Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 23: brought to you by divorce

A reunion, a recap, a...ram! And a lack of funnies in the summary. Hey, Aunt Flow's dropping by and being an adult is tearing me away from my warm comfy place, what more do you want? Just play some classic 80's-90's songs or David Bowie's Goblin King pants and you're probably not off course.

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Neara could hear her heartbeat reverberating throughout the house. Embarrassed, she covered her face with her hands and felt them pinned to her sides. Wait, what was going on? Grey light filtered into the room through the mist of morning and she opened her eyes. She still heard her heart, like someone was trying to kick down a door. The fur on top of her felt heavier than usual and she pushed it off. A large tiger tail poked out underneath the overturned blanket. Winston's enormous white tiger form dozed next to her bed and an absolute unit of a sheep snored in the corner, legs twitching as he dreamed. Her hand found her heart, but she couldn't feel anything.

Winston's head faced hers, suddenly back to human form, silver eyes filling her vision. "You should answer the door," he said.

Oh, right. Someone was knocking. She covered herself in her cloak and opened the door.

A leopard beastman, no beast marks visible, stood there shaking. He could smell the power rolling off the house and surrounding garden and keenly felt his unwelcome presence. "Neara?"

"Um... hey?"

The beastman refused to meet her eyes. "Parker sent me to get you. He's returned with Shay."

"....he what?"

"Parker saved Shay from the feral." He sounded disgusted. "She's so dirty though; I don't know why he'd risk his life against a tetra-mark trying to save her."

"Um...thank you for telling me..." Neara said in a daze. After all this time, all the craziness was going to be over! Well, some of it, at any rate. They were still in a reverse harem anime and could be killed at any time but... Shay was back. Her friend...someone who knew that world.

He looked up, awestruck by her niceness, then collapsed when he saw her shining face. He'd heard rumors of the beauty of the female under Winston's protection, but he hadn't thought she would rival the leopard queen. Her gratitude was the cherry on top of the sundae he would never get to taste.

Unsure about what to do in these situations, Neara shut the door so he could gather himself in peace. Winston sat by the beginnings of a fire. "Parker returned with Shay." Even saying it felt weird, words she never expected to exist in her mouth. She turned it over in her mind, repeated it until it felt less strange. Shay was back.

"And you'll go back to his care?" His eyes faced the fire, body stiff like the logs he fed into the flames.

"I don't know. I haven't heard of a male caring for two females. I guess though, if Shay's with him." She couldn't focus on anything else right now; Shay who knew about the Internet and tampons and Nickelodeon, who played Pokemon and used an actual toilet...

He didn't say anything.

The aura of the room changed, sharp and cold, like a moment frozen in time against its will. Neara choked on her breath attempting to rewind time, go back, select another dialogue option, where the hell was the save point? "I guess I'd better go get Orson to escort me then." When Winston remained silent, she walked to the bedroom and tried to find the head under the mass of wool. "Orson?"

He bleated angrily and the mass of fluff on the other end of the animal turned to face the wall.

"Orson, I need to go to the Leopard King's castle and Winston isn't well enough to take me. Could you please escort me?"