The female panther smelled blood, but the blood had a familiar scent to it. It wasn't the scent of her mate, and it wasn't the scent of any Prey. Wait! Prey-that was not not-prey! The blood smelled like the doe the female panther had first at the beginning! No! Oh no! The smell was too strong! The female panther called to her hunting partner to follow her, she had to know she was wrong.
She came to the sight just in time, to see the two legged dogs drag her away, begging her not to die. While a bear with blood on her claws was being dragged around by a big bunch of other huskies. The female panther's base reaction at the sight was to leap at the bear and eat her heart. Her hunting partner softly tackled her before she could do this foolish though completely justified act.
The female raced up to the remaining No-Prey Deer, and growled and snarled at them, wanting to know what had happened. The stupid deer wasted time taking several steps back from her. She wanted to know now!
Keith on the other hand, why stay on all fours, asked the question english rather than panther.
It was several hours of agony later that Jackie had learned that Hannah was alive... it seemed the deer in the park were destine to have their little internal history stained with blood.
The look of betrayal, and final debasement in Jeremy's eyes, even scared Jackie, when she was supposed to be the predator.
So close, too close. 'Maybe in the end 'these forms make no different. We're just as prone to strangling each other as when we were monkeys. Maybe that's all evolution means, learning more clever and ingenious ways to kill the opposition. Maybe the Ferals, are just the most honest of us lot.'
Still, to leave civilization behind, just felt too much like cowardice, and if there was one thing the panthers in this part resented, weather human or animal or not, it was cowardice.
++++
"Marth?"
"I'm sorry Leticia, sorry for everything, I've, I've got to go." And here was alone again.
Marth left Leticia, he didn't dare stay near her. There were too many things he could do wrong at a time like this.
And Marth realized, if he didn't want to see if Hannah was indeed all right (she WAS a friend after all and she had been woman enough to come back after her outburst), he'd have jumped the electric fence that moment to leave this cursed place.
He remembered what the contract said, he couldn't back out now that he was in. Unlike most people he had actually READ that part. He had figured some time alone with Larry for that long might have been good for their relationship. Screw it all.
"That was awful wasn't it." Another doe was walking besides him, cool, calm collected, but a blind man could see the look of regret, and dismay on her face.
"Who are you?"
"Prof. Su Yin. I like to think I'm a chronicler of sorts for my friends." Again Su Yin thought of the book she intended to write after she left the park. But this was an incident she wondered if it would be more respectful to simply leave out of it. "Though sometimes I think I simply meddle too much for anyone's good." She quickly changed the subject of her monolog. "So, you're Marth, it's an honor to meet you, Hannah wouldn't stop talking about you." Not a lie. "So, you've finally let go of Leticia? Don't take it personally, gossip travels fast in this park."
"... I lied to her. I pretty much implied that I had let her go. I haven't. I'm just, I'm just SICK of fighting it! And fighting OVER it! The longer it drags on, the more misery that will pop up and... I love her too much for that to go... I just wanted to show, one last time, that I really did love her, and to show Jeremy I wasn't just some piece of meat she rejected. I'm never going to forget her, or him, Larry, no matter how hard I try. If we could have been together, between us two, in any combination this damn place has to offer, I'd have taken it. But that is impossible now, isn't it?"
"Leticia made her choice, maybe it was a selfish one, it likely was, but she's chosen to live with it. So what about you?"
"I'd leave this place in a second if I could now, though I'm not sure anymore if I'm Marth or Maria. And I don't want to leave and make a friend think I left because of her. That poor girl has been through enough from the looks of things."
"You wouldn't be the first buck who left because of something like this. There was another female to male buck, Sally, or Sam, who Hannah fell for, only to find out he was married."
"Ouch."
"That's not the worst of it, to keep a corrupt buck from becoming herd leader, they fought, and Sam beat him, but just barely, and using some desperate tactics. Spike was rushed to emergency, a lot like Hannah is now. Though the circumstances were a lot different. But Sam, he got so sick of the violence this place can spawn sometimes, he just left... poof. Don't ask how."
"... I think I'm beginning to understand her..."
"You know, you're still going to have to fight the other bucks, just to establish your spot in the pecking order. Though I think after what happened at the finals... it'll be a lot more civilized... weather we're human or not."
"I like to think we still are... feels too much like an excuse if we say we aren't."
++++
Mr L was waiting outside when Juanita walked out of the holding cell. He gazed at her from under those dark glasses. "You know you broke a lot of rules here. Reverting a guest to human form without permission. Ending a stay early. Banning a guest without board approval. Plus there's the fact that Mrs. Hannah said she didn't intend to press charges, so there was technically nothing to remove her for."
"And each and every one of those rules were originally made by the Management, and every one I broke was for the good of the cause."
"I've honestly begun to wonder of creating a social environment for our true forms via proxy is even worth it anymore."
"How can you say that?"
"Simple gains to loss ratio. Nothing more. There's nothing to keep Mrs. Maggie from spilling out to the tabloids. And while we're not technically illegal, there are yellow journalists who'd have a field day with us."
"From the shape she was in when she left... I doubt she's going to be doing much of anything for a while. And I've protected the park by making her human again."
"Though doesn't that create the atmosphere that our true forms are privilege and not a right?"
"If she had left the park in her anthro form, and had told what she had done, people would jump to the conclusion all forms react the way she did. It's safer this way for the cause, and the guests. They would have slaughtered her if she had been allowed back in. And we have enough trouble making sure Spike doesn't get murdered in his sleep."
"Granted. But I still think you were hasty in your decision."
"Hannah is everything to the cause. We can't risk losing her."
"I heard you had found two more possible proxies for the cause."
Juanita decided not to say how she had spoken with Hannah personally and revealed the cause to her. It was a violation of the board creed along with assuming your true form before the cause had been achieved in a rational form.
"All the same... Hannah is still our best bet. Plus the TG community will be all behind her."
"Latching onto another interest group is dangerous, forgive me for saying so, but that's why the woman's movement met so many roadblocks."
"Look, I think our main concern should be to make sure Hannah hasn't been traumatized by the incident, and Jackie and Leticia are still our most important in park guests."
"Granted Madam J. Granted. The fruit of their wombs, will decide our and the cause's future."