"Sure were a lot of Mary's." Cansandra quipped.
Glass Marie said simply, "It was, and still is, a very popular name."
For a species that naturally went around in the buff except for ceremony, (even ignoring
otherwise the pleas from Felmans and Humans to at least put on a loincloth), the Lupmans
all gathered in nineteenth century clothing were all looking and feeling quite comfortable.
Alice of course in the dress of her namesake, her cousins/half-sisters in color inverted
versions of that dress. The carnelian colored twins Lilly and Casandra were in dresses that
hide quite a bit and then some and was more ruffles than dress it seemed that were the
same style but with inverted colors of each other.
Lawrence was dressed like a typical gentleman except her was barefoot (the others either
had sandals or partial socks like a ballerina dancer), and Betty wore a typical middle class
woman's dress of that era. Maddex wore... well, it was a freak show costume -exactly-...
But Maddex was like Martha... a shiva wolf.
He had two arms, two tails, four arms, two sheaths, an extra eye in the foreheads, two -
heads-, containing two brains that were wired to each other resulting in a singular
awareness (unlike Ingrid and Joy whose heads whose heads each seemed to have an
independant psyche). This enabled him to speak with both of his daughters at the same
time.
Perhaps it was due to whatever magic decided what those who came into this world within
mirrors wore being aligned with the time that Lewis Carol had written 'Through The
Looking Glass' had Maddex now wore slacks, and several charms and totems necklaces that
looked like she were bought from a Snake Oil Salesman.
He was bare chested, which among the now clothed lupman made him seem even more
the odder one out in spite of his deformity/mutantcy (which it was was unknown, though
rumors and myths of previous such lupman existence in areas saturated with magic were
not completely unknown).
The bracelets and body paint on top of all that made him look like some kind to stage
performer medicine man. Maddex of course said nothing. Barely two hundred years ago
there would have been jokes about Omega inbreeding.
As it was, Felmans and Humans who didn't know of the Omegas who visited the estate for
one reason or another still shrieked at the sight of him and his ilk.
Then of course there was Marie's black dress with red trim that was the same pattern as
Alice and her sisters save for the red runes sown into the cloth. A fitting dress for the
lupman pup made a witchling wielding all the magic that the game of Transform or Dare
had been stealing from the rest of the world for over three hundred years. Deep down,
none was more terrified of this than Glass Marie herself.
++++++++++
"If Alice and Abbey hadn't been in such a hurry," Jensen thought as he looked over
neglected reports from the multiple small businesses the Big Bad Wolf pack owned, "I
could have likely zeroed in on where Samantha was. Not that I can blame them for not
asking, I don't use that magic trick so often, so I guess it's understandable."
Amy, Zelipe, the glass pups, the quadruplets, the Omegas, and Penny were not the only
ones touched by the over saturation of magic brought about the Game of Transform or
Dare drawing in endless amounts of the stuff to set in motion the cruel and just as often
outlandish Transforms those who played the game inflicted on others.
There was supposedly even a young man who had found a way to avoid the limits of the
game entirely by Transforming a woman into a Genie of the Necklace, loyal, without the
limits on wishes, and without the genie seeking to turn on her master.
One man thinking the game just a game had even supposedly turned his girlfriend into a
mermaid until he married her (as were the conditions of the transform he innocently used).
Another was a poor woman was made to her hair grew by the foot each day. It seemed
that woman-haters were drawn almost magically to the game, rather strange given the trio
of witches who had brought the game into being.
Jensen, like the Big Bad Wolf his pack was named after, could seemingly sense his prey no
matter where it was or how far away or how well hidden. The one exception was those who
entered the world within mirrors he found.
He had used it once to even find his wife Kaylee who had gone with his wives Fran and
Darla to look at a new house the pack might be interested in buying.
"I know it would make things easier, or rather, simpler, if all the gifts we've gained from
the residue magic as Amy calls it just vanished along with the game but... it would feel
almost like a cheat too, or would keeping them be the cheat? Or maybe in spite of how
awful the game's been abused, maybe we just couldn't endure to not have -some-
strangeness in town." The giant naked wolf-man with fur as black as midnight said.
"It's not all bad, the quadruplets said that a side effect of the magic is that all Leoman
they've met and a lot of my Pack are immune to having our species changed." That made
Jensen for one moment question about how Kurse was able to change them, but this
thought very quickly faded to nothing as he figured that since all that magic that flowed
through the curse, that Kurse herself would be able to somehow bypass it.
++++++++++
"It's past lunch time, would you please stay with us?" Kaylee asked Gillie like a friend she
had known for years.
Gillie didn't want to be rude, in particular when she was walking blind folded through a
minefield. But there was still one sacred thing she held onto and wasn't about to lose it no
matter how much reality screwed with her now or before or later.
"I'm sorry, I have my duty back at the station, I've been gone way too long already." Gillie
said calmly and politely doing her best to inch away.
"Too bad, I saw how you handled the cubs, or rather how they handled you, I was hoping
you could stay." The seven foot tall she wolf to the nine foot tall lion woman. They were all
effectively giants! But with everything built to scale, it was like the plants and animals were
smaller, not the people were bigger. Kaylee's voice was that of a mother thinking of her
children, not some teenage boy whose revenge Transform or Dare backfired.
'Then again, Kyle Perkins never existed. The laws of the universe say that everything has to
be consistent.' Gillie had the sickening feeling that if she was somehow to go back in time
a year, she'd find wolf people and lion people still existed. That was the worst in her
humble opinion if that was right, even TIME had forgotten how things were supposed to
be.
Then Kaylee added out of the blue, "You seem a natural with kids, you'd make a good
mother."
"NOWAY!"
Kaylee startled by the reaction, and Gillie was startled out her exclaim turned into a roar
that all the sensitive ears around her easily picked up. A lot of eyes fell on her. Gillie felt
herself blush under her copper colored fur. "I-I-" Gillie struggled for a response, "I'm
dedicated to my duty, I don't have time for a family..."
Kaylee seemed a little deflated, "I was only joking..."
"Besides, I nearly made things -worse- for the kids."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. You did fine."
"Only by the skin of my teeth. I was playing it by ear."
"You'll find that's what pretty much any parent does."
+++++++++
Zelipe wasn't like the Alpha's pups, he had never liked hunting. While Kevin loved the
excitement of the case, and Bart the thrill of the hunt and the delight of the kill, Zelipe had
seen it purely as a task to be performed. As a lupman, hunting was expected of him, the
little boy however couldn't have cared less for it.
'I understand it's our food we're getting... but, I don't like it, I just don't like it!'
Zelipe followed half heartedly as Kevin held onto Bart's every word as the seven year old
held onto every word of the nine year old. The eight year old Zelipe just listened
pretending that he was paying attention. His half-sister sometimes said weird things but
at least he always felt safe around her, complete with her.
Then finally came the time when the pale pink Zelipe was to flush out the rabbits, while
Bart and Kevin zoomed in for the killing. Zelipe was glade he wouldn't be doing the actual
task. The little boy never once thought how the meat he ate at the table had to come from
somewhere.
The rabbits had of course over the years due to natural selection been left with only the
fastest, smartest, or luckiest of their breed. This meant that hunting had become, like
predators, a long and often fruitless task. However Zelipe played his part well and Bart and
Kevin managed to grab a rabbit a piece, crushing the life out of them leaving the rabbits to
struggle to breath with crushed wind pipes before they finally suffocated.
A couple hours later, the two boys between with the middle child Zelipe between them. The
two naked furry children covered in blood and grinning as they held up their prize much to
the praise of their mother. The two boys well remembered when they had been tongue
lashed about eating a kill on the spot that would leave them with any number of diseases...
Gold Deer seemed to be immune to the vast majority of diseases with the lupmans and
leomans' hunting keeping their population in check, but still better safe than sorry.
+++++++++++
1688
Marie in her life had never seen so many felmans together at once. But she knew it would
be rude to stare.
In some part of Marie mind, she fought against the image that she had been in a hallway
full of children, 'dwarves', and teenagers dressing up as adults.
Lilly asked, "Didn't she mean munchkins?"
"That word hadn't been invented yet. And wizard of Oz wouldn't be published for over two
hundred years."
"Ah."
"Dwarf?" Abbey asked, thinking of little men who mined diamonds.
Marie nipped this one in the bud, "As in naturally short people like who performed in the
film adaption of Wizard of Oz! Not the characters from Lord of the Rings!"
"Oh, okay, right, wasn't thinking that." Lawrence was the who nodded at that. After the
strange things Marie Cruz had apparently met in her lifetime, he was almost ready to
believe anything.
Marie Cruz had taken to binding her chest while on some assignments, while it certainly
helped her stay unnoticeable being 'just a woman' she also didn't like -them- getting in
the way during life or death battles, and not all of her opponents would be as thrown off
by their opponent being the life-giving gender.
From everything she had read and heard from Kathrine, that same thing did not quite
apply to felman. It was hardly perfect, but it was a Heaven and Earth closer than anything
the lupmans, humans, or even leomans came to gender equality.
+++++++
"Must have been bad for Martin, being pink furred and being male in that day and age..."
Betty said simply.
"Actually," Glass Marie said simply, "Pink until the twenty century was seen as a masculine
color, being a shade of red, while blue, being related to the virgin Mary, was thought of as
a feminine color. Martin's fur color marked him a manly man, while Kathrine's primary blue
color in turn marked her as a girlie girl."
While Lawrence and Maddex digested this piece of information the blond pups spoke up.
"I think Zelipe would be very happy to hear that." Samantha said simply.
"Yes I bet he would." Abbey added. Alice said nothing, odd for her and her opinionated
mouth.
Maybe she was a bit frazzled at having her title of 'story interrupter' being stolen under her
feet from her siblings and pack mates.
+++++++
"Calias you say?" Marie asked.
"Yes. We've lived there for several generations through the great sickness." Mary responded
in perfect Italian. It was a slightly embarrassing reminder to Marie that while she spoke
Italian, English, French, Latin, and German, she only knew the fundamentals of her
birthplace's language. Lobo had joked that she read so much that it was a wonder her eyes
didn't fall out of her head, Marie personally wondered with all the training her father put
her through Marie wondered how she had not gone mad from lack of sleep.
"Your families should leave that city... it'll be conquered and re-conquered time and again
in the ages to come..."
However Mary responded evenly, "I know, it's been conquered more than once and I'm not
a fool enough to not think it's not precious enough a prize to be conquered again. But it's
our -home- we won't leave it, and we said we lived near Calias anyway, not in the center of
the city."
This startled Marie, this broke another age old stereotype... she knew that Kathrine had
vowed to protect her with her life, but she figured Kathrine was an exception. Felman's
desire to preserve their numbers was well known. Kathrine didn't think they were cowards
(someone who would impose a risk on another rather than face it themselves), she just
didn't think they were risk -takers-.
Not that Marie was one to judge, Marie was glade there was a good chance she wouldn't
have to set foot back in England.
England was among the last places any catholic wanted to be right now. When King James
second earlier that year had formally suspended laws punishing catholics for being
catholics, (along with having an army in place during peacetime after he had to deal with
two rebellions), his own country had turned on him, and violence towards catholics had
flared.
Marie remembered her own trip to England... she never imagined a place where she'd have
to hide her faith AND her gender from those around her.
'Two catholic nuns going there right now would be suicide,' Marie thought.
To humans, she was Spanish (in spite of not having spent less than six years of her life
there before she was adopted by her father), or Catholic, or A Woman, to everyone else, she
was just 'a human,' and was group together with people who'd swear by the god they loved
that they were nothing alike. Marie resisted the urge to laugh.
Glass Marie spoke, "King James the Second would be remembered for nearly three hundred
years as a tyrant and a bigot, it wouldn't be until some began to question the inevitability
of the so-called 'bloodless' revolution that he'd be seen in a different light. While it would
be final end of any absolute monarchy in England ever, they also wrote into law then and
there that no Catholic could be king and no royalty could marry a Catholic. Catholics
themselves who wouldn't have the right to vote in England for over a hundred years."
Maddex blink, "Bigot?"
"Declaring Protestantism to be a false religion after he converted to Catholicism didn't earn
him that many friends. And Pope XI didn't like how James II was supposedly close to Louis
XIV who was trying to form a strangle hold on the church to strip it of it's lands and
property. The point is, if Marie could avoid going to England, she wouldn't complain."
Marie -really- didn't like the idea of dragging along two families through the Vatican and
having to explain to any curious enough or alert enough to ask what they could possibility
be doing there. Thankfully the adults let her do the talking and Mary was able to keep a
lid on Joshua's mouth.
However if Kathrine's family was willing to provide them with a much faster rout to the new
world and thus 'New England' (if her senses were correct) and thus more time before the
witches' power reached the threshold were nothing on Earth could stand in their way, then
Marie Cruz was more than willing to endure it.
And of course the felmans had to act like a family on a vacation through the country in the
seat of Pope Innocent XI. Mary was as quiet as stone. The boys had to almost be put on
leashes to keep from ruining centuries old works of art. And Josephine only cried twice.
Martin stood with his head held high and his shoulder board and one foot in front of the
other next to his serene wife as was expected of their fur color. Rachel and Dillon couldn't
seem to go five minutes without saying something boldly or dramatically until finally Marie
had to remind them to use their inside voices. Rachel's choices of words were mostly
metaphors (one of which Marie was certain was used incorrectly), while Dillon's were
articulate yet abstract (if that made any sense).
This made Marie really wish she had done more than simply skimmed the guild on the
different personality types expected of different fur colors. The boys acted no different
from any other boys she had seen, but maybe that was cause it hadn't had it hammered
into them how they were expected to behave by their fellow Felmans.
Finally she managed to make it to Father Draco's room. She knocked and the bandaged
clergy man opened the door. "Yes Sister Marie? I-, who are your friends?"
"Hello Father Draco, these are Sister Kathrine and her family, they apparently came all from
near Calais to seen her farewell. They've offered to provide expedient transportation as well
as cover expenses for Kathrine's sake for the trip to the new world."
"Are you a leaper?" The kitten of course mispronounced the word.
Father Draco groaned, "No, and no, and no.... Sister Marie, there is something I wish the
two of us to discuss... in private... "
"Private? But if Kathrine's family is willing to help-"
"It is important. They can wait out here. It shouldn't be more than a moment."
Trust her old friend to the just honorable person she knew him to be, she walked inside
leaving instructions to stay put and NOT to touch ANYTHING. "Especially you." She pointed
at Adam who seemed to have forgotten what his eyes were for and had to see everything
with his curious hands.
One inside the dragon did not sit back down.
"Sister Marie. I want to know. What are you hiding from me?" Father Draco said simply and
calmly.
Marie Cruz held her composure, "I told you I'd explain everything once we were on the
boat to the New World."
"No!" The bandages hiding his mouth blackened, "I am not getting on any boat where I'll no
longer have a chance to turn around and go home if I don't like what I learn. I am fully
aware there are secrets that should be kept! But if you feel that they must be told, then
you should tell me sooner than later!"
".... The name Marie Cruz was given to me by my father, I've long since forgotten what
name I had before then. ... but for years when he first took me in he gave me another
name. One which nature in some mindless act of petty spite and sadism chose to cut short
my use of that name. You know one of the girls in my abbey thought I was a boy in a dress
when I first arrived? Marie Cruz. Didn't you think even once to ask if I was related to
Maurice Cruz?" The blond haired woman spoke of the dark haired boy Father Draco Fire
had known.
"... you knew him?"
"Tell me 'Flame-Baiter'! Doesn't this destroyed eye look familiar?"
"...-Impossible.-"