by Tempe O'Kun
Kylie groaned. “Seriously?”
Max’s thick paw settled on her shoulder. He drew a rumpled list from his pocket and consulted it. “Plenty of other places to check out.” He pulled out his phone and opened the map. “Shrubs of Mystery maybe?”
“That’s an actual landscaping business, Max. Mom buys plants there.” She brushed a lock of hair from her muzzle, trying to look flirtatious. “Anything else you’re in the mood for?”
“Hmm.” The canine peered down the street toward the center of town, pointy ears erect and scanning. “I guess we could find something to do around town until it’s open.”
She nuzzled his throat and watched his ears perk, felt his heartbeat accelerate. “Or we could find something to do back at the house.”
In the quiet shade of the storefront, he kissed her. A quick touch of lips as their hands found each other’s hips, followed by a lingering smile at one another. He wagged.
She wiggled as a glow of joy spread through her body. Nothing could ruin this moment. Nothing.
Behind them, someone’s phone played a fake camera shutter sound.
They spun to see a massive rhino holding a minuscule phone, bouncing on his toes and making a sound like a teakettle.
The otter swept both hands to the sides. “Karl, are you kidding me?”
Grinning, he gave them a bouncy shrug. “No one online would’ve believed me—it’s every shipper’s dream. You guys have even more chemistry than on the show!”
Max blushed, frozen.
She advanced on the rhino. “Gimme the phone, Karl.”
The fan cradled his mobile against his chest, looking sad. He glanced back and forth between them, hoping at least one would cave.
Repelled by guilt, she pinched the bridge of her muzzle. “Max, tell him he’s gotta delete that pic.”
Still pink in the ears, the husky shrugged.
“Max!” The otter eeled between him and the rhino, unsure what to do. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
The husky offered half a smirk. “He’ll just take another one, or someone else will. Unless we’re going to stop kissing in public.” Pondering the notion for a moment, his expression soured a little. “I vote no on that, by the way.”
Meanwhile, Karl typed with astonishing speed on his phone. “You guys don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll make sure it gets good spin. Have you always been dating, or is this a new thing?”
“It’s uh, new.” Max cleared his throat under the weight of Kylie’s glare. He turned to the hapless fan. “Though, uh, we should probably wait until we tell her mom until we have a press release or something.”
“Oh.” The rhino froze. “Oops.”
The dog’s ears rose. “Oops?”
“I kinda already posted it.” The massive fan squirmed. “It sounded like you were cool with it.”
Kylie groaned. “This is so going to bite us in the tail…”
With a deep breath, the dog patted her shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
She head-butted his chest once in slow motion. “Aren’t you supposed to be the shy one?”
“I am, but I’m trying to be realistic: you’re my canon ship now.” He gave her shoulders a tender squeeze. “Besides, who’s really going to see—?”
Across the street, the civilian garb of a cheerleader caught her eye. “Oh carp!” She grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him behind a stand of fresh vegetables.
Max heeled, but lifted his eyebrows.
“Ugh. Cindy.” The otter hissed. “Just act natural.”
“The only acting I know.” He studied a rutabaga, then glanced around. “Where’d Karl go?”
The otter scoured the street, but found no sign of their massive fan. “Stupid rhino ninjas.”
The stand’s deer proprietor froze in surprise at her grumbling, but that was nothing new. Deer were always freezing about something. She had trouble looking the poor guy in the eye after what they’d seen in the woods. Instead, she watched Cindy from the corner of her eye.
“Never known you to have a blood feud.” He presented her with an eggplant. “How’d that even start?”
“I got a lot of attention when I got to town, which meant less for Cindy. Since she gains nourishment by having people stare at her cleavage, she attacked me as a rival for her food source.”
“You let her get to you, huh?”
“I’m used to dealing with adults. I mean, look.” She nodded across the street where Cindy stood with a friend. “Even her friend can’t stand her.”
“Oh?” Max leaned out into the open to stare, without a hint of subtlety.
“Don’t stare. She can sense it.” She poked him with the eggplant and hauled him back into cover. “See how her friend slouches whenever Cindy’s not looking. She clearly wants to be somewhere else. Clara or something is her name; I’ve seen her before.”
As they watched, Cindy yapped all the way to a shiny red sedan, hopped inside, and made a cursory attempt to invite her friend along before driving off. The brown and white rabbit sighed, hefted her plastic shopping bags and headed across the street.
“Doesn’t even want a ride.” The otter squeezed an avocado, then nodded with approval and pulled out her wallet. “Can’t say I blame her.”
Max nodded, still watching the bunny.
She glanced over some other veggies. “Hey, do you like cucumber in sushi? Max?” She turned to the husky.
But the dog had gone, dashing down the street toward the bunny.
The lagomorph flinched, drawing her bags against her in shock, as the muscled canine charged over.
Max stooped to pick up an aerosol can. “Excuse me, miss.” He offered the glinting canister. “Dropped this.”
She took it with a harried smile, brushing a floppy ear from her cheek. “Thanks.” She glanced from the hunky husky to Kylie, considered them a moment, then bounced off.
He strutted back, wagging.
The otter leaned against the stag’s display stand. “Great job, Sir Ocelot. She’s totally not going to bring this up to Cindy and draw her evil eye once again upon us.”
“Did you see what she was carrying?” He smiled. “Pepper spray. Polecat-brand pepper spray.”
“Lots of girls carry pepper spray.”
“A can you could put on a keychain, maybe. Not one you could use to douse a fire.”
“Maybe she’s going to use it on Cindy.” The otter scoffed. “She’d make my Yuletide card list.”
“Why would she need wildlife-grade pepper spray? Does she work outside?”
Accepting her change, she took her bag of vegetables. “Nah, just in one of the tourist shops.”
“Not a lot of wild predators around here.” His eyes glimmered, assuring her of his supposed cunning. “Nothing for them to eat. According to the guy who owns the outdoors shop, the big game in Windfall has always been scarce. It’s a real drain on the hunting industry.”
“How could you possibly—?”
“This could be a lead.”
Kylie crossed her arms. “This could be a pain in the tail.”
His grinning muzzle dipped to bump hers. “If we’re nice to her, she might convince Cindy you don’t want attention and that she can have it all to herself.”
Arching backward, she released a groan. “It wouldn’t work: Cindy’s more of an attention black hole. An insatiable vortex that consumes all in its path.” She patted his arm. “But it’s cute that Hollywood hasn’t corrupted your innocence.”
One wide paw settled on her hip. “I think people are pretty decent.”
The otter lifted a digit. “A week ago, you thought that monsters weren’t real. Shows what you know.”
“Good that we know now.” He squeezed her a little closer. “I like learning new things.”
“Yeah.” She leaned into him, his closeness lifting her heart. “Me too.”
A bell tolled, chiming out the hour. A few people on the street noticed, but most continued on without a g
lance at the town hall’s bell tower. Max stared, though, with that singular confusion dogs got when trying to focus.
A moment passed. The bells stopped. She looked up at him. “What?”
His gaze narrowed on the bell tower. “The book our shopkeeper friend sold me had photos from an exhibit in town hall.”
Kylie’s arms crossed. “You wanna check it out, don’t you?”
“Last I heard, we were hunting the monster.” He glanced down at her, amused. “Unless you have a better idea.”
“Just one…” She bit her lip, slipping him a coy look. “…over and over…”
The husky’s ears stiffened with interest. A soft whine escaped his muzzle.
“…but Mom’s probably back at the house by now.” Reason caught up with her libido. Sighing, she swung the bag of vegetables against her knees. “So we might as well look at old homestead photos.”
His paw closed around hers, gentle and strong. Hand in hand, they headed for the center of town.
Pamphlets stirred as they opened the door, pinned to the cork board like a still-twitching insect collection. Cool shade and old tile welcomed Max and Kylie to the quiet interior of the town hall. A single sleepy clerk oversaw the lack of activity from a scuffed counter. At the heart of the room stood a massive landscape painting of the area at the town’s founding: rustic shacks, heaps of downed trees, and minecarts brimming with silver.
Between a rack of maps and a table of coupon flyers, glass enclosed a timeline from the town’s founding to the last time someone cared to update it, which seemed about half as recent. At the ancient end stood a pillar of bone, a meter tall and charred up one side. A selection of photographic plates and informational cards hovered around it.
“The Windfall Cataclysm.” The canine tapped the glass with a claw, just in front of a painting of leveled trees. “The storm that flattened this forest enough for people to settle it.”
She padded to the burnt pillar. “And they celebrated with postmodern art?”
He studied the placard. “This bone totem was found near the center of the area leveled by the storm. Archeologists believe it to be a tribute to the spirits of fertility and good harvest.”
“Archeologists!” The otter rolled her eyes. “They’re gonna find your laptop in a few centuries and think it’s a fertility idol.”
The dog nodded and glanced her way. “They wouldn’t be wrong.”
“Max!” Her webbed paw batted his elbow.
He crouched for a closer look at the totem’s base. “Yours has fanfiction of us.”
“Okay…fair point.” She rummaged in her satchel, found the bone disk, and held it up against the glass. “The carvings look the same.”
He nodded. “Meaning the most abstract totems ever.”
“Maybe they eroded?” Slipping the disk back into her bag, she put a hand on his shoulder. “Who knows how long these things had been out in the rain before people found them.”
The dog looked up. “Bone weathers more like wood than stone; it cracks and splinters, but this…” He pointed through the glass. “…looks smooth, almost like one solid piece. But if it were petrified wood, it wouldn’t have burned like this.”
Kylie took a picture with her phone. “Could be a hoax.”
He stood. “Yeah, but why hide part of the hoax in a shack?”
“I’d hide pieces all over.” She shrugged. “So more people would find them.”
“Hmm.” Studying the display for another moment, he flipped through the pamphlets for any references to the pillar, then surrendered with a shrug. “The only mentions of the totem use it as shorthand for mysterious relics in town. They use it as clip art on anything supposedly supernatural.”
“So they think they understand it, but they don’t, but they use it to symbolize what they don’t understand? That’s pretty meta. Maybe it’s art after all.” She opened the door to a gray sky. The air smelled of thrown dust and rejoicing greenery. Wind stirred bits of litter down the sidewalk. “Looks like rain out there.”
The husky’s blue eyes traced the street, watching as vendors pulled displays indoors. “Yeah, we’d better get back. Curio shop can wait.”
They ducked out the door and jogged north, droplets of rain scattering around them. The otter tossed back a catch-me grin, then zipped off with her tail raised and swaying.
Entranced for a moment, the canine shook off distraction and water to give chase. Block after block, he gained on her. After a few minutes, they reached the edge of town, clothes close and heavy with rain. She paused a bare instant, watching the droplets dance down the branches, and he grabbed her tail. A squeak, then she dodged into the woods, jumping logs and mud puddles. Caught in brush and harried by branches, he fell behind. The otter hopped onto a stump to gloat, only to see him burst through the impediments with a playful growl.
Far behind, dark clouds rolled in from the sea. Curtains of rain followed and stirred the forest into a tangle of sound: spatters against trunks, taps on rotten logs, and splats into mossy ground. Lightning flashed above, thunder snarling at their backs. Together, laughing, racing, they jogged to the old game trail and scampered uphill toward home. Steep slopes and slippery soil tripped them here and there, but never enough that a quick hand from the other couldn’t haul them back to their feet. Rain scattered off her face and neck to soak the neck of her shirt.
Halfway home, her breath kept cutting short and each step came harder. She gasped, then writhed as large paws snatched her from the ground.
Without breaking stride, he scooped her up and carried her against his chest. His loping strides bounded them up the hill. The smooth ripple of muscles through his body against hers brought back a flash of last night.
“Hey!” She squawked a laugh, squirmed a lot, and gripped him close. “Put me down, you lunatic!”
“You’re lucky I don’t use you as an umbrella.” Breathing hard, he lifted her a little higher in jest. Now that he’d caught her, he loped into an easy jog.
She tucked her whiskered muzzle under his chin. “I’m nobody’s umbrella!”
A laugh rumbled through his chest to her. “Then why are you waterproof?”
Dripping wet and laughing, he carried her up the driveway and set her on the porch. They stood in each other’s arms and caught up to their breath, then caught up on kisses. Their muzzles met in a mix of passion and summer rain. Lightning crackled above, wind sweeping the woods, but nothing could break them from making out against the screen door. A wild urge rose in Kylie: she imagined him making love to her as the storm thundered like their hearts, the wind howling with her lover as he came inside her, leaving her as wet inside as she was out. Someday, she promised herself. For now, she groped his back and tail, then opened the door so they could tumble inside. They could just slip into his room without her mom hearing from upstairs; it would be the perfect plan.
At least until her mom leaned in from the living room and yelled: “Hey kids, you’re trending!”
Kylie blinked, torn from her building frenzy. “Trending?” Then she groaned as her mind flashed back to the meeting with Karl and his stupid smartphone. “Dang it, Max.” She bopped his shoulder and hurried inside.
The dog doffed his soaked hoodie as he followed, then stood dripping on the entryway tile, looking amazing in a tight t-shirt. “How bad is it?”
Pushing up her glasses, the elder otter glanced down at her laptop and scrolled through social media posts. “Very good, at least for the DVD sales. Outside the fandom, I don’t think you’re famous enough for it to appear on any but the most desperate TV gossip shows.”
“Just the kind my mother watches…” Worry crept onto his muzzle as he felt for his phone. “I’m going to hear about this.”
“She almost found out about it before I did.” The middle-aged lutrine smirked. “I’m impressed. You two went from living in denial to making out on the streets and I never even knew. Well, I mean, I knew, but it’s a better story if I didn’t.”
K
ylie froze from wringing herself dry. “Mom!”
“Hey, the Internet found out you were dating before your mother.” She poked a webbed finger at the couple. “I’m allowed to tease.”
The younger otter scrambled for a change in topic. “Uh…you get your stair railing?”
Laura glanced out at the car, out in the driveway getting a thorough rinsing. “I was waiting for Max and his muscles to be home to unload it. It can wait till the weather clears.”
“I’m as wet as I can get.” He finished checking his phone for messages and set it on the table. “I don’t mind.”
“Fine, go.” The elder otter rolled her eyes. “I might as well exploit your fondness for my daughter. Just don’t hurt yourself.”
“Sure thing, Ms. Bevy.” He stretched his arms, shaking off a little of the rainwater.
“Laura.” She wiggled her whiskers in annoyance. “Seriously.”
He smiled as he padded back out into the rain. Wind clattered the door shut after him.
“That boy has terminal politeness.” She shook her head at the retreating husky, then turned to her daughter. “Sounds like you had an eventful trip to town.”
Kylie shot a glare in the direction of town, hoping it would hit Karl. “What’s the best way to kill a rhino?”
“Wait for her to die of old age.” The elder otter tapped away at her keyboard. “They’re three hundred pounds of armor plating, sweetie.” She didn’t look up. “Glad things are going well with Max. Guess your scheme worked.”
Her daughter bit her lip. “Yeah, I was over-thinking it. Thanks for being cool.” She gestured to the house, then shook water off her tail. “Compared to how you could be, I mean.”
A wry look lifted her mother’s eyebrow. “Sweetie, if I were going to object, I probably would’ve done it in the three months you were planning this visit. You know I think Max is a sweetheart; the boy lived with us for three years.” She drained the last third of her tea in a single gulp. “Besides, you’re both adults; I figure I ought to at least try to be one.”
Max wrestled a massive box through the door, then set it down with a thud that rattled Laura’s teacup.
The slender lutrine jumped at the noise. “Holy mackerel. What’s that even made outta?”
