Masquerade Rogue

Chapter II ~ A Rude Awakening

The sun was deep in the sky when Mara woke with yelps and screams splitting into her skull. She opened her eyes. “Oh...Dodger! I’m sleeping!” Her body ached, as if it had been stretched multiple times into different positions. She sat up, groaning. “That is the last time. I will. Ever. Run.”

Dodger continued to howl, but this time, Mara could make out words. “By my bone, what is going ON?”

“Wait...what?”

"Mara, what's all the yelling about?" Merle groaned, also hearing screams and yells. With her back turned to her sister, she had no way of knowing that Mara wasn't the one who was screaming. Merle moved to press her hands to her ears, but her arms, which were very sore along with the rest of her body, didn't seem to work quite right. "Am I dreaming?" The groggy girl asked, scrunching her eyebrow as she flailed her arms about in confusion.

“Merle?” Confusion swirled through her brain as she tried to make sense of the sight before her.  Her eyes were so blurry, it was like they had never been opened. “Gosh, where are my glasses? Merle, Dodger’s talking to me. I think I hit my head or something...” She blinked a few times, letting the world come into sharper focus.

In reply, barely audible over the confused babbling of Dodger, there was a sight smacking sound. Shortly after, Merle announced, "My mouth feels so weird." She smacked her lips once more before finally opening her eyes. Everything was blurry, and slowly coming to focus as she blinked. It looked like she was wearing a white, long-sleeved T-shirt, but she hadn’t had one on before. "I feel really weird. Are you sure that's Dodger? Dogs don't talk."

“Yup. That’s Dodger.” Mara replied, staring, terrified, at the dog. His mouth seemed to be making words, and with every blink, her world got clearer than it had ever been since her glasses. “Something’s wrong...My butt hurts really bad...”

"I can't move my fingers! Dodger, get out of my face!" Merle said, shoving the white muzzle and hot breath coming from it away from her with her seemingly paralyzed hand.

"Help! What's going on!? Who are you!? Where's my girls!?" Dodger continued to wail.

“Dodger, shut up!” Mara reached out a hand to shush him. “Why are you talking?” Then she noticed the coarse white fur covering her fingers. “Merle? Merle!”

"SHHH. I'm THINKING." Merle growled, and tried to get up. There was a high-pitched wail as she quickly fell when her legs wouldn't support her weight. Everything felt wrong. The world was still blurry, but focusing more and more progressively. Dodger was whining, tail between his legs.

“Dodger. Dodger! Shush up! It’s me. I’m Mara. Calm. Down.”

“You’re not my girl!” Dodger yelped, his different colored eyes wide and staring. “My girls do not have tails!”

"What-?" Merle began, but she quickly figured out what he meant. What she had been stumbling over in her struggle to simply stand up was, indeed, an extension of her spine known as a tail. Mara screamed.

“MERLE! There’s a tail attached to me! Help. HELP!”

Merle paused her own panic. The world was now focused enough for her to make out a white, fox-shaped animal with a splash of scarlet on their tail, face, and back.

"MARAMARAMARAMARAMARAYOU'REAFOX!" Merle wailed, stumbling over in short hops and belly crawls to the fox-Or was it her sister?  Her twin tripped over the long white extension.

“Merle...Merle, I’m not the only one...” Her sister now had a long white muzzle covered in black freckles that swarmed around her cheek fur. A long, black tipped tail curled between Merle’s new fur-covered legs, symbolizing fear.

Hyperventilating, Merle looked to the now silent and utterly confused dog. "How... do... I... stand..." She said, trying to focus on one thing at a time. Flustering around and screaming wasn't doing any good.

Dodger wasn't sure at all what to say. He had seen foxes before, but never foxes like this.

Mara the fox was pure white and had a patch of reddish chest fur that stretched up over her muzzle and eyes as her cheek fur. More red spots appeared between her ears and continued down her back to a scarlet tip. The weirdest part about Mara the fox was the clip on cuff earring on her left ear, like she had when she was human.

As for Merle the fox, she looked like your typical red fox. Her coat was a reddish brown, her legs were  coffee brown, her tail tip white with a black stripe separating the red fur from the white. The tip of her jaw  was black, the fur around her eyes was dark red, and she had a black triangular mark on the sides of her muzzle.

"H-how to stand...?" Dodger said submissively, unsure what to say. "I.. Don't..." He backed slowly away.

"Wait, Dodger, what are you doing?” Mara tried to move forward, but her head crashed down, sending a jerk of pain across her scarlet muzzle that she could feel in her whiskers.

Merle struggled to stand, and managed to briefly, although it looked very awkward. She took one step towards Dodger, but fell. Scared, Dodger jumped back with a yelp. "Stay back!"

“No-wait!” Mara reached out a paw, but that seemed to be it. Their dog spun around, yelping, and raced away, his fluffy tail between his legs in terror. “Dodger!” Mara watched him disappear over the hill. The sun was slowly sinking, and as panic set in harder than before, she turned to Merle. “What are we going to do?”

Merle closed her eyes and tried to calm down. "T-try not to panic." She said, although her shaky voice was unconvincing. Slowly and unsteadily, she eased her paws under her.

“NOT panic? How can we not!? We’re foxes! Dodger is gone! It’s almost night time, and we can barely stand, let alone fend for ourselves out here alone!” Mara wanted to cry, but as a fox she had no tear ducts. “What if we die? I’m seventeen! I’m too young to go!”

"W-way to be opti-optimistic! If you s-say you're going to die, then you're giving up a-already!" Merle stuttered. Her twin let out a whine, crawling slowly to her sister and collapsing against her.

“What are we going to do...?”

"Find civilization? We can talk, so they might understand us!"

“I dunno, Merle...we’re animals.”

“It’s worth a shot. What are they going to do, shoot us?”

Mara looked away, her whiskers twitching uncomfortably. It was weird to know that she even had whiskers!

“I’m getting a headache from all these new smells.” Merle complained, resting her head on the grass and closing her eyes. Her twin sister was noticeably smaller than her, and her red fur shimmered in the orange light from the sunset. Mara’s head shot up, her speckled ears pricked forward and her hazel eyes shone in the fading light.

“The Festival is starting!” Mara could see just over the hill, the ripple of lights against the background of the setting sun.

“We overslept quite a bit. I really wanted to go...” Merle murmured, opening her eyes to stare at the streets lined with tents, torches and other decorations. Mara’s eyes narrowed, looking closely at the twinkling as a dark blanket began to form in the sky as the sun disappeared farther.

“Well, why not? We should go.” Mara’s tail twitched with excitement. “We could just stay on the sidelines; no one would see us but we would see the festival.  We’ve been going since we were babies. Why should we stop now?”

“Yeah.. We’ll be fine, we should go.” Merle said, getting to her paws. She shook her head quickly, then looked to her sister with a smile.