Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 35: brought to you by fine print adultery

I interrupt your usual stupid episode intro to let you all know that my co-writer, taykuni whatever (I can never remember the pen name she chose because she pulled it out of her butt and never says it), is going through a really hard time at home right now and is having a hard time writing because of it. It's hard to write when you're so stressed and sad. So I'm putting a note here to ask of you who enjoy this story to please put a comment on here with words of encouragement to her so she knows there's someone who enjoys what she does. It will help her write. She needs the help. Just comment on the story and I'll pass it along to her. If you guys aren't sure where her writing is, she's the one who writes Neara. Now, back to your regular programBecause getting people drunk was always the cheap way of getting a marriage to work. That's why they call it a "honeymoon." Honey was a common ingredient in making alcohol, namely mead. Then and now it was a cheap shot and they should be sued.

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Shay woke up the next morning lost, confused, and so hungry she retched.

Didn't I eat anything last night? And she tried to remember as she turned over on her comfy-comfy bear-fur nest and came nose to nose with a chocolate, sleeping Ryan.

A very naked sleeping Ryan, not even with his pouch. On that thought, she was also naked, with concentrated aches between her legs and scattered across her body.

Drenched in foreboding, she lifted her head and took her first look at herself. Bright purple bruises ringed her arms and thighs, along with reddish marks across her breasts and stomach. Slime slipped from between her legs.

And contrasting to all the chaos was the tattooed head of a panther on the right side of her chest near to where her shoulder met her breast, baring its fangs towards her heart.

Shay suddenly found it very hard to breathe.

Shaking, hurting, chin trembling, she pawed around for clothes and only found her snakeskin skirt. Something terrible expanded in her chest, ready to explode, so she stuffed the snakeskin against her chest and pushed to her feet.

"Curtis?" she croaked. Her legs moved like a newborn fawn's.

She stepped past the temporary leaf curtain hung over the doorway into the main room, which had been cleaned out of moss and bugs the day before, to find stone tools, ashes, and bamboo canisters strew every which way, as though a tornado had had its way with the room.

Memories trickled in like the raindrops sliding in from the half-born framework of the mainroom. Each one caused the shivers within her to increase until she was running for the front door, uncaring of the sharp pangs against her feet.

She tripped and caught herself on the front doorway. "Curtis!"

There were bodies in the front yard. Parker curled beneath a tree, red gashes staining his yellow spotted fur, and a particularly soggy lump of ginger fur huddled between two bushes, still, but at least unbloodied.

She stumbled towards the forest, sobbing and screaming her husband's name in turn. Tears mixed with the heavy rain, washing away whatever ick she'd gleaned from the night before but not the ick in her chest.

She ran away from the City of Beasts, deeper into the forest, catching to trees as her bare feet hit rotting logs and roots. The cold numbed the pain of her bruises.

Finally, she fell into the dirt, sobbing so hard that between the thick rain and her weeping she couldn't catch her breath.

A whuffling sound came, followed, by a sudden stop to the rain above her. She felt a brush of feathers.