*"A lurker I suppose? I am Katerina."*

Oh, shit—

I had been so busy in my own little world, gnawing on my own shit while the warmth still bubbled in my eyes (and Cheek still licked it up)—and someone had come up to me, and I hadn’t even processed it until they were introducing themselves like real people do with one another. I flinched (which is not something real people do) and I fumbled a little bit with the information she had given me, looking up into her greyness and wondering why the hell Chico hadn’t warned me she was here. (Wha— bitch, why my job?!)

“Cool,” I said, after she had told me her name. Then there was a pause, and I realized that was kinda shitty to just leave hanging, so again I had to unbend myself enough to say, “Name’s Ros.”

I was glad you were licking up the tears for me, before they could really fall. My eyes were sparkly but dammit they didn’t need to know all that stuff about me. So I got my shit together and squared my shoulders a little, just in time for…someone…else to join me. Like, hell. What even the fuck. Why are they over here with me instead of over with their…I dunno…friends? I ain’t even in this herd! The shit, man?

She was spotted and white with butterfly wings, and it was funny to me in a way that I couldn’t explain. It was also hard and painful, too, or as close to pain as it could be without actually being pain. She was reminding me of someone else who was spotted who I had wanted to see (and they weren’t here and I didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know how to feel about that). She didn’t say anything to me though. Which was great, cuz that meant I didn’t have to say shit to her either. I could just stand there as long as I wanted and feel awkward and have that creeping feeling in my gut that I wasn’t supposed to be here.

And I wasn’t. I really, really wasn’t. I watched as Tembovu went down a laundry list of shit that meant nothing to me, emotionally or logically or otherwise, noting that the icy looking mare that bothered the fuck out of Cheek wasn’t saying shit this entire time. People being promoted, a General being gone. (You be General) (Fuck off, man). Some shit about the broken glass and people to clean it up (hmm, maybe I could help do that?) and some other shit about finding followers for the “way of the Moon” (and it was harder than I expected to keep my ears un-pinned, to remember to relax my jaw before I broke the teeth in there).

A bunch of shit that didn’t matter to me at all. And then, just like that, it was over--he was thanking us(?) for the attendance, going on about all those others who hadn’t made it and what was to be done with them. It shocked me I had sat through that entire thing, cuz I totally hadn’t meant to. No, it was more than shocked. It scared me, and I’m not even sure why I should be scared of a thing like that.

I was about to turn away to…do my own thing I guess, I dunno. Take a shit. Roll in some grass. And then Chico was zpsnking on my fucking face into his large, flapping, furry-maned, blue-tailed thing of a form, his largest body, his most ferocious presence. Right there on my face.

He leapt down, of course, but not before I had bellowed “MY FUCKING FACE” for the whole children-filled congregation to hear because I’m smooth.

He had clawed my cheek on the way down, jumping down to the grass, his eyes trained back on—wait, what? I was blinking really hard, my vision blurry (that’s what happens when you have lionfeet all up in your face like that), but I could see what he was seeing through our bond. Lee. With a…a stick in his mouth?

(Fresh from ass.)

??!??!?

Cheek was on guard, and I don’t know why. There was a leap in me that I didn’t anticipate, a swelling I wasn’t ready for—and it was weird cuz it wasn’t the same swelling Cheek was feeling. Complete opposite, actually. And I’m not sure why or what or how, cuz he had liked Lee before, hadn’t he? (Hadn’t you?) But Chico had been pissed this entire morning, during this whole meeting, and seeing Lee now after the fact didn’t sit right in Chico’s head.

That’s all I could figure out. It was a deep feeling in Chico’s breast, deep and deep and winding with points I wasn’t prepared to handle. Cuz there was Lee and he was taking up everything like he always did; my attention, my headspace, my he—

And oh, there it goes, my heart doing that thing that it always does. Cuz the moment I saw Lee, I wanted to go see him, that rising in me wanting to go right over and—

But then I couldn’t just do that, could I? How could I? So then my heart was dropping like a stone in a frozen pool, cuz what was someone like me gonna do for him in a sea of all his actual (ignored) herdmates? (His family--)

Chico had had his eyes trained on the pair—on the new King Tembovu, on the old King Lee Mow-ya. And also on the white Queen he had in unexplainable grudge against. And before my heart could leap too far upwards or drop too far down, Cheek was turning towards me again, leaping onto my back with a few quick flaps of his massive wings. Time to go.

I listened to him. It was the same sort of words he would use to bring me back to earth (Stop. Not now. Time to go.) And he was absolutely fucking right. I had no place in this herd—why had I even shown up to this shit, what was even the point? There was none, and it was only putting tears in my eyes, doubts in my head—and now a ripping in my heart that was completely unnecessary. Lee was talking to Tembovu about something and I didn’t know what—as far as I could tell, he was bringing him a fucking stick like a good little boy (wow okay why am I so mad?) Cheek was right (Duh.). It’s time to go.

So I turned without a single word to those two “friends” I had made and strode back into the forest. I had tried to be cool about it, calm and casual—but my tail whipped a little too hard, lashing short and furious, just enough to know I wasn’t okay.

"talk"