La Curandera III - My Old Self by Dissident Love

La Curandera III - My Old Self

Dissident Love, Angry witch, Big fox, Drinky witch, Fox, Herm/male, Hermaphrodite, Huge fox, Hyper, Hyper bulge, Hyperphallic, Kissing, Post-Apocalyptic, Smite smite smite, coati, herm on male, radiation, rescue

Odella's prequel story. The tale of how shi came to claim Bayside as hir own,

as well as how a certain soft-spoken prospecting fox came to claim hir as his

own. Also this hopefully helps set up the world a little bit better, as the next

story will feature the world outside Bayside coming to call, and not very

politely... especially when a certain curandera is with child, and not in the mood

for that sort of nonsense.

I hope you enjoy!

La Curandera

Volume III - My Old Self

Dissident Love

Kenyon's Diary

_ _

Day 1. Wait, I guess I should put the real date here, shouldn't I? I think it's Tuesday. I don't really look at the calendar that much. Too many numbers. I'll just call this Day 1, because it's the first day of me writing in this diary. That makes sense.

_ _

I left Bayside this morning. There was a little get together breakfast at the Scarf. Uncle Rocky gave me this book that I'm writing in, and a couple grease pencils. I don't know how much he must have traded to get it. It's real paper. I told him I'd write in it every day. He just smiled at me and told me not to hurt myself. He's always worried about me hurting myself.

_ _

Ma and Pa waved goodbye, but wouldn't get too close. Ma kept crying and Pa kept hugging her. I tried to talk to them and Pa just got mad at me for making Ma cry, which I didn't think I was doing. Uncle Rocky just told me to come back and prove both of them wrong. I don't think that means what he thinks it means.

_ _

The road is hot, but there's no-one else around for miles. Hot day today. No clouds in the sky. Gotta save as much food and water as I can. Pack is pretty heavy. Got supplies for a month.

_ _

Day 1. A little later. Actually getting on in the day. The sun is starting to turn red, and there's a smidgen of purple over the Hills. You hardly ever see purple anymore. The signs are right where I remembered them. Half of them aren't in any language I know. Most of them are supposed to look pretty scary, I guess. Just a bunch of paint, to me. I played around the Bloody Foot Hills all the time when I was a cub, and I turned out fine.

_ _

Day 1. Night time. Writing by camp fire is hard. Also, the fire is green. That's neat. Wish Ma could see this. No-one could stay mad at a green fire.

_ _

The Gossamer Scarf was the sort of reputable establishment that every town eventually acquired, were they lucky enough to be situated on a major road. In this part of the world, in a time when 'shiftless and well-armed transient' was a viable career option, the major roads saw a brisk business, and so the Gossamer Scarf could be counted on to be open all days, at all hours, for any of the three most important products and services.

LIQUOR! BATHS! GIRLS! proclaimed the fancifully-painted plank hung over the Scarf's door. Anyone coming through those swinging portals generally preferred them in that order, or with the first two reversed, or with the first omitted entirely, but the employees insisted that the final two occurred as indicated. Under that roof, nearly anything was for sale and nearly anything was negotiable, but some things were important.

It was so late that it could charitably be called early morning, and the main dining room was still half full. Telulah tickled merrily away at the ancient, battered piano, producing a remarkably competent tune from the forty-five remaining keys, and occasionally one of the other serving girls or even one of the patrons would pick up an instrument from the shelf next to hir and play along. Entertainment had to be enjoyed where it could be found, and a couple pleasant songs for a good crowd could easily be traded for a drink or a wash or some private relaxation. Toes and hooves tapped along with the tune, but most eyes were focused carefully on nothing in particular, and with each cry from one of the upper rooms, the volume of Telulah's ditty swelled in a futile attempt to distract.

The chambers upstairs were small, hardly big enough to string a curtain down the middle to separate the bed from the wash basin, but they were clean and dry and warm, which was luxury enough. Mativa's was far more crowded than even she was comfortable with, all available floorspace taken up by Mr. Rico, the establishment's proprietor, the Bayside chirurgeon Souttar, his nurse Charlotte and a paw-wringing dancing grrl named Aishia. Mativa herself lay on the wide, disheveled bed, her far wrist and ankle tied with thick rope to the sturdy oak corner posts.

"You're not doing anything," Aishia quavered, the bony but buxom antelope shifting restlessly. "Why aren't you doing anything?"

Mr. Rico sighed softly, taking half a step back, which was all he could manage in the cramped little room. "Aishia, you... they're doing the best they can," he murmured, resting his paw on hir shoulder. "You should return to your room, and rest. Don't... don't worry about working."

Shi slapped his hand away, eyes hard and wet. "It's not the best they can, if they're not doing _anything,"_shi hissed. Charlotte rolled her eyes, the plump aged badger well used to family and loved ones getting mad in situations like this. Souttar gave no outward sign of being aware of the discussion whatsoever, simply clutching his bag in his dark feathered hands, staring sadly down at Mativa.

Clad only on a purple robe tied tightly around her slender waist, the svelte jackrabbit sagged boneless and sweaty, breathing fast and shallow. When her eyes were open, generally one at a time, they showed nothing but mad white, gleaming like her perpetually bared teeth. She muttered constantly, but nothing approaching recognizable words; to Aishia's ears, it sounded like witchcraft, or worse.

"What would you have us do, that we haven't already done?" Charlotte queried, not unkindly. "Her fever's not broken with ice nor cinchona, parthenium nor heartleaf. There's no wound to clean, no bones to splint, no wen to remove."

Aishia's knuckles knotted, arms vibrating with the effort of restraining hirself, until shi simply erupted by screaming "SOMETHING!"

Souttar nodded, the dusty buzzard never lifting his eyes from the patient. Charlotte pulled back in a huff, but also said nothing. Mr. Rico waited for the fight to go out of the dancing grrl, and after hir outburst that only took a few more seconds. Shi seemed to deflate, allowing hirself to be guided towards the door. "I'm sorry," he began, squeezing hir tenderly. "All we can do right now is try to keep her comfortable, and wait. She is fighting her own battle right now, and I don't think she'd want you worrying yourself into your own sickbed."

Something heavy fell in the main hall below, punctuated by a few cries of alarm, but Mr. Rico trusted in his employees to sort it out. After Mativa's latest round of guttural moans, a table getting knocked over didn't even register. Aishia shoulders shook; shi sniffled and whimpered something unintelligible. Mr. Rico just nodded and mumbled something reassuring.

There were numerous sicknesses in the world, and they could generally be lumped into two broad categories: the fairly common and easily identified maladies that could almost always be traced to a root cause, an injury or a contamination, and the unfortunate variety of which Mativa now suffered. No cause, no injury, no warning. In ages gone by they were attributed to ghosts, demons, vengeful spirits, and after four decades of doctoring, Souttar wasn't ready to dismiss those as wild ideas.

Mr Rico was reaching for the door when there was another, louder crash from below, angry shouts and protests seeping through the floorboards. One voice rose from defiant bellow to womanly shriek, and was abruptly cut off.

He pulled back his hand as though burnt. Even Souttar and Charlotte couldn't ignore a commotion like that. "Mr Rico," warbled Aishia, leaning back against him, "what's going on?"

"I don't know," he worried. "Stay here, the three of you. I'll-"

A door down the corridor slammed open, more piercing shrieks filling the inn. Small, determined footsteps tromped closer, followed by another door nearly kicked off its hinges. And another. And another, this one next door to Mativa and Aishia's room.

"Mr Rico?" Aishia whimpered, twisting out of his grasp and moving to the bed. The delirious jackrabbit showed no signs of comprehension, but her roommate and lover moved to protect her, shielding her with hir wispy body.

"Get back," the proprietor hissed. "Get back!"

Footsteps just outside the door, a large shadow darkening the gap around the frame. Rico's paws shook, the sleek silvery fox extremely uncomfortable with violence. His hired strongarms should have been downstairs preventing any intrusions, which left two possibilities, both extremely unpleasant. He stood in front of Charlotte, though given the tough old nurse was twice his size, it was only charitably a noble gesture. Brigands were not unheard of, especially this close to a major road, and there had been rumblings of unrest, possibly even war, far to the south. Bayside hadn't seen a Beast in ten years, but there was always a chance...

Kenyon, he thought. Why did you leave...

_ _

The door all but exploded inwards, wood splintering as the rusted deadbolt tore free from its slot. The intruder's tiny foot was still extended, ramrod-straight tail standing up behind hir to counterbalance. Rico's eyes widened, taking in the figure's preposterous proportions, wildly exaggerated hourglass figure wrapped in a simple white linen robe, although it was heavily streaked and stained with hard travel. He was by no means a large fox, but the coati standing furiously in the doorway hardly even came up to his chin.

Shi took three steps into the room, and there shouldn't have been any room for hir or hir vast endowments, but the wild look in hir eyes, staring out madly beneath hir crazed unruly mop of coppery hair forced everyone back.

Oh, gods, Rico thought. Why couldn't it have been brigands, or a Beast?

_ _

"Who do I have to FUCK," the petite coati yelled, jabbing him in the belly with one finger, "to get a damned drink? Rico!! Your bar bitch said my tab is no good!"

"They... they're new," the fox wheezed, pushing backwards hard enough to nearly flatten the doctor and his nurse against the far wall. "Odella, we've got a bit of a... situation, right now, so if you could just go... wait downstairs, and I'll be right with you, and tell Tizanne and Adelle that I said you could have whatever you want-"

"Situation?!" The coati glanced down at Aishia, who was doing hir best to force hirself between the unpredictable intruder and the feverish dancing girl. "What? This?! Is that all?"

Rico inhaled sharply, desperately attempting to get the volatile curandera safely out of the tiny chamber, but he realized this might be the only way. "She's sick, Mistress," he babbled, trying to bow deferentially and driving his hips into Charlotte's back. "We can't do anything for her. Three days, and her fever has only worsened-"

Odella's palm pressed against his muzzle, silencing him and forcing his head back crudely. "Yeah, yeah, I can see that," shi said dismissively. "Let me at her. Move, trollop."

For several long seconds, Aishia stared defiantly up at Odella, locking eyes with the half-mythical scourge of the region. Mativa thrashed weakly, burbling nonsense syllables into Aishia's shoulder and struggling to drag herself free. The antelope had never seen the curandera before, but of course shi had heard the stories; strangely, none of them had ever done hir body justice. Aishia was considered very well endowed with respect to both genders, but shi felt as flat and bald as a mewling pup next to Odella. "Can you help her?" shi whispered at last.

"Not if you don't MOVE!" Odella snapped, snatching at Aishia's wrist and hauling hir aside as though shi weighed no more than a bedsheet. "Honestly, Rico, can't you hire wenches with any brains?"

"I'm not-" Aishia started, until Rico's paw snaked around hir mouth, cutting hir off. "Mmmf!"

Odella perched on the edge of the bed, leg splayed wide around hir ponderous hermness. The coati was clearly quite slim of body, but possessed a collection of bulges that simply should not have existed outside of the most twisted of fantasies, each orb far larger than hir own head and topped by a sheath as big around as hir narrow waist. Nearly resting atop them was a bosom that pushed so far to either side that it seemed unlikely shi could even bring hir paws together, the robe drawn snug enough to reveal the coati's three feminine swells that were larger even than hir sac.

Despite it being unlikely shi could see Mativa very well, shi placed one tiny palm on the jackrabbit's forehead, and another on her belly. "She's burning," Odella rumbled accusingly. "Someone's not been wary of the Bloody Hills?"

"No!" Aishia said quickly, shaking hir head. "She knows not to go there! No-one goes there!"

Almost no-one, Rico thought sadly.

"Yes, and whores never lie about anything, do they?" Odella asked sweetly. Aishia bristled, struggling to free hirself from Rico, fists already balled to strike, and the coati just rolled hir eyes. "Fine. She's a pure and innocent little virgin. Well, let's just say for conversation's sake that she didn't go anywhere with certain death in the air. Has she received any presents lately? Gifts? Souveniers?"

Aishia continued to wrench hirself side to side in Rico's grasp, but hir eyes flickered momentarily to the headboard. Odella followed hir gaze, reaching up to pluck the little leather loop from the oaken corner post, warily eyeing the smoky bluish metal charm that hung from it.

"I bought it from the picker train," the antelope grunted, giving up trying to escape hir employer's grip. "Last month. I traded four tomatoes and a... a favor, for it." In a tiny, scared voice, shi added, "It was for her birthday."

"And would have looked lovely at her funeral," Odella scowled. With a whiplike motion shi twirled the leather loop around hir hand, the organic-looking metal trinket vanishing into fist. With hir other paw, shi tugged open Mativa's robes, exposing her small, proud breasts. The coati's finger circled a small, incongruous spot of whitish-grey fur between the dancing girl's swells, and a flick of hir nail caused a puff of loose hair to fly free. "Some items from the old days bring their poisons with them."

Aishia's eyes widened with terror. "I killed her?" shi breathed. "Oh gods... no, I killed her... it was just a present... she never got anything for her birthday last year... I just... I didn't mean..." Words fading off into garbled, choked sobs, shi fell weakly against Rico's chest. Souttar and Charlotte frowned sympathetically, but also instinctively moved away from the necklace. They knew well the effects those items could have on perfectly healthy flesh, even in short exposures. Wearing it for a month...

"She ain't dead yet," the curandera retorted, staring down at the sweating, shaking jackrabbit. "The damage doesn't seem too bad, but it's in her heart. I can do what I can, but if she dies I don't want you going and blaming me. You're the one that gave her this."

Rico's jaw clenched, but he remained silent. The witch was, technically, correct, but as usual hir choice of words defied all polite convention. "Just do what you can," he said stiffly, holding Aishia closer as shi cried. "And then-"

"And then," Odella continued loudly for him, "and then you're going to tell the idiots downstairs who I am, and then I'm going to take a few days here to relax, and no-one is going to bother me! Right?"

"Right," Rico murmured in defeat.

"Unless I bother them first," shi added with a smirk, reaching out to brush hir knuckles against Aishia's hip, eyeing up the curvaceous antelope appraisingly. The dancing grrl recoiled from that touch, not only because that was the paw which still contained the contaminated charm. "You'll do nicely. Do you have any new porters, Rico? Young? Wide-eyed? Springy?"

"Just heal the girl!" he exclaimed, shocked at his own presumption. "All will be agreed upon after!"

For an instant, a taken aback Odella seemed on the verge of standing, and he wouldn't have been surprised to see hir storm out of the room and leave them to their own devices, but in the end shi just shrugged as though nothing of import had occurred. "As you command," shi sang, and Rico winced, knowing he was going to pay for his comment.

Holding hir paw in the air, leather cord dangling free from between hir fingers, shi placed hir other paw on Mativa's chest. The mystic closed hir eyes, hir breathing growing more shallow, hir striped tail twitching back and forth above hir head like a metronome.

The chirurgeon leaned around Rico to see better, even as his trusty and unfazeable nurse covered her eyes. Bit by bit, Aishia got hirself under control, turning in Rico's arms to watch, though for the longest time there seemed to be no results.

"Wh-" shi started to speak, but once again the silver fox's paw was around hir muzzle in a flash. Shi glanced up to see him shaking his head urgently back and forth.

Silence, he urged with his eyes.

Aishia sniffled and nodded.

The bedchamber was only lit by two candles, but darkness seemed to creep in with each of Odella's breaths, as though faint black mist were filling the room. Sounds were absorbed by the gloom, until the only tones that reached their ears was Mativa's mindless growls and curses. Gradually the sweaty jackrabbit settled down, joints popping as she managed to relax her tortured muscles for the first time in days, and Aishia's heart gave a tentative little leap.

"Is she-"

Mativa's scream carried on far longer than it should have, far longer than she could have possibly had breath for. Her back arched like a bow and she simply ripped her wrist free from the rope that held it, nails digging bloody furrows in her palms.

Below, in the Gossamer Scarf's main hall, most of the patrons that had elected to stick around after Odella's violent entrance chose that moment to leave. There was only so much entertainment to be had at this hour, after all. Only one of the weary wanderers remained at the bar, having nowhere else to go, though he cared not that he had all four serving girls and barmaidens to himself.

When the agonized shriek eventually faded from the upstairs chambers, he reached into his pockets and fiddled for more currency. "I think you could all use one, on me," the dusty young porcine traveller said gently, sliding the coins across the well-worn bar. Tizanne, a heavily made-up older mink, nodded wordlessly, the coins vanishing behind the bar with practiced ease. Teleulah abandoned the piano gratefully and joined the others at the bar, downing her drink in one toss and beckoning for another.

"Should we go up?" Adelle whispered, sniffing at hir drink distastefully. The bottom-heavy feline had never really seen the appeal of alcohol, except when it made hir patrons more pliable, or sleepy. "Should we-"

"There's nothing we can do," Tizanne noted bitterly. "It's Odella."

Everyone except Adelle nodded, as though that were explanation enough.

All five pairs of eyes snapped up to the long railed balcony that overlooked the stage, where one of the dozen identical doors slammed open. Odella, outrageously curvy underneath hir worn white robes, swept imperiously out of the room, dragging behind hir a sobbing Aishia. Adelle squeaked, clapping hir hands to hir muzzle in horror, until shi realized that Aishia's tears were, for the first time since Mativa had fallen sick, tears of joy.

The two herms vanished into an empty room, door thundering shut behind them.

Rico moved slowly, zombie-like out of Mativa's and Aishia's shared room. He leaned against the railing, tail drooping with exhaustion, and nodded down to his girls. "She's ok," he wheezed, gesturing behind him. "Odella... shi... Mativa's going to be fine. She just needs rest."

All four girls sighed with relief, Tizanne and her young protege Adelle hugging. "Should we thank hir? Odella? Is shi really a witch?"

The sounds coming from the upstairs room the coati and antelope had disappeared into swelled with intensity, and passion, and Tizanne shook her head. "First rule when Odella is in town... you don't bother hir. Shi bothers you."

Kenyon's Diary

_Day 3. The Hills aren't nearly as scary as everyone seems to say. I'm going slowly, taking my time. Trying to find a good place to start digging. The rocks are all tall and lumpy and funny-looking. They look like when Mom makes boiled asparagus, and there's always some left in the pot that no-one wants to eat, except they're rocks. That's about the scariest part. _

_ _

I know there's animals up here, but I guess they're leaving me alone. I can hear them, but they sound funny. Not ha-ha funny. Not scary, either. I saw some bugs that are bigger than my shoes, but they always run away from me. I tried to lure them closer with some crackers, but they wouldn't fall for it. Smart bugs.

_ _

My fire is purple tonight. The stars look so pretty, but I'd swear they're moving more than normal. I thought the stars didn't move that fast. Pa always says the stars don't move at all, it's us that moves, but that never made any sense.

_ _

I might head up to the summit tomorrow. I found what looks like an old road, but it's got even more warning signs around it. Maybe they're protecting something valuable.

_ _

Bayside was on alert, as always during one of Odella's visits.

It was not that the curandera, a mystically endowed wanderer given to fantastic power and destined to right the wrongs of a parched and dying world, was a bad person... not exactly. No-one would claim shi was evil, or cruel, or even particularly unpleasant. Should the mood strike hir, shi could rouse even a funeral service into laughter and song and gaiety, and had done so on several occasions. Dozens, maybe hundreds of babies were born healthy under impossible circumstances, thanks to hir midwifery. Bandits, beasts, demons and worse had all been righteously struck down, the white-robed coati standing defiant between a terrified dirt-farming family and certain destruction.

It was just that, to put it mildly, shi didn't particularly care how shi achieved these miracles, nor how shi chose to collect what shi felt was hir due compensation.

"The Work," shi explained, hair hanging in a sweaty, tangled mess, waving around a small and nearly-empty bottle of what was theoretically whisky, "is how the world tells me what needs... working on. You know? The Work is the message, and the Truth is the... well, not the messenger, but the one SENDING me the message. Does that make sense?"

The young porter, a sleek and somewhat underfed percheron swallowed hard and nodded, eyes rolling back so hard he feared they might never come back 'round the right way. He had long ago ceased being able to form coherent syllables, and now simply tried to settle for grunts and groans that sounded halfway affirmative or negative. "Bleat," he managed.

"Good!" Odella chirped, hir other hand squeezing his hip just shy of painfully hard and adjusting hir position. Shi had been worried when Rico had selected him to bring up hir meagre possessions, but after being assured that he was old enough for that sort of task, shi had decided to give him a slightly accelerated education. Shi removed hir thumb from the mouth of the bottle and took a swig. "Sho... sorry, so_many people never sheem... _seem to understand the Work. It'sh important Work. I'm alwaysh walking... always walking..."

Hir rhythm slowed, and the percheron, whose name shi never quite got, briefly thought shi might soon be finished. He was correct, as it turns out, but not quite for the reason he'd hoped when the powerful and potent coati sped up once more.

It was so late once again that it properly qualified as early, the Gossamer Scarf's chef already starting the daily ritual of frying everything until it was palatable. It had been an unpleasant growing season, so the available crops of vegetables were lumpy, stunted and pallid, and it took considerable ingenuity to help people forget what they were putting in their mouths. Odella planned to take advantage of the breakfast that would no doubt be part of hir reward, but shi never ate on an empty stomach. Upending the bottle, shi downed the last of the burning, acrid liquor and tossed the empty aside with a clatter. "You should have drank some when I offered," shi churred lecherously into his ear, now free to grip him more fully with both paws. "It might help you... relax..."

_ _

The percheron whinnied weakly, tail swishing against hir belly, legs splayed awkwardly to either side. He would have kicked himself for not accepting the drink, if he'd had any inkling of what the curandera had planned for his gratuity. Gentle rebuffs of hir affections hadn't worked, and he couldn't deny shi was certainly pretty in an exotic, slightly deranged sort of way, but he had NOT expected to end up on this end of the bargain.

His groans grew louder with each difficult breath, feeling Odella's vigor redouble, even though it had already been far more than enough to rattle his bones apart. Shi had been given one of the larger rooms, the bed big enough for three people and with real paint on the walls, but he was becoming very worried that it wouldn't be enough. Shi had been big, far bigger than his equine endowments, and after burying himself in his rump he had been shocked and bordered on terrified to discover that shi'd still had a great deal of growing to do...

He twitched and spasmed, his third brute-force orgasm wringing what little energy he had left out of him, internal muscles tightening around hir and eliciting a purr of approval. "Mmmmm, frisky little horsie," shi giggled, the percheron normally standing more than a foot taller than shi. Shi leaned forwards, pressing hir three incredibly plump breasts against his back and nipping at the nape of his neck. With each buck of hir hips his entire body was drawn back and forth, although he didn't have much choice: his speckled black-and-grey body was stretched around a column of steel-hard flesh significantly longer than he was tall, and significantly girthier than his formerly-trim torso. "I think you've finally worked those kinks out of my neck... don't worry, I'll tell Rico that you've earned the day off."

"Bleat?" he whimpered, those promising words sounding quite ominous coming from hir lips. He could feel hir trembling within him, somehow continuing to grow thicker with each breath as shi prepared to cross hir own finish line.

The rest of the Gossamer Scarf had been awake since hir arrival, and no doubt sleep would not be easy to come by for the rest of hir visit. The dancing girls and grrls had been swinging by Mativa's room in ones and twos, sitting by her side, holding her hand, brushing her hair and simply basking in the delight of seeing the jackrabbit sleeping peacefully. The fever that had wracked her body for the better part of a week was broken. Whenever someone asked where Mativa's partner Aishia was, a thumb was jerked down the hall to one of the rentable rooms.

"Is shi sleeping, too?"

"That's... one way of putting it..."

Odella's appetites were well-known and oft-lamented facts of Bayside lore, and one by one the new girls were brought by the rented room and were allowed to peek inside. The room wasn't very big, even smaller than Mativa's as it was just for travellers to borrow for a night or two. Aishia wasn't very big either, the waifish antelope able to achieve nude what most girls required several layers of corsetry to accomplish. After Odella's 'reward', though, the grateful dancing grrl was bloated seemingly permanently into that room, not just touching but bowing out three of the four walls.

"Is... is shi ok?" the new girls would ask, eyes huge and fearful.

"I'm fine," Aishia would wheeze, giggling drunkenly. Hir paws moved gingerly across hir stupendously inflated body, legs dangling several inches above the ground, a creamy white trail trickling out from beneath hir tail and around hir still-hard hermness. "For Mativa, I would do this... and more..."

It had been more than four years since Odella's last visit, and the town's population had swelled considerably; most of the dancing girls stayed less than three, so it was no wonder most of them had only heard rumors of rumors. Breakfast was being served in the main hall while Mister Rico and Tizanne educated them all, as well as several locals who had heard the commotion.

"I don't know how long shi's going to be in town for," Rico was addressing the crowd at large, trying to ease their fears. "Shi didn't really... uh, get that far when we talked this morning."

"Shi saved Mativa!" piped up one of the newest dancing girls, a remarkably fluffy sheepgirl from one of the smaller scrub-farming communities to the north. "Shi just showed up, and BAM, fixed her up! Just like that! It was AWESOME!"

"Yes, thank you, Miff," the silver foxed chuckled, waving her back into her seat and still having a hard time believing that was her real name. "Shi's started off on a high note this time."

"Where is shi now?" cried out one of the locals, stress clear in his voice.

Rico's face passed through a series of awkward expressions, as he struggled to find the proper, polite words. Eventually, with the room growing quieter as everyone started to pick up on a new sound, he settled for gesturing back up over his shoulder. Beyond the decorative balcony that crossed over the stage, rhythmic creaking and whinnying could be heard from one of the rentable rooms. "Shi's... resting," Rico winced.

Everyone nodded nervously. "What do we do?"

"The same as we always do," Rico sighed. "Go about your daily business, don't go outside unless you have to, leave all offerings and requests with me, and... stay out of hir way."

The groans from upstairs suddenly rose in pitch, a feminine voice filled with exquisite pleasure, a more masculine moan tinged with breathless fear. Someone opened their mouth to speak, but his jaw worked soundlessly as the spacious dining hall was overcome by the sounds of passion. Rico winced, knowing that he would owe that poor boy a serious apology and probably a raise, when Odella's voice ascended to a panting, endless scream.

Underneath and above those crudely sexual shrieks, the sounds of wooden timbers creaking and flexing under unfathomable new stresses caused the assembled crowd to glance nervously at the door, several of the more sensitive locals making good on their instincts and fleeing the establishment entirely. The rental room was located over a storeroom, and Rico was already wondering just what the potential damages and losses would be if there was a repeat of hir last visit.

In the end, hir voice faded dreamlike from the morning air, and the building somehow found the strength to carry on. Aishia in Room Three, he mentally tabulated. Percy in Room Seven. It'll be a few days before I get those rooms, or those people, back. Shi's going to be 'hungry' tonight...

Conversation faded to huddled whispers, the locals drifting back to their homes and businesses to prepare for the day. Odella in town meant the number of travellers would certainly increase over the next week, and there was a great deal of currency to be had, but that also meant something unpleasant was on the wind. Rico had just been a pup when he had first laid eyes on the curandera, looking absolutely, uncannily similar to how shi looked now, and two days later a slavering, horrendous worm had smashed its way through Bayside. A dozen dead, a hundred injured... but how terrible would it have been without hir?

The door slammed, and all eyes turned to watch a yawning, stretching, wild-haired coati sashaying sultrily down the stairs. Hir white robes were in disarray, clinging damply to hir nethers which were clearly not yet fully detumesced, the little mystic looking more bulge than body. "Good morning," shi waved muzzily, tugging unselfconsciously at hir lap. "Breakfast?"

"Good morning, Mistress," Rico said grandly, instantly interposing himself between Odella and the rest of the girls, if only to buy them some time to get elsewhere. "I just wanted to thank you more formally for everything you did for Mativa last night. We weren't sure she was going to survive-"

"She wasn't," Odella said easily, sidestepping the fox with remarkable grace for someone with hir misplaced centre of gravity. "I wouldn't even have given her to tomorrow."

Cutlery clattered, Rico and Tizanne gripping Adelle's shoulders to keep hir from leaping to hir feet. "Which is why we're all the more grateful," the silver fox said with patent emphasis, eyes wide and pleading with his employees not to start a fuss.

"Good," Odella nodded with approval, swishing behind the bar and searching through the bottles mounted by the cracked, streaky mirror. Shi paused to fix hir hair, then gave up when it was clear it wasn't a battle shi could win. "I'll be around for a few days. The Work isn't clear, but there's a few Tasks to keep me busy. I'll need another room."

"Of course," Rico simmered. "As you wish."

"I do wish," the coati grinned, snatching a bottle of golden liquor from below the bar, where Tizanne kept the good stuff, and trotting out the door. "I do."

Kenyon's Diary

Day 6. The oasis isn't quite as useful as I'd hoped, but it's out of the weather. The water burned a hole through my favorite tin cup, so I figured I should probably stop drinking it. The whole top of this hill looks like it was scooped out by a giant, but despite the spring and the rain it didn't fill up because the whole thing drains into a cave, and the cave has a big hole in it. It sounds like the water falls really far, but I brought a lot of rope.

_ _

I will have to make sure that I can get claim stakes for this place, because there's bits and pieces from other prospectors everywhere. I found spoons and forks and belt buckles and bones and teeth all over the place, but otherwise no sign. I guess the living ones left in a hurry if they left their teeth behind. Teeth are important.

_ _

There's also a bunch of really neat stuff around the hole, which I've decided to call The Hole. Some of it is definitely from the Early Days, and I don't even know what half of it is. Feeling pretty good about this. I know Ma and Pa will be impressed.

_ _

Over the next few days, Odella swept through the region like one of the infrequent but devastating thunderstorms. Bayside proper was a collection of thirty buildings heaped roughly around one of the few reliable wells for a hundred miles in any direction, but there were more than a hundred loosely-associated farms and homesteads and rugged windblown shacks dotting the countryside. Anywhere crops could cling precariously to life, the land was worked with the care and dedication required to carry on for just more year.

Where they could be spared, sons and daughters were dispatched to warn the outlying regions of hir arrival. The adults, many of whom had endured several of the curandera's visits, worked hard to keep those messengers on the move, one step ahead and hopefully out of reach of the lusty, lecherous and unpredictable coati. It was nearing the end of a dusty and unreliable growing season, though, and many hands were needed to keep the larders and pantries and coldrooms full for just one more year.

As the week progressed, the messages being passed around from homestead to homestead carried with them the news of Odella's deeds, from the fantastic, the noble, and the good to the... questionable.

Several miles to the southwest of Bayside, near the endless cliff known simply as the Shelf, Odella purportedly arrived at a sprawling homestead in the middle of the night, nearly removing the heavy door from its hinges with the force of hir knocking. The clan of ruddy red ringtail mongooses had been fearfully expecting hir arrival, as the family matron was quite gravidly pregnant, and if there was one event that could draw a curandera more reliably than a phantasm or wandering desert monstrosity, it was a birthing.

Perhaps even more fantastical, after the difficult but successful delivery, presenting the clan with five new pups, Odella refused all attempts at payment, even the jug of barley wine that had been specifically fermented for just such an occasion; all forward-thinking mothers-to-be tended to keep liquor on hand, just in case.

"So... what does that mean?" Rico sighed, taking a break from repairing the damaged floorboards in the curandera's latest room. Stacks of cracked, splintered and thoroughly soaked lumber crowded the corners, and would shortly be brought down to the smith's for proper disposal, which would no doubt create some very sought-after items. Horseshoes, knives, even buckles and buttons forges in the fires stoked by a curandera's essence were said to bring exceptional good fortune. "I doubt shi's turning over a new bramble. I'm already dipping into next year's early brews just to keep the patrons happy."

Aishia shrugged. Half of the storage room below was still exposed, the buxom antelope straddling a beam and kicking hir long legs above the mess of crates and sacks. "I'm just telling you what I heard, and it wasn't all rumor. That was Kinty's auntie, and I heard it from Kinty herself. Stormed in, got to her just as she was going into labor, and turned around three pups by hand. One of them wasn't even breathing, but they're all doing fine!"

"And then shi was gone," the silver fox mused. He'd heard the story several times that morning. "Shi's always had a weakness for the midwifery. That's about the only time it's safe to be around hir. Heh. I guess I don't need to tell you..."

The dancing grrl nodded. "Shi delivered me, AND my mom... does anyone know how old shi is?"

"Not really. My grandmother told me stories about meeting hir when SHE was a kit, so... shi goes back a ways. Not a good idea to ask hir, though."

"Why not?"

"Well, how old are you?"

Aishia blinked and twisted hir muzzle slightly. "Nineteen," shi said, a touch defensively.

Rico chuckled. "Exactly. So what makes you think ODELLA would tell the truth?"

Kenyon's Diary

Day 9. Jackpot!

_ _

What does jackpot mean? I know what a pot is, and I know someone named Jack, and there's that game with the ball named jacks, but I was never good at it, and you don't need a pot for it. Why do we say jackpot? Did there used to be a kind of pot full of treasure that was called a jackpot? Was it called a jackpot before it was filled with treasure?

_ _

Sorry, I got distracted. The oasis is making a pretty good home, even without any clean water. I've still got food and water for at least two weeks, maybe three if I push it. There's a big rocky spire, and in the spire is a cave, and in the back of the cave there was a rubble pile, and behind the rubble pile there was a hole, and down the hole there's a lot more hole, and when you come out the other end of the hole, there's another cave, and this is where I have a hard time using words to describe it. This cave is so big it could easily hold three or four towns as big as Bayside, but it only holds one city. There's towers with thirty or forty different levels, and even Uncle Rico's place only has three and that used to make me scared of heights when I was a kit. I don't know how many people could have lived in this city. Maybe more people than there even are in the whole world anymore. I don't know how many people there are in the world, though, so I might be wrong.

_ _

Everywhere I look down here, there's treasure. I'm saving a lot of my torches, too, because lots of things down here have this strange blue glow, even the water. I can't believe no-one has prospecting rights for this place! I'm going to be rich! Ma and Pa will be so happy.

_ _

There weren't many high places in Bayside, or in the surrounding thousand square miles. There were ridges and buttes and mesas to the south, high craggy mountains far to the east, and endlessly rolling cracked hills to the north. Just a mile to the west there was the Shelf, and that didn't really count, since it was just a sheer vertical dropoff to yet another vast, endless, dusty plain. Various expeditions had been mounted to the bottom of the Shelf, intending to explore what lay further west, but the few parched, bleached survivors that returned didn't really provide a compelling case for future attempts.

No, Bayside's immense surrounding plains provided its two greatest assets: the utterly featureless expanse proved easy ground for farming (where and when water could be dowsed), and it was quite thoroughly impossible to approach unseen. Three rickety lookout towers just outside of the town's aged, ornamental fence allowed the spotters to pick out motion for twenty miles in all directions, giving the locals ample warning of travellers, caravans, bandits, Beasts, or anything else that might come their way, for better or for worse.

Odella, of course, somehow managed to avoid this sort of conventional detection.

"And that's why you're all just sitting... sitting ducks out here," Odella sighed, slouching over the tower's spindly railing, the entire structure creaking and swaying from the weight. "There's more things out there, just.. out THERE, than you can possibly imagine, and most of them don't need legs to, you know, get around."

The spotter nodded nervously, pressing himself against one of the tower's four posts in an attempt to counterbalance the curandera's motions. The structures had only been designed to support one lightweight occupant, and the stormy grey coyote was pretty sure Odella's balls weighed more than his entire body. "We... we do what we can... we know we can't spot... spot EVERYTHING, but we see what we... what we can see," he finished lamely, wondering what a fall from sixty feet would feel like.

Odella spun around in complete defiance of physics and momentum, hir robes flaring out and giving the anxious spotter quite more of a view than he'd expected. "On the other hand, you probably don't have anything that anyone like me WANTS," shi continued, eyes blinking slightly out of synch with one another. The coyote wasn't sure what kind of alcohol shi reeked of, but he was willing to bet it was a mixture of all of them. "Other than maybe a, you know, a drink or two. And some... companionship."

He didn't like the leer that ended hir sentence. "Yes, ma'am," he swallowed nervously. The sun had set about ten minutes before, and while he was absolutely certain no-one had come up the tower's ladder, he had simply turned around to discover his little platform had a guest. "Uhm... is there anything up here I can help you with?"

"Defenceless!" shi snapped, sweeping hir arm out over the railing to take in the entirety of Bayside. "Your fence couldn't keep out a carrot! Who do you have protecting you?!"

The coyote felt that, in this particular instance, hir question was not entirely rhetorical and a response was expected. "Er... you, ma'am?"

"You're damn right!" shi hollered, clearly addressing the entire town. "Me! And what thanks do I get?!"

"Er... whatever you want?" he hazarded.

He would later swear that the temperature up in the tower dropped so fast and so far that he could see his breath, and there were several such puffed breaths before shi spoke once more.

"Right," shi eventually nodded, shoulders sagging almost imperceptibly. "Whatever I want."

The coyote was left with his heart pounding in his throat, gripping the railing with such ferocity that he feared he would find splinters in his padded paws. Arms and legs moving in a complicated dance in deference to hir stupendously overstuffed dress, Odella climbed down the tower's ladder, a strangely commonplace exit after hir magical arrival.

Shi heard the politely-cleared throat while shi was halfway down the ladder and sighed again. "What?" shi demanded, wondering how long shi had to endure another goodness-gracious oh-me-yarm we're-not-worthy conversation.

At the bottom of the ladder, shi turned and stared dangerously up at Rico, noting the more conventionally reddish foxes standing nervously behind him. They were of stockier build, their clothes dirtied to the point where their original colors could only be guessed at, clearly local farmers from the surrounding dusty plains, but shi noted they stood somewhat closer to eachother, and Rico, than shi'd have expected. "Family?" shi observed brusquely, tilting sideways to get a better look at them. "They don't look much like you."

"This is my brother, Hem," Rico said patiently, sliding courteously to the side, "and his wife, Lyn. I'm sure I'd look a lot more like them if I actually worked for a living."

Odella's eyebrow arched. "That's a joke."

"Er... yes, mistress."

The married couple clung to eachother. The husband's face was rigidly flat with terror, but there was a burning spark deep within Lyn's, a spark that flared when the unpredictable coati matched her gaze. "Spit it out, I ain't got all night."

Hem started to speak, but his wife cut him off. "Our son set out, prospecting, quite some time ago," she quavered, voice urgent but fearful. "He's... he's a good boy, and he just wanted to make his mark in the world, and help provide for us."

"Uh huh," Odella sighed, focusing over the curve of hir bosom to work a little bit of dirt out from beneath hir claws. "And you think he's, what? Captured by bandits? Eaten by a Beast? Possessed? Dead in a ditch somewhere?"

"Mistress!" Rico protested, moving back between the sturdy farmer-foxes and the curandera. "That's-"

"You ain't talking to me, they are!" Odella sneered, shoving the silver fox aside as though he weighed no more than a tumbleweed. "Keep going."

The ruddy foxes were both on their heels, but it was Lyn was the first to recover. "He's prospectin' up in the Bloody Foot Hills."

Odella's tail twitched back and forth thoughtfully, and Rico closed his eyes, fully expecting hir typically callous response. He was not disappointed. "So you'll be wanting me to go and collect his remains?" shi inquired with a wry, syrupy roll of hir tongue.

"He's alive," the fox matron insisted, lifting her chin challengingly. "He's young, he's strong, he's... he's a little different. We couldn't stop him from leaving, as much as we tried, but we... we heard what you did for Mativa. They say the invisible spirits that curse items such as those inhabit the Hills, and if anyone could... could help him... if he were... sick..." Lyn's shoulders shook and she seemed to simply run out of words. Hem wrapped his arms around her comfortingly, cooing and churring into her ear.

Odella looked expectantly between the frightened couple and the well-dressed Rico. "That's it? What, he lived his whole life and never heard the stories? Probably too dumb to read the warning signs, too, I'll wager-"

"That's enough!" Rico bellowed, the brief moment of rage instantly replaced with regret and horror. His words echoed back and forth between the buildings on the edge of town, and the lookout tower above them seemed to shake and creak in sympathy.

He couldn't remember the last time someone had raised their voice to a curandera, especially not Odella. While certainly not evil, hir capricious nature concealed a mean streak a mile wide. Normally shi grounded those proclivities by bringing violent and extremely prejudicial justice to bandits and Beasts alike, or sublimated them with drinking and cavorting, but shi had been known to take simple arguments and misunderstandings very, very personally.

When he could no longer go without drawing breath and he filled his lungs with a hoarse, rattling gasp, he was surprised to find he was still alive.

"I've got a few more things to do before I leave," Odella said, and great length, still focusing on hir claws. "If the Work takes me south, maybe I'll make a little detour. See what I can see." Without so much as a backwards glance, Odella somehow managed to fill a curtsey with sarcasm and trotted off, undoubtedly in the direction of the Gossamer Scarf.

The three foxes exhaled slowly, tails sagging. When he was reasonably positive that even hir preternatural hearing wouldn't be able to detect it, he murmured, "That's actually a good sign. Shi... shi didn't say no. They say curandera can't lie, and... well, to be honest, shi never has, in my memory. Shi just doesn't always tell the truth people want to hear."

Kenyon's Diary

Day 17. I'm starting to get a little bit worried, Diary. I don't feel very good, and I haven't been sleeping well, and I'm not hungry, which is the really strange thing. Ma always said I'd need to grow up and start my own farm just to keep myself fed. Now I just look at the little boxes of biscuits and I have to make myself eat a couple of them every day just because I know I probably should, but I don't really want to.

_ _

_Still I feel good about everything I've got up here! I'm going to be, not rich, but there's more good stuff here than I've seen come through on whole picker trains. I've got more than thirty little mirrors, and that alone could keep Ma and Pa going for years of bad crops. I've got paper, real paper, and more little metal things than I can almost pick up. Forks and knives and tools and rods and bits of wire and nails and things I can't even describe. _

_ _

And I've still barely touched everything that's down there! I've only gone maybe a hundred yards in any direction from where my rope touches down, and that cave is so big, I'll never explore it all.

_ _

I miss Ma and Pa and the Scarf. It's weird not having anyone to tuck me in at night. Maybe that would help me sleep.

Odella spent another three days in the Bayside region, but shi rarely stayed long enough in any one location to make much of an impression, or at least the sorts of impressions for which shi was quite infamously known.

More than a dozen kits, pups and foals were delivered in lightning-quick home invasions, at least three of which were named in some way in the curandera's honor. Another well was dowsed to the north of the town, near the Shelf, and the town council was already being petitioned by a handful of farmers wishing to expand their lands or start new homesteads. Injuries were mended, illnesses were healed, and the Black Bristle, a raider operating far to the east near the mountains, was found bound, gagged, bloodied and pleading for mercy on the steps of the Gossamer Scarf.

Shi still made hir presence known at the inn, rapidly depleting the liquor stocks and working hir way amorously through every young, stretchy employee, but hir singing and carousing had been silenced. Shi was, so to speak, all business, sweeping through at random hours, grabbing a bottle and a companion and vanishing into an empty room.

"There's not going to be anyone left in town who can walk a straight line soon," Rico sighed, listening to the inn's beams flex and groan as Odella once again buried hir passions in a mostly-willing participant. "I suppose I should consider myself lucky I'm too old for hir."

Tizanne laughed, not entirely with good humor, and leaned across the bar to rubb her boss's shoulder. "Oh, I see that little sparkle in your eye. You're jealous."

Rico's muzzle flexed and straightened, but he said nothing, staring off into the distance. The Scarf was once again doing a brisk business, even with Odella's repeated but blessedly brief appearances, and those dancing lasses that had more or less bounced back to their original shape were doing their best to keep everyone's spirits high and coins flowing.

"Shi really does mean well," he mused at last, changing the subject. "In the... you know, broad sense."

"Shi does," the barmink nodded.

"They all do."

"Curandera?"

"Aye."

"I suppose they do," she agreed once more.

"And they get their... their 'orders', I suppose, from the same place. The Work."

Tizanne just nodded again, always a little worried when her boss started to get overly philosophical. He wasn't as old as his silvery hue would indicate, and he remained a staunch bachelor because, as he often put it, "What wife would have the proprietor of a brothel for a husband?" Still, whenever talks turned to that of marriage, or children, he would get that same blank look in his eyes.

"It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Somewhere out there... or maybe not even out there at all, maybe something inside all of us, or maybe somewhere we can't even imagine or understand... something is guiding those hands, guiding those actions. Trying to help heal the world."

"I don't think it's guiding ALL of hir actions," Tizanne mused under hir breath, watching the chandelier sway gently back and forth as the entire building responded to the curandera's devastating courtship. "Is Philo going to get-"

"Yes, yes, three days off with pay," Rico chuckled. "The usual."

"Ah. Good. I only ask because he seemed a little... _eager_to volunteer."

"Oh, you hush."

A rather noisome and boisterous handful of hours later, Odella emerged (alone, naturally) from what remained of hir room. The Scarf's great room silenced almost instantly, all eyes focused intently upon either their drinks or the nearest dancing girl. As the still visibly-aroused coati descended the stairs, hir white dress clinging moistly to every exaggerated curve, shi was followed by a faint chorus of half-conscious moans and whinnies from hir room, until the door eventually clicked shut.

Shi paused halfway down, hir contemptuous gaze taking in the sombre crowd. "Someone die?" shi asked archly. "This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Come on! Get up! Smile! Piano bitch, play something!"

For several seconds the patrons shuffled uncomfortably, each wondering who would be the first to obey. Odella solved the problem in hir typical knot-cutting manner by bellowing, "NOW!" at such a volume that more than one dancing girl found herself abruptly on the floor, rather than in a traveller's lap. The piano tinkled awkwardly to life, and every scantily-clad employee was quickly swept up into a desperate slow-dance.

"That's better," shi nodded victoriously, skipping the rest of the way down the steps. Despite being technically fully clothed, it was painfully obvious that shi was slowly re-sheathing, and shi was forced to constantly tug at hir dress to keep everything modest, for a given definition of modesty. "Rico! One for the road!"

The piano hit several sour notes in a row, and every ear surreptitiously angled to take in their conversation. "The road, mistress?" Rico said with faux casualness. "Leaving us so soon?"

"Are you a terrible liar," Odella grinned, leaning hir elbow on the bar, one of hir three breasts resting heavily on the ancient oak and shoving a bowl of salted nuts out of the way. "Yeah. I've done about as much damage 'round these parts as I can handle."

Yes, Rico thought. That YOU can handle... "It's been an... experience, as always, mistress," he said with a smile, a tiny bit surprised to discover his pleased expression was genuine. There had been no unexplained fires, no building-flattening fights, no mercenaries looking to make a name for themselves by bagging a curandera. It had been, comparatively speaking, a rather pleasant, if tense, week. "Where are you headed?"

"Why you wanna know?"

And that ruined the good mood, he sighed. "You know why, mistress," he sighed. "My sister... my nephew-"

"-is far to the south, tempting fate and seeking his fortune and generally doing his best to remove himself from society's gene pool?"

Tizanne growled softly under her breath, but a mere raised finger from Rico silencer her. "Yes, that's him," he nodded.

Odella rolled hir eyes theatrically. "Yes, I'll go and see what I can see, but if he's really been gone as long as you say he has, I'm not going to find anything other than a pile of dust with a belt buckle and some teeth sticking out of it."

There was a choked cry of dismay from one of the dancers, but Rico kept his composure. He, perhaps more than anyone in town, was well used to hir behaviour. "Then if you could see fit to return his remains to us, or leave them with a ranger station, we would be... very grateful. Mistress," he added, almost as an afterthought.

Odella grinned and leaned hir arm around the edge of the bar, blindly but unerringly grabbing a large smoked glass bottle and bringing it to hir lips, uncorking it with hir teeth. "Your gratitude is most certainly appreciated, barkeep," shi snickered, sniffing the bottle. "As is the continued recruitment of such lovely... lovely folk," shi purred, eyes lowering suggestively. "I just hope I haven't ruined them for their future husbands and wives."

"They'll... recover," Rico exhaled, but he couldn't keep himself from smiling again. "Thank you again, for all of your good Work." He was sure to capitalize it, while also trying to cut off any further conversations. While hir presence was considered a good omen, and hir contributions would reverberate positively for years to come, there was a collective sigh of relief and considerably better sleep when shi left.

The coati scratched hirself fairly indecently, hir dress and general dimensions more or less back to normal. He had never seen hir wash hir robes, or even fully remove them, but somehow whatever dirt they became stained with disappeared after mere hours. One of the few strange perks shi enjoyed, he thought.

"OK, I can read between the lines," shi cackled, straightening and slapping the bar hard enough to leave a crinkled handprint in the wood. "I'll fuck off now. Metaphorically. YOU ALL BE GOOD WHILE I'M GONE, YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!" shi bellowed to the room in general, though Rico was pretty sure the lookout towers could have heard it clearly enough.

"We'll... do our best."

"Eh, if that's all ya got," Odella agreed cheerfully, leaning across the counter once more and snagging a slender, green-glassed bottle. "Thank you!"

Rico, in spite of himself and the knowledge he could probably recoup his losses, couldn't help but point to the uncorked bottle and say, "I thought that one was for the road."

Odella tugged at the neck of hir dress, spilling a few splashes of whisky on hir cleavage, and shoved the green bottle down into their forbidden depths. "No, that one is for until I get to the road. THIS one is for the road."

The inn's owner just sagged in defeat. "As you wish, mistress. Be well on your journeys."

"Ah, don't worry about me. Worry about whatever pisses me off."

"I'm sure they had it coming."

"Damn straight."

Kenyon's Diary

Day 25 (?). There's nothing living in the cave.

_ _

It's the strangest thing, I never really noticed it until now, but there's nothing alive down there. I figured there was rats, since there's a whole lotta bones but no meat, but no rats. And no chew marks on the bones none, neither. Rats and dingos and coyotes and slithers and Beasts and ghouls always chew on the bones. Ma told me so, and I done seen it out back when one of the chickens got et. The bones is always nibbled on. But there's no nibbles.

_ _

_Just bones. And not even no ants to carry off the meat, and just leave the bones. _

_ _

It's just bones down there. Lots and lots of bones. Didn't really notice the bones, where my rope came down, but lots of the buildings has lots of bones in them, when you go up a few floors, or go down. They got lots of down, those buildings. I went down five, six, seven floors in a few of them, and there's metal and glass and rubber everywhere, and bones, and not much else.

_ _

I should head back to town soon. There's fur all over my bedroll and I ain't seeing straight. There's more good stuff down there, though, I know it. Enough to last me the rest of my life.

_ _

For the first day, Odella's journey south involved very little violence, much to hir dismay. Shi'd worked through most of hir favorite sins in Bayside, always a good place for hir to clear the old cobwebs out of hir brain and drink down some nice fresh new ones, and blown off a little steam.

Shi grinned and rubbed one paw across hir well-filled skirt fronts and grinned. OK, more than a little...

Shi wasn't in any great hurry. The Work was pulling hir to the south, that much was sure, but the insistent force at the back of hir eyes was vague, ill-formed. Shi knew shi would get a more accurate idea of what was expected of hir the closer shi got, but that could be weeks away.

The curandera grumbled and rapped hir knuckles against the side of hir head, unkempt but still glossy, coppery curls bouncing. "I always get terrible reception up here," shi muttered, fishing the other bottle out of hir cleavage and taking a long pull from it. The burning liquid seared hir throat, acrid fumes trickling from hir nostrils, and the bottle was half empty before shi came up for air. "Fleh. Terrible."

"If it's so terrible, you won't mind sharing," piped a cultured but guttural voice some yards to hir left.

"It's toxic to coyotes, you know."

"It's certainly not doing much damage to you."

"That's different," Odella grunted, waving a paw fitfully. "I'm, whatsit... invincible."

The feral coyote skittered closer, walking parallel to hir but respectfully back a few paces, well out of kicking range. "Sure you are," he nodded wryly, lips moving awkwardly around the syllables. "Remember that time you broke your own tail because you fell off that cliff because you were trying to take off your dress with one paw and-"

Odella flung hir free hand back, sparks trailing from hir fingertips as a peal of thunder splitting the tranquil night air. "Shut it!" shi snarled.

"As you wish," the coyote nodded, somehow managing to walk smugly even as he examined himself to make sure he still had all of his limbs and hadn't turned into a gila monster. "Where you off to, sweet cheeks?"

The coati quickened hir pace slightly, not taking hir eyes off the road.

"Mmmmm, sounds good," the coyote continued. "There's lots to do there. Babies need babying, wells need welling, drinks need drinking..."

"Fuck off."

"I am glad at least the Thorpe's homestead is going to be safe. For a while, at least. For as long as anything around here is safe," he added with a growling sigh. "You know, they wanted to offer you a reward for that. They have this heirloom, it's like a copper-handled hairbrush, and they know your hair often needs a little bit of... attention... and they had it all wrapped up for you and everything, but you never came back after-"

"I did my job and left," Odella grunted.

"That you did, that you did," the coyote agreed hastily. "Fucking porcu-prick won't be bothering anyone for a long time. Apparently he begged to be locked in the cell, and refused to even come out to sign his confession, in case 'that crazy witch' came back. Made quite an impression on him."

The coati cracked hir knuckles. "Someone had to." They walked along in silence for a few minutes, the coyote switching sides several time and giving the impression of wanting to bolt but being unable to. Knowing there was no escaping it, shi went ahead and asked, "Something on your mind, Johnny?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Your body is clearly trying to escape." Shi sniffed the air and sighed. "And has wet himself."

"Well, he just doesn't know you the way I do," Johnny chuckled. "He'll be fine. I left a hare for his family before I took him, they'll be fine."

"That's awfully nice of you. Get to the point before I forcibly eject you."

The coyote nodded, an expressly anthropic gesture for a four-legged creature. Johnny was, for lack of a better term, a ghost. His only real way to interact with the world was to hitch a ride in a living being's body, and he could exert limited control when the minds weren't too complicated. "OK, OK, whatever. Look, see, there's this fox... big guy, like you have no idea, big... out of Bayside more than a month ago. Towing his own wagon. No horse, nothing, just towing the whole wagon by himself. Passed by here, going up into the Bloody Foothills..."

Odella sighed and rolled hir eyes. "And you want me to go and rescue him? You're too late, his dirt-farming folks already threw themselves on my tender mercies and begged me to save him from his own stupidity. Rico, too."

The coyote sputtered, as close to a laugh as that muzzle could manage. "I thought they might, wasn't sure. They're a little... nervous around you."

"Why?"

"No idea."

Odella went for another swig of the bottle, but was annoyed to find it now nearly empty. Shi grumbled and tossed it back over hir shoulder, hearing it shatter just behind the coyote. "If you want some, there you go. It ain't good for coyotes, though," shi noted for the hundredth time. "Their livers can't handle alcohol, not the way people can."

Johnny was there in a flash, though, greedily sniffing the droplets and licking them hungrily from the larger, safer pieces of glass. "Don't... care..." he managed between laps. Whoever he'd been in his corporeal days, Odella had come to learn that he was as much of a connoisseur of fine and terrible liquors as Odella hirself. "I... miss... this..."

"It ain't even no good booze."

"Good... enough..."

Shi left the coyote behind, all but rolling around in the heady remains of the sub-par whisky, and turned off of the well-worn dirt road. In the distance, the strangely organic, molten and spired mound of the Bloody Foothills rose like a tumor above the flat, cracked hardpan. When the sun rose the heat would be cruel, even lethal to those not prepared for it, but for now the air was blessedly cool.

Hir tail trembled, just once, as shi marched towards the cursed hills.

Kenyon's Diary

Day 30 or 40 or something in there

_ _

it was a bad idea to come here

_ _

i don't think i'm going to be leaving

_ _

i tried to get out of the bowl and i couldn't do it

_ _

i can't go down the hole anymore, arms too weak

_ _

didn't bring the right kind of medicine

_ _

lost a tooth this morning and it won't stop bleeding

_ _

it's strange

_ _

blood in my mouth

_ _

and it won't stop

_ _

the most i've eaten in days

_ _

i miss ma

_ _

"Why am I doing this," Odella growled, just one short verse of the mantra that dominated hir thought. Shi kept hir eyes resolutely on hir... well, on where hir feet WOULD be, if shi could see them. As it was, shi kept hir nose pressed against the linen-clad mound of hir immense middle breast, tugging angrily at the rope that bound hir dress about hir waist. "Why am I doing this..."

There was nothing in the Hills that could hurt hir, as far as shi knew. Realistically, there didn't seem to be anything anywhere that could hurt hir, and not for lack of trying. All around hir, occasionally lit by the moon's bone-white glow that seemed to have been filtered through the smoked purple lens of the sky, shi knew there were eyes and claws and teeth, endless numbers of teeth, but all of them kept a healthy, respectful distance.

Shi wished one of them would try something, just to take hir mind off of the Real world.

The stories shi dimly remembered being raised on spoke of two worlds, distinct but overlapping. There was the world of the Seen, which made up the day-to-day humdrum universe of rocks and shrubs and wind and fire and liquor. Most people, the vast majority, were only aware of the Seen, and were usually lucky enough to live their entire lives without experiencing anything different.

Over and above and around all of that, though, was the Real world, and it was here that the curanderae truly lived and, on infrequent but unavoidable occasions, died. A curandera's eyes took in both worlds simultaneously, which took years of training to separate and understand. Odella looked at a nearby shrivelled, blackened cactus, and Saw not just a fine latticework of poisonous spines and stored moisture, but the passage of the cactus backwards in time to a seed, and forwards in time to when it would someday be devoured by a larger and clearly indiscriminate Beast of some sort. Shi Saw all the animals that had died by its spines, shi Saw when a scorpion had wintered within its flesh, and just on the periphery of hir vision shi could See the cactus's achingly slow awareness of Odella hirself.

And that's just a cactus, shi winced, staring back at hir bosom and very, very deliberately not at the Hill itself. Only a cactus... just a stupid cactus...

_ _

A few miles into the Hills, and shi could sense the presence below the mount with more than just hir eyes. It pressed against hir fur like an oppressive weight, and on any other day shi would have turned back. Spirits seemed to seep out of the sand, wisps and fragments, no more cohesive and malicious than raindrops, but unnerving nonetheless. Shi could sense the age in them, thousands of years, many thousands, wandering adrift and mindless.

"Shoo," shi grunted, waving them away from hir face. "Fuck off."

One footpaw in front of the other, shi climbed into the Hills, trying to ignore the strangely alive stone spires and the twisted, mutated, half-dead critters that inhabited them.

"Hate walking," shi groused, ignoring the distant soreness in hir pads. "But I ain't gettin' up there the fast way. Not twice."

Shi could Sleep Walk and find hirself at the top of the Hills at dawn, but lowering hir defenses for long in such an eldritch location wasn't safe, even for hir. Shi could Walk Above The World and be at the top of the Hills in minutes, from a certain point of view, but shi'd done that just within sight of the Hills before and fought nightmares for a week... actually doing it ON the Hills? Unlikely.

"Stupid feet."

A dozen times, shi made the decision to just turn around and head back down the barely-visible rocky path. Shi was only in Bayside every few years, that would be more than enough time for them to come to terms with their son's stupid, pointless and yet utterly inevitable death. It would be simple enough to tell them that he... that he... what, exactly? Shi couldn't lie.

Oh, a lie of omission is one thing, and shi could tie the truth up in knots so dense that people who actually knew the truth could find their minds changed, but shi wouldn't be able to say shi'd actually found him, actually seen him.

"Not that there'll be anything left to see," shi muttered. "A month up here? Yeah, right."

A dozen times shi'd sworn to turn back, and a dozen times shi found hirself resolutely heading east, higher up into the disorienting, spired mound of the Hills.

"This is bullshit," shi spat, glancing up into the sky to make sure the stars weren't doing anything unusual (which was not out of the question, in this place) and then back at hir bust. "Even with hir Sight blocked by hir own not-entirely-natural flesh, shi could make out the off-green, glowing innards of the Hills, a sun-burnt afterimage on hir retinas that shi couldn't seem to blink away. "Hate this place."

Odella had worked out a good not-quite-lying speech to give to Ma and Pa Fox when shi returned to Bayside, something that shi was fairly sure would satisfy them or at least mollify them enough for hir to make good hir exist, when shi found hirself cresting a loose gravelly ridge and heading down into the small, scooped-out valley at the Hill's apex. The Spire was just as shi remembered it, a rocky eruption clawing madly towards the sky, casting a moonshadow across the slimy black spring that burbled out of the ground halfway up the slope and drained into the cave at the Spire's base.

And there, set up next to the Spire, was a yellowed canvas tent anchored securely to the side of a wooden wagon. A rock-ringed firepit sat cold a few feet away from the tent's loose-hanging flaps. Smaller tarps were set up in a methodical pattern, thrown over hidden mounds and held down at the corners by rocks. Odella lifted up one corner and found hirself staring at a jumbled stack of cutlery, enough for everyone in Bayside. Another tarp concealed roughly-sorted stacks of paper and cardboard. A third was nothing but tough-looking boots in all manner of shapes and sizes.

"Riches," shi chuckled. "Practical boy, at least."

Shi straightened and walked towards the tent, hope not exactly waving a brightly-colored flag in hir breast. Hir ears could detect a heartbeat at twenty paces, and the inside of the canvas pup was as silent as a tomb, and looked as though it hadn't been used in quite some time. Clothes were stacked and folded nearly, however, and the bed was made.

Shi blinked, feeling the smoke-like stinging in hir eyes whenever hir gaze passed over a cursed item. Shi couldn't directly see whatever it was that poisoned the air, poisoned the water, had poisoned Mativa, but shi could sort of detect the lack of something vital, something important that _should_have been there. The curse, as it was known, spread from physical objects to other physical objects, and sometimes to living flesh, rotting it out from within. Rumors said that, in the ancient days, great weapons had been wielded, obliterating entire cities with the curse and preventing those lands from ever being settled again.

Odella shifted hir weight and glanced down, through the rock beneath hir feet, and shuddered.

"Ain't no-one here," shi nodded gruffly, straightening up and stepping back out into the warm night air. "I did my job. Did what I promised. Hell, I didn't even promise nothing, I just did this 'cause I felt sorry for 'em. More than I needed to do. I'm done."

The coati set hir jaw and started back up the tiny bowl valley, hoping to be well on hir way before the sun rose...

... when shi felt the Tug, hir head turning towards the Spire.

"Oh no," shi moaned, digging hir toes angrily into the rocky soil. "Oh, no. Fuckin' _kidding_me! I ain't going down there..."

Two extremely reluctant steps, then three, then four, towards the Spire.

Odella threw back hir head and screamed at the heavens. "I AIN'T GOING DOWN THERE, YOU FUCKIN' HEAR ME?! I AIN'T AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! NO!!"

Hir claws were sinking into hir palms, drawing thin trickles of blood, as shi approached the cave at the base of the Spire. Shi knew it well. Far too well. More than shi'd ever wanted to. Hir heart pounded in hir chest, hir tail puffing and twitching viciously behind and above hir. Sparks danced from rock to rock around hir as shi strode on, the curandera summoning what power to hir defense as shi could find in such a barren, alien landscape.

At the mouth of the cave shi stumbled, nearly taking a knee before regaining hir balance.

"I ain't... going down there..." shi hissed, blinking away a tear. "I... ain't..."

The inky darkness of the cave existed in the Seen world as well as the world of the Real, but through hir rage and terror shi made out something different this time. A dim, pulsing glow towards the back of the cave gave hir pause, and shi could on the outer periphery of hir senses detect a wheezing, gasping, labored breath.

"If you're down the hole, I ain't gettin' ya," shi told no-one in particular, stepping into the cave.

As it turned out shi didn't need to, and shi thanked the Work and the Way profusely for that tiny mercy. The glow was coming from a small metallic device, hardly more light than a candle could throw, which was illuminating a tableau Odella hadn't expected to see. A thin blanket was spread out on the cave floor next to an iron piton that anchored a thick, heavy rope. The rope disappeared down into the hole, but shi didn't spare it a second glance.

Shi knelt by the huge fox's side, touching one fingertip to his gaunt, sunken face, but hir attention was on the book he held open with one paw, a charcoal pencil having fallen just out of reach.

"Last day," shi read softly. "At least it doesn't... hurt."

Odella took in the fox's unreal size. Were he capable of standing he'd nearly double hir height, and before he had begun to devour himself from within the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his chest told hir he'd have weighed more than a good draft horse. There was no right in this world that should have allowed him to survive this long in the Hills, but whatever had given him such tremendous strength had managed to sustain him for this long.

Shi wiped a finger across his sweating, ice-cold forehead, and took half of the fur there with it.

"I'm glad it doesn't hurt," shi sniffed sadly, bending low to touch hir nose to his.

"Rrrrrrhe," the ghoulish fox wheezed, managing just enough power to shift his weight and roll onto his back.

Odella, shi who had Walked Above The World, shi who had slain the Beasts with hir bare paws, shi who had faced down bandits and gangs and entire chaotic tribes, felt hir jaw go slack with shock.

"Huh," shi mused, gathering the colossal but bone-thin fox into hir arms as if he were no more than a pile of bound wooden poles and rising to hir feet. "Looks like you made me a liar after all."

The sturdy camping cot was quite large, but Kenyon's knees hung off the bottom regardless. Getting him back to the tent had been simple enough, and shi found that with something to actually occupy hir attentions, it was considerably easier to ignore the strange, surreal surroundings, especially the apparitions that kept wandering through the tent's canvas walls.

Shi spent nearly an hour sitting on one of the many crates strewn around the tent, arms wrapped around hir bust, just... staring at him while he slept. His overalls hung comically loose on him, evidence of just how much weight he'd lost, and there was a light dusting of shed fur everywhere. Shi wanted to slap some sense into him for not leaving at the first sign of danger, or maybe just for settling here in the first place, but shi didn't think he'd survive even one blow.

Blood flecked his cheeks, particularly where his toothy maw sported new gaps, and red bubbles foamed and popped from his nostrils when he exhaled. His eyes, when they were open, were shot through with crimson, and even his cheeks were streaked with bloody tears. Odella had never seen a case quite like this. Mativa's wound had been easy enough to spot, a little ball of emptiness where her necklace had rest against her chest, but this fox... the evidence of the curse was everywhere. Even the little brass buckles on his overalls were contaminated.

"What am I going to do with you," shi sighed in resignation, thumping hir head against hir bosom. He wouldn't survive a trip back down the hill, that was pretty obvious. The sun was rising above them, and the full fury of the day's heat would steal what little life force remained; being tucked into the back of the cave, actually lacking the strength to crawl back to his tent, had likely saved his life.

Kenyon continued to breathe, in defiance of all probability. Every now and then his head twitched, eyes rolling drunkenly, and Odella thought he might have been aware of hir, which would be a small miracle.

As the temperature within the tent steadily increased, the sun rising higher into the sky and burning mercilessly, Odella made up hir mind. "Well, bucko," shi said brightly, standing up and rubbing hir palms together, "there's only one way to keep you alive until night time. I work better at night."

Shi untied the rope around hir waist and bundled it up, placing it carefully on hir crate. The dress followed, which involved quite a bit of wriggling and twisting before shi could lift the enormous garment over hir head. Shi snapped it out with a practiced motion of hir wrists and folded it neatly with the rope.

"You know, _most_men are a little more appreciative of this," shi winked, sashaying closer to the bed. "I once snapped a wounded soldier out of a coma just by stripping. Nothing? Not even a wiggle?"

The emaciated fox gurgled and wheezed, one toe twitching.

"Eh, your loss," shi grinned, more for hir own benefit than for his. "Here, scootch over..."

Paws moving with the utmost grace and care despite hir blunt words, shi managed to insinuate hirself into his cot with him, though a good deal of hir backside hung over the edge. Hir body was not built for confined spaces, and shi was absolutely not averse to making more room when the mood struck hir, but shi had no such luxury here. Shi was a healer, and shi had a patient. Shi still didn't give him half a chance of surviving to the next sunup, but when shi spoke to his parents again, shi wasn't going to be able to say say shi didn't try.

One palm sliding across his trembling belly, the other caressing his hair, shi tried to snuggle up to him without jostling him. His fevered shaking calmed somewhat as shi drew his pain into hir body, sought out the sores and ruptures and failures which were putting him in the most immediate danger. Almost instantly shi stiffened and hissed, feeling blooms of agony sprouting all over and throughout hir own body, but they were nothing shi was not prepared to accept, and had not accepted a hundred times before.

His rattling gasps soon sounded almost normal again, but shi knew that was just wishful thinking. Shi had, at most, cleaned the surface of a wound that festered down to the bone.

Shi reached back and beneath the bed, and drew forth the small knife that had been left there. "You're a big boy," shi yawned, stretching slightly as shi tried to supplant his injuries with hir own energy. Shi cut the straps of his coveralls free and pulled the worn-out fabric back, revealing his broad but badly shrunken chest, and placed the knife against his sternum."You rest... if you're still here at sundown, I'd just like to apologize in advance for what happens next."

The dying prospector whuffed once, whimpered, and then fell back into the steady rhythms of sleep. Not having properly napped for the better part of a week hirself, Odella soon joined him.

It was hir own fault for daring to sleep in this place, shi knew, but there was nothing else for it. Shi couldn't work, not the way shi needed to, while shi was awake, and shi needed to recover at least a little of hir strength.

While hir body lay motionless in the world of the Seen, hir spirit was free to roam in the Real world... and shi had a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, it was a lot harder to ignore the violently eldritch nature of the Hills when hir spirit roamed, and now the wisps and strands of psychic energy were more than just annoying. Hir discorporeal form didn't have arms or legs, exactly, but the meandering phantasms were bumping and jostling hir nonetheless.

And with every psychic contact, shi picked up fragments of who or what those phantoms had been, how they had lived, and how they had died, which was universally described as 'not well'. Flashes of blinding light, searing flame, a shockwave so loud the brain barely had time to register it before the eardrums burst.

Shi shuddered, or shi would have if shi'd actively possessed a body, and continued on hir work.

Odella reached into Kenyon's body, drawing the curse out of his flesh and bones, though it was like trying to draw air out of a paper bag. Shi could sense the tainted matter, shi could feel the repulsive force it exerted in both worlds, but it radiated and flowed and seemed to stick everywhere it wasn't supposed to.

Much easier to do was drawing it out of the rocks and metal and pilfered treasures around them; it practically leaped at the chance to do that. Shi took the vile energy into hir spirit, isolating it much as shi had with Mativa's charm, although this was more akin to a contaminated pendant the size of the Gossamer Scarf. There was always more, so much more of the curse available, flowing up and out of the unholy graveyard deep beneath the Hills, but it moved slower through the rocks than through air, or flesh, and soon the only real source in the immediate area was Kenyon himself.

There was no sun in the Real world, but there was a moon, something that had always puzzled Odella. Shi peered through the ghost-like walls of the tent and through the strange world beyond and saw the bone-white, intricately-detailed sphere rising over the horizon.

Almost time, shi thought, hir words echoing around hir in colors and waves. Below hir, the fox's body glowed like a black bruise, pierced only by the blazing incandescence of the knife at his chest, the knife that now held the lion's share of the curse that had infected his body. Metal, for whatever reason, could hold onto the curse for centuries and never seemed to grow any less potent. It would work best with this sort of poisoning to have the original source handy to draw the curse back into, but Kenyon had been poisoned by the air, the water, the rocks, everything. It was like trying to save a drowning man while he was still at the bottom of the sea.

Hir eyes popped open and shi gasped, jerking on the cot and jostling hir feverish companion. After the Real world, it was sometimes a shock to be back in the merely Seen; the tent was dark and cool, a gentle breeze blowing through the open flaps. Were it not for the hundreds of square miles of toxic badlands surrounding them, it might almost be a pleasant camping trip.

Shi purred softly in the darkness, running hir paws across his body curiously. His limbs were still at last, though shi knew that was because he now simply lacked the strength to even tremble.

"Still here," shi breathed, nuzzling his cheek with hir nose and dismayed to find his temperature was now worryingly low rather than worryingly high. "You just need to hold on a little bit longer, big fella."

Digging through his possessions, both in the tent and in the wagon, shi eventually came up with two small casks of water. Shi clucked hir tongue in disappointment, dismayed that shi had somehow found the only prospector in the entire world that didn't keep a better supply of beer or liquor than water; either one would be a better disinfectant, and shi wouldn't say no to a drink right then.

Using scraps of his blanket, which were now about as safe and sanitized as anything in camp, shi used one of the casks to carefully wash the fox down, daubing the blood from his muzzle and the smears of mud and sweat from his body. Shi rumbled appreciatively as shi worked, although he was not what shi would generally consider hir type; he was young and strong and based on his current situation he was clearly not especially bright, but the randy coati was more fond of the more slender, waifish types.

"Still... if you pull through..." shi smirked, washing down his legs, squeezing out the filthy cloth and dunking it into the fresh water once more. "I know some ways you might say thanks."

In the cool night air, his fur clung to his flesh and highlighted just how lean he had become; folds and clumps of loose-skinned fur were plainly visible around his waist, his thighs, his broad shoulders. Enough hairs had come free during his bathing to make a regular-sized fox, shi noted. His fingers and toes were twitching now, and shi wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. In hir experience, no-one had survived this sort of exposure, certainly not for so long. This was new territory.

"I might have to write this down, if it works," shi conversed while shi worked, moving hir paws palm over palm, back up his body. "Your pulse is still regular, that's good. Your eyes don't seem to have any permanent cataracts, that's kind of a miracle all by itself. It's probably going to take you a good year to regrow all this fur, but hey, if I collect enough of it you can make a sweater out of it to keep you warm, so that's something, right?"

Squeezing with hir skilled, powerful fingers, shi was supporting his heart's faint, pathetic beats by manually forcing the blood through his veins. "You've got a lot of tension in your extremities," shi continued, hir breasts caressing up one side of his body when shi reached across the cot. "You should really try to drink more soothing teas, maybe enjoy some more sunrises. Far too tense. Prospectors always work too hard."

A tepid, keening moan escaped his lips, and Odella nodded. "I know, this probably hurts like hell, but look at it this way... pain means you're alive." Shi heaved a sigh. "That hardly ever reassures anyone. The truth is usually ugly and scary and painful. Story of my life, right?"

On some level, shi knew shi was procrastinating and shi kicked hirself for it. Shi stood up and took in the sprawling, cadaverous Kenyon, and the gleaming knife at his chest that had acquired an ethereal, off-blue radiance. Fifty-fifty chance, shi thought sadly. Though now maybe I'm just lying to myself.

The cot creaked angrily as shi straddled his hips, hir own vastly larger maleness weighing heavily against his lower belly. He whined again, stringy muscles pulling and twisting beneath hir. "Shhhh," shi consoled, reaching around hir bust to pick up the small knife. The moisture that remained on hir paws flashed to steam in an instant, hissing angrily. Shi frowned uncertainly. "I'm pretty sure that's supposed to happen..."

Shi could sense that the curse still flowed through his body, his blood a toxic river that continuously defiled whatever shi could repair, however briefly. There was only one way to purify someone this far gone, and while shi had worked out the theory quite some time before, this had been hir first chance to properly see it in action.

Hir hands shook, just for an instant, and shi clenched hir jaw resolutely. "To heal the river, the source must be cleansed," shi intoned, gripping the knife so hard hir knuckles popped, the searing hot steel flexing and bowing under the crushing pressure. "This is going to feel... a little weird."

With one final breath to prepare hirself, and wishing shi could make hirself and hir intentions properly understood by the helpless and swiftly-fading fox, shi focused all of hir Will into the knife and drove hir arms down, plunging the blade through his chest and into his heart.

In the Seen world he hardly reacted at all, jostled back and forth by the impact, but in the Real the ghost-like blur of his Self struggled to wrench itself free from its physical body, howling and screaming silently but pinned as securely by the blade as a fly. The streaks of greenish- blue that tarnished the pristine white apparition, and the voids and gaps that represented the curse itself, swirled and flowed angrily, but where they passed through the blade they were lessened.

Odella clenched hir eyes shut, working not with hir eyes but with hir mind. His heart was almost completely bisected, and it was taking all of hir focus to keep it pumping, muscles contorting around the razor-sharp blade, closing wounds even as others opened. More and more of the baleful poisons were drawn into the blade, cauterizing the flesh and causing tiny eruptions of flame where it touched his fur.

"Sorry," shi winced, breathing hard, sweat flowing freely now. Blood boiled out of the wound, turning to angry black smoke where it touched the blade.

With agonizing slowness, the spectre of his Real Self became more whole, the sullied streaks and voids of the curse drawn bit by bit into the eldritch knife. Odella drew hir paws back, slowly withdrawing it from the fox's chest, leaving a sooty, scarred trench up his sternum. His heartbeat was erratic, more under hir control than his, and it was all shi could do to keep it from tearing itself to pieces while simultaneously maintaining the blade's isolation. The contagious pestilence was contained within the metal, at least for now.

Working with threads that were more spirit than physical, Odella managed to patch the fox's heart enough that, when shi released hir iron mental grip, it continued to pump, at least well enough to keep him alive while shi completed hir task.

"Good boy," shi wheezed, clutching the knife as though it were trying to escape, which in a sense it was. "Just... make it... a little longer..."

Hir own body quivering now, tail ramrod straight, hir coppery curls writhing and coiling as sparks danced along hir fur, shi straightened up and held the glowing knife high above hir head. The power concentrated into such a tiny space was difficult even for hir to control, far more than shi'd expected.

But shi didn't need to contain it anymore.

"Fuck off," shi grunted, no longer holding back the rampant destructive forces within the blade, but simply directing them. With a crack like thunder splitting the tiny tent, the sliver of half-molten steel detonated, a blinding azure bolt of lightning streaking skywards. Odella screeched in pain, clutching hir scorched paws against hir breasts and hunching forwards, rolling off of Kenyon's hips and onto the rocky ground with a thund.

Over the next few minutes, hir gulping breaths slowly pacifying, shi pulled hirself together enough to reach up onto the cot, pressing hir paw against Kenyon's chest. Shi practically sobbed with relief when shi felt his chest rising and falling, felt the faint but blessedly steady beat of his heart.

With one final grunt of effort, shi rolled over onto hir back and stared at the stars through the newly-destroyed roof of the tent.

"Told you I could do it," shi grinned defiantly, raising a still-smoking middle finger towards the heavens. "I told you."

And then shi slept.

Over the next week, Odella's routine was simple and repetitive and boring, and shi wasn't too put out by this. Shi wasn't exactly antisocial by nature, but shi found the pressures of constantly being around normal people to be exhausting and infuriating. Secluded by the impenetrable Bloody Foot Hills and with only the comatose Kenyon for company, shi wondered if shi'd found the perfect level of polite civil interaction.

"The sunset was marvellous this morning," shi prattled while shi worked. Shi had made up a bed for the huge fox in the wagon, and enjoyed carting it around with hir throughout the bowl valley while shi continued hir decontamination procedures. Now that he was on the long road to recovery, shi felt that a little sun would do him some good. "You don't usually get those shades of green down on the flats. This place might actually be rather pleasant, if it weren't for all the, you know, certain death."

Using Kenyon's conveniently enormous selection of scavenged utensils, shi was methodically drawing the cursed emanations out of the rocks and into the ancient metal and tossing them back down the hole. It was slow going, but shi didn't have much else to do with hir time, and shi didn't want to risk dragging the unconscious prospector back down the Hills. Returning him half-dead probably wouldn't do him any favors, and shi would be unwilling to endure Bayside again so soon in order to ensure his recovery.

After a week of cleansing the little brown valley and the big red fox, regularly spoon-feeding him from his seemingly endless supply of dried rolled oats, he had regained quite a bit of his former bulk. His clothes were still far too baggy so shi simply dispensed with them, as well as hir own. "So, what do you want to do tonight?" shi asked, dropping another glowing metal spoon into the little bag hanging from the edge of the wagon and drawing a clean one out of hir cleavage.

As usual, the only response was a muffled snore.

Odella sighed and gripped the wagon's yoke effortlessly, dragging it further up the slope. A week of feeding and monitoring, of talking to him during the day and curling up with him for warmth at night, and he'd not so much as opened his eyes once. Shi could sense that his Self was still present, but it was... still. Too still.

Returning a healthy Kenyon might not be as impressive a feat if the fox slept the slumber of oblivion, never again to wake.

Shi kicked the wagon petulantly and set about cleansing another mound of rocks. "You better wake up soon," shi grumbled. "Getting a little sick of rocks. I need a drink."

That night they sat around the fire, burning the scavenged husks of the strange, mutant cacti that sprung up just over the lip of the valley. Kenyon lay on his back, sprawled out in a little nest of rocks and twigs and covered by all of the tarps and blankets Odella could scrounge, while the coati sat cross-legged by his feet, one paw caressing hir curves while the other occupied itself by poking distractedly at the rainbow-hued embers.

"You're a great conversationalist," shi mused, not for the first time. "Really. Most people around me are 'mistress' this and "forgive me' that, and 'I'm not worthy'... it gets so tiresome after a while. Your uncle is one of the only people to actually disrespect me by talking to me like a real person. At least one of the only people to survive that, because he's actually not all that bad. This one time I was cleaning out this band of mercs that were raiding New Jaynestown, using these strange weapons from the Oldtimes, and the leader actually called me a bitch. To my face. It was refreshing, in a way. Of course, though, I had to kill him. An example had to be set. They named that whole mountain after him, mostly because they kept finding bits over the next few days."

Kenyon snored, and Odella nodded approvingly. "Damn right, he deserved it. Killed hostages the week before. That's crossing a line. You can kill bounty hunters and rangers all the live long day, because they signed up for it, but you go around putting holes in people that are just trying to grow enough food to make it to tomorrow? Ain't nobody got time for that."

The fire crackled and popped, green sparks showing Odella's bare body, and shi giggled. "I wish I could learn this trick. Green fire? That's a hoot. Probably from the curse, though. Don't think people would appreciate me bringing that out of the Hills. Still, maybe some of those cacti..."

Shi turned hir stick's attention to the pot that was steaming gently by the fireside, yet another potful of oatmeal approaching sufficient mushiness to be safely spoonfed to the recumbent fox. "Do you really live on this? For, like, every meal? All I found in your wagon was oats and crackers and water, and all three of them were same color. How'd you get so big, eating food like that?"

Shi leaned awkwardly forwards, breasts piling up atop hir burdensome hermness, and grabbed the edge of the metal pot with hir bare paw, bringing it alongside hir to cool. "Here, give this a few minutes and we can get you a little midnight snack. You're a bottomless pit of oatmeal. I wonder how much coin your folks saved when you moved out."

"Lots," came a whisper out of the darkness.

Odella froze in the middle of licking a fleck of oatmeal from hir finger. Shi didn't need hir eyes to know that his hadn't opened, and his breathing hadn't changed noticeably. "How much did you go through a week?"

"Three... bags," the huge fox gasped, more breath than enunciation. "The... small... ones."

The curandera nodded. "Big eater. Lucky oatmeal is so cheap."

"That's... what... Ma... says..."

The fire crackled for a minute while Odella waved the steam away from the pot. So, shi thought. He survived. Remembers his Ma. Remembers oatmeal. Bloody hell... you've got some grit in you, big fella.

"Who... are..."

"My name is Odella."

Another series of awkward breaths. Kenyon tried to roll over, but all he managed to do was lift up his head and nearly knock himself out again on a rock when it fell. "Ow."

"Have you heard of me?" shi asked curiously, scratching hir chin. It occurred to hir while shi had been decontaminating the little valley that shi couldn't believe shi'd never seen him around Bayside. A fox the size of a small house tended to stick out.

"Ra... ranger?" he hazarded.

"Hah, no. Try again."

Shi could almost hear him thinking. "You... work... for... Uncle... Rocky?"

A tiny smile spread across hir lips. "No, I most definitely do NOT work at the Gossamer Scarf, although I do enjoy my time there. No, I am a curandera."

Kenyon licked his lips. "That's... neat. Can... water?"

"Oh, right, no problem. Here. You can open your eyes if you want."

"Can't... see..."

Odella frowned, kneeling by the prospector's side and thumbing his eyelids open. They rolled around, seemingly at random, and the pupil that drifted towards the fire was just as dilated as the one in shadows. "That's... probably just temporary," shi murmured, bringing a tin cup to his lips. "Here, drink."

With Kenyon eating like a fox possessed once more, and Odella deigning to subsist off of the gruelling diet of oats and more oats, the food supply was running dangerously low before long. Kenyon was sitting up in the wagon now, though when he tried to climb down to help out Odella with hir chores he discovered that he still wasn't nearly as strong as he'd expected and had to be lifted back into the wagon, nursing a new bandage around his head.

"You are going to stay put in there if I have to tie you down," shi grinned, patting his knee as he settled back into the wooden cart. "You hear?"

"You're strong for such a small lady," he noted, gingerly placing his hat over his bandage and pulling it down low over his face. "You must eat more oats than I do."

"Hah, not even close." Despite hir hermhandling of the big boy, he had yet to make any comments regarding hir figure. Blind though he might be, there was no way he hadn't gotten several good feels of hir outlandish curves, and he still seemed perfectly content with their lack of clothes. "So where've you been hiding yourself, big boy? I shoulda seen you before, and trust me, I'd remember."

Kenyon scratched his chin, listening to Odella work and tracking hir with his ears. "Not sure. Always just worked the farm. Pa was the one to go into town. Ma always stayed with me. My room is in the cellar. Ma and Pa always said it was safer for me down there, in case bad people came."

"Bad people," shi mused, kneeling by a gravel spill and drawing more of the invisible curse into a tiny two-pronged metal fork. "Did you ever see bad people?"

"Not myself. Heard them, sometimes. Walking around upstairs and yelling. They take stuff. Don't seem fair to me, taking stuff when we already don't have much."

Odella growled softly. "Any of this recently?"

"Ma'am?"

"I mean, in the last, oh, three or four years?"

"No, not for a while. Ma said the best way to stay safe was to not having anything worth taking. I guess it worked." He smiled, tilting his head back to face the sky and squinting into the sunlight. "That's one of the reasons I'm up here, I guess. Ma and Pa deserve to have nice things again. Maybe if I can make enough money selling all this, they can hire their own ranger, keep the farm safe."

"Well, you're not going to have many utensils by the time we're done here," Odella chuckled apologetically. "But the glass and the paper and some of the other goods should be safe, and more than enough to buy your Ma a nice dress and a big gun."

The huge fox heaved a sigh, the wagon creaking when he shifted his weight again. "I guess I can't go back down there, can I?"

"No."

His fingers moved to the soot-black scar on his chest. "Didn't think so," he frowned remorsefully. "There was... there's so much down there still. So much to explore. Have you ever been down there?"

Odella paused, remembering the ancient spectral graveyard stretching from horizon to horizon while hir spirit floated in the Real world. "Yes," shi managed. "But... some things should stay buried."

He sighed again. "You're probably right. Oh well. I'm sure Uncle Rocky can help me get a good price for all of it. Should be more than enough money to help Ma and Pa get through the next couple years on the farm, and help me get set for my next trip."

The coati glanced sidelong at him. "You heading back out? Prospecting?"

"Of course. You can't give up just because you had a bad experience."

"You're blind, you know."

Kenyon shrugged and glanced back up at the sun. "Instead of a big dark blur I'm seeing a big bright blur. I think I'll be ok."

In spite of hirself and hir desire to slap some sense into the fox, Odella smiled. "Nothing really worries you, does it?"

He shrugged again. "Don't see the point in worrying. If something needs doing, you do it. If something don't need doing, you don't do it. If something needs doing and you can't do it, you find a way round."

"Or through."

He touched his scar again and smiled. "That, too."

Shi swapped out another tiny fork and dragged the wagon another couple yards down the hill. Over the last week, most of the little valley had been decontaminated, though shi wasn't sure for how long. Maybe a month, maybe less, depending on the winds. The spring currently gouting its toxic water into the little lagoon was already looking a lot clearer, but that would take a special effort to properly clean. In the back of hir mind, Odella was already picking out the best place for a hut. Three hundred years wandering, shi mused, surprising hirself. Maybe it's time I finally called somewhere home...

_ _

"We're going to have to head back down to Bayside in the morning," shi noted, kneeling to continue hir work. "We're just about out of food, and I think you're strong enough to handle the trip. You can finish recovering with your Ma and Pa and with all the pretty ladies of the Gossamer Scarf fawning over you."

Kenyon shifted his hat down to cover his blush. "Awww, shucks, those girls don't go for people like me. They wouldn't even look at me the first time I went there."

Probably your uncle promised to fire anyone who so much as smiled at you. Something about his story chimed funny in hir mind, though. "When was the first time you went there?"

The big fox hummed. "The... day before I came here. Not sure exactly how many days that's been. I kinda lost count in my diary towards the end."

You can't be serious. Of course, Odella could tell when someone was lying, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of dishonesty from the slow-speaking fox. "When was the first time you left your farm?"

"The... day before the day before I came here. Took me a week to fix up the old wagon to bring it into town. Ma didn't want me to see that she was sneaking out at night to bust the wheels again, but I saw. Fixed the wagon anyways." For the first time, there was just the faintest trace of hardness in Kenyon's soft voice.

His whole life spent on an oat farm in the middle of the Painted Desert. Sleeping in the cellar. He never even saw a pretty girl until a month ago.

_ _

"So why-"

"-prospecting?" he finished, turning to face hir despite the pale, translucent sheen to his eyes. "We didn't have much at the farm, nothing anyone would want to steal, but Uncle Rocky would sneak books to me when he came to visit. I hid them under one of the stones in the foundation when I figured out even Pa couldn't lift it. They made the world sound so... big."

"It is," Odella agreed carefully. "I been wandering it for... a long time. I ain't seen it all."

"One of the books mentions you."

"Curandera?"

Kenyon grinned. "No. Mentions you."

Shi froze, hir thumb claw sinking into the metal handle of the dainty patterned fork. "Good things, I hope?" shi managed, struggling to sound nonchalant.

"Mostly," he replied, tail wagging.

Shi glared at him, eyes narrowing. "You're enjoying this a little too much, I think," shi growled. "You knew who I was this whole time?"

"No. I knew a little bit about you from a book that was so old the pages would curl if I left it open for more than an hour, and I knew a little bit about you from meeting you. Still doesn't mean I know you."

"Damn right," shi grunted. "Those books never get everything right."

"I'll say. I thought you'd be taller," he continued, his tongue lolling from his muzzle-splitting grin.

"Hey!"

That night they sat side by side, taking turns poking the fire. Kenyon's vision was still a long ways from letting him read again, but he was very carefully and methodically preparing the last of the oatmeal all by himself, using his fingertips to trace the pot's outline just to be certain. "The water will last longer if you use a little bit less," he explained patiently. "The best oatmeal should almost bend the spoon when you're stirring it."

"Yeah, well, at the time I was worried about just getting sustenance into you as easily as possible. You weren't really in any condition to be chewing nothing," shi snarked.

"True," he nodded. "But now I can show you the proper way."

"Oh, you're going to show _me_something new?"

"We all have our strengths," he said soothingly, leaning sideways and gently bumping his elbow against hir shoulder. "I know oats. You need to stir slower, and give it little breaks, just long enough for the bits on the bottom to brown and get toasty, but not enough to burn. It really brings out the flavor."

"The flavor."

"Yes."

"Of oatmeal."

"Yes."

"You've led a strange life, boy," Odella sighed, dragging hir stick through the embers and raising a halo of sparks. "OK, what color is that?"

Kenyon squinted into the fire, jaw set with determination. "Uhm... purple and... uhm... I wanna say pink?"

"Very good," shi congratulated him, patting his hefty thigh. "You'll be back to farming oats and fixing wagons in no time."

He bent his head down low to sniff the steam rising out of the pot, stirring it with painstakingly deliberate care. "It's my wagon now, and it works well enough. Thinking I might try heading north after this. They say the weather's a little bit cooler up there."

"Still not ready to admit defeat?"

"I wasn't defeated, thanks to you," he smiled, his tail swishing behind him and just brushing against hir lower back. Although shi knew his eyes were almost back to normal, shi still hadn't once caught him ogling hir still-naked body. He'd looked at hir more than once, but just to locate hir; he'd never stared. "I definitely learned a few things, though."

"Such as?"

"If the campfire is green, camp somewhere else."

In spite of hir frustration at his attitude, Odella giggled. "Good advice. The sort of thing most people don't need to be told."

The big fox just shrugged. "The stories didn't say nothing about it. I just thought it was, you know... one of those things."

"Yes. One of those things."

"You making fun of me?"

"No-o-o-o-o..."

Kenyon straightened up, twisting his back and hearing the bones creak and pop back into place. "A week laying down sure didn't do me no favors," he pouted, poking at his midsection. "I look funny now. Ain't never seen my own bones before."

"Could be worse, you know. You could be nothing but bones."

"True," he conceded. "I saw enough of those down at the bottom of the hole."

They both sat and listened to the oatmeal burble and slurp while Kenyon continued to stir it, and Odella had to grudgingly admit, if only to hirself, that it certainly smelled better than when shi'd been making it. Shi still couldn't imagine eating it every day, but it was hard to argue with the results.

"I guess I have to try and fix my overalls before we head out in the morning," he mused softly.

"You can do that on the trip down the hill. Got plenty of needles in your scavenge piles."

"I can't sew while I walk," he frowned. "Especially not if I'm still not seeing the best."

"You, big boy, are going to be riding in the wagon," Odella declared, poking him none too gently.

Kenyon shook his head. "I couldn't ask you to do that. You've done so much for me, and I could really use the exercise. Chance to stretch my legs."

"Well, it's a good thing you're not asking me, and I'm telling you. You're in no shape to be hauling half a ton of junk down a mountain when you're still having a hard time handling oatmeal."

"Odella, I insist. At the very least, you have to allow me to take turns with you when you get tired. I know you're strong, but that wagon is very heavy, and-"

"You insist? With me?!" the curandera glowered. "I still know where the rope is, and I don't want to return you to your folks tied up like an escaped calf, but I will if you keep this up."

He opened his mouth to protest further, but even with his damaged vision he could see that there was no way he was going to win this argument. "Can I at least walk beside the wagon for a little bit?"

"You're pushing your luck..."

Snickering under his breath, he pulled the pot away from the fire and sniffed it approvingly. "There we go. Just let this cool off for a moment, and then you can tell me if this isn't the best oatmeal you've ever had. I heard curandera aren't allowed to lie."

"That's one of the down sides, yes," shi agreed.

Settling back on his rump placing his arms behind him, he stretched once more and took in the night's cool air. "So is there anything I can do to repay you for saving my life? I don't have much. You can probably take whatever you want from the piles."

Odella shook hir head, copper curls bouncing. "No, no, curandera don't accept payment or rewards." Shi chewed hir lip for a moment before adding, "Though we have been known to accept gifts... on occasion."

"Well, is there anything I can offer as a gift-"

"No."

"Are you sure? It don't seem right for you to just-"

"No."

_ _

His whiskers drooped. "You make it hard to be a gentleman."

"And what do you know about being a gentleman, Mister Oatmeal?"

"Whitlow's Guide To Younge Men's Etiquiette And Manneres," he recited promptly. "Uncle Rocky told me it was Ma and Pa's only chance at grandpups. I didn't understand what he meant at the time."

Odella stared up at him, amazed that the naive fox had even made it this far in life. "Can I give you a little bit of advice, based on nothing but my own meandering experience?"

"Of course."

"That book is going to get you killed someday. The whole world is out to get you. No-one is going to help you for free, and everyone is waiting for you to fail so they can feel better about themselves and go through your belongings. People who worry about what other people think end up dying in a ditch somewhere, and they won't know why."

Kenyon nodded slowly while shi spoke. "You helped me for free."

Don't hit him. Don't hit him. Don't hit him... "That's different."

"If that's different, how do I know nothing else will be?"

"Are you always so infuriating?" shi huffed, shifting hir weight as shi prepared to storm off. A proper storming required proper preparation, particularly when one's centre of gravity was so far in front.

"I don't know. My Ma thinks so."

"Fine. Do as you please. Get you back to Bayside tomorrow and you just keep on doing what you're doing now. I'm sure everything will turn out just dandy."

He frowned. "Are you mad at me?"

"No!" shi snapped, rising to hir feet. Shi turned to face him, prepared to give him just a little bit more of hir mind and hopefully bellow some sense into him, but nothing in hir exceptionally long life prepared hir for Kenyon's final argument.

Hir eyes flew open, shock temporarily paralyzing the rest of hir body, when shi found the big fox's lips pressed against hirs. His own eyes were closed and he seemed to be working from rote memory, tilting his head to the side to allow him to deepen the kiss, his lean but still impressively broad chest bumping cautiously against hir three wonderfully oversized breasts.

The crack of hir fist against his jaw split the night and sent a chorus of startled insects spiralling up into the sky, and a moment later was nearly matched by Kenyon's rough landing several feet away, knocking the breath out of his body. Odella stood fiercely, paws clenched and shaking furiously at hir sides, tail tick-tocking back and forth like a metronome.

"What... was... that?!" shi hissed.

Kenyon whimpered and tried to sit up, arms and legs moving drunkenly. "Chapther... five. Th-oothing a... hysterical woman?" he lisped, moving his jaw gingerly.

"When I told you that book was going to get you killed? This is exactly what I was talking about!"

"Thorry."

"You kissed me!"

"Yeth."

"No-one kisses me!"

"Yeth, mithtreth."

"No-one has EVER kissed me!!" shi bellowed, hir words echoing back to hir from the edges of the bowl valley.

The big fox sat up very slowly, ears drooping. "Ever?"

Odella tried to hold onto hir anger, normally not a problem for hir, but it was quickly being supplanted by thoughts shi'd worked long and hard to suppress. "That's... that's not what I meant!"

"What did you mean?" His voice was curious, sympathetic, infinitely gentle, and that only made hir want to punch him again.

"I mean... it's just... I've _been_with plenty of... I just..."

"Hath anyone ever tried?"

The curandera, feared and worshipped for a thousand miles in any direction, unfazeable and indefatigable protector of the innocent and punisher of the wicked, squeaked. "No," shi winced, unable to lie.

Kenyon coughed, licking his wrist and holding it up to his eyes to gauge how badly his muzzle was bleeding. "I apologithe," he murmured, crawling back over to the pot of oatmeal. "I should have athked first, ath you were not my betrothed."

Now being pummelled by the unfamiliar sensation of remorse, shi reached out and touched his cheek. "I didn't mean to hit you so hard," shi confessed. "I was just... surprised."

The big fox nodded. "It'th ok."

"Let me heal you..."

His plate-sized paw came up and, very courteously, pushed hir arm away. "It'th all right. It will be a good reminder."

"Of?"

"Alwayth athk firtht."

Odella gawked at the immense and forlorn fox, and started to giggle. "Athk?" shi asked, mimicking his lisp.

"Yeth."

"You have to be thure to athk girlth if you theek to kith them?"

He turned to look reproachfully at hir, hurt clear in his eyes. "Are you making fun of me?"

"Thurely not!" shi laughed, bosom shaking.

"That'th not nithe..." he pouted, which only caused hir to laugh harder. "Pleathe!"

Shi pushed back against his arm, nearly knocking him completely over when he tried to resist, and touched hir fingertips to his cheek once more. "Please, yourself. I insist," shi cooed, drawing the hurt out of his flesh.

Kenyon straightened, working his jaw experimentally. "Thank you," he spoke softly, keeping his eyes on the fire. "That was not necessary."

"Not everything needs to be necessary to be worthwhile," shi breathed, inching closer. "So... are you?"

"Am I what?"

Even with him sitting and the coati standing, their eyes were essentially at the same level. Shi put hir muzzle up against his ear. "Are you going to ask first?"

He blinked in surprise, but to his credit he didn't open his mouth and dig himself any deeper. He mulled over the implications in his mind for a moment, and then carefully moved the oatmeal pot back towards the fire to stay warm. "Odella," he murmured, turning once more to face hir, noses nearly touching. "May I kiss you?"

Shi pondered making him beg for it, but quickly dismissed the idea. If shi'd learning anything in the last week, it was that although big fox was virtually indestructible, he was still in many ways as fragile as anyone shi'd ever met. "Yeth," shi winked. "You may."

Life had been boring in the lookout tower, which was just the way Regenald liked it. The town had settled rapidly after Odella's fairly uneventful departure, and based on the stories he'd heard in the Scarf that night it had been perhaps hir least destructive visit to date. Repairs were ongoing in nearly all the upstairs rooms, of course, that was standard and to be expected. The Black Bristle's capture had put quite a damper in all bandit activities in the immediate area, and recent spending had been approved to hire three full-time rangers to patrol the northeastern borders.

All in all, it had been a dull few weeks, and that was quite to everyone's liking.

The dusky coyote looked up from his woodcarving project and checked the horizon. "Three o'clock, and nothin's fuckin' happening," he muttered, yanking once on the little rope that connected him to the Post Office. One yank, every hour, and all was well in the world.

He turned the piece of ancient driftwood over in his palms, wondering if he had gotten the proportions wrong. He'd only seen the curandera up close the one time, and it had been far, far too close for his liking... but still, he'd been all but unable to get hir out of his mind, to say nothing of his dreams. The rough figurine most definitely had hir generous proportions, but the face lacked detail, except for an angry slant to the brows.

"I wonder if I could sell this at the Scarf," he mused sleepily. "Probably someone would buy it. Maybe a good luck charm..."

He glanced up again, squinting at where the main road vanished south, and noted the small black dot in the distance. "Well, hello there, where did you come from?" he mumbled, reaching for the scope. "No dust cloud, probably just a prospector. Let's see..."

From this distance it was difficult to make out much detail, but there was only one possible answer when presented with the clear outline of a monstrous vulpine shape towing a wagon with his bare hands.

The rope lurched back and forth wildly, Regenald yanking on it with all of his might.

By the time Kenyon finally trotted into town some hours later, just before sundown, half of the population of Bayside had gathered in the big square, no small number of them already tipsy from pre-celebratory drinks at the Scarf. Rico hadn't been willing to offer free drinks just yet, though, not until he had confirmation. He was, if nothing else, a practical man.

The cheering started when the wagon was still a block away, the huge fox's frame and well-worn coveralls utterly unmistakable. Most of the residents knew all about Kenyon and had known him since he was a pup, and well understood why his parents had been perhaps a little overprotective. More than just his fearsome and unlikely size and strength, he'd been far too trusting, and seemed more than a little dim, often taking several seconds to answer even the simplest questions. There had been some concerted effort to stop him from heading off and prospecting on his own, but it had been generally assumed that, well, the boy was just too thick to understand the dangers.

Seeing him returning now, long after even the most optimistic residents had given up hope, was almost more good cheer than Bayside could bear.

The cheering started subsiding once he got a little closer, however, and the wagon's sole passenger became more clearly visible. When Kenyon eventually trotted to a stop just in front of the town's statue of Rango Djones, the heroic and bloodthirsty founder of Bayside, you could have heard a pin drop. Every polite, terrified cough drew a hundred angry glares.

"Hi... everyone..." Kenyon gasped good-naturedly, breathing hard and tongue lolling. "Gosh, you're... all here... for me?"

With the possible exception of Rico, everyone's eyes were on Odella.

"Hello," the tiny coati smiled, waving a paw delicately, the other tugging at hir pristine white robes.

As though on strings, all eyes then finally turned towards Kenyon in utter, baffled disbelief.

"Are Ma and Pa here?" he asked, chest heaving. His overalls hung loose on him, but he was still head and shoulders taller and heavier than anyone else present, except perhaps the statue.

"They've, ah... been sent for," Rico called from the Scarf's front porch. "You, uh... you look good, boy."

"Thanks!" Kenyon grinned. "I brought so much stuff, you won't believe it! You can have mirrors in everyone's room now!"

"That's... that's great."

"OH! Sorry!" Finally unharnessing himself, he skipped back to the wagon and held a huge paw up for Odella, who took it carefully. "Everyone, this is Odella. Shi found me when I was all but dead. Nursed me back to health. Shi's a real wonder."

"I think they know who I am," Odella chuckled.

"What? Oh! Right. Sorry. Here, let me help you down..."

The crowd backed away as one when Odella was lowered daintily to the ground. Daintily? they all thought. Since when has shi ever done anything daintily?! "Uhm... here, boy, come on inside," Rico offered, standing back and holding the Scarf's famous swinging doors open. "Get a bite to eat. Your, uh... your folks should be here shortly."

"That's great!" Kenyon grinned, tail wagging like a puppy's. "Come on, Odella. You ever seen Uncle Rocky's place?"

"Er... yes," the coati said patiently.

"Oh, right! Well... do you want to see it with me?"

Shi smiled up at him, hugging his arm to hir chest. "More than anything."

The crowd watched, awestruck, as Kenyon and his tiny companion climbed the Scarf's steps and vanished inside, and the sun was nearly fully set before one of them had the presence of mind to open his mouth and say, "Lyn ain't going to like this."

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