Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 111: brought to you by love nests

Because everyone needs a love nest (but Ryan especially, the needy, horny panther), Ash Ketchum needs to get rid of that annoying ass Charizard if it won't listen, baby snuggles is the ultimate soothing technique, and being a little and weak when you want to be buff is one of the most annoying things in the world. Trust me, I know. *sigh* Dawn is the spirit animal of us all.

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It took a while to get everything close to where it had been before. At least a few weeks. In the meantime, Muir and Ryan built a nest in the mossy bowl of a giant tree further inland. Ryan would have rather done it alone, but having broken arms sort of impeded that. How he even got up into the tree like that, Shay was told not to ask. But, Ryan insisted on a tree, for his reasoning was that it had lived through centuries of hurricanes, so it would do for now. Shay got the pleasure of watching Ryan's building techniques come out in full, as witch doctor's lived in elaborate tree houses. Muir was excited to help as well, since nest building wasn't that far from tree houses. She even had a chance to coax the quiet Miur into conversation while he built. She could even say they had a rare chance to be friends.

Sad for him, a week and a half later Ryan's arms had healed and he was kicked away from the tree. Shay really thought the life of a guardian was rough, but Sky took it upon herself to sooth the bird, so Miur didn't seem too down and out.

The little snakes wanted to join too, loving climbing the tree and getting lost in the massive world of branches. But, inevitably, they were pulled back down by their father to help with the main house under the threat that he who does not work gets kicked out of their father's territory, where mother resided.

Once the flexible, woven walls of branches, vines, and sap were up, along with a roof, Muir was called back by Curtis to go on a search for volcanoes, and in short, volcanic ash and rock for the cement experiments. Ryan opted to stay in the tree, happily going about decorating the tree house with all kinds of paints, feathers, and clinking beads made of bones and sea glass.

Soon the entire place sparkled. The moss worked as a natural carpet and it always smelled of rainforest. He even managed to remake the nest in a dip of the tree's wood, cushioned by moss, which Shay found to be the most comfortable bed yet.

The only thing Shay didn't like was that she couldn't get down on her own. The tree was at least several stories tall, and she couldn't help but get heart palpitations at the idea of having one of the girls tripping at the wrong moment by the front door and plummeting to their deaths--or little Asher, who was a bit too little to really get his claws into the bark right and tended to seize up in fear half way up. He was always with the girls, so she started to think of him as a done deal with them.

To appease her fears, Ryan made a net of vines in front of the door that would catch any babies. He couldn't do much for her wanting to get down on her own though, but he didn't seem to hung up on it either.
"It just means you'll need me more," he said with a fanged smirk.

Shay thought she could see the savage beast in him when he said that. It wasn't unlike Curtis's wish to hole her away in a den in the ground.

Even so, there came a little sadness when Curtis finally climbed up one day to announce the house had been repaired, with a new stone roof, and the garden and orchard fixed. She'd spent nigh to a month in Ryan's tree house and had gotten back into making medicines and poultices, mostly because Ryan kept bringing her herbs or hanging them around the house.

But her sadness was nothing compared to Ryan's.

"Oh, love, we can always come back. It's not going anywhere."

But his handsome face in her hands just melted into a panther's scarred muzzle, which harrumphed and pulled away.

"We could always keep our medicines and such up here. It would keep the children out of them." When Ryan just continued to pout, she sighed and leaned against his furry back to whisper in his ear. "It could be our love nest."