Mary recognizes a 14 year old neighbor coming across the road. Her eyes shoot wide with alarm as she recognizes him. Oh, no! It's a boy from school, Cody, who knows her well, and she and her friends have always made fun of him and treated him badly. Mary and her friend Josephine had caught him drawing furry animals when he was 11, and when one of Mary's friends had giggled about it, Mary had joined in the cruel teasing of the boy just to fit in with Josephine and others as one of the "popular kids." Cody remained one of the least talked to kids at the lunch table, and other kids still promptly started talking over him loudly if he spoke, with others paying rapt attention to the interrupter because nobody wanted to hear the input of some creepy furry. Scars on his arms had begun to testify to how much the loneliness had been affecting Cody.
What if he recognizes her? What will everyone think if he gets revenge? Not that anyone would believe him, no, but even the suggestion, even if he only voiced a suspicion...she can't have anyone knowing, no! No! No! That would be worse than death, to have it bandied about freely that poor, strange Mary fetishizes being a kept pet so much that she once wanted to give up her humanity for 6 whole months just to whore herself to her shameful submissive fantasy. She tries desperately to hide her naked, inhuman 8 year old body behind Daddy's leg, whimpering unhappily for protection from this new, horrible fear of social disgrace.
"Wow, I've only read about dragons!" Cody says as he comes over. As he approaches Daddy, Cody extends his hand cordially, his gray-cheeked face smiling his usual goofy smile. "Oh, sorry if I startled you Mr. Smithson," says Cody. "You don't recognize me, but I'm, uh, Cody Barkley from 8th Street. Your daughter, Melinda, came to my 11th birthday party." He scratches behind his neck as if sort of abashed. "I guess, sometime after that, we sort of grew apart."
{{Melinda?}} Mary thinks silently. {{So the name of my human self has changed.}} Maybe, just maybe it won't make too much of a difference what happens in this altered reality? Could she be saved from humiliation?
"Oh, you," Daddy says. "Yeah, Melinda went off to a technology camp for six months. They said she might come back with some funny memories, but they were offering a big scholarship for it."
"Oh, that's okay" Cody says, waving his hands in front of him. "I don't really want to see her, and I'd noticed her not being around, which is why I'm okay talking with you." He smiles affably and goes around to look behind Daddy's legs where Mary is hiding. "So is this really a Taiwanese Red?" he says excitedly.
Mary goes in a circle around Daddy to avoid Cody, and to her chagrin, Cody decides to make a "peek-a-boo" style of game out of chasing her around in one direction and then the other, eventually driving Mary to bury her face helplessly against Daddy's groin as she peers distrustfully at Cody, who then decides to leave her alone.
"Aww! She's so shy!" Cody cries, and he giggles a little bit. "You see, I know she's a she because anthro males all have external bits with a sheath, kind of more like a foreskin. Most people don't know because most anthros kept as pets are completely desexed and made to LOOK like they just have female bits or, in the case, a cloaca, except I know you can't desex them this young." Wow, he studied his stuff.
"That's right," Daddy says. "We might not have her fixed if we can get pedigree papers from the former owners, although that might be difficult."
Cody nods. "You got her as a rescue, I bet. That would explain why she's so skittish, although I know owners do just make mistakes."
"Yeah," Daddy says. "If the papers exist, we might have to buy them from her former owners unless we could find out who the breeder was." He looks at young Cody curiously. "But what got you so interested in anthros?" he asks. "Isn't that sort of niche for someone your age?"
Cody nods exaggeratedly. "Oh, you have no idea. Other kids think I'm so strange to care about this stuff. Like I know why they can't be made capable of speech in spite of being intelligent. It was a trick to get past the bioethics commissions, so the human-like mind was sneaked in while engineering in a speech deficit. After that, everyone went into denial about it, and all the governments have it on paper that they're not smarter than dogs."
Mary fumes at that at she glares out at the world from between Daddy's thighs where she has her face buried. So in this altered reality, intelligent creatures are being kept as slaves. This is horrible!
Daddy shakes his head "Well, I'm not sure whether to believe that sort of conspiracy theory" he says, "but you do seem enthusiastic." His eyes light up as an idea strikes him.