"No! I'm not her mom! I'm not your mom! I'm not mom to baby foxes! I'm not anyone's mom, I don't have to care about them! I want to go to Alaska where nobody's there!" "Where's Alaska?" the fucking coyote wants to know. "It sounds shitty. Here's better. My territory's the best. Anywhere with coyotes is great." You growl at her. She is completely unimpressed, even though you're twice her size and could eat her, and she bites your tail. "I DON'T LIKE YOU," you bark. Her ears go back and her tail poofs. "Well! You're stupid! I'm the most likeable coyote anywhere and you've had to resort to befriending cars!" You give Bel a significant look of your own. It's a lot more murderous than his look.
You sigh. "I'm just saying, dude, maybe we should introduce her to Pancho and Helen. If we ever find our way back to them." You lick his eyebrow apologetically. "I'm still going to Alaska with you. I'm not inviting any randos along. I just want Coneflower to meet Helen. Okay?" The truth is, the idea of someone with humanlike intelligence having no contact with anyone smarter than a coyote horrifies you, and you won't be able to let it go until you do something, even if that something is just offering to introduce her and getting your offer rejected.
"Okay, okay," you agree grudgingly. "We'll give her to Helen. That's not so bad." "Who's Helen? Is she a coyote? Or a car?" "She's nice," you explain. "She gives us food whenever we want." "Whoah." Coneflower considers this. "Whoah. Why?" You blink. "I don't actually know." You look questioningly at Bel.
"Cuz she's friends with his dad," you shrug. It's the closest you can get to a coyote-friendly explanation. "I'm not sure I'd say whenever we want, but she's pretty generous with the canned meat product, yeah. Anyway, our friend Pancho and her dog Logan are there too, it's a pretty canine-heavy party." You snuffle in embarrassment: "Only problem is, we got so caught up in running for running's sake, we didn't mark our trail, and then we took a nap and the snow covered up what there was. We don't know how to get back."
"Oh. Well, you could stay here. This bit is Other Guy's territory, and he ran off, so I bet you could just keep it. But don't go too far over that way, because then it's my area, and I'll fight you. I'll rip your legs right off!"
"Er, no, thank you, we don't want a territory. We're traveling." You're about played out for now; you give up any pretense at doing anything but grooming Erskin. "Hey, Coneflower, I don't suppose you know how to get to the old grain elevator building with a hobo ghost in it?"
"What's a building?" "Like a truck but huge and made of wood and not on the road," you say. "Near roads, though." "Oh, yeah, those. There's some around here. Like, if you go that way for awhile, there's one." You look at Bel. If he wants her to come along and meet Helen, he's going to have to make the case himself. The best you can manage is to sit here and not look overtly hostile. You love Bel, but you could really do without his ridiculous human drive to befriend small useless animals.
"If you'd like to come along, Coneflower, you could meet someone who can tell you more about the times when you can turn big, and also possibly about your parents. We can shapeshift too, did we mention that? But not on the full moon, which it is tonight. "
"Oh. You mean that other shape is useful? You guys use it to do worthwhile stuff? That's a thing I can learn?" Coneflower looks enthusiastic. "Okay! Let's go. I want to know about it. I'll learn and then I'll be even more important and good at things! Do we have to go by road, though? It smells bad." "We're not actually cars," you point out. "Bel is big for regular animal reasons."
"Yeah, I'm not a vehicle, I'm just an embarrassment," you laugh. You give Erskin's face one last lick, thanks for putting up with your nonsense, then bounce up, ready to move on. "We only ran for half the night, we can't be that far off. Let's see if we can find it."
You and Coneflower follow Bel for awhile, until he remembers that you all should be following the coyote, so the two of you follow the coyote, who goes and digs for awhile at a badger den until reminded that she should take you to a building. By then it's noon and you want a nap, but instead of getting a nap, you follow the coyote to a building, which turns out to be about two thirds of a barn. "This thing's weird, but it smells good," Coneflower says, sniffing at the last lingering trace of livestock.
You let out a long whine and pounce on some snow in frustration, but then you let it go. "Not the right one, but I bet we could catch lunch here. I bet there's some critters sheltering. Let's surround it and see what we can flush out."
You do as instructed. The coyote doesn't. There's a scramble of rodents tucking into boltholes and birds fluttering off into rafters. "Nothing much here for anyone to eat," you observe. You curl up in a bit of dry grass against the wall. "Maybe we should try to find a deer, you're too big to live off mice."
"I don't know if finding a deer would be easier than finding Helen. I'm afraid you're right about the mice, though." You sigh. "Well, worse comes to worst, we stay hungry until the moon's past, and then I'll shift human and break into a house or something."
"You're so useful," you beam. "Wait, you can eat humans?" Coneflower wants to know. "I mean, I guess you guys are big enough. But they're weird. And rare. And smell awful. I thought they were like cars, non-meat creatures." "You can't eat humans, other humans always know and then they come and kill you," you tell her. "It's not worth it even if you're really big." "I'm big enough," Coneflower says defensively.
"Nobody's big enough," you say flatly. "I want to break into a house because humans stockpile food." It's weird talking about humans as if you're not one, but you think trying to explain the context to Coneflower would be even weirder. "I want to do it in human form because if you do it without hands you'll make a lot of noise and a huge mess, they'll come after you with guns. With hands, I can do it so they don't even know I was there."
"Oh, cache-raiding," Coneflower says. "That makes more sense. Hey, I know another building, do you think you can get food from it? It's got more parts than this one. Actually, I know lots of buildings. I know probably most of the buildings in the world."
That gets a chuckle out of you. "You're pretty knowlegable. Sure, let's have a look at it. Even if it's empty like this one, it'll be a good place to snug down for a nap, right?" You nuzzle Erskin out of his grass nest. "Come on, gorgeous, let's put a few more miles behind us."
You give a big sigh, but you don't really mind. Running along with Bel is genuinely wonderful, and you haven't gotten to do it enough. "I'm glad you're healed up," you tell him. "I like you healthy. You're handsome and good." "Haha, are you guys in love?" the coyote asks. "Gross! Your babies are going to be way too big! They'll get stuck!" "Who asked your fucking opinion! We didn't!" you bark at her. She just whisks her tail mockingly and puts on a fresh burst of speed.
"So grumpy," you tease him fondly. "Don't kinkshame the mpreg shipper, it's pointless." Wow, that was a really interesting sentence in werewolf.
