Die Role, by Foxy Femme, March 2020
“She was an ordinary person... until...”

Chapter 1: A Fated Encounter

Mister Chen was an elderly Chinese red panda, with cinnamon brown fur and white and black black markings, in which one could see an infusion of silvery grey hairs, indicative of his many years of life experience. But despite his age, which he declined to reveal to anyone but his closest friends, he enjoyed good health and excellent hearing and eyesight. He was a skilled observer of the world around himself. It was a useful talent, for a collector and seller of unique antiquities and hard to find items. And the neighborhood where he lived and worked - between the city of Timberland’s Chinatown district and the queer end of the city’s nightclub district - provided him a most diverse and entertaining assortment of people and situations to hone his skills on. He dearly loved to watch others, trying to determine from their words and actions what sort of people they were, what their needs might be, and how his odd assortment of wares and skills might be of benefit to them. 

He had a reputation among his regular customers for an uncanny ability to know what they needed before they even asked, almost as if he could read their minds. But the truth was, he had no real magical or psychic talents, beyond being fairly good as casting the coins for I Ching divination, and interpreting the results, and, perhaps, a having better than normal intuition about the needs of others. Sometimes he was lucky enough to locate and offer for sale artifacts with real magical powers, but such items were rare, and difficult to obtain. In truth, items that could cause truly significant magical changes to reality were rare enough that he was usually only able to locate and obtain half a dozen or so in a year. And even then, most were trivial in what they could do, such as a bracelet he had received just this last week, which enabled the wearer to change their hair or fur color to anything the wearer could imagine. When he did get one of those truly magical items, he examined it carefully before selling it. He might not be able to work magic himself, but he had acquired a vast knowledge of the subject, and an excellent personal library of arcane books and scrolls on how magic worked. The true mages and artificers who could work real magic were more rare in modern society than an albino tiger. He knew a few of them, living in distant lands, and would correspond with them if in doubt about the abilities or safety of the magical artifacts he possessed. He was content with his own life and abilities, however. He had done well for himself, with his shop and home fully paid for, and his finances secure. His needs were few, and he simply enjoyed making the lives of others better.

Tonight, he was enjoying a rather late dinner, on a Saturday evening, in early July. The Chinese restaurant that was only a few yards from his shop served excellent Cantonese food, and the family that owned and operated it were old friends. His own shop was usually open on Monday through Friday, between six pm and two am, or by appointment, so the chance to enjoy a leisurely dinner in the restaurant, rather than his own cooking or having take-out delivered, was one he seldom failed to partake in. When working in his shop, he favored wearing rather dramatic Chinese Silk robes, and a little black Chinese cap, playing up on the expectations of his customers for the sort of person who sells anything from rare books and antiques; to herbal remedies; to supplies for Wiccan and Druid rituals; to unique BDSM and sex toy items; to the occasional real magical items. But on his own time, he favored black sneakers, tight fitting black stretch denim jeans, and very ordinary t-shirts. That was how he was dressed tonight, with a shirt decorated with art from a Japanese anime series on the chest.

He cast his gaze around the room. 

An old friend, a black bear named Andrew Richards, was coming into the restaurant, moving slowly and using his cane. It seemed his bad hip was acting up again. Mister Chen got up and helped his friend to a nearby table, and quietly informed him that one of the herbal remedies that helped his hip pain was again available in his shop. While he did not sell narcotics or other restricted or illegal drugs, he was quite skillful in compounding remedies which included such drugs as his customers provided, for their own use, and which increased their efficacy. They agreed upon a special appointment the next day, to add Andrew’s prescription opiates to one of Mister Chen’s remedies. Then he returned to his seat.

Most of the other customers at this hour were queer younger people, dressed to go to the nearby LGBTQ nightclub to dance, or clearly having just come from the club, seeking a quieter and more intimate setting in one of the back booths, to chat or make out with someone they had hooked up with. An adorable lesbian couple, both slender mixed breed puppies barely old enough to drink, were passionately kissing in one of those back booths, while their food went cold and uneaten on the table. A vulpine woman, who he recognized as a professional escort who often met customers at the club, was brushing out her luxurious tail fur as she gave her dinner order to the waitress. The vixen was seated close enough to his table that Mister Chen could smell that the escort had just recently had sex with at least one male customer, and likely she had serviced several males at once. An apparently straight family of four, all otters, were enjoying their meal, while the young parents tried to ignore the sexy clothes and lewd behavior of some of the other customers. A fairly typical night.

The bell on the side entrance rang as the door opened, and a short-statured motorcyclist entered the restaurant. At first, their gender was unrecognizable, due to their helmet and bulky coat. Before they even removed their helmet, which was of canine design and painted to look like a snarling white wolf, against a blue metal flake background, they peeled off a thigh-length white winter parka, then a black leather motorcycle jacket, then a burgundy red colored zip-up hoody, and finally, a second, smaller, white leather jacket, hanging each on the coat rack by the door. So much winter clothing, for a rather warm early summer night! Then she took off the helmet, which was also clearly too large for her, as she next removed a padded helmet liner hood, releasing a cascade of waist-length, snow white hair. The girl was a young timber wolf, perhaps eighteen years old, and her fur was colored in what one would normally think of as winter pelage, mostly snow white, with faint grey markings. Her wide eyes were ice blue, she had a petite figure with curves in all the right places, and she was very cute! Mister Chen could not help but recall an I Ching casting that he had done for himself before coming to the restaurant: ‘Winter will arrive in Summer. New beginnings lead to many changes. Determination will be rewarded with success. Change requires a mentor to find happiness.’ His curiosity piqued, he watched her with great interest.

She was seated fairly close to him, next to a brown furred bunny couple who had come in through the front door and been seated while she was peeling off her excessive outerwear. The bunny couple, familiar with the menu, quickly placed their order, and with a grin the woman  specified, “Chopsticks only, please! No silverware, except for the spoons with the soup!” The white wolf girl cocked her head when they said this, and after placing her own order, and mispronouncing most of what she ordered, she somewhat uncertainly gave the waitress the same instructions, to bring only chopsticks.

When her meal arrived, it swiftly became clear that the young woman was both unfamiliar with Chinese cuisine, and absolutely pathetic with using chopsticks! She looked quite startled when she bit into a piece of raw ginger, which she had mixed in with her salad. When she tried to eat a shrimp dish, she got so frustrated at being unable to get a shrimp to her mouth without dropping it that she resorted to skewering one with the point of a chopstick! Yet she adamantly declined, three separate times, when the waitress, seeing her difficulties, offered western silverware. She was determined to complete the task she had set for herself! Mister Chen admired that determination in her. And it also implied that his I Ching casting was foretelling him of this girl’s arrival. Sometimes his divinations were uncannily accurate, even about events he had no inkling of being possible. So he decided to politely offer her some guidance.

“Excuse me, please,” he said, as he approached her. “I am Chen. You are new to this place, yes? Is it presumption on my part to assume you are unfamiliar with this sort of food? May I humbly offer some assistance?”

She was startled that anyone had spoken to her other than the waitress. She had been focused intently on getting a shrimp to her mouth properly, and when he spoke, she fumbled the chopsticks so badly that the shrimp flew away from her and almost hit the vulpine escort woman! “OH! Ummm, I’m Karen. Yeah... new to everything here, really. Just moved here from Haven, a few hours down the valley. I do kinda suck at using these sticks, don’t I? It’s only the third time I have ever eaten this stuff, and the other two times were takeout, at home with my mom. But my new place is right above this restaurant, so I guess I will be eating here pretty often. Gotta get used to it.”

“Haven is a nice town,” Mister Chen replied. “Good people, fine craft market. Why move here? To attend the state university?”

“Yeah, eventually. Need to save up some money, first,” she replied. “Um... is Chen your first name? Or your family name?”

“Family name. The rest of my name, only someone who speaks Chinese well is likely to pronounce. So I am just ‘Chen’, or ‘Mister Chen’, if you wish. Now, please, let me help you, while your meal is still warm.” He brought his own meal to her table, and proceeded to teach her the use of chopsticks, and which sauces and condiments go best with which foods. By the end of their meal, Karen was still awkward with her chopsticks, but at least she was consistently managing to get the food into her mouth, without resorting to silverware.

“May I ask a few questions?” Mister Chen inquired. “Nothing terribly personal, I promise.”

“Fair enough,” Karen said. “You helped me and asked for nothing in return. What would you like to know?”

“Why so many coats, on a summer night? You arrived looking like you were ready for a blizzard. Why?” he asked. 

“Oh! Well, like I said, I just moved here. But you see, I don’t have a car, and neither does my mom. I had to bring everything I own here on my motorcycle, with a small trailer behind it,” she said. “Tonight was the last load. I ran out of room in my backpack and trailer, so I just put on all my remaining coats.”

“But the different sizes? And were you not unbearably hot?” he asked.

“Well, most of my stuff is hand-me-downs, from my mom and her friends. I... never really had a dad. Mom got pregnant with me when she was about to graduate from high school. Her boyfriend skipped town as soon as he knew. Mom... well, with only a high school education, she was stuck in dead end jobs. Usually working two jobs at once. And getting abandoned by my dad really screwed up her love life. She tried dating other guys. Dated girls, too. Nothing lasted very long. The two oversized jackets, and my bike helmet too... they belonged to one of mom’s more recent male lovers. He was the closest thing I had to a father... once, he even offered to marry mom, and to adopt me. But mom was too afraid of getting hurt again, to let him marry her. We all remained friends, though. So he gave me those, and he painted the helmet for me himself. And he and my mom got donations from all their friends to buy me a used motorbike and trailer. The white leathers were a gift from mom. They have a matching set of pants, and there are pockets in the lining for phase change gel packs to keep me cool when it is hot, or chemical hot packs for winter time. And, and... you did not ask about anything but the jackets, and here I’m gushing all this personal stuff, and I don’t really even know you...” she said, voice faltering and looking terribly embarrassed.

“I am a trustworthy person, and you sensed that,” he replied. “Ask that bear over there, or any of the staff here, or that sultry vixen who you almost hit with a shrimp. All will tell you that Chen is a man of honor. And I think... you need a friend you can trust. You have come, alone, to a town much larger than the one you were raised in. You seek your future here fearlessly, yet... you have not mentioned having a job here, as yet? Did you truly trust to fate that you would swiftly find work here?”

“I... guess I did, yeah. Mom always said the way to have a good future is to reach out and grab it with both hands. For as long as I can remember, she has told me to be a good girl, and concentrate on my education. Told me to avoid the stupid mistakes she made, not rush headlong into sex and dating. There will be time enough to find a mate, after I have my degree and can support myself,” she replied. “I’ve worked since I was old enough to get a work permit. Washing dishes, bussing tables, waitress, grocery store bagger, grocery cashier... I can even be a great barista. I’ll find something. I hope.”

“I too, believe in fate,” Mister Chen replied, handing her a business card. “I think fate has led us to meet. You need a job, yes? I own a shop close to here. I need an assistant. Someone who is not afraid to work. Someone who can run a cash register. I would like to offer you that job. There is my card. Come to me at lunch time, on Monday, and we can discuss it further. Before then, ask anyone in this neighborhood about me. I am respected here. Please, think it over.” Then he scooped up the bills for both their meals, and said, “Your meal tonight is my treat. A welcome gift to the neighborhood. I insist.” And before Karen could object, he got up, settled the bill with the waitress at the door, and departed.