Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 53: brought to you by chicken poop on a bed

Don't step on snek. Snek wrestling. Scary sneks. Sleepy sneks. Cute sneks.

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Days after Neara's birth, Shay worried about infections. Every day she annoyed Orson with her house check-ups to make sure he was doing everything to keep Neara, not only clean, but her surroundings sanitized. As she marched from room to room over and over, the fuzzy little brown lambs followed, curious and bleating on their knobbly, wobbly knees.

Every so often she'd feel one of the baby snakes wrapped around her body poke its head out to flicker its tongue in curiosity back at the lambs.

Not wanting to stress her healing friend, she'd push back a head that dared to venture out too far.

"I said you could only come if you stay hidden," she muttered. She'd even bothered to rouse the very drowsy Curtis long enough to interpret her command to the little snakes in a language they'd definitely understand. No freaking out the patient and no exposing babies to the harsh cold.

Orson grumbled, but after the scare, he seemed to not have the courage to fight back against her with "but I'm a doctor and a damn good one" as usual.

Harvey somehow heard of how she'd saved her friend with 'revolutionary' medical knowledge and had to be reassured several times that she still had things to learn from him, though Ryan, ever her escort, was all too happy to encourage him leaving.

Three weeks after the birth of the lambs Shay's visits were brought to an abrupt halt by a monster of a blizzard.

The wind roared. Snow lashed around like whips. The only reason the whole roof hadn't come off was because Joseph and Parker had slowly been reinforcing the thatch and leaf roof with more green lumber and the sun had hardened the snow that had already fallen on top into a layer of ice. The hides did nothing against the wind, leading the men to fortify both the windows and door with more lumber. The temperature dropped to the point that even the inside of the house began to gather ice in the corners. Because of this, Shay brought in all the men to the main room, not trusting the slap-dash cabin of theirs to provide adequate shelter. The constant chattering of Harvey and Joseph's teeth seemed to prove this was the right choice, despite their protests that "males are strong." She even brought in the not-chickens, crusted over with ice and half-dead with cold already, and set them up in the now unused bedroom.

She threw more furs on Curtis's den, just to be sure, before holing herself and her babies next to the temporary nest in front of the fire with Ryan. At night, Ryan curled about her protectively as a panther with Parker as a leopard in the rest of the space about her that Ryan couldn't reach without smothering her. Harvey and Joseph, both in their animal forms, tucked in close around those two.

During this time, they kept the snakes fed with eggs and Ryan killed two short birds to keep her fed. But, despite her protests, none of the males ate.

When not cuddling to stay warm or eating, Shay learned medicine from Harvey and, in turn, taught writing and reading to whoever was interested in the room.

On the third evening, even the baby snakes, who never went outside away from their mother, were beginning to feel cooped up in such a cramped room of males and had begun hissing wrestling matches on the floor. Wary of breaking in, since physical combat was a more prominent part of this world, and also afraid of getting bitten, she watched with one eye during her lessons. When it looked like too many were piling on one, she'd call for Parker to separate them.

She had just let her guard down to focus entirely on her lesson, thinking Parker had a handle on it, when a wild, explosive hissing she didn't even think a snake could make moved her to her feet.