Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 118: brought to you by Thanksgiving--so be grateful, fartknockers

OKAY! Turns out I didn't re-post chapter 118, I just accidentally posted up 118 as chapter 114! So it's 114 that I missed! So I went back and posted that up. Sorry yall!

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Sorry for the late update. I got admitted to the hospital and they didn't let me have anything other than the second volume of 'The Swamp Monster,' crappy food, and a little plug-in-the-wall noisemaker that was a step above what they make for babies. But, that aside: Ethel takes Neara to make out with trees and pretend the world isn't crashing around them. And Leopard King drops by to be a mega-creep, so TW if reading creepers isn't your thing. Orson has 0 sympathies.

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Ethel pulled her friend along a path only she knew, reaching into the deepest parts of the forest. Their feet stumbled across once-thorny vines, now shriveled and so dehydrated they burst apart when the women's feet touched them. They walked for so long, Neara felt positive they walked out of the City of Beasts entirely although she hadn't seen a wall since this morning when she and Winston first left the Castle. Gasping over stones, which hadn't lost their resiliency in the drought, she felt like they'd been walking forever.

Soon they reached a quiet thicket, crowded with dead leaves and arching trees too thick to be anything but ancient. Ethel's blonde head stood out against the dead color of the trees, sunlight condensed into strands as she raised a hand white with winter to her mouth.

Any fascination with describing the ethereal scene in front of her disappeared when Ethel's light pink tongue fell out of her mouth and sloppily licked her own palm.

"Ugh!" Neara couldn't help a grunt of disgust even as she watched Ethel do it, then smear her hand across the tree in front of her.

"What? I didn't want to use water to show you, and unless you want me to pee on it or something, this is what you get." Ethel gestured for Neara to get closer, which she did although hesitantly. The bark underneath her friend's fingers slowly pinkened like the tree blushed at such an intimate encounter. The pink turned to red, which grew darker until it resembled blood.

"Whoah." Holding a finger to her mouth, Neara licked the tip and pressed it against the smooth bark. It came back dry, the bark absorbing the liquid, and turned a bright shade of pink. Her friend's mark stayed damp, even as the edges of Neara's spit began to slowly fade to a dull brown again.

"You need more than that!" Ethel stuck her tongue against the bark. The pink moved outwards from her mouth like a glow, the parts touching her instantly going red while the rest of the pink spread like water on asphalt.

Neara edged closer to the tree and noticed small white spots, like freckles, appearing on the surface where the red was darkest; speckles like on a fawn. She wondered what the entire tree would look like, or what kind of amazing fruit it produced to be called 'sweet-crystal'. Summoning her courage, and feeling Inner Shay cheering her on, she slowly moved within makeout distance to the tree and extended her tongue.

The bark felt bumpy, like citrus skin, beneath her tongue and the tip itched where the bark leeched the moisture out. It felt like licking concrete, or trying to suck the last bits of a popsicle out of the wooden stick; you always gave more than you got.

She opened her eyes and the tree fuzzed into focus. The bark bloomed beneath her tongue in all shades of red and pink, white marks appearing nearest her mouth and spreading outward. A giggle managed to sneak out of her mouth and Ethel joined in, both of them soon laughing too hard to continue the experiment. They collapsed to the ground, howling with laughter that held an edge of desperation. In the middle of a drought, in the middle of chaos, they were using precious moisture to bring temporary life to a dead tree.