Previously on "Who's That Mary Sue?": Neara visits and is smacked with reality, although chooses to ignore it to the chagrin of her friend. Joseph shows up and says something funny.

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Shay wasn't as involved with teaching her mates how to write. She took a 'by need' stance with it rather than the organized little classes Neara had set up with. Basically, if they asked a question about it or wanted to know, she'd teach them.

Somehow, Curtis managed to zoom ahead to the point that he could read most simple words in the fairytale book. Parker and Ryan, ever competitive, rushed to keep up, but either found their concentration lacking or, well...Curtis was just damn clever.

"How do you do it?" she asked one evening while she kept the eggs warm and Curtis hung upside down as he digested. "I mean, they're out with me more often nowadays and have more time, but I leave you with the book and it's like...are you a genius?"

"Genius? I'm afraid I don't know that term," but he was smiling as though he did. "I simply have plans for what I can do with it. Trading information and learning would be...very wanted, especially if I could make any skill into a physical form that could be taken from one point to another and copied. Far easier to access and transport than an actual teacher."

Shay felt her mouth twitch. A CEO in the making. "And what about your sewing skills?"

"That is for my wife. I have no desire to work my hands for anyone else, let alone some spoiled, bratty female."

She had to chuckle at that.

"Very well. I shall remember that for future snake culture classes. It is important to snakes that they sew for no one else but their wives." She ducked her head beneath the blanket to nuzzle an egg. "Isn't that right?"

"Should be about one more month now," he said. "The cold season is drawing near. I will do my best to stay awake until they hatch, but it was difficult to hunt today."

"Will they have to hibernate too?"

"They won't have the stores," he frowned as he said this. "It would have been better to have eggs during the summer or spring. Winter is very difficult. But since females only go through heat once a year, we can't be picky."

"You could have just waited, you know, since I have mine every month."

At his horrified look at the word 'wait,' she laughed so hard the closed walls of the den made it deafening.

"I do not see what's so funny," he said, showing the closest thing he ever would to a pout, which was more or less just a softened scowl. "There is nothing more pleasurable or divine as mating with you. To have to wait to experience that..." Something flickered behind his gaze. "Have you had your estrous cycle yet?"

"No. Guess my womb's still recovering."

His tongue flickered in the air before he twisted about so his belly was level with the ground so he could slide in about her. The eggs separated them, but he still did his best to reach around them to her, nuzzling against her neck.

"I heard you and the panther last night," he whispered.

Heat flooded her face. She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a squawk.

"So I presumed you're recovered enough..."

She thought there wasn't room enough down there for the both of them and the eggs, but that had been in his snake form.

She came out sometime later, hungry, flushing, and even more embarrassed at seeing Ryan waiting in the bedroom doorway as a panther, flicking his black tail and goldeneyes on her. Just inside was a bowl of water, warm by the tendrils of steam in the air, and one of Ryan's now very used handkerchiefs.

Shay covered her face in shame. "You heard, didn't you?"

The panther said nothing. He even waited, watching unnervingly still, as she cleaned herself back up and adjusted her clothes.

Harvey was waiting for her in the main room over a blanket of dried herbs while Curtis worked on a soup over the fireplace. If Curtis had been able to hear...wait, just how good was beastman hearing? Could they have all...?

To her dismay, Harvey wouldn't quite meet her eye through their lesson.

Maybe I'll have Curtis dig a hole for me so I can curl in it and die.

She had taken it upon herself to dedicate the rest of her notebook to sketching the herbs and listing their attributes, and because of that had been learning in leaps and bounds, but a more pressing need distracted her. Halfway through a quiz of her memory, she snapped the notebook closed.

"Okay, I need privacy."

Caught off guard, Harvey finally looked at her straight in the face. "Pardon?"

"Parker, Harvey, when Joseph gets back you lot are building your own place. I don't care where it is as long as you don't...can't, uh, hear anything that happens in here, got that?"

Harvey blinked. Then flushed red.

Ryan, who had been curled behind her as he usually was during her lessons (he seemed just as wary of Harvey as Curtis and made it a point to always be there when Harvey was teaching her), started to purr.

Parker, however, whined.

"Shay, I'm your guardian, don't kick me out."

"Aren't you embarrassed?"

"Embarrassed?"

Shay covered her face. "Just do it. The rains let up today, you better get started on it now."

"But the soup--"

Ryan suddenly shifted. "I'll do it." He tugged on his kilt from his pouch and crossed the room. Parker pouted like a child until Ryan crouched down and whispered something to him, his low voice still somehow making Shay's toes vibrate. Whatever he said made Parker blanch and scuttle out the door.

Ryan turned to give Harvey, who had been particularly slow this time picking up his herbs, a certain look that Shay couldn't read.

"I know you do too," he said.

Harvey's tail puffed, his pupils shrunk and he paled. In a blink the herbs were swept up, tied in the corner, and he was heading out into the cold. The door slammed behind him.

Ryan snorted and turned back to the soup.

"What was all that about?" she asked.

"A male thing. Come over here and let me know if you think it needs something."

Her panther husband sounded so casual that she shrugged it off and joined him at the fire.

A few days later she told a properly pregnant looking Neara this as they looked at a hurriedly built log shack where a good chunk of the remaining greenery lay bare and wasted in the winter sun. She rather missed the living wall between her and the rest of the neighborhood.

"So, you ok?"

"Yeah, I guess. I'm worried about what Rosa's going to do next. She really hates us for Parker and Winston..."

Shay shooed her off with a shake of her hand. "I'm not worried. Her dad's the weakest of the kings here, so I don't think he'll do anything to avenge her. Curtis will take care of him if he tries."

"What if it happens in the winter? Ryan's only a three-mark."

"Then... Winston can take him on. He'll do anything for you." She looked at the small cabin again and smiled to herself. Privacy from the neighborhood, privacy from... when she turned, she was hit with Neara's rather mischievous looking grin.

"What's that look on your face?" she asked.

"I just get it," said Neara.

"What?"

"You'd rather not know. Trust me. I don't think I could kick out Winston and Theo though."

Shay, sighing with sudden frustration, said, "That's because you want to bang the first like a hammer and a nail, why haven't you done it? You know how bad you're making me feel for that guy?"

Neara frowned. "I'm pregnant and... I asked him to spend some time with me and he didn't want to. I think you're just blowing it out of proportion because everybody in this world wants to screw all the females. He doesn't think that way about me."

"What kind of excuses--gack, blegh--screw this. Oy! Orson!"

Orson, who always hovered nearby Neara nowadays, looked up from where he was leaning against a nearby tree like the cool kid on the block.

"Eh?"

"You want to mate with Neara like crazy even though she's pregnant, right?"

Neara grabbed Shay's fur shawl, face blossoming with color. "Shut up!"

The large, lewd smirk cracking across Orson's face was answer enough.

But Neara shook Shay hard anyways, "The others can hear you! And they're his kids, so of course--"

"Winston!"

"NO!" Neara threw her pregnant self (plump with fruit and rice) on top of her friend, hurriedly showing the fur shawl into her mouth.

Parker and Ryan were out hunting (a heated competition had started between the two ever since Shay had daydreamed aloud about having a white fur dress for winter), Curtis was incubating, but the rabbits in the corner looked all too interested as Winston straightened from where he had been cleaning and gutting fish for their friendly hotpot that evening from across the plot of land.

Smirking, Shay gestured him over while struggling with Neara.

Neara slapped down her hand. "Don't, Winston, you don't want to come over here!"

Winston, who had just pushed himself to his feet, froze.

"Aw look, now you're troubling him. He thinks something's wrong."

"Something is very wrong! Shut up!"

"I was just going to ask if he thinks pregnant women are hot."

"And do you think Winston would honestly answer that question?"

"Yes, actually. He'd even look you in the face why he said it. What's with that look? Can't deny the truth?"

Orson, not too close but still within hearing range, started to chuckle.

"You know--" he started.

"Don't you start!" Neara all but screeched.

"Go on, testify of her beauty," Shay managed to squeeze in before Neara could cut her off with another frantic "Shut up!"

"Females only become more beautiful when pregnant," said Orson. "That isn't my opinion, that's a known fact. The vision of a female round with young, soft and fertile, is the most intoxicating thing to a beastman."

"See?"

So embarrassed her brain had probably exploded, Neara collapsed on Shay now, head bowed behind her back. Shay imagined she could feel steam from Neara's face drifting up her neck.

"So you're more or less torturing him," she said. "I say kick him out or hit it while it's hot."

"Well what about Harvey then?" She mumbled behind her back.

Shay managed to not flinch. "Harvey?"

Chuckling her best evil villain guffaw, Neara reeled back before Shay, straight and rounded belly poking out like a soldier.

"Didn't you mention something about his brains being dangerously attractive when we first came here?"

In the peanut gallery, Orson 'ooed.'

Shay, however, wouldn't be so easily embarrassed. She was, however, irritated.

"That and this are two different things."

"How so?"

"For one, it would really hurt Curtis and Ryan. Two, I am done having husbands. Three, I don't like him nearly as much as you like Winston. Four, he's not Winston, my guardian, doing everything that a husband does anyways and forced to listen to what he can't have."

Neara, who opened up her smiling mouth to continue one using the only weapon she had, suddenly stopped, her eyes going over Shay's shoulder.

"What?" Shay turned.

Standing outside the little log shed, as though he had just stepped out, was Harvey, his shoulders slumped and his smile uneasy.

"Is there anything you would like me to look for while I'm out?" he asked.

There was a bit of flustered pause before Shay pushed out forced calm, "No."

Harvey nodded and set off towards the neighboring street, probably aiming for the woods on another side of town.

Revenge met, Neara chortled.

"You reap some, you sow some."

"Still not the same," said Shay, not looking at Neara.

Neara stopped, growing solemn. "I...are you hurt? Did I go too far?"

Shay turned back to show Neara her smile as she lightly ruffled her curly hair, as though she were a younger sibling. "Didn't go any farther than me. I'm fine. Why don't you go settle around the fire inside. I'm going to feed the not-chickens."

"You sure?"

But as Shay went off, Neara and Orson exchanged a look.

"She doesn't seem fine. Why doesn't she seem fine? Did I go too far? I didn't even mention Parker... or how getting with Ryan hurt Curtis... ugh... I hate this whole relationship thing." she muttered, weaving her fingers in and out.

Orson shrugged. "Hell if I know. You two are some of the most confusing females I've ever met. And you, the most irritating." He ruffled her hair affectionately, copying Shay's movement.

The bunnies, however, who had most likely heard it all even at their distance, leaned towards one another in heated conversation.

Shay listened as Neara and Orson headed inside, followed by a jogging Theo, Neara's ever constant hobbit entourage. She threw the gathered vegetable and prey scraps onto the ground, not paying much mind to the birds glaring at her from their nests. Unlike Neara, she hadn't the skill to train birds. But she had spent enough time sitting and watching them strut about for lack of entertainment that the shortbirds were more or less used to her, treating her as they did each other: indifferent.

Not really knowing why she felt this ache in her chest, she took up a stick and started drawing swirls in the ground. Under her breath, little more than a mumble, she sang one of her mother's favorite George Michael songs, the words bringing the feel of a desert sun to her back despite the frigid air. The notes tasted of red licorice and Pepsi, something she'd never taste again.

But she really hadn't had much of a choice in that matter, had she? And neither had Harvey in living in this world.

"What's wrong?"

Shay let out a shout of surprise and whirled about, stick armed like a sword.

Joseph crouched behind her, ginger ears tall and still.

"Nothing!" she squeaked. "Jeeze, warn me before popping up next to me, yeah?"

He nodded. "I am stealthy. I shall be more aware of your poor hearing in the future."

"Uh...thanks."

But he didn't leave. He just crouched there, drumming his fingers on his knees, even as a short-bird puffed up and began it's back-and-forth intimidation dance.

She was just about to open her mouth and tell him to beat it so she could brood in peace when yet another male dropped in beside her.

"Hello, Shay," said Orson, kicking aside the dancing shortbird. It squawked in indignation and scuttled back to give him the 'look at me, I big' puff-and-glare, along with a friend who seemed to have caught on to the act. The others were still yet preoccupied with their meal.

Shay sighed. "Hey, sheep man, what's the fo shizzle?"

"What?"

Whaddya want? But seeing as she didn't want to be rude to Neara's husband, who was an important source of sarcasm in Shay's life, she said instead, "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I was going to ask you that. Is everything alright?"

"Is this Neara or the doctor asking?"

He rolled his eyes. "This is a friend asking, as in me, the one whose mouth said the words. Neara can ask you herself if she wants."

Shay leaned her cheek into her palm and smiled. "I like you. In a friend way, of course."

"Of course."

And because of that, rather than with Joseph, she actually considered answering Orson.

"Well..." she said after a minute of watching shortbirds and biting her lip. "I...I guess I'm just feeling like I don't have much of a choice in...maybe I'm horrible."

"That makes so much sense."

"Train of thought, okay? That's why I was out here in the first place, to figure it out myself."

"Then take a minute. If you go in like this now, you'll just have Neara on your case anyways. She's so damn nosy, always asking how you feel and think."

"Yeah, yeah," she shoved off the puffy shortbirds, who treated her arm as though it were invisible and just stalked back. "I guess I'm jealous of Neara because she actually gets a choice in the matter. I didn't...really get one. Curtis bit me and with Ryan I was under those drugs and it wasn't like I hated them and they needed me so bad--ugh, there's so much need in this world, it's like I can hardly breathe and walk anymore."

Joseph, who had been more or less forgotten, but was used to it, also frowned, his ears twisting back and forth on his head.

Orson, his sharp frown always an impressive sight held up by his equally sharp chin, crossed his arms. "Why do you think the females are the way they are? You and Neara call them spoiled and selfish, but if they weren't they'd be used just like you're being. It's for self defense."

"But I really do love Curtis and Ryan, I love them to pieces and they're really great, so I don't know what's my deal and--and I feel so awful for being jealous of Neara. She could even choose to just have one..."

"No, no, you do have it hard. There is no one more possessive than a feral, and you have two of them. How they haven't killed each other is impressive. It's alright to feel pressured. Every female deserves to choose their mates." He jutted his sharp chin out, thumbing it. "And there's no saying if any mate you choose would survive ferals, and ones so strong as that. And that Harvey wouldn't last a second..."

"It doesn't matter, I'm only having two!" Shay snapped, hugging herself as though Orson had attacked her personally.

Orson flinched. "Of course, of course, no need to get on edge. But you know, it isn't wrong of you if you did have another. It's normal here which is, as you said, full of need. You don't have to feel guilty."

"What's to feel guilty about protecting their hearts?"

"Males are tough--"

"Male or female, the heart is the same!"

Joseph's ears froze in their mad twisting. His light blue eyes widened.

"I'm not trapping my husbands in a relationship where they have to endure the pain of watching their spouse love someone else just so they can be loved and cherished," she added, her mood plummeting from broody to foul. "If I have to sacrifice my choice, fine."

"But it's hurting you--"

"No it isn't. I get two freaking sexy perfect husbands, what am I missing out on?"

Orson said nothing, his furrowed eyebrows saying the answer was obvious. However, he let it go with a hefty sigh.

"The mer tribe really must be something."

Shay looked up from the ground at him, lips turned down. "Mer tribe? Is that what she told you?"

At Orson's startled look, Shay stood up, figuring she should head into the house before her loose mouth got her in trouble.

But she got up too quickly and, as she was prone to, black fuzzed in her vision. She tottered, reaching for the wall of the house--

Only for her hand to catch to a shoulder lower than hers and an arm about her waist.

When her vision returned a few seconds later, it was Joseph, not Orson, who supported her.

His blue eyes on hers were earnest, his strawberry blond eyebrows puckered.

"I will not force you," he said softly.

She stepped away without answering and returned to the house.

Meanwhile, the shortbirds had gathered reinforcements and now set loose a barrage upon the unsuspecting bare feet of the sheep and rabbit.