The room is warm. Heavy wool blankets and quilts–most slightly moth eaten, and all permanently blended with bear fur–lay across Henry and Judith, his large paws emerging from beneath. She has her face pressed into his fur while he watches her dream.
Since the moment they met, Henry has been entranced by her. It’s in her dark curls, in the cardamom flavor of her scent, and the delicate russet tone of her skin. Some part of him had recognized that she was only playing along when he had stolen his glances. He doesn’t mind, instead delighting in the moments when she made sure he knew. He tries to count how many times she’d teased him, before he understood she was inviting him closer. It’s fruitless, his tally thrown off by the flex of her fingers and the determined frown that disturbs her peaceful features.
“You opened the cut again.” She frowns at the paw. It’s large enough that she needs two hands to examine the small, deep cut. Henry’s pads aren’t rough, a fact that surprises her every time she touches them. Judith smoothes the fur away and studies the injury.
“You try spending all your time walking through the forest without shoes,” he mumbles. He is still shy, still holds back from welcoming her into his life, but he has learned to let her help with the small things.
Judith smiles as she rummages through a small bag for salve, her head shaking. She never expected to find herself playing nurse to a forest creature, much less the Beast himself. When she begins to tend the wound, he leans down and licks around her fingers.
“For the love of decency, it’s not a snack,” she laughs.
“Sorry.” He looks up at her with wide eyes, whiskers drawn back in apology. Judith sighs and lets his paw settle in her lap so she can scratch under his jaw.
At some point, things became casual enough for a friendship, whenever he let his guard down. She found that those days came more and more frequently, despite his wariness. While she spent her time organizing his libraries–a task often delayed by her fascination with the illuminations–he’d wander, occasionally finding his way back to her. Judith would feel his gaze, and often wondered if he saw prey or companion. She was polite enough to never acknowledge his visits, and he was smart enough to leave her in peace.
Their nights had grown increasingly familiar, with fireplace conversations until she fell asleep. Most mornings she woke in her own bed, lain there by his gentle strength. More often, Judith found herself wrapped in the warmth of his bulk.
“Don’t be sorry, Henry,” she tells him.
Inside, she is surprised once again–his coy promise of the interior being better was no lie. Judith found rescued tapestries that had been hung in new arrangements, their stories now assembled into a dizzying story she couldn’t piece together as they walked through the halls. Shattered, damp flagstones made for uneasy steps. Judith found herself clumsy and unsteady on her feet, frequently reaching out for balance, only to find the sudden warmth of Henry under her fingers.
The first time, she was too shocked by his unspoken favor to pay attention. The second and third times, she noted the fullness of his coat and the softness. Judith smiled when she again reached for him and he paused.
“Why did you stop?”
“You keep stumbling. Maybe food and sleep before the tour.” Henry’s head lifts and his whiskers bristle with concern as he studies her.
“It’s just the floors. You restored so much in here, but you left the floors like this?” Judith raises a hand to the yellowed, but clean plaster walls, the dusted and polished wood trim. Everywhere she looked, there was evidence of his effort to make a home out of the abandoned estate.
He smiled at her, hind teeth revealed to make a more human gesture of it. “Something has to be left for the ghosts.”
The estate looms large in the sunlight. Like Henry, the dark stone and timber is patched with vibrant green. Long overgrown windows mark their existence with barely visible impressions in rainbows of ivy. Autumn has brought out the gold and scarlet, ochre and ash, hinting at the lost grace of the sprawling house.
She did not have to come, Henry told her so; the travel to his home was peppered with offers to see her to the next village, or help her make her own home if she wished it. Judith had to argue for a week’s stay, a trial period, she assured him.
She was well aware that her lack of fear or concern made him uneasy. With all she had been raised hearing, she was surprised she felt not even wariness. He had been quiet, and gentle, and when he spoke it had been only to seek her desires. Rather than fear, he’d made her feel at ease, even comfortable. Henry had tried for ominous, but something about his bearlike shape amused her at the outset.
“It’s better inside,” he apologizes. She turns to see him sitting at the edge of the small clearing, several paces behind her. “If it’s like that, people tend to pass by. Most don’t even stop.” In the light, his fur brightens to a handsome chestnut under the mossy patches, and she wonders if it is soft or coarse to the touch.
“My town doesn’t have estates like this. I’ve only heard about them from my mother,” Judith explains. “She traveled before she settled into home life.”
“Is that why you’re not afraid?” His brow shifts and she assumes it’s a curious arch.
“No. You did the work yourself,” she teases.
The new moon presented its own haven. Darkness gave way to a sea of chalk dust scattered across the sky. Where they ran there were no eyes to see, no voices to call out. Only the wind and solace.
A full moon signaled competition and abandon, while the new was for making bonds and confession. Yew had confessions aplenty, but the night had yet to make the path. The pup strolled the meadows absent thought, with eyes to the stars.
To the east, a cohort had begun readying for a hunt. They danced and wrestled near the treeline, yips and barks of excitement occasionally broken by a warning growl, or the rougher barks of veteran hunters. It was a simple chase, a herd of deer ranged the woodstove and came to the meadow during the day. Their movements had been tracked for a week in preparation. Behind Yew, to the south lay the forks of an unnamed tributary. The meadow’s rolling hills shallowed until they became a marsh in the tributary. Deep lines showed the rise and fall of the forks from season to season.
That was where it had happened. Yew still shivered with the memories, foggy as they were. It was supposed to be okay, his first new moon after the bite was expected to be eventful. Eventful was the diplomatic way of saying it. Disappointment had rained down on him in the weeks that followed. Not even the subsequent changes had smoothed those wrinkles. The smell of new earth and silt was inescapable. It had clung to his fur and trailed him home.
Keza is a backwater. The colony was stripped of all tourist value generations ago, leaving the weary moon as little more than a resource colony. Cal can’t help but think about what the moon once looked like.
They sit at Maker’s window, studying the distant line of the sea. A small one by system standards, but the only place still full of life. A twinge begins at the base of their neck, the edges of their vision start blurring, then the disorientation starts. Cal moves to a workshop table and finds the case where Maker leaves rations and medication to ease the transition.
How many years left? It’s a common thought. Maker often talks about how long it’s taken just to bring Cal to this point. Half-finished and still reliant on synthetic proteins to keep Maker’s mods running. Mods that outnumbered the organic pieces left in Cal’s body. Maker had taken an orphan in and began to shape it for his own purposes. Another masterpiece of his theories and suspicions.
Cal watched, from a catwalk in the storehouse, the sales and commissions Maker lived on. A trinket here, an upgrade there. New spinal discs for miners unable to retire from their labors. Knees for young ones trying to keep up with impossible quotas. It was an assembly line.
Maker wasn’t the only mod specialist in the city, much less the entire moon. But he was the best, the fastest. He was also willing to do anything put in front of him.
Just wrote this new piece. Think I’m gonna try to work on it until it’s done. If folks like it, I’ll keep posting updates here.
When Cal said it, the storm had kicked up, wind howled above us until even the sirens had quieted to a faint melody. I didn’t know what they’d said, not exactly. I could guess, but the wondering made my stomach painful.
Cal was already onto the next rooftop, tail still whirling in an effort to control their fall. I didn’t like not knowing things, didn’t like feeling unsure. Especially with Cal. We worked together, we lived together. Ever since licensing, we’d been a pair. I’d never seen Cal before the announcement and pairing ceremony. Once I saw them, I was confused. A scruffy, half-human mod job, still branded with their maker’s mark. I was supposed to be paired with a meathead–someone like Neris, Joely, even Merx. Cal was a grunt, not fit for a pairing.
Regardless, Cal was on the scent. They lunged across the mercilessly peaked roofs as if the city below was nothing more than a padded training room floor. I marveled, as I took the safer line along the water collects, at the fearlessness in my partner. They had only two modes, study and work. Study had recently begun to include exploration of each other, but I hardly knew a thing about them.
The storehouse was familiar. Our job had come with too-detailed schematics of the target. I’d told Cal I didn’t like it. They shrugged.
“This is ridiculous. They’re using us as bait–you see that, right?” I had screamed at Cal and watched those big dumb eyes blink slowly. Their irises went from onyx, to amber, to a mossy peat as some hidden mod helped it to process. I had wanted to strangle Cal. I could have, easily.
“So there’s nothing to lose,” Cal smiled. It was a clumsy thing, Cal’s smile. With all the shaping and remaking of their body, their maker had decided the mouth of something wild, something extinct would suit them. I can’t say it was always a warm look, but I enjoyed it. Cal only smiled if they had a plan.
“Map it out, sweets.” I watched Cal look down at their hands a moment before raising a finger to begin pulling up what they wanted me to see.
We waited, rifle at my shoulder as Cal perched on the edge of the roof. They seemed almost at home on planets like this. Old fashioned skyscrapers lofted above whatever troubled the surface, walkways and skybridges helpful landings and routes for Cal’s big form. It made no sense that Cal moved so easily, their maker had been deadset on creating a brute–the evidence was in every inch of their body. They rumbled quietly, a message for me alone. I didn’t shift my gaze, the clock was running, which meant both of us were being looked through, the Big Bosses recorded every operation. They called it quality control. We called it annoying, so I found time to teach Cal my family’s tapping language. With their furry paw atop my boot, they began to speak.
There’s more shielding than the schematics showed, They tapped out.
How’s that possible? We scanned for power sources. There’s only traditional geothermal from surface stations. More power meant this wasn’t our usual smash and grab. There was something inside the storehouse worth more than currency. Cal’s foot lay still on my boot, but I felt their tension.
We go now, we might not come out.
That’s the job. Wasn’t it your plan. I tried to remember what Cal had said before the final push to the storehouse. It was still muffled, but I’d seen the glowing of their onyx eyes, the creases of their brow deepen, hadn’t I?
“It’s a bad plan,” they whispered. This side of Cal wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was jarring. “Airini.”
“It’s a bad plan to use my full name,” I joked. Cal’s sudden apprehension was getting under my skin. I didn’t need that. I was a sharpshooter. I’m the scalpel, Cal’s my broadsword. That’s what they said at training, and that’s how it’s been.
“Ri, just…let’s scout first.” Cal was practically begging through their well practiced neutral tone. Something wasn’t right, that was obvious, but it was never right. That’s why the Vanguard are sent.
“Quick. Only a few minutes before the weather ships come through this block.” It was a compromise I didn’t favor. Cal’s visible relief only made me more wary. Whatever it was that was upsetting them, they weren’t or couldn’t say. “Wait.” Cal was already headed to a different corner of the roof, when they turned to face me. “Before, what–”
The explosion scorched the air between us. Cal’s clothes were on fire, and their eyes were a color I’d never seen before. No screams left Cal, but I had little time to appreciate anymore of their training as the steel began to crumble under me and my suit began to fire off alarms and transmissions back to our transport. My rifle clattered on the ground shortly before I did, and we slid. Chunks of concrete battered my helmet, snapped off the sight of my rifle. I felt heat again, then my suit began to pump coolant. My body warred with the relief of the cooling fluids as they nipped my limbs with cold before the flaming building could warm me back up. Even my helmet couldn’t stop the brain rattling blows against falling and fallen debris that knocked me out. If there was no mercy elsewise, there was this: unconsciousness.
More of the lovers. A little back story I began last night.
His pack was wild, feral. When the Shift came, the Old Ones came back to the Green. They were a motley clan–the adopted outnumbered the blood relations, but it had yet to cause significant trouble.
With a large range stretching from the squat weathered mountains of the west to the deep forests of the northeast, they were well enough fed that they lived easily. Laws arose from necessity and occasion, rather than arbitrary control.
He was still young when it happened. Later, he would say his pack had grown overconfident. At the time, they were summering in the cool off the deep forests. His family was small–only he and his sister had lived past infancy–but he cherished his mother and aunt.
They were playing at the cenote. The cubs dove headlong into the still, black pool before changing shapes and wrestling on land and in water. She’d just tackled him when her ears perked and her eyes went to the direction of home. Before he could ask her anything, she was off into the jade shadows of the forest.
Her scent and the thunder of her blind charge home were his only clues that something was not right.
~~~~~
It is loud at the ball and her ribs ache under her corset. Still, she begged for this night. A little lightheadedness was a small price to pay for a formal introduction. Gratitude would go far, she knew, if she expected to learn from the Naturalists. She loathed games, yet she found their mechanics intriguing. Four offers to dance had come and gone. She knew to never refuse outright, which left her reserve of cordiality waning. A shame, she thought. The hall was filled with a golden haze for the night, fireplaces the size of small flats delivered sweet cardamom and lemon scents that she breathed in covetously. Tapestries with a thousand histories and genealogies trembled with life. “I fear you’re in the wrong place.” The voice was close enough to startle her. “And what place should I be?” The stranger smiles, “Where the action is.” She moved to stand in front of her. “I hear you’re friends with Domia?” She studies the stranger: full lips painted burgundy against skin as dark and mesmerizing as the moonlit sea. Carnelian and terracotta eyes settling upon her. “Domia was my host for the night, though I worry she’s found something better to occupy her time,” she tells the stranger.The theatre is cold despite heavy curtains and the clank and belch of the furnace. Its stage cracking and buckling with rot, pocked from fallen pipes. The seats had long ago began falling in on themselves and erupting their batting. In the catwalks and flys slunk rodents and pests and birds. Spiders had transformed the corners into lace work masterpieces.
Who they had once been doesn’t matter. He has her against the wall of the stage left wing, her nails digging into his shoulders. She likes it when he takes her here, they are safe and he can open himself to her.
She yanks his head back and makes him look at her. He looks starved. His face is flush under spreading fur, his low whine makes her shudder. This is not the only place he changes for her. He is change manifest. His cells divide and reorder, making his needs reality.
Between her legs he grows hard against her warmth. She smiles at the distress on his face. The tight mouth and knit brow, his fur short and bristling. Moss Brown eyes glint in the dim.
~~~
In its heyday, the stage was a haven for performers of vaudeville and magic, clowns and thespians. She had always loved the mediums best. After a show, she would linger backstage and wait for a quiet time to talk with the talent.
This is her theatre, the performers only tourists. They glimmer and gab, filling greenrooms thick with smoke and perfume.
~~~
She touches him, finds his thickness and guides him inside. His growl rumbles through her. She groans when he begins to grind his hips against hers. His fur tickles her skin.
“Come now, give yourself over.” Her voice is husky, her tongue feels heavy. He shakes with the low sound he makes. She smoothes the fur of his face–she kisses the side of his muzzle. He shifts to nuzzle into her kiss, fangs grazing her cheek. She sighs as his hips begin to thrust.
Together, they are slow to find the place where loss doesn’t hurt. She draws it out of him, feels his growing eagerness until his eyes go animals-black. He snarls and she is ecstatic. He bites her shoulder, sends electricity through her veins. The lights flicker; dead bulbs and charred wiring crackles and sparks. He is snarling, soft body grown taut with too much adrenaline.
There is a tapestry hung just over his shoulder. The colors blur and shake as he ruts against her.
~~~~
Candles danced when she approached, smoke swirled around her. The medium is the only one she has eyes for.
The medium smiled at her, they always did. The good ones knew her before she spoke. The rest learned on her terms. She was no more cruel than any other lover, no more fickle.
During the party, she’d dance and read palms, trade tricks with the magicians. It rejuvenated her, filled her with new life. She felt the space warm her from within. Nurturing energies plumped her cheeks and swelled her lungs.
~~~~~
She has buried her face in the fur of his chest. His heart thuds against her cheek as he pushes them both. She lets her frequency mingle with his and feels him tremble. Her nails bite through his hide and she feels warmth pool under her fingers. Her voice rises into the catwalks and he bays with her.
This is why she stays with him. He’s the only lover who takes all she gives. He is the flam she makes dance and flicker. She blows over him, rustling the tangle of his fur.
~~~~~
With a brush of her fingers she hears the medium’s mother call him in from a fieks. Wheat smacks his cheeks, tickles him. She breathes in crisp fall air–cider fermenting, bittersweet smoke rising from the syrup house.
He glares at her, angered by her brazenness.
~~~~
This one is a wolf, his people don’t usually open themselves to her. He does. She parts the clouds of his doubts and he gives her all he has. Thick underbrush snags his fur, sweat mingles with dirt and decay to fill his nose. His heart pounds in her chest and she sees a sibling charge at him and hears the familiar rumble of his laughter.
He is still half a cub, his energy has no limit. She’s felt his fear, tasted his anger. When they are like this–his body hard against her back, fangs against her ear, warm breath in her hair–she is wrapped in a desire so feral and complete she cannot think. If he is dark and reserved, temperamental and fearful as a human, he shows none of it in his true shape.
She is crying out, begging for release as his claws dig into her shoulders.
~~~~
She watched the cub wander into her theatre. He was scared–it rose from him in waves, telegraphed through his stalking of the building. From the moment she saw his true forms she was charmed. Sable and gold fur bristled as he bedded down in the Director’s Office. He was thickly muscled, his corded shoulders captivated her.
They came in on the third night. Her cub had been patching the office together. He was quiet, diligent. When they came, their static filled her senses. She cursed their intrusion–her bond with the cub was not yet solid. Though she could share herself with him, she could not protect him after so long a hibernation. The intruders were brash, one pale and sharp edged, the other even paler, with ink-dark hair and eyes.
She held the cub’s hand when they took his broken body to the stage. He mumbled for her, groaned pleas for her aid. They were efficient, though cruel. Steel was punched into the stage just above each collarbone. Any attempt to shift or escape would only worsen his injuries.
For hours she gathered herself, collected the memories and faces, the scattered pieces that made up who she was.
~~~~
The past is where they came together. It is the impossible sea in which they collided. She knows this, savors each memory. They smell of musk and juniper, cinnamon and smoke. Every one soft as dew.
He is her wolf, her bond. His body is warm against her back, his hips meet the curve of her ass. She phases through different states–hard as diamond, thin as the atmosphere, fluid like a river come to life. Her hands catch his and hold them to the wall. His claws dig into the concrete and his breathing grows ragged.
~~~~
She knew the wolves who’d hurt him. They roamed the city nipping at the heels of larger packs, intimidated human. She’d watch their haunts from clock towers and remains of office buildings. The cub she knew only from the theatre.
He was ashen by the time she brought him to the greenroom. His skin grown clammy as his as his fur receded. She smiled at his fevered gaze whenever it settled on her.
~~~~
On the roof, he’d hunkered under natty blankets heavy with the smell of damp. A week ago she’d been tending him while his body knit itself back together. He didn’t complain or question, though he kept a wary watch on her. Even as a human he was shaggy. The powerful, muscular body of his wolf had given over to a chubby form with broad shoulders and downy fur over his whole body.
“You can stay,” she told him. “I haven’t had company worth meeting in a long while.” He gave her an odd look–jade eyes slid over her, a not-quite-frown pulled at his mouth. She shook her head and looked at the horizon. The sun was high, but the city was still drenched in twilight. His memories swirled inside of her, painting the streets with his travels.
“I have somewhere to go.” His lie twisted her lungs. She twisted her curls and tried not to look at him.
“Same place as them that almost killed you?”
“Them…they’re not my pack,” his voice was low, burred with a soft growl.
“Just…stay until you can protect yourself.”
I can’t wait.
You can’t?
You know I can’t.
Laughter. The sound is distant–secondhand. I roll onto my side. Turn to face where she should be.
Tell me about it.