Windfall

by Tempe O'Kun

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 — On the Train

  Chapter 2 — Watching the Clock

  Chapter 3 — Settling In

  Chapter 4 — Camping

  Chapter 5 — Crazy Wall

  Chapter 6 — The Past

  Chapter 7 — Searching

  Chapter 8 — Steamy Dreams

  Chapter 9 — Dog Day

  Chapter 10 — The Shack

  Chapter 11 — Research

  Chapter 12 — Exploring

  Chapter 13 — Trending

  Chapter 14 — The Cave

  Chapter 15 — Skitters

  Chapter 16 — Chambers

  Chapter 17 — Loose Ends

  Chapter 18 — The Gateway

  Chapter 19 — Renewal

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to: Megan for sunshine in the depths of drafts; Brandy and Jer for delving into strange furry lore; Carl, Eljot, Keiron, and Pedro for international investigations; Slip-Wolf and T-Kay for reports from north of the border; Ana, Apollo, Gouka, Kohaku, and Nic for dispatching the typos of madness.

  Windfall

  Copyright (c) 2015 by Tempe O’Kun

  Cover and interior illustrations by Slate

  Ebook formatting by Jovo

  Published by FurPlanet Productions

  Dallas, TX

  http://www.FurPlanet.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-61450-253-1

  eBook ISBN 978-1-61450-260-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition Trade Paperback 2015

  Electronic Edition 2015

  All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form, in any medium, without the express permission of the author.

  To Slate, for conspiring. To Sophie, for inspiring.

  — Chapter 1 —

  On the Train

  Max didn’t really miss being a TV star. He did, however, miss Kylie, his co-star and co-conspirator.

  In the six months since the show had ended, the husky had tried to fit in with the rest of the world. He’d moved back into his parents’ house and his old, normal life. He’d caught up with the lives of his large, close family and the sights and smells of his childhood home, but it was weird not having Kylie around to fire off a wisecrack or save him from some awkward social situation. Really, it made sense: dogs excelled at missing friends.

  Now, at long last, he sat aboard a passenger train as it rumbled down the long line of tracks between the Rocky Mountains and New England. When the trip started, he’d never been so happy to sit on so lumpy a seat—It’d be good to spend time with her again, even if it was only for a few weeks. As the countryside sped past, though, time had dilated to a crawl. He’d reached that anxious period of near-arrival found toward the end of every long trip. He stifled an impatient whine, breathed, and blinked to clear his mind. When his eyes opened, scenery still rolled past the window: trees, hills, rivers, power lines; all superimposed on his blocky canine face in the glass’s reflection. He rested an elbow on his duffel and watched the rocky, wooded landscape roll by, knowing only a few hours lay between him and his best friend.

  The train car rumbled, almost empty. Almost.

  The mouse two seats ahead peeked at him over the back of her chair. She couldn’t have been older than mid-teens, judging by her glittery bracelets and neon fur clips. She’d gotten on with her father about an hour ago and gradually started staring at him. The weight of her gaze pressed down on him, drooping his pointy ears and burying his nose further in the book he kept trying to read. Back on the show, he never dealt with fans in his day-to-day life, since filming ensured he never had a day-to-day life. Besides, he’d only been a second-string character, regardless of what the Internet insisted.

  His phone buzzed, a blessed diversion. He dug the mobile from his pocket and swiped a paw pad across it.

  Kylie Bevy: {The show jumped the shark when the director hired triplets to be in the background of every scene and wouldn’t tell us why.}

  Max grinned. Speak of the otter…

  Max Saber: {What about the mirror universe panda with reverse-dyed fur?}

  Kylie Bevy: {Hmm! I’d forgotten about her. XD How’s the ride?}

  He sighed, glancing up from his phone. The giggly mouse girl still stared at him.

  Max Saber: {Train should be on time. Being stalked by suspected fan.}

  Kylie Bevy: {Hunky huskies get stared at, especially when they’re famous. Nobody stares in Montana?}

  He looked up again. The mouse’s whiskers bounced with the motion of the train; her gaze flicked away once he made eye contact.

  Max Saber: {Well, we do, but we pretend not to.}

  Kylie Bevy: {See ya soon, Maxie. ; ) If you survive.}

  The husky put his phone away and checked his watch. An heirloom with two time zones, his father had given it to him when he left for filming full-time. He kept it set half on Kylie time and half on family time.

  The train rumbled on, tree shadows flickering against the windows. With every sweep of darkness, the fan crept a little nearer, appearing in the next closest seat.

  Max closed the mystery novel. He’d already read it, but he’d been going over it again to pick it apart and figure out why he liked it. He relaxed his shoulders and smiled at the mouse, trying not to be huge and intimidating.

  The scrawny young rodent seemed to encounter thinner and thinner air the closer she got. Her pink paws clutched a battered and very familiar DVD set.

  He gave a disarming wag, his tail thumping the seat. “Hi?”

  She bounced and swept away a nervous lock of hair. “Oh. My gosh. Are you Serge from Strangeville? Because if you’re not, I’m sorry if I’m, like, coming off like a total weirdo.”

  Behind her, a taller, graying mouse had peeked around his chair to see where his daughter had gone. His eyes met Max’s with a shrug of silent apology.

  There’d been a time Max would’ve leapt from the train sooner than have this conversation, but Kylie had spent three years beating a semblance of social grace into him. “Um, yeah.” He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “But in real life, people usually call me Max.”

  “Ohmygosh! My friends are gonna be soooo jealous!” Her hyperventilation was prevented only by the air resistance of her braces. “This is soooo cool! Okay, okay, so like, what’s it like being, like, a TV star?”

  “I wasn’t really the star—more like a supporting cast member.”

  She trembled with excitement, mobile phone charms clattering. “So what’s it like?”

  He contemplated the experience, then distilled it down: “You get up early, go to bed early, and spend most of your day working.” It wasn’t so different from farm life, really.

  “Ugh!” Reality left a bitter taste in the mouse’s mouth. “You make it sound totally like school.”

  “I guess so.” He offered a smile.

  She glanced down at the scuffed DVD box set, studying the cast list in search of a conversation topic. “Is your name really Max Saber?”

  “Yep.” A polite nod. “It was a birthday present.”

  “Like, really really?” She donned the look of a reporter gunning for a scoop. “It’s not, like, some kinda stage name?”

  The husky glanced at the middle-aged mouse opposite her original seat. They traded shrugs across the aisle. “Saber is an old husky name. The casting director wanted to add a second X to Max, but everyone else said that was too cheesy.”

  “Yeah, you wanna keep things, like…genuine or whatever.” A pause. Wheels turned in her mind. “I didn’t like it when they tried to ship you with that fortune-teller bat lady.”

  Max couldn’t suppress a wry smile as the conversation took a familiar turn. He shrugged. �
��Yeah, I don’t think anybody liked that.”

  “Why didn’t you get together with Cassie at the end?” A cheery scoff bounced her whiskers. “Everybody knows you should.”

  His ears drooped, suspecting where this line of dialog led. “Um, that was really more the writers’ call.”

  “Oh…” The mouse seemed to run off the edge of the conversation, then scrambled back onto it. “Soooo, are you guys dating in real life?”

  Max squirmed. The inevitable question; the writers had always flirted with the idea of them flirting. “We weren’t really dating in the show…”

  “Yeah, but you know what I mean!” The mouse cornered him, blocking all escape from the seat or conversation. “Where are you headed? I mean, if it’s okay that I ask that. I don’t wanna, like, train-stalk you.”

  “I’m going to see Kylie, actually.” He retreated against his carry-on luggage as he realized what he’d said: those words would keep her glued to the spot until one of them got off the train. Still, he thought, no way out but forward. “Cassie from the show.”

  Sure enough, a quiver traveled up the mouse’s entire body, from tail to ears. “Oh my gosh! Did you finally propose?”

  “What?” His ears shot up again, flushed hot. This wasn’t the first time a conversation had taken this route. The fandom seemed determined to conflate him with his character, and Serge and Cassie had been the target of a lot of speculation over the seasons. “We aren’t dating in real—”

  “Does she actually live out here?” The rodent looked around, as if Kylie would spring out from the luggage racks. Then she focused like an awkward laser back on him. “It’s totally awesome you two’re together like that!”

  “We’re just friends. And, I don’t know, we were on the show together forever, so I figured I’d visit. I wasn’t really doing anything back in Montana anyway.” Max’s family had gotten used to his presence around the house after so much time in Hollywood, and it had taken some work to get them to endorse a two-week trip to the Eastern Seaboard. In the end, his mother’s parting hug had been less “have fun, honey” and more “come home soon.”

  “Ya-huh!” She jabbed an unsteady glitter marker in his direction. “Would you mind signing my Season One, please please please?”

  “Okay.” He took the box. “I’ll sign on the disc I actually appeared on, how’s that?”

  She nodded, whiskers whipped with enthusiasm. “Sure!”

  Sitting up straight, he autographed the DVD with her squeaky felt-tip marker. It was his first signing in some time. At home, surrounded by people who’d known him from diapers, he’d felt foolish playing the Hollywood big shot. “Why do you have this on a train?”

  Her pink paws lifted at how obvious the answer was. “In case I need to watch it on the way!”

  “Ah, okay.” Max gave a slow nod. “Aren’t you kinda young for Strangeville?”

  “Nah, my parents know I’d just watch it on the Internet anyway.”

  “Can’t argue there.” He handed the box set back.

  A quiet hiss of deceleration. A train station rolled into view out the windows.

  Her dad rose from his seat and gathered their bags.

  “Ohmygosh! This is my stop!” She fumbled out her phone and held him and her father hostage with it. “Can I take a picture with you?”

  He took a deep breath and tried to seem cool and friendly. “Sure.” With a good-natured shrug, he stood, careful not to bump his head on the overhead rack.

  Shoving the phone into her dad’s hands, she scrambled over and hugged Max with disturbing strength.

  The canine gave his best smile. The last thing he wanted was to seem all jaded and bitter.

  A screech of brakes brought the train to a gradual halt. The mouse grinned back, colorful braces shining. “It was super awesome meeting you! Say hi to Cassie for me! Thanks so much!”

  He chuckled. “Kylie, you mean. And sure.”

  The mice disembarked. A few more people loaded onto the train, but none seemed very interested in Max—save for the mouse girl who waved so hard she seemed in danger of spraining her wrist. As the train pulled away, the husky waved goodbye to the mice on the platform, then sunk into his seat. His thoughts lingered on Kylie. Before long they’d be together again, without any of the rigors of filming, getting into weird little adventures and feeling special for more than their moderate fame and his considerable tallness. He liked that idea. At least the weirdness with her was weirdness he enjoyed.

  — Chapter 2 —

  Watching the Clock

  Kylie Bevy sprawled, webbed paws spread across cool countertop. Her supple lutrine body flattened further as unending minutes pressed down on her. Strong afternoon sunlight poured in through the windows of the downtown antique store to fill it with sleepy, old-timey warmth. The afternoon might have tempted another twenty-year-old part-time employee to nap, but Kylie was too wired.

  “Staring at the clock won’t get his train here any faster, you know.”

  With a sigh, Kylie pried her chin off the countertop and flicked auburn bangs out of the way of the glare she aimed at the scrawny orange tabby who shared her shift. Technically Shane was supposed to be training her, but the job was simple and business slow, so he’d been passing the time with old music magazines. The feline adjusted his outdated jeans and leaned against a shelf of knickknacks. He lowered the unironic article on the evils of rock ‘n roll and arched an eyebrow from beneath the hood of his overlarge sweatshirt. “Why don’t you go into the back room and sort some silverware? I promise I’ll call you when it’s quitting time so we can head out.”

  Kylie gave a noise of frustration and glanced back at the clock, which had been stuck at 4:42 for at least twenty minutes. It had been slowing down since noon, and she worried it’d start going backwards if she didn’t keep an eye on it. “I wouldn’t be able to get anything done in fifteen minutes anyway. All I’d do is wind up having to put it all back right away, and then we’d be late leaving, and then we’d take too long to get there and no one would be there to meet Max when his train arrived!”

  Shane pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and gave her a wry look. “His train isn’t due ‘til almost six, and it’s only a twenty minute drive to the station, and then we’d have nothing to do but stare at the clocks. At least here you’re getting paid for it.”

  “I don’t wanna risk being late!” With a chitter, the otter bounced up from the countertop. “He’d have camped out there overnight if it were the other way around, just to be sure.”

  “Why’s he even taking the train? It’s a long way to Montana.” The tabby’s tail gave a teasing swish. “Big-time TV star can’t afford a plane ticket?”

  She waved a dismissive paw. “You’d think so, but tagalong kids aren’t super high on the cast payroll.” Being on the show had given them both a tidy nest egg, but they were hardly rich. “Besides, he likes scenery.”

  “You seem pretty hung up on this guy. Is this, like, a cross-country booty call or something?”

  With a blush, Kylie studied the scratches on the countertop as her tail curled around the stool. “No, we never hooked up or anything, no matter what the fan sites say. He’s just…Max. He’s my best friend.” It was most of the truth. “We were the only teenage regulars and spent a lot of time together.” She shrugged. “It’s been almost six months since we saw each other, right after the show ended.”

  “You act like you were never apart.” He lowered the magazine to eye her with slitted pupils. “Didn’t this show have breaks in shooting?”

  “We shot a lot of episodes per season and we were in basically all of them to some degree. And it wasn’t worth shipping Max home if they might need him for a pickup scene a week later, so even when we weren’t on set, we were hanging out. Eventually, he just moved in with us.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against a wall, tail curling around her knees. “It’s been weird not talking to him every day.”

  Shane flipped a few more pages and
paused to examine an advertisement proudly touting a thirty-year-old computer. “No calls? No texting?”

  She heaved a sigh, shoulders slumping. “We text all the time, but it’s not the same, y’know? And the Internet on his ranch is too crappy for video chat. Besides, his sisters tease him if he talks to me for more than twenty minutes at a time.” The idea he’d soon be around, with that easy wag to his tail and ready smile, lifted her spirits. Max made no secret of enjoying her company, which meant she didn’t have to do anything special to keep him entertained. She almost succeeded in suppressing a bounce of excitement. “It’s going to be really good to see him again.”

  The tabby cat peered over the magazine at her. Triangular ears rose under the thick fabric of his sweatshirt hood.

  The otter beamed, hands in her lap, giving him her most endearing smile. Her little round ears pinned against her head. She couldn’t pull off the sad puppy face as well as Max, but he had taught her what he could. “Really, really good.”

  He heaved a long-suffering sigh and turned back to the clock. “Fine. It’s only ten minutes to closing anyway. Lock up and I’ll go get my wheels.” He tossed her the keys on his way out the door.

  Kylie snatched them mid-air, wriggled in happiness, and scampered over to hug him. “Thanks, boss!” In a blur of excitement she closed the till, locked the back door, turned off all the lights and flipped over the sign that lied about how sorry she was they were closed. She padded outside to wait for Shane. The little town sat quaint and proper, spreading down the hillside to the sea.

  On the way out the door, however, she almost tripped over an exquisitely-groomed cocker spaniel lounging on a lawn chair. Cindy Madison, taking a break from pretending to work at her family’s tourist trap next door. Her honey-brown fur gleamed in the afternoon sun as she lay at an angle calculated to make everyone driving past look at her boobs.

  On another day she might have asked the canine to move, but with places to be, Kylie decided to let sunbathing dogs lie and squirmed past the chair. In passing, though, her anxious tail bumped Cindy’s foot.