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June could feel the hunger mounting in the pit of her stomach, like the rapid churn that water makes just before the water crests one last time before it's gone, with a gurgle of finality. It was worse than starving, a feeling she could ignore, a hardship that she had overcome many times before. No, this was the feeling that her body was hollowing out, like some gourd drying in the summer sun. Decaying, shriveling, becoming less. She never wanted to have this feeling ever again. And now, her destination was so close, she could taste it.

Mestrapoli, the royal city, could be seen on the horizon. It was like a mountain, but terraced and squared at the edges, the result of stonework upon stonework. At first she wondered if the city might be on fire, but there was no smoke, only glittering lights. Then she wondered if maybe the stars itself had been brought down from heaven itself, as ornaments to the Queen's palace. As she trudged closer, the reality became clearer: that these were great towers gilded with copper, with brass, with gold leaf, with more luster than she had or her entire family would have seen in a dozen lifetimes. This was Mestrapoli, the city of the full purse and the full belly. This was where she would find her dream.

June was a tall girl, especially for the people of Mestra, who were usually no more than a dozen hands tall. Since she came of age, she was over well over sixteen, and she took long strides with thick legs, with hips flared that no one might mistake her for one of her brothers. Born and raised free, June had been taught to be proud of her long, undocked tail from an early age (June had never appreciated her own tail; it was something for her teasing brothers to tug upon, or to tie to some pile of rocks and scraps while she was asleep as a cruel prank.) Her knife was too dull to cut her head-hair, so she had improvised some braids with bits of twine. Her pelt was a thin brown coat, light from long days in the sun. Her whiskers randomly spread from her short muzzle, bouncing in the breeze. (No working farmer would bother trimming these.) By some miracle, June had come of age without a notch in either ear. (Her last memory of her mother was when she had stitched up a cut in her ear, which was more bloody and scary than lasting, and it had healed with the faintest scar.)

June's satchel was empty. All it had before were gourds and bread, and with each growl of her stomach, she grew more upset with herself, for lacking the discipline to ration her food supplies on the journey to here. She knew she should have been snacking, instead of gorging, but she couldn't help herself. With no brothers around to snatch at her scraps, the food had been all hers and hers alone. Now she was hungry, empty, and lonely.

The hunger made her irritable, so when the strap on her sandal broke, she let out a strangled scream and kicked both her shoes off, over the fence by the roadside. Rage turned to regret when she felt the road underneath her toes. Though she had the calloused, hard footpads of a farm-girl, the road wasn't soft sand, it was broken stones and gravel worn by all the foot traffic. Cursing her temper, she looked at the road-side fence, which was covered in graffiti of languages she couldn't read. It was a wooden, smooth affair, difficult to climb. And it was day and there were too many witnesses; other travelers on the road, farmers weeding their fields.

By my tail and teeth, thought June, I didn't walk halfway around the world just to give up because I don't have shoes. Unwrapping her knife, she cut her satchel into leather straps, to tie up her feet. The knife was dull, and the cuts were ragged and skewed. To keep the hide, she had to cut some of her tunic's hemline, too, to get something to tie them up. This doesn't matter, she thought. I'm sure once I'm taken in by the Sadogues, they'll have fine clothes for me. And some good bread. Maybe with cheese. Or honey! The thought of such morsels put a spring in her step.

After long minutes of walking, June's sense of wonder was ebbing, replaced with dull and worldly sense of the practical. The white walls of the city, which had looked like smooth, implacable clouds when she was far away, now showed their pits, divots, and repairs, even as they loomed several stories overhead. The gates weren't great arches but tiny little things, barely big enough to drive a wagon through. And the gates certainly weren't free and open -- there was a long queue, wagons and parties on foot waiting patiently to be let inside. June craned her long neck, looking about for a side entrance for loners like herself, but she saw only the piles of refuse on either side of the entrance ramp. Her whiskers twitched as she sighed, and she impatiently rolled on her leather-wrapped heels while she took her place in line behind some hay-cart. Closer to the city, the smells of habitation were strong: musky fur, animal dung, still air... it was a smell stronger than a dozen farms and yet unlike them.

June tried to think about other things than food, but what else was there, to occupy her thoughts? The realization that she'd run away from home, and that she might never see her brothers again, to fight over scraps at the table? Or her prospects of finding a rich, new life as a postulant in the Sadogue? With nothing to do but wait, all she could think about was the single-minded plan that led her to here, and doubts bubbled to the surface. Would her family come looking for her? What sort of dangers lurked in this city? What if she couldn't find the Sadoguery in this sprawling mess? What if they diagnosed her with some disease, some farm-borne sickness that she didn't even recognize, and they rejected her for reasons that learned people do? What if they didn't believe her sincerity? For the first time since she'd left home so many weeks ago, June had time to think about what she was doing, not just to herself but to others.

"Ahoy there, little miss. Are you lost?" The strange voice was rough; not an accent, but a rasp that June had never heard before. It came from a young man clinging to the side of the hay cart before her; he was pushing rolls back into place. His pelt was brown, and his ears were roughly cropped in a way that made him look on edge.

"Oh," June sniffled, and that surprised her. Her eyes were blurry, too, but she couldn't show weakness right now. She may be a simple farm girl, but she knew that folk were the same anywhere, city or country: if they saw weakness, they would press for advantage. "No, I'm not lost, I just ..." Remember your mission, her internal voice demanded. Clearing her throat, she continued. "I'm a lone pilgrim."

The stranger continued balancing the load, his shirt clinging to flexed biceps. June's first thought was that he looked like one of her older brothers... and her second thought was that this was no relative, this was some stranger. He smelled like sweat and leather.

Involuntarily, June felt her tail start to rise, and she quickly swiveled her hips and pawed behind herself to catch it. She couldn't stop the blood from rushing to her face, the road dust falling from her fur.

Going about his business, the stranger snorted, then smirked. "If you've come to rid yourself of impure thoughts...." He pulled the ropes tight, his hands tied a knot more complex than June had ever seen before. "You've come to the wrong place, miss." Dismounting, he walked close to her, no more than two paces. "This here is the wickedest place on earth. They say that when the Mestra could find no more temptations, they took it upon themselves to invent new ones." He tipped his brimless hat, but the way he smiled at June only reminded of the expression that her brothers would wear when they had been caught doing something they shouldn't, and it gave her no ease. "My father calls me Quinto. What do they call you?"

"Jejunia," she said quickly, she always gave her full name to strangers. She curtseyed, awkwardly in her improvised footwear. "And I am no aesthete. I'm a pilgrim to the Great Sadoguery of Mestra."

Quinto's smile went from affable to mocking. "Hah. And I'm the Queen!" He pulled a smoking pipe from his apron pocket, began to fill it.

The hunger inside her belly fueled a reckless anger for June's retort. "Of course I am! I am good and sincere and I have memorized all the mantras backwards as well as forwards." She took a deep breath, ready to recite --

And Quinto raised a paw. "I apologize, I am sorry." Now he was frowning in that way that father did, when he wanted to say something disapproving but couldn't find the right words. "Hear my words, my good Jejunia, but if you've come here to prostrate yourself before those fat rinds who call themselves priests...." With rolling motions of his fingers, he struck flint together in a single hand and lit his pipe, a practiced motion that fascinated June. She'd seen a pipe only once before, and that when she was very young and some noble was staying at the house. Country folk couldn't afford to smoke.

When Quinto spoke again, thick smoke came fort. "Well, let us just say," he puffed, "that the priests expect an indulgence."

"A what?"

Quinto puffed again, frowning. "They usually only invite the rich people into their ranks."

"Why? Rich people don't need abundance! They want for nothing!"

Quinto couldn't bring himself to laugh, not with this feckless girl before him, so wide-eyed and serious. "Miss, that's how those priests get their somethings. They get rich people to give them all their money. How do you think they pay for all that abundance?"

June's brows knit. "... The divine generosity of Mestra?"

Quinto choked back on his laughter so hard, he had a coughing fit. He rinsed his mouth from his drinking horn, then spat some black mixture into the road-side ditch. He frowned at his pipe, said, "Nasty habit, this," and rolled his big shoulders. "Little miss, this is Mestrapoli, where the rich stay healthy, and the sick stay poor. If you're here all alone and with nothing more than that sack-cloth and ... what I would guess are supposed to be shoes, then there's no place for you in this city. If I took all the money that I earned, and that my father earned, and that my father's father earned before him, and put it all in a bag and offered it to your priests as a price to join their order, they'd take it all and demand a dozen more. You're young, you're healthy, you've got strong arms and wide hips. Turn yourself right around, hop one of those fences, and betroth yourself to the first man that you can keep your eyes on for more than a minute. Give him healthy sons and a daughter or two, and spend the rest of your days in a happy, family way." He shook the embers out of his pipe, then spat upon them. "Live out your years as a happy wife, and not as some scullery pass-around for corrupt priests."

June always found it easier to just let a man keep talking than to verbally disagree. She nodded, dumbly. The moment ended with a strange sound that made June start, and that made Quinto smirk when June started like that. It had been the blow of a bugle, some ways behind them.

Over her shoulder, a party of at least a dozen were arriving. Their tails were docked, and they wore black trousers and red shirts, all stained brown with dust from the road. Many were pack-bearers. One was the herald, in front, with the bugle. Four of them were the largest men and women that June had ever seen, with legs like tree-trunks and shoulders wide as cattle. They each held a pole from a palanquin, a covered box that had some loose load shifting around inside it. June thought it might be sacks of gourds and potatoes, but something about the motion suggested something else. She squinted, waiting for them to get close so she might see.

Quinto groaned and moved quickly. "I hope those folk are ready to tread through that ditch over there, because there's nowhere for me to move this cart." He still moved himself to the driver seat.

June stepped aside, and watched the party jog in their precise, rhythmic steps. As they came closer, she could see that the palanquin didn't carry dried goods... it was a woman.

The party strode past her quickly, but the side of the palanquin box was open to the air, and June could stare at the lady as she was carried past. Her face was round as a pumpkin, and a silk scarf was tied not around her neck but her chins, of which she had at least three. She reclined on feather pillows, with such shapelessness that it was difficult to tell where her shoulders ended and the pillows began. Her midriffs were wider than the palanquin itself. Her hips were even wider, the fur undulating as she bounced with each of her bearers' steps, casting a round shadow beneath her. Even her tail was thick; instead of rough scales, it was marbled fat, rippling and inviting, draped over her stomach.

And that stomach. Even on the farm, even on the best of harvest years, when there was so much corn that even the animals couldn't get through it all, she had never seen a stomach that looked so full, so rich. This reclining lady was stroking her belly with one paw, while feeding herself the juiciest grapes, nibbling each from the vine.

Though the palanquin took mere seconds to pass June by, this moment passed slowly, like honey dripping from a spoon. June thought she might be drowning in time itself, no longer fast-flowing but a heavy, still liquid. Then her lungs expanded, and she could smell this lady of Mestra. Anyone would smell that heavy musk, with a hit of rose-water perfume that failed to cover it up. A keen nose would pick up the pleasant tang of the grapes, the way their sweetness lingered on the empty stems. But as her chest rose, her whiskers spread like sails, her nose edged forward, and underneath all those layers of odors, spoors, and musks... under it all, June could smell that fabled quality known as "the air of Mestra."

Even if June were a learned scholar, she would have no words to describe what that air was. It was as if fire-roasted nuts were caramelized with honey, then glazed with the richest butter. It was melted cheese of a dozen kinds, draped over the most succulent cuts of beef and squab and mutton. It was the pheromones of a rampant god, effulgences dripping from a strong yet tender embrace. It was the hot sun of a cloudless summer day and the refreshing moon on the long night afterwards, it was the caress before and the glow after, it was the love from the first bite and the replete bloat from the thousandth swallow. This air had a smell that made June hunger with a manner and a power she'd never felt possible.

And in a moment, it was gone. If the lady had even noticed the focus of June's attention, she'd made no sign. She hadn't even stopped eating. Her team of bearers jogged right on past, for it was the privilege of nobility to not have to wait in line and to submit to inspection. Those

June almost twisted her ankle, as she staggered back. She felt she had been punched in the gut, and that something had sucked out all her insides. She felt hollow, hungry, ravenous. She quickly put a strap of leather in her mouth, to stem the gush of drool. Her tail whipped excitedly, her teeth chewed fervently. This was a rush, this was a feeling she had been seeking all her life, a joy unbridled. A need to fill.

The dust clouds were settling, and the queue had lined up again, though it had moved forward a wagon-length or two. June dusted herself off, tossed the ruined leather aside. Narrowing her eyes to the great walls of Mestrapoli, she wanted to look past the shining domes, the aging walls, the peasants and the police. Somewhere in that city was something magical, something that would inflame her, expand her, complete her. And she was going to make it hers.