Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 55: brought to you by da feelz

Trying to restrain myself from buying cinnamon rolls from the bakery down the street. Dey jist so gewd, and I jist so poor and fat.

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Though she had been told beforehand, it still disturbed Shay how easily the Wolf King had turned away from the body of his dead son. She probably should have been more bothered by the attempt on her life, and perhaps it would come to pounce on her at the most inopportune time, but at the moment, standing there next to her bemused and sobbing friend, she couldn't find it in her.

Because dying was easy. But living with no one caring about you was hard.

She sang through her mother's old lullabies as she bathed her babies that evening. Mostly they happily swam about in the warm water till the stone tub became a whirlpool of writhing red and blue specked noodles.

With the hut cleaned off and better insulated, it was once more just family in the house, meaning Ryan watched from where he stirred the stew over the fire. It was a peace Shay had sorely missed, and sitting here, bathing her babies, in a clean house, with both Ryan and Curtis nearby, she found it an apt heaven just right and safe for contemplating sorrowful things.

Licorice, the one with the black stripe, stopped in his playing to rest his head against the back of his mother's hand with a rather unsnake-like, happy sigh.

"Ryan, did your father not really care if you died like the Wolf King acted with his son?"

"On the contrary," said Ryan. "My father liked me very much."

She perked up and turned. "Really?"

"Shay, there are beastmen who care mightily for their children. Don't base everything off what you see."

She flushed. "Oh, I didn't mean..."

"It's alright, my sweet." He gave her a gentle, thick-lipped smile. "I can not say my family was anything like others, especially having grown up around ferals." He turned back, stirring the stew mostly for something to do rather than because it needed it. "My father was my mother's only mate. She had not the taste for cold-blooded beastmen, and her reputation as a witch doctor and her dark skin frightened away any others. Not that my father minded, but it did make it very dangerous. Thus, he found every son born to be a blessing. One more panther to protect my mother. But even without that, he found much joy in being able to play and be with other panthers. We were rare even then, and while we are raised like ferals, we are not loners as much as they are."

Three baby snakes had tired of their bath by now and she gently peeled each one away from her arms and to the clean furs below for drying. They cried a bit at the cold, but obediently rolled about, ridding themselves of the water.

"That sounds like a wonderful family," she said.

"It was. I don't have another to compare to, but we had a very happy life." He tapped the spoon on the side of the pot. "We had a lot of fun, my brothers and I."

"Did you not have any sisters?"

"Sadly, no. My mother's womb was too weak to handle females. She said something about it being too small. Any female my mother conceived was born far too early and died moments after birth, and my mother ever only gave birth to two male cubs at most." His gaze on her, though fond, seemed bittersweet. "She would have adored you, my sweet. She was always telling us that, when we found a wife, we were to bring her to our mother at once so she could finally have a daughter. She'd go on about braiding hair and beads and shawls--'You gross males can't stay in clothes for longer than it takes to breathe, like I could ever make anything pretty for you.'" He chuckled, but it died quickly and he went back to contemplating the fire, his shoulders soft.