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Allie left Cannon Shoals four years ago -- not by her choice. Now the ocelot makes her way back, finding that everything isn't as it was and her attempts at reform might be self-defeating...

This is the first part of a four-part series of vignettes, all taking place in the wonderful harbor town of Cannon Shoals, Oregon. They're mostly unconnected, save for taking place during the same winter storm. Some old characters will show up; some new ones will appear. To start us off, here's a Supertramp-themed look at the question of whether you can, in fact, go home again. Thanks to Spudz and Max Coyote and Rechan for their help in bringing this one to shore.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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"Riders on the storm" cycle:

1. Take the long way home
2. The tough guy
3. All along the watchtower
4. The Oregon rain

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"Take the long way home," by Rob Baird

---

The first raindrops were already pelting the windshield of her car when she turned off Highway 38, headed north towards Florence. Crossing the Umpqua, Highway 101 formed a sharp dividing line: to her east, the clouds ended at sharp blue sky. To the west, the white was in the process of surrendering to ominous grey.

By Waldport the rain had built to a constant drumbeat. She reached for the radio and turned it on. Four years had gone by, but the station was still a preset. It didn't take long:

The National Weather Service has upgraded its storm advisory to a high wind warning along the Oregon Coast from Astoria to Waldport. Winds of up to sixty miles an hour are expected, with storm conditions worsening through the evening and tomorrow. I'm Sandy Callaway, and you're listening to KCNS: Pacific Coast public radio. Up next on All Things Considered: the French prime minister is in Washington to meet with...

But France was so very, very far away. Who cared? Her last name, Navarro, came from Navarre, right on the border of Spain and France, but the ocelot had never been further than Wyoming.

A cable snaked from the tape deck down to her mp3 player. She switched from All Things Considered to the playlist that she'd been looping all the way from Sacramento. Music that had sustained her since high school. Nice '70s rock. She still kept the first album Steffan had given her, even though she no longer had a CD player.

Her left foot, next to the clutch, tapped along with the beat. I ain't ready for the altar but I do agree there's times, when a woman sure can be a friend o'mine.

The ocelot's paw drummed on the old Cherokee's steering wheel. Thump-thump-thump. "Now I been one poor correspondent, an' I been too, too hard to find -- but it doesn't mean y'ain't been on my mind..."

Halfway into the second chorus she caught flashing lights in the mirror. A quick glance at the speedometer reassured her, but when she pulled over to the shoulder of 101 the cop car settled to a halt behind her. California plates: that always did it.

Rolling down the window took work: the crank was old and broken, and rain pelted her soft golden fur. Soon enough the policeman made his way up alongside. The weasel's sharp teeth made him look menacing despite his slender build, and he had a way of smiling that always showed the teeth off. "License and regist -- aw, fuck! Racket?"

"Hey, Danny."

"Still driving this fuckin' crate, too. Hell, shoulda known it was you from the damn rust." She was still holding out her car's registration, but the stoat waved it away. "Fuck it."

"Why'd you pull me over?"

He pointed towards the hood. "Lights. C'mon, Racket, this rain an' all? You ain't that dumb. Get 'em on. Good girl," he grinned, when she flicked the switch, and leaned in closer. "The fuck you doin' here, anyway? Thought your lame ass was down in Phoenix or some dumb shit like that..."

"Yeah, I was for a bit. Sacramento, technically. It didn't work out..."

"There's a surprise." He laughed; it was a dark laugh, but she'd long since gotten used to it. "Back for long?"

"We'll see. Guess you're still around?"

"Can't leave." Dan flashed a wink that might've been called roguish, by those who didn't know the stoat particularly well. "Ankle bracelet'll go off or somethin'. Look, I'm gonna get outta the rain, but if you're stickin' around, let me know, okay?"

Allison rolled the window closed, and sighed. It was a hell of a welcome. She turned up the radio. "When you're up on the stage it's so unbelievable..." Dan's car passed her on the left, and she pulled back onto the highway, giving the Cherokee's engine time to prepare itself. "Oh, calamity -- is there no way out?"

Stef Kelly had a little band, at Matthew J. Rex High School; they jammed on Supertramp sometimes. He'd given her Breakfast in America, all wrapped up, with a bow even. She treasured it, like she treasured his phone number -- the one he'd scrawled on a bit of paper torn from an English essay, in their sophomore year.

Allison wondered if the fox still played guitar; if he still hung out with Sammy Benson, their drummer, and Roger Hall. Was Roger still with his girlfriend? What was her name -- Astrid? Little French girl. Dan's partner in crime.

A lot could change in four years, though, that was for sure.

What hadn't changed was that she still knew every curve and dip of 101 by heart. Despite the rain, and the grey sky, and the inauspicious start to her return Allison still felt a smile come to her muzzle as the road turned from the Pacific Ocean towards the span of a proud bridge.

The sign at the city limits said that two thousand people lived in Cannon Shoals, which seemed at best optimistic. Its glory days were well behind it, older than Allison by at least a decade. The houses she passed were weatherworn and battered; more than a few of the businesses had been boarded up.

For the log trucks and the highway travelers it was just another stop on 101: a few lights and a few gas stations. That was their loss, though; how could you not love it? How could you not love the smell of the docks, and the call of the gulls over the fishing boats? The taste of the marionberry muffins at Stach's Grounds, the coffeeshop on First Street that was as old as any of them?

As she turned onto State all the memories came flooding back. Long, laughing nights at Rainbow's Diner with her friends. Watching tourists pick their way over useless trinkets in the summertime, when the cool Pacific breeze kept the sun leashed and pleasant.

Her first drink ever, at Three Sheets. Disgusting tequila; Steffan had warned her against it and started in with his teasing when she was still nursing her hangover. He knew how to get her in just the right ways -- to say it just so she laughed along with him when he needled her.

It was a small town, with small-town problems and small-town horizons, and that was why she'd left. But there wasn't any place like the Neatasknea Valley and there weren't any people like Cannon Shoals people. She pulled the Cherokee to a halt in the parking lot of the IGA and got out to stretch her legs away from the chill of the November rain.

The grocery store was fairly busy, for a Thursday afternoon, and she took the opportunity to see who she recognized. A few were clearly classmates. The man at the checkout was Alex Page, a rabbit who'd graduated the year after her, and though they'd never really talked he had the same immediate reaction that Dan had. "Allison, right? Ricky's daughter? I didn't know you were back -- I saw your mom yesterday, you know? Caitlyn? Catherine? She's really far along..."

Not my mom. There was a reflex in the way her fur bristled, but Alex was too carried away to notice it. "Caroline. Yeah."

"But you... I haven't seen you in years."

"Traveling," she said. "What do they say, right? There's no place like home..."

"Yeah, no kidding. Just the deli sandwich and the coke?"

"Pack of Golds," she added, and gestured to the case behind him. "Hey -- do you know where Steffan Kelly is these days?"

Alex glanced over his shoulder. "Steve? Fox, right?" When she nodded, he turned back to the cigarette display, fiddling with the ancient, wear-gritty lock. "Use to work with Sam Benson at the machine shop, but sometime after Sammy's accident he went off to, like... I think he's at the hardware store or something?"

"Accident?"

"Wasn't wearing a tail-cuff. Got it caught in a grinder." By the way he was recounting it, and the rabbit's smile, Benson must've survived -- Alex was just enjoying having a story to tell.

"Jesus," she breathed, slightly exaggerated to show her appreciation for the tale. "He's okay?"

"Says it didn't even hurt until he left the hospital. He lost like... this much." Alex held his paws a foot apart, then thought better of it and closed the gap a few inches. "Danny Hayes calls him 'Stub' now. Uh. Total comes to thirteen... seventeen. I won't ask for ID," he teased, lowering his voice like it was a favor he was doing her.

The ocelot rolled her eyes, and handed over her credit card. "You know, the first thing that happened here was Dan pulled me over? Like... a mile before the bridge. Didn't get a ticket."

Alex laughed. "He must like you. We see each other all the time -- you know that building on Jefferson and Kalapuya? It was like a PWA warehouse, and then it was an ODFW office for awhile? They made 'em these apartments. I live there, Dan lives there... you remember Charlie? The little, short, like, a squirrel I think? He lives there. It's really nice. I mean, but Dan friggin' hates me, you know? Like, he says I talk too much. But what does that even mean?"

"No idea," she lied. "Stef lives there?"

"No, no. Steve's on... yeesh. Damn, this card reader never works. I should talk to Jace about that. They closed the Radio Shack two years ago, but Jace and Tammy -- she's new. You met Tammy? Nah, I guess she moved here after you left, but anyway they got this store now; they even fix computers and stuff. Tammy started up a phone company -- or, like... it's not a phone-phone company, but like phones for computers? Like, they sell the world wide web and stuff? That's where I get my YouTube from. There we go!" He handed the card back, and glanced at the receipt before sliding it into the register without taking a signature. "Steve's living out by the old school now. The old-old school? He's still got that silver Pontiac."

She remembered it well. "Thanks."

"Yeah, of course. Picked a heck of a time to come back, though, I gotta say. This weather... I'm glad I'm not on a boat right now! Man, did you hear what happened to Yong Riley?"

Allison shook her head. "But... I need to get going. Want to get a room, you know? Before the storm gets worse..."

"Yeah! Yeah, good point! Good to see you!"

Says I talk too much. The ocelot snickered to herself -- no, she had no idea at all where Dan might've gotten the impression that Alex was overly talkative. Ordinarily she wouldn't have minded: it was good to catch up, after all. But she had places to be.

Not a hotel, though. Not yet. She was sort of hoping it wouldn't come to that; if Stef had his own place, now, surely he'd have a room, too...

The 'old school' had been abandoned since the 1960s, but if anything it had aged better than the rest of the town: its windows were still intact, and even the lettering was still visible. The streets around it were the closest thing Cannon Shoals had to suburban living -- single-family houses and tiny yards. Back in the day, when the mills were still running, it was the sort of household you settled down into.

'The day' was many years in the past, though. She found Steffan's car and pulled in alongside the curb. Four years. Four years weighed on her mind as, with the rain pelting her fur and pinning her ears, she made her way up to the door. Taking a deep breath, she thumbed the button for the doorbell and heard an anemic chime in answer.

In four years, Steffan hadn't aged more than a few days. His fur was still the color of autumn leaves, and his eyes were still golden. He even had the same thin-rimmed glasses, framing his keen gaze as it widened in surprise. "Allie? Oh, my God..."

"In the flesh," she said. "The flesh and the wet, cold fur."

"Yeah, you picked a... well, I mean, the weather could be better. You --"

Another voice rose over his. "Who is it? The post?"

Stef turned, and opened his mouth to answer as a new figure stepped into visibility in the foyer. A red-furred vixen, their age or slightly older, with an uncharacteristically bland smile and an uncharacteristically fashionable dress.

"Ah..." Allie stammered.

"Hey, so. Mary, this is Allison Navarro. Uh. Allison, this is, ah... this is my wife, Mary."

Your -- wife? The bland smile had widened into something disarming and empty. "Pleased to... to meet you. Mary."

"Come in, come in. No, it's not an imposition, Steffan -- we can have guests over. She looks wet, anyway. Don't let her drip on the carpets..."

Allison glanced behind her shoulder, as the opportunity for retreat suggested itself. But Stef was pushing the door wide for her, and she let herself be drawn in. Dazed, she pulled off her shoes and hung up her coat to dry. Her t-shirt, printed with the logo of a Sacramento band her roommate had followed, felt very conspicuously out of place.

Their house was tidy and immaculate, a far cry from anything she'd ever seen of the fox. She had to imagine that the new carpeting was not his idea; nor were the hardwood bookshelves or the twisted metal of designer floor lamps. A pristine living room set, with a sofa topped by a tasteful afghan, ringed a teak coffee table. Carefully, almost fearfully, Allison sat down.

Mary had never stopped smiling. "So! You're... Alice?"

"Allison."

"We're old friends," Stef explained. "She's just back from Sacramento."

"Oh, lovely. Business or pleasure?"

"I lived there. For... a couple years." It was hard to find words; the whole scenario was alien and awkward. "Before... coming back. I'm from here."

"We went to high school together. At Matthew Rex. Remember where the voting booth was? We had home ec and social studies there."

"Oh! There were classes there? Interesting. We volunteered our time for the election, you see, Allison. It's nice to spend time with the community, and to really feel like you're giving back by helping them. It must be quite different to have been an actual student at a place like that. Both of you! You're from his wild days, I bet," Mary decided. She reached over, and took Stef's paw in hers to give it a squeeze. "One of your rock star groupies, dear?"

Steffan coughed. "Roadie, is the word you want. She used to help us out. You remember Roger Hall, don't you?" He pointedly ignored the face the vixen made. "Rog and Allie...son... used to help carry our equipment."

"Oh, I see."

"You still play?"

Stef looked to his wife, who laughed and answered for him: "No, no, he hasn't in a while. No time, I suppose."

"I'm going to, uh..." Steffan gestured towards the kitchen. "Get some drinks. Cranberry juice okay?"

"Sure." Allison had the curious sense that she had stumbled into a play, an artifice of some kind. Steeling herself, she turned to the vixen. "So how did you two meet?"

Mary tilted her head, recollecting. "Well, we were introduced by my cousin after I moved here three years ago. I'm not from Oregon, you see, but I do have family here."

"Where are you from?"

"Detroit -- well, the Pointes, really. But after I got tired of living there, mother suggested that I might enjoy it out here. It is such a different environment. I suppose you know Lauren Galvan, don't you?"

The town's credit union, upon which the fishing fleet depended, had been owned by the Galvans since the 19th century. Lauren must've been one of those, although Allison didn't know her and wasn't certain how to respond. Was the implication intended to be that, in a small town, surely everyone was acquainted with everybody? "Well, I know Dougal Galvan was a couple years ahead of me..."

The answer proved to be good enough. "Oh, yes, that's her brother. Now, Lauren helped me find this house, and, well, wouldn't you know it but my Steffan was helping her out with some housework. She thought we might get along. And, of course..." As Steffan returned, Mary giggled politely. "He did need to be tamed. Didn't you, dear?"

"That's right." He set the glasses of cranberry juice down on ornate lace doilies to protect the coffee table, and rejoined the vixen on their sofa. "We hit it off pretty quick."

"Quickly," Mary said, and set her paw back atop his. "It's nice that he's good with his hands. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, don't you find? What do you do with yours, dear? I mean -- with what do you occupy yourself?"

"What do I do?" Allison asked. "Well, I just moved back. I haven't found anything yet. Uh, what about you?"

"Oh, this and that." Mary took a polite sip of cranberry juice, and cast her eyes around the room in a way that suggested Allison was to follow.

The ocelot couldn't really make sense of it: framed paintings, and black and white photographs of people she didn't recognize. It was tidily kept and carefully arranged, but any order to it lay beyond her ability to divine. "You're an artist?"

"Oh, heavens, no."

"Yes," Stef spoke up. "Like some of those paintings."

"Please." Mary giggled again, and set her glass gently down. "There's more artistry in the frames -- which my Steffan built. Really, I help to administer the family trust. I suppose you know of the Corbins? We aren't merely in minerals and finance, of course; we are also a patron of many endeavors."

"I see."

"It's not simply a matter of scattering money to the winds, as you no doubt understand."

"Like, just last week, Mary had to go back to New York," Steffan said.

The vixen nodded with just the right amount of demureness. "Helping to judge and award the Randolph Corbin prize in experimental poetry. I designed it myself, after the original Corbin in American literature."

The feeling that she had been trapped on a stage was growing. "What is experimental poetry?"

Steffan grinned slyly. "It means you can't understand it."

"Oh, don't be a philistine, dear. It means poetry that explores what language truly means. Would you like to see the winning entry? Steffan was working on framing it, after all the work it took to get the competition set up this year."

The original was in a leather binder on the coffee table, which Mary opened and held up for Allison's inspection. The ocelot's ears went back. Steffan was right: some of the curved shapes looked like letters, but none of them appeared to form words. "I don't... uh..."

From the binder, Mary pulled two pieces of metal, and carefully positioned them. The shapes and lines merged, and with some difficulty Allison was able to force them into English words.

"'This is what julian does not see'?"

Mary nodded, clearly pleased with herself. "The author says that it is a commentary on how we never truly see ourselves. A mirror is not reality. We forget many things in mirrors."

"Like how to capitalize your name," Steffan pointed out.

"julian born-of-gethsemane feels that names are artificial and capitalizing them makes them too important. Don't look at me like that, dear; I think it's very touching. Poetry is a mirror to the soul. I am trying to get Steffan to write poetry."

The second-place entry, which Mary also displayed, was written as a rebus. When the vixen asked for Allison's interpretation, it was all the ocelot could do not to say something obscene. "You know, unfortunately I do have to... to go now..."

"Home?"

Where? "Yeah. That's right. Uh -- it was nice meeting you, though. Nice seeing you again, Stef. I'll... I'll catch you around."

The world was leaden and slow and blurry -- she didn't bother to turn on the windshield wipers for nearly two blocks and almost couldn't tell the difference when she finally did.

She pulled off at the high school, in the muddy parking area by the bleachers. Nobody else was there; nobody would come to bother her. She put the radio on, then crawled into the back of the Jeep and opened the hatch, letting her legs dangle.

Out of all the scenarios she had considered... out of everything she had turned over in her mind on the drive from Sacramento...

I didn't come back here for him, she told herself. And then she thought of how empty her car was. She hadn't had anything to take from California, not after she'd sold it all. She thought of studying with her roommate, tedious coursework and exams, telling herself that she'd return to Cannon Shoals as the person she'd always imagined herself becoming.

And who was that?

Cleaned up, she thought. Cleaned up and polished. Sensible. Logical. Responsible. Practical. Not the kind of person who worked part-time at a convenience store and sold pot under the counter for the spare cash. Not the kind of person who'd put a brick through the window of the fancy design studio on State after the out-of-town owners jacked the rent up to kick Roger out of the upstairs apartment.

Not the kind of person who would've told Stef, over and over, that he could make it as a musician until they both almost believed it.

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?

In her imagination Stef would've done the same thing -- calmed down a bit, and that was all. Allison lit a cigarette and tried to trace her steps back through the wrong turns she'd taken.

The sound of footsteps didn't really surprise her; Stef would've known where to find the ocelot. Cannon Shoals wasn't that big, for starters. She had no place to go, and no better place than where they'd first met.

"Cranberry juice didn't agree with you?" he asked.

She laughed, and the sound hid shyly beneath the patter of the rain. "Turned out I wasn't thirsty. That was something else..."

The fox ducked under the open hatch, and she moved over to give him room to sit down. "I guess it must've come as a surprise." When she looked at him again, with fresh eyes, she decided that he wasn't quite the same as before. His fur was better groomed; his whiskers had been trimmed. His mane was combed properly, not shaggy and tousled.

Allie still wore her hair short, as she always had, purposefully disheveled and framed by the rings in her ears. "Maybe. Alex told me where you lived. He didn't tell me anything else."

"You saw Alex?"

"Stopped by the IGA for lunch, yeah. We caught up."

"That rabbit..."

Allison had the suspicion that Alex Page had known, and held back deliberately; that the ocelot herself had been filed away as a story to be related to the next customer. He talked too much -- but only when it suited him. "Next time, have him memorize some of the poetry."

Stef shook his head. "It's not really my thing, either."

"Seems like it. Framing it and all. And no music, of course."

"Mary thought it was a bit wild. I mean... unbecoming."

That, as the vixen put it, he had needed to be tamed. Allie stared at him until he was more than aware of her skepticism. "I figured that was one thing you'd never let anyone take away. Like you'd have that urge forever. Wasn't that how you saw yourself, too?"

"Yeah. But... things change."

"Right." And one couldn't ever truly see one's self, could they? Allison snorted, rolling her eyes at the memory of the absurd conversation. The sound caught his attention, and as long as she had it she held up the pack of Marlboros for his taking. "Want one?"

He shook his head.

"Suit yourself." She tapped one of the cigarettes free, and fished out her lighter. "You sure, though?

"I don't anymore. Mary doesn't like..." Steffan didn't finish the sentence. The fox sighed, heavily, and pressed his finger to the metal of the car's frame, catching a raindrop as it trickled slowly along the spots of rust. "But Allie, I mean, what did you think would happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Coming back. I mean... did you think it all would've been the same? Like time would've just..."

She waited until the cigarette caught, trusting in the delay to buy her thoughts some time. "I don't know what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting that you would've... settled."

"'Settled'? She's my fucking wife, Allie! I mean, you leave town for five damn years and you come back here like you can just pick up where you left off? Like we were all just... just up on a fucking shelf while you were out having adventures? Fuck -- I'm not in high school anymore! I mean, Christ, you have some fucking nerve."

"I didn't mean it like --"

"Yes you did," he shot back, cutting her off. "You always thought you could just do whatever you wanted. Tell off Principal Carr or Jim Riggs and -- what? Like they could do anything? Not to Allie fucking Navarro, that's for damn sure. You never did anything if you didn't see what was in it for you. Hell, we only went to prom because Nico wanted someone else! You want to talk about settling? Jesus. And now you turn up like... like..."

"Feel good to get off your chest?"

"Maybe." Steffan took a deep breath, and wiped away another trickle of water. "It wasn't even the leaving. I get that. Sam told me about Caroline throwing you out. Did she and your dad ever..."

"Two years ago. They got a kid now, I guess -- or they're working on it. I heard."

His paw dropped away from the side of the ancient Jeep. "It was shitty, okay? I know it was. You had to get out, sure. But... you didn't even call. Five years, and you never even called. I mean..."

"Four years. And I did," she said -- her voice quiet, not defensive or angry but wistful. "Your mom said you were busy. All the time. Then she said you didn't want to talk to me." She hadn't blamed him, at the time. In a dingy SRO in Cheyenne, working at a truck stop, she hadn't blamed anyone for wanting to avoid her. All the same, Stef's number had been the one she saved. She pulled it from her purse, and turned it over between her claws, long after the ink was worn away.

"She never told me that." The fox had softened his voice.

"Probably figured I was a bad influence," Allison suggested. "Not so far from the truth, huh?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

"You remember that time we dared the Findlay girl to climb the radio tower?" She'd looked pretty ridiculous, scrambling up the KCNS broadcast tower -- skinny little Border collie, with those wild collie eyes. Just more memories: "Whatever happened to her, anyway?"

"Life," Stef said with a shrug. "I don't really know."

"I've changed," Allie said, to break the silence that followed. "At least, I think I have."

"You're still smoking," the fox pointed out. "Still driving this old thing."

"Let me have something," the ocelot chided him, as gently as she could. "I held off on coming back until... until I thought I was ready. I did a lot of thinking, when I was back east."

She had bad habits; she knew she had bad habits. Not just the smoking; not just putting off the repairs on her car. Not just abandoning Steffan for four years. He'd said it, in his more honest moments -- when they were stoned, say. That she kept people at arm's length. That she was flighty. Reckless. Destructive.

But she'd had a lot to think on, driving I-5 with a busted radiator and one eye on the engine temperature and one eye on the gas. Humming quietly to herself through the tears that came, at intervals. Here I am: the only living boy in New York.

She'd ended up in Cheyenne without enough fuel to make it to Denver. She didn't tell Stef about killing rats with her heavy metal flashlight in the SRO; didn't tell him how much it hurt her empty stomach, giving up change for the payphone to call back to Oregon. Instead she said: "Decided I was tired of... being me, you know?"

"Well. Who are you now?"

Allison pulled out her cell phone, and called up the photo gallery before turning the phone onto its side so the picture expanded to fill the screen. She turned it to the fox, so he could see the piece of paper.

"'The State of California confers upon Allison Gabriela Navarro the degree of Associate of Science in Accounting,' huh? You're going to be an accountant?"

"I might be," the ocelot said. He wasn't teasing her, and that made it easier for the slight smile of pride that came to her muzzle. "I've been an office assistant for the last six months or so."

"In Sacramento?"

"Yeah. In Sacramento."

Stef looked away from the phone, finally, staring straight ahead. "Why'd you come back?" For me?

That question, the one he hadn't asked, hung like the low grey clouds, sullen and cold. "I was homesick. You don't know how nice it is here 'til you leave it. All the people you know, all the places you know -- having to build up all these new memories and stuff again..."

"I guess."

"Nobody can fuck up an enchilada like they can at Cochinillo. Nobody makes muffins like they do at Stach's. Nobody just friggin' gets movies like Tommy Mercado."

"Mercado's closed down," Stef told her. "Two years ago."

"Oh."

"A lot of things have changed." She could tell that he wanted to ask the question, almost as much as neither of them wanted her to answer it. "Damn it. Damn it. Allie."

"Stef?"

He gestured limply to the pack of cigarettes, as though being noncommittal would keep him from having to admit something -- or anything. When he took one, he rolled it between his fingers for several seconds; when he took the lighter from her, too, it was with an air of inevitability.

"Bad influence," the ocelot said.

Stef inhaled slowly, and looked at her sideways until he was certain it had caught. His exhalation was just as ponderous; the way he watched the smoke, Allie could tell he was trying to convince himself he saw regret there. Another slow drag, and then he cast his eyes downward. "I waited. Don't you think I waited?"

"Never said you didn't, kit."

He looked up, from his dangly, muddy shoes. She felt the weight of his eyes on her, searching; asking the same question she had at his doorstep. Has it really been four years? "My mom was really thrilled when I met Mary. Mom never forgave you, you know? I mean, she blamed you for all of it."

"When did you stop?"

"We played, like, three or four shows after you left. Had about half an album together, I think, with some work. Sammy was into it. But after I started working... and then Mary and Roger never really got along..."

Allison lit another cigarette, to keep Stef's company. Now it was her turn to avoid a question -- but she'd changed, hadn't she? Wasn't she different now? And so she rallied: "Do you wish you'd gone to school?"

"Sometimes. Kind of. Sometimes I don't. I can't spend too much time regretting things." His eyes settled back on her, and the gaze carried with it a subtle disquiet. It was seeing the wandering track of chance and circumstance, and of possibilities.

What had been. What might have been. "At least you're happy, Stef." If she didn't make it a question, maybe it wouldn't have to become one. "And it's... it's good to be back, anyway. Even if things have changed."

"School looks as ratty as ever. They keep saying they'll fix it... goddamn, Allie; hard to believe it's been almost ten years. Spent so much of our lives here. I mean... I mean..." He said it a third time, and couldn't seem to think of anything that might follow.

But he was right. So much that mattered had been born in places just like it: drab, and dingy, and lived in. In the dark reflection of the tinted rear window Matthew J. Rex High School looked even gloomier -- a building that was made to be rained on -- but she could never think of it that way. "I never asked Nico, you know? To prom? It was always you."

"What?"

She didn't know why she'd said it, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth the ocelot regretted them. Her tail twitched; she stumbled and tried to recover. "No. No, no. Look. I -- hey, I -- it's been a long drive. I -- I need to find a place to sleep. Probably ask Jim, or -- or Clarence maybe. Should... should go. And..."

Warily, Steffan got to his feet; the cigarette dangled between hesitant fingers. "Well..."

"I think I'll stick around. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. For now, because -- with the storm, and... but we'll see." She couldn't find the inflection to make we'll see sound like but probably not.

Or at-least-you're-happy. "Do you..." He waited for her to close the hatch and even after, with the rain plastering his lustrous fur, he struggled. "What's your phone number? While you're here?"

That was the only thing she'd really planned, out of everything that had led her back to Cannon Shoals. She'd hand him a worn, folded scrap of paper and explain that it was the one he'd written his number on. That he'd given it to her back in high school and she'd kept it for more than a decade. That she was repaying the favor. He would smile; they would share a moment.

The scrap was in her jacket pocket, where her mental script had placed it. She pulled it out, dumbly, and handed it to the fox. His muzzle opened -- but not in recollection, surely? Certainly? Hopefully...

Allison left him, standing there, and at the light where Jefferson Street met Highway 101 it took a great effort not to head north and keep going. It felt a little like surrender. At last she turned south, back into town, and pulled in to an old gas station that had changed brands half a dozen times without ever changing owners.

Jim Riggs was behind the register in the convenience store, and until he saw who the customer was he mostly looked irritated at the thought of going out the rain. As soon as he noticed, though, Jim lit up, and raced around the counter.

"Look who decided to drop in!" The bear held his arms open, in invitation for a hug that she took gladly. "It's so good to see you again, little one..."

"I didn't mean to be gone quite so long." She didn't really want to let go; it was Riggs, finally, who let go and even then she stayed close. "And I'm sorry for leaving the way I did."

"I heard later it wasn't your choice..."

"No. But I could've been better about letting you know. I could've... well..."

"You could've done a lot of things," Riggs assured her. "But you only could've done them four years ago. It's all in the past. Have you seen your dad yet?"

"No. I don't know that I will," the ocelot admitted, curling her ringed tail protectively around her leg. "It's... it's a long way home."

The old bear patted her shoulder soothingly. "'Home' isn't just an address, you know. It's a time... a state of mind... a lot of things. You'll get there. Or maybe you're there already, and you just don't know it."

"Maybe..."

He smiled; if she felt like being dramatic she might've said that Riggs was more of a father than Ricky Navarro had been in years and years. "You'll figure it out. Is this just a social visit?"

Jim knew her all too well. She shook her head guiltily. "Not exactly, no."

"Figure you aren't stopping in for candles and flashlight batteries..."

Allison glanced behind her quickly, to a grey sky that the lingering afternoon was beginning to turn charcoal. "Going to be a bad one, you think?"

He'd been around for more than his share of storms, of course. "Oh, who knows? What can I do for you?"

"Do you still have that room on Second, over the old real estate office? Is Danielle..."

He shook his head. "Nope, she moved to Bend 'bout a year ago after she graduated. Haven't used it since. You're welcome to it, but it's just a bed and a hotplate. I think she even took the lights..."

"That's fine! I just... well... need a place for a few days while I figure stuff out, you know? I want to stick around for good this time."

The bear nodded, and held up a finger, bidding her to stay put while he disappeared behind the counter. A rustling minute later he stood up, holding out a keyring. "It's probably a mess, but..."

Allison took the key with her left paw; her right held a pair of bills. "For a couple weeks?"

Jim Riggs looked at the money. "No, no, you don't have to do that..."

"Need to get off on the right foot," she explained. The money was neither a bribe nor restitution. It wasn't an apology for the way she'd left but a statement that she was trying to start over, and when the bear finally took it his eyes softened further with that understanding. "Thanks, Jim."

"Sure. And if you do need those candles..."

The apartment, to be generous with the word, was the second floor over a real estate office that had been closed at least a decade: a sticker in the window pledged support to a presidential candidate from 2004. True to Riggs' word, it was spartan: a bed, a mattress, and a 'kitchen' with empty space for an oven and refrigerator.

At least it was well-insulated, or well-preserved; there was only a thin layer of dust on the sheets. The ocelot plugged her phone in to charge and flopped back on the mattress with a sigh.

What had she expected? Had she really thought that Stef would leap into her arms? Or drop down on bended knee? And she'd acted terribly, more like a petulant child than a grown woman. "I should be happy for him," she told the quiet room. "He's over me, and I..."

Allison rolled over and checked to see if there were any messages on her phone. No. What would they have been? There were no good endings. The only good ending would be one that turned back time, and with that impossibility ruled out, what remained?

One new message: Allison. I think it would be best if you kept your distance. Or: it would be easiest for the both of us if you left again. Or: you're a bad influence and I'm finally getting my life together and...

She was a bad influence. Not just the cigarette; she'd seen the way he looked at her, the way he was weighing possibilities. If they didn't keep their distance she might be tempted to do something stupid -- or he might -- and she needed to accept that.

But she couldn't, and so instead -- leaving her phone behind -- she slipped from the apartment back out and into the rain, and to the flickering neon that indicated the door to Annie's. The bar was a Cannon Shoals fixture: Shelley Mills ran it now, but nothing had really changed and even twenty years later the weathered paint said Annie Armstead, proprietor.

Mills was behind the counter when Allison nudged the door open and made her way inside. It was a harbor joint, ragged and wear-polished by harbor folk -- tourists stayed at the less insular bars, where at least they might be served.

Most of the stools were empty; Allison chose one at random, and waited for Shelley to stalk over. "Hi. Can I get a beer?"

"Card." Allie handed it to the lioness, who turned it in the light and then stared less than kindly at the address. "From California, girl? Three Sheets is up that way. And out the door."

"I'm Rick Navarro's daughter. We used to live off Jackson."

"Ricky has a daughter? Huh." Shelley gave her back the card. "Learn somethin' new every day. What are ya havin', again?"

"Just a beer. Whatever; I don't care." She looked around the dim bar -- nearly empty, in the early evening, with only a few dockworkers around, and a half-hearted game at the pool table. "Slow night?" she asked Shelley, when the lioness thumped a full glass on the bar.

"Storm comin' in. Folks'll be busy gettin' stuff locked down. It'll pick up here, girl. Always has. Shelter from the rain an' Oly on tap? Where else would you go? California, I guess."

Allison took a sip of the beer -- light, bland lager. Microbrews had yet to infiltrate the town's dive bar. "California isn't so great."

"Naw, kitty. 'Course it ain't. No place better'n home, is there?"

"Good question." She followed the non-answer with a longer drink. "Does my dad come around here?"

"Ricky? Naw. Not since he got religion and settled in with that Nevada tabby. Was from Nevada, right?"

"Nevada," one of the other patrons grumbled. "Awful place. Hucksters and whores, that's all that comes outta there."

Shelley Mills put her paws on her hips, laying the baleful glare of authority on him. "Now if you're eavesdroppin', ain't you just heard me say her pop's wife is from Nevada? Look at that mouth on you."

The ocelot hid a grim smile behind the rim of her mug. "Well, he's right."

"That so?" Shelley asked.

"That so," she nodded.

Shelley let the glare drop, along with her paws. "Good. Never did like her much, to tell you the truth. Seemed like one of those types who always sees better when they're lookin' down."

That wasn't far from the truth, but the story was long and complicated and she didn't feel like telling it. Instead she sipped her beer quietly, and tried to watch a game on the fuzzy antique of a television hanging in the far corner.

"Well, hey. New here? Don't see many of those..." The voice was coarse, with rough edges that tumbled together like the words had been quarried, rather than spoken.

Its owner was a wire-haired canine, a foot and a half taller than her and built like a marine diesel engine. He smelled like one, too: grease and fuel and honest work out on the ocean. "Nobody's new here," she told him. "Some of us just take longer to come back."

"Well. Let's say ya caught my eye, how's that?" He lifted one of his big paws, and brushed the ocelot's ear -- black, with a conspicuous white spot right in the middle. "So if you aren't new..."

"I've been away for a few years."

The dog slid onto the seat next to her. "Couldn't stay gone? Boy, do I know that feeling. You got a name, wanderer?"

"Allison. Uh, Navarro."

"Oh, shit! Ricky's daughter?"

"Watch your language," Shelley interrupted, glaring as she placed a glass in front of the dog -- Allison hadn't heard him order it, but then, that was the advantage of being a regular. "Who do you think you are, young man -- Daniel Hayes?"

"Sorry, Shel." It sounded like an exchange they'd had before. "Just hadn't heard about Rick's kid for a few years. My aunt used to tell the craziest stories about your class. You remember Myrtle Bridgman?"

"The school nurse?"

He nodded. "Yeah. My aunt." That helped Allison place him: the Bridgmans were one of the oldest families in Cannon Shoals, deerhounds who had immigrated from Scotland and immediately headed as far west as they could possibly get.

"I remember her, yes..."

He downed a third of his mug without any apparent effort, and licked at the drops that remained in his whiskers. A chuckle interrupted the work: "It was your class that welded Jimmy Haygood's wrists together, wasn't it?"

"Well..."

"Because of... oil?"

Allison rubbed at the back of her neck. "The thing in Iraq. Jimmy and Roger's girl wanted to protest it. They handcuffed him to the gate at the Coast Guard pier, and then... Roger and Dan had the idea to weld the handcuffs. We were like... fifteen."

"Did it work?"

The ocelot could still remember that early morning, waiting for the Coasties to show up for work. She could see James Haygood, leaning against the gate, his fur singed and insisting despite his discomfort that it was all for a good cause.

Three sailors had showed up, and looked at the gaggle of high school students first with suspicion, and then with growing awareness. "No blood for oil," one of them read from Haygood's shirt. "So... you cuffed yourself to the pole on our gate. In protest. About a war on the other side of... let's see: a continent, an ocean, another continent, and another ocean. A war that the Coast Guard isn't fighting."

Haygood had nodded, with all the seriousness a teenager could muster. And now, ten years later, Allison herself had to snicker. "When the gate closes, there's this pole that sinks into a hole in the ground. None of us noticed that. So this guy, this Coastie -- you know, he couldn't have been much older than us... he just rolled his eyes, and lifted the gate and the pole came right up between Jimmy's wrists."

"Good job," the deerhound said, grinning.

"They didn't call the cops, at least. But we got in so much trouble anyway..."

"Kids," Shelley scoffed, and rolled her eyes before leaving the pair.

Allison didn't argue. "We raised a lot of hell. I'm sure you did, too. You said your name was..."

"I didn't. But it's Ryan."

"Fisherman?"

"Yup." He said it with pride, and the grin stayed despite what she now saw were streaks of water still matting his wiry blue-grey fur. "Fifteen years, now, and ain't nothin' like it."

"Crabs?"

"Shit," he snorted, and then coughed, calling an apology to the bartender over his shoulder. "Started out on crabs. Now I'm on the Katie Coefeld -- halibut. Rode out the longline bans, rode out the lean years... had to pack it in early, 'cause of this gosh darned storm." He raised his voice so that Shelley could hear the oath.

"You like it?" Cannon Shoals was largely a town of canines, and cats had a reputation for avoiding the water, but Allison had always liked the sounds and sights of the harbor. Even if the big canneries had shut down, even if the best days of the Pacific fisheries were behind them, the area between Bay Street and Kydonia Boulevard was still the heart of the town.

Ryan nodded firmly, polished off his beer, and raised his heavy paw to order another. Fifteen years had left deep scars down his thick-furred arms; his claws were as rough and worn as his voice. "You want to know something? Something those bast -- those nice fellows in Salem don't get? Let alone Washington. Oof."

"Sure."

"They like to talk about how great Seattle and San Francisco are. These computer guys and their electric cars and their Amazons and their android telephones and all that? Everybody's always all about engineers and technology. How we need more techies. Techies. Build a robot phone but can't even change their own oil!"

On the far side of the deerhound, an older, shorter man leaned forward so that she could see the canine's sharp-muzzled face. "You windin' Ryan up again?"

"Shut up, Yong," the hound said with a laugh. "Now they talk down to us fishermen. We don't understand ecology; we're raping the Pacific -- screwin' with some albatross or turtle or whatever. Like we're dumb, you know? You know what fishermen are, kitten? We are the last hunters on the planet. We're the last people who go out and search for prey for a living."

She hadn't thought of it that way before -- that they were in the same tradition as the early man who had tracked mammoths and bison. "Funny, isn't it?" the ocelot said, and by the glint in Ryan's eyes she remembered why she had come home. "All the superhighways and cell phones, and we still depend on professional hunters..."

Ryan took a well-deserved swig of his lager. "Most dangerous job in the country. A buncha idiot fishermen, and the Pacific halibut fleet lands a million pounds a year. Like we don't understand the ocean. Christ."

"You know where NOAA Fisheries is headquartered?" Yong asked -- rhetorically, for he immediately answered his own question. "DC. Hundred miles from salt water."

"Now who knows more about the ocean? Who knows more about tuna? Yong Riley, with thirty years on a boat? Or some bureaucrat in Silver Spring? They can bitch all they want. While they're bitching, we're goin' out and landing fish."

"Preach it." Yong held out his beer, and the two men clinked mugs. "To dealin' with government bullshit."

"To dealing," Ryan agreed.

Shelley had been watching, and Allison caught her eye. "Language?"

"Girl, get real. Those Greenpeace nuts in the statehouse? Salmon-huggers trying to catch fish, baiting their hook with a PhD in ocean ecology? Maybe you forgot while you were away, but I've been in Cannon Shoals every one of my fifty-five years, and I say they can get fucked with a harpoon. How's that for language?" The lioness smiled to show her fangs, at the approving hoots and applause from the patrons.

Allie laughed. "Pretty clear."

Ryan held up his mug in the ocelot's direction. "Welcome home, huh?" She tapped the glass lightly with her own. "What about you, kitten? Guess you aren't a fisherman yourself." He nudged her paw, and the contrast between her delicate white fingers and his was immediately apparent. "Robot phones?"

"No. I was a secretary. Before that, I waited tables. Before that, I worked at the convenience store for Jim Riggs... but I'm hoping somebody will be looking for a clerk or an office assistant or something. Anything. I didn't make plans, I just... had to come back."

"Family?"

She shook her head.

"Some guy? High school sweetheart?"

Allison stiffened. The ocelot felt those long years of being a bad influence surging back. In a moment of straitjacket-tight panic she thought of how Stef had looked when she appeared at his door, and then again when she'd given him her number.

What am I doing? Or, as the fox had put it: what did I think would happen?

"No," she answered, and hoped it was firm enough to be convincing.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. His dark brown eyes slid like a slowly trickling raindrop from her face to her jacket to the scuffed and ragged jeans that seemed to accent the soft flawless fur of her tail. "Hard to believe you aren't spoken for..."

The ocelot blinked. The statement had been more than prompting. Like his eyes, it was... appraising, even. And what if? The thought started as a weak spark, but then it caught hold.

What if she wasn't a bad influence? What if he hadn't seen her baggage? Or didn't care? What if she was just a hometown girl, in a hometown bar, and Ryan was... well, maybe he wasn't Steffan, sure; he didn't have the fox's smooth voice or his cute little whiskers, but... but she couldn't think like that. You've changed, Allie.

"Maybe by some Californian," she told him, accenting the word so he knew to take it for a mild oath.

"Do they count?" The deerhound had his eyebrow lifted again. "California's a long way away..."

"And I'm not there," she pointed out. "So. No, they don't count. What about you, Ryan? Settling down?"

The big canine smiled, although it was slightly quirky; she was, Allison realized, being helped by the beer he'd put away. "Was. Old problem, you know? Easier to hook 'em than to keep 'em."

She'd heard it before; they were plenty of splintered and tenuous families in Cannon Shoals, not merely her own. The work was dangerous, as Ryan had said; it was also unreliable. It was hard to keep a mortgage and raise kids when there was nothing but the grace of nature between a fisherman and an inevitable string of bad hauls. "Sorry to hear that..."

"Is what it is." The deerhound shrugged, but despite the easiness of the gesture she could see the wheels turning in his head. And considering the alternatives -- considering all that had happened -- she was happy enough to let them turn. And when she finished her beer, and looked to be thinking about escaping from the building crowd, she was happy enough to let him bribe her with a replacement.

Leaning on the counter, she listened to him talk. Stef had been good at that. He had a wonderful, addictive voice, whether he was singing or telling jokes. Rambling on about life while they sat on the pier, watching the boats. Whispering tenderly, with his muzzle pressed to her ear, telling her that... that...

Allison shut her eyes to drive the thought back. Things were different now. Ryan had a thick growl that was well-suited for his massive body -- but it belied his wit, and the easy grin that reached all the way to the deerhound's dark eyes. It was as easy to picture him hanging out with his friends at Annie's as it was to see him on a trawler. Or in a steel mill.

Or with his arm wrapped around her, perhaps. He was thinking about it, she could see. His fingers brushed her with his gesturing as though it might've been an accident, and clearly was not; they both knew it. When he rested his paw on hers she jolted -- he'd asked a question, but between that heavy warmth and the pleasant fuzz of the alcohol she didn't even process it.

"Y'alright?"

"I should..." Allison looked towards the door, with a sigh that spoke to the inclement weather and the regret at leaving good company. "I should be going..."

"Do you need a ride?"

"I'm just up the street, actually."

"Really?" He had his brow furrowed, like she might've been trying to pull something over on him.

"Yeah. Other side of Washington."

"Big street," the deerhound said. "Should have some company."

One excuse was as good as another. "You think so? Maybe..."

Outside the rain now fell in heavy sheets, kicked by an angry, howling wind. Ryan looked in the direction of the harbor, his dark eyes searching for the pulsing beam of the lighthouse that marked the bay's entrance. "Glad I ain't out there..."

"Is everybody in?"

"Most."

Allison pursed her lips, and leaned into the gusts as they made their way up the street. It was only a few blocks, but they would be hard-fought. Gritting her teeth, she pulled her jacket as tight as she could. She had to raise her voice: "was it always like this?"

"Just when it gets pissed off." The deerhound stopped, and pulled her into the shelter of a doorway. She was about to ask him why, but he was already unzipping his overcoat and her teeth were chattering too much to make the effort worthwhile.

Draped over her shoulders, at least the oilskin cut the worst of the damp. The streets were deserted; the only movement came from the rush of the wind and the banging clatter of debris tossed angrily against the abandoned storefronts.

'Big street' meant only that Washington deserved a stoplight, which swung in agitation from its wires; by wordless agreement the pair ignored it, crossing empty lanes that the storm seemed to lash for their indolence. Ryan cupped a paw to his muzzle so that she could hear him. "How much further?"

"Here," she shouted back. Getting to her keys required taking off the oilskin, and she regretted even those few seconds of exposure. The quiet, when the door closed behind them, was startling. "Wasn't like this in Sacramento."

"Can't all be smooth sailing." Ryan took his coat back, and shook the water off. "She'll blow over soon enough."

Yeah, she thought. Settle down and take up poetry, I bet. "Thanks for the jacket. I'd, um. I'd invite you upstairs, but... I just got here. I only have a bed and a hot plate, and I don't know if the hot plate even works."

"Simple living, huh?"

Allison bit her lip. "But... you could dry off a bit, huh?"

To her slight irritation, she discovered that Riggs had been right in guessing that his granddaughter might've absconded with the apartment's lights. She settled on pulling the curtains back: it was enough for the streetlamps on Second to cast a diffuse, eerie glow on the spartan room.

"Make yourself at home," she told the canine. His heavy footfalls came closer until he was behind her, staring with her out the window to the rain beyond. "Get your coat, maybe?"

"Dry off," he echoed her suggestion, adding a hoarse chuckle. Without the protection of the overcoat, his flannel shirt was also truly soaked. Under it there was nothing but wiry slate fur, featureless in the dim light. Her fingers brushed it accidentally, when she took the shirt from him.

She unzipped her sodden jacket, and rested it with the other garments on the kitchen counter. That was as good a place as any. And then, looking over her shoulder to Ryan's silhouette, the ocelot swallowed and took a deep breath. Every path was still open to her. They'd just met, really -- was this the kind of thing New Allison did? Reformed Allison? Part of her thought that perhaps it was not.

But she was cold, and wet -- and why not, really? 'Just met'? What did that mean? They were hardly strangers. She peeled her t-shirt off, smoothed her fur down, and padded back into the other room.

Ryan turned, when she took his paw. His eyes dropped, taking in spots rendered subtle and soft in the reflected lamplight. His folded ear lifted, and the deerhound's other arm circled her -- warm and strong and self-assured, just like she'd known he would be. "So when you said 'dry off'..."

"It could take awhile, for the clothes. Right?" She tilted her head back to look up at him, cocked it in a game attempt at demure subtlety, and shrugged. "Maybe?"

She could see enough of his face to tell that his gaze was lingering on her bare fur, long seconds more; then he looked over to the bed, still unmade. He bent down; his arm dropped, and he lifted the ocelot swiftly enough that her stomach sang with the giddy acceleration.

The mattress arrested the fluid movement that followed; that left her flat on her back, looking up at the dark shadow of the big canine. Tall and imposing, he could've been a wolf, or a guard dog, or a bear perhaps.

But not a fox.

She arched her back to the touch of searching fingers that unfastened her bra as deftly as they would've secured a fishing line or untied a mooring rope. She closed her eyes to take in the wash of canine panting over her damp fur and a moment of tense anticipation before his warm tongue bathed her, an electric shudder as he drew it slowly over pert flesh.

Then again. And again. Until he was satisfied, and his possessive, panting nuzzling pushed swiftly up her dense pelt to the vulnerable hollow of her neck. Allison gasped, and just as she closed her mouth again his lips landed on hers.

In the darkness their muzzles clashed awkwardly; she sighed a less than kittenish whimper, cocking her head so that when he nuzzled her again the contact was deep, and sure, and hungry. That broad canine tongue slid into her mouth and she heard him growl in surprise when he found the ocelot's rough feline answer.

Somehow all of the hesitation was gone, replaced by simpler, coarse-hewn eagerness. The deerhound's heavy, strong tail beat against her fingers -- she was groping for him, seizing his jeans in sharp-clawed pawfuls while she looked for the belt buckle, and his zipper.

He grunted, torn between the fierce pressure of the kiss and his need to help her. Allie felt him pause, and just before the unbearable threat of losing his touch overwhelmed her the belt gave way. And then the zipper followed, and for the briefest moment she felt a shocking, solid bulk brush against her paw.

Ryan tore himself from her; what he gasped was unintelligible and he had to try again. "Boots." One word. An order; an oath. His muscular body arched away from her and while he tore at the laces Allison kicked her shoes away and wormed desperately from what remained of her own clothes. She got her panties off a fraction of a second before he pounced.

His frame was a massive, blanketing presence over her -- pinning the feline, smothering the last of the storm's chill and replacing it with a comforting, protective warmth. Everywhere, the ocelot's paws felt only his coarse fur and the lean sinew under it.

She grasped for his ear, guiding his big head back to feel his muzzle on hers once more; his ragged breath washing her soft nose. Her other paw took hold of his taut rear, and when he snarled she had the thrilling sensation of some great, wild beast half-tamed and spurred under her touch.

So she repeated it: this time the growl came with a flexing buck of his hips that forced a heavy, thick something through the downy pelt of the feline's leg. Allison sucked her breath in with the sudden reminder that the dog was far taller than her -- that if he was anywhere near proportionate --

He thrust reflexively and the tip of his cock found her, the pointed taper guiding the big deerhound in. He groaned brokenly against her lips as he sank inside -- just. She gasped, and her claws dug into him -- a guttural bark and his next jerking grind forced another few inches into her.

"Ryan," she mewled to him. She felt so full already; swore she could follow every pulse of his heartbeat in that thick column. Half inside her? Maybe? Will he even fit_?_ She forced herself to relax; to let up the raking grasp of her sharp claws. "Gentle..."

His breathing was strained and harsh against her neck. The deerhound stiffened and pulled back, leaving them both shuddering as that that stretching, filling warmth gave way to unbearable emptiness. Trying to control himself, he rocked forward again... and again... every inch thicker and more difficult to take...

Just when she thought she would have to beg for mercy it got easier; the widest part of his fat canine cock had worked its way inside. Ryan gritted his teeth and gave one final push, and she felt him slide in smoothly until he met new resistance -- tip nudged all the way up against the furthest reach of her inner walls.

She almost wished it was light enough to see it -- at least she imagined she would've been able to, so completely did the deerhound fill her. He held his rigid, quivering-muscled body still for as long as he could, letting her adjust, and then pulled back.

Allison told herself she was ready for what came next but when he thrust again and she felt that massive prick forcing its way back into her satiny folds, pressing her apart inch by inch she mewed like a startled kitten with the shock of it, and as the deerhound began to move in a rocking, urgent rhythm she found herself jolted every blessed, blissful time.

She'd had canines before -- one canine, anyway. She knew what to expect. But Ryan was so sure of himself, so strong and forceful as his cock stroked its silky-slick girth ever more swiftly into her... she could feel every textured, veiny ridge like it was perfectly contoured for her.

Soon enough he'd forgotten gentle; they both had. The bed creaked and squealed with his building pace. She could hear him trying to speak -- grunting, muffled oaths between her throat and the sheets. Then his muzzle dropped further; his teeth found her shoulder. His groan came with the heat of his breath and his saliva matting her fur.

His position had shifted slightly; his body was taking a deeper, more forceful stance. She gasped and moaned for him as the wiry-furred dog arched and bucked between her thighs, driving her into the bed against its protests and her breathless exhortations.

Her eyes had shut tightly, and though her paws clung desperately to him it was with the growing sense of bracing herself. Ryan's powerful thrusts were enough to send little rills and ribbons of sparking color through her mind. Brightening. Spreading. And he wasn't stopping -- his teeth scored her shoulder and he just kept going, forcing the last bits of resistance from her...

She gasped and seized up like a over-revved engine at sudden, explosive surrender. The ripples of color burst into a flush of shuddering heat and she could do nothing to stop it. She knew she was yowling, sobbing as she lost all control, her body clenching urgently on her canine lover's cock.

The world came back in a patchwork -- rebooting with one sensation after another. The darkness. The sound of the rain. The sound of ragged panting. Ryan growled as raw instinct rutted him into her, and she could tell by his pace he was at his own precipice. His breath hissed as he rammed himself into her, deeper -- and now it was getting harder again, a yearning tightness bulging her lips with his knot.

At first she thought she couldn't possibly take him -- then she thought she might -- then she knew that she had to, had to feel that thick bulb claiming her for his own. Her paws groped for his steel-muscled rear and she rocked her hips to meet him -- stretching wider. Wider.

With a shocking lurch his final thrust forced his knot into her -- his pointed tip wedged deep and then plunged past resistance, throbbing up deeper inside than she'd even known was possible -- that any man could have had her the way the deerhound now did.

His back bent as he ground his hips forward, humping against her convulsively. His heavy sac thumped against her tense hips; his knot throbbed thicker and thicker.

From the surrendered release of her own climax she had the peculiar, giddy sensation of being in complete control in those last few moments. The big, strong dog was helpless in his lust -- bucking and groaning until she heard him gasp and grunt in strained tension.

His long muzzle pressed teeth into her shoulder and she felt his generous, fuzzy sac twitch and draw up in the half-second before his shaft jerked sharply. It took a few more before she was aware of a new heat, spreading into her, pulsing deeper every time he tensed inside her, pushed by biological instinct to seed her.

She stroked his back tenderly as he grunted and hitched his hips, his laden orbs clenching to spill their creamy load inside her. She was more than grateful for it; when he fell against her, crushing to the bed, his knotted shaft was still throbbing solidly.

This was not exactly what she had planned at the start of the day, nor what she had planned by the end of it. Allison squirmed until she was comfortable -- relatively comfortable, anyhow. Ryan let her shoulder go, and licked at it gently. "Christ almighty..."

"Language," she teased.

"Mm." The deerhound took a deep breath and tried to roll off her; she kept him fixed in place, prolonging the intimacy as long as she could. Minutes? Hours? "Eh?"

"Stay."

He gave up, settling down. "Works for me. Got a bit, anyway... your first canine?"

"Hm-hm." Allison shook her head, and flipped his soft ear between her fingers. "Taken a knot before."

"Oh. Good. Didn't want to go too far..."

Try losing about six inches. "Don't worry." She switched to tender strokes, feeling where the velvet of his ear gave way to thick, rough fur. Waterproof; workmanlike. Coarse and sturdy, like the inhabitants of the town itself. Her town. Wasn't it?

As if reading her mind, he shuffled and lifted himself up look into the hints of her face in the darkened room; the white and black stripes that framed her soft eyes. "You gonna stick around?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

He nodded, and sank back into the bed. Too much movement put a pressure on his knot that jolted them both; instead they snuggled together, and she listened to the sound of his breathing growing deep and regular. Lulled by exertion, and a long day, and the sound of the rain; some time later she whispered his name, questioningly, but he did not answer.

Would she stick around? Probably. There were things for her in Cannon Shoals, and not just convenient fisherman to be borrowed now and again. Jim Riggs. Roger Hall and Sammy Benson. Awful tamales at La Cochinillo. Fresh fish off the boats. The boardwalk. It was a good place.

Just... complicated.

Steffan Kelly would find his own way, she thought -- or hoped. Probably, he would leave her alone. Probably, he would not want to see her again. Probably he had tucked her number away and would never even look at it. But. Curiosity twitched her rounded little ears. If she stretched, she could just barely reach her phone. It lit up with her touch. Two missed messages.

Allison blinked. With the reality of it there, staring her in the face, curiosity turned watery and melted into quiet dread. She turned the phone over to hide the screen. The ocelot was abruptly self-conscious, aware of her position. Six hours back in town and she had already left the straight and narrow. I've changed -- that's what she told Stef, and here she was curled up next to some dog she'd picked up in a dive bar.

Did he know? Maybe he'd seen her, or maybe he'd asked Shelley Mills. Maybe he was already done with her. Maybe a hundred thousand things, though, and before she could stop herself the ocelot unlocked the phone and swiped over to see the messages. Two, one right after the other; a few hours old.

been thinking

we need to talk somewhere private

She read it twice, and once again. Her grip faltered; the phone slid from her fingers, and tumbled from the bed to the floor. It would be so easy now, she knew, so easy to give in for the both of them. Just a few words, a few gestures; a few hints. That was the ocelot's specialty. Like a ship without an anchor; like a slave without a chain. Like...

Like a bad influence.

Allison stared into the darkness and listened as, just beyond her window, in a torrent of driven rain and biting wind, a growing storm howled its exultant triumph.