

He had arrived halfway through the rescue phase, hoping to make a difference amid the chaos. Now, he sat shaking in the heart of a one hundred and thirty acre scrapyard beneath which lay some fifteen thousand men, women, and children who had yet to be accounted for. The shaking was largely muscle fatigue. He remained behind to gather himself when his team withdrew to camp.

Vacant, yellow-green eyes stared into the middle distance, not really seeing anything around him. They watered, not from crying--he had run out of tears on his second night--but from something acrid that permeated the ruins and drifted with the breeze. His bruised, dusty paws worried absentmindedly at a small stuffed animal; the thumb pad of one described a slow, repetitive arc across the soiled fabric of the plush's belly while the finger pads of the other paw softly stroked the tuft of longer fibers that sprang from the top of its head. It might have been a bear or a cat, or anything, really. Two-and-a-half tons of stone had robbed it of a discernible shape. It was a souvenir of his second day 'helping'. If it could be called that. It was the sort of experience that could really fuck up a young cat.

He was not a young cat. Granted, he wouldn't have accepted the title "old" either. His muzzle was a bit lighter than it had once been and the odd light hair sprang up in his pelt to taunt him in the mirror. After all, the years that stretched behind him had borne their fair allotment of heartache. All of that notwithstanding, he wasn't so hardened by life that the last week hadn't worn on him. He wondered how much more of it he could stomach. Especially now that they would be going forward with the expectation that every person they found would be an ex-person. Back home he'd be talking things over with friends over a drink. Here, on another continent in another hemisphere, he hadn't met anyone with whom he felt close enough to feel comfortable talking. So, he took the next best thing: solitude and quiet contem--

"...was still out here," filtered into his consciousness from somewhere behind him to the left. His tail jerked and his left ear twitched and swiveled in the direction of the sound.

The sound could have been just another tumble of stone, but he turned anyway. It took him a moment to focus on the source of the voice in the growing dusk. The new figure resolved itself into dark-furred rabbit, about shoulder height to him if he were standing. (Not counting the ears, of course.) She was dressed much as he was: beleaguered work trousers, steel-toed boots, t-shirt. If it weren't for the light colors of her shirt and the reflective tape on the high-viz vest that draped off of one shoulder, she'd have been tough to see in the dwindling light. One of her gloved paws gripped a dark flashlight, while the other was tucked into her back pocket. She was looking at him as though waiting for a response. Realizing that he probably didn't hear her, she dropped her ears and repeated herself.

"I saw you as I was passing by on the way back to camp. I didn't realize anyone was still out here." Her accent sounded like something from the north of Britain, sing-songish and high. Not like the nasal twang of the Aussie locals or the slow, rough drawl he'd been used to, growing up in the southwestern United States.

He shrugged with a quiet grunt. "You seem to be, too."

A nod. A mirthless chuckle. "Aye. Curfew's coming up quick, though. Need to get back."

"Yeah?" His low voice faded as he turned his head forward again, gazing back down the slope and across the waste.

She frowned and flicked one ear. "Yeah. You, too."

He reached down with his left hand to find the large pocket halfway down his trouser leg. The plush toy resisted limply before he managed to nudge the pocket open with a finger. Once it was secured beneath the buttoned flap of the pocket, he stood shakily. Turning to the rabbit, he stretched his shoulders and neck. The blistered pads of his paws--damned gloves were next to worthless--slid from his forehead, across his eyes, and down either side of his muzzle, dropping off his chin. He shuddered, retched, and stumbled, just barely stopping himself from sliding down the mound of debris. Somewhere during the day, either from a piece of rubble or one of the bodies that they retrieved from the last pocket of space that had been a hallway or a bedroom, or who knows what, blood had soaked through the cheap cloth of the gloves and into the fur between his pads. The light was weak enough that he couldn't see it, but the scent was there. Canine, young, female...pregnant. Fucking nose.

"You ok, man?" The rabbit had taken a half-step forward and reached with the paw that didn't have a flashlight.

He waved her off. "I'm not. But, I'm ok enough. Lead the way down, if you don't mind."

"No torch?" She waggled the flashlight, still switched off.

"Lost it," he mumbled, "this morning, yesterday, dunno. It's gone."

"Thought cats had great night vision."

He scoffed, motioning to his awkward position, "Yeah, and we're supposed to be graceful, and agile, and always land on our feet. I'm not exactly in top shape right now, lady. I'm tired, sore, and something in me or in the air is making me dizzy."

She nodded an switched the light on, making sure to direct the beam downward before hitting the switch. With careful strides she started off down the slope. The puma glanced down at his gloves, shook his head and picked them up before following. As they picked their way down the slope, the rabbit plied him with small talk.

"So," she called over her shoulder, "what's your name?"

"Alder."

"I'm Cat," she grunted, shimmying down a block wall that was within forty degrees of passing for a floor. "That first or last?"

Alder found his footing slightly better that the rabbit's and walked down the incline instead. Perks of being a mountain lion, even a deeply fatigued mountain lion.

"First or last what?" he asked, offerin his paw to help her up, which she accepted with a nod.

Back on her feet, she carried on through the ruins and her line of inquiry. "Name. Is Alder your first or last name? Sounds like it could be either."

"Tell me about it," he huffed with the exertion of walking across the uneven, shifting terrain and silently begged his muscles to at least carry him back to camp. "First name. My mother had a thing for trees."

"Huh." She didn't let up. "So, what's your last name?"

"What else do you want," he asked with an impatient growl, "my PIN and mother's maiden name?"

To his surprise, she laughed at that. "Fuckin' hell, man! Calm your tits. I'm just trying to fill the silence until we get out of here. This place scares the shit out of me when it starts getting dark."

"Sorry," he said, raising his paws. "Let me try that again." He stopped, prompting her to stop and face him. "Alder Matsubayashi, nice to meet you, Cat...?" He trailed off, recognizing that she hadn't provided her surname before.

"Caird," she allowed with a grin and a pawshake that was easily twenty percent more enthusiastic than Alder felt he could tolerate at the moment. "Cataría Caird, but no one calls me that. Cat will do."

The breeze that whisked across the ruins momentarily rose into a stiff gust, causing the rabbit to shudder and shake bits of blown dust and grit out of her ears. Scraps of paper fluttered around them in lazy vortices, like moaning ghosts built out of the tattered remnants of thousands of lives. Utility bills, refrigerator masterpieces, and department store advertisements described a lazy spiral before tumbling off into the darkness. One flyer stayed behind, wedged helplessly between a clutter of masonry and some unrecognizable bit of steel. Mud and shadow obscured some of the words, leaving only "The...END...Everything must go" to be seen. Cat caught him frowning down at the twitching paper, the corner of his muzzle quivering with a stillborn snarl. The light of her torch fell on the paper, dispelling the shadows to show more of the text.

"The home...something starting with E...experts, maybe? Store closing liquidation sale...ends soon," she read aloud. "Everything must go...."

Alder shook his head. "Guess they were right. Everything had to go...."

Cat switched off the torch, throwing them into shocking darkness. Her voice came from his right, soft but stern. "Fuck off, pal. Everything didn't go. Look." She directed his gaze to the distant periphery of the destruction. Lights shone in the buildings that stood outside. "Shake off the tunnel vision. There's enough broken out here without you letting yourself break, too." Then the light was back, shutting out the wider devastation and narrowing their focus to the path out of the rubble. "Come on."

He only nodded and followed her silhouette as she picked her way down to the open street below them.

***

A clear chime sounded three times over the quiet city as the last faint glow of daylight gave up to darkness. Cat and Alder stood before the guard at the entrance to the search and rescue--or have they already changed the sign to say 'recovery'? the puma wondered--camp, nothing more than fenced tent village that housed all of the relief workers and the military reservists who kept order during the cleanup. The guard, a stocky mutt with shaggy red fur and a grey muzzle that matched the accents in her poorly-fitted urban-ops fatigues, scowled at them and jerked her head in the direction of the gate.

"Just under the wire, you two," she gruffed. "You fucked around and missed the late mess, so you'll have to scrounge for something cold. Get in on time from now on, yeah?"

"10-4, y'grouchy cunt," the rabbit grumbled when they were out of earshot.

The walk through the camp was sensory overkill. Small groups of volunteers wandered from place to place, talking and shouting to one another. There was a marked difference in scent between the city and the ruins, and another one entirely in the camp. Four hundred tents of varying sizes and sleeping capacities held a fluctuating population of between nine-hundred-and-fifty and thirteen-hundred humans and assorted species of voxiped. Latrines could bad enough at the festivals where only one species congregated. The camp facilities were drastically overtaxed having to accommodate such a wide variety of waste. The combination of scents could be offensive to some human noses, but it was downright overwhelming to the animals. Coming back in from outside, there was always a period of adjustment.

In the mess tent, Alder managed to find a packaged sandwich that looked soggy and tasteless; and a cup of coffee, the only saving grace of which was that it was still warm and not decaffeinated. Cat made out little better with a bottle of water and a wilted, slightly brown salad in which nestled two halves of a boiled egg. The pair dropped onto benches on either side of the first table in sight and stared at their meals.

Cat plucked the two egg halves out from between the sad greens and wrinkled cherry tomatoes. She sniffed at the non-vegetable interlopers and set them aside on her discarded cling film with a grimace. "These might just be decorations. They smell like glue factory fucked a lilo."

Across the table, the puma nodded with little sign that he had understood her words or even comprehended that she had spoke. His paws rested limply on both sides of his unopened sandwich and his eyes focused somewhere through the table, beyond the worn asphalt of the parking lot in which the mess tent had been erected, probably through the planet and off into space. She watched the slow wandering of his pupils and the rise and fall of a blood vessel beneath the fur of his temple. A muffled pop sounded across the tent where the night breeze was pushing and pulling at the fabric of the wall.

The rabbit pushed her half-eaten salad away after a few minutes and cleared her throat. "Ni honjin de suka?"

He looked up at her, as if suddenly realizing that she was there. "Huh?"

She smiled apologetically. "I fucked that up, I bet. I basically only learned enough to order a pint and find a loo. You said your name was Matsubayashi. Are you Japanese?"

"Oh! No," he replied with a small chuckle, "not really. Not, Japanese-Japanese. My mom was. I asked her a hundred times how a voxipedal puma ended up coming from Japan. She never answered; said it wasn't something she felt comfortable talking about. I'd be half, though. The other half is American. She took her name back after she split with her husband. She was still pregnant at the time, so I got the name, too. As for your grasp of the language, hell if I know. She wanted me to learn only English, so the only time she spoke Japanese was when I really pissed her off." He caught her look of confusion and elaborated, "I had friends in school from Europe and Mexico who were practically beaten into speaking only English by the faculty. They used to do the same thing to the indigenous peoples, too--probably still do. I expect she already knew about that sort of thing going on and wanted me to be spared the trouble."

The rabbit's eyebrows lifted as high as they would go. "Aye? The English did something similar to us Scots. Didn't realize it happened in America, too."

The puma poked at his sandwich, then pushed it aside the the back of his paw. He didn't have the appetite. The coffee was fully cold now and no amount of caffeine was worth trying to get through the oily slick that wobbled on the surface. He sighed and stood. Taking his uneaten meal he gestured to her unfinished portion with a raised eyebrow. She nodded and tossed the eggs and wrapper into the plastic bowl. Once the trash was safely balanced atop an overflowing garbage bin, Alder stretched and turned back to his new acquaintance.

"I dunno what time it is, but I guess we should say 'good night'."

"Oh?" Something about the glint in Cat's eye seemed like more than a reflection of the generator-fed bare bulbs that dangled from the ceiling of the mess tent. Her ears perked forward, focused on him. "Worn out, eh?"

The puma shook his head. "Pretty much. I'm sore as hell and my head is all over the place. I'm going to drop onto my cot, dosed up on enough aspirin to rot a whale's stomach, and lie awake wishing I had a bottle of bourbon instead."

Cat huffed, "Aspirin's good for headaches, bumps, and bruises; it'll do bugger-all for the kinda of hurt you get from doing this kind of work. Any of the kinds of hurt." She stood up and arched her back, pushing her balled-up fists against her hips on either side of her fluffy tail. An audible pop reached Alder a few paces away and he couldn't avoid a cursory glance at her rump. "Liquor won't do any better, really. Still, it's a shame about that bourbon, eh?"

"Yep, powerful shame." He said, giving a little wave and moved to exit the tent.

As he turned to leave, she spoke up again. "Eh...would it have to be bourbon, though?"

Alder glanced at her sidelong over his shoulder. "Pardon?"

"Just, eh, curious," Cat fumbled a bit for words, pulling her right ear down and fidgeting with a trio of tiny stud earrings that the puma hadn't noticed before. "if you were stuck on the idea of bourbon, or if another whiskey might work in a pinch."

He cocked an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "Well, now, I don't suppose I'm terribly picky."

She worried one of the earrings with the tips of two claws and watched him out of one eye. Noncommittally, she elaborated, "Well, you know, it's just that sometimes the stress of life gets to a girl, and she likes to keep things around to ease her troubled mind. One of those thing might be a wee bottle of whiskey from home."

"Caird, are you asking me around to your place for a nightcap?"

"Aye." She flashed what might have been a coy smile; he couldn't quite tell. Both ears were perked back up again, on full alert. "What's so funny, about that?"

He was shaking his head, muzzle twisted in a disbelieving smirk. "Nothin', really. Just, never would have expected to get invited for drinks in a place like this. But, sure. It sounds nice."

She grinned. "All right! My tent's L-223. You wanna come over in about an hour? It's a damn mess right now, and we could both use showers after the day's work."

"Yeah," he muttered, glancing at his paws, "true."

***

It's amazing how eight minutes under lukewarm water can make you feel like a new fucking person, Adler thought to himself as he toweled off in the makeshift shower tent. He'd had more fulfilling showers in the old AirStream trailer that had been his first national park post. He may have had to turn the water off in between soaping and rinsing, to avoid running out; but, at least the trailer had hot water. He sniffed his paws to confirm that the scents they had absorbed during the day had been relegated to memory. That was enough.

He dried himself off in front of the trough that passed for a sink in the communal facility. The nice thing about being covered in fur was not really needing much in the way of privacy. Though, there was never much traffic at that hour anyway. Small steel mirrors were hung over the trough every meter or so, giving people a chance to groom themselves in accordance with whatever cultural vanity to which they chose to subscribe. Alder didn't go in for any that. He'd long since grown out of pissing away precious time trying to impress people.

Towel draped over one shoulder, the puma stared at his reflection. The bloodshot eyes were barely noticeable; hell, hardly any whites showed around his irises anyway. He could almost pass for someone who managed to sleep. He tried smiling at his reflection, but it came out closer to a weak snarl.

"Bud, you look like shit," he whispered to himself. "At least you know this is an innocent visit. She didn't ask you over, looking like this, to get in your pants. Probably just lonely and can't find anyone to run her mouth to." He ran his finger pads under his eyes and across his aching temples. "Not a bad price to pay for a drink." Somehow, he actually managed a passable grin, this time.

The puma stopped by his tent to store his toiletries and file down the tips of his claws; he'd neglected them since he arrived and they were starting to hurt. He thanked whatever there was to thank--assuming there was something to thank, he was never sure--that his tentmate was out at the moment; he didn't need someone nagging about the clipping sounds so late at night. Plus, Philips was an annoying prick.

Sitting on his cot, he extended each claw in turn to clean up the loose sheathing, nip off the sharp ends and file them smooth. Work in the debris field was rough on them, splitting and cracking the outer layers and leaving a splintery mess. Some big cats liked to cut just shy of the quick and round the claw off until it was more club than dagger. Alder preferred to just remove the point and smooth the burrs. There were too many things that moderately sharp claws were good for: opening soda cans, climbing, raking through the soft fur of a woman's back when you pull her close and... Don't start, bud. It may have been a while, but don't go getting your hopes up. Drink, chat, sleep, start another day of searching the broken, hapless neighborhoods out there for broken, hapless bastards.

Recovery.

That one word change in the title of their task still loomed. They weren't looking for broken, hapless bastards any more. They were looking for corpses. They'd given up the hope of finding anyone left breathing. He shook his head to clear the depressing thoughts; they weren't any more productive than the lascivious ones.

Dressed in reasonably intact and somewhat clean clothes, shod (one couldn't be too careful with screws, nails, and broken glass being tracked into the camp), and as ready for social niceties as he ever could be, Alder strode toward the entrance of his tent. He stopped at the door and patted his pockets. Nothing. Frowning, he looked back at the cot. There was the stuffed animal, whatever it was supposed to be. Keeping it nearby wasn't conducive to forgetting the woes of his week, but it had become something of a talisman for him. It didn't feel right for the thing not to be in his pocket.

Rolling his eyes at his own behavior, he stepped through the cloth door and into the night.

***

Cat was standing outside her tent, faffing around with her phone, when Alder arrived. She smiled at him and tucked the device away in her hip pocket. An oil hurricane lamp burned in her tent--the electric lights were cut every night, an hour after curfew, to reduce the load on the generators and conserve fuel. It cast a quivering, yellow-orange glow through the door. Even in the wan light, Alder could see that the rabbit cleaned up nicely.

She wore loose-fitting, comfortable clothes. The pants had the style of a nurse's scrubs, the sort of muted blue that looks to have faded from navy. Her grey t-shirt once bore an image, probably from a band or some such, but only a handful of flakes remained. The outfit had the telltale wrinkles of ersatz pajamas. Not the sort of gear he was accustomed to seeing a woman adopt when having him over for a drink. Yeah, the puma grinned inwardly, no way in hell she'd be in that get-up if she was angling for a one-night stand. The thought relaxed him; it took away any pressure about keeping up appearances.

"A wash-up seems to have done you well, tree boy," she said with a chuckle. "At least, you don't look like you've been dragged through the aftermath of a music festival."

He grinned and retorted, "Thanks! Knockin' the dirt off seems to have done you some good, too." That earned him a quick, bark of laughter.

The rabbit headed for the interior of the tent and motioned for him to follow. It was true though: she did clean up well. Even with the knock-about clothes, she managed to look good. She had a generally slender body, strongly muscled, with appealing curves. The shirt, for all its disrepair showcased those curves well, as did the thin cotton of the pants. She didn't seem to harbor much in the way of fat; the little that she had really just served to soften her lines a bit. He had to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes from wandering too much, especially to the fluffy nub of her tail.

Her fur was not as dark as it had seemed out in the debris field. It cut an odd balance between black and brown, depending on the angle of the light, but it made for a field of spotless velvet on her arms, neck and head that practically beckoned to be touched; not in a sexual way, so much as the way that one can't help reaching out to brush their pads across the plush, fleece blankets in a shop. When her head moved just right, the ruff of fur and skin around her throat made it appear as though she wore one of the lush fur coats that the humans adore so much beneath her t-shirt. It gave an incongruous impression of elegance. The air in her wake carried the scent of her body wash--one of those nonsense herbal ones: lemon and sage, cucumber and thyme, agave and unicorn farts. Maybe they did more for herbivores.

"Make yourself at home," Cat said with a grunt as she flopped to a seat on what must have been her own cot. The scent that billowed out of the wool blanket with her impact confirmed as much.

Alder glanced around the tent, noting the absence of chairs or boxes on which to plant himself. He glanced at the rabbit with a shrug and pointed questioningly at the empty cot where her tentmate should have been, or at least the detritus that would suggest someone occupied the space.

"Aye, you can sit there. Silly cow bailed four days ago. Said something about 'running out of vacation time' or some bollocks," snorted Cat. "Probably remembered that she had a flat with running water and wi-fi."

Alder settled in on the empty cot, momentarily surrounded by the faded scent of its previous occupant--deer, maybe. "I can't blame her. I got a place back in New Mexico with running water and a view of mountains that aren't made of broken concrete, steel, and glass. It beats hell out of this place."

Cat was busying herself with a small crate that she pulled from under her cot. As she popped open a couple of collapsible silicone cups, she asked, "So, why haven't you fucked off home, then?"

Alder adopted a theatrically hurt expression and pressed his right paw to his chest. "Why! Miss Caird, you wound me. Here, you've invited me into your castle, only to tell me to leave!"

She smiled. "Oi, piss off, pal. You know what I meant. You're half a world away from home, cutting your knees on an earthquake's leftovers. You've obviously seen some tragic shite since you got here, because you look like a junkie that's been told they've stopped making heroin."

"Brutal. But a fair point."

"Right. So, why are you still here?"

He crossed his legs and leaned back, propped up on his outstretched arms. "You want the honest answer or some horse shit about social duty and heroism?"

"My last boyfriend was a horse. I've dealt with enough of their shit, thanks."

"Sounds painful."

"I can be very determined. Stop changing the subject."

Alder threw his head back and laughed, resulting in a shout for quiet from two tents down. He wiped his eyes and finally answered, " I came in for a woodland conservation conference in Sydney and scheduled to do some sightseeing up the coast. Never been to Australia before; figured three weeks would be enough to tourist around and fill my fur with beach sand. Got bored with it by the end of the first week. Saw on the news in my hotel room that a chunk of Newcastle had been coerced to lay down; they were asking for volunteers, so I volunteered." He shook his head and looked at the floor. "And, yeah, I have seen some shit. All of us must have."

Cat set the cups aside an pulled a tall, simple bottle of whiskey out of the crate. It was about two-thirds full and glowed a muted amber in the light of the oil lamp. Pulling the cork stopper, she poured a few ounces in each cup and set the bottle on the squat folding table next to her cot. She handed him a cup and quipped, "Ok, so we've established why you're here; and aye, I think most of us have seen something here that shaved something off of our souls. But, you still haven't answered why you haven't fucked off back to your hot-and-cold taps and American vistas."

Alder accepted the cup and took in the aroma. Ohhh, fuck that's good! He plucked up the bottle to look at the label. Cosáincaillte occupied the top in swirly script over an ink sketch of some idyllic highland trail; below were details about content and age. "A bottle of whiskey from home" translated to a twenty-year-old, single-malt scotch from "Caird Estate". He set the bottle down with an appreciative grunt. Home, indeed! "Well, Miss Caird, it's like this: I've got a flight arranged to leave in one week and I'm too damn cheap to pay the airline to reschedule it."

The rabbit twisted the cup in her paws and frowned at him. "You could've just gone back to a hotel when this place got to be too much."

"Too much trouble tryin' to get there and make the arrangements. I'm more than a little lazy and kinda prefer to just go with the flow." He scratched his neck and grimaced. "Even if I don't always enjoy where the flow takes me. By journey's end I'll have gotten something out of the experience and it'll probably be more useful than sunburnt ears and sand fleas."

"Fuck, man. You really are doing this shit out of the goodness of your heart and you're modest to the point of making excuses for staying. You're a piece of work. No, don't fucking argue. If you were really as lazy as you suggest, you wouldn't have come out here in the first place." She shook her head and regarded him with an odd expression. Some sort of decision was reached behind her gaze that he couldn't make out and she cleared her throat. "Well," she said raising her cup to him, "guests first?"

The puma cocked an eyebrow and raised his cup hesitantly. After a moment, he grinned and chanted, "Salud y dinero a mis compañeros pero solo de tiempo cataría." and tapped the rim of his cup against hers and they both took a drink. Its taste was even better than its aroma. A pleasant warmth spread immediately into his head and limbs. The whiskey was smoother than any he'd had before. It still had the characteristic burn, but it was muted and almost sweet. The day's soreness ebbed out of him as the knots in his muscles slowly relaxed.

"First time a bloke's managed to work my name into a toast that didn't start with 'Take off your blouse...'," the rabbit lilted. "Can't tell if you're kissing ass or that meant something."

"It means something like: 'Health and wealth for my peers, but time is enough for me.'," he explained. "Some old vaquero thing about eschewing material wealth in favor of fully enjoying the existential richness of life. The journey is more important than the destination, kind of bullshit. Your name is probably what brought it to mind. Though, it also brings catnip to mind." Nepeta Cataria and him had a volatile relationship. He tried to keep away from it as much as possible.

"What the bloody hell is a vaquero?" One ear was pulled back over a bemused smirk.

"Cowboys," he chuckled.

"Fuck me sideways. Like, 'yippie-kie-ay, get along little dogie' fuckin' cowboys."

His head shaking, he laughed. "No, no. Not the dude ranch jack-offs that do that John-Wayne-with-a-stick-up-his-ass walk or the cattle baron cunts who'd run over their grannies for water rights. The working stiffs. Vaqueros is what the Mestizo cowboys were called."

"Didn't realize cowboys were so Buddhist." Her tone remained unconvinced.

"Nah," he gruffed, "a bunch of 'em were money-grubbing toadies for big cattle concerns. They were in it for their cut. There were some cowboy poets, though, that romanticized the life of freedom and wide-open spaces. I've always been a fan of solitude and untouched lands, so it resonates with me. Your turn."

"Ooh!" squeaked the bunny. "Och, I've got nothing that profound. Fuck it. Cosáin caillte!" She trust the cup into the air and knocked down the remainder in a gulp.

Wide eyed, he drank with a bit more discretion. He asked, "The hell was that?"

"Cosáin caillte?" She nodded to the bottle. "It's one of the family brands. This one means 'paths lost'. It seemed to fit the circumstances. Better than 'at least we're not dead'."

"You got a point," Alder mused.

The rabbit leaned over and resupplied his cup, then hers. Over the next hour, they talked about their impressions of the land down under and their respective homes. The puma allowed her to do most of the talking. He learned that she had recently graduated from university in Scotland with a wildlife biology degree. She had come to Australia on a short vacation between school and career searching. Her main interest was New World fauna, particularly that of the continental divide regions of North America: all the big predators and wee, chirping things that scampered over the rocks. She wondered if there was something to learn about their own kind from observing the wild, quadrupedal ones.

It wasn't strange to ponder the paradoxical, simultaneous existence of voxipeds and common animals. Humans didn't even understand why some animals had come to speak human languages and walk upright, and those pretentious cunts thought they understood everything. (Their best answere to why humans themselves had come to do all of those humanish things was: "God did it!" As if that were anything approaching an answer.) All they had managed was to provide the creatures with a name.

At some point during their drinking and talking, Alder had subconsciously removed the stuffed animal from his pocket, unnoticed by either of them for a long time. During a lull in the conversation, however, Cat glanced down at the sight of movement. The plush toy sat in the puma's left hand, so small that it was nearly hidden. The repetitive motion of his thumb over the weird plume of fibers on the top of its head was what drew her attention.

"What's that?"

"Hmm? Oh," he muttered, looking down and opened his paw, surprised to find the thing there. "When'd that get there?"

She snorted, "Buggered if I know. What is it?"

"Something I found," Alder replied with a shrug, "out there. Second day on site."

He raised his paw and opened it, revealing the stuffed creature. Even after a wash, the color had remained a mute grey. It was about as long as his paw was wide. There seemed to be a tail but no arms or legs. Down the tail was the name "Julia" in green permanent marker. The face was smooth and nearly featureless, beyond the eyes--bulging, shiny, black plastic eyes. Cat concentrated on it with one eye closed and the frown of someone trying to read a subway map without their glasses.

"Ah!" The rabbit moved over beside him with a series of movements that looked less like walking and more like falling horizontally from one side of the tent to the other. She poked the toy with the claw of one finger and looked up into his eyes with a look of joy at having recognized it, asking, "You know what this is?"

Alder leaned away from her slightly, eyes blinking against the sudden need for close-range focus. He snickered, "I think we already established that I don't. Though, it sounds like you might."

She elbowed him, probably harder than she thought, and nodded. "Aye! That's Mister Budgie." Her matter-of-fact tone suggested that no further elaboration should be required.

The puma glanced at the toy and back to his very near, very female drinking mate. This close, her own scent managed to sneak through the veil of soap and herbal bullshit. It was like a grass field after a warm rain--earthy and sweet. He wondered why anyone would want to cover something like that with something that smelled like a hibiscus fucked a pomegranate. He caught himself leaning slightly closer, trying to get more of her scent. Whoa, buddy. Chill. He took an awkward swig from his cup and leaned back a little. "Okay. That sounds like a thing, sure. What is a Mister Budgie? Budgie like, what, a parakeet? They ain't got crests." He flicked the tuft on its head.

"It's a character from a television cartoon for weans. My little brothers and sisters watch it all the time back at home."

"I guess that sounds about right," Alder said quietly. "It came out of the office block that we finished clearing a few days ago. The one with the, uh," he noticed a familiar, unwelcome tightness in his throat and the corners of his mouth involuntarily pulling down. The corners of his eyes burned and he shook his head to clear the feeling. Turned out he hadn't run out of tears after all. One rolled down his muzzle and left a dark spot on his pants leg. "The one with the daycare center on the...on the ground floor. Shit!" The puma couldn't keep his voice from breaking. He set his cup on the side table, took a shuddering breath, and brushed at his eyes and cheeks with the backs of his paws.

Cat reached up and drew his head down to her shoulder, wrapping one arm around his back and running her other paw in slow stokes down the back of his head and neck. The big cat wasn't wracked with sobs, but she could feel where his tears were soaking through the cloth and fur on her shoulder. She winced slightly as his arms clutched around her as if desperate to avoid falling and the hard points of his claws pressed against her back. Ragged, uneven breaths warmed the front of her shirt. She had gone through plenty of moments like this; she understood.

Alder's voice was hardly a whisper when he could finally trust himself to speak. "We pulled dozens of people out of that grid. Dozens, maybe a hundred, all injured but alive. This one human, some poor secretary or something from one of the middle floors, came out on a stretcher. She was--" he shuddered, watching the memory unfold behind lidded eyes. "She was seriously fucked up. They had to cut her out of the shit that fell on her. Got her loose and found that something, some bit or reinforcing bar or fuck-knows-what, had ripped her open. One of the guys had to follow next to the stretcher to try and hold her closed on the way up out of the hole we got her out of. As we're taking her to a helicopter to lift her out, she grabs my arm and stuffs this toy into my hand. Looks me dead in the eyes and says that her little girl is in the daycare on the ground floor. First we'd heard there even was one. Her eyes drop down and look past me, she lets go of me to point, then she just faded out right there. The medics postponed the lift until they could stabilize her but that never happened; she was already gone. Dehydration, blood loss, and internal trauma, one of the medics said.

"Took us until evening to get to the daycare. Whole goddamned building sat on top of the kids and the workers down there. Thirty-odd children and four employees. We got them all out of there, what was left of them. I..I checked their IDs, all of them, until I found a little girl with a surname that matched the secretary lady." He pushed back from the rabbit and wiped at his eyes. "I don't know what breed Julia was, but she was a cat. Not like me. Had, like, spots. The photo on her ID badge was cute. Adorable, little grey and white kitten, with these fuckin' huge blue eyes. All fluff and eyes and long, shiny whiskers. The lady didn't say 'kitty', or 'foster', or any of the usual shit that means a human is keeping a vox because hey-talking-pet-awesome. She said 'my little girl'.

"I know all those other people had families. I know all those other kids had moms and dads. But, the thought of her little fluff ball was probably the only thing that kept that woman holding on when everything was trying to fall out of her. All she wanted was to get the girl home and tape her newest crayon drawing of a blue-spotted fuck-knows-what to the fridge and laugh and watch fucking cartoons together. I don't think it was the blood loss or the dehydration that finally was too much for her. I think she held on to this goddamned toy like a lifeline, like it represented everything that she needed to stay alive for; but when she looked back at that pile of fucking concrete, she knew that no one was at the other end of that lifeline."

In the minutes of silence that followed, Cat reached across the narrow gap between them on the cot and squeezed Alder's paw. She then stood and set about rinsing the cups with a canteen at the tent door, wiping them down with a cloth from the crate, and securing them in their places along with the bottle. She nudged the crate back under her cot and sat back down. Her eyes flicked from one corner of the floor to another as she mulled something over. Every couple of breaths, she would glance at him, then look away.

"Stay." The word was soft but heavy as it fell through the quiet of the tent.

"Pardon?" replied Alder, looking up.

"It's just that it's late and all. You probably shouldn't be out wandering the camp, especially in the shape you're in. Stay. You can use that cot; there's extra blankets underneath it. That's, if..." Her eyes caught and held his. Something in them spoke to a loneliness in her that matched his own. "...if you want."

He regarded her from his side of the tent. There weren't any rules against men and women sharing accommodations in the camp, but there were some pretty strong guidelines against predators and prey doing the same. Understandable, as it wasn't unheard of for the occasional predator to "sleepwalk" in such situations.

"I dunno," he grunted. "Might be some emergency management coordinator, or military fuck with some harsh words about you shacking up with a..." he wrinkled his upper lip and pointed at his teeth.

"Fuck 'em," she huffed, looking away. "I'm a big girl. If I wake up to find you gnawing on me, I'll beat the fuck out of you. After they get you to a hospital, the cunts can tell me 'I told you so'."

Alder snorted. "Please! I'm not interested in eating you, Cat. Don't worry."

She smiled at him and quipped, "Not worried, tree boy. Gotta say, though, I'm a bit disappointed with your wording. I mean, I'd kinda hoped..."

There was a surprise! He stared at her and said, "Bun, please, tell me I'm not misinterpreting that."

She giggled,"I didn't ask you here just for a drink at first, Alder. Despite all this," she waved to encompass the camp and ruins as a whole, "weighing on you, you're a gorgeous fucking cat and I was hoping to angle for a one-night sort of thing. But, I don't know if I still want that." She paused and gave him an earnest look. "One night, that is. Y'know?"

The tip of his tail twitched on the cot. He held up a paw. "Miss Caird, you are one hell of a doe; but, I am three drinks, seven rough days, and one awkward crying fit beyond the sort of frame of mind that I need to be in to adequately respond to that." He made an attempt to stand; but his fatigued legs wobbled, his tail thrashed to maintain balance, and he promptly pitched backward onto the bare canvas.

Laying face-up, he patted the cot beneath him and said, "I'll take you up on the bed, though. Between my next-to-dead muscles and the liquor, It doesn't look like I'll be walking, much less sneaking across camp to my tent. Plus, my tentmate is a damn prick and I don't want to have to deal with him in this state."

They both giggled and settled down on their respective cots, agreeing that they both needed rest. After exchanging "good nights", Cat extinguished the lamp and they both collapsed quickly into the sort of deep sleep that only comes from chasing a hard day of manual labor and emotional strain with a third of a bottle of scotch.

***

Alder woke to the head-splitting sound of the camp's morning alarm. The crisp, clear chime pierced the tent fabric and his eardrums, lodging somewhere behind his sinuses. It stopped after thirty seconds, but the damage was done. He led his lips. Morning whiskey breath and dehydration., bud? Aside from the headache and dry mouth, he was in head-to-toe pain. Nothing a few anti-inflammatories wouldn't fail miserably to fix.

The puma took stock of his surroundings while his eyes were closed. No sense encouraging this headache. Scent reminded him that he was not in his tent. Uh oh. He caught the scent of the rabbit, strong in the enclosed space. The extraneous odors of her soap had faded to the edge of perception overnight, laying bare the rich, earthy aroma of the rabbit herself. Nope, not at all unpleasant, he thought. Flicking his ears, he listened to the sounds of grumbling and movement in the camp around him. Closer by, he recognized the sound of slow, steady breathing. He moved to stretch his aching limbs and froze. He was laying on his right side and brushed against something soft when he moved. As he parsed together the sensations, he noticed that his arms, chest, stomach, and thighs were warmer than his back and tail. Something moved against him.

Alders eyes snapped open. Fuuuuuck! Mistake! The pain in his head tripled with the crash of light against his retinas. The tents all had translucent panels in the roofs to reduce the need for artificial light. This meant that the interior of the tent was awash in the pink sunlight of early morning. Ok, slower this time. The cat's eyes opened gradually to reveal a hazy glow. Within a few moments, his situation became clear.

At some point during the night, Caird had joined him on his cot. The rabbit was snuggled against him with his arm thrown over her. Her back pressed against his chest and her hip wiggled slightly against his pants, greeting the only throbbing head of his that didn't hurt. Good morning to you too, little guy. Glad to see one of us is happy to be awake. He failed to suppress a yawn and Cat pressed her back harder to his chest. Clearly, she woke up with the racket, too. She took his left paw with a gentle squeeze, drawing his arm tighter around her chest. She giggled when an involuntary purr began to rattle against her back.

"G' morning," she sighed. "Not sure how I ended up over here, but it seems like neither of us is complaining."

Alder chuckled. "Speak for yourself, bun. I can't feel my right arm."

"Oh! Sorry!" She shifted, trying to move her weight off of the arm that was tucked beneath her head. His left arm prevented her from moving though and he pulled her back to him again.

"Hey, now! Don't go giving me something else to fuss about." He gave the top of her head a trio of short, soft licks. "I'm sure my arm is still there. Stay."

They lay smiling together for a few moments until the second alarm forced them, groaning, into action. Cat sat up in the cot and brushed her paws back over her down-cast ears. She rubbed her face a few times and stood, unsteadily. Alder rose as well, morning erection vanished, thanks to the clamor outside and the increasing pain in his head. He thanked her for the drink and the bed, hugged her, then made his way to his tent to get ready for the day. Humans and voxipeds moving about the surrounding tents watched him with raised eyebrows, of which he was blissfully unaware.

When he arrived at his tent, his tentmate was awake and shirtless, doing push-ups with his legs propped on the cot. The ferret was half his age, twice his energy, and a source of near-constant annoyance. Even his scent was a claw upon the chalkboard of Alder's nose. Craig Philips hopped up when the puma walked in.

"Look what the cat dragged in!" He chuckled when Alder winced at his loud, nasally voice. "Fuckin' hell, mate, you look like you need a few dozen pills and a week off."

Alder flopped onto his cot and rifled trough his luggage. Pulling out a medicine bottle, he rattled in in the air toward the ferret and retorted, "One down, Philips. Think you can swing the second?"

"Shit," the prick threw a shirt on and slipped into his boots. "You want out of this fuckin' place; you walk out the gate. Cunts won't stop you."

The puma grunted at that. "Tempting."

"Mind a change of topic, Al?"

"Philips, do we genuinely have to have the 'Al' conversation again? I'm not some fat, fuckin' hick with a beer-stained tank top and goddamned tractor-pull cap." He planted his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands. "But, yeah. A change of topic would be great."

Philips shot him a lop-sided grin. "You smell more like rabbit than lion."

"Dude," the big cat groaned, muffled by his paws, "first off: not a lion. Don't look or smell like one, not even a little. Some racist, speciesist, whatthefuckever, shit right there. It's like someone calling you an otter or a ermine. 'B', whether or not I smell like rabbit, or bear, or salamander, or Jello-fucking-pudding-pops isn't any of your goddamned concern. If you're done in here, why not fuck off and harass the servers in the mess tent."

The ferret just laughed and walked through the doorway, hollering, "Good morning to you, too, sunshine!"

Fucking. Prick.

Medicated and dressed, Alder stopped at the latrine tent to brush his teeth and splash water on his face. He dried off with a handful of paper towels and returned his toothbrush to his tent. Cat arrived at the mess tent a minute after he did. She looked almost as bad as he felt, though she carried it a little better. Her ears, sensitive to the sounds of the bustling common area, drooped down her back to fall over a yellow-trimmed, white t-shirt bearing a round logo. Partick Thistle Football Club? Probably a soccer team, he guessed. The worn denim of her trousers was loose enough for comfort out on the rubble, but hugged the lines of her hips nicely. She was a more-than-welcome sight. The puma rolled his eyes when Philips jogged past them with a wolf-whistle and an unsubtle "Rawr!". The rabbit winced and watched after him as he went.

"Who's the cunt?" she grumbled to him, massaging her temple, as they stood in line for breakfast.

Alder's quick bark of laughter made him reach up to hold his own throbbing head. "That was Philips, my asshat tentmate."

"Well, if you're in the market for new accommodation, I know a tent with an empty cot."

He looked down at her. "Oh? That so?"

"Aye," she answered with a smile, "and the current resident is probably a step up in terms of mates. Eh, tent...mates. Tentmates." She nodded, satisfied that she had salvaged that slip.

Alder, for his part, didn't mind the thought. They grabbed their respective meals at the makeshift counter; bacon, sausage, and reconstituted eggs for him, assorted fruits and diced melons for her. They ate together at a vacant table; though, they skipped conversation in favor of speed. Most folks had already finished eating and gone to the briefing yard to assemble with their teams. When they finished, they dumped their trash, returned their trays, and made their way to the yard with the other stragglers.

When they got to the edge of the yard, they stopped. There was usually chatter all through the crowd in the mornings. Today, a hush was over the assembled volunteers.

"...want to thank everyone for their hard work and dedication these past weeks," echoed the voice of the woman who oversaw the volunteers. "You all have made a remarkable difference here and Newcastle thanks you. However, like the mayor said, it just isn't safe to continue volunteer activities right now. We don't yet know the full extent of the spill, but it appears that it will take days, maybe longer, to contain. Until then, only certified individuals with the proper protective equipment will be allowed in the area. We would encourage anyone with hazardous materials training to stay behind and discuss remaining on for the clean-up. The rest of you are welcome to leave your contact details with your team coordinator. You'll be called back when it is safe to resume search and recovery operations. You're dismissed."

The crowd erupted into cacophony as the speaker walked away from the microphone. Humans and voxipeds made their way, chattering, back to their tents to secure their belongings and begin checkout proceedings. Alder and Cat approached a small group of people who stood talking at one side of the yard.

"Uh...hey, guys," the big cat said with a weak wave. "We walked up late and missed the first bit. Y'all mind helping us fill the gaps?"

"Yeah," a chipper, young, Aussie woman replied. "Safety team on the regular morning sweep ran across something in grid D-5 that triggered their chemical sensors. Turns out there was a private storage facility smack in the middle of the fuckin' search area. Some ignorant fuck apparently stored chemical shit in there, like, for weeds or something, right, Jackie?"

The guy next to her, an oryx, nodded. Before the antelope could talk, though, a gangly teen with them cut in.

"Bullshit! There was probably a government storehouse down there. Chemical and biological weapons, man. They got that kind of shit hid all over, just in case the people ever rise up!"

"You'll have to excuse my brother," the woman told Alder and Cat with a roll of her eyes. "He's, uh, sick."

"Yes, he has caught 'being a moron' from internet videos," added the oryx in a strong accent that Alder could not quite place. The guy's English was perfect, but the syllables were pitched and stressed in an unusual way.

Central African, probably, the puma thought to himself. Of course, central Africa, genius. He's an oryx. He's probably not from fucking Norway.

The oryx went on, "The spill was weed killer, lawn fertilizer, things like that. Multiple chemicals leaked and mixed together at some point after the tremors, and the fumes are toxic to the point that they could very seriously harm people if they are exposed for too long. They have to keep volunteers out until a hazmat unit can clear it."

The puma and rabbit thanked them and turned to go.

"Well, I'll be damned," Alder murmured as they walked away. "Guess I'm getting that week off after all."

"Eh?"

He looked down to the rabbit walking beside him. "Sorry. Just thinking out loud."

"So," Cat said as they wound their way between tents, "what are you going to do?"

The puma scratched at his neck as he thought. He finally answered, "Well, I've barely spent any money over the past week, so I've got plenty to spend on a new hotel room with a huge, soft bed and one of those big-ass jacuzzi bathtubs. Maybe see a beach before I have to go back to the States. You?"

Cataría remained quiet for a while. "Not a clue," she eventually grumped.

"What's on your mind, Caird?"

"I guess," she sighed, "I was hoping we'd have more time together. Fuck, we just met and seemed to hit it off pretty well. Would have been nice to have seen where things between us might go."

Alder smiled. "Plus, you never got into my pants."

"I know; don't rub it in."

"I dunno, I might like to."

She scowled at him. "Can it, Yank. You're going to fuck off back to the Land of the Fried and I'm gonna do...whatever the fuck I'm going to do."

"Well, hell," he pouted. "My flight out isn't for another several days. In the meantime, I was kinda hoping I might be able to ogle a beach bunny or two."

"Remember what I said about sending you to the hospital, tree boy?"

Alder stopped and looked her in the face with a smirk. "Yeah...."

"Keep teasing and I might still do it." Her face was stern and serious, but her eyes were sad. He was trying not to admit that he was taking it every bit as hard as she was. Love at first sight was a load of shit, but there was the potential for something between them, and both of them wanted to chase that potential.

"Cat, come here." He wrapped her in a hug, pressing her head softly to his chest. "I'm sorry, bun."

Her paws clutched at his sides. "God! I feel like a fucking idiot. One night talking over drinks and waking up to a warm body, and I don't want...," she trailed off with a sniff.

He stroked her head, pressing his muzzle between her ears and whispering, "Me either, Cat."

They stood for few minutes, each holding on to the other as if some current might pull them apart and carry them away. The milling of other volunteers around them could have been miles away.

"Say, Caird?"

"Mmm?"

"You've got no plans and nowhere to stay, right?"

She nodded against his chest and said, "Mmhmm."

"How about I turn your offer around on you?"

"How so?"

"Well, hmm. How would you like to share a hotel room? I'll even let you use the jacuzzi, if I get tired of it."

"Promise not to eat me?" There was that mischievous grin he remembered from the night before.

He laughed. "No promises. Let's get our shit together and get out of here."

***

Alder's low whistle echoed off the walls of the expansive hotel room as he and Cat dropped their belongings next to the chest of drawers that occupied the wall closest to the door. An enormous window before them opened onto a balcony that overlooked a small stretch of coastline north of Sydney. Inside the room, a broad bed with a rich, dark brown comforter occupied about a third of the floor space, tucked back against one wall. The table, chairs, armoire, and chest of drawers all had simple, elegant lines. Mounted on the wall over the dresser was a wide television. The bathroom door stood open near the door to the corridor. Inside, they saw spotless white tiles leading to a walk-in shower and a tub that could have comfortably fit four people. Alder flopped onto the bed and stretched out on his back, while Cat skipped out to the balcony. The rabbit's mood had brightened considerably after he had suggested that she join him. He probably wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but he was just as happy. When she came back into the room, she plopped down to sit next to him on the bed.

Placing one paw on the puma's chest, Cat leaned down and planted a kiss on his nose. As she hovered over his face she asked, "You sure about this?"

"Sure about what, bun?" He lay with his eyes closed, purring.

She snickered and pecked him on the nose again. It was adorable when a cat meowed while purring; a voxie puma talking through a purr conjured the amusing image of someone trying to hold a conversation while riding a bike down stairs.

"This, daft tree," she sat back up and motioned to the room at large.

"I dunno, a king size bed should be enough. Though, I guess we could have gotten a suite, if you really wanted a whole bed to yourself," he murmured. "Waste of money, though; seeing as how you'd just sneak into bed to snuggle anyway."

She tweaked his whiskers. "No, us. We're practically strangers, are you sure you want to do this?"

Alder opened one eye and glanced at her with a smirk that flashed one of his long canines. "Says the bunny who coaxed me into her tent to get me drunk and fuck me," he drawled.

"That's just what I mean, though!" she growled, getting up from the bed and pacing back to the window. She stood there, watching the shadow of the hotel and the surrounding buildings creeping slowly out over the sea. It had taken most of the day waiting in lines to get through check out procedures. Then there was the ride down to Sydney. "I wanted that. Hell, I still do. But talking with you last night--"

The soft thump of her forehead against the window made the puma sit up and watch her more closely. Her head thudded gently against the glass a couple more times before staying pressed to it. Her ears drooped down her back, a dark waterfall over her light colored shirt, and her tail sagged.

When she spoke again, her voice was low. "I enjoyed it. Just spending time talking with you. I probably enjoyed it more than I would have enjoyed the sex. I've enjoyed talking and joking with you for almost every minute of the last twenty-four hours, Alder. I haven't grown tired of it, even though you sometimes push my buttons, like just now. I want to keep doing that. Talking, learning more about each other. My last relationship was shite and I've been out of the mix for longer than I care to think. I don't know if I want something emotional between us, but I don't think I'll be able to avoid it. I also don't think I'd be happy with just one night of casual sex."

The bunny hadn't heard him approaching across the soft carpet. She jumped when he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his muzzle to the top of her head. "Same here, bun," he whispered into the fur between her ears. Louder he said, "So, let's make a deal. You stay here with me for five days and six nights of casual--and maybe not so casual--sex and, in between grinding pink bits together, we see if we can't get to know each other a bit more. Worst case scenario: we figure out that we don't get along or you realize that 'big cat' is kind of a subjective term when contrasted against a fucking horse. If things go sour, we go our separate ways. Best case: we find that we fit together in a whole bunch of nice ways and we figure out what we're gonna do about it." He kissed her head again. "What do you think?"

The rabbit spun in his arms faster than he could have imagined. She was up on her toes, her mouth was on his, and the room faded away around them. Plush, velvety fur tickled his nose, sending tingles down the back of his neck. A tiny tongue darted between his teeth and grazed the tip of his. They broke apart briefly for breath, then dove in again.

She nibbled lines down his neck and back up his throat to his chin. Growling, he nipped at her twitching nose and kissed her from her forehead to her ears. One of his paws caressed down the back of her neck, tracing her spine with alight touch from the tips of his claws. Cat shivered and her teeth clamped onto his shoulder, moaning and pressing her body to his. Encourage by her reactions, the puma licked the rim of her ear and nibbled at its edge. Now her paws were pressed to his sides, pushing him back; her claws gripped tight the fabric of his shirt.

The backs of the big cat's legs bumped into the soft comforter on the bed. They toppled onto it, Alder beneath her, without breaking contact. His paws ranged down Cat's sides, feeling her firm-yet-soft body beneath the t-shirt that she wore. She squeaked and sighed when he gripped handfuls of denim and bunny rump in his paws. One paw continued to squeeze while the other slid over to her tail and grasped it loosely. Her breath hitched again when she felt the length of her tail slide though his pads. Cat pushed against his chest, raising herself up.

Alder panted out a little, disappointed moan as she crawled off of him; but it fell immediately into a low growl lust when he saw her shirt drop past the edge of the mattress. The bunny made quick work of the rest of her clothes and climbed back onto the bed to work on his. Soft light from the windows highlighted her dark fur with a soft brown glow. As she knelt beside him and relieved him of his t-shirt, he continued exploring her with one paw; the pads of his fingers ran through the fur of her abdomen and traced faint furrows in search of the heat between her legs. Meanwhile, she ran her claws through the creamy white fur of his chest. She pressed her nose against his sternum, breathing in his scent and trailing the movements of her paws with quick, nuzzling kisses until she reached his waist.

Deft fingers flicked open the button and zipper of his trousers, then gripped the seams at the sides and pulled pants and underwear down his legs in one motion. He kicked the fabric free just as his paw found what it sought. The first pads of two of his fingers slid along either side of her sex and circled her entrance. The flesh there protruded slightly and in the center he felt a Y-shaped cleft. Her fluids immediately saturated the fur of his paw.

Holy fuck! She's soaked, he noted.

She groaned from the contact and reached for his cock. No sooner had she gabbed it, sliding his sheath down over its length, she released it and gasped, "What the fuck?"

Alder chuckled. "First time running across those?"

She stared at his dark pink, tapered shaft and the lighter spines that formed a wide band around it, just above where his sheath was bunched up. They were short, semirigid and disconcertingly sharp-looking. The rabbit glanced at her paw and realized that they hadn't felt particularly sharp on her pads, just...different. "Yeah," she whispered, "I mean, I guess I'd heard; but...."

Keeping one paw on her pussy, he took one of her paws in his other and brought it to his muzzle. He kissed and nipped at the fur-fringed pads of her fingers and palm, then ran his rough tongue along each. Her fingers spread reflexively and her arm shivered.

"These barbs are a good deal harsher than those. Was that uncomfortable for you?" he purred. While he waited for her answer, he slid his middle finger along the lines of her wet cleft and paused at the middle of the 'Y' with the rest of his paw lightly gripping her mound.

She shook her head. Her teeth were clamped on her bottom lip and her eyelids drooped with lust. He smiled up at her and slowly guided her paw back down to his bare, throbbing flesh. Gently wrapping her fingers around his shaft, he watched her face for a reaction.

Cat's eyes widened at the touch of Alder's hot skin and its contrast to the cool of her pads where he had licked them. The spines were still strange but not unpleasant. They flexed ever so slightly as her paw raked across them and stiffened with every twitch of the puma's cock. She leaned down, mouth opening to taste him; but, at the last minute his paw rested on her cheek and drew her mouth up to his.

Breaking the kiss, he smirked at her and said, "Sorry, bun. I'm not a fan of that, uh...particular service."

She sat up with a laugh and smacked his chest playfully with the back of her paw. "Bullshit! All guys are fans of 'that particular'--" She broke off with a squeal and arched her back. Alder's middle finger had sunk to the second knuckle in her and he was teasingly flexing the tip within her.

"Not me, Cat. Never have liked it. Now," He withdrew his finger, grabbed her sides, flipped her onto her back and straddled her. "it's my turn!"

They locked lips again, reveling in each other's taste. Alder's paws roamed across her body; here rubbing, there dragging claws through her fur. The rabbit turned out to be incredibly sensitive to touch; though, not to the point of ticklishness. He worked his way down her velvety abdomen in a series of meandering licks and nibbles, all the while inching his body farther back, until his legs slipped off the edge of the mattress. Cat lay panting and frozen, but for the occasional twitch when her partner found a nipple or other sensitive spot in his explorations. Her gasps were broken by occasional whispered guidance, begging the puma to linger or hurry on.

Alder reached the valley between her legs and the wet, twitching mound in its midst with a growl of anticipation. Her scent was overpowering there, between the arousal and her scent glands. He teased around her pussy, never quite touching it with anything but his breath, using slow licks and nibbles. Just when Cat was braced, certain she would feel the coarse heat of his tongue on her sex, his mouth wandered away. He drifted down one leg, nipping at the tendon that pulled taut at her hock and dragging his tongue down the furred length of her foot to worry the pads of her spread, straining toes with his incisors. This got to be too much for the bunny and her foot involuntarily jerked out of his paws.

With a chuckling growl, Alder returned to her inner thigh and slid his tongue down in one smooth motion to the top of her mound. He paused, watching her face with a question in his eyes. Her nod was at once pleading and demanding. Needing no further answer, he dove in.

The heat of Alder's long, broad tongue enveloped her entire vulva. Rather than the scouring sensation that she expected, there was just an odd, bumpy feeling and a delicious warmth. The puma, knowing well how tongue barbs could feel on sensitive flesh, ran his tongue forward across her cleft. The rear-pointing barbs slid, harmless and tantalizing, over the wet folds. On the return stroke, he focused the pressure on the barbless tip of his dexterous tongue, ending with flicks at the top of the Y. At odd intervals, his tongue, lips, or teeth would deviate from her folds to address the surrounding skin. The rabbit's hips rolled with the patternless repetition of these motions. He finally had to place one paw on her belly and grasp her ass with the other to hold her somewhat still and avoid either of them getting hurt.

Lost in her partner's ministrations, Cat's paws wandered: now rubbing her chest, now covering her mouth to stifle her louder noises, now grasping desperately at Alder's head and ears. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she rode the sensations from her groin. She failed to stifle a particularly loud moan when the big cat tightly rolled his long tongue and worked it into her with short, firm thrusts that sent waves of building heat radiating through her. While doing this, he continued softly working her swollen vulva with his lips and teeth, paying close attention around the front of her cleft. His paws, independent of conscious thought, began flexing and relaxing, gripping her fur and pressing his dulled claws against her skin. Time became fuzzy for both of them, lost in the scents and sensations.

Suddenly, the rabbit's voice changed to a deeper moan that rose to a snarl as her jaws clenched and her thighs squeezed around Alder's head. Any sense of rhythm in her movements was lost and her belly tightened beneath the puma's flexing paw. Her head lifted from the bed and tilted to the side, eyes shut tight, eyebrows twitching and arching, and ears laid back and quivering. Her hands gripped and clutched at Alder's head. Around his tongue he could feel the pulsing contractions inside her. As the pulses slowed, he withdrew his tongue and lay his chin on her pelvis, just above her mound. He licked his lips and purred softly as he watched her come down from her climax, enjoying the rabbit's writhing pleasure until she patted him unsteadily on the head.

"Hmmm?"

Her back arched anew. "Ah! Sen...seneeeeheeheee," she twisted and squealed, pushed his head away from her throbbing pussy. "Sensitive! Lay off, ye rumbly bastard!"

Alder chuckled and crawled up to lay down beside her. Cat hugged him close and nuzzled him, still panting and quivering. He ran the pads on one paw over the soft fur of her head and she reached down to stroke his penis. His arousal from tasting her had generated an excess of precum, leaving his bumpy shaft slick and the surrounding fur matted. Her paw slowly worked up and down his length, coaxing small bucking motions from his hips and more thin, transparent arousal from his tip. Each dribble of fluid from his cock only added the lubrication of Cat's paw.

Huffing irregularly, the puma held her tight. The soft skin of her pads and the plush fur between them felt incredible. He was building quickly, though. Far too quickly.

"Bun...," he whispered into the fur of her forehead, lurching with a particularly deep thrust. "Ah! Fuck, Cat," he groaned, "I'm--"

The rabbit interrupted him with a deep, slow kiss. Her paw slid down to the bottom of his shaft and pressed gently against his pelvis. Her finger pads clutched softly around the spines at his base and squeezed in rhythmic waves from her pinky to her thumb and index finger. Everything dissolved around Alder, leaving two bright points of stimulus: his mouth and his cock. He burst in her paw, with a choking groan. The first pulse of his ejaculation hurled a thimble's worth of seed over both of their heads to land on the comforter. Each successive pulse was weaker, leaving a sticky trail of semen down his chest and belly.

Through his ragged panting, Alder was dimly aware of Cat's lips and tongue, nibbling and licking at his fur. When he finally opened his eyes, she had cleaned almost all of his release from his torso and was playfully licking at the tip of his still hard member.

He flinched and sucked air through his gritted teeth at the warm, flicking touch of her tongue on his still-tingling tip and snickered. "Payback, eh?"

"Turnabout is fair play." They kissed again and he could taste himself faintly on her lips.

The pair showered together, each taking time to help the other wash, lingering overlong in some places. By the time they finished and dried off, the sky outside the window was deep, purplish blue with faint orange fire still painting the scattered high clouds. They dressed and went out to find dinner.

***

"Fuck off!"

The dark, slender rabbit giggled and replied, "I shit you not, tree."

Alder stared at his shallow bowl in frowning confusion. "Tofu?"

"Yup." She sipped at her tea and watched him with amusement.

The puma poked at the chunks of what he had thought were meat. He shook his head and took another bite, savoring the rich curry sauce. "I'll be a son of a bitch," he mumbled.

They sat on the patio of a small Indian restaurant, about which Cataría had read good things. It was just before noon on their first full day away from the destruction in Newcastle. If either one were asked, they would say that they were having a wonderful time and had hardly a care in the world.

It was mostly true. They were having a fantastic time with one another. They had walked and talked along the strand this morning, sharing more about each other's childhoods (her brief time as a Catholic and his nonreligious and comparing tastes in books, television, movies, and music. There were few topics upon which they encountered walls--one being The Wall (Cat professed that it was her favorite Pink Floyd album, while Alder preferred Wish You Were Here.)--and none which generated any real tension.

Reciprocal familiarity with the popular culture contributions made by their respective homelands cemented their growing affection. The night before, instead of the heated session of lovemaking that their passionate non-coital play had foretold, they had talked for hours about Doctor Who, the Star Trek franchise, Game of Thrones, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Under the surface, however, they were both still dealing with the trauma of their search and rescue experience. Each woke, crying, at different times in the middle of the night from the cold grip of nightmares. Fortunately, they had each other to hold in those times.

Cat set her cup on the table and commented to her partner, "I really don't see how you're just casually eating that."

"Why? I mean, yeah it's not meat, but..." He shrugged and too another bite.

The rabbit looked down at her own bowl, scarcely eaten. "Not the tofu, doofus. How can you stand the spice?"

Alder almost snorted food through his nose. He dropped his spoon with a clatter into the bowl. He wiped his mouth, chuckling through the napkin. "Look, bun," he chuffed kindly, pointing down at the bowl, "that ain't spice. If I ever get your fluffy butt to New Mexico, I'm gonna blow your fuckin' mind. I'll take you to a little bodega and café in Tularosa where they make the best chile relleno ever and half of the food is so goddamned hot you could soften steel over your pellets."

Her bright laugh in response made some of the other patrons turn to them. The bunny's ears drooped and went red inside from the attention. "Silly Yank cunt," she said with a smirk.

"Yank it? I'm not even sure how one might do such a thing. You'll have to show me later." He winked and resumed eating.

Cat shook her head and laughed again.

After they finished lunch, the pair went back to their hotel. They were still exhausted from the physical toil of their time in the search and rescue zone and didn't have it in them to explore the tourist destinations that Sydney had to offer just yet. Laying in bed, they flipped through the television channels on offer and relaxed in each other's arms. Both of them fell asleep midway through making fun of some obnoxious, made-for-tv, science fiction movie that pitted college students (played by a cadre daytime-melodrama actors whose makeup team failed to hide that they were double the age they were meant to portray) against an impossible combination of disasters--Blizznadocano vs. Hurricomet or some such nonsense.

Cat awoke to the flickering light and tumult of an infomercial on the tv. Dusk showed through the window and the cable receiver's display reported that the time was 9:45 in the evening. Between the eight and the four a glowing colon blinked in seeming remonstration over their casual disregard for civilized circadian rhythms.

She slowly exited the bed, not wanting to wake Alder. Her long, furred feet made no noise on the carpet, but she gasped at the cold touch of the tile floor in the washroom on her bare toe pads. She closed the door and turned on the light, blinking in the sudden brightness. The fan, operated by the same switch as the light, spun up to a soft purr overhead. She settled onto the toilet and fiddled with the apps on her phone while her body did what it needed to do. She never bothered with social media, but flipped through an assortment of news providers and played a puzzle game to which she had become addicted. Her lives in the game ran out quickly on a hard level. Bored of news and not yet wanting to get up, she scratched her belly and let her mind wander.

What the hell was she going to do? She couldn't stay in Australia forever. Well, technically she could; she just didn't want to. The country was nice enough, but there wasn't anything there that held her. Going back to Scotland was a possibility, but there wouldn't be much for her to do there. She could only bum around the family estate so long. So? That was two nations out of an entire globe. She specialized in New World, temperate zone fauna so that left extreme southern South America or North America. Canada could work, but she only knew one person in the whole country. Even though the chances of bumping into that person at random were astronomical, they weren't astronomical enough.

She shook her head, cleaned herself up, and stood to pull up and fasten her pants. Finished, she flushed. Thank fuck this hotel has a nice, quiet toilet that can handle voxie rabbit pellets, she thought to herself as she washed and dried her paws, switched off the light, and stealthily opened the door. No sense waking Alder up with whooshing water or a panicked bunny trying to handle an overflowing loo. Even though the silly bugger would probably just laugh. She started snickering at the thought, then caught herself.

She stood at the sliding door for a moment, watching the big cat sleep. From time to time his upper lip would twitch, swishing his whiskers about. Bloody adorable, isn't he? She thought about the long conversations that they'd had over the last two days. Somehow, the desire to shag had taken a back seat to fulfilling some deeper need that they both seemed to feel. They hadn't gone farther than the foreplay and oral sex that had happened when they arrived at the hotel. Oh, please, she chided herself, in Scottish terms that hardly even counted as making out.

She continued to watch him with a wry grin. He lay atop the covers, still clothed. The long, fluid lines of his body made him look as far from athletic as anything could look; but beneath the lanky exterior and tawny fur she had felt exactly the sort of sleeping power that one should expect from an ambush predator. He was a loaded spring, and as much as she loved his company and his conversation, she was getting increasingly curious about what would happen if she ever got that bound up energy to release.

She subconsciously started toward the bed but paused after only a couple of steps. Och, now! This isn't the time for thinking with your pussy. Get a clear head on ye. She slid the door open quietly and stepped outside. The night air was cool in comparison to the heat of day, but still warmer than the air-conditioned room. Stretching her limbs, she yawned and continued her earlier thoughts.

Where to? America? Alaska (technically part of America, but geographically a world of its own)? Or, perhaps forego her specialty and go to Europe or Russia? She stuck her tongue out at the thought. She'd been all over Europe and visited Russia. Neither held any interest for her. Argentina or Chile? She paced the balcony quietly. No, ye know damn well what you're thinking. Aye, but was it her head thinking it or was she just thinking about chasing that odd, prickly cock across the ocean?

She ultimately decided that while there was a hint of that, in the end, whatever drew her to Alder now was clearly deeper than getting laid. Besides, everything else about America interested her, too. The simultaneous novelty and familiarity of the culture, the diversity of ecosystems. The conservation network! More than a hundred million acres of national and state parks, preserves, and conservation areas dotted the nation. Hell, many of those parks neighbored unprotected forestland, where forestry concerns harvested timber. Maybe she could get a post at a park near where he worked.

Okay, rein it in a bit. He's sexy and fun to be around, don't get ahead of yourself. Chris'sakes, woman. If you're gonnae go, you're gonnae go for you and no other goddamn reason.

Looking out across the white-streaked, dark expanse of the sea--with the warm, yellow-orange lights of lonesome freighters and pleasure craft mirroring the cold blue of the stars--Cat leaned against the balustrade, ornate frosted glass panes capped by a polished teak rail that still held the heat of day, swiveling her ears to and fro at the various sounds of a coastline community transitioning from the business of day to the play of night. She breathed deeply of the salt air. The smell was vaguely reminiscent of the shores of home, but the climate was far warmer. A smile tugged at her velvet cheeks. Dad would have likely have said something like, "Let th' fuck'rs come dip their willies intae th' wa'er off Pe'erheed. See how they like fartin' aboot in th' sea then!" Yet, the gruff bastard would happily tote his brood to the sands of Peterhead to freeze their own arses off in the North Sea every year.

For a moment, her ears ceased their asynchronous rotations and stood alert over her forehead. She grinned and withdrew her phone. A quick check of the sliding door confirmed that she had closed it. No sense waking the big pussy cat. A press of the lock button lit up the display. Ten o'clock in Sydney corresponded to one in the afternoon back at home. She selected a contact and initiated a call.

After one ring, a voice crackled on the line. "Kitty?"

"Hi, Dad. Yeah, it's me." The smile in her voice did little to cover her nervousness.

"Wha' is it, tomorrow there? Ye all right?"

She laughed. "No, ye daft twat. It's only nine. And, yeah, I'm good. You?"

A clatter echoed in the background. "Damn it, David! Keep yer eyes poin'ed in th' direction tha' yer fuckin' moving!"

"Still haven't got Davie trained on the forklift?"

"Aye," grumbled the voice. "Stupid bugger probably still hurts hisself e'ry time he uses a bloody spoon."

She snorted. "Well, tell him his sister says he's a silly cunt that'll never amount to anything."

"Dave! Oi, Davie! Kitty says yer a useless cunt!" A bellow of distant laughter rose amid the sounds of the warehouse, followed by something indistinct. "Aye, he says he loves ye, too."

"Awww," she moaned. "I miss you arses."

"Well," her father gruffed, eschewing emotion, "wha're ye callin' for?"

"I think I ken where I'm going." She looked down to the patio and swimming pool below, nervously fondling the ruff of fur and skin that pillowed out between her shirt collar and chin. In a human, this would have given her a double-chin at odds with the rest of her frame. The dewlap, though, so characteristic in women of her species, merely gave the impression that she was wrapped in a plush, black stole. Unfortunately, the position also changed the dynamic of her voice. Something her father never missed.

"Oh, aye?," the old rabbit hummed pensively. "And what? You're thinkin' I'll no like it?"

Cat nodded and sighed, "Aye, probably not."

"Wait a bit, Kitty." The cacophony in the background on his end faded as he walked out of the storehouse and into his office. She could hear the creak of his chair as he sat down and the soft thwump of a cork being pulled. A slosh of liquid. A squeak of the cork being replaced. A sip. A sigh. A throat being cleared. They were the sounds of a ritual that she had seen performed countless times.

"All right, love. What is it?" His voice and accent were softer, more...professional.

"Dad," she began, "what's the worst place you could see me trying to settle down?"

There was a sharp sound of glass on wood. The softness broke momentarily. "Oh, Christ, Cataría! You din't get knocked up by some dingo-fucker, did ye?"

She turned and leaned her back against the railing, laughing. "No, Dad! I didn't get pregnant, for fuck's sake. Also, I guess it'd be the second worst place."

A sigh of relief. "Ok, good. Wait, Wales? No...Rwanda? Albania? What's just slightly less awful than Australia? Hell? South Africa?"

"The U. S., Dad."

"Pish!" He chuckled. "Not even close. Yeah, I bitch about Yanks, but only about half of them are cunts. At least you won't get bored there; plenty to see. God knows their diet there isn't any better than here. Careful you don't get so fat you have to roll home. I'll have Bill get in touch with you about taking care of your visa and whatever else you need to look for work." Bill was the family solicitor and a long-time friend of her father.

"Thanks, Dad."

"Of course, Kitty. Now," another sip and a faint snicker, "what's this I hear aboot you tryin' tae become a snack for a...what was he?...a puma?" He pronounced it differently from Alder, drawing out and stressing the first syllable. Pyew-ma. It took her a second to catch his meaning. When she did, she almost dropped her phone.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" she whisper-yelled into the handset. "Which one of those awful cows mooed? Molly, was it?"

The old bunny laughed merrily. "Ne'er ye mind which of yer sisters it was," he said, slipping back into his usual, comfortable brusqueness now that the serious business was concluded. "So, is he be'er than th' last one?"

"I," She looked through the window at the vague shape of the big cat laying in the darkness of the room, then turned back toward the sea. "think so, yeah. Time will tell."

"Well, tell hem if he hurts ye, I'll cut his baws off and push them doon his throat."

Cat smiled. "Hell, if he tries to hurt me the way you're talking, I'll do it for you. Anyhow, I'd best let you get back to making sure Davie doesn't demolish the storehouse. Talk to you again soon, dad. Love ye."

"Aye, dearie. Take care." The line went quiet.

The rabbit sighed and slipped her phone back into her pocket. Her eyes roamed over the dark grey ocean to where it blended seamlessly with the sky. She couldn't quite tell if it felt more like the sea was towering above her in some cataclysmic wave or that the little shoreline community sat at the edge of the world, bare meters away from the void of space. If she leapt off that edge, how far would she fly...or fall?A soft sound behind her made her ears swivel back. It was the balcony door sliding open.

Alder shuffled out, scratching his neck, claws furrowing the fur behind his ear. He gave her a tired smile and stretched his arms against the railing with a heavy, toothy yawn. Cat had mostly grown accustomed to cavorting with the predator, but there was something deep within her that still cringed when he moved just right. She shivered slightly, hoping that he would miss it. The big cat was more attentive than that. He'd noticed all the other times, too.

He gave her a sidelong glance and let out a little, self-conscious chuckle. "Takes some getting used to?"

Abashed, she admitted, "A little, yeah."

He nodded and looked down at his paws, sheathing and unsheathing the claws. He left them extended and stretched them out over the edge of the balcony. Against the darkness of the sky and the ocean, they flickered faintly with blue light from the television. He retracted them, sighed, and stared off into the distance. A heavy silence settled in the humid air between them, with only the odd sound--sea and road traffic, sea birds, and the like.

After a moment, Alder turned to her with a shake of his head at some internal thought and rested his hip against the rail. The puma took one of her paws in both of his, unintentionally highlighting for both of them how much smaller she was than him. With hers resting palm up in his left paw, he traced her fur-fringed pads with his index finger. She frowned, wondering what he was doing. He cupped her paw in both of his again and bent, pressing his lips softly against the larger pad of her palm. Alder remained still for a few beats, then lifted his head and folded her fingers over her palm. His right paw covered his left, enveloping hers with his warmth. Holding her thus, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on hers.

"Cataría," he said, "we've only known each other for a little while. There's a lot that we don't know about each other's habits, points of view, and instincts."

She rested her free paw on his chest and whispered, "Aye...." Her fingers flexed and the claws pulled at his shirt fabric.

She flashed back to another man, another conversation about instincts and habits. That conversation ended with the relationship. He had been a very different person, as had she back then, but the memory made her worry about where this talk was going. Was he getting ready to pull away, just when she thought things were going well. Fucking wanker!

"But, there is just no way I could hurt you like that." He shook his head, pressing his fur deeper into hers.

Pardon? Cat's eyes snapped open and tried to focus on his face. A smirk tugged at the dark stripes on either side of his nose.

"I mean," he continued, "I can't promise that I won't bite or scratch a bit during the odd moment of passion.

"Fuckin' hold up, now," she pushed back, confused, and looked him in the eye. "What the hell are you trying to say? I thought you were getting ready tae break this off, but..."

The big cat's ears twitched and he cocked an eyebrow in bemusement. "Uh...no. I was trying to tell you that I understand you having trouble with the tooth-and-claw bit, but that I love you too much to go farther than the occasional nip or scratch during sex. Why would I want to break up; I thought we were getting along really well?"

The pink skin of her ears, barely visible where they were pressed to her back, was slowly darkening. "What...the fuck...did you just say?"

Alder leaned back from her snarl, unsure what to make of the expression on her face. It seemed to be more anxiety than anger. "That we're getting along well...?"

"Not that, you ass. We've known each other for barely four fucking days and you're dropping 'love' on me?"

He released her paw and spread is arms in open bewilderment. "Yeah? I like you a lot, but 'like' sounds like, 'hey, wanna hold hands on the field trip to the dairy farm'. It's got a nasty, juvenile taste. I tell my mom and my sister that I love them. I tell my kids that I love them. I tell my fishing buddies that I love them. Why the hell wouldn't I tell you that?"

Her jaw hung open and her right eyebrow twitched a little.

"Bun? What's--"

"Change of venue, Alder. Now!" She reached up and massaged the bridge of her nose. "There is no way in hell I'm continuing this conversation without alcohol and a table between us."

***

The hotel bar was agreeably quiet. A handful of solo drinkers occupied stools at the bar, while two couples and a group of five had staked claims to a few tables. Cat selected a small table, set back against a windowless wall. She wanted quiet and as few distractions as possible. Alder sat across from her, bemused, as they waited for the lone waitress to bring them their orders.

The bubbly human returned with the drinks quickly. She was tall for her kind and the three inches added by the heels of her shoes did nothing to help that. The hem of her miniskirt stopped two inches below her muff and five inches above the tabletop. She was all cleavage and smiles, but no amount of garish Aussie charisma was going to pull up the mood at the table. She glanced between the two of them, gaudy hoop earrings jostling and flashing beneath a blonde coiffure that looked to be more hairspray than hair. Seeing that they were immune to her effervescence, she told them to call for her if they needed anything and swished off to try to infect others with her giggles and winks.

Alder sipped at his bourbon and watched the rabbit over the rim of his glass. She knocked back her scotch with the delicacy of someone taking the antidote to some lethal poison. Her empty glass made a sharp thwock on the polished wood of the table. Before the residue in the glass could slide down its walls to puddle at the bottom, she had downed half a pint of ale. Setting her bo The puma set his drink down and folded his paws on the table before him.

"A'right," began Cat, "Listen, here. First, do let's go slow on this 'love' business, 'kay?"

"Okay..." he said. He leaned back in his chair and cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"

The bunny rested her weight on her elbows and ran her paws over her face. "Just, y'know, go slow. That word carries a lot of weight and some uncomfortable history for me."

Alder nodded. "All right. I look forward to hearing that story ."

"Thank you. Next, that bit about your fishing pals. Blokes casually telling other blokes they love 'em..." Cat shook her head. "Let's just say that where I'm from that's...rare. Like, You bi or poly or something?"

The puma laughed. "It's a bit less rare in the States. Even less rare when you're all on a river bank, too drunk to stand. I'm not poly, though. My head's not wired to handle more than one romantic or physical relationship at a time."

Her body relaxed a bit more and she took another swig of ale. "Good. Neither am I, but I am also not strong enough to share with someone else. Not with out some serious insecurity. But...wait...you skipped the bi part. Are you?"

"Depends on who you ask. Pansexual probably fits better. Somewhere on that spectrum, at least. Let's just say that I've had a couple of girlfriends whose tender bits were outies instead of innies. I'm attracted to feminine characteristics, and I've never been terribly picky about what I run into 'downstairs'."

"Huh!" Cat finished her ale and retorted, "How very European of you. Sounds like there are some fun stories I need to coax out of you."

"So," he asked, spreading his paws, palms up, over the tabletop, "What's going on, here? Are we good?"

"Not entirely. There's one thing more," the rabbit said, just above a whisper. She took a deep breath and forced her ears forward for the response to her next question. "You said that you tell your kids that you love them."

"Yeah...?" he said, reaching for his drink. His tone of voice suggested that he couldn't grasp why that was important.

Frustrated, she managed only barely to keep her voice down when she demanded, "And how the fuck has the fact that you are a father somehow failed to come up in conversation until now?"

It was Alder's turn to be flummoxed. He overreached his drink, nearly knocking it over. "The hell...." He paused in realization, then laughed. "Oh! Oh, shit.No, no, a thousand times no. I'm not. Definitely. Not. I made damn sure of it in college after a close call."

"What the fuck are are you babbling about, Al?"

"Okay, whoa!" He took a deep breath and continued, "One, please don't call me 'Al'. As uncomfortable as you might be with the l-word, I can guarantee you I am worse with 'Al'. You can keep calling me 'tree', or 'Alder', or 'Hey, Cunt!' if you want. Just not 'Al'. All right? Pretty please, whipped cream and a cherry on top and all that?" He raised his eyebrows and pressed his paws together in a melodramatic pantomime of prayer.

That got the desired result, mostly. Cat smirked and said, "All right, tree boy. What's number two?"

"Thanks, bun," he sighed. "Two, my 'kids' are my students."

"You're a teacher? I thought you studied forestry and worked as an interpreter."

He nodded. "Yep."

"Doesn't that mean, like, axes and saws and flannel shirts? Tim-berrrr! Y'know? Figured you must be a liaison between Yank foremen and Mexican workers."

The big cat laughed so hard that the patrons and staff of the little bar all turned their heads. He ignored them, trying to catch his breath. "Sorry, bun! No, I work as a park interpreter. I lead tours for park goers and explain the park's resources and wildlife. Though, naturally, I tend to lean more toward flora than fauna."

"Well, fuck me sideways!" She laughed and fidgeted with her earrings in embarrassment, mumbling, "I couldn't have had that much more wrong. Your field is a whole lot closer to mine than I thought. Maybe I need to have you put in a good word for me." She flashed a smile to show that she meant that in jest.

"I wouldn't mind doin' that for real, though."

Cat cleared her throat and tried to get the conversation back on track. "So then, who are the kids?"

Alder took a sip of his drink and settled back in his chair. "Well, every summer there are these groups of children--human and voxiped, both--that get bussed out on field trips and summer camps. School groups, church groups, that sort of thing."

"Okay..." she said, her voice echoing in the bottle just before draining it and signaling Bubbles McCheerleader for another round.

"So the camps have the kids sticking around in the park, in tents and cabins, for weeks at a time. Some of the interpreters, including me, volunteer as counselors during these camps and lead the kids on nature walks, or run them through activities; like, building birdhouses and squirrel feeders, or orientation and wilderness survival. Some of 'em come round every year for most of their childhood. I've watched a fair few of them grow up."

"Sounds like fun."

"Usually. Some of the kids can be assholes, but most of the 'em are fine."

Their drinks arrived and they ordered some light food. The waitress fairly glowed when she saw how the mood at the table had changed for the better. She winked and grinned at both of them and bounced off to the kitchen. Cat watched the jiggling ball of energy flap through the swinging doors and shook her head. Then something clicked from earlier in the conversation.

"Eh, hang on. What was that a minute ago about making sure you couldn't have children?"

"Mmm," he grunted into his glass, finishing his first bourbon. His eyes closed as the sting flirted with his trachea. Clearing his throat, he replied, "Yeah. My, uh..." Holding his paw up, he pointed toward his lap and whistled in time with two short, downward jabs of his outstretched finger. "...has been vivisected, rearranged, cauterized, sewed up, and officially stamped 'none shall pass'."

She frowned. "In college? Alder, what the fuck? Most folks do that in middle age, don't they?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, like I said there was a close call and I made the decision for my own good."

"Is it the kind of story you don't feel like telling?"

Alder shook his head and swirled his new drink, left ear flicking involuntarily. "It's nothing scandalous, just--" He was cut off by the sudden return of their server. A plate of onion rings, fried cheese, and a trio of nameless sauces clunked on the table between them.

"If you two need anything from the bar or the kitchen in the next fifteen minutes, just yell, a'right?" The pair nodded politely. "It'll be the end of my shift then, so if you need anything else just let me know."

Her odd emphasis on the word "else" was punctuated by a folded cocktail napkin, held between two green-nailed fingers, sliding across the tabletop to rest near the food; then she was off to her other tables. The aura of perfume and stale cigarette smoke that hovered in the air next to their table seemed to watch them in her stead. The puma folded his ears back and turning to watch her go. Cat, meanwhile, reached for the napkin and unfolded it. Her chuckle brought Alder's attention back to her.

"'Either or both, if you're up to it,' it says and this is probably her mobile number below it," the bunny whispered, showing him the note.

"Flattering," he muttered. "Love to say that was a tempting offer."

Cat snickered, catching his sarcasm. "Silly bugger. You've got a girl right across from you."

"No, I mean I wish I could say it was tempting." He inclined his head in the direction of the waitress, who appeared to be repeating her offer to the group of five. "Aside from the fact that she's probably carrying bacteria and viruses from twelve different species, fucking her'd be like trying to find an anchovy in a half-empty barrel of old potpourri and dry twigs, using only your dick."

The rabbit snorted and buried her face in her arms on the table, fighting to keep her laughter quiet. After catching her breath she said, "Jesus, Alder! Have you ever seen any of Frankie Boyle's stuff?"

"The name doesn't ring a bell. Artist of some sort?" he replied, popping a bit of fried cheese in his mouth.

She rose back up and wiped her eyes. "Scottish comedian. I bet you'd enjoy 'im."

"Well, you'll have to introduce me to his work."

"Gladly," she said with a grin. "Anyhow, you were explaining how your frogs can't skoosh out tadpoles anymore."

"Right," The big cat snickered at the analogy. "It happened in my second year of college. The astronomy club would throw these 'Full Moon Follies'--big fucking parties on the night of each full moon. They had this observatory shed on the campus, up on a hill., where they'd push all of their gear off to the sides to make room for dancing and drinking. You'd think a group like them would be these dry, boring nerds--and they were--but, man, they could put on a bash!

"So, there's this girl--a puma like me but, y'know, innie rather than outtie--and we meet and talk at a few of these parties. Hot little pussy cat, named Dusk. Yeah, I see that look in your eyes. It was her actual fucking name. Here, I thought my parents had fucked up taste in names.

"About the third time we meet, we're drunk as skunks and all horned up, and we go down the hill into the woods on the outskirts of the campus. You familiar with the phrase 'wild cat' regarding a woman's sexual performance? Imagine how much more apt that is when applied an actually wild actual cat. One of the trees there still has our claw marks in it. Looks like a bear with OCD spent two hours marking his territory there. Fast forward a few weeks, we meet at the next party and she says she's preggers."

Cat set her bottle down with a thud and said, "Well, there's you fucked."

"Exactly what I thought. Now, I'm out of my fucking head. I make a huge fucking scene. Some moderately expensive optical equipment may have gotten damaged...or...thrown through a window, and they may have told me that I should avoid showing my face at future shindigs. But, I'm not the sort of cunt that knocks a girl up and disappears, right? So, I take care of her and make sure she gets to doctor appointments and shit. There's no love or anything between us. We can hardly tolerate each other when we aren't lit and horny. It's just me being responsible for my actions."

While he gobbled down another cheese bite, she nodded. "Right honorable of you."

"Oh, yeah! Fuckin' saint material. Anyway, time comes for her to squirt out my bastard kid,"--he paused to let the rabbit recover from choking on her drink, grinned and continued--"and we're at the hospital: me, Dusk, and her mom, who came because ooh-grandkits. I'm fucking right there, next to the bed, holding her paw. The doc goes, 'There's the head!' and sort of pauses. He looks at Dusk, then at me, then kinda shrugs and keeps doing his business. He gets the kitten out and asks if I want to cut the cord. Sure, why not?

"I walk over, take the scissors, and I look down at this bloody, goopy, little fur ball." Alder shook his head. "Cat, you're a wildlife biologist. You ever seen a puma-bobcat hybrid?"

She gasp and whispered, "Fuck off!"

"Shit you not," he said. "The poor, little, grey-brown fucker's got her nose and her muzzle markings, and these hilarious fucking tufts sticking up off its ears. Spots all over, like kittens from either species, really, and this tiny little stub of a tail."

"What'd you do?"

"I laughed my ass off. I guess I should have been pissed, but I was relieved. I snipped the cord and let the doctor and nurse finish up. Took the little wrapped up fluff over to its mom and set it in her arms. Her eyes go fuckin' huge and she's stuttering 'Oh my god!' over and over. The look on the new grandma's face was priceless, too. I patted her on the shoulder, wished her luck, and left the hospital. In hindsight, sort of a dick move.

"Two weeks later I went to my doc and got a referral for a urogenital surgeon. A weeks after that, I'm fucked up on valium, laying on a table without my pants, while a nurse shaves a patch off of my sheath and balls. The doc, an old guy from Pakistan, slices and dices my plumbing to keep the little soldiers from charging into battle, and my sister drives me home. Not my highest point. Sleeping off valium on a couch, with a bag of frozen peas on your junk, and your mom and sister futzing about in the kitchen is not anyone's highest point. For the next month and a half, I had to go to the clinic and crank out samples every Thursday, so they could check my counts and make sure nothing was getting through." He tossed the last chunk of fried cheese into his mouth and chased it with a swig of bourbon. "That's that. Shootin' blanks, now. My epididymuseses are on lock-down."

Cat laughed. "At least you kept your humor. A situation like that might have ruined other blokes."

"Eh," he said, shrugging dismissively. "A lot of us fuck up when we're young. I just got lucky. If the kitten had been mine, I'd probably be stuck working for minimum wage in the stockroom of a K-Mart, trying to save up enough between minivan payments and buying school clothes to buy a pistol and a single bullet. Instead, I work in a field I enjoy and I'm an ocean away from home getting drunk off mid-grade liquor and high-grade bunny."

"Silver linings," she said, raising her bottle and receiving a satisfying clink in response.

The plate now sat bare between them and their respective glasses and bottles were all drained. They decided that some fresh air would do them both a world of good. Alder stood and dropped an appropriate amount of cash on the table, leaving the napkin with their server's phone number. He and Cat waved to her, sitting at the table with the party of five, as they walked out of the bar. They walked through the hotel lobby and stopped on the sidewalk just outside the revolving doors.

"Quarter after twelve," the puma said, looking at the lock screen on his phone. "Won't be much going on, except more of the same. Care for one of them 'long walks on the beach', bun?"

"I got nothing better to do. Sure," she replied.

"Great! That'll give you plenty of time."

"Eh? Time for what?"

He poked her playfully in the side and said, "I've spilled my beans. Now it's your turn. You get to regale me with the tale of why the l-word has such 'weight' and 'uncomfortable history' for you."

"Fuuuuck," she groaned. Her ears and and torso drooped as they strolled down the footpath to the beach.

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