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--Claire--

He was right, of course. I knew that. I didn’t want to be her, exactly. I didn’t even think I could be my mother. Not because she was strong or dignified. But because she was so stuffy. So stuck up. Nothing was ever good enough, and nothing ever pleased her. I didn’t want to be that. I wanted to be happy. I was happy, in ways she could never understand. I was happy with him. I was happy beside him, and beneath him and I was happy with the way we pleased each other. She'd never understand. I didn't want to be her.

But I wanted to be stronger. Night after night, Mira and I fought each other while he slept. Oblivious to the struggle we gave each other. We hurt each other, and we made love, and sometimes when we made love, we hurt each other a little more. We didn’t mean to keep it secret, but we were the only ones who really had the energy most nights to stay up like we did. So what did it matter?

I knew it was paying off, I was able to touch his dreams. Sometimes even change them. Formless black, like spilled ink covering a blank page. Swirling myriad brilliant colors changing at my touch, more and more I began to twist them into ideas, into visions. His hungry mind reaching for the beauty I conjured. He wanted a lopunny orgy? I gave him one. Night after night, I let him dream of three slutty bunnies, wrapping their soft, silky ears around his cock, teasing each other with their fingers as they stroked him to completion. Licked it off of his spent rod, off of each other, before one or another took a turn. The way she slowly lowered her hips on him, bouncing up and down with her powerful legs, riding him hard until he rose again in his sleep. I made him dream of the way they teased and groped each other, goading him for just a little more, just a little harder.

I was shameless. It was just a dream, after all. What did it matter that I gave him visions of the three eager little whores lavishing deep, probing licks on each other's cream filled cunts? They weren't real, so who cared that he came, balls deep inside the youngest, while the eldest spread her legs for the girl's fist? What did it matter when they traded deep, cum filled kisses in front of him? He might never have admitted it, but he was as twisted as I was, and his cock always rose to the occasion. He never seemed to remember any of it, but he started going to bed when he felt tired, rather than when he felt exhausted. So there had to be something he kept of it.

Of course, I kept a fair part of it too. Mira and I both did. More than once while he dreamed he was stuffing a lopunny’s hungry cunt full, it was mine he satisfied. Or Mira’s. It was filthy, and wrong, and twisted, and I knew if he ever found out, he’d give me new ideas to fill his head with at night! It was tempting to just tell him, but Mira and I both savored our little secret.

In the mornings, he awoke looking surprisingly refreshed, and more than once he checked to see if he’d actually made a mess or merely dreamed it. But Mira and I were careful, one of us keeping him asleep, while the other cleaned him up with meticulous regard.

Mira and I came to love it, came to love the idea of our near nightly visits. It became more than training, more than practice. The three of us grew closer every day. His affectionate touches more and more open with all of us. He was more willing to touch and kiss and whisper and hold, and all the things he'd often felt hesitant to do he began to change.

When Cocoa found out what had gotten into him, she didn’t say a word, just watched for a little while that night with a quiet little smirk, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

Tempest, on the other hand, wanted a piece of the action. It took both of us to keep him asleep, because she couldn’t stop shaking her hips on his lap. I couldn’t believe how much she squirted. I was sure he was going to figure it out, but Mira was clever, and pulled him away first thing the next morning, making him satisfy her before breakfast while Tempest and I cleaned up the tent.

It got easier with time, and I began to pick up colors, images, feelings, more and more from his mind as we walked during the day. I learned more about him in those days than I had in the year prior.

He loved the color of the night sky just before sunset. The way the first stars began to show as the last blues faded to black. He loved the wind, even when it blew hard. Even when it carried sand with it. He could close his eyes, lean into it and for just a moment, pretend he was weightless.

I learned he actually kind of hated trainer battles. It surprised me. He was always proud of us, but some part, gnawing in the back of his mind lingered to his tournaments, to the kind of gnawing, sick anxiety he felt in the moments leading up to them. No matter how hard he trained, I learned he felt like he was going to screw up, disappoint everyone. That didn’t change when he started training with us. He just learned to feel like we were going to be let down, instead of his instructors.

I learned that he sometimes loved, sometimes hated his parents. I felt for the first time, how lonely he was. We dulled it, took away the edge, but behind his smile, his bright eyes, his cheerful little songs and whistles, tucked away beneath his love of the road, of the journey, there was a disappointed little boy, spending another birthday alone. It had come and gone without notice while we were on the road this year. His parents didn’t call. He didn’t have any friends to call. Nobody noticed, and I didn’t know, either.

When I brought it up to Mira, she seethed. Her ribbons practically worked themselves into knots, until she pulled Tempest in, waking her up from her sleep. Cocoa joined us not long after.

--Mira--

“He told me once or twice about his childhood. The things he was okay to talk about. He never really talked about his parents. His friends. I never put it together before. I feel so damn stupid!” That was putting it lightly. Of all of us, I should have understood. I should have seen it. I knew what it was to have things I couldn’t talk about. To have things I didn’t know how to say.

I felt like I’d let him down, like I’d let them all down. He was my beloved. My partner. My closest friend. I could feel the things he felt, if he felt them strongly. But for all that I loved him, for all that I cherished every bit of him, I had never felt this. Never felt his loneliness.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe it existed. Maybe I just couldn’t let myself accept that some things needed more than a hug or a kiss.

It was Tempest that calmed me down, her hand running over my head, forcing me to stop pacing as she spoke. I was so angry I couldn’t even hear her words. I wanted to find his parents and personally thrash them for every time they hurt him. Every time they let him down. I knew immediately that for just the barest moment, when her own emotions were still raw with learning the reality, she would have done worse. But she covered the raw edge quickly, and instead turned her frustration with them into a moment of calm for us all.

Her heavy hands wrapped the three of us up. She held us all, and let us have our moment, as we regarded his sleeping form. As she did, I saw the rise and fall of his chest, saw the calm expression on his face, I saw what we gave him, not what his parents did.

He loved being on the road. He loved being with us. I knew that. We couldn’t take away yesterday any more than we could predict tomorrow. Here, now, the man we all loved was asleep, content and oblivious. He had laughed and smiled and had a good day, and he loved each of us very much.

“It’s not enough.” I said, unable to put everything else to words. “I want to do something special for him. I need to.”

“We need to.” Tempest agreed, as she let us go. “We just need to figure out what.”

--Cocoa--

I reckoned there was a whole world inside that boy I ain’t never guessed at. Never thought much of him bein’ a kid, what his life was like ‘fore I met him. Hearin’ from Claire made it seem like his parents didn’t care much for him, an’ that he hurt an awful lot for it.

I couldn’t rightly say one way or another. I knew my ma was who she was, an’ ain’t never got too much coddlin’ from her, but it was hard to be any kinda hurt when I had a hundred aunts, cousins, siblings, an’ always had someone come round to see how I was.

He didn’t have nothin’ like that. An’ the more they talked, the more I came to find out that before he met Claire, his punches and kicks were all the friends he really had. Little wonder he was so good at them, then.

They agreed they wanted to do somethin’ special for him, an’ I reckoned it was a fine gesture, but when it came time to figure up what we were gonna do, I was about as useful as wet straw for makin’ a fire.

All I could think was to just talk to him, really talk to him. More’n just trainin’ or lovin’, or all the usual how d’ya do we got up to. For all we were still learnin’ about him, I knew that had to work both ways. Had to be somethin’ we could do to help him understand it was okay to tell us how he felt.

I reckoned it’d be a fine start, an’ Claire started schemin’ with Mira about the rest. That night, I snuck into his sleepin’ bag, an’ held him awful close while he slept. If he didn’t have family to look after him, that meant we were it.

If he needed mama, I’d be mama. I’d be any damned thing I could, if it’d help him feel better.

--Tempest--

For just a moment, all I felt was the want of blood on my claws. They were his parents, and for just a moment, I wanted to tear into them. I wanted to bite and gouge and rake and tear and scream and feel my fur matted with what was left of them. For just a moment, I wasn't quite myself. It was almost as if I were watching myself from the other side of the room. For just a moment, I was so angry I couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing through my head.

It didn’t last. I wouldn’t have acted on it. Probably. But for just a moment, I would have given anything to turn back time and fix it. Make them acknowledge him. Make them love him. Make them care.

He loved us with all his might. He loved us with everything he had. He set aside every hurt, every worry, every doubt, all his pain. Again and again, he took up the burdens we could have carried, simply so that we didn’t have to.

He was always that way, and in that moment, it made me see red. How could they neglect someone so sweet, so gentle? How could they just leave him? Forget him?

He worried, every day he worried. He fussed at every little scuff and scratch we got, checked on Cocoa whenever she walked with us, set up the tent alone in the rain just so Claire could keep a little dirt out of her fur. That was who he was. That was the kind of person he was.

The kind of person they didn’t think was worth remembering. The kind of person they were too busy for.

They were his parents, and for just a moment, I wanted to make an orphan of him.

For a moment, I heard my mother’s laughter, felt her familiar touch when I closed my eyes and breathed. Her light, her warmth. Her kindness. We were … in many ways we were night and day. She taught me better. She believed better of me, and so did he.

… And so did he. The anger was gone, it didn’t matter.

A strong mate… that’s what he was, and that’s what I needed to be for him. That’s what we all needed to be for him. Mira was right. We needed to show him. We needed to show him what he meant to us, to all of us. To celebrate him. Maybe not the day he was born, exactly… but that we treasured him just as much as he did us.

“We need to. We just need to figure out what.” My reply to Mira had been automatic, it almost felt like someone else had said it.

Mira was right, and that meant we had a lot of work to do.