Chapter 67: brought to you by horsies

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A visit to a sheep village for rice and other veggies in return for the last energy crystal that Curtis had been hoarding who knows where, and some doctoring from Harvey. Horseman MMA finals. The jazz. And I restuffed my beloved giant pikachu from '99! Pikachu is reborn!!!

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Shay wanted to see a horse beastmen. After Curtis's description, she wanted to see a baby horse beastman even more. And since she had to put up with three days of rough travel in the spring chill with three grouchy toddlers and half a dozen horny and possessive men, she thought she very well earned a break.

Her mates weren't exactly against it. They knew she was a conscientious female and had worried themselves that she had been under too much stress. However...

"One of you has to stay behind with the kids. I'm not going to trust anything less than one of you to keep them safe, and I can't very well walk into town with three female cubs, all obviously mine."

Harvey, Parker, and Muir gave Ryan and Curtis a wide berth, the first two holding Dawn and Sky respectively. Luna was behind Shay, practicing her walking, unconcerned with the violent glare down between her father and his fellow husband.

"I am the boss," said Curtis. "I am stronger."

"This isn't a matter of strength, this is a matter of attention. To protect Shay's soft heart we can't let any male even try to pursue her, and some don't care if you're strong."

"Then I'm a feral, and they'll naturally fear me."

"More like they'll take it as an even better excuse to steal her away. No one believes that a female could love a feral. I'll take her--"

"You are practically a feral--"

"They'll think her a witch doctor. It doesn't matter how beautiful they find her if they think she's going to birth their children amongst ferals or use them for medicine."

"And they won't try to kidnap her from you because...?"

Ryan smirked wide, his white teeth contrasting with his dark skin. "Panthers are well known to be beloved by their witch doctor. You know yourself the stories of curses and poisoning to whoever harms a panther."

Curtis scowled. "Among the ferals."

"And among the villages as well." Ryan flicked his tail, far too much like a satisfied cat with a mouse beneath its paw.

Curtis lifted himself higher, towering over Ryan, looking down his nose at him.

"Winter has made you cocky," he hissed.

"Thank your kids for that. Kind of hard to have a phobia of snakes when you have to sleep with them every night."

Curtis's lips curled, flashing fangs.

Seeing her husband's long red body coiling for a strike, Shay figured she should step in. "Ryan has a good point. Nobody wanted to mate his mom because of her status. We can even roll Harvey or Parker in charcoal so they look like panthers too."

"Oh! Me! Me! Me!" crowed Parker.

"I can earn some food for us by doing jobs in town," said Harvey. "There is always a desperate need for a doctor."

Poor Muir just sulked, eyes to the ground, having no excuse to come with whatsoever. A few of the baby snakes coiled at his feet, looking at him in a way that made Shay wonder if they pitied him.

As one last ditch effort, Curtis said, "If anyone tries to so much as talk to her I can just kill them. I can kill the whole lot of them with ease."

"Then I'd divorce your murderous ass," growled Shay.

She regretted saying it as soon as it came out and Curtis melted into a puddle of dismay on the forest floor. But it had to be said.

"Shay?" He even managed to make the wide hurt puppy eyes that her children so often used on her.

She sighed, pinching her nose. "Look, if anyone seeks to harm us, I can understand. It's your job. But killing a whole village just because you slew someone who looked at me funny..."

"I went too far. I exaggerated. I'm sorry."

Parker just snorted, rolling his eyes. "He's a feral snake, Shay, this is just how they are."

Curtis's long tail lashed Parker's legs out from beneath him. The ground knocked the wind out of him in a loud whoosh, along with a crack of spine.

"Ooowwwww."

They ended up only having enough charcoal to black out one cat, so Shay picked Parker, figuring Harvey would need his non-pantherish appearance to do his work. She politely asked Muir to watch over her children with Curtis and the poor bird nearly collapsed in a plume of feathers from happiness as she handed over a wide-eyed Dawn. Luna returned to her father, or more like tripped into his arms, while Sky pattered after them, the best walker of the three.

"Me! Me! 'Ake me!" She tried so hard to enunciate the 'k' it sounded like she'd said cake instead.

"If I take just you, it won't be fair to your sisters," Shay said softly.

"Take one of the boys, at least," said Curtis. "They can bite someone if you get separated from Ryan."

Seven streaks of red and purple zoomed to her side. Lazy Boy swapped his smaller siblings aside, already going up her leg just to be stopped by Curtis.

"Not you," he snapped. "You're huge. You'll crush her." He hissed between his teeth.

From behind his siblings came the runt, still large for a snake, but almost half the size of Lazy Boy.

The other boys hissed their jealousy and he tried not to look too proud.

"Little Tom!" Shay said happily, reaching for him. "I've been so proud of how you were able to keep up with everyone these past few days.

"Tom?" hissed Curtis. "You go too far with these nicknames. They need to find their names."

"It is a nickname. It's from the fairytail 'Tom Thumb.'"

"I remember that one!" said Parker. "The male as big as his mother's thumb."

"Aside from the fact that a male that size would be an embarrassment to anyone who looked at him, Tom is too close to a real name. I allowed Sky because it can pass as a non-name, but Tom--"

"Fine, Thumb. I'll call him Thumb. Can I just go already?"

So, with her snake skin clothes in place, a simple black rabbit fur shawl, a baby snake wrapped about her shoulders, and a pitch black leopard, she climbed onto Ryan's furry back. Harvey stayed in his human form so as to wear his white cape and tunic, which turned out to be the usual uniform for a doctor trained in the City of Beasts. He had learned his basics from herbivores growing up, then finished his education in the City of Beasts.

As a last touch, Ryan had braided Shay's hair and woven in feathers donated from Muir. To better fit the image, as he said.

She hoped she was the only one who caught Muir's blushing, euphoric face. She didn't know what wearing an eagleman's feathers meant, nor did Ryan seem to know, but she didn't think it would help anything to know.

They left the shelter of the trees to the cooing good-byes of the triplet girls. They had to cross a short expanse of brush and grass before it gave way to the fields which surrounded the village. She didn't remember much from the first time she had visited an herbivore village, being sick at the time, but she did remember passing fields before seeing thatch homes. The dirt-beaten road they eventually stepped onto passed both patches of dirt and squares of budding green, too early along for her to guess what they were. Harvey and her took wild guesses, sniffing the air in turn, though Shay was sure she'd only be able to smell onions at this early stage.

The first workers to see them had the curled horns of sheep, and balked into the dirt, holding their hoes. They stayed put, however, watching the band of cats and snake-bearing female pass by. Only one, a young female girl with tightly curling white hair and narrow eyes, turned and ran towards the nearest hut.

"Weird to think Ryan would take advantage of those bad rumors about witch doctors," said Shay, leaning her chest down onto her panther's shoulders as she said so and rubbing one of his ears. It flicked at her fingers.

"I never paid much attention to them myself," said Harvey. "They were mostly stories told by parents to keep their children in line. Logically, panthers are beastmen too. There'd be no reason to do any harm to children, even if they could make medicine. Not only are they precious, but you'd get the ire of the entire community on you, and a witch doctor only has their family."

"Yeah, well, mob mentality is an emotional thing, not a rational thing."

"Mob mentality?"

She went into explaining that, along with tales from her time, until they reached the outer homes of the village. There, working beastmen, both with and without horns and white hair, stopped to stare. Their eyes went from Shay and to her two black cats.

As they passed somewhat near to a female sheep and her horned mate, Shay heard her say, rather loudly:

"I thought all the panthers died?"

"Well, obviously they didn't," said her partner in a dry tone which reminded her all too strongly of Orson. "Gods, that female--Ow!"

"Don't give me more reasons to leave you!"

"You can't divorce me just because I have eyes!"

Shay lowered her head to hide her smile behind her son's body and snickered.

They hadn't quite reached the center of town, where the stalls were built in a block wide circle, when a male finally dared to approach them, or rather, Harvey, though his blood-shot eyes kept flickering to Shay and the panthers.

"Please, doctor, my wife..."

Shay tapped Ryan's shoulder to stop, but Harvey waved them on.

"I'll find you," he said, tapping his nose to remind her of his stronger than ordinary sense of smell.

She smiled, nodded, and her, Ryan, and blackened Parker continued on.

"Oo, I hope they have rice," she said. "I've been missing it. Meat is so old school--I mean, boring. And constipating. Ugh, my poor slang bank."

Turns out, the markets of herbivore villages are busy places. Predators from all around come here to trade for crops that their females crave. Even a female from a predator tribe will crave certain plants when she is pregnant or low in certain nutrients. Shay also found, to her delight, that the stalls here offered more than crops, but furniture, wool cloth died in several shades, and even tools and a few weapons, manned by, not a sheep, but a beautiful, green haired man with eyelashes that extended to the sides like miniature peacock feathers. His long hair was tied up on his head in a tail of intricate braids that turned bright blue near the ends.

He gave an extra flutter of his eyelashes when Shay slipped off Ryan to get a closer look at his wares.

"Everything here is made by the rabbit clan, guaranteed," he said. "I have a special deal with them, you see. You see something you like?"

It didn't take a stretch to say he meant himself as well.

"Just looking," she said. "I've never been here before."

"I don't imagine witch doctors to get out of the wilds much. Got to say, you're the first I've ever seen. Are they all as beautiful as you?"

"I wouldn't know," she shrugged, eyeing a particularly well-shaped carving knife of obsidian. "I'm the only one I've ever known. What would you be willing to trade for this?"

"What do you have to offer?"

Not whatever you're thinking, pretty boy. "I got some well made rabbit and fox furs, some basic medicines for wounds, burns, and colds, and a..." she stopped herself. No way a knife was worth the last crystal of Curtis's horde. She still wondered where he hid it all. Ryan just told her she didn't want to know.

"Oo, the rabbits go through medicine quickly, and made by a witch doctor..." he leaned forward, like a girl showing off her cleavage to a man over a bar, though it only showed off the width of his shoulders. "Would you mind if I took a look?"

He ended up really liking the medicine's smell or something, so he traded her the knife and its thick leather sheath for two of her four containers of burn and wound tincture. She also liked the bow and arrows, but she doubted she'd be able to get any practice, let alone any teaching, with the lot of males she had. She thanked the peacock for his time and left, ignoring his dejected look.

"Matches me, don't you think?" Shay asked Ryan and Parker, showing them the gleaming blade. "And obsidian can be sharpened to hair-fine point. Good for surgery. You know, cutting into people to fix their insides."

Ryan did a double take while Parker's jaw dropped. Seeing a leopard gape was perhaps the funniest thing she'd seen yet. She did her best cackle, sure that if any of the shopping crowd was watching, and there certainly was some, they'd be turned off more than they already were.

Playing the witch was great.

It was even greater when she sauntered over to the fabric stand and the poor little man sheep on the other side looked crossed between running for his life and drooling.

So much fun.

She took her time feeling the weave, which was rather rougher than she hoped and nowhere near as soft as fur, and seeing the quality of the dye (namely if it would rub off on her hand or not). She had hopes of making dresses for her little girls with these but she didn't know how sensitive their skin was. She knew males had tougher skins since they could transform, but would transforming change that for her daughters? And then there was the idea of making curtains for her new home and washcloths galore.

"Ryan, the handkerchief you gave me is so soft. Where did you get that?"

The sheep man, whose horns didn't even make a full circle, recoiled as Ryan lifted his chin onto the counter, where a few samples had been left out.

"O-o-our s-softest clothes r-require a t-t-tighter weave and--and, well, take more time, so we only have a small a-amount--I mean, in small sizes."

"Good crap, I'm not going to eat you. Ryan won't either, he's perfectly tame."

Shay ran her hand down Ryan's head, even as he let out a short growl to the word 'tame.'

"Sorry, let me rephrase that. The only reason Ryan would do anything to you is if you attack me or something, and you're not going to do that." Shay gave her best smile.

Bad choice. The poor man now looked faint.

Best she hurry.

"Can you show me your softest stuff, then?"

"S-s-snake?"

"Oh, this little guy?" she patted the head of Thumb, who nuzzled against her cheek. She was sure he was having a field day, being able to enjoy the much enviable spot usually protected by Lazy Boy. "This is my son. He's just along for the ride."

Paler than ever, he pointed to the samples as he reached under the counter. Just as he pulled up folds of white, soft cloth, the sound of drums turned her about.

Adjacent to her in the circle, next to a stand filled with knobbly looking roots, a trio of beastmen had set up with two hide and wood drums, a bamboo flute player, and--

"A harp?"

There was nothing else it could be, barring its more alien crafting. Rather than wood, it was made of what she could only guess was polished coral, chipped into something like the traditional outwards V shape with its corners smoothed over. Pearls had been inlaid into carved swirls, and the strings were yellow.

Something hot and buzzing started at her feet and shot up to her hair.

How long...how long had it been?

She wasn't aware of the squeaky inquiries of the cloth merchant, nor Ryan's prodding at her palm. She waited with bated breath as the drummer found a rhythm, eyed his companions, and kept it up until they joined in. The flute had a breathy tone, giving it a Native American like sound.

But the harp was a harp, in all means, and strangely loud enough to compete with the flute. However, its gentle tone clashed a bit with the drums. She felt herself droop a bit, disappointed by the musicians lack of talent. She had hoped for something of home.

She left the stand, making a beeline for the musicians. Being who she was, they caught sight of her almost instantly and froze up. The one at the drums had odd, carpet like red hair that ran down onto his back in a rough scruff. The flute player didn't have horns, but was very very tall and wide. But her eyes were too the sheepman holding the beautiful pink coral harp.

"What will you trade for the harp?" she asked, pointing towards it.

He exchanged looks with his friends, all of which were slowly pinkening in the face. The flute player gave him a smirk and a nudge with his wrist.

"Um, uh, it was...." The sheep looked at her face, then away. Then seeming to make up his mind, he met her face again with what he probably thought was a charming, flirtatious smile, but came off more like he was trying to hide an oncoming case of the runs. "I-it's a family heirloom, so, sorry, if you want it, you have to be part of my family, if you know what I mean."

Ryan let loose an air-crackling snarl. Females nearby screamed. Something thudded to the ground behind somewhere.

The group of musicians recoiled.

"I got it from a merman last salt trade!" wailed the sheepman, as though God Himself had caught him in the act. "For a ponheart fruit! They grow in the desert, so they're highly prized!"

Shay bit her lip. She hadn't expected it to be cheap. But she didn't even know where to begin to get something of value of a ponheart fruit, let alone what that even was.

"I've got some medicine..."

The sheepman shook his head hard, knees pinched together. "I-I-I don't c-c-care what your feral does to me--"

"You were the one stupid enough to try and make a pass at me in front of said feral mate," Shay snapped. "Now calm the hell down and just talk to me, I want that harp. No to the medicine?"

"No," the sheepman tried to regain his seating, back straight, but he couldn't quite get his knees back apart. "Sorry, that's--I can get medicine anywhere."

Shay rolled her lips beneath her front teeth.

"How about a crystal?"

All the band members perked up, eyes flashing.

"Really? You--you'd trade a crystal? Instead of using it?"

"Forget it, I probably shouldn't waste it on something I don't need."

"No wait!" The sheep man lunged to grab her skirt, but scrambled back with a barely restrained scream as Ryan pawed forward, bottom jaw dropped to reveal his enormous, sharp teeth. "It-it's really high quality. I have to pay another ponheart fruit whenever I want the strings to be tightened so they sound right to the mermen and even they are envious of it whenever I bring it. It's one of a kind..."

"You don't need to sell it to me, I can already see it's beautiful." She sighed. "But I have children to feed and...yeah. Sorry for taking your time."

Wishing she had never seen that harp, she slumped back to the cloth stand, traded some medicine to the merchant for his softest cloth in white, blue, and green, then turned--

To find only Parker by her side, expression more like a happy dog than a cat.

"Where's Ryan?"

He was the one who had Curtis's crystal in his ever-present thigh pouch. They would need it to buy the rice. She had used up all but one jar of medicine for the cloth, and she didn't think it would be enough for the highly prized grain.

With a bad feeling, she looked over to where the musicians had been before and found them gone.

"Oh no, don't tell me..." she looked at Parker. "He didn't go to bully the harp off those guys, did he?"

Parker shrugged.

"Don't give me that, you've been behind me with him this whole time. What were you doing, staring at

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