Insert funny episode summary of choice here, because Tyndali's still working on her divorce. Do we have any suggestions? Let your funny FREE!

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After a week of making signs and hanging them wherever they thought a snake or panther or leopard would find them, (some of them at chest height to catch the attention of any wandering babies... what she was most interested in) they arrived at the ocean. She finished hanging the last sign, which read, 'Neara is here' by what Orson deemed 'an adequate spot'.

Some of the spelling for the signs had been... creative, but she hadn't corrected it because she didn't know how far along Shay managed to get in her reading lessons and it seemed unfair to expect new readers to get 'o-shun' from 'ocean'.

"This is my garden!" Orson loudly proclaimed, pointing to a weedy patch sheltered from the ocean breeze by tall dunes and trees. "So don't go pissing in it or I'll use you as fertilizer!"

"How will other beastmen know it's our territory though?" Tony pouted, having already 'marked' several of the trees along the way. She hadn't minded too much since it wasn't in her direct space but dammit if she didn't miss the smell of... not-urine.

"Winston's walking around with five stripe aura; who's going to come near?" He jerked his thumb at Winston, who stopped digging the foundations for their home long enough to nod. "So don't even think about it!"

Tony's ears wiggled as he bent down to shovel through the sand again.

"I know you're thinking about it, so stop!" Orson barked, causing Tony to drop the sand he was holding.

"Sorry," he yelled, then turned to Benedict and whispered, "Can he read minds?"

"Yes!" Orson bellowed.

Tony, thoroughly convinced, went back to digging with Winston and Benedict.

"How will the clay stay firm if we use it in the salt ponds?" Ethel's questions continued nonstop as she seemed to find strength from the proximity to the ocean. Neara couldn't have been further from comfort, but she knew this was the most likely place to find any of Shay's babies and mates that hadn't gone running for the City of Flames.

"We have to mix clay and chalk from the cliffs into the mud, let it harden, then we can fill it with water. It will keep the water in it forever, and we can scrape the salt crystals from it when they form."

"Sounds like a lot of work. Good thing we have Benedict!" She laughed and gestured to the wriggling Snow Leopard tail sticking up from the ground where Tony accidentally buried him in a pile of dirt.

"Yeah." Neara laughed with her friend and waited for the natural pause in conversation. "So, do you like him?"

"Benedict?" Ethel laughed. "I guess he's alright. Not exactly what I'd call a hero in gleaming fur, but he's ok."

"Does that mean you might mate him sometime?"

"Ha! No. I think I might be done mating for a little bit. Losing... I don't want to get into it. Benedict is just a good friend."

"I agree, and that's something I never thought I'd have to say about the males in this world."

Ethel nodded, then brought a long strand of seaweed to her mouth. Despite Neara telling her multiple times about the dangers of bacteria and mold, she still nibbled on anything she could get her hands on. "You know, I think we could probably chip the chalk without the guys' help. You have that stick thing Winston gave you, right?"

In response, Neara held up the oddly shaped spear with a chunky head, almost in a cube shape. She'd thought it was weird, but Winston showed her how sharp the tip was, even encased in wood, and insisted she take it for protection. Even if he was always there, she couldn't count on his strength always and he wanted her to feel secure.

"Great. Let's just get a couple of these baskets and go then." She stood and brushed off her skirt. "I mean, nothing bad happened the last time we had an adventure."

Neara decided against informing her friend the Leopard King had been an ex and just nodded. There'd been enough shared secrets for at least a few weeks, and it's not like Calvin was a problem anymore. Her blood ran cold when she remembered the sensation of stabbing through his ribs, fingers sucked into warm flesh that felt ragged and puffy, the edges of bone almost forcing her out again. The heat of his last breath on her blood-soaked cheek...

"For the love of rain, Neara, have you learned nothing? At least take the useless Bear with you to use as a distraction!" Orson threw a handful of weeds at Tony, who caught them with a grin.

"If being a useless Bear means I get to go with Neara, I'll do it." At her nod, he scooped her and Ethel up with a whoop and nuzzled his face into Neara's thigh. "I've waited so long to touch you!"

She nodded and ran her fingers down his neck. He shivered in pleasure and started walking towards the milky cliffs just beyond the last dune.

"I know it isn't far, but I always enjoy spending time with you. And you, Ethel."

"I like you too, Tony. I'm glad Neara mated you. I like having you around." She knocked one of his ears playfully and he growled in return.

"Hey, knock it off! I'm supposed to be listening for danger!" But he didn't press the issue and let her bat it around a few more times before jiggling the arm that held her.

"It'd be easier if we had a plow, but I guess a sturdy tree trunk in the arms of a beastman would be just as good as a plow dragged by an ox."

"Ox beastmen? They haven't been seen for decades. Everyone says they wandered off by themselves and formed their own herd, never to be heard from again."

"Ha, herd, heard, I get it." Neara chuckled politely.

"Herd?" He walked them to the base of the steep cliffs and let them down, untying the large baskets on his back. "And... we need to knock all this down?"

"No! Not all of it." She laughed and walked to one of the larger white boulders dominating the beach. "We just need to grind this down to chunks so we can bring it back. Then we can mix it with the dirt for the ponds."

Tony looked at it doubtfully, but flexed all the same. "All right, womans, stand back!" He took a running leap and dove feet first onto the pile, shattering the soft rock instantly and strewing the beach with rubble and dust. When it settled, Neara lowered her hands from her eyes and examined the wreckage.

Ethel had the foresight to duck beneath another boulder, shielding her from the larger chunks although some chips and dust still clung to her hair. Tony was a complete mess, covered from head to toe in white powder and looking dazed.

"It's a soft rock, Tony." She walked up to him and brushed some of the larger crumbs from his hair. "You made such a mess."

He smiled up at her. "I remember we were also a mess when we first kissed."

"We?" she barely had time to sputter that out before his arms wrapped around her waist and dragged her down to his lap, rolling in the sand and dust, his warm lips dragging crumbly residue on her face. "Tony, stop!" But she couldn't stop laughing, so she knew he didn't take her seriously. When she finally relented, he tasted like chalk and grit and not much else. She still wanted him though and nuzzled deeper into his embrace, knowing she'd be a mess when they finally got home.

And she was except for the places where Tony's hands clasped on her thighs, although she wouldn't know that until Orson pointed it out and she bravely splashed in the sea to wash everything off.

After finding a sunny place for the pond, complete with appropriate clay in the soil, Orson started churning the mud into a slurry while Tony followed, dumping buckets of the chalk as he went. Orson occasionally ran him over, but he always fished him out again once Neara caught on to what had happened. After a few days of constantly churning and adding chalk, Neara declared it complete and they used a large flat board to smooth it completely.

"Don't mess with it or it won't dry properly. We need it to be rock hard in order to hold all the water we need."

She couldn't remember if this was Shakespeare history class or World History class... some culture somewhere did this regularly... oh well. Now it was a part of beastmen culture. Beastmen? Beastman? Oh well; they'd argue the politics of it in a few hundred years once everything stabilized and her and Shay's names faded from all memory. Maybe she should write something down...

"Are you Neara?"

"What?"

She instantly regretted looking up.

The beastman had shaggy blond hair cut close to his ears and a scraggly beard most hipsters only dream of. His bare arms were covered from wrist to shoulder in colorful tattoos of line art of all kinds of flowers, pink and red and gold and blue crisply accentuating his muscles. On his chest hung a single tooth the size of her fist. His golden/tawny eyes had sprinkles of green and brown highlighted by the dark gold hair hanging into them. Winston stopped her heart when she first saw him, and whoever this was almost stopped it again.

"Neara?" He said again, concern and curiosity making him infinitely more vulnerable and attractive.

If this was an anime, she'd be shooting blood out her nose like... a Gusher or something, the rush of hormones did not help her feel adequate for this moment.

"Who the hell are you?" Orson asked and, despite the strange beastman's proximity to his mate, sounded bored.

"I am Leopold. I am looking for Neara." He picked up a large wooden sign at his feet. "The one who wrote these."

"For what?" Orson didn't move, but the air around him seemed to ripple. Winston and Tony raced up, towering over the Sheep but not diminishing his presence in the slightest.

"You can read that?" Neara said it without thinking and, in her world, it would've been rude to assume someone couldn't read but here... it was nothing short of miraculous. Did Shay have another secret male on the side she didn't know about? Surely this would have come up in their talks or fights or something... unless she was ashamed... but she hadn't noticed anything on her arms or legs, which meant this one was close...

"How can you? No one other than Lion females has been known to decipher the Ancient Language."

Lion... that accounted for his ears and the swinging tufted tail behind him.

"Neara taught us how to write."

"You all can understand this?"

"Yeah, but scat-for-brains here misspelled 'ocean'." Orson nodded back at Tony, who nodded.

"I spelled it like I said it."

"'O-s-h-i-n' was your best guess?"

"Leave the arguing for later," Winston interrupted, stepping in between the intruder and Neara. "Why are you here?"

"I thought this was a summons... a summons by the Ancient Masters. I came to heed their call. Then I saw a sign declaring that Neara was here, so I assumed I was meant to find her." His eyes still held that awe.

"We were looking for someone else who can read that."

"There are others?"

"A snake, a leopard, a panther, and their children." The height difference wasn't much, but the Lion beastman clearly deferred to Winston's power, despite the four dark stripes lining his throat.

"Children?" He gasped and staggered backwards, one hand to his head and the other reaching around to grab his tail. "There are young ones who can read? The prophecies... but they can't all be coming true at once." He trailed off and turned to face the ocean, barely visible from where Neara crouched. Orson reached forward and yanked her back into the stern pile of males, Benedict taking Winston's place at Orson's side while Ethel clasped her hand reassuringly.

"We don't know anything about desert prophecies, but if that is all your business, you may leave."

"Wait! I need to know more!" He held out his hands imploringly. "She is not only the most beautiful female..."

"She gets that a lot," Orson grunted. "But we've got double digit stripes between the four of us so I suggest you get packing."

"Please, just tell me where you learned this. I will leave, I swear, once I know."

Neara, who knew better than to do what she was about to, stepped outside her protective circle. "I learned it in a different place than this land. It's the common language of my people. There are hundreds of other languages that are written, but this one is understood by the majority. I don't know it as an ancient language; just my first language."

His eyes widened and he fell to his knees, hands grasping hers before Winston could stop him. "Please, tell me everything."