The humble leaf. As the season turns and the humidity and warmth becomes crispness and cool, so to do the vibrant and fresh greens show the wear in spots of yellows, and reds, and finally browns. Once lush and moist flowers begin to wilt and wither, fraying like the ends of once proud rope into unrecognizable, emaciated fibers, rotting upon a ground that looks progressively more like the dirt it lays upon than the fertile promise it started as, after the winter thaw.

	And observing it all was a rotund figure clothed in an expansive, yet now progressively more tight, pink sweater and light grey pants. Sitting upon the old iron park bench, which had seen the buttocks and seasons of over seventy total years of service in this wooded, scenic thoroughfare of the northern suburbs. Paint was chipping away at it, but it had only the most scant hints of rust in places in the art nuevo curves and bends of the iron comprising its structure. The wooden slats had started their journey of deterioration, but were still servicible. Just a little wear, just a little character. Still so much life in them yet, but it could not be said to be brand new anymore. The pristine, built for purpose beauty, abraded away by function over far too short a time. The stretches of still good, oiled wood contrasted to the spots that had worn and sagged from use- no less so now, under a prolific amount of posterior that depressed the structure slightly, and had repeatedly for the last five months. The profile changing, to match hers. From silhouette, to the depression by mass and volume.

	Plump hands, thicker than they'd been just months ago from numerous reasons, all with a single overlying source, fidgeted in her lap. Simultaneously enjoying her daily constitutional, and rueing the need for it. Conflicting feelings, as polarizing as the fur of her thick, monochrome coat as she stared down at the progressively retreating grass. Grass that not but two months before was growing wildly out of control, the luminous sun and warm, hydrating rains enabling a surge of floral expansion, density and beauty. 

	The time of warmth and season of youth was over, and she was feeling the transition from one phase of life to another, inside and out. But, mostly inside. And while no mugger, nor masher nor pick pocket had ever so much as held up the great northern park, or anyone in it, the young woman couldn't help but feel as if she'd been accosted. Robbed of something that was being stolen, aggravatingly slowly. Day by day, hour by hour, to every beat of her heart. Self-aware enough to know just how selfish and disgusting it was to feel the way she did, and yet incapable of feeling otherwise. Not even a thousand days beyond childhood when she could be said to be a maiden, and that phase of her life, all the singular promise and potential that was hers to enjoy, was as good as unset. It lingered, but much like the dying flowers, only as preparation to feed her inevitable replacement. 

	She even felt harder than she knew she should be feeling, even for a teenaged girl. Yet another thing she could not help. Yet another thing this unfortunate circumstance was foisting onto her. Staring down at herself in the reflection of the puddle in the slightly overcast day, gazing at her own soft face and the recent double chin (that was mostly fur) that had developed not but three months ago with her increasing appetite, she pursed her lips in apprehension. This wasn't her. This was just a coccoon, for someone else. Touching her own cheeks, softened by her coat and the slowly creeping amount of fat that had collected under her skin, she saw echoes of her own mother. Her grandmother. Wide. Soft. Fat.

	Three months into the new year, she hadn't been any wider or thicker than most other girls her age, bear or not. Her hair, now grown out to the natural black and white tones and hanging down to her upper back, bore the hints of a finger's length of lilac hair dye she hadn't had touched up for months. Not since the lifechanging news, good or bad. She started the year biking, running, playing sports. She was going to finish the year wondering if junior would be born at the end of this one, or the start of the next. Sexy, spry, shapely.. able to keep up with all her friends, whether they bore feet, paws, hooves or anything else. And now, as she gazed down at the sagging, shapeless mass of her own cleavage, made into a breastloaf beneath the thick pink sweater, taut as a T-shirt around her more marshmallowy body, she didn't see the teenaged girl anymore, full of tight, elastic promise and budding curves that had just begun to bloom. She saw the shape she spent all but the last three quarters of a year viewing as the profile of middle aged spread. More animal bear than sweet, beautiful young woman, practically a girl, in the prime of her life. A marshmallow. A plushie. 

	She detested this. But she also detested that she felt this way. On the one hand, simple irrational vanity stung her pride. On the other, she would never get to spend her teen years and her twenties as her own, single woman. That girl, that sweet, slim teenaged version of herself, could no longer exist singularly in this time. That future course was irrepairably altered, now, and it was her own fault. All of it. Right down to proactively putting herself in a bad position. Right down to her own heart, obstinately refusing to let this situation play out any other way. Even when offered. She could not even bring herself to consider it, but she did not want it to be this way.

	So she cried, there on that park bench. Face in her palms, elbows on her chubby thighs. Droplets of lipid rich tears conservatively collected at the edge of waterproof fur as they spilled down her cheeks, rippling the surface of the rain puddle that had run passed the bench between the pavement and the dirt the bench rest on. She sat at that bench, and she mourned the innocent girl she'd never gotten the chance to really be, before she was ready to pass that role of child to another. In an uninterrupted cycle, older than the very concept of bones, she felt stunted and obsolete. It was a sentiment that had been gnawing at her more and more, the nearer she drew to the due date. Fall was starting. The New Year would be here, sooner than she wanted. Yesterday jumping rope, tomorrow changing diapers and doing taxes. 

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	"Eyes front, boys." Ms. Wright corrected a few of her student between their bawdy giggles and wisp-like whispers. Clearly, the woman forgot how to have fun sometime around twenty years ago, and her students were suffering for it ever since. It was a sacred tradition to razz the edutainment videos, whether they were archaic to thirty years ago in the 90s, or thirty years ago in the 20s. The cheesy acting, the stilted dialogue, the actors that wouldn't even have icons to their career profiles on the big website of actors and all the things they were in. 

	Otto Gum flipped through his three ring binder, looking for the mesh pouch that housed his writing utensils. He accounted a pencil that was more edge than wood leading into the metal of the eraser holder, a half dead blue marker and a mechanical pencil with lead that kept falling out of it. A huff of air moved through his trunk as he draped it across his stubby, foam covered right tusk and frowned, drumming his thick fingers atop the desk. He was out of things to write with. But, he needed to take notes. That meant it was time to borrow something. Looking around him, protocol dictated it be the nearest classmate with a good repitoire. 

	That classmate happened to be a certain stubby horned kid in a white T-shirt, sitting in front of him. The back of which leered at him menacingly, as a cartoon Jack-O-Lantern wearing cartoonishly oversized shoes. It looked like Louis was wearing another ridiculous homemade fit. Otto didn't know what was on the front of the shirt, but he couldn't imagine it was any less silly than a pumpkin with a face with a sick fit on the back.

	"Hey, Louis." Otto spoke up, just loud enough to carry the half meter between them. His attention wandered to the teacher, checking to make sure she wasn't watching. It was such a short time later, and would be a second too late before he realized Louis had turned to look at him, but in the worst possible way.

	"Can I borrow a penc-" Otto started, before his brown eyes spotted the goat's rectagonal pupils. The problem wasn't that Louis had turned backwards to face him, it was simply that his head had leaned backwards and now rest his wild black mane of headhair across Otto's desk and binder. He was looking at Otto, upside down, without having turned his body in any direction. It almost looked like he'd either broken his neck, or it'd been severed, from the perspective of the young bull elephant. An exasperated and alarmed gibbering series of hisses escaped his mouth and his hands flapped until he could regain his composure. Louis just stared at him as if not the simplest thing were out of sorts, not even surprised when the bull got spooked.

	"For Christ's sake, Louis!" Otto whispered, post-surprise as he frowned down at the goat head upside down on his desk. Clutching his chest with his right hand, his left palm flat on his open three ring binder. Silently panting, he grunted. "You fit to give a brotha' a heart attack." Other students had turned their heads to notice the disturbance. Amusement hung like mustard gas in the rows of seats and chairs.

	"Mad you don't have a neck, huh?" Louis replied, expression unchanging but smarm obvious, his ears splaying across the papers of the three ringed binder. The two boys exchanged glances, one of the glowering straight man and the other the dry performance of a puckish trickster. Demonstrating dexterity and agility one wouldn't assume of an elephant, Otto reached out and pressed his right palm to Louis' windpipe, pinning his neck to the desk. About this time, Louis' countenance broke and he emitting a strained, hand compressed bleat of amusement from his squished throat, playing along as he raised up his arms as if to block punches that were never coming.

	"Boys." Ms. Wright interrupted, the garishly dresssed Ms. Frizzle of a llama immediately bringing the duo's fracas to a stop. She never even looked up from the fried audio delivering, vintage edutainment that was hamming up a suicide by driving off of a cliff. "Detention office. Now." And so, that was the start of an unpleasant afternoon. Just another day, for Louis.

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	Detention sucked, as it was meant to. The usual crowd was there. A bunch of kids that were hard cases, none of them particularly friendly to the others that weren't inside their group. Louis didn't recognize most of them as anything but extras in his life. The teacher's aide, a man of his mid-30s, sat at the desk in the empty math room. He treated this part of the job as much a punishment to himself as it was to the students. 

	Louis surveyed and counted the other kids. It wasn't just he and Otto in here. In a chance roving of eyes, Louis happened to lock gaze with someone he hadn't even imagined would be here, this day. The realization of their identity set his blood to boil, as he looked at her, and she back at him. Narrowing her eyes, the way her gaze fell over his hair. He'd dyed it, since last she saw it. She had to've noticed the brown contact lenses, as well. 

	Zapthra scoffed derisively, making a face like she just smelled something rancid as she looked Louis over. A slim girl, with a tacky fashion sense. Her tanktop was some set of horizontal stripes of darker colors on a white background, like someone swiped a bunch of colors of highligher across it. A purple, short sleeve vest, lined with all kinds of pins and safety pin figurines up her chest and sides. The shallow parts of her fur gave way to skin that was covered in blue pen ink, in assorted symbols and nonsense. Stars, ringed planets and hearts, along with roses and lightning bolts. Louis wasn't certain if she just lacked headhair, as some anthros did, or if she just kept it buzzed to her natural fur and wore a purple beanie for the statement. Her boots were the heaviest part of her ensemble, and though they broke school code and regulation, still appeared on her feet, every day. Studs and cleats and anything to make them heavier. A short skirt with women's tight pants beneath those, both black. She was not the most well dressed of girls, but that appeared to be the point. If it meant anything at all, he was unaware.  

	"Look the other way." Zapthra commanded, directing Louis to look at the wall directly at the front of the class.She wore acrylic nails, as decorated as her own pantlegs and how she colored her skin. 

	Louis rolled his eyes. Seeking to avoid confrontation, he did so. Not that he cared. There wasn't really anyone to talk to in detention, and Otto seemed to be busy doing homework. He heard white noise behind him as Zapthra and a few older kids talked about something, but it was just a murmur and some giggles. Even still, one could just get a sense in middleschool when something mean spirited was being talked about. It wasn't long until he felt the sting of a an object pegging him in the back of the head.

	 "The fu-?" Louis started as he gazed around, turning his head. Out his impressive peripheral vision, he caught movement of something. The shell of a brazilnut had been lobbed at considerable velocity at the back of his skull, hard enough to launch it a meter and a half into the air before it dropped to the linoleum floor. It was not immediately obvious whom among the five upper classmen threw it. Zapthra was a prime candidate and suspect, but there were three boys there too. One larger than him, but two only arguably so. 

	"Face the front of the class and be quiet, kids." Came the apathetic, yet somehow without patience voice or Mr. Ginseng. There was no life behind those eyes, just a soulless wagey that had long since checked out. He didn't care, but he seemed to care less about one student throwing things, than he did another not facing forwards. Louis couldn't help but find that unusual. Staring face forwards again, Louis groused.

	And predictably, he both felt and heard the impact made by the shell of the nut as it dinged its hard, angled body off the back of his dark head of hair. This time the angle was such that it bounced off the table between them, before landing back at the feet of the other boy Zapthra was sitting with. Louis' ears lilted in irritation, as wishes of violence bubbled up in his imagination. Instead, he raised his hand.

	"Mr. Ginseng?" Louis piped up, as the glassy eyes of the beaver man. "Can you get them to stop pegging me in the back of the head with nut shells, please?"

	Mr. Ginseng looked at Louis the way one looks at a howling alarm clock in the morning. Derision, irritation and dismissal. Rather than respond to him, he simply averted his eyes and went back to clock watching. Louis was going to have to fight his own battle, today.

	"You can dish it out, but you just can't take it, can you?" The rat bitch smugged, as Louis felt another brazilnut shell bounce off the back of his head. Louis semi-turned to gaze back at Zapthra while Mr. Ginseng wasn't paying attention, glowering at her with a kind of indignant impotency. There wasen't really much he could do about it.

	"What does that even mean!?" Louis whispered back, voice squeaking in exasperation. He didn't mean to crack his voice, but the frustration just made it slip out. Squeezing the top of the desk, looking just enough forwards for Mr. Ginseng to see only an attentive detention student if he felt like looking back. Another hard shell clonked off the top of his head with a noise of impact, spinning into the air and landing on the floor before the teacher's desk.

	Louis stared forwards at Mr. Ginseng expectantly, all ten fingers curled like claws with the hard, keratinous nails pressed to the top of the desk. Ears lilted, eyes narrowed and jaws tight as he weathered the indignity. All the time, he waited for Mr. Ginseng to turn his head to acknowledge the abuse happening, right in front of him. Out the corner of Louis' eye, he could just see Zapthra's silhouette move in the further back of the detention room, the subtle way her limbs blotted or moved and reflected light from the reflective chair legs, glossy book covers and what reflected off of windows. He had to give it to her; She was quick with throwing things and making it look like nothing happened.

	The kid's glare sought out the teacher's eyes, all but bidding them to return his gaze. There was no way the man wasn't seeing what was going on here, but he was trying his damnedest to pretend he didn't. A judgemental and frustrated, disappointed look, one of expectations unmet. All the while, it seemed every sixty seconds brought another empty shell that smacked right off of his noggin'. Hard as his head was, he had skin and muscle just like anyone else. Skin that'd be welting, if this kept up. 

	Smack. Smack. The minutes creeped forwards, and Louis' fists were white knuckled beneath the creamy fur dotted with grey flecks. He knew how this game was played, he'd been the recipient of it his entire life. Someone with a position of advantage, leveraging it to antagonize the shit out of him and just tempt, tempt, for some sort of retaliation. 

	What he didn't understand, was what she could've meant. 'Dish it out'? In truth, he was at a loss for just what she could mean. Sure, he could be an asshole, but he certainly didn't remember throwing any kind of nut shells at anybody's head. Pistaccio, almond, or brazil nut! It was such a strange comment that it took him off his guard, confused and double checking his memories over the last few years, just to think of something, anything, that could've accounted for this alleged retaliation.

	He couldn't think of anything he'd done to compare to this, and that hurt more than the shells being used as bullets. This was supposed to be some sort of retaliation, and as far as he knew, he hadn't done anything wrong. Consequences for one's own actions were one thing, but being subjected to the abuse by another for petty, nonsensical reasons? It was grating, to the soul. What did she think he, 'dished out,' in order to feel so self-righteous to, 'take it?'

	Smack went the nut shell. Louis wasn't even flinching anymore, just staring up at the clock and every single unit of a second that passed before he was allowed to leave. Maybe, he thought, she wasn't thinking of him, specifically? That was an option. She was, on some level, a person with some pretty out there beliefs. Did she mean goats? Did the goat-people do something to the rat-people, once upon a time? He couldn't recall anything like that, either. And as far as history was concerned, that was a question for the petty ethnic neighborhood squabbles of their great-great-grandparents' times. It seemed ludicrous to carry a grudge that far, and she'd already established she at least paid lipservice to the ideas of antibigotry. That didn't make sense.

	Another smack of a shell. This one lodged itself beneath his backfacing left horn, small and underwhelming as it was, getting stuck at that angle between where the horn met the scalp. An annoyed grouse and one dig later, he set the shell on the table. He could already tell by how this detention was going, if Mr. Ginseng really wanted to be a dick, he'd get blamed for, "having food in class," as well.

	So then, he wondered. Was it because he was a boy? The tribe angle was one thing, but he'd heard some pretty amazing mental gymnastics on the part of some that hated males. That also didn't make sense. He recalled the day of the gangslamming, out there on the playground. She surrounded herself with boys, and while a few of them ticked off some boxes aligning themselves with some.. interesting, views about gender and culpability for what they thought of as, 'collective responsibility,' she just didn't seem the type. Unless she made special exception for males that were her friends, perhaps? That seemed a reach. Every boy dealt with this, eventually. One way or another, there'd be a girl taking something out on you, because some other boy had done them wrong. Earlier in the day, earlier in the week- maybe even after having just read a particularly unfortunate injustice in history in an article recently, and deciding kicking a basketball out of your hands was some sort of justice served. Possibly, but unlikely. He was still no closer to solving exactly what it was he'd done to (supposedly) deserve this. This was conjecture, at best. 

	Maybe he was just reading too much into the petty actions of a ratchet assed rat bitch. Someone that had nothing better to do than be an antagonistic piece of garbage. Maybe there was no intrinsic logic in it, and she was just mean to be mean. It was an unsatisfying answer; it meant that reason couldn't resolve this, and it couldn't be stopped. Only endured. 

	He wouldn't have long to wait. Finally, Mr. Ginseng turned to address the students and announced they were free to go, once the hour was up. Everybody simultaneously stood up and got their backpacks together, moving to leave. The hustle of activity and noise of less than ten students, leaving the one door in no particular order. Everybody just filed out, seeking to go their separate ways.

	Detention meant he missed the bus. He'd have to hoof it home, but that suited him fine. A quick call home to mom, and he let them know he'd be there within the next hour. "Again, Louis?" Was the commonality between each call to his parents' respective phone. Yes, mom and dad. Again, mom and dad. Apparently, always and forever. Dad offered another ride home; this one, Louis declined. A walk home may do him good. With some hesitation, a little resistance and an, "I love you," a walk home it would be.

	Pulling his backpack up by the straps, he stretched and strolled his way home. It was passed four in the evening, now. Still a few hours left to darkness. Not that it mattered much. After all, what was the dark of the night, but a wonderful time to browse in peace? One of many of the animal folk that was blessed with keen, night time vision. It wasn't perfect, but at least he wouldn't be falling into any holes. Traveling without a flashlight wasn't the hazard it was for some of his friends. Not as much, anyway. Poor Peter needed all three of them to lead him around on nightly hijinks. 
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	Louis fully expected to see the white picket fences, the flower beds, the business and personal signs out front of the properties leading to the artery that was the main highway. What he was not expecting to see, in this circulatory system of traffic and civilization, was the familiar sight of a certain, golden doe, sitting on her characteristic rock in the middle of a field, separate from the main street by a dirt road and a ditch. It was strange, as encounters with the golden girl always were, but bewildering in just what circumstances as he gazed out at the lotus crossed leg positioned cervine(?), perched on the flat topped boulder and staring directly at Louis with an amused smile. Thirty meters out in an open field between two stretches of forest, in this place where suburb bled to rural. He didn't think he remembered this open space here before, but he wasn't about to argue with nature, nor the zoning board.

	Those eyes. That face. Louis knew that expression. One could never accuse the hind of being anything but bright eyed and at attention, but something about the way she was looking at him this evening seemed.. especially intent on something. Something was on her mind, this much he felt. As stoic and patient as ever, but he had never seen her and her precious rock rest so comfortably by urban development, before. It seemed she wasn't as worried about being spotted as he thought. And as the cars passed by, with absolutely none of the occupants gazing outwards at the sight, Louis had the sneaky suspicions that maybe they couldn't see her.

	She wanted him to approach. He could feel it. Not a demand, not an order. A kind of pleading, in those stoney, green eyes. Like a woman at a kiosk, hoping for a commission on a sale, or a soliciter at an airport, desperate to hand out pamphlets to her special group. The way the begging expression conveyed hope, but reservation. One could just feel the sort of begging, the way a good dog lays down before someone eating, trying to look oh so open for a generous sample. Not a word left her lips, as always, but there was clearly something important in her heart. Just what, exactly, he couldn't say.

	Yet.

	Louis looked left, to the sidewalk and street out before him, the direction he was taking to go home. He looked right, to where he'd come from. The direction to town, the school, the more urban environment. And then he looked out towards the field, which bore no more industrial development than utility lines and cables through the naked, grassy field. Starting down the dirt road, elevated by a drainage pipe flowing under and spanning drainage ditches, he walked at a leisurely pace to his supernatural friend. As always, stopping just before the mushrooms of the fairy ring, around her boulder. A hesitation she did not leave unnoticed, brows raising and pure green eyes rolling, as the gentle smile became sarcastic for all of a moment.

	She bore no urgency, she simply moved with a kind of impossible, mercurial intention of motion. Leaving her rock, she stood before Louis well outside the menace of the mushroom lined ring. Slender, lithe but feminine frame raised up like this, her hair catching the generous breeze that cooled Louis' chest and fur through his clothes, standing up as though the finds of a beta fish, under water. It was there, exchanging pleased looks to see the other through eye contact, when he heard a distant, distraught third party. A young woman's voice, but by the way the Hind closed to his right side and revolved in a clockwise walk, it was not coming from her. The sound consistently came from the northwest, while the hind, presumably moving for contrast, did not.

	The sound in his ear- it was consistently coming from the Northwest. Not the hind. The way she kept her eyes on him, deliberately seeking out his gaze, made Louis feel like hearing the mysterious, distant sounds were part of whatever this encounter was. Her mouth remained a somber semi-smile, stoic and expecting of his realization, eventually coming to a stop in front of him. She knew he knew. She was pleased.

	Louis met her gaze and explored the deep, green, scleraless green of her eyes. His ears subtly tilted in the direction of the sounds, soaking in the distant echoes as he tried his hardest to interpret what he was hearing. So subtle, so wordless, the hind's right hand began to wiggle at the fingertips, face lighting up with encouragement now that he was on the right track. Her tail vigorously wiggled. What a silly game of hot-cold, this otherworldly creature was playing. But all the same, Louis' attention went into the sounds.

	It was a feminine weeping, and it sounded pitiful. The sniffling sounded stifled, as if covered by hands. The time between suppressed whimpers suggested it was an activity she really did not want to be succumbing to, but couldn't suppress it from coming out. By the hint of congestion, it was ugly crying minimized down to a fraction of what it should've been, masked behind a need to hide. Mere speculations, to be sure, but every time he came to some determination, the knowing look on the hind's face just got more and more affirming. Whatever funny means by which she could read his thoughts- and he was almost positive at this point she could sense feelings, it was doing double time today, cooler when he made some speculations and wildly supportive of others. This raised his concern immensely. She'd never been so... invested, perhaps would be the right word. Aggressive? Louis felt ashamed to even suggest the word, regarding the hind. Something had her urgency raised. This was practically a cry for help through a game of charades, in the only way she was willing, or perhaps capable, of reaching out to a mortal.

	No talking. This is something Louis told himself, without any prompting from her, but it was also a thing that when thought hard enough, a slow nod of affirmation came in response. Absolutely no speaking. Fine. Turning his face as if a satellite dish, shutting his eyes and assuming a Northwestern direction, he let his mind blank. 'Show me,' his only coherent thought. He didn't know if this would work, whether the suggestion had been planted into his mind, or if perhaps he was just poisoned by so much literature and pop culture about fairies and magic-folk that he was making assumptions that weren't true. 

	He heard small, soft hands excitedly clap in rapid succession, felt the ground beneath his hooves ever so slightly tilt the way his golden friend teeter-totted from her own hoof to hoof. Just like that, the dark veils of his consciousness swirled as greys intermixed with them. Floating there in the darkness as if perfectly illuminated from every angle, was the figure that was crying. Laying on her side in this empty void, though he could not see any bed beneath her floating body, face half buried in the darkness of what may've been her pillow. By the wet spots, she'd been there for quite a while. By the puffy eyes, she'd been marinating in her own sadness about as long. Sometimes a dark eye open and just staring at the air in front of her, not focusing on a thing. Sometimes shut in a dreamless indolence.

	The environment around her started to fill in, spreading out from the teardrop shaped keyhole in his mind's eye to another, three dimensional space. She was perched on her bed, in a poorly lit bedroom. The place was poorly lit with gentle LED bulbs serving as ambience, but the darkest place of all appeared to be her heart. Clothing that seemed to clash and contrast with her room's far more sporty and outdoorsy aesthetic of roller blades, a hockey mask, soccer equipment and a hiking pack, that despite the circus tent nature barely served to cover her. Far too.. froufrou and feminine, in a 30-something way. Hand-me-downs from mom? Hair that looked like it hadn't been touched up in nearly half a year, despite looking washed within the last two days. 

	She looked depressed and miserable. The saddest panda he had ever seen. Well, let's be honest; that pool was pretty darned shallow, but both contenders made up for it by filling it with tears.

	Louis studied her from this strange omniscience for a moment or two. She never moved, beyond the occasional quivering from the tears, not even bothering to blow her nose. Nothing more was happening, that he could see. Slowly, he opened his eyes and allowed the imagination construct to fade, only to find it hung in his imagination like a daydream whether he focused or not. Looking towards the hind, he studied her face for a reaction. Impulsively, his shoulders gave a shrug of confusion. He felt bad for the girl, but what exactly was he supposed to do about it? 

	The hind already had an answer. Even as he was getting ready to think his question, by the time he had opened his eyes, she was walking in the Northwesternly direction. As the chase but a day before, her face was turned to the right, grinning at him out her peripheral vision and flagging him along with a wiggle-swish of her tail.  It was a reasonable walking pace, but they both knew she wasn't about walking. This was about going. And no matter how hard Louis pushed himself, no matter how fast, no matter how much stamina he possessed, there was no earthly way he was catching her. Walking was fine.

	Apparently, no it was not. No sooner had he admitted that defeat in his heart, than her mouth lost that characteristic smile and she came to a stop. Studying him, blinking and exchanging eye to eyes, she abruptly started to jog in place as if to warn him. The gentle jingle of her tiny bell sounding hooves still rang out, even on this grassy, lush field. As if to say, 'C'mon.. we're going to really hoof this one!' without saying a word. 

	Louis looked back at her skeptically, remembering how small and outclassed he felt after she'd revealed her true power. Memories of her practically T-posing and noclipping through the atmosphere as if she were flying behind the physics of the universe, where no friction nor molecules could drag or burn her. Where no gravity could steal her momentum, or direct her towards the earth. Where no mass could impede her linear direction, as inertia or momentum. She was practically a superhero. 

	At this, the hind just stopped and turned to face him again, lips drooping and even her gravity defying hair deflating with a gradual droop, straigthening as it lengthened and hung like it should on a normal person. A slow rush of air escaped her nostrils, before she stepped back towards him and offered him her hand. Awkwardly, Louis lingered on taking it, inspecting it as it hung there unrequited. The hind noticed, but still held it out for him to take, even if she could sense the reluctance. He hadn't yet declined, and that was enough for her. Looking a little confused and concerned, lips starting to purse.

	Reluctance. Inhibition. Louis dearly wanted to go on another adventure with her, truly, but then remembered his father. A wince of realization crossed his face, before he met the hind's eyes and apologetically looked coy. No. He couldn't go. Not tonight. Taking his hand away with a shake of his head, thinking very hard about the conversation they'd had before he'd left the school. Not a word passed between the two, but the hind looked more and more disappointed, the more the conversation went on. 

	'Tomorrow, perhaps?' Louis thought, in the form of imagining himself going to bed, waking in the morning, the sun progressing through the sky and himself appearing in this exact same field again, on a latter day. Wearing a new set of clothes, with a cartoonish version of herself tapping her hoof impatiently. With a sigh that swelled the svelte chest and barest hint of breasts, the hind nodded her head sadly. It would have to wait until..

	Louis' phone went off. The vibration was as much a surprise to him as it seemed to be for the hind, whom immediately stared at it in wonder as Louis brought it out. Perhaps this was the first time she'd ever seen a cell phone? Louis wasn't inclined to ask at this time, instead checking the number. Dad. It was Clement Braintree, calling. Activating the touch screen device, bringing it up to his ear.

	"Dad? You need something?" Louis asked, barely hiding the confused, elevated attention he was paying to this oddly timed call. The receiver sounded like dad's, as did the white noise of his office. It just hit different. 

	"Louis." Clement said, deadpan. It was a bewildering tone to use- not angry, not disappointed, not frightened. Louis didn't understand just how to interpret it. Maybe, neither did Clement. 

	"Yeah? I'm here. You need something?" Louis quickly responded, performing in the event the speaker may've been busted, or transmission was fuzzy. Louis recalled just how his phone reacted the last time he was near the golden hind. It was a miracle a call like this could even get through. "I can hear you."

	More silence. Dad was clearly there on the other end of the line, but taking his time thinking exactly what to say. It was conspicuous. Alarming. What was going on?

	"You got detention today, Louis. I want you to come home." Clem said, with a somber tone. Louis pursed his lips tighter, before he confirmed to his father.

	"I'll be there soon." Louis insisted, before gazing to the hind. By now, the doe looked quite forelorn. "I'm coming straight home, nowhere else. Don't worry." As the hind gave him the biggest sulk of disappointment.

	"I wasn't finished." Clement continued, relaxed tone somehow stern. Not stern like a weight that bears down on you, more like the pull of the earth that grounds you.  Another uneasy silence passed, with Louis awkwardly waiting for his father to continue, as he hung on every second of dead air.

	"I want you to take that fast wit of yours and find somebody to cheer up, son." Clement said, in his most slow, disciplinarian tone he could muster. It was so deliberate in its nature, it was almost a threat. Louis felt his brow relax in surprise. Even the hind's expression went blank at that revelation. "Make someone just a little happier before you come straight home. By any measure of sadness, by any means you will. That is your punishment."

	The hind's expression went from surprise, to excited wiggles from side to side again, hands forming into fine little fists and shaking her hips in barely restrained excitement. Even her hair, previously deflated and hanging straight, had regained the air and sky exploring curls. Rising high enough that, if frozen in time, could've appeared as antlers. It was enough that Louis could now viscerally feel that sensation radiating from inside of her, like sunlight through a jar of honey. Louis waved a hand at her, as if to say, 'keep it down.' That was the only thing that got her to slow the wiggling, lidding her eyes at him and making a deadpan, scolding expression. The universal, 'don't shush me!'  

	"Alright, dad!" Louis replied, excitement returned to his voice. "It's.. funny you say that! I was just about to go look for someone, right now." Louis awkwardly chuckled. The hint of sass in his voice barely constrained. It'd be Clement's choice whether he acknowledged it, or not.

	"Mmhmm." Clement replied, with endless patience. Louis hung on the line, waiting for more elaboration. Another few seconds dripped into eternity. "And Louis;" 

	"Dad?"

	"Appreciate the golden moments, son." Clement advised. All while Louis watched his very golden friend from the wilderness do her little wiggle dance of glee in place. "You can always take a little time to appreciate those, as they deserve to be appreciated. Don't let opportunites pass you by, alright?" His voice slow, deliberate. Multi-layered. It wasn't his imagination; It would just be denial now to think dad didn't believe, or understand. "You've a devious spirit, but a good heart. I'll never grudge you wandering off for those golden moments. I trust your discretion to tarry, when they crop up. " 

	Why wouldn't he just say what he meant directly? Why couldn't he? Questions as these percolated in the back of Louis' mind, but make no mistake, it was the backburner and not the front. The most important bit was exactly what he'd just said, without saying it aloud. A curious manner of delivering it, but he couldn't deny the deliverance. 

	"You still there?" Clement asked calmly, after it was Louis' turn to fill the call with dead air. As if expecting him to be, just probing him to act.

	"Yeah, dad. I'm still here." Louis confirmed. "Just wondering how many generations have heard this passed along to them." A not so subtle hint. 

	That comment was rewarded with a throaty laugh, of a man with many secrets and no straight answers. 

	"Bugger if I know. I'm just the messenger for this one. Since man has known gold and moments, probably. If you ever find out, be sure to tell me. You have fun, now. Love you."

	"Love you. Bye." 

	The beep of the cellphone was complimented by a confused digital whine, as the regularly scheduled disfunction kicked in once Clement's call dropped. The time, the display, all of it warped and shifted into an incomprehensible liquid crystal blob. There was the technological disjunction he remembered. Just like with Cherry, there'd be no further calling out until this business was concluded. As he put his cell phone away, turning his attention to the strangely mature young lady, or strangely youthful woman before him, he extended his hand out to her for her to take.

	Like a true lady, she acquiesced his touch and turned, to lead him along. Starting at a brisk walk, encouraging him to keep pace by the tension between their arms. Following her cue, Louis discarded his backpack in the field, behind her boulder. No automobiles would see it from the road like this. And he had the sneakiest suspicion, he'd be back before he knew it, as well. The tension on his arm increased, as the spritely girl extended her elegant legs and found resistance on the most shallow touch of topsoil short of the dewdrops on the blades of grass, pulling them forwards. And he, in turn, moved to keep pace.

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	In no time at all, Louis understood just what the hind was trying to convey to him before. Before he could feel it in his muscles, he felt it in his heart- or rather, cardiovascular system. It was as if he didn't need to breathe at all, and his body had perfect saturation of oxygen throughout, despite the absurd pace they were moving as though a leisurely jog. Holding her hand, just quick enough to follow her into the horizon as he felt the very air and mass of the world bend out of the way around them. Passing through trees, hills, rocks and buildings as if they were phantoms, in a permeable bubble of causality, he sensed the change of the air around them not by the friction, but by some unusual sense of ambient temperature. Practically external, delivered to his senses from something else? Intuitive, like a built in thermometer, an on board barometer. How strange, this sensation. How strange still to move the way she did, robbed of the inconveniences of moving in a flawed universe and instead, permitted the purity of forwards motion, unhampered by the world's rules.

	They weren't just traveling Northwest, they were traversing miles. Hundreds of them. Their bodies were moving at such a pace, but it felt so natural. How to reconcile a normal perception of the flow of time, yet your own faculties expanding vastly to operate as those velocities? Without the world feeling relatively still? If he weren't putting so much effort into the motion, watching his predecessor shake her glutes with each elegant kick into the ether to move forwards, he would've assumed they were simply flying. But no, he felt resistance against his hooves. And he was somehow keeping up with her. This was running, like he'd never run before. 

	Clearly, something was at work here, and Louis had no control over that thing. And yet, he retained the agency of use. Gazing downwards at the land beneath them as it rushed beneath their feet, it all blurred together and had a dark hue, no doubt due to rushing towards the point forwards. The hints of golden light kicking up like sparks, or pixie dust perhaps, weren't just sparkling from her hooves, but his as well. This wasn't simply an inborn trait of being the hind. This was magic. Touching down on something near transparent, gaining only the hint of a translucent, plastic substance each time his hoof depressed it each step. There was something they were traveling through, between where they were and where they were moving. 

	His generous guide again turned her head to look at him, hair flowing as if in a gentle breeze and miraculously, never buffeting his face. A warm look, both literal and emotional, as her flesh had since gone from an ambiguous orange and brown, to auburn hide, to one of molten gold. She felt no warmer than flesh to the touch, but focused as she was at this unreal velocity, it revealed her as anything but mortal. Like a living metal. And even as quick as she was taking him, as thunderous as it felt to trek on this impossible trail, he could tell he was as a toddler being handheld during a walk with a parent. A clumsy, inexperienced, short limbed, low stamina creature, next to something that seemed conceived for speed. By what, he could not know. Nature, perhaps. Perhaps not.

	No sign of crossing an ocean, but numerous fresh water lakes, swamps, river and more. They were staying on the continent, though other details vexed him. Gazing upwards through the refraction of the light above them in the sky, face illuminated by the dim evening sun, it seemed to be growing more intense. At least, at first. Perhaps they were traveling in a direction where it was earlier in the day? No.. That couldn't have been it. It got to the point whre the sky started to darken again, and the stars to appear over their heads. All out of place and traveling above, as they did below. The cycle continued, as again the sky turned pale, before once more the sun emerged to swing overhead, and fade to night again.

	It was so rare to hear the hind make any noise at all asides from her ringing hooves, his brain couldn't quite process the sound he heard. How she sounded, he did not remember as she giggled, but he knew she'd said something. Once again, her eyes were upon him, and they danced with puckish secrets. He knew that look, however. No one ever knew a girl with a secret they were bursting not to tell, and not know that face. It was subtle, but the direction they were taking veered off just so slightly, and the light around the meter out to each side of them shifted just a little, darkening as if they'd just entered a solid space. Lightless, insulating.

	Out of the left corner of Louis' eye, he saw something. Something so amazing, he knew in that moment it was not meant for mortal eyes to witness. Something that would've been worth a half hour assembly of speaking to convey, were it spoken aloud. There, in this impossible darkness thick enough to cut as if it were oil, glowed and streaked another golden light. Another golden hind, same as she whose hand he squeezed tight now, running in virtually the same direction through whatever this impossible, viscus darkness was. 

	She was not alone. Behind her, the familiar sight of another silhouette thundering their feet behind her while running. At first, he questioned whether perhaps it was supposed to be themselves, gazing recursively upon their own progress from another beat into the future? Or, perhaps, the past. That made no sense; the silhouette of the body was all wrong. Louis was being pulled along by the hand, this figure was running behind their own hind under their own power. A different team, perhaps? He supposed it made more sense than to think there was just the one of her kind. Or that he was the only contact her kind may've had to the mortal world. Perhaps it should've made him feel just a little less special, but it didn't. The hinds, whatever they were, were magnificent. That perhaps he was one of many had its own certain comfort to it.

	They drifted closer, ever so closer. Still running as if they were on an interstate road  alongside and above the other pair, Louis got a better look at this other team. The other hind was scarcely different in any way, compared to his. A svelte figure, with just a touch of feminine fat to round out the runner's body. So very cervine in shape, elegant and alien. She still bore no clothing, as seemed par for the norm. Her hair was long, flowing, as though it had a mind. If not for the fact he was traveling behind one already, he'd have assumed it the same beautiful, otherworldly girl.

	Her companion remained shrouded in the fog of distance and blurring of golden light they were following, figure blurred by the ambience given off by their hind. A masculine shape, but by the height and figure, not much larger or presumably older than Louis himself. He could make out a T-shirt and jeans, something that flapped as if unzipped or buttoned up front, but no hoodie. A muzzle, but no more details.

	No more, at least, until the figure turned their head. An inquisitive glance in Louis' and his hind's direction, and Louis beheld the anomaly. Ghostly, blazing, blue. Like a pair of cold blue headlights, or a frozen angel's tiny halo in each eye. Their unnatural brightness not content to sit in the sockets, not content to be washed out by the gentle gold ambience now illuminating his face and chest and displacing other colors and hues his ensemble once had. The reflection of them against the brows overpowered the gold gleaming off of his hind's back and hindquarters, as he turned his head just slightly to get a better glance at Louis. One brow raised, lips parting just slightly in concern and confusion. A young goat, with light grey hide and small, backfacing horns. Some sort of robot character graced his T-shirt, and his caprine-head fit baller cap gleamed from all the icon pins attached to the felt.

	Dad?

	The hind running ahead of him giggled wickedly. As before, his memory did not catch her true pitch or voice, merely the bubbling, gurgling noise of something that was missing from the archive. Turning her head towards the other party as if to emphasize them, her green eye turned back to Louis. And just like that, their direction changed. Both hinds, with their respective kids, were subtly veering in different directions. This dark, opaque muck separating them grew harder and harder to see through, and once more, Louis and his guide were running alone.

	So many questions percolated in the back of his young mind, as Louis faced forwards again. Was that his father, as a kid? Did his father run with the hinds, as he was starting to do now? Was it just a coincidence? What were the limits of where, and perhaps, when, they could run to? The weight of these questions started to sit heavily on his mind, refreshed only by an affectionate squeeze of his hand by the warm, golden glow of the hind before him, fondly gazing back at him without even slowing her stride. 

	She had said so much, while saying nothing at all.

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	Whatever ungodly darkness the two of them were blazing through started to thin before them, until it was clear by the changes in the flora around them, they had gone far north. As light from the waking world once again competed with the all imposing dark until Louis could see the land before him, he could tell just by the way things passed beneath them that the hind was slowing her run. Rather than just feel like images on a screen blowing passed them, Louis could feel the echoes of material as they passed by and through them, shallow hints that their bodies or perhaps just the universe itself was becoming corporeal again. The transition between states so smooth and immediate that he barely noticed, until the fur on his hide started to whip around as the odd bubble surrounding them let the air in. And then, they were standing on someone's back lawn.

	It was a quaint house, colored a plain white with wooden shingle siding. The air was chilly. There were mountains northeast, and an ocean to the west he could see far over yonder. They were at a high elevation, and that felt different on the sinuses and lungs. This time of year, it would never be so cold where he was from. The unspoken reality, however, appeared to be that he was nowhere near home right now. The prospect terrified him, but as he gazed to the warm smile and relaxed demeanor of his chaperone and remembered what he'd inferred from his father's blessing, he stilled himself from fear. This girl that was roughly his height, that could've been an older sister or even a teacher, yet may have been older than his family line, for all he knew.

	She was back to her only vaguely unearthly hide color, her sclera returned to white with green irises. Pleased as punch for him to come, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and ushering him towards the topiaries and trees separating the large open space the property may not have owned, from the property lines of the yard. Excitedly, the hind pointed up at the back window of the aggressively rectangular house, looking from Louis to it. Slowly, his brown, contact lensed eyes followed her finger. It was pure darkness, owing to the low light of the bedroom and the drawn curtain.

	This earned the hind a helpless shrug. And that shrug earned him an, 'exasperated at boys' expression. The sound of a sigh wafted from her nostrils, but the puff of warm, humid air somehow seemed illusory. He could see it, but unlike her hide, it bore no warmth or moisture. An ember of curiosity of how much of her was real bloomed, but died like a bright welder's spark in the dark shortly thereafter as the hind started her wordless game of charades. Louis observed.

	Over the following minute, she pantomimed tossing tiny pebbles up at the window with pinches of her fingers, without actually touching any of the grains of sand she could reach beneath the grass. Reinacting a scene that could've only been a reference to Romeo and Juliet, before she rose from her knees and gave Louis a hug. Expectation in her eyes, as she gazed into his. 

	Louis returned the hug, both in character and just holding her as he considered what she were telling him. Glancing up towards the window, then back at the hind. His thoughts wandered back to the crying panda girl, whom even now he could kind of hear sniffling despite the distance, the glass and the house insulation for the northwestern climate. Wheels turned in his head, as he visualized himself somehow catching her attention, coming inside and... The hind stared at him, apparently hanging off his thoughts. Louis visualized he and this mystery girl interacting, and her face changing. Gone, the crying eyes and snotty face. Gone, the pouting expression. Replaced by contentment, if not happiness. 

	That earned him a kiss on the forehead and another squeezing hug. Louis took that to mean he understood his assignment, but questions remained, and had a habit of multiplying. A question that the hind appeared to pick up on as he stared at her, then back to the window. Why? Specifically, why her? Why HERE? Why now? Why..

	The small, feminine hand of the hind found his, tightly squeezing it with intention as she apologetically gazed into his. The curious sensation entered his mind again, a warm exterior of compassion as a mask. But behind her eyes, Louis could feel something colder. The words never formed, but the intention was beyond clear. Answers lay buried beneath that mask of, if one could call it, professionalism, but now was about action, not understanding. A pleading for something, fundamentally important to this equation.

	Trust.
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	Tink. Tink...... Tink............. Tink.

	Diane's senses dulled over the sounds of the tiny grains of sand bouncing off of her bedroom window, the first few times it happened. Dead to the world. After the first dozen or so, she started to get the impression it wasn't just particularly sassy raindrops beating at the panes. Too irregular, too chaotic for chaos. She dedided to play dead, hoping that whomever it was would go away. No such luck. The sounds of the itty bitty grains of sand bouncing off the window went on for a good fifteen minutes of audacious noise, before she finally grunted in aggravation and determined to get up to go see what was going on.

	In short order, she was on her aching feet, lamenting gravity as she strolled towards the window of her darkened bedroom and pulled the curtains away. Gazing out and down, she saw nothing but the trees marking the privacy line close to her home. Confused, she glanced around at the dark shadows cast by the lowhanging branches, until she caught some unusual creamy, meringue colored fur sticking out from the shaded, bristled layer. Raising an eyebrow on her light face, she gripped the handle and started to lift.

	"Hello?" Diane called, quietly. There was still a bugscreen between and the cold, northern climate of outside, and she wasn't about to stick her head out. Crossing her furry arms and resting them on the pane, nose near to pressed up against the uniform crossed wires of the screen. "Hanna, is that you?" She called, a mild frustration in her voice. "I swear to god, if you're doing another stupid 'expose,' I'm tying you to an anchor and letting the sea do the rest." 

	"Nope, not Hanna!" A juvenile male voice called back, whose voice sounded unbothered by the crack of puberty, just yet. "Not doing any stupid internet thing, either." 

	Diane's eyes widened at the revelation. This was a stranger. A young sounding stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. Leaning back into the bedroom and keeping her face out of the light of the late afternoon, she kept her eyes on the source after triangulating it with her sense of hearing. Suspicious, but he sounded harmless. 

	"Who are you?" Diane asked, nonplussed but patient. 

	"Name's Louis." Said Louis. Apparently. "You can call me Lou-is, or Loo-ee. Either or. Don't mind which. But, I use -is." A long pause settled between them, until Diane decided to take a broom to it and shoo it back to activity.

	"Is there any particular reason you're hiding beneath my trees?" She asked, practically whispering out the screen. "Should I call the police? For you, I mean. Are you hiding from someone?"

	"Oh, nah. I'm eating."

	"Eating." Diane echoed.

	"Mmhmm!"

	Another awkward pause passed between them, with the white noise of the far north whistling passed them and howling down the road. Diane twitched her round, fuzzy black ears. Somehow exasperated and entertained at the same time. 

	"Can you come out where I can see you?" Diane asked, in a manner that sounded like a polite demand that would escalate if he did not. "I'd kind of like a face to the name." Both polite and stern. This was a stranger, after all. Choosing to eat who knew what in her back yard.

	"Okey dokey!" Louis replied, with a mouthful of something. In no time at all, he crawled out from under the lowest skirt of thick green needled branches of the tree, emerging into her back yard on all fours. His grey fuzzed tail lashing side to side in rapid succession with his amusement while he switched from a crawl to a squat with his elbows on his knees. He was clearly unarmed, as far as she could see. A curly, dark haired boy with cream fur, dotted with tiny flecks of grey in a hoodie sweater. He was chewing a needle bearing branch. A goat.

	"This better? Can you see?" 

	"I can see you fine." Diane replied, tone less amused than her true level. "I'm just confused why you decided to.." Realization hitting her. "Are you eating my trees?" 

	"Mmhmm!" He eagerly confirmed, lifting his head and bending his neck to take a bite out of the branch right above his head. The pine tree made satisfying crunches against his strong, strong teeth before going back to staring at her in the window. Another awkward silence, before a look of realization fell over Louis' face.

	"Oh. I'm sorry." Louis said, bashfully. "Want in on this? You grow some DELICIOUS needles, out this way!" Before leaning back to have another bite of pine branch and those tasty, tasty needles.

	"Pandas don't eat TREES!" Diane huffed in frustration, frowning down at him. "Bamboo is more of a grass and grain than a tree. And it's not all we eat! Not even panda-people just spend all day eating bamboo!" 

	Louis sensed there was some bad blood here, made worse by her feelings. He just patiently stared up at her with that borderline vapid patience, chewing away on her pilfered pine needles with his jaws working overtime. Another big, strong swallow deposited that bolus of bark and the delicious green bits into his stomach. He'd never insinuated all she ate was bamboo. But, fine. He'd let that go. It wasn't what she needed, right now.

	"So, that a no?"

	Diane leaned her face against the bugscreen so hard, patches of her fur stuck through the tiny pixel sized pores, nosepad pressed up against the old mesh in disbelief. More awkward, stunned silence. The obliviousness. The audacity.

	"Can I have it?" 

	Diane threw up her hands, eyerolling and letting her jaws hang with a chuff of air wafting into a cool, opaque cloud through the screen. "Knock yerself out, bud."

	"SwwwEEet!" Louis pumped his right arm, before going back to having his needly snack. Sitting himself down on his denim clad rump, folding his legs and just browsing the lowest hanging branches first lazily. All while Diane stared down, tight lipped and bewildered by this odd little kid that decided to eat her yard. This was at least more entertaining than sulking herself into a crater in her bed.

	"Awfully brave to come up to somebody's property and start eating their plants, Louis." Diane murmured, still being quiet. Both for her neighbors' sake, and presumably her parents, inside her home.

	"They're too close to the house." Louis declared, swallowing and then going in for another bite. At this, Diane couldn't deny. Daddy has said as much for the twelve years she could remember. They were grandfathered in, but they posed a risk to the property. "Gonna have to get rid of them, anyway. That means running them through a de-barker to use the wood, if not just throwing them away. Waste of good food."

	Diane semi-tilted her head, brows lifted. "You seem to know a lot about eating from other peoples' yards."

	At this, Louis just bleated at her. The reason was rather self-evident. 

	"Where did you even come from?" Diane asked, looking around. Did this absurd little kid even have supervision?

	"I just jogged up the road a bit." Louis said. Certain words in his mostly true statements doing heroic amounts of lifting, compared to others. It wasn't the whole truth, but it wasn't a lie.

	"You sound like a Workhomer." Diane prodded. "But I can't place if midwestern or southern." 

	"Keen ear." Louis replied, with a mouth and throat full of pine needles. "Kinda both. But, kind of mountainous? So, kiiiind of neither and its own thing." The ever more naked branches provided less cover towards the ground. "Here on family business, on behalf of a friend. Just enjoyin' the fat of the land. Love me some juicy landfat." 

	Louis emphasized with an almost canine pantomime of thrashing his mouth on the branch, growling. Diane quietly snorted. A tiny streak of self-consciousness grew at his casual use of the word, 'fat.' 

	"Do your parents-." Diane hesitated, "-Or legal guardians, know you're wandering into people's yards, eating trees?" 

	"Yup!" He practically bleated again. "So long as I'm home before midnight."

	Midnight? Diane watched him nibble the needles, trying to sort through what strange morality of his parents led to such a house rule. 

	"Don't you get enough to eat at home?" 

	Louis made a dismissive noise at her, waving a hand. "I have more than I can eat at home. You know the difference between wild blackberries, and storebought?" Louis asked, practically rhetorically.

	"What?" Diane asked, taking the bait.

	"Wild berries," Louis breathily started, leading up to a high pitched, "Are frreEEEeee!" And try as she might, Diane could not find fault in that most economical of logics. She was trying to find hints of child abuse, and finding only strange children. And clean clothes. And cute boys.

	"Keep your voice down!" Diane whispered.

	"Sorry." Louis whispered back. Another calm silenced passed them by. Diane went and got herself a cup of iced tea, almost surprised to see the boy still munching when she got back.

	"Aren't you getting thirsty? You have me wanting water just watching you."

	"A little." Louis admitted. "The pitch and tar is a little sticky." 

	Yeah. No shit. Diane filed that under, 'understatement,' and chalked it up to being a goat thing. The amount of difference it made between needles and no-needles was interesting for the breadth of the tree. 

	"I'd invite you in, but I don't think dad would like that much." Diane admitted. 

	"He home?" Louis asked. Surely, for benign reasons. Diane thought about how to answer that.

	"He'll be back by ten."

	"What about your ma?" He pursued, turning his face to look at her as he paused his snack. "What would she think?"

	Diane was silent for a good ten seconds. "I think she'd say no."

	"Awwwww." Louis complained, via whispering. It was almost the warble of a bleat. "I bet she'd like me." 

	"Confident, aren't you?" Diane grinned.

	"No, not really. I just shitpost like a champion." 

	"Too much more tree in your stomach, and you WILL shit a post." Diane suppressed a giggle.

	"She's got jokes! But for real," Louis swallowed, coughing. "Could you toss me a bottle of water, or something? You can just fling it out the window, if you're worried I'm going to mug you, or whatever." 

	Diane considered. Gazing down at this strange boy, clearly not from around here and too bathed and clean dressed to have been out jogging for more than a day. The way he so casually sat on grass and under trees and didn't appear to have any until then suggested these were good clothes, only recently dirtied. He was considerably smaller than she was, and she could tell, definitely nowhere near as strong as a bear sow. She could probably suffocate him under her.. Well. Sniffing, she leaned against the bugscreen.

	"Okay, Louis. What I'm going to do is come downstairs, and try to sneak you in through the backdoor." Diane whispered. "Mom is a little more sympathetic since I got pregnant, and if you're caught she'll probably be disappointed, but understand." 

	"Woaaaaaaah." Louis said. He'd gotten a look at her, courtesy of the hind, but for some reason never put the pieces together that she was pregnant. He wasn't the sort of boy to judge too harshly about bodyweight in the first place, especially on creatures meant to be chubby. Even if only in their later years. "You're preggos? That's cool."

	Diane realized what she'd let slip and immediately flushed! Stepping away from the window and back into the darkness, she held her face and shook her head. The reality finally donned on her, and the self-consciousness and shame were back like a bad allergy. A whimper too quiet to escape into Louis' ears quivered out of her nostrils, while she composed herself.

	"Y'know, I don't need to come through the back door." Louis offered, leisurely taking another big bite of pine needles. "I could just walk in."

	"You're not coming through the front door!" Diane whispered with a hiss. "She might forgive me, but I doubt she'd let me have a strange boy in again." Even one that looked somewhat pre-pubescent. But, perhaps, she was using panda standards. He looked like a pre-teen. He could be a pygmy goat and just be a grown billy, for all she knew. Probably not, but odds were, it's not like he posed a threat.

	Before she could even process what he was doing, he got up, dusted off his pants, walked up to the side of the house with her window on it and started using the shingles as a foothold, fingers pinching hold of the undersides of ones above those. With the apparent ease of a gecko, he started scaling her house's singles like they were particularly vertical stairs. Up, up and up. Diane's eyes widened in surprise at what she was seeing, immediately concerned and moving to pop the screen out of the window!

	"Louis, what the hell are you doing!?" Diane whispered, her tone pitched high like she was performing a scream despite the low volume.

	"Here I coo-ooome!" He whispered back, breath strong with pine scent. Hurriedly, Diane pulled the bugscreen in passed the pane, turning it diagonal to get it through the window and laying it against her closet. Almost immediately thereafter, in came a wild goat through her open, upper floor window. It was quite the distance, if one fell.  That he just impulsively did it concerned her, but she couldn't be too mad. Taking such initiative gave them a secret, and kept her out of trouble. For now.

	Louis entered to the sights and smells of a teenaged girl's room. A room that was definitely in transition, from one for a single flower of innocence, to indeed, the teen mom. She had a desktop computer, a television, a nice book cabinet with titles he'd heard of but never read, or never heard of at all. An unassembled baby's crib lay in the long, narrow box with art of the same make, laying against the corner wall of the room next to the collapsed playpen and other piles of baby things. Like a tumor, the newborn and baby theme just seemed to spread and devour what used to be a teenager's living space, with no sign of stopping until it had devoured every bit of juvenile, girlish joy. 

	And there she was. Tall, for a teenager. A whole foot taller than Louis, and thanks to the transformative, maturing powers of nearly six months of pregnancy hormones, nearly one hundred pounds heavier. Someone that looked like the full brunt of puberty had yet to hit them, versus someone that got a premature extra helping of endocrine boosters, combined with the appetite of a seastorm. Stout. Fluffy looking. Soft. Extremely huggable. In that form denying pink sweater that looked like she'd reached into some spinster aunt's hamper for anything that'd fit, the presence of breasts was noted, but somehow seemed to obscure her curves worse than just wearing a potato sack. Only the final few inches of her long hair carried the hints of that colorful dye, with the rest looking untouched likely since the day she got the big news.

	Louis looked her up and down, impressed. He smiled, that flitter grey tail wagging again. "Woah. You weren't kiddin' about bein' preggos." With all the grace of a middleschooler. An observation that had Diane practice her Marge Simpson-esque sigh of displeasure, with Louis got an inkling he may've hit a raw nerve. He wasn't completely heartless, just.. inconsiderate and rude.

	"I'll get you some iced tea." Diane murmured politely, an overcast on her enthusiasm giving it a bit of a raincloud to her mood. Turning around, she started towards her bedroom door. Inescapably, Louis' eyes fell directly to her ass. It was big, but not exactly what one would call perfect bubbles. That was alright, though. They didn't have to be perfect. As Diane waddled with her added mass and waterweight out the door, seemingly completely oblivious to the way a boy would watch, Louis licked his suddenly parched lips. There was roundness there, he was sure. It was just buried under all that babyweight, put on in haste. 

	Louis licked his lips. Pine needles were tasty, but the stickiness was palpable. It was good his body was built for it, but that still wasn't perfect. Stickiness in the throat was stickiness in the throat. Once that enchanting babyweight booty disappeared around the corner and then headed downstairs, Louis gazed around her room. Where should he hide, if mama dear came in? Supposing, of course, she couldn't just smell the pine on his breath. Or clothes. Or skin. Laying on the floor on the other side of the bed was an option; not expecting a strange kid in her daughter's room, she may just pass it by. 

	Under the bed was an option. Kinda dusty, though. And depending on what the big girl had hidden under there, he might turn her red of embarrassment. That much, he at least considered. Perhaps her closet, then? One door he immediately recognized as to a closet, and another to a private bathroom. Guess they really wanted their daughter to have ease of access, there. Hm. Perhaps the tub and a white sheet? Or shower stall. Though, he tried to imagine his generous panda hostess showering up in it and got completely side tracked. So much fur and fluff and girl, too little space in the stall. 

	By the time Diane walked back in to her room, she noticed Louis sitting on the left corner at the foot of her bed, staring off into space in thought of monocolored boobies and soap suds. "Got you some iced tea. Can't believe you ate so much of that, so quick." Shaking her head in disbelief as she offered the boy the large, bear sized cup. A gesture Louis accepted with gratitude, taking it with both hands and tilting it back to pour it down his throat. The sort of chugging that surprised her when from a smaller creature. She could do that, but her throat was also substantially bigger.

	"Take it easy." She cautioned, immediately feeling a tinge of painful realization. Oh, no. The maternalist attitude. Tightening her lips and shrugging it off, adding on, "You drink too fast and puke, you'll get us both in trouble."

	One finished cup later, Louis let out a sigh and handed her back the empty glass with a triumphant grin and wet lips. Mess and greed had converged and argued, and though the sloppiness of consumption threatened to upturn the liquid into a mess, a void of a stomach had managed to pose as enough of a vacuum to lead it down. A piney, diminuitive burp escaped his throat, thankfully adding only the scents of great northern woods to the immediate air. "Never happen. I'm nowhere near my limits!"

	"You're a friggin' animal, Lou." Diane said, taking the cup back and inspecting the now clear path to the bottom. This savage child really did just tip the glass upside down and catch it in his stomach. Half a liter of iced tea, gone in a flash from something that was way too small to just casually do that.

	"Why, thank you.." And it only then occurred to him, he hadn't even been told her name. ".. You!" Giving Diane the ole fingergunnies, with an expression that all but begged for an answer. A sly smile bent the corners of his lips.

	"Ah..! Diane. But there were five of those in my school alone, so they called me Dee." 

	"Glad they didn't call you Di(e). That would've just been mean." 

	"Some did. Can't say I care for them."

	That sounded odd. She didn't seem too terribly unlikeable to Louis, but then he wasn't the sort of person to antagonize, either. Tilting his head and studying her face, she didn't demonstrate too terribly much emotion. It was a wound long since closed. 

	"Bullies, huh?" Louis said, with an understanding lilt.

	"Just mean girl shit." Diane deflected. "Too big a problem to ignore, too small to get away with smashing their face in." Shaking her head. "Some people can just be picked out from a bunch and shut out of a group. And stay that way. Long and short of it."

	"That let up at all this year?" Louis said, nose tilting down to indicate her stomach. He was not being subtle, at all. The angle of his eyes would've sufficed, but he was leaving nothing up to interpretation. 

	Diane slowly shook her head. "Worse. Had a reputation as easy, when I'd never been kissed." A large, furry hand coming up to hold her soft side. "Got ten times worse when I showed up for Grade Nine, twenty five kilograms heavier and sporting a babybump."

	"Oof." Louis winced, quietly sucking in air through his teeth. One thing he could say about most male bullies; At least they were short sighted idiots. The worst ones just repurposed the same shit Mean Girls did for another avenue. The constant vigilance, the backbiting, the social manipulation. Immediately, he thought of Zapthra. No matter how you sliced it, it was a game for sociopaths. Mean Girls were just a different breed.

	"'Oof,' indeed." Diane groused. "Bitches."

	Louis tried to think of the best course of action at this point. Trying to undermine her venting could've been mean, but exacerbating it may not be good either. How to say relate to a lifetime of abuse in the smallest number of statements possible. His eyes shifted, left to right as his mind turned. Eventually, he settled upon an idea. Slightly drastic, but it'd work.

	"Wanna see a trick?" Louis asked, rhetorically. Grinning at her the whole while as he lifted his right hand to his face, index finger finding its way over an eye. 
	Diane caught wind of his conversational approach. A cautious, monotone, "Sure." Passed her lips.

	Whether she was going to play along or not, the process was already started. Carefully maneuvering the contact lens off of his eyeball, the brown, flexible lens sat like a convex half bubble balanced on his fingerpad, freeing the violently, ghostly blue of his eye to her sight. One contact removed, he almost could've passed for heterochromia. One blue, one brown.

	"Taadaaaa!" 

	Diane was surprised. Not very, but surprised. Peering deep into her guest's natural rectagonal iris as he grinned his fool goat grin, studying the unique color and architecture. It sure looked strange, in contrast to the uniform brown of his left. Just for fun, she reached down and placed a thumb on his cheek, the rest of her hand on the side of his head and drawing him closer for a better look. A tittering chortle left Louis' chest, letting her have her peek at his peeper.

	"You've very pretty eyes." Diane blurted, not even realizing she'd said it. It was almost as reflexive as the genuine redundancy of declaring a cat, a cat. They knew they were a cat, the universe knew they were a cat. Honest and true things just said aloud, for the sheer, brutal honesty that they were real. A moment Louis almost ruined by batting them at her. Her response was as sudden, tapping him on the snout with her thumb. "Why even bother with contacts?"

	Louis' expression didn't change, beyond those eyes lidding. Adopting someone elses voice and candor, he paraphrased, "'YoU lOoK lIkE yOu'D sUrViVe A fAsCiSt UpRiSiNg, LoUiS!'" He mocked. "Meant-as-an-insult. Taken-as-one,-too." 

	Diane took a few seconds to process that as she stared down at this strange, wall climbing goat. Curiosity overtook her, as her dark brown eyes lifted to his headfluff. Not even a request, just a silent acknowledgement for what came next as her free hand, the cup long since set on the bed, found his scalp. Pressing down the wild, curly black mane, until finding the layer of cream colored fur and then parted in a hairline further between her taut fingers, to the roots. The verymost tips of which at the roots were as gold and shiny as cornsilk.

	"Ahhh. Yeah." Diane sighed her acknowledgement. "I get it, now." Releasing his face, Louis reapplied the contact to his eye and blinked it back into place. Practice had made him awfully good at readjusting it. 

	"I got gang slammed because a mouthy bitch decided to scream at me like she was arguing with someone, that I am very much not. Earlier today, that same bitch spent detention bouncing brazilnuts off the back of my head." Putting his arms behind his head, fingers interlocking and resting in it like it were a pillow, elbows out. "So I get it. If a particularly savvy loudmouth with social skills to spare decides you're fair game, there's not much you can do about it." He shrugged. "I don't think adults know what to do about it, either."

	"They've never tried to beat me up, but I think it's kind of obvious why." Diane half smiled. The muscle had either dissolved or been buried in more motherly fat, but a bear was a bear. Still, she had to admit it at least felt good to know someone understood that displeasure. Constant rejection by a gaggle of girls over years was not the same as the sudden, violent chaos of a dozen students slamming you, but a horrid time that didn't have to be, was what it was.

	"Point still stands, though." 

	"Yeah, I'm just saying." Diane stewed in her thoughts. She'd just been told her guest was accused of authoritarian hate. This ridiculous guy that likely had more strong words to say about fighting game characters than any opinion on politics or ideology. No, it wasn't years of groups of girls conspiring to make her feel unwanted or ritually mock her to make an example to other girls, but the idea they could've tried, and on false pretenses no less, suddenly crossed her mind. Lucky he could change his appearance with just a little dye and contacts, or eyewear.

	Reaching down for emphasis, grabbing Louis by the hips and sliding him further up onto her large bed before sitting herself down at the foot of it. An action that looked like it was going to go well, until actually setting her weight down on the bed caused the mattress to depress enough that Louis leaned in against her with a noise of questioned balance. Through no fault of his own, the earth beneath his butt depressed and saw him all but fall against the soft, cushy body and the ugly pink sweater, covering it up from behind. A look of realization went over Diane's face, a split second before impact. Post collision, 'Well, this may as well be happening' was the mood du jour. 

	"Sorry!" Louis quickly yapped, hands finding themselves on Diane's shoulderblades from his sideways sit. Diane just sighed, feeling her cushy, relatively new frame moosh against his hands. Recent enough that she could remember affectionate touches and hugs and contact where she didn't feel like an overly stuffed teddybear. Before she put a plug in it, tears managed to leap from her lacrimals and subtly drop to the rug beneath her bed before even she could see where they escaped. 

	"It's fine. I forgot, again."

	All was still for a good fifteen, uneasy seconds. Louis seemed to know something was building before Diane did, but exactly what he didn't know. It came in the form of spontaneous crying and covering her eyes with her hands. Just loud enough that Louis' eyes widened and he stared at the closed door. Freezing like he were trying to deceive a T-Rex, he brought up his left hand to stroke Diane's soft back.

	"Hey. Heeey. Shh... Diane, it's alright. It's. all. right." Louis tried to console, despite it being blindingly obvious it was as much to calm her down as not be discovered. "Did I elbow you?!" 

	"I..." Diane sniffed, "Am SO TIRED of getting FAT!" She whispered, just a hint of a squeak from her pipes as she robbed them of volume, but really put pressure into the breath. Louis' ears twitched at the near inaudible sounds of great big pearly tears, running down that hydrophobic fur and meeting their final resting place on the carpet, darkening the color in spots. Out came the vitriol, and it wasn't limited to lipid rich, saline tears.

	"Every week I can just feel myself turning into a blubbery pile of fur. I'm hungry all the fucking time, I'm peeing more than I've EVER peed in my LIFE, and I feel like, that's it. This is me, now." Holding up her arms to emphasize, gazing from soft bicep to soft bicep. "The Living Pillow. My body just turns food into fat and baby, except for my bones, which just.. get thicker and bigger to carry around all this weight. I'm never fitting in my cute clothes again."

	Louis never felt so inadequate of a tool to handle so sophisticated a problem, in his life. Like a proverbial rusty wrench in the middle of psychology session. A claw hammer, in a chip fabricator. A chlorine tablet, in hospital soup! He was in an emotional mine field, where anything he said could make the problem worse, and there was nothing he could say to fix anything. Just what did you tell a girl whose body was speed running Maidenhood into Motherhood, to raise her body image? Whose very ego was ready to fight anyone that called her fat, including itself? As a frickin' preteen BOY? He couldn't un-babybearer those bear hips, or shrink her hormone stretched and swollen nipples. Here she was, dreading every week being Fat Bear Week from now on, with angst about aging and femininity on top of that. Diet and exercise advice? Encouragement? Discouragement? Body praise? Just to not make them feel patronized with boilerplate platitudes. 

	This was a minefield. This was a setup to fail. The more he tried to think about what to say that could avoid the wrong things, or misinterpretation, as he'd remembered from the little conversation about bamboo out front, the more time passed of saying nothing. He was surrounded at all angles by bad ideas and being the wrong person for the job.

	And yet, here he was. Was the hind crazy? Was he? 

	Fuck it. He could be torn in half and tossed out the window, for all he cared. 

	"Some things are more important than cute clothes." Louis murmured, wiggling onto his knees up behind her in the crater made by her gravity well of a bear ass, leaning his chest against her back and resting his chin on her left shoulder. Diane's crying momentarily dialed down as she peered back out of her left periphery, just getting the hints of caprine snoot sticking into her field of vision. 

	The next sensation she experienced was that of warm boy arms as they tried to wind around her chubby sides. He didn't quite have the wingspan to do this as an equal; She was just too dang big to do it as properly as he ought. And yet, with a bit of displacing all that monochrome fur about her waist, he wrapped his arms as far around as they'd reach across her belly. Just far enough to palm around the equator, not enough to reach the her protruding navel. She felt very warm to him. Her skin and hide had that intoxicating smell, but he knew better than to bring it up. Damned once for cute girl smell, damned twice for that unique twist pregnancy gave it. 

	She was listening. Still crying, but at least the inconsolable self-pity had been stopped. If only postponed. Babybrain was real. It was a little shameful to admit, but Louis' could only describe that in one, absurd way: Hot. Still, trying to be on his best behavior was a struggle. The irony. A flat toothed creature, trying not to predate on an omnivorous carnivore. Hit her with both barrels, he thought, she could pour what was left of him down the sink, or wash him out of that carpet with soap.

	"The whole point of this growing up thing, is to become the you that you're meant to be." He continued, giving as comfortable a squeeze as he could around her waist, fingers splayed and palms doing the majority of the work. Depressing into the soft panda chub, sinking until he found the resistance of that second trimester tummy so defiantly forcing the shapeless pudge to conform to its unyielding mass. Diane groaned through her nose at the sudden sensations of another entity exploring her body, in an area that had grown more intimate and less wholly hers over the last half year. 

	"Maybe it happened a few years earlier than you wanted. Maybe you didn't get to be a hot, sexy, curvy, carefree teenager. At least, for very long." He considered, just exploring with his fingers. Doing his best not to bother the enormous masses that hung like warm mounds above that belly through the ugly, thick sweater, daring to start tugging it upwards like a dense curtain. Soft fluff pooched out to her sides, sitting in what remained of her lap as his cream colored arms slid beneath the fabric for direct contact. Diane was remarkably tolerant of this examination, keeping her eyes forwards and her ears keen. Unconsciously, the vulnerability was bare. Delicate surgery of the soul.

	"I think you're scared you'll never be sexy again." 

	It sounded such a petty, disgusting thing to be afraid of when said aloud. It hurt to acknowledge. It hurt to be said by someone else. It especially hurt that it came out of the mouth of a jerkass, middleschool boy. Physically, she winced, pursing her lips. If she wasn't facing him before, she sure wasn't facing him now. A deep breath made her ribs stretch, and Louis felt his arms part just a bit further for a moment.

	"I promise. WhatEVER you're into," Louis emphasized strongly. Because, in truth, it sincerely didn't matter. "- Isn't looking at you like a rotten fruit, or spoiled meat. You're not broken. You're not dead. You just became a different kind of hot." 

	This earned him a sour expression pointed towards the space in front of her, and a droop of her face of disbelief. Louis could tell she was rejecting the whole notion. It was something that didn't sound true. Maybe it would've, in a different state. If her insecurities weren't screaming at her at ten times their usual volume. If she didn't know so many people that only cared about tight, maybe voluptuous. If chubby chasers weren't so creepy, almost seeming like they were into something just to be contrary and counter-culture. Something so counter-intuitive couldn't be true. 

	"You know what else?" He asked, again rhetorically. It was a lead up, and she knew the purpose. A dispirited, "Hmm?" Was the only humoring consent she gave to him to continue.

	"You don't get to decide if you're naturally sexy, to other people." He whispered by her left ear, close enough to the side of her head that she could feel those caprine lips pulled into a trollic grin. "We do. It may not be sexy, like you like, but I promise, it's sexy like THEY like."

	Diane's current sadness was diminishing, but in its place, a different kind of sadness. The confirmation that some things were out of her control. At least, for the most part. But at least she was still listening. That her heart hadn't calcified or exploded told him, there was still an ear to hear. The hand didn't crush her feelings as hard as he feared.

	"Maybe from where you're standing, you're a popped cherry. Or a spoiled peach. I can't know how you're feeling. I can only guess." Leaning in closer, pressing his boxy chest with only the fairest semblance of masculinizing development against her back. His neck slid forwards with the extra slack granted by adjusting how much he was leaning on her, while his face slid closer into view. Diane felt an eye on her, seeking out hers. Brown eye to contact lensed brown eye, humoring him with a look.

	"Maybe other people like other fruit. Some like cherries. Some like peaches. Some like oranges." His grin just got more smug, more silly. "Maybe some people like big, juicy grapefruits. And some freaks even eat raw onions."

	This caused Diane to giggle, despite herself. The frown during and afterwards told him she found it funny, but was mad at him about it. That was fine, he'd resolved to die on this hill, anyway. How dare he be funny with such terrible jokes. 

	"And freaks like me?" Louis said, tone uplifting to refer to himself. Diane felt the cool in the air as he sucked in a breath, tightening his arms around her waist, but closer to her ribs than her mid-section earlier. And then Diane felt the presence of something else against her back. Something warm was pressed against her sweater. Something clearly firm. Something hot. Something buried beneath the denim of his jeans. Only once in Diane's life had she ever felt what that was, and it's how she ended up as she was, now. 

	She felt the warmth and pressure of an erection, flat against her back. Nothing exceptional in length or width. Simply the only positive affirmation of her desirability in half a year. The unmistakable give of two nuts beneath, as her lewd, frustrating guest rolled his hips sensually against her body. A cheeky, breathy snicker or giggle passed her ear.

	"We," He emphasized strongly, "Like the whole fruit salad. Cherries. Oranges. Peaches-" It was so sudden. Part of his brain questioned just what he was doing, uncomfortable with his own Id-borne impulse. His hands under that ugly, frumpy pink sweater, his left hand coming up to find the warm underswell of that fat panda-woman breast, caged in a nursing bra with pads. Gratuitously swollen in her second trimester maternity, on top of the hasty filling out by a body that was trying so hard to finish construction before the next generation got here. With only a twitch from Diane of surprise, stunned to silence and surprised by the audacity, but no interruption took place. No rebuke, no disgust. Not even numbness! She was consenting, and her rational mind only just now understood she was more than alright with this. 

	Way too skilled fingers for their size found her left nipple, not even looking as they undid the cover of the nursing bra cup and pulled it aside while his right merely upturned his palm and affectionately held that heavy, fat bear breast on the opposite side. His left played with her teat, index tip and pad swirling around her areole, studying the unique topography with attention to detail. Every little bump, every little depression, every patch of smoothness. Thumb above, index below, he spread them to each end of the areole and rolled them downwards, excruciatingly slowly. A tender coo escaped Diane's nose as sore, aching, feverish breast felt uncharacteristically good. Fat drops of colostrum weeped from freshly activated ducts, running like viscus tears down his hand. Running his thumb down across the ducts, smoothly convincing them the swipe of a tongue had bid them close. Operating blind, yet like a master at the controls.

	Now Diane was curious, turning her head just slightly left to watch this strange kid with her peripheral vision, lips partly gaped. Cooly, he kept his colostrum wet hand close to her belly, as he used the end closest to the outside his hand to make space between the fabric, until it emerged from under her sweater. He made a show of it, licking up the slightly bitter, rich pre-milk from his hand, like something between a fruit bat and a sommelier. Savoring and celebrating the flavor and substance for just what it was. Perhaps she could deny it interested her, but as his right finger teased and carressed her tit, a simple, tiny dot of white sympathetically weeped from a duct. Those teats were achingly roused, touch starved and hot. 

	"And cream."

	Diane knew this was wrong. She knew this was mad. She knew she should, by all rights, be upset and even potentially furious at this audacious little bastard. Who did he think he was, to appear out of nowhere and then rub all up on her, tell her she was sexy and then sample her tit juice?! Who did she think she was to LET him? And who turned the thermostat up so fucking high? Diane's face was as flushed as she felt during an allergic reaction, her breathing elevated just slightly by denied arousal as she caught up with her own subconscious and senses. 

	She felt like a part of her was drowning. A nasty, violent, toxic little bit of her ego was being starved of air. Dragged into the waters and choked by the sheer, unbridled realization of Id. Everything her heart thought it knew about what made her body desirable and by whom came into question, all thanks to the well meaning, if misguided and honeyed words of this Workhomer from the south. She waited for him to gag, to lose face, to expose his leering gaze as a mask to put upon, to make her feel better at the expense of his own feelings. It never came. This leering, perverted billy meant every squeeze, every rub of his crotch and every lick of her cream of it. 

	She should feel outraged. She should feel belittled. Objectified. Perhaps. But searching her heart, she felt nothing like that. Not even indignity. She tried to read his heart from his eye, but he was frustratingly sincere in his faunish behavior. Right down to the way his silhouette's tail flittered a mile a minute against the wall. There was no ablative shield to protect it, there was no denial to be had, no way to deflect what he was or what he did. Only the most cold hearted and psychotic of boys could fake an erection like that through layers of denim jeans and frumpy, bumpy, grandma sweaters. Shallow as it was, she was roused. And now, she was curious.

	How did he communicate it with brows? She didn't know, but the message was clear if you understood how to read it. A playful bid of permission. A silent approving stare. Louis reached down with his free hand, gripping the bunched up waistline of that ugly sweater and joining it with his right. Coyly, Diane took in a deep breath of anticipation as this strange boy pulled up, up, gathering more of that extremely heavy, cumbersome thing was lifted. First up over her belly, exposing the black and whites of pregnant panda tummy and the slight overhanging frupa that'd grown as the months passed. Boldly onwards, the shape destroying fluff of the winter sweater giving way to two fat, enormous breasts, engorged by the blissful kiss of second puberty that was pregnancy in your teens. Still wrangled down in the nursing bra, one cup hanging aside and dark, delicious areole hanging wetly out. Up went her arms, a tilt back of her head. There was simply no way Louis could've ever gotten this off without her active participation. 

	The both of them stared with a brief sense of concern as he dropped it haphazardly to the floor, the weight of the ugly, used sweater sounding almost like a whole cat just jumped to the floor from a shelf. A pause, for signs of stirring from downstairs. None. So far, so good. Not missing a beat, Louis snickered a breathy snicker before his hands found her neck and shoulders. Diane's breath caught in her throat. This was not where she was expecting him to go next. As those calloused and active boy hands squeezed into tired, fatigued muscles through that insulating plush fur and flesh, kneading in ripples and waves over sinew and bone and fibrous knots seemed to dissolve, she resolved to forgive it. 

	Working his way down, and now appeared to be the time. With spooky ease, her bra came undone from behind. Audibly, she grunted with a shock of relief as those boulderholders gave way and spilled out her dark teats with a jostle, resting atop her swollen belly. Reaching up, voluntarily tugging them off her chest and dropping them to the foot of the bed. Only then did she realize they'd left the window open. Excitement was joined with protest against the cool of the season, before Louis reached around and under her arms to warm them up in his palms, resting his chin on her right side of her shoulder, this time. "Sorry."

	One ease closed window later, Louis stared her eye to eye and smiled. Reaching out to touch her shoulder, applying just enough pressure to suggest for her to lay back on her bed, she followed his lead. So carefully, he hooked his fingers into those light grey maternity pants and started to peel them off of her, smoothing down the disturbed fur as he rendered her naked. Every new bit of fur and flesh earned a squeeze or inquisitive stroke from his palms, as those rudimentary stretch things were added to the list of clothes she no longer wore. 

	Louis could tell by her expression, the way she gazed him up and down, she wondered if he'd be naked, too. Her only response was a cheeky grin, a relaxed expression and an ambiguous aire. Climbing into the bed with her, fully clothed, he wriggled in against her side and got comfortable as she wrapped her left arm around him. A game of legsie, careful not to dig with those silicone shoe capped hooves. Nuzzling her nearest breast, his sky facing arm from laying on his side found her belly, rubbing down with the grain of her fur over the burgeoning swell and where it met her wide hips. Much easier to look eye to eye this way, while her hand stroked through his fluffy, curly black hair. 

	"Sex and love are two very different things, I've noticed." Louis espoused, resting his nose against her breast and taking in a deep breath. There was no substitute for how girls smelled. Any kind. And in this condition, it was enchanting. "And I think you feared you'd never get sex again." The boy teased, sticking his tongue out to press the top of his lip. Embarrassment flushed Diane's already flushed face. Yes, it was stupid. Petty. A product of insecurity and inexperience. Her hand playfully squeezed the top of his head through his hair, fingers spreading around those little horns sweeping back from his head, as if to threaten to squish his skull in her grip. Message received! Hehehe.

	"Your body, whatever state," Louis started, Diane felt the push and pull of cool breathes in, the warmth and moisture of warm breath out as he eyed her tit like a starving kid. "-Is uniquely hot!" Like a pint sized vampire, his maw widened and closed down over her hypersensitive teat. If she wasn't already squeezing his head before, she was doing it now. She'd had a boy at her breasts before. It was nothing.. NOTHING like this. The way his tongue hugged her areole, fine grain of the abrasive tongue slicked with spit washed and scrubbed over her teat in ways that inexperienced, low effort bastard maker never bothered. Wet and warm, her titty felt like it'd found a second home. It belonged in a mouth.. it deserved a mouth to fill up! Her lip trembled and her jaw quivered as the suckling began, as a relentless gentle assault on her senses. Greedily, refusing to spill a drop, Louis went in. 

	"God, Lou..." Diane whispered, gutturally. "How many tits have you had in your mouth?" The way she said it not criticism, not sarcasm, not disgust. Generally curious, imagining this frustratingly audacious kid at the chest of a plethora of women, from smallies to bigguns. From colostrum carriers, to full blown dairy maids. And by the way his puckish eyes stared up at her while he sucked her tit with gusto, while saying nothing it told her all she needed to know. Plenty. It was not an exclusively, singularly sexual sensation, but somehow wholesome, as well. Fulfilling. Two things which ordinarily shouldn't mix, but were comfortably nuzzled up and grooming one another like bonded kittens, purring away. A jolt, a jump, as those flat caprine teeth pinched that outrageously sensitive tit saw the sister sympathetically bead up and cry the rich, off-yellow cream to a moan, stifled by her free hand. She realized, her body was making her into a breastfeeding machine. Only now, could she appreciate that with fresh eyes. Never once did she ever look at a manual breastpump and imagine it could be as stimulating as this.

	He didn't ignore that swollen belly, she noticed. The way he affectionately stroked it as a delicate feature of her body, fingers leaving little streaks in her fur and weaving squiggles down to her navel. Intimate, the way he teased tender pressure down the underswell and played over her pubic mound. He didn't recoil from the chubby overhang of babyweight, like some shallow teenager or man would, instead groping, squeezing. Diane lay back and basked in the sensations, indulging in this spoiling attention to her body. This was really happening. Not some perverse, impossible dream. Not some fantasy, deliberately contrary to how the world worked. How without hesitating, those fingers found her mound and his fingers pressed over the outer flesh, leisurely rubbing up and down while that scant supply of bitter cream grew more and more empty.

	"Lou..!" Diane squeaked, seeing stars as her free hand grabbed her own pillow. Muffling her own mouth with it, moaning and squealing loudly as small fingers lovingly rubbed her cunt with a kind of attention to detail she'd seldom bothered with these days. She was puffy, swollen.. overly sensitive. All that pressure, welled down in her pelvic floor, and full. Without even delving a digit deeper, without more than a little indirect pressure passed that little hood, Diane's moans bled to whimpers and back again. She wanted to squeeze with her thighs, instead spreading them wider as this devious boy soaked his fingers in her grool. Carressing his head and hair, squeezing those horns like little curled handles. Biting her pillow with her strong, sharp teeth, doing her best to stifle her delirious noises.

	Diane couldn't believe her own pussy. The difference, in how a stranger fingerblasted her to space and how she herself did it, was spectacular. It'd become harder and harder as her energy sapped, as her reach shortened thanks to Jr., just to attend to that starving pandapuss. And here he comes, like a safecracker, listening to the noises she makes just to blow open her cunt like a treasure vault. Her thighs twitched violently, before a sudden rush of fluid soaked her spread. Her arm desperately grasped that thick, dense pillow as she howled into it for a brief, exasperated climax before going limp. Louis' fingers slid over that soft, dark skin of her outer lips, with just that inner line receiving the brunt of that vigorous rubbin'. As before, she heard his tongue lap across his fingers.

	She lay there panting in her post climactic cooldown, her rational mind buried under a miasmic fog of babybrain and pure sex drive. If not for those daily constitutionals, she thought, she'd be in much worse shape. Whimpering into that pillow, all while Louis patiently lavished that belly with attention. Her breast had lost what colostrum it held, leaving him just suckling to suckle. It felt different than when there was substance to draw, more pressure, less.. fulfilling. Something inside of her felt uncomfortable to be so uneven. Resting her pillow atop her head of long hair, she grasped her own sister-breast and whimpered, offering it to him as an alternative.  She wanted to be empty. It was suddenly more important now than it had been, all day.

	Louis licked his lips. That wet tit fell from his lips with a return to worldly pressure, immediately making Diane miss the warmth and sensation. Following his eyes, he stared at her door, then back at her. With a bit to process, she realized why. He was holding himself to the opposite side of her for a reason; If mama came barging in, he could vanish and be unseen between her bed and the wall. He couldn't reach that tit from here. Not without.. !

	Repositioning was hasty and hard, as it should be. There was abolutely no way Louis was moving her all on his own. That didn't stop him from providing critical balance and leverage, holding her hand and pulling as she leaned and rocked. What amounted to going from head to the end of the bed, still maintaining that veneer of separation if they were to be interrupted. Louis wriggled up beside her again, grasping hold of that neglected breast and reintroducing his thumb to her tit, stirring the thick pre-milk into a mess across her areole before eagerly lapping it up. 

	"You know," Louis started with a pant, his tongue flickering over that fat, milkdud of a tit. "You're gonna lose weight after you start nursing. Breasfeeding burns calories like a torch." That lecherous, puckish grin ever present while he treated her tiddy like an icecream scoop. The pleased look on Diane's face was evident. All the more when he grabbed that chubby pouch of her underbelly. "But don't hate this. It's part of the package!"

	"Why the hell do you know all this stuff?" Diane snorted with a tittering giggle, graduating into a sighing moan as those slick fingers spread her apart, finally. "I've got a stack of baby books by my bed and I haven't even read them all."

	"Unga bunga," Louis joked, adopting the candor of a caveman. Staring right at her as he held her breast, planting a big, tension packed kiss right on that plump teat. "Me likey wo-man. Take care wo-man, get milk." Sagaciously nodding to his own.. we'll call it, 'wisdom.' "Wo-man swell up. Awesome. Also problem!" Getting a devilish idea. Little by little, his palm upturned, middle finger started to slip deeper into Diane's vagina, ever so slightly writhing as it sank deeper and deeper upto the knuckles. And then, with a groan of discomfort from Diane, whom couldn't see passed her own pregnant stomach to see just what this crazy kid was doing, she felt the slightest presence at her cervix. A twiddle, sliding that finger around in a quick, tight circle without too much pressure. "Learn catch. Happy bab-by. Happy wo-man. Make more bab-by. Very happy caveman. " 

	"Alright, Louis. Alright." Diane shook her head, trying to keep her cool despite the stimulating probing. Regulating her breathing as best she was able, her insides squeezing him tightly out of reflex. Some monster had taught him what a G-spot is. "You've made your.. pf.. point!" Grinning face a bold difference from the desperation in her voice.

	"Have I?" Louis asked. A chill went down Diane's spine. Laying beside her once more, Louis went back to emptying her second breast of the limited amount of colostrum, as his fingers continued their assault on Diane's peace of mind, utterly taking her sexless dryspell and burning it to the ground. All while fully clothed, that hand fluidly plugged away in her tight, squeezing hole. Again, resorting to her face stuffed into her pillow out of desperation not to start screaming with her fluttering eyelids and quivering legs. Transitioning onto her side as finally her tits were empty of that thick, yellow cream, wet and cooling in the air as she held onto the bed for dear life. His strength, though only just barely atypical of a boy his age, surprised her. Lifting her thick leg upwards as he moved to stand at the edge of the bed, hoisting that drumstick skywards as his other hand assaulted those nerve endings and tender spots of her pussy, inside and out. Again, that poor panda went crosseyed as she was fingerblasted to a honey drizzling orgasm for the second time by this precocious guest. It was minutes before she could get coherent enough to beg.

	"Please... please!" Diane panted, suddenly crossing her legs and squishing Louis' hand between those big, drumstick thighs. "N-no more. My pussy's on fire. I'm so thirsty.. and mom'll be on about dinner, soon!" Reaching down with a free hand as she hugged the pillow to her face and chest, Diane whined into the fabric of the case as Louis trapped her clit beneath his thumb. "I'm wiped. We have to stop."

	Louis could only giggle. In the matter of seconds, that soaked hand went from fingers deep in her sex, to planting his palm on the side of her belly. "I've gotta get going soon, too. It's been a helluva time, though." He praised, kneeling down beside the bed and resting his chin next to where she was laying her head. Her breath heavy as she recover, feeling drained in many good ways for the first time in months. Drained, but sated.

	"What's your cell number?" She asked, hopeful. 

	Her answer earned Louis a pout, as he wiggled his dry fingers at her. "That's a secret."

	"Oh, come on, guy." Diane whined, pout only growing larger. "I let you suck me! You made me cum my brains out!" Her large hand reached out, seizing Louis' in a most permissed grasping. He didn't try to avoid, merely allowing the bigger girl to tighten her grip. "That's at least worth some numbers or social, maaaan. C'mon!"

	"I have my reasons, woman!" Whispered Louis, fighting the urge to giggle as the pressure increased in her desperation. "Owowow, good grip."

	"I could yell, you know." Diane joked, holding him by the hand and refusing to let go. "Show mom the goat that snuck in."

	Louis waggled the fingers of his caught hand, while his opposite flicked her bellybutton. An act that earned him a complainy noise of hurt disproportionate to the pain inflicted. "But if you did that," He said, coming close enough for their noses to almost touch. "I'd have to disappear, and you'd never get to feel me cum inside of you!" 

	"You're killing me here, Louis." Diane complained. Just when she'd found someone to be young, horny and stupid with. Despite her condition, even! Holding his hand tight and pulling it to her cheek, laying her head on it and pouting. An action that saw his hand cup her cheek, rubbing it tenderly.

	"You're just going to have to trust we'll see eachother again!" Louis smiled, his free hand coming over and getting a handful of panda breast. Those palpable moments, one can feel excitement in a lady's tits. It didn't stop the begging puppy pouting, though. A pout that earned her a sweet peck on the lips. 

	"Just feel better, alright? And..." Louis gazed down at that horrible hand-me-down sweater. Then back up to Diane. "Consider burning this travesty. Nobody under fifty can feel sexy in THIS. Good grief." He groused, glaring at the offending thing. "Somehow, it makes a burqa look revealing. And it shows more skin." 

	"Staaaahp." Diane giggled. "It's just, funds are limited for maternity clothes. We get by." 

	"Going topless is an option up here, I heard!" Louis bat his eyes at her.

	"Not so close to winter." Diane stared. Humor on her face, but an underlying threat in her heart. Cold teats were not to be tolerated. "Those black, brown and polar bear girls can get away with that. I'm not built for that, guy." 


	Louis couldn't argue with that. Still, he gazed at her bedroom door, then out the window to the rapidly darkening sky. "Well. I kinda don't want to hide in your room tonight, so I've got to go." Louis smiled. "Cheer up, alright? You're many somebody's flavor." And he was off, carefully and quietly making for the window. Quiet as a mouse, he lifted and hauled himself outside, bringing his hooves to the slanted curves of the shingles and reaching out to grim the slight underhangs, like a rock climber would grasp holds. Diane hefted her naked self up and trundled to the window, seeing him out. The last sight Louis got was her bare chest as she waved affectionately at him. An act which earned her a blown kiss, a heelturn (as much a heelturn as one can make on hooves) and a rapidly wagging tail as he crawled back under the pine trees to vacate the property. 

	He could've just gone around the trees. There were gaps. Kinda, completely did not need to crawl under the lowest hanging, skirt-like branches. But apparently, Louis wanted some pine brush for the road.
	
-------------------------

	Louis came upon the hind quicker than he expected. One moment, he was running back towards the place he started. The next, she was standing in front of him, hands on her hips confidently and beaming with golden pride in his direction. An appearance so sudden, it actually stopped his forward momentum from sheer surprise. She was back in her more mortal guise, with green irises and normal pupils, and healthy white sclera. The rest of her a shiny, coppery brown color, only more yellow and even reddish under certain angles of the setting sun. 

	Offering him her hand, she gave a brief nod. Images flashed through Louis' mind of everything he'd done for Diane that evening. It seemed somehow, she was able to keep track. No words were passed between them, but somehow the sensation of admiration and appreciation radiated off from her. She approved of the work he did, and his funny little, 'golden moment', was complete.

	Taking her hand, Louis squeezed tight. As before, she turned around and started to jog. Louis followed suit, keeping pace. In much quicker fashion than before, he felt the odd, tingling sensation of the hind's influence radiate through his body, encapsulating his hooves in a thin, golden membrane and invigorating his tissues. Fast, faster and faster.

	An intrusive memory entered his mind's eye. The flash image of that other goat kid, running behind the hind untethered and under his own power. Looking back at him with curious, now pure green and glowing eyes, the hind seemed to be asking something. Louis gazed back into her face and considered this offer, before relaxing his hand. Still following close behind her like an imprinted duckling, the hind's tail vigorously started to waggle in delight as she pulled ahead, leading the way. And onwards, they went. Through the inky blackness that surrounded them on all sides, across this nigh impossible to see interstate of time and space. 

	Many things passed through his mind on the way back home. Was that grey kid really his father? If not, whom could it be? Why was Diane, of all people on earth, chosen to recieve help? So many questions poured through his head, and his only possible source of information probably...

	Louis looked ahead of him, finally snapping out of his introspective funk. The hind's head was upside down, looking back at him from over the top rather than turned back to gaze over her shoulders. Not unlike the fright Louis had given Otto. And just like the scare Otto had, Louis just about stopped dead in his tracks to see the golden hind's head facing backwards, upside down while she kept running ahead of him. Stopping far more on a dime than he, the bubble of whatever it was that surrounded them at these speeds dissipated, leaving them in the exact field they'd started this adventure from. 

	The hind doubled over in silent, convulsing laughter, crying molten golden tears that vaporized into the air once gravity separated them from her body. The only sounds she made were wheezes, as mental images from her perspective of Louis' bug eyed, jaw gaped surprise filled his mind. Taking a deep breath as he watched his silent guide lay there giggling, he could only shake his head. 

	'Guess I owe Gum an apology.' Louis thought, while staring down at the hind. He guessed this was where the stop ended. The Hind had collapsed not more than ten meters from her precious traveling rock, and all Louis had to do was collect his backpack. Waving his goodbyes to his hysterical friend, he started home. As before, as soon as he stepped out of view of the hind, his phone showed the normal time. A whole five minutes more than before he'd left.