Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 71: brought to you by daughter wars

Pika pika chu chu pika pika chu chu

Three little girls with bright red hair and little leather shoes ran ahead, or ran the best they could on their tottering, short, unpracticed legs. Each wore a dress that tied behind their necks and fluttered about their lower shins, one in blue, one in green, one in an off-white yellow. Scraps from their dresses had been tied into bows on them, the blue around her head, the green around her throat with the bow on the back of her neck, and the yellow about her waist.

Ryan and Parker couldn't get enough of the cuteness. They both scuttled around the girls, instantly jumping in the moment one stumbled on her awkward legs.

"Let them fall," Curtis snapped, though he had done his own share of darting forward when it seemed like one had tripped over a rock. "They need to learn to pick themselves up."

Muir was also enchanted, though when he had drawn near to the girls Curtis had scared him off with an angry hiss, so he watched from the back with the other baby snakes, pouting as much as his pride would allow him. Finding the sad bird once more in their midst, the boy snakes seemed to take pity on him and hissed their sympathies to him. Shay could just imagine them saying 'You too, man? Yeah, no one fawns over us either.'

Shay just smiled, tickled fuzzy by the whole lot of them. Besides her walked Harvey, his eyes to the growth along their path and up the sides of the foothills. Occasionally he would vanish to return to her with a plant for her scrutiny.

This stopped when Curtis's patience ended and he called for an increase in pace. Luna obediently wobbled back to Curtis, who patted the dust off her green dress before picking her up. Sky, the most adept on legs of the three, pounced on Ryan in a poof of blue skirts, while little Dawn became a lighter yellow smug against Parker's tail. Both cats obliged them by setting them on their shoulders, their heads taking up the entirety of the little girls' stomachs.

"No grabbing the ears, alright?" said Parker.

Sky giggled as Ryan's black fuzzy ears dodged her seeking fingers.

"My daughter will have the cutest little ears," said Ryan. "And a little black tail poking under her skirt--"

"Who says I'm making your kids clothes?" said Curtis with a scowl.

"Not me. Like I'm letting you touch any of mine with your cold, scaly hands."

Cutis's expression deadpanned. Then he held out a hand. "Give her back."

Ryan's hands covered Sky's shins and he took a step away. "She chose me. She wants to ride with me."

Curtis's eyes narrowed. He lifted his nose. Something cold and prickly filled the air, erupting goose bumps all over Shay's skin.

Then Sky filled Curtis's other arm across from her sister and a black panther skittered back to Shay, ears back. Ryan gave her a sad kitty look.

"You asked for it," said Shay, rubbing his ears. "Though it's nice not to be the one fought over for once, I feel a little sad that you don't want to carry me."

Ryan's eyebrows angled down, enlarging his yellow feline eyes, and he gave her fingers a hurried lick before wrapping his body about her. This was nothing to shrug off, as Ryan's panther form was the size of a small horse. But just as Shay tipped she found herself somehow falling onto his back. She got comfortable, nuzzling her face into his fur, and they were off.

Around noon their path along the foothills grew more complicated, as the mountains began to encroach on the fields, beginning their wall between the horse plains and the plains that would inevitably lead to the lands of the eagles and peacocks. They were still a good few days from reaching that wall, and another week from crossing it.