The Nemadji River Incident

[CKent45]

Hello all!

I've been working on another project that I hope will be much shorter than my others. I'm still working to get to the SW portion of this, but it's very much a Halloween inspired beginning, so if you'd like a little of the paranormal with your SW, maybe this will do the trick for you. Hope you enjoy as I try to get this out at a reasonable rate.

Happy Halloween!

The Namadji River Incident


It’s eyes were a deep, rich amber that actually appeared to glow, lapping vaguely against Ben’s cheeks from a little more than a body length away from him. In the early predawn hours of the morning, the air was thick with moisture and a thin fog hung around them in the midst of the dense, late fall forest and the air was eerily still. To his left, a nearly full moon hung in the sky, washing the landscape in a pale light contrasted by black, lifeless shadows from the many leafless trees that surrounded them.

Ben lay on his back, holding his rifle, a Remington 760 that was an heirloom left to him by his grandfather pointed directly at the creature that stared at him with a deadly intent.

The creature itself stood completely still as Ben sat shivering violently in fear and sweating profusely despite the brisk fall air. It was hunched over on thin, tense legs with thick, muscular thighs, but thin lower legs that bent backwards like those of a dog. It’s upper body was thin, but with incredibly dense muscles, projecting up to a chest and shoulders that were rippling with thick muscles that would have left even the most accomplished of steroid abusing body builders feeling inadequate, and its body was covered in a dense, black fur, roughly an inch thick, but it was the face that was the most terrifying of all.

Those same amber eyes glared with anger and rage at Ben, and steam flowed gently out of the corners of its mouth as its breath hit the cold air around them. It had a pronounced snout that was rounded as if it were a mixture between human and mongrel, and its teeth were bared, a thin string of drool hanging from its chin and its teeth glistened in the moonlight, revealing deathly debris from the creature’s last victim still hanging from it’s stained enamel.

Fluidly, it took a single step forward, covering an unnerving distance between them both and let loose a long, deep, guttural growl that seemed to resonate in the blanket of leaves lining the forest floor, and as it did so, it’s considerable height of around seven feet became all the more evident as it loomed over Ben intimidatingly. As it moved, its arms, which were obviously there the entire time somehow seemed to materialize unexpectedly as they extended outward as if to box the relatively paralyzed young hunter in. They were every bit as muscular and bulky as its shoulders and chest, but tapered down to sinewy wrists that connected to wide palms and long, sharp claws that had to be at least five inches long each.

Ben shook violently and his left leg kicked spastically as if to attempt to run by itself and leave the rest of his body behind, but the rest of his body failed to respond. It’s growl intensified and grew in volume as it leaned closer and Ben’s shaking, sweat covered fingers finally managed to squeeze down on the rifle that was all but ready to fall from his hands and brought the barrel to bear against the creature’s chest tenuously.

The growl intensified further, causing Ben’s body to now borderline convulse, but he mustered what little remained of his courage and pulled the butt of the rifle against his shoulder and somehow managed to lean back up toward the menacing figure as the dense, moist autumn air echoed with the creature’s growl until the deep rumbling focused gradually and then suddenly into a single syllable.

“Don’t.”

Ben’s head shook as he attempted to whip the cobwebs out of his brain and he stared at the creature uncomprehendingly and his jaw hung precariously.

“You too,” he answered the creature back in a quivering voice that barely managed to creep past a whisper.

The creature hung over him silently and still now, those glowing amber eyes seeming to focus even more tightly on him for an eternity as Ben’s pounding heart could be heard audibly even by your average passerby now. Then the creature’s eyes narrowed and it took a step backward, reassessed him, and then its thin lips spread upward in what looked like a wicked sneer. Then, finally, the creature disappeared into the brush in a single leap as it moved with supernatural speed and vanished without a sound.

Ben sat there, still trembling violently for several minutes before he had enough wherewithal to push himself up onto uncertain legs and he scanned his surroundings. There was still no sound and he attempted to walk back to the nearest tree, though his legs moved sluggishly as if they were encapsulated in mud up to his thighs. He fell against the tree once he finally arrived and took a deep breath, filling empty lungs that had been completely emptied somewhere in the middle of this near miss encounter and he remained there until he finally recognized the discomfort of the peg poking into his rib cage as he leaned against the tree.

He stood upright and looked up at his deer stand, a good eight feet above his head and then scanned down as he looked over the identical pegs that he used as a ladder to climb up to the stand.

Needless to say, his hunting trip was now over and he was no longer in any shape to shoot any deer this morning. Not that it mattered as the unnerving silence surrounding him proved that the rest of the forest denizens were also still spooked, though it would be difficult to imagine them being more spooked than Ben currently was.

There was now a decision to be made. Ben had two choices. He could sit there at the base of the tree (mostly due to the fact that he couldn’t muster the strength to climb up to his stand) until sunlight, or he could make a run for it back to his truck.

Somewhere out there, the creature was still there, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood upright as though he could sense its presence. He clutched his chest and turned to his right, where in the distance there almost seemed to be a faint amber glow, but by the time his eyes landed on their target, there was nothing but forest with pale moonlight illuminating it.

He ran for it, extremely slowly at first with legs that lumbered painfully and sluggishly, but the further he ran, the faster they moved and the more responsive they became until by the time he was within 300 yards of the clearing where he’d left his truck he was at a full sprint, running as if his life depended on it and far too scared to look back for any pursuers.

When he reached his truck he fumbled with his keys, dropping them three times as he struggled to aim them into the keyhole, ripped the door open so hard that the hinge creaked agonizingly. He leapt in, slammed the door shut, turned the engine over with a roar and then peeled out of there with the pedal pinned firmly to the floor in a cloud of dust and dew covered turf kicked high up into the air as he made his escape.

That was four years ago.

[Knightstable]

It’s awesome to see you posting again! Great start Looking forward to reading more

[CKent45]

It’s awesome to see you posting again! Great start Looking forward to reading more

Thank you, sir, very kind of you to share your encouragement. There is a bit of build up to get to the SW part, but I won't wait nearly as long as in The Goddess' Retreat to get to the meat of the issue. Here's hoping it will be a tale worthy of sharing.

[Flippity-Floosy]

So glad to see you back and writing Ckent! It's been YEARS! You still have your fantastic prose and writing touches! Trust me when I say I'm excited for more!

[CKent45]

So glad to see you back and writing Ckent! It's been YEARS! You still have your fantastic prose and writing touches! Trust me when I say I'm excited for more!

Thanks so much.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been working hard to get to the actual SW portion of the story and is usual for me, it took me longer to get there than it probably should have. If I post larger chapters like I have in other stories then it should only take a handful of posts to get you there, but I haven't gotten very far beyond that point yet. There's some mysteries to solve and getting to know characters and stuff before we start making ladies little...

I very much appreciate your kind words. I don't mean to be rude, but have we chatted before? I don't see your handle in any of my older posts. Also, I have taken a look at Small matters and love the descriptions in it, especially her perception of her surroundings, but I haven't read everything in that post. I'm looking forward reading the rest of it and will post there once I do.

[CKent45]

Ben was hardly the only one in that small, rural town with a story to tell about the dogman. In the years since his encounter he’d done his best to learn all he could about them, though his efforts hadn’t born much useful fruit. It was a year before he even managed the nerve to travel back up to his family cabin, but he only did so to perform some much needed maintenance and did so armed with a rifle and two pistols on him at all times, then tore off of the property at an entirely unsafe speed until he reached the hotel he was staying at during his trip up there that year.

The next year Ben managed to gather enough resolve for a midday hike through the woods on the property, clutching his rifle at the ready the entire time, and thankfully the walk was entirely without incident, just like all of the other walks he’d taken through those woods his entire life, save the one where he’d come face to face with the dogman.

In year three he had recovered enough that he regularly traveled up to the cabin throughout the summer and fall, gradually becoming comfortable enough that he began sleeping at the cabin again, and here in year four he was planning on his first hunt in four years.

After years of recovering from the incident, he finally felt at home again in his family’s cabin, which couldn’t have worked better as he’d been laid off from his job in the late spring and only a few weeks earlier had run out of funds to maintain his apartment in the suburbs any longer. As soon as his lease had run out, he sold off the majority of his possessions on facebook marketplace and moved what remained up to the cabin where he was living full time now and was hunkering in for a long, lonely winter.

His girlfriend from four years before scoffed at his story and openly held his sudden uncharacteristic fearfulness in open disdain. She only stayed with him for a couple months, choosing to dump him the day after Christmas that year and Ben had little desire to go out seeking companionship after being completely abandoned and replaced in a matter of days during the holidays.

Everything from that point on was a downhill slide, culminating in being laid off as his company reorganized and he was making ends meet by picking up odd jobs and working part time as a handyman wherever he could get work while he poured himself into an unending stream of job interviews that all seemed to peter off into nothing tangible.

He still had some money squirreled away, but nowhere near enough to maintain his current and admittedly meager lifestyle any longer, but thanks to this property that had been passed down through the family for generations, he wouldn’t have to live out of the back of his pickup truck.

Now he was sitting on the step just off the front porch to the cabin staring off into the woods lost in thought.

Three days prior, he’d gone to listen to a speaker at a nearby casino who was there to share his stories about the dogman. Ben listened carefully and intently, but did nothing to draw attention to himself. In the four years since the incident he’d finally learned his lesson.

There were a few who would listen eagerly to his story, but even among most of them it was clear in their eyes that for them it was nothing more than juicy entertainment. Of those that remained, they would inevitably immediately spout off in the middle of his retelling about any myriad of conspiracy theories and overwhelmed him with incredulous claims that made his story seem positively sane in comparison.

All the rest gave varying versions of reactions of dismissal or revulsion at his tale, judging him to be yet another nut job whose mind had been twisted and warped by the unending rabbit hole of the internet. He’d lost friends and strained his relationships with most of his family over his story and had discovered the hard way that one way or another, this responsibility was his alone to bear.

The speaker was an elderly man in his late sixties from a nearby reservation and was a full-blooded Native American man who peppered his personal stories of the dogman with traditional aspects of his culture. He was a captivating and entertaining speaker with a lively sense of humor that left the audience sitting on the edges of their seats, and he was a humble man who sporadically would show interest in the members of the audience nearer to the stage, showing a personal desire to learn their stories and drawing them directly into conversation mid presentation.

Ben had listened to a number of these storytellers, but this one offered something unique- he was disarming and something about him made him feel more at ease than he’d felt in years.

Upon ending the presentation, Ben slipped out the back of the room where he’d been seated and made a beeline for the door, but paused and opted to use the bathroom first before leaving. He was there relieving himself at the urinal up against the far wall when another man walked conspicuously in and chose the urinal next to him, despite there being four others to choose from in the line.

Ben tensed and his stream slowed at having his space invaded so rudely in this most intimate of activities, but he grinned and bared it, refusing to look in the intruder’s direction. As the man unzipped and began relieving himself as well, Ben was taken back as the man broke the awkward silence.

“Give it time, son,” came the familiar voice he’d listened to for the last hour and a half. Ben turned and looked across at the elderly man who continued to stare down at his stream as if this conversation was a mere afterthought. “Most are broken by it. It snaps their brains. You seem to be holding it together pretty will though. You’ll be alright in the long run.”

Ben gulped and looked back down at his piss stream, focusing on finishing his job, then packed his pecker away and zipped back up again. He turned just as the elderly man finished as well. “How did you know?” Ben asked him, not bothering to dance around the issue.

“The eyes. There’s always one or two that show up to these things. Most are too afraid to talk about it. Some want to talk your ear off about it. Only a few don’t seem to be broken by it. You’re in pretty rare company.”

“How did you manage?”

“I didn’t for years,” the man admitted freely. “I drank myself stupid for decades. Eventually a tribal elder helped me through it. I wish I’d had as much of my wits left as you seem to have back when it first happened.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Well, I made it back after all that time. I think you will too,” the man encouraged him, and then led Ben back to the sinks to wash their hands. Once they’d finished washing up and drying off, the man patted Ben on the shoulder. “Come look me up if you ever feel like you need it. Tell them you’re my guest when you come on the reservation and they’ll point you in my direction,” he said, and then left the bathroom without any more discussion.

In the here and now, Ben was truly contemplative as he seemed to gently move with the fall breeze. He remained like this, lost in thought until evening when the sun was all but gone and stepped back in the cabin to make dinner before sitting down and reading the book the elderly man he’d listened to had been selling at his speech.

The next day, Ben took a call to clear out a blown out toilet at a restaurant in a nearby town. After he’d finished cleaning out one of the messiest rooms he’d ever encountered, he went home, showered and soaped down four times, then went out to the porch and sat on the front step again as he watched the sun slip down underneath the tree line and the light take on it’s familiar golden hew of impending evening.

He sat for several minutes like this, then without another word stood up and proceeded to his truck, then set off on an hour long drive until he saw the signs pointing him toward the reservation. The first thing he saw when crossing the boundary was the casino, a sheet metal structure that looked more like an oversized pole building, but with a bright, colorful array of neon signs surrounding it. Past that as the sun began dipping beneath the horizon, he passed a beaten down housing development with yards that were littered with all manner of junk. As he drove along the dirt road, he was greeted with cold stares of the residents, all of them instantly recognizing him as he passed by as not belonging there until he came across a building that looked like a cross between a nineteenth century trading outpost and a twentieth century convenience store where he pulled in and parked.

As he walked into the store, the attendant, a middle aged Native American man with a large potbelly stood upright rigidly, staring coldly at Ben, but not bothering to offer any kind of greeting, not even so much as a smile. Ben grabbed a candy bar and a soft drink and brought them to the counter, but the man only stared across to Ben.

“Can I pay for these?” Ben finally asked after an extended pause, but the man only continued to stare back at Ben. “Tim Boyd told me to tell you I was his guest,” Ben added, causing the other man to move slightly as this new bit of information seemed to register.

“Ah,” the man finally replied after some thought. He took Ben’s cash, gave him back his change and then led Ben out the front of the store where a small gathering of residents of the reservation were watching from the edge of the parking lot. The man then pointed up the road with his hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“Up this road three more miles, then hang a left at the old oak tree that’s split on the side of the road. Then up that road about a mile and you’ll see the shop on the right. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” Ben answered back graciously, shaking the man’s hand. “You sure I’m not causing too much trouble?” he asked, nodding toward the suspicious onlookers.

“Naw,” he dismissed. “You go have your chat. Take care,” the man told him cordially, and then turned back to the store.

This encounter seemed to be enough to ease the conscience of the locals, including a nearby squad car that had been watching from across the road and upon being pointed toward his destination, all seemed to turn and go their own ways leaving Ben to continue on his journey.

Ben found the shop exactly as described and pulled in a short distance away from where the elderly man he’d spoken to a few days prior was sitting with three other elderly men smoking on cigars around a half barrel that had a fire lit inside of it. As Ben approached, he heard one of the men mutter something in a language he couldn’t understand, then a second grumble, “guess he decided to show after all.” There was a gentle huff in agreement among the four of them and as Ben finally approached, one slid over to the side on a log bench and patted the empty space he’d just left behind for Ben to take a seat.

“What’s your name, son?” Mr. Boyd asked Ben after a particularly long puff on his cigar.

“Ben,” he replied back obediently. “Ben Larson.”

“Good Scandinavian name,” one of the elderly men chuckled.

“So how long’s it been, Ben? You know, since it happened.”

“Four years,” Ben answered back, attempting not to lower his head in shame.

“How close did it get?” one of the elderly men asked him after blowing an impressive smoke circle while lounging back.

“Closer than you are to me. It was right over me, staring me right in the eyes,” Ben answered back to the old man who was sitting just across the barrel from him. One man dropped his cigar upon hearing this, while all, including Mr. Boyd’s eyes widened and one man gasped something highly reverential in his native tongue.

“No shit,” one of the other old men gasped, though whether he was answering the other old man or Ben was uncertain.

“Damn,” Mr. Boyd muttered, shaking his head. “Damn,” he repeated.

“This little asshole’s got your story beat, Timmy,” another one laughed, causing a round of nervous laughs.

Once they were all settled again and they all had a moment to gather their thoughts and puff a few more breaths from their cigars, Mr. Boyd nodded and leaned toward Ben, leaning on his knee. “Can you tell me what happened? From the beginning?”

Ben had to try twice to get started, but a couple gentle pats from his new friends nudged him along the way and he did as asked, leaving the others in stunned silence from beginning to end. When he was finished, they all sat gobsmacked at Ben’s harrowing tale.

“Last one we heard that got that close died from his injuries in the hospital,” one man remarked after several attempts to regain his composure.

“And you didn’t drop your gun?” one of the old men asked him in disbelief.

“The fuckin balls on this boy,” another remarked, shaking his head also in disbelief while the others all laughed loudly but nervously.

“How old are you, son?” Mr. Boyd asked Ben once the laughter died down again.

“Twenty six,” Ben answered back. “This is the first time I told anyone what happened and it didn’t go horribly wrong,” he confessed.

“Yeah. We have stories of this thing going back to well before your kind arrived here,” Mr. Boyd explained soberly. “Even amongst us, most don’t believe the tales. They at least tolerate us better than your kind does.”

“So you’ve all seen it?” Ben asked the men, but two of the four shook their heads.

“No. Just me and Tim,” the only elderly man left answered. “Talking about it gave us a bit of a reputation, but like I said, at least they tolerate it here.”

“Know that you’re among friends here,” Mr. Boyd told Ben as he leaned forward again and rested his elbow on his knee. “But there’s something you should know, Ben.”

“What’s that, Mr. Boyd?” Ben asked.

“Tim,” he replied back with a sly grin. “We have this in common, so we’re friends now. There aren’t enough of us really to be picky on this, so from now on it’s just Tim, understood?” Ben smiled meekly, but nodded. “Anyways, you said you’ve been hiding in the world of man, so to speak. You haven’t really been out here in the wilderness for a few years.” Ben nodded in agreement and Tim took a long drag of his cigar before he puffed out another smoke circle. “Ben, now that you’re back out here for the foreseeable future, I need you to keep in mind that you’ve seen through the veil. These things aren’t of our world. They slip through from time to time, but they’re not from here.”

“At least that’s the best theory we can come up with,” another elderly man added with several nods in agreement.

“The thing is,” Tim continued soberly with a sigh, “you’ve seen through the veil. It’s hard to tell where it is from one moment to the next, or when it will lift and offer a peak through. Sometimes you think things are just like that time you told us about and you expect something to come through but nothing happens. Other times everything seems perfectly normal, but… well, you know. But what I need you to remember is that once you’ve been through the veil, it has a tendency to want to find you again. Especially if you’ve been hiding from it.”

“That rifle of yours might have hurt it,” another elderly man piped in, “but I seriously doubt it would have stopped it.”

“I suggest you start to make peace with the fact that you might find yourself underneath that veil again. The good news, though? It’s been a long time since we’ve heard of someone with the guts to stare back at those things and have anything left in the tank to fight back.”

“The fuckin’ BALLS on this boy!” the same man from before chuckled, eliciting raucous laughter from all four men that was infectious enough that gradually even Ben could join in.

In the two weeks since Ben had met with Tim Boyd and the other elderly men from the reservation, Ben had met with them several times as they got to know each other. A couple times, Ben traveled to meet them in their home territory. The second of those times, reservation police showed up at the shop to check Ben out and determine what he was about.

Tim, knowing that Ben refused now to go anywhere unarmed after his run in with the dogman, made a special point to vouch for the character of his new friend and a brief synopsis of the run in Ben had had with the enigmatic creature.

“You really think it was some kind of monster and not just your imagination screwing with you?” the officer asked Ben skeptically while the others watched him intently to see how Ben would respond.

“There was something there,” Ben answered honestly. “It was right in my face and I know what I saw. But could it have been some asshole in a costume trying to punk me? Sure, I guess. The moonlight wasn’t THAT bright, so maybe my imagination got carried away, but whatever or whoever it was, they were getting off on me being scared shitless, and I’m positive they were trying to decide if they were going to fuck me up.”

The officer looked Ben over carefully, appraising his response while Tim and one other old man nodded somewhat impressed by his response.

“Just so you know,” the officer remarked off handedly as he turned back to his car, “we don’t tolerate you all coming onto our land bringing your guns with you, so don’t you ever let me catch you carrying one around here.”

“My young friend here would never even think about it,” Tim vouched, though the officer seemed to ignore Tim’s comment and climbed into his car and left. “Where you carrying?” Tim asked once they were certain they were alone again.

“Shoulder holster,” Ben admitted. “Leave it at home from now on?” he asked.

“Fuck no,” one of the elderly men blurted out loudly. “Just don’t get your ass caught.”

“You’d be a damned fool to not have one on you at all times these days,” another complimented Ben.

“Just keep in mind us backing you up will only get you so far,” Tim finished for the others.

Other times, Tim would join Ben for coffee or lunch and once Tim had come over for dinner after a tour of Ben’s property and a visit to the stand where Ben’s encounter had occurred. Each time they got together, Tim spent less time talking about Ben’s encounter and more offering insights into the world around them and the veil of which he’d spoken of before.

Then, for the first time in years, Ben was out there on his deer stand and watching the dark, predawn skies for any sign of prey like he had once upon a time.

There was a moment in those dark hours where the hairs on the back of his neck went up, however, Ben took a deep, gentle breath, focused hard and followed Tim’s advice while also drawing upon his previous experiences. Eventually, the moment passed, and not long after that, Ben watched as the sun crept up over the horizon and the forest came to life as it always did.

On the way back to the cabin, Ben was walking along causally until he noticed something unusual in the dirt to his right, just off the path. It was vague, but it almost looked like a paw print, though it was difficult to tell if that really was the case or if Ben’s imagination was simply getting ahead of him. He stood there staring at it, then crouched low and looked it over more carefully. As he started to stand again, he paused as something seemed to jump out in the corner of this eye. He turned his head to the base of the nearby tree and he saw something that caused him to audibly gulp.

Blood.

It didn’t look like deer blood, but despite his experience Ben was not really an expert on the matter. It was relatively fresh, not fully dried, indicating whatever had left it had done so very recently. This was odd, however, as Ben hadn’t heard anything and this wasn’t particularly far from his stand.

After a moment to think about it, he stepped off the path, then trudged carefully along until he found another splattering of blood, then another, and another until he came to a small ridge overlooking a creek. He was about to climb over a felled tree to continue his search when he paused and thought better of it and looked up and down the creek bed, noting how he couldn’t see anything over the ridge. He trekked up the creek a short ways almost to the mouth of the river until he found something that approximated a path that offered him visibility over where he was headed and then backtracked down the creek until he reached his previous position.

From there, he found nothing and began searching for another spattering of blood to determine if the wounded animal had crossed the creek or traveled down it until he saw it.

There, tucked underneath the felled tree, buried in a thick layer of leaves was what looked to be pale, soft flesh. Only an inch or so, but as he looked closer, he was certain; it was definitely flesh. Ben swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then checked around him again for any sign of another interloper before he began to carefully and gently pick the leaves away, obviously fearful of what he might find. As he did so, there was a low rumbling, indicating a storm rolling in. Ben looked up at the dense, dark cloud cover above, then braced himself and began plucking more leaves away faster, revealing an arm.

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, then whispered to himself, “please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead,” as he started pulling the leaves away faster and faster revealing a shoulder, then finally a head of a woman who was densely covered in dirt and mud. He leaned in and removed his gloves and pressed his fingers against her neck and sighed with relief as he discovered a weak but steady pulse. Her skin, however, was cold and clammy and she was unresponsive.

Ben again checked around him for any sign of danger, and having found none, he now frantically dug her out of the tiny hovel she found herself in and dragged her out. She was thoroughly caked in mud and dirt, and her clothes were ragged and somewhat primitive looking, but beyond that there was little else he could tell about her other than that she was roughly of average height for a woman, perhaps slightly less and surprisingly thin.

Her breathing was weak and strained and her entire body cold, so Ben removed his jacket and wrapped her in it and then proceeded to carry her up the bank and ran her back to the cabin at the best speed he could muster.

Once inside, he grabbed a fresh bed sheet from the closet and laid it across the couch before laying her there. He ran to the fireplace and filled it full of wood and kindling, then doused it heavily in lighter fluid, not even noticing as the unconscious woman’s nose crinkled at the smell, but relaxed as it was eaten by the flames, which quickly benefitted from the shortcut Ben had given and before long was crackling into a genuine, warm fire close to the already freezing woman.

With heat available to absorb into her cold body, Ben next ran to the kitchen and filled a bucket with warm water, then returned with a cloth and began using it to carefully rinse her clean, starting with her face and working his way downward. He peeled her intensely soiled clothes away from her, revealing pert, pale breasts that were prominent, but not overly large and down until he pulled her garments free of her hips, revealing also intensely soiled hips, and a thick, matted tuft of pubic hair. He spent over fifteen minutes cleaning her in order to reveal her wounds, which were many, and far more serious than he would have preferred. There was a deep gash on her left leg on the side of her calf, one on her right shoulder, two on her abdomen, with one that would have extended underneath what would have been her waistline and a puncture wound on the right side of her chest. She also had bruises covering her body, including her face.

That aside, she looked to be a younger woman, perhaps in her early twenties and fairly attractive with facial features that looked distinctly Native American, though her skin was much more pale than he’d ever seen from a Native American woman, even taking into account how cold she was and the effects of hypothermia on her body. Her hair was a dense black, and even though it was heavily soiled, it was evident how lustrous it was.

Ben then took out a box of first aid supplies and began using them to address her many wounds and applying a balm he had on hand just as there was a crack of thunder and a downpour began. He only noticed it momentarily before returning to his work of ensuring the worst of her injuries were dealt with and that she was stable before he finally wrapped her in a fleece blanket and applied a heating pad underneath her to help warm her up. As he was finally wrapping her in her blanket, however, he couldn’t help but stop and take notice of something he’d overlooked while tending to her wounds. Along her stomach were four small mounds of discolored flesh that protruded up away from the rest of her skin suddenly and noticeably and he stared at them before shaking it off and moving forward.

With the immediate issues dealt with, he went to his phone and pulled it out, only to find that his cell phone reception was unusable. At this point, he sighed and pulled a stool up next to her and leaned his head in his hand as he kept watch over her.

The rain continued for hours and well into the night, and Ben found himself working on dinner in between darting up to the couch to check her pulse and temperature. Thankfully, she was warming up nicely. Unthankfully, she was still largely unresponsive, however he did notice that her nose would twitch slightly at certain aromas as he cooked.

“I’ll bet you’re hungry,” he surmised aloud.

He ate in silence, watching her nervously. On a whim, he set his plate down and considered what he could do for her, given the fact that she was bound to be in need of some kind of sustenance, and settled on going back to the kitchen to heat up a can of chicken broth. Once it was steaming, he took it from the stove and added an equal part of water, cooling it to a more tolerable temperature, then returned to the couch and carefully parted her lips while using a spoon to pour a small amount of the broth into her mouth while cradling her neck and head in his arm.

Though still unconscious, she seemed to take to the taste and swallowed in her sleep, which was a relief to Ben, so he repeated the action over and over again until what remained of the broth had grown cool to the touch.

He stayed with her the entire night, occasionally offering her more broth while trying to avoid pouring it into her mouth while she was breathing, which he was generally successful at. Once in a while, he slept, but found himself waking before long and getting up to check on the woman again and her many wounds and bandages.

When morning slipped in the next day, she was still out cold, which was less than pleasing to Ben, but he remained calm and even took a few short walks outside the cabin to try to call a doctor. After several attempts to find a spot with enough signal, he sat down next to the still burning fireplace and stared at her for a while longer until he decided he had other household chores to see to.

Around lunchtime, he finally heard some commotion in her direction and he returned immediately to see her stirring only barely.

“Hey,” he said to her gently as he leaned over her. “Can you hear me?” She groaned in pain and squirmed slightly, but proved to barely have the energy for even that. He waited patiently for any kind of response from her, but she stopped moving until he touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers and she suddenly turned her head, albeit slightly. Then a moment later, she finally pried her eyelids open and stared groggily back at him, revealing a pair of soft amber colored eyes before drifting off again.

Ben stared back with his mouth hanging open and then plopped back down to his butt on the bare floor, staring at her speechless. Of course, he’d seen amber eyes before, but these were… unexpected.

It wasn’t until night came that she stirred again, this time with slightly more strength and Ben slid up to her just after those same amber colored eyes slipped open again and looked around the room, gathering in her surroundings.

“Can you hear me?” Ben asked her. She paused, staring at him for a good long moment, then nodded. She let loose a raspy sound, but then coughed weakly and settled for a moment before opening her eyes and staring at him as though her mind contained nothing but unanswered questions. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I didn’t want to move you unless I had to,” Ben explained. Her eyes now showed even more confusion before she was forced to give in again and close them.

“Can you drink something?” Ben pressed, and her eyes opened again slowly, accompanied by a pathetic whimper and a slight nod.

Once again, Ben heated a can of chicken broth, which now that she was awake, she drank faster than he could feed her by spoon, voraciously absorbing the liquid, though she found herself having coughing fits several times in the process. “Slow down,” Ben urged her, but her delicate hand slid out from under the blanket she was wrapped in and pulled his hand back to her mouth so she could drink more of the needed liquid.

This time, she drank the contents of the entire can and panted from the work involved, but overall she seemed satisfied and more relaxed after having something to both hydrate and nourish her. She settled in, needing him to slide her arm back into the covers and she winced as he inserted a thermometer into her mouth to take her temperature again.

Ben was satisfied with the results, but sat back down in front of her. “I think you’ve gotten a bit better, but I couldn’t leave you alone while I tried to call for help,” he explained. Again, those amber eyes opened and she looked at him in confusion. “If you’re strong enough, I should take you into the hospital.”

Her eyes now showed even more confusion at his comment, but she squirmed despite her complete lack of strength and shook her head no while whimpering.

“Your bandages are going to need to be changed soon, and they can take better care of you than I can,” he added, but she still whimpered and shook her head. “Come on,” he pleaded. “I don’t know what happened to you, but you need doctors to look over those wounds.”

“Wha-at?” she whispered in response, and then pushed her covers away just enough to look down over her nearly entirely naked body, assessing the damage for the first time.

“It’s about an hour away,” Ben informed her. “They’ll take much better care of you than I can.”

“Wha-a-a… noooo,” she whimpered, grabbing his wrist weakly as she pleaded.

“Do you really want me changing all your bandages?” Ben attempted light heartedly, and she forced her eyes open again, then peaked underneath her covers again at her wounded body, then sighed, the last of her strength obviously used up, and nodded to him as she drifted off again.

Ben sat and contemplated for a moment, then muttered, “well, I guess you’re stable enough. But I’m pretty sure you need stitches…”

He then stood and began cleaning up around the injured woman before returning and opening her blanket to remove her blood soaked bandages and apply fresh, clean ones. Once he was certain she was alright, he left the room and went to sleep in his bed for the first time in days.

When Morning came, Ben was awake shortly after sunrise and staggered out into the main room of the cabin, where the woman was still laying there, having not moved so much as a muscle since the night before. He approached her and checked to make sure she was still breathing, and once he determined her breathing was steady, he checked her pulse, nodding as he noted her pulse was much stronger now.

As he removed his fingers from her neck, she pried her eyes open again and stared across to him as he knelt on the floor. Her gaze was steady and unwavering, though still questioning.

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked her. She gulped visibly, but nodded to his question, and her expression became even more quizzical as he smiled from her response. “Breakfast?” he asked her, though she only cocked her head slightly. “Come on, I know you must be hungry,” he offered.

Her eyes widened slightly as her excitement grew and then she nodded rather timidly. “Be right back,” he promised, and then left for the kitchen where he looked around for something suitable. Searching through his stores, Ben paused to look back at the couch where the woman was as he looked over a box of cereal, then thought better of it and put it back in its cupboard. Another moment of thought later, he began a simple breakfast of bacon and eggs with a side of toast and orange juice. When he returned to her, he found her staring up at him with those same amber colored eyes somewhat suspiciously as he set down a plate for each of them and sat on the floor in front of her.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, breaking the silence as she turned her attention toward the food, both looking at it with curiosity as well as an apparent hunger. She ignored him until he began pulling the food away from her and she looked back at him warily. “I’m Ben,” he offered. She stared at him, and then back at the food, clearly conflicted. “Well? What am I supposed to call you?” he pressed further.

She glanced down at the plate he was holding, and then back to him again, furrowing her brow slightly. “Anang,” she replied softly.

“That’s an interesting name,” he complimented her. “I’ve never heard it before,” though she didn’t respond further and merely turned her attention back to the plate of food. Having at least established how address her, he started with the orange juice, leaning forward. “Are you feeling strong enough to sit up?” he asked. She moved and strained, then an expression of excruciating pain enveloped her face and she gave up, laying back again and shaking her head. “Alright,” he determined. “I’ll just help you out for now, ok?” he asked, which only seemed to further confuse her. She remained uncommitted until hunger seemed to get the better of her and then she finally nodded, watching him warily as he lifted her shoulders and head and slid a couple pillows behind her to at least allow her to partially sit up.

She was clearly in a lot of pain, but she bared it silently, watching as he brought the glass to her lips, and she shied away from it. “I think it’s important. You’re probably pretty dehydrated,” he encouraged. “Although, if you’re going to be here, we’ll have to figure out you going to the bathroom…”

“What?” she asked him, again confused, but she looked at the glass and leaned toward it, sniffing it suspiciously. “Water? Please?” she asked him meekly.

“A little later,” Ben promised. “We need to get as many nutrients into you as we can first.” Her brow furrowed again, but she agreed and allowed him to tip the glass to her lips and pour some into her mouth. Her immediate reaction was surprise, then she withdrew, not quite sure of herself as she stared at the nearly full glass. “Something wrong?” he asked her. She looked over to him, then back to the glass, and after some thought, she shook her head and allowed him to pour some more into her mouth, but before long she was drinking rather eagerly.

When he offered her some toast, she again sniffed it, but turned her nose up at it and her focus moved back toward the bacon and eggs. “I guess beggars can be choosers,” Ben joked, though she glanced up at him, apparently not enjoying the joke.

Her first bite of the eggs was again suspicious, but as she chewed on them, she considered it and then made up her mind rather quickly, chewing faster than he could feed them to her. The bacon she seemed decided on much more quickly, and that she devoured so ravenously that she almost bit him while gulping the bacon down. She also ate up nearly half of Ben’s plate of eggs and bacon before she needed his help laying back down again and catching her breath while snuggling back beneath the blanket once more.

“Anang, can you tell me what happened to you?” Ben asked as she took several deep breaths to center herself.

“Why?” she asked back dismissively.

“Because something seriously messed you up. And then it stuffed you into a damn dirt hole to die.”

“Not something. Someone,” she replied softly, though with a certain amount of disdain.

“A person did that to you? And then just stuffed you in the dirt to die?” She opened her eyes again and stared at him for a long moment, contemplating.

“He didn’t put me there. I did,” she answered flatly.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? To hide,” she replied as though the answer obvious.

“To hide yourself from him?” She nodded silently at him while curling up slightly deeper into the blanket. “So he’s still looking for you?” Again she answered with a meek nod. Ben sat stoically looking back at her, then he took a deep breath and turned, looking closely at his Remington rifle leaned up against the wall next to the fireplace. She watched him for a moment, and then turned to follow his gaze and once she found the object he was focused on, she hugged herself and shivered.

“Are you okay?” he asked, taking note of her sudden change in demeanor. She stared back up at him very nervously, but she nodded. “What’s wrong?” he asked her, genuinely concerned, which only served to confuse her further.

“Why?” she asked him.

“Because something is obviously bothering you.”

“No,” she corrected, shaking her head at him. “Why are you doing this?”

“What?” Ben asked, taken aback by her question. “Because you’re hurt.”

“But… why bother?”

“What do you mean? Why bother with what?”

“Why bother feeding me and cleaning my wounds when…”

“When what?”

“When you…” she muttered, then glared again at the rifle.

“What?” he asked, and then turned to follow her gaze and was again taken aback. “You… you don’t have to worry about that thing. Whoever he is might, though,” Ben assured her.

“That won’t stop him,” she dismissed, though she seemed even more confused now. “You’re not going to use it?”

“Why would I?”

“You wanted to before,” she answered back plainly. “I never did figure out why you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You pointed it at me,” she accused him. “You were going to use it. I could see it in your eyes.”

“I’ve never pointed it at anyone,” Ben denied strongly, though she looked at him in an accusatory manner, obviously not believing him. “The only thing I’ve ever pointed that gun at is targets or deer,” he insisted, and then suddenly paused and his face went awash with a realization and concern. “And…” he added, though she stared at him silently, watching and waiting with concern and suspicion. “When did I point it at you?” Ben asked, shaking his head as his disbelief fought to override the conclusion that was staring him right in the face while he stared deeply into those amber eyes.

“Four years ago,” she answered him simply. “Under the tree with a platform.” Ben’s eyes went wide and he covered his mouth, leaning back against the nearby coffee table. “You don’t recognize me?” she asked him with overt confusion.

“You… you looked different then,” Ben barely managed to answer back in a hushed tone.

“Of course I did,” as if the answer was obvious. “But my scent is the same.”

Ben’s head shifted forward, now struggling to keep up. It was almost as if they were speaking completely different languages. Similar, but not the same; not at all. He struggled to think and she tipped her head to the side slightly as his eyes began flitting to and fro while he attempted to process the situation and bridge the gap in their communication. Eventually he came to a conclusion and stood, then turned off the nearby light, depriving the room of most, but not all of the light. When he looked back at her, sure enough, those same amber eyes were glowing up at him while she observed him suspiciously, and all of his remaining doubt seemed to evaporate, as did the sudden, inexplicable fear he’d begun to relive. He turned the light back on and sat in front of her, carefully considering his next words.

“Somehow, I think your sense of smell is much, much better than mine is,” Ben informed her. She paused now as well, and seemed to reconsider him though most of the confusion remained in her eyes.

“Are you going to finish what you started that night?”

“I never wanted to shoot you,” Ben answered her forthrightly. “You looked angry and I thought you were going to kill me.”

“Of course I was angry. I know what those things can do,” she answered him back also forthrightly. “You wouldn’t be carrying it unless you planned to use it.”

“I was planning to use it on a deer.”

“A what?”

“You know. A deer. An animal, with antlers?” he said, putting his hand up behind his head to use his fingers to approximate antlers. Her brow furrowed and she tipped back.

“Waawaashkeshi?” she answered back, questioning him.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Ben replied, shaking his head at her. “I was out hunting. Honestly? I didn’t even really expect to get anything that morning. I really didn’t expect to get anything once the forest got dead silent and I realized something had spooked all the deer.”

“Deer,” she answered, mimicking him as if it were the first time speaking the word. “You just wanted to hunt?”

“Yeah. Okay, so then what were you out there doing that morning?”

“Hunting,” she answered back plainly.

“Alright, so for the last four years… what? You’ve been thinking about me thinking that I wanted to kill you, while I was sitting here thinking you were trying to kill me, but really all we were doing was the same thing?”

She stared at him gobsmacked, clearly not ready for the way this reunion was playing out. “But your kind… is dangerous. We have stories.” Ben dropped his head and shook it in disbelief.

“Well so do we,” he answered her back. “I guess who started those stories first?” Suddenly, she frowned as she considered the question, searching her memory for the answer. “So why do you look different than then?”

“Because I’m too weak to shift,” she answered plainly. “So… you didn’t drag me back here to… torture me?”

“No. I brought you back because you were hurt and I wanted to help you. You were dying,” Ben explained.

“That makes even less sense,” she blurted out, refusing his explanation on its face. “Why would you bother with someone who is crippled and dying?”

“To help.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” she insisted. “No one does that. When he finds you, he’s going to do far worse than what I would have done to you.”

“I do,” Ben answered back, taking a bite to eat for himself for the first time that morning.

“Are you a fool?” she demanded to know. “You saw my blood, that’s how you found me. So you knew I was prey. Why would you get involved if you knew I was being hunted? And why would anyone get involved with someone in such a weakened state?”

“If I was in trouble, I would hope that someone would step in and help me. Would you rather I put you back where I found you?” he asked suddenly rather seriously. She was stunned by his reaction to her comments and then fell silent. “So you can just change into what I saw that night?” She looked at him quizzically, and then nodded. “So… then I have to know. Are you.. human? What exactly are you?”

“What kind of question is that?” she asked, then groaned from the pain and forced herself to settle down. “Of course I’m human. What exactly are you? I mean, you can’t smell, apparently you can’t shift, so what in the world are you?”

“I’m a human being, obviously.”

“But what kind of human is… like that?”

“All of us. We’re all over the place. You’re the one that’s next to impossible to find around these woods. Go in any direction and before long you’ll find more like me.”

Her brow furrowed, and she stared at him good and hard this time, with a healthy dose of concern. “Where am I?” she asked worriedly.

“You’re in my cabin.”

“But where is that? Where did you take me?”

“About a twenty minute walk south from where I found you.”

She suddenly jerked backward, then hugged herself and coughed and groaned from the pain of attempting to move. “That’s not possible. When did you put this here?” she asked, looking around the room, examining it and looking as if she were trying to explain something that made no sense to her.

“Decades ago. My grandfather built it when he was a young man.” She stared at him unflinchingly in disbelief.

“I’m behind the waterfall,” she gasped.

“What do you mean?”

“The ones among my people who actually believe in things like cottonwood man think the reason they hide so well from us is because they’re hidden behind a kind of waterfall that blocks us from seeing, hearing or smelling them.”

“What’s a cottonwood man?”

“You are.”

“Why would you call us that?”

“Because you are soft, and fluffy and you blow away in the wind like a cotton wood does when… never mind,” she explained before second guessing what she’d shared.

“Well that’s rude,” Ben responded flatly.

“So did you… think I wasn’t human?”

“We don’t know what you are here. Locals here call you dogmen,” Ben explained to her and smirked when her expression darkened, showing she was even less pleased with the nickname Ben’s people had come up with for her kind than he had been for the reverse.

“We are nothing like dogs,” she spouted bitterly.

“We’re not boxwoods,” he retorted back, though she only huffed back at him.

“So what exactly do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Just get better.”

“And then?”

“Well, I guess once you’re strong enough, go back through the waterfall.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she lamented. “Before now I didn’t even know if it was actually real. I’ve heard stories and guesses, but I’ve never heard of anyone who actually went all the way through and came back again. The ones that were taken, though? They absolutely never came back.”

“Ones that were taken? By my people?”

“No. Your people aren’t strong enough. The waterfall leads to different caves. At least that is what the stories tell. This is just one cave. It’s hard to find your way back after wandering in. I didn’t even realize I was crossing through.”

“Can you sense it? I think we have a similar thing that we call the veil. There are times when people think they can feel it when it’s happening.”

“Usually we can smell it,” she answered. “I’m not allowed to go through, though.”

“But you did four years ago.”

“I thought you came across to us. No one believed me, though.”

“Maybe it was a little bit of both.”

[ensmallen]

Well, that was a pleasure to read, and his ex sucks.

[CKent45]

Well, that was a pleasure to read, and his ex sucks.

Thank you, I'm happy you enjoyed it. And yeah. Bro showed vulnerability and he paid for it with his relationship. She probably did him a favor, though.

[Rusco57]

Yes, a good story so far. I'm looking forward to the next chapter...

[CKent45]

Yes, a good story so far. I'm looking forward to the next chapter...

Thank you. I'm thrilled you both read and enjoyed it. Here's hoping the next chapter is also entertaining. We still have some ground before we get to some SW, but we're building towards that. I haven't separated out the text yet, but if I can split the chapters similar to these last two, I should have three more chapters after this next one before we are there.

[CKent45]

After that, the conversation died off a little as Ben took the opportunity to check her injuries while taking care to keep her most private of parts concealed. Anang merely lay there the entire time observing him as he tended to her, her eyes never wavering as he saw to her needs.

“What?” he asked after glancing at her staring at him for the third time.

“You act like a mother caring for a small baby,” she answered flatly. Ben chuckled to himself and finished what he was doing.

“Well, it won’t be long before you can move around like a full fledged adult again.”

“What do you gain from this?” she asked again point blank.

“If what you really want is for me to stop, you can just say it instead of just beating around the bush.”

“Beating around the… bush?” she asked, struggling to understand the meaning behind his comment, but Ben brushed it off rather than explain it and pulled up a chair across from her staring back now.

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

“You’ve asked me basically everything else,” she complained, rolling her eyes. Ben remained still and stoic, so after a moment, she sighed. “Yes.”

“Those… well… Can you tell me what those bumps are on your stomach?”

“What?” she asked, suddenly shocked and blushing heavily from this unexpected question. “Who would ask that? Who would ask a woman that?” she demanded while beneath the covers he could see her hands moving to subconsciously cover herself up. “You know full well what they are!” she accused, and then began a coughing fit from the exertion. Ben leaned forward and rubbed her back, trying to sooth her until the fit passed and she looked up again at him in embarrassment and shock.

“I know what they kind of looked like, but…”

“But what?” she demanded. Ben stared into her eyes and sighed, then sat back and lifted his shirt, revealing his bare stomach. At first she looked at him in confusion, then at his stomach, then back up at him, and then her eyes darted back to his stomach again and went wide as saucers.

“Where are your nipples?” she asked in a near panic.

“I have nipples,” He explained, and pulled his shirt up higher to reveal his chest.

“But where are the others?” she asked, so shaken that she let a hand slip out from underneath the blanket and touched his stomach and felt around, attempting to feel out the location of his missing anatomy (from her point of view). “Is it because you’re a man?”

“No,” Ben answered with an awkward smile.

“But how do your women feed their young?” she asked, thoroughly shaken and she withdrew her curious hand again.

“Their breasts. We have nipples, it’s just we only have two.”

“But… what if all her young are hungry at once?”

“How many… babies do you normally have at a time?” Ben asked her, following the logic of her confusion as best as he could.

“Usually three, a lot of times four. Sometimes more,” she answered. “Why? Is that different from your kind?”

“Usually one,” Ben chuckled awkwardly. “Twins aren’t all that uncommon, but more than that is really, really rare.”

“Your people are very strange,” she muttered breathlessly. “And you consider yourselves to be human?”

“You know, I could ask the same of you,” Ben countered, gaining a raised eyebrow from her.

Anang lasted a little while longer as they discussed some of the more basic differences between her kind and his, which thankfully seemed to be fairly minimal after the revelations that she could change forms and she had six nipples, but before long she found herself needing to rest again. In the meantime, Ben used the time to get some fresh air and tend to some chores while he pondered the strange, ongoing encounter from another world. His expression shifted from concern to amusement as he relived the events of the last couple days.

When he came back in for lunch, Anang was still asleep, though he heard her stirring as soon as he began cooking and walked in to check on her. “How are you feeling?” he asked her softly.

“I’m alright,” she groaned, and then sighed. “I need… to go outside.”

“What for?”

“What do you think?” she asked rather gruffly.

“Maybe consider this is just another thing different from how you do things compared to how we do,” he suggested, which only seemed to make her even more uncomfortable. “What do you need to go outside for? It’s kind of cold.”

“I only need to go out for a moment,” she promised. “Why? Am I a prisoner?”

“No, but whatever that was you were wearing is still caked in mud and I’m just trying to understand what’s outside for you right now.”

“I need to… go,” she explained, struggling while giving an obvious expression to solicit sympathy.

“Oh,” Ben remarked as he processed her unspoken request. “Oh,” he added with more emphasis as the realization fully took root. “Don’t you use bathrooms?”

“What is that?”

“You don’t need to go outside for that.”

“That is disgusting,” she cringed. “And you are not going to convince me that you do that in here because if you did, I would smell it.”

“Just.. trust me,” he insisted, then excused himself to the next room. When he returned, he brought with a t shirt and a pair of sweat shorts, both obviously too large for her, but also obviously the closest thing he would have on hand that would fit her. “If I had a bedpan, I would have you just go in that, but if you’re strong enough, I can help you into the bathroom.”

“It would be easier if I had a tree to lean against.”

“Put these on, and when we get there I’ll explain,” Ben insisted. She stared at him, once again appraising him, but she took the shorts and shirt from him and slipped them on as best as she could underneath the covers and finally pulled the blanket away and tensed as he picked her up and carried her down the hallway to the bathroom. Arriving there, however, only made her even more confused.

“What is this place?”

“For washing and relieving yourself,” Ben answered her, then put the toilet seat down with his foot and carefully set her down. “All you need to do is… let it out. Then you can use the tissue on that roll there to wipe yourself and we flush it.”

“Flush it…” she remarked thoughtfully. “But it won’t stay here?”

“No. Now, can you do it on your own, or should I stay here?”

“I… can do it alone,” she determined, though she obviously wasn’t certain of it.

Ben helped her find a stable position and then stepped back and looked at her sitting on the toilet in oversized shorts and shirt before he felt comfortable enough to step out and wait for her to finish. It took her a few minutes and he heard her groan in pain more than once and fumble, but eventually she was finished and gave him the all clear to enter again. Seeing that she’d successfully, if haphazardly, managed to pull the shorts up again, he knelt down and pulled the draw string snug and tied it into a bow for her to ensure they wouldn’t fall off of her smaller hips. Finally, he lifted her up into his arms and away from the filled toilet bowl and she watched with wide eyes as he flipped the lever on the toilet with his foot and in a whirlwind of water her waste was washed down the back of the bowl.

“Your magic controls the water?” she asked him as he carried her back to the couch and laid her down carefully while tucking her back in for warmth.

“We don’t have magic here,” Ben replied calmly.

“Then how do you do something like that?”

“Well, that upright portion of the toilet at the back is a container filled with water, and when you push the lever down, it opens up a lid at the bottom, and the water pours down where you did your business and it flows down the bottom and out of the house.”

She lifted her eyebrow at him and considered his explanation, letting loose a fascinated “huh.”

“So… no toilets where you come from?” he asked, to which she merely shook her head no. After that, he went back to making lunch and came back shortly thereafter to her with pan-fried hamburgers. As with breakfast, she examined the food carefully, sniffing it closely, but this time she at least took a small nibble of the buns before she frowned and shook her head at them. “I take it you don’t like bread?” he asked, seeking confirmation.

“That’s bread?” she asked, frowning as she considered his question. When Ben confirmed this for her, she gave it another look, but still turned it down. “No. We don’t usually eat bread. Our bread is… different, though.”

Ben sighed and unsheathed the burger from the bun and used a fork to feed it to her, which she was much more eager to eat, and she even was pleasantly surprised by the taste of the ketchup, which was another thing she hadn’t encountered before. After lunch, she took another nap, and it was mid afternoon after he had finished helping her with a drink of water that there was a knock at the door. Anang immediately tensed and stared fearfully at the door, while Ben’s only concern was the stress she was subjecting to her injured body.

“What is it?” she asked, curling up on the couch as if to hide. Ben investigated by looking out the window and upon spotting a familiar vehicle outside quickly relaxed.

“Oh, it’s Tim,” he reported, though Anang found no useful information in those words. “It’s a friend,” he promised. There was another knock, and Ben called out loudly, “One sec!” to placate the visitor, and then returned back to Anang. “Okay, he’s a friend, but… try not to talk much. I’ll tell him the truth, that you were injured out in the forest and I brought you back here to help you, but if we can, we’ll leave out the part about you being a dogman.”

“I’m not a dog. And I’m not a man,” she muttered unhappily.

“The point is, let’s see if we can convince him you’re an injured woman from our world,” Ben told her softly, but urgently. “Your eyes are a giveaway, though. Especially for Tim.” Ben then made a point to turn on more lights in the room to help dull the comparative glow from Anang’s eyes. “Try not to stare directly at him too much,” Ben coached. “In fact, just lie down again and see if you can’t pretend to still be sleeping. You’re still tired anyways, right?”

He then adjusted her back into position under the blanket and answered the door. “Hey Tim. I didn’t expect you up here.”

“Yeah,” Tim answered back with a soft smile. “I left you a couple messages but you never called back. So I thought I’d check on you.”

“Oh, sorry. Reception’s been especially bad out here the last couple days and I’ve been holed up here trying to deal with something that came up. I didn’t know you’d tried to get hold of me.”

“Oh. Well, was just checking on you. Everything okay?” he asked from the porch.

“I think so. I… found someone up along the creek the other day.”

“Found someone?”

“Yeah. She was pretty beat up and just left out in the woods. She’s in really bad shape, so I was just trying to get her back on her feet before worrying about going into town and sorting the rest out.”

“But she’s okay?”

“More or less? Just really beat up. A lot of cuts and bruises.”

“Oh. Well maybe I could give a hand? I was a medic in the Army, after all.”

“Really…”

“Oh yeah. Saw some pretty rough stuff. I bet I could lend a hand.”

“Well…” Ben considered, looking back over his shoulder and looking for a way to stall Tim, but Tim used the opportunity to slip by him and walk into the living room to get a better look at the damaged damsel.

“Oof,” he grunted as he got his first look at her still dirty face. “She been awake at all?” He walked in and looked at her, then took his first pause when he looked at her face, but quickly brushed his questions off.

“On and off,” Ben answered honestly. “The first night was a little scary, but she seems stable now.”

“She tell you what happened to her?” he asked while lifting the blanket to see her bandaged arm.

“A little. She’s pretty hesitant to go to a hospital or talk to the Sheriff.”

“Huh, these bruises are brutal,” he determined, pulling the neck of the oversized shirt aside to look at her shoulder. He then pulled her arm out, not noticing as Anang briefly flinched at being handled unexpectedly and peeled away one of the bandages. “This is gonna need stitches,” he informed Ben flatly.

“Like I said, she’s hesitant to go to the hospital. I didn’t want to force her unless I had to.”

“She on the run from something?”

“I think so,” Ben answered, also generally honestly.

“I’m gonna try and wake her,” Tim declared, which made Ben cringe. “Miss… miss,” he called gently, nudging her softly, but firmly. Anang flinched, but with little else to do aside from play along, she slowly opened her eyes, glancing only briefly at Tim for a second before turning to Ben again.

“Anang, this is Tim, the friend I was telling you about. He knows more than me and thinks he can help you more than I have,” Ben assured her, knowing full well she’d heard the entire conversation up to this point.

“Anang…” Tim muttered, startled, and then reexamined her face again. It was then that he noticed her eyes and seemed momentarily stunned, but pressed forward and asked a brief question in his native tongue, which caught her completely off guard and she stared directly into his eyes.

“You are… Anishinaabe?” she questioned, at least as stunned as he was. Now, with her attention focused directly and at length, he fell back from his squatted position to sitting on his butt, staring speechlessly at her.

“Yes,” he barely managed to answer her.

“But why is your skin so dark?” she questioned, thoroughly confused.

“Why is my…” he muttered, then began speaking in his native tongue with her and they traded comments back and forth, though it was clear to Ben that she was hesitant to answer several of his questions. All the while, however, Tim remained fixated on her amber eyes until as she was trying to answer him in their language he suddenly stood up and walked around the room, flipping off lights.

“Tim…” Ben began, reaching out, but Tim pushed him aside until the room was mostly dark and he returned to Anang, who was tucking her head into the blanket and closing her eyes. Then Tim commanded her something in his own language, she ignored him and he commanded more forcefully.

“Tim, you had better not be threatening someone in my home,” Ben ordered gruffly. Tim glanced at Ben with a scowl, but when he returned his gaze to Anang, she was looking up at Ben with pleading amber eyes that appeared to glow in the dark. Tim staggered backwards and began to fall, necessitating Ben to catch him and guide him to the ground as he stared at her entranced in a dense fog of fear. Then he muttered something else under his breath, which she immediately took offense to.

“I am not! That is rude!” she declared with anguish in her voice.

“What did he say?” Ben asked her.

“He… it was WORSE than dog man,” she answered him.

This was enough to shake Tim mostly from his trance and he glanced at Ben, then back at Anang. “It’s… the translation in my language of dogman.”

“That was rude,” she growled at him, then muttered something angrily in their language as well, which at first shocked Tim, then his expression turned to a contorted, indefinable one, and finally he began laughing nervously at her. By the time he was finished laughing, both of Ben and Anang’s confusion had mostly subsided and Tim’s demeanor softened, though he was still more than a little on edge.

“You weren’t kidding,” Tim remarked back in English. “They can talk,” he commented with astonishment.

“I could say the same for you, fluff man,” she declared, which caused Tim to laugh much more genuinely.

“Ben, is she or is she not?” Tim then demanded from Ben. Ben looked to Anang, who was again looking to him with fear filled eyes.

“Anang is who I saw that night four years ago,” Ben answered after considering carefully. “She’s the same one.” Tim released whatever air was held in his lungs and he stared just ahead of him at the floor.

Tim then turned back to Anang and asked a question of her in his native tongue again. She gave an anguished, nervous expression, then looked at Ben and answered in English.

“We can shift from an appearance like this to what you saw. We almost never show these forms among those who aren’t part of our families. I’m too weak now to shift, otherwise I wouldn’t have let you see me like this.”

“You’re completely helpless, aren’t you?” Tim deduced. “All of your strength and abilities are from that other form.”

“Not all,” she answered him in a pathetic voice. “I can still hear and smell. But we are very feeble like this. Especially with my injuries.”

“And who did this to you?” Tim asked, but Ben interrupted.

“Tim, you promised you could stitch her up.” Tim then turned and looked at Ben, struggling to make the jump fully to the merciful stance that Ben had managed to adopt.

“Are you sure? She’s from the other side of the veil, isn’t she? They attack people like feral animals.”

“I didn’t attack anyone,” she said defensively.

“Let’s sort it out afterwards. Can you help her, or can’t you?” Tim sat there lost in thought, but after reconciling everything within his mind, he climbed to his feet over creaking bones and brushed himself off, nodding.

“I’ll get my pack,” he promised, then stepped outside and went to his truck. He returned a moment later with a large bag that was packed to the brim and began opening it and removing items. “Get the blanket off of her. Get me some fresh sheets. You’re gonna need to wash them as soon as we’re done, though, so get two sets.”

Ben did as asked and a moment later, they were transferring Anang to a fresh bed sheet on the couch and he was looking under her bandages. “So, you got this in a fight? With one of your own kind?” he asked as he began stitching up the massive gash in her arm. She nodded, and he continued on in contemplative silence. “He did this to you when you were in your other form?”

“Yes,” she answered him flatly.

“How strong must he have been to be able to do this to you? When I saw one of your kind, you were damn near indestructible.”

“He is much, much stronger than I am. It was not even close,” she answered him.

“And he’s hunting you.”

“Yes.”

“Can we stop him from finding you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered softly. “I am very deep behind the waterfall. I don’t know of anyone who has gone this deep and ever come back again. And it masks our scent. If he comes through where I did, I don’t think he will find my scent. I covered it as best as I could. If he smells Ben where he found me, he might, though. If he comes, he will probably come when the falls are thinner. That just happened, though, so there will be some time before it happens again. Hopefully our scent will fade by then.”

“Let’s go out where you found her when we finish up here and pour some deer scent out there, see if we can’t help things along,” Tim suggested.

“That’s a good idea. Wish I thought about it.”

“You’re a city boy,” Tim teased. “You’re doing about as well as we could expect of you.”

“You two are… friends…” Anang observed with intense curiosity.

“Yeah,” Tm answered her. “Not many have experiences like we have. It’s a bit of a lonely world for those of us who’ve peered behind the veil. So yeah. We’re friends. Brothers, you might say.”

“I’ve never met any Anishinaabe who were ever friends with an English,” she commented, demonstrating her surprise.

“Oh, you have his kind where you’re from?” Tim asked her.

“Well… not English like him. They also shift.”

“Into do… canine like forms like you have?”

“Oh no. They shift into something much different. Bigger, stronger than us. But slower, and not as good hearing or scent. But they can hide much better than us.”

“What do they look like?” Tim asked as he wrapped up stitching her arm and began bandaging it up again.

“Like… well.. think how we look now, only much, much bigger, almost twice as big and longer hair than my kind has all over their bodies, and their faces, still like this, but not quite like this. And very tall.” Tim stared at her for a moment before finishing with her fresh bandage, then completed the task and took out his phone and began thumbing through a book he had on his phone.

“Like this?” he asked her. She was stunned, first by the device, but absolutely shocked when he showed her the image.

“Yes! Exactly like that! That’s an English!” Tim’s face contorted as if he were determining how to feel about it, then turned the image toward Ben.

“Bigfoot?” Ben asked after looking at the image.

“Yeah,” Tim chuckled. “A British bigfoot. Jolly good, whut whut,” he joked in a mock accent.

“Yes! Yes, they talk like that too! Not in his accent,” she exclaimed. “But this language. Mostly.”

“So no Americans?” Tim asked her while moving to the next wound on her neck.

“What is an Ah-meer-uh-can?”

“Ben is,” Tim explained.

“You are too,” Ben pointed out with a nudge.

“Technically, I suppose,” Tim answered with a sly grin. “So they talk with the same language, but not the same accent?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And they love to drink leaf stew.”

“I guess an Englishman is an Englishman no matter who he is,” Tim joked. “I just can’t stop thinking of one of those pompous, self righteous blowhards standing upright going ‘pip, pip!’ as a giant ape, though,” he laughed, then another thought occurred to him. “And Queen Elizabeth looking like some overgrown orangutan picking flees out of her shoulders!” he laughed loudly. Ben immediately joined in, though Anang’s face became awash with fear.

“You mean the exact same as she is in this world?” Ben joked back, causing them both to laugh raucously.

“You can’t talk about the queen like that!” she hurriedly hushed them.

“We can,” Ben countered confidently. “We’re Americans.”

“Huh. Yeah,” Tim agreed with a satisfied nod.

“No! You can’t disrespect the crown like that!” she insisted, clearly terrified of what the results might be.

“Honey,” Tim assured her while patting her hand, “the English crown here was kicked out centuries ago. And even in their own country they’re only a shadow of what they once were. There is no crown in this place. We can say whatever we want.”

“You can?” she asked in disbelief, but she bordered on a coughing fit from the exertion. Tim helped calm her with surprising expertise and then set about tending to the remainder of her wounds. As he did so, he noted how anemic she seemed to be.

“I’m going to give you an IV,” he explained while pulling a clear bag filled with liquid from his pack, though Anang needed more description than that. “What I’m going to do is pretty simple. We’ll find a vein, and I’ll use a needle to poke just a tiny opening in that vein. Then we’ll connect it to this bag full of salty water, which will be like most of the liquid in your blood and that will help you feel a little better and hopefully stronger.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes,” he assured her while sending Ben on a mission to get a bucket full of warm, soapy water. “If you weren’t so slashed up I would make sure you were cleaned from head to toe, but as it stands it’s going to be a bit of time before you get a proper cleaning. But, no roaming around and make sure you keep your body clear of anything dirty or dusty. I’ll give you some basic antibiotics, but not much, because I’m not really sure how different your body really is to ours.”

“Will this IV hurt?”

“It’ll just sting for a moment, but nothing near the pain of the rest of it,” he promised her, and then went to work.

It took a couple hours to fully take care of Anang, but once he was finished, Tim sat back and nodded appreciatively of his handiwork.

“Why are you people doing this?” she asked them both.

“Because we want to,” Ben answered her before Tim could weigh in.

“The question I have is, why’s it have to come to this to get one of you otherworldly folks to be nice to us?” Tim asked her earnestly. Anang lay there and looked down, thinking his question over and how to answer him.

“To start, we didn’t know what you were. No one where I am from simply walks around in this form. It’s too dangerous. And any time we see one of you, there you are, wrapped in funny robes and thumping around like your brains are broken. I never would have even imagined you could speak until Ben talked back to me that night.”

“Well, to be fair, you’re the first dog that I ever met that talked to me,” Tim teased, but Anang frowned.

“I’m not a dog,” she countered unhappily. “But your kind always seemed clumsy and poorly formed to us, as if they were failed humans wandering between worlds. We don’t really think of you as people. You just mutter and moan and cry and fall over yourselves. And you scare away prey. It’s very frustrating when some clumsy creature stumbles around smelling awful and sending the prey running. And then we have to think of your thunder sticks. We know they’re dangerous. They don’t immediately kill the males, but for me they’re much more dangerous, and we have stories of our people being struck by one of them and he’s hurt, but seems well overall and then he becomes sick and dies slowly and painfully. So you are dangerous, we know that, but it seems foolish to not try to let you know how dangerous we can be too. But even then, the elders encourage us not to kill one of you unless we absolutely have to because we’ve heard tales of the thunder sticks stinging our kind from across an entire field and we don’t really know what kind of magic they use or how they do it.”

“So guns are a complete mystery to you?” Ben asked her, and she nodded in response. “Well, would it really do that much harm if we taught her about them before she goes home?” Ben asked Tim.

“We shouldn’t,” Tim answered him firmly. “She let you go that night, but I have a cousin that we found when I was a boy absolutely mauled to pieces in the woods. He wasn’t armed and the last thing we saw was him running when someone claimed they saw a dogman, and I know for a fact that he was running from her kinsman. Someone from her side tracked a lone, unarmed boy down and slaughtered him. Getting along with her may help us, but I can guarantee you that she doesn’t speak for all of her people.”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted. At this point, her head was drooping and she was showing her fatigue again, so Ben helped cover her up and settle her in for some much needed rest.

After she was asleep again, Tim had Ben lead him out to the location where he found Anang. They walked along and were nearly there when Tim held a hand in front of Ben to stop him and signaled for him to be silent. They stood there quietly on the trail for several minutes before they could hear the faint sound of men talking in the distance.

“How far does your property extend?” Tim whispered into Ben’s ear.

“A lot farther than that,” Ben answered. “I’ll go deal with them,” he said, but Tim cautioned him and had them sneak quietly up the trail a ways until they could hear a little better. While they still couldn’t make out what was being said, it was clear they were coordinating and looking for something. At this point, Tim gave Ben the go ahead and followed along as they stepped off the trail and made their way to the men without hiding their presence any longer.

After a few minutes of walking, they came across two men dressed in all black carrying rifles with their eyes to the ground and caring little for anything until they heard the brush rustle as Ben and Tim approached and they turned with rifles at the ready as Ben and Tim entered into view.

“What are you doing here?” one challenged loudly.

“What am I doing here? It’s my land. What are YOU doing here?” Ben challenged back. Tim remained behind Ben standing silently watching as the two trespassers quickly closed the distance and intentionally brandished their firearms in a manner to establish dominance.

“That’s not your business. Now explain yourself and what you’re doing out here,” he pressed. As he did so, Tim nudged Ben as a warning, and a second later similarly dressed men appeared on either side of them, boxing them in.

“It is my business, because it’s my land and you’re trespassing.”

“Disarm them so that we can identify them,” a man from their right ordered.

“I don’t think so,” Ben replied angrily. “Who the hell are you to trespass on MY land and order me around? You sure as hell aren’t law enforcement,” he challenged.

“Surrender your fucking guns now,” one man from in front demanded and suddenly Ben and Tim were facing down five rifles. This did little to intimidate Ben, but Tim grabbed his arm and shook his head at Ben, urging him silently to stand down. Ben stood silently looking at Tim, doing nothing more to provoke the situation, but then before he knew it, he was on the ground screaming in pain from the taser that had been shot into his thigh.

“Who the FUCK do YOU think you are?” one man snarled at Ben as he pinned him and jammed his face into the dirt, while Tim raised both of his hands in surrender and was disarmed immediately.

“Get their IDs,” the one apparently in charge demanded, and plundered both men’s pockets for everything, tossing it all into the brush without a care for their belongings until they found the identification.”

“Yeah, he lives here,” one reported, though there was nothing in his voice that indicated he actually cared about this fact.

“Oh, well good for you,” the one on top of Ben growled snidely while rubbing Ben’s face in the dirt. “So answer the FUCKING QUESTION, maggot!”

“We’re out looking for a place to set up a deer stand for me.”

“Then why are you so far off trail?” another demanded, pointing his rifle at Tim.

“We heard you and went to go look.”

“There are no trespassing signs along the entire edge of the property, dip shit,” Ben managed to argue after spitting a mouthful of forest turf out.

“Maybe you should check those signs. We didn’t see any.”

“I am telling you that you are trespassing and to get the fuck off of my property,” Ben growled.

“Or what, maggot?” the man atop him challenged, and then suddenly punched him in his kidney.

“You’re government,” Ben growled up at him. “I don’t know which branch or department, but that much is obvious and what you’re doing is flat out illegal, you goddamned oath breaking PIECE OF SHIT!” Ben declared, and got his kidney punched even harder for his trouble.

“Martins,” the one in charge barked, warning the man off of Ben. He stood and allowed Ben up enough to at least kneel. “We’ll be leaving when we’re ready. Until then, you can leave the area. Where is this stand you mentioned?”

“It’s not put up yet,” Tim answered him calmly. “We were looking for decent spot. We’ll call it a day and just go back to the cabin,” he offered.

“You do that,” the man in charge decided for them, and then waved the others off and they moved away toward the distant brush again, though one could be heard muttering to another something about being surprised that “he” would have ever developed the guts to try and hunt again before disappearing from sight. The man in charge observed Tim and Ben as they collected their belongings and then tossed Ben’s grandfather’s rifle callously off into a dense gathering of bushes before he went off to join his compatriots. Ben turned in a rage to challenge the man, but Tim grabbed his arm and shook his head no, pleading with his eyes for Ben not to say anything more.

The walk back was slow and tedious as Ben walked off the pain from their encounter, and the entire way Tim insisted they not talk until they were finally back inside the cabin and he had Ben heat up a mug of hot water in the microwave for him. Once the microwave was running, Tim leaned close to Ben to speak.

“They’re feds,” he explained simply and then nodded toward Anang on the couch.

“There’s no way they can hear us. Is there?” Ben asked him.

“Probably not? But you never know these days with those parabolic mics they have and other gadgets.

“So you really think?” Ben whispered, glancing over to Anang again.

“We’ve seen guys like that on the reservation after dogman sightings. They probably detected her coming across. They probably did four years ago too. They didn’t need your ID, they knew exactly who you are. They know me too.”

“So what do we do?” Ben whispered back.

“We have some tea. When the time comes, we have our own parabolic mic,” Tim suggested, nodding again to Anang. “If they’re still around then, we’ll figure it out. Till then, maybe some cards to pass the time?”

When Anang finally woke up again, Tim took a break to go to his truck and rummage for a fresh cigar and light it up while leaving the door open. Ben whispered what they found on their walk and asked if she was able to hear or smell anyone around the cabin that might be eavesdropping. She nodded and closed her eyes, listening carefully.

“Can you hear anything?” Ben whispered softly to her after giving her some time. She opened her eyes, and then closed them again, listening once again.

“I can hear Tim breathing in some kind of tobacco thing,” she whispered back.

“So you can smell the cigar from over here?”

“It might as well be in my face,” she complained in a whisper. “Squirrels. A rabbit. I can’t place where they are, but they’re nearby,” she described observing the area with her senses. “No one like you is nearby. No one who stinks like that… fake deer stink you had on that night either.”

“Oh. You knew it was fake?” Ben asked her, a little hurt.

“Not at first,” she confided. “But when we were close? But I don’t smell that either. There is no one else like you nearby.” With the coast established to be clear, Ben went out to join Tim while he finished his cigar and then returned back to the cabin together.

After they were all together, Tim sat quietly gathering his thoughts while Ben made dinner and began helping feed Anang. “Well, Anang might not like this.” They both turned and looked at him for answers. “Going around talking about all this paranormal garbage, I’ve met some people. I think I know a guy who might be able to help. Probably the best thing we can do is get Anang back on her feet and see if we can’t get her back to her side as quickly as possible.”

“I can’t go back,” Anang interrupted. Ben looked at her with surprise, but Tim lowered his head and nodded, then pulled up a chair next to them both and looked at her earnestly.

“I suppose it’s time you told us about who’s hunting you,” he informed her.

As it turned out, Ben was hardly the only one from the encounter four years before whose life had been upended over the matter. On Anang’s side, only a select few were even allowed to cross behind the waterfall, and when they did, they were only to go so far because of how dangerous not only the cottonwood men were, but also how ridiculously dangerous men she referred to as black snapping turtles were. Those creatures were covered in black shells that left very few vulnerabilities, and not only did they carry extremely powerful thunder sticks, but they also they stung in other ways as well, including in ways that left their victims instantly paralyzed and usually unconscious as well. They could also scream so loudly that Anang’s kind would collapse in unbearable pain. What was worse was that these creatures actively hunted Anang’s people whenever they slipped behind the waterfall.

And then there were the giants. They never seemed to even be aware of Anang’s people, but they stomped through the forest in the most treacherous cave behind the waterfall and were large enough that if one of Anang’s people found himself underfoot, he would certainly be crushed instantly. In this cave, the lands were the most treacherous and mutated, and anyone who crossed into this cave immediately retreated back to their own side of the waterfall because of the inherent dangers there.

Anang hadn’t intentionally crossed behind the waterfall at all four years before and had only found herself there by accident. She was out that night stalking prey when she realized she was standing in the midst of the anomaly that connected their two worlds when a deer passed through right in front of her. The path back wasn’t immediately evident to her, as she’d never crossed through before, so she chose to follow the deer, hoping that it would lead her back to her side again and had found herself just inside Ben’s side of the veil in a surprisingly prey filled environment. She used the opportunity to take a couple of grouse and a wild turkey and was closing in on a deer that had gone deep into hiding when Ben stumbled through.

At first, Anang wanted to keep her distance from him, but when the wind shifted slightly, she picked up on the deer’s scent again and crept toward it. That was when Ben began looking in the same direction she was in, having made out the edges of the Deer’s hiding area around the same time that she was closing in on it and raised his rifle from the ground level hoping to gain a shot. The deer used her divided attention to make a run for it, leaving her almost directly in Ben’s cross hairs and Ben also alerted specifically to Anag’s position. That was where the encounter from four years before began in earnest and ended with the biggest surprise of all: the revelation that Ben could actually speak, and not just speak, respond to her words appropriately.

She fled the area not wanting to take the risk of his thunder stick poisoning her, hoping that Ben had been scared enough to think twice about tangling with her and then set all of her energy back on finding the way back to her own side of the veil after Ben ran off.

Anang’s people didn’t think much of the denizens of this side of the veil, other than considering them troublesome and to be avoided, however having a hunt disrupted was particularly infuriating, and sometimes the tempers of Anang’s people got the better of them in such situations, but in Anang’s case, she knew that while men were large and strong enough in general to absorb the initial impact of a thunder stick going off, the few women they had stories of having been hit were found dead shortly after being hit trying to escape back through the veil. In any event, they hadn’t even considered that the cottonwood men were even intelligent, as across the board stories of them indicated that they acted almost entirely on instinct.

Regardless, however, when Anang returned to her village, she reported her encounter and no one believed her and considered her insane for even suggesting that the cottonwood man was intelligent enough to speak. The rumors of her lunacy spread quickly beyond her village and that was where the trouble really began.

Typically when someone not allowed to step through the waterfall did so accidentally, Anang’s village would keep it to themselves and simply not allow the offender to walk freely until it was certain they’d learned their lesson. Supposedly the same could be said for other villages, but because discussion was limited so much on the matter, she couldn’t really say for certain. But this case was essentially broadcast to all of the villages in the region. A neighboring village had a rival to the chief of Anang’s village who had been posturing for years for a take over of Anang’s village and her encounter was the catalyst that he needed to not only finally make a move, but do so with the active support of several other villages as well.

Less than two years after Anang’s encounter was the first attack that was brutal to Anang’s village, but they did manage to push back the attackers. They held out for nearly a year, but in the end wound up being conquered as what few villages that would side with Anang’s village dropped away one after another after each attack, fearing being conquered as well.

When Anang’s village was taken, the mastermind behind this hostile takeover sought Anang’s family out specifically for endangering the region due to Anang’s actions. After all, it was known that black snapping turtles might actually come through the waterfall sometime after a conflict with a cottonwood man, almost as if the encounter disrupted the waterfall enough to allow the creatures from that cave to slip across.

“So does one of our kind ever slip through?” Ben asked her as she explained that portion of the story.

“Never,” Anang answered Ben plainly. “Giants and cottonwood man can’t come across, and the waterfall only seems to only go one way. The cave of the black snapping turtle seems to go both ways, however. That is why it is so risky for me to go so far through the waterfall in these two caves. Once we are free of that barrier and all the way through, it’s said that the waterfall will always wash us back into the cave and never let us through again.”

She then went on to explain the remainder of her story. Anang’s father and all but one of her brothers were killed in the final attack on her village. Her mother and sisters were taken by men from other villages and Anang was to be as well, however she was to be made an example of for risking the region through her careless actions. Anang’s last remaining brother took Anang on the run and they evaded the man who had waged this entire war for more than a year until they were caught while hiding in a cave one morning unshifted. Anang’s brother was killed, but Anang was able to escape, though she was injured. They chased her for weeks, catching her repeatedly and injuring her more each time until Anang vaguely sensed the waterfall and attempted to force herself through in an act of desperation. She had actually thought she was unable to make it through, and with the last of her strength, she faked a crossing through the creek Ben had found her at and then dug herself into the hole where she’d been found and hoped that she could last long enough for the hunting party to pass her by. The next thing she remembered was waking up in Ben’s cabin, staring into the face of the creature that had started her down this cataclysmic path to begin with.

With her story complete, Tim sat and pondered the situation.

“On our side, it’s said that once a dogman tastes your scent, it is connected to you, and you are never truly safe after that. He will find you again unless you are truly good in your heart and always looking over your shoulder. Maybe there’s a little bit of truth in that. Maybe once one of each of our people come in contact, it can impact how the veil works.”

“I wish I never met you,” she confessed with tear filled eyes to Ben. “I know now that you never meant to harm me, but I’ve lost everything. If I go back, Nenaginad will find me, and he will kill me for making him look like a fool for not being able to catch me.”

“Neither of our lives seemed to have gone well ever since we last came across each other,” Ben offered back. “I’ve spent four years wishing I could erase that night from existence. But now? I feel like I can finally turn my life around.”

Anang lay there considering his comment, but not entirely moved by it while Tim thought over the situation carefully. “Anang,” Tim asked, “how hard will Nenaginad hunt you? Do you think that he might realize you’ve crossed over? If he does, will he follow you through, knowing where you went?”

“I don’t think he knew I passed through the waterfall. It was flowing very weakly when I crossed through. Normally we can’t pass through when it flows that weakly. Even the Waawaashkeshi can’t seem to slip through when it flows that weakly.”

“But if he decides you did, will he follow you through?”

“Yes. He will come if he learns I slipped behind the waterfall. His entire reputation depends on it now.”

“For now, however, we’re safe in assuming he isn’t coming.” Anang nodded in response while Tim added this additional point to his assessment. “And how will we know the next time the veil is thin enough to pass through?”

“I can smell it. Or actually, I can’t smell it. That is how I know it is happening,” Anang answered him. “I will notice that my sense of smell will disappear in an entire direction and that is how I know. It will almost be like being blind for me.”

After much deliberation, he decided on a course of action.

“So here’s where we’re at,” he began. “We have three sides. Like it or not, you me and him are one side. We have the wounded girl who can sift into a dog like creature, and us two mere men with guns. The second side is this Nenaginad, who will come and he will come in force if he ever figures out where you are. The good news is that he won’t be able to smell you until he crosses over. Then there are the feds. Ben, we don’t know for sure who these guys are. I don’t even know if they’re part of a governmental organization either of us is even aware of. They can generally do whatever the hell they want. They show up after certain paranormal events, and usually no one is the wiser, but every once in a while someone runs into them and they regret it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re here after you slipping across to our side.”

“Which means that they’re looking for Anag,” Ben reasoned before Tim could get there. Tim pointed directly at Ben with a nod.

“Now, the good news is that you’ve got a pretty good disguise. I’ve never heard so much as a whisper that one of your kind are skin walkers or shape shifters, so I think it’s a good bet that the feds don’t think so either. They won’t recognize you in this form.”

“What about her eyes? Amber eyes are rare enough, but hers glow,” Ben pointed out.

“One thing at a time,” Tim cautioned Ben before continuing. “To the average passerby in this form, she easily passes as one of us. The only place people will probably struggle with her appearance is other Ojibwe who will recognize her facial features but not understand why her skin is so light and her eyes off color. But even then, as long as she only speaks in English they won’t ever even consider that she’s from another world. Not even the feds should be able to pick her out of a crowd. Now, both of these other sides have one thing in common: neither really has any idea of what they’re looking for. It rained after you got here, so your scent was washed away pretty good and the feds needed time to detect that something came across the veil and then get someone here to investigate. If they were on to us, we would know by now because I don’t see them sitting and waiting on a target just lying around helpless in front of them. If we keep our heads down and don’t draw any attention to ourselves, then they will go away before too long without even realizing what they were looking for. Anang, how frequently have you noticed when the waterfall will let you through? For us, we notice specific times in a couple of seasons and around full moon.”

“Full moon?” she asked with a healthy dose of incomprehension.

“About once a month,” Tim answered, refusing to let her derail the conversation too far. “How often?”

“What is a month?”

“About the time it takes for the moon to cycle from one completely visible in the sky to the next.”

“Which one?” she asked back, and Tim was now confused.

“They have more than one moon in her world,” Ben deduced.

“Yes,” Anang confirmed. “You don’t?”

Tim laughed and shook his head at her. “Do you have 365 days in a year? The time it takes for the seasons to start over again?”

“Yes,” she answered back.

“There are twelve months in a year,” Tim explained. “They’re all within a few days of each other in length, but the moon cycles every 28 days, so a month is just slightly longer than that.”

“Oh, okay,” she replied, thinking carefully while she tried to translate the differences. “How often varies,” she explained. “We’ve never been able to determine when so that we can be ready for it, but it usually happens around nine to ten times in a year. But, I don’t know if my crossing over this time will count as one of those times for certain. What I sensed was known as a false waterfall, where the sensation is similar, but nothing comes through. I was… desperate. That might be why I was able to pass.”

Tim sat and pondered again while Ben continued to help feed Anang and she watched the old man think through the situation. “Do you have any idea where it will happen?” he asked her, and she shook her head no in response. “How close will he need to be in order to smell you if he comes through?”

“It depends on the wind,” she answered back calmly. “On a day like today? I could tell it’s very calm out there. I could probably smell him at least four times as far as you were when you were outside.”

“And how far away was the site where you last saw her four years ago?” Tim asked Ben.

“The complete opposite side of the property. Well past the creek we were headed to,” Ben replied.

“It’s all a gamble, then isn’t it?” Tim reasoned out loud. “Okay then. We have an enemy of unstoppable beasts on one side and an army with infinite resources on the other. We’re gonna need a hand.”

“Honestly Tim? I wouldn’t have even let you meet her if I had been able to come up with a better excuse to send you on your way. Who can we really trust?”

“Not many. But, like I told you, I know a guy that’s come to talk to me more than once about my paranormal experiences. He’s kind of… eccentric, but he at least believed me when I told him about my encounter. And he’s got more than a little bit of science experimenting with this crap. No one’s going to know more about this phenomenon than him except our fed friends. I’ll get a message to him when I get home and have him give me a visit.”

They finished eating and laid Anang back down for some much needed rest and then Ben and Tim sat facing each other discussing more mundane matters in regards to the situation at hand.

“You know, Tim, maybe it’s a better idea if you just left us to our own ends,” Ben suggested. “The truth of the matter is that she’s not exactly enthusiastic about me taking her in and looking after and she doesn’t even seem to respect that I did it. Those fed guys are all over my property and focused on me, so I’m pretty sure you can walk away from this with no problems. I think I’m stuck, though. And let’s be honest here: once she’s healed enough, she might just see me as holding her back because I’m nowhere near as strong or fast or find any threats like she can. She might even feel better gutting me because I’m the reason her family ended up getting killed.”

“And she’s the reason you’re all but completely outcast from society,” Tim pointed out. “She’s still no match for the feds or this Nenaginad character, so don’t let it get you down. Having us on hand is better than nothing, and I’m hoping that this friend of mine will be able to give us a leg up.”

“How so?”

“He’s had some ideas that he’s worked on trying to open up the door on our side to let us through to their side. One way or another, I’m betting that will be at least of some use to us.”

“We can’t stand up to an entire village of those things,” Ben pointed out soberly.

“You ever heard of a kill dozer?” Tim asked him.

“You’re kidding,” Ben asked back, stunned.

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but no, I’m not. I can get our hands on what we’d need to make something similar. A thirty ought six might not be enough to take one down like a man from our side, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have other rifles that could. We’re not completely useless in a fight, or else the feds wouldn’t be so eager to find them. And besides, it seems pretty evident to me that their technology is nowhere near where ours is. I took a good look at that dirty dress you said she was wearing, and I recognize it. It’s what you could have expected a woman from my tribe to have been wearing two hundred years ago.”

“You think they’re that far behind us?”

“I think in some ways more. If the English made their way to her area, that suggests they have navigation and sailing abilities, but I’d bet you that their vessels aren’t any more advanced than the caravels that brought Columbus over. It’s interesting to me that she knew the English and didn’t mention the French, though. They were the first ones to this area, not the English.

“And no American revolution,” Ben pointed out. “I wonder how they managed to keep control of the colonies.”

“Let’s hope that we have plenty of time to learn the answers. In any event, no, I’m not walking away from this. I feel like you, that this is a chance for me to do some work to overwrite some of my own bad luck.

[ensmallen]

Excellent!

[Flippity-Floosy]

So glad to see you back and writing Ckent! It's been YEARS! You still have your fantastic prose and writing touches! Trust me when I say I'm excited for more!

Thanks so much.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been working hard to get to the actual SW portion of the story and is usual for me, it took me longer to get there than it probably should have. If I post larger chapters like I have in other stories then it should only take a handful of posts to get you there, but I haven't gotten very far beyond that point yet. There's some mysteries to solve and getting to know characters and stuff before we start making ladies little...

I very much appreciate your kind words. I don't mean to be rude, but have we chatted before? I don't see your handle in any of my older posts. Also, I have taken a look at Small matters and love the descriptions in it, especially her perception of her surroundings, but I haven't read everything in that post. I'm looking forward reading the rest of it and will post there once I do.

No worries! And don't worry. I feel bad that I now go under a new username. Tis' I, once known as Nanogirl! Back on both Minimizer and the other SWB. Kinda forgot I changed names for a moment so a lot of people.

[CKent45]

No worries! And don't worry. I feel bad that I now go under a new username. Tis' I, once known as Nanogirl! Back on both Minimizer and the other SWB. Kinda forgot I changed names for a moment so a lot of people.

Nanogirl! How great to see you! I didn't realize who you were! I'm glad to be able to talk to you again. I hope all has been well. We should totally chat more.

[CKent45]

It was two days later before Anang was finally strong enough to sit up on her own and move around a little. Unfortunately, something that had been overlooked in the initial process of dealing with her injuries was that her left leg was fractured and not useable for the time being. Tim again used his medic skills from his time in the military to put together a splint to help her heal, and called in some favors to have Anang seen by a someone for cash with access to an x-ray machine and plaster for a real cast.

Anang was surprised when the pair of crutches that Ben simply had sitting on hand in a closet from a much earlier injury from years before were presented for her use. She had mixed feelings about using them as on the one hand they finally allowed her personal mobility again for the first time in days, but on the other it was humiliating for her to be in such a pitiful state. She made it clear that in her world people with such injuries were left to their own devices to heal or die as the weak did nothing but slow the rest down. Loved ones would be there to comfort the dying in their final moments, but other than that little was done to care for the infirmed.

Tim came over to watch over Anang while Ben would go into town for supplies or take a job to bring in cash, and over those two days both Ben and Tim did their part to start building up basic supplies needed for Anang starting with clothing.

The night after that, Ben insisted on carrying Anang out to the firepit behind the cabin for some fresh air. Anang was dressed up in a winter jacket Ben had on hand and a pair of extra sweat pants and boots. As a result, she was practically drowning in his leftover clothes, but was otherwise quite warm and comfortable as she easily retreated her arms inside of them for added comfort. As they sat in the chairs warming in the cool autumn air by the fire, Anang stared up through the leafless trees into the night sky.

“Anang,” Ben called out while stoking the embers and adding a log, gaining her attention, “if the people from the other side of the waterfall are so dangerous, why come across at all? Why not just stay on your side?”

Anang stared at him for a long moment, then smiled softly, the first time since waking up in this strange world. “Waawaashkeshi,” she answered simply, almost seeming to be ready to laugh at his question. “The deer.”

“Why? Is there something special about our deer compared to yours?”

“They exist,” she replied, staring directly at him with her glowing amber eyes. “The English destroyed all of the deer where I am from long before I was born. They burned down entire forests and slaughtered them.”

“Let me guess: to starve your people?”

“Yes,” she replied, more than a little surprised that he knew the answer so easily. “It didn’t work, of course. There were plenty of other animals that we were able to hunt, so it didn’t stop us, but it certainly hurt us. Keeping fed is far more difficult than it was for my ancestors. Then we discovered that the deer seem to know the waterfall far better than we can and they walk through from time to time. Not enough to regrow the population, but they are so delicious! Your world has such delicious meat. Even the birds tasted better here.”

“So you come through just to hunt?”

“It’s an opportunity to hunt without the English disrupting us. And a single deer can feed an entire family. It’s worth the risk. I’ve only caught one deer in my entire life. It wandered through the waterfall and I found it and I’ve never eaten such delicious prey in my life. There’s something I just don’t understand, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You cook literally everything. It just doesn’t make sense to me why you cook perfectly healthy meat. Doesn’t it taste better to just simply eat a fresh deer?”

“It’s a precaution. A lot of times animals have something in the meat that could make us sick.”

“I don’t know anyone who has gotten sick from the prey of your world,” she remarked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, around here we just don’t eat raw meat. I suggest you try to get used to it being cooked for the time being. Does it taste bad cooked?”

“No, it’s wonderful,” she admitted. “It’s just so rare to get to eat prey cooked in my world. We save it for sick prey or for special occasions. You’re much better at cooking meat than anyone I know.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, at least.”

“But maybe… could you cook it a little less?”

“Well, I suppose I could make it a little more rare,” he conceded, tending to the fire again. Anang stared again at the night sky and then looked to her left toward Ben’s truck.

“I remember that thing,” she commented. “What exactly is it?” Ben turned and looked in the direction she was pointing with her injured arm.

“That’s my truck.”

“How did you make it move that morning? It moved very well for something with no legs.”

“It has an engine,” Ben explained. “And it uses wheels instead of legs. Those round things around the bottom,” Ben explained as she looked at him in confusion. “Those roll and the rest of the truck sits on top of them, and the engine causes them to turn, which makes the truck move.”

“Hmm,” Anang considered attempting to comprehend what was being described to her. “At first I thought I might be able to catch you in it, but you kept getting faster. I’m not sure if I could have, even if I really tried. How fast can you make it go?”

“I mean, do you use miles for distance?” he asked her. She nodded, which gave him enough reason to continue. “Well, assuming your miles are the same as ours, I could push it up fast enough to cover more than one hundred miles in an hour.”

Anang’s eyes widened and she stared at him with astonishment. “That’s more than twice as fast as I could run,” she gasped. “How long can it maintain that?”

“Until it runs out of fuel,” Ben answered simply. “Or until I hit something. At that speed it’s extremely easy to crash into just about anything that moves even a little on the road. But also, if I get caught going that fast I’m probably going to go to jail.”

“Where is jail?” she asked innocently.

Ben laughed at her question before looking at her with amused eyes. “Jail is a place you go when the people in charge want to punish you.”

“They would punish you, simply for wanting to go fast?”

“Do you run full speed through the middle of your village in during the day?” Ben challenged.

“No, of course not.”

“Well, there are a lot of villages around here, and a lot of other things as well. Driving at half that speed out here at night can get you to hit a deer in a split second and that causes quite a bit of damage to the truck. Anything that moves out into your way, you just might not be able to avoid it, so yes, it’s possible to get in a lot of trouble for going too fast. Hitting a deer with that truck literally crushes the deer. It all but ruins half the meat.”

“Do you think hitting one of my kind with one of these could kill them?”

“Yes,” Ben answered simply. “I’ve seen bodies of deer absolutely explode from being hit by vehicles like my truck. But, don’t go thinking that this truck is a very useful weapon against your kind. It’s too big and cumbersome to turn at those speeds and if you try to take it off the roads at those speeds it won’t take very long for important parts to start snapping and breaking.”

“So this thing… does what exactly? Is it like a cart?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Ben agreed with a nod, then ran to Anang when she suddenly sat up alertly and yelped in pain from moving her broken ribs as she turned to look past the truck to her right.

“What’s wrong?” Ben asked her, sliding up to her and holding her to try to stabilize her.

“I hear something,” she gasped as she tensed, her fingers twitching. “It sounds like that thing of yours. It’s getting closer.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Ben assured her. “There’s a road not far from here.”

Anang’s eyes narrowed and she leaned toward it and as she did so, Ben could see her face beginning to change as if it were attempting to mutate before his eyes, but this only lasted a second before she whimpered with pain and doubled over. Ben assisted her and held her steady and then just as predicted, a pair of headlights could be seen through the brush in the distance turning and making their way toward them.

“That’s Tim,” Ben assured her.

“How can you tell?” Anang asked nervously, trembling as the unknown entity approached.

“Because he has his lights on. And they look like the lights of an F-150. It’s got to be Tim.

This was enough to calm Anang until the vehicle was about a hundred yards away and then the suspicion started to disappear. “I smell his tobacco,” she noted.

As it turned out, the vehicle was indeed Tim’s, much to Anang’s relief. Tim was a little surprised to see them both out and about given Anang’s condition, but also pleased and smiled warmly as he approached, eliciting another one from Anang.

“Well that’s nice to see,” Tim complimented her as he drew near.

“What is?” Anang asked him.

“A smile,” he answered back happily, though Anang blushed after being called out.

“She’s been lowering her guard a bit today, Ben reported and began poking a hot dog with a stick, which immediately caught the attention of Anang’s nose as soon as it hit the flame. “It’s nice to see her behaving a little more human.”

“It’s very strange staying like this in this form in front of strangers,” she complained, hugging herself beneath the pile of clothes she was swimming in.

“Don’t you ever go out looking like us?”

“Of course not,” she answered without hesitation. “It’s the most vulnerable I could possibly be, being stuck without being able to shift.”

“Who knew someone could feel so naked wrapped up in so many layers of clothing?” Tim teased her.

“I’m also not used to people who are as obsessed with clothing. He looks embarrassed every time he sees my body.”

“I am a little bit,” Ben answered casually. “ I mean you look pretty good beneath those clothes,” he admitted with a smirk. Anang looked at him with both a look of shock as well as disdain and for a moment it looked like she might have something callous to say, but in the end she thought better of it and settled back in underneath the layers of warm clothing in front of the fire.

“So how’d you convince her to come out?” Tim asked Ben.

“I told her she needed some fresh air and that she was coming out whether she liked it or not,” Ben answered.

“You do realize that once she’s back on her feet again, she’ll be able to throw you over her shoulder and force you like that, right?” Tim teased.

“She said as much,” Ben chuckled. “And she accused me of taking advantage of her in her weakened state.”

“You are,” she noted sourly, but her focus suddenly shifted to a laser focus when Ben pulled the now cooked hot dog from the flames, wrapped it in a bun and handed it across to Tim right in front of Anang.

“You’re drooling,” Ben teased her. Anang shot him a nasty glance, but reached out through the loose sleeve with her less injured arm and touched her lips, then blushed as she realized she actually was.

“The lady does seem to love her some meat,” Tim chuckled while dousing his hot dog with some ketchup.

“Anang, would you like a hot dog?” Ben asked her in an almost condescendingly sweet voice, which again seemed to sour her demeanor.

“Do I have to have it with the… bread?” she asked somewhat meekly, and sighed with relief when Ben shook his head in response to her question.

As Ben prepared Anang’s next treat of meat, Tim leaned back in his chair, turning his attention back to her. “Okay, so tomorrow we get that leg of yours x-rayed and get a cast on it. Can you tell me how you’ll behave amongst us mere fluff men?” he asked in a leading manner.

“Don’t talk unless I have to,” she answered obediently, though her eyes were set on the hot dog as it began to sizzle in the fire. “I can tell them that I am your granddaughter and I was hurt by a pack of coyotes, but not share things I don’t have to. How can I really trust this… healer?”

“Because we’re paying him in cash,” Tim answered her flatly. “He deals with cases like this a lot, especially with certain folks from the tribe who want to do business quietly.”

“And you’re sure this will help my leg?” she asked warily.

“Yes,” Ben answered immediately and pulled the hot dog out, letting it cool in the evening air. He smiled, thoroughly amused as he watched her glowing amber eyes focus tightly on the steamy piece of sausage. “I think we had to get really good at healing when we couldn’t turn into indestructible beasts.”

Anang glanced at him with a displeased look on her face and then with surprising speed, she snatched the hot dog from the end of his stick and chomped through it voraciously in three bites, however she really only would have needed two the way she devoured it.

“I am not a beast,” she denied through her full mouth, then her expression soured even more when both Tim and Ben began laughing at her response.

“We have a few things to go over before we take you to a restaurant,” Tim informed her gently.

“Like what?” she asked obliviously while chomping down on her mouth full of meat.

“Like not eating everything in a single bite,” Ben chuckled. “If you eat like that, you’ll draw attention to yourself.”

“Your people are strange,” she complained after swallowing a massive chunk of the meat she’d chomped on.

“Would you like another?” Ben asked them both. Tim agreed with a polite yes, while Anang nodded fervently, so Ben started two fresh hot dogs at once. “Now Anang,” Ben began tentatively. “Slow down a little bit while eating. Enjoy the taste a bit more. Maybe the texture too,” he suggested.

“Why?” she asked after gulping down the last of the meat in her mouth.

“Anang, do your people ever eat just to enjoy yourselves?”

“On special occasions,” she declared. “But what does that have to do with how I eat?”

“I’m betting when they’re together eating, they tear through food even harder and fight for each piece,” Ben suggested with a smirk.

“Of course,” Anang replied as if the answer were obvious. Tim sighed and put his face in his palm. Ben couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“You know that this won’t help with that ancient stereotype about your people,” Ben joked to Tim.

“What… stereotype?” Anang asked Tim.

“They called us savages for centuries,” Tim answered her with a look of disdain towards Ben.

“The English say the same about us. But they eat the exact same as us too. What does this have to do with anything?”

“You tell her, smart ass,” Tim snapped at Ben, who sighed, obviously not wanting to press his luck too far.

“Anang, the way you grab food is a lot like how a wild animal does or… a dog,” Ben explained as gently as he could.

“I am not a dog!” she exclaimed angrily.

“I know, but if you chow down as hard as you just did now in front of other people, someone’s likely to say something just like that to you,” Ben elaborated, but this only made Anang actually growl at him. “That won’t help either.”

“Are you saying… I am embarrassing?” she accused Tim, who was suddenly fully aware that he was in over his head. “You are Anishinaabe!” she accused. “You would actually take the side of English over one of your own?”

“He’s not taking sides,” Ben interrupted, forcing her to focus on him again. “Ojibwe here don’t eat like you do either. You can eat however you want when it’s just us, but in front of others, just take smaller bites and chew more slowly,” Ben coached her.

Anang pondered his advice for a moment and by the time the next round of hot dogs were ready, she took hers much more delicately with her thumb and forefinger, this time watching Ben as she took it almost as if she were asking permission with her eyes. She watched Tim as he began biting into his hot dog, and then carefully mimicked him, taking a much more delicate bite, though there was still an incredible hunger in her eyes as she chewed and she remained fixated on the rest of the hot dog in her hands.

“You must really like them,” Ben said with a smile as he sat down beside her.

“Delicious,” she answered eagerly with a wide grin. “Your people do such fascinating things with your meats. Is it because you have so much of it?”

“Most of the things we do were for preserving it,” Tim answered her. “Nowadays it’s more about taste.”

“Preserving…” she muttered while thinking over the consequences of his statement. “For how long?”

“Depends on the meat and the method,” Tim answered. “Bacon, real bacon, could last for months.” Anang’s eyes lit up at the mere suggestion of keeping meat for such a long period and she moved to the edge of her seat, but quickly regretted it and leaned back, wincing and whimpering in pain after irritating her many injuries. “Slow down, sweetie,” Tim encouraged her, this time leaning over to help Ben steady her and ease her back in her seat.

Once she was relaxed again, she clutched her chest from inside the oversized jacket, and then looked to Ben. “Could I have another?” she asked. Ben nodded with a smile, but Tim rested his hand on her shoulder.\

“Make this the last one, sweetie. I’m still worried about those gashes on your stomach. She nodded in agreement, and then sat there waiting patiently for her next meat treat. As she sat, Tim continued his update. “So tomorrow will be a bit of a busy day for you,” he explained to her. “Ben will drive you to have your leg looked at and casted and I got word back from my friend. He got my message and will be here tomorrow. I’ll bring him by in the evening.”

“You’re sure he’s a friend?” Anang asked him nervously.

“A very good one. But a strange one,” Tim answered kindly. “I didn’t tell him anything about who you are, only that I needed him to come talk to you.”

“So I need to keep who I am a secret from him too?” she asked Tim, but he shook his head no.

“I didn’t tell him what you were because I didn’t want to risk someone unfriendly catching word of you. I know that he’s had a number of people keep tabs on him and try to hack into his messages, so better to leave him in the dark about it until he’s here. Don’t worry, I used a phrase he gave me so he knows it’s very important. When he gets here, let’s just ease him into it, alright? No need to tell him right away, let him figure it out on his own.”

“Cottonwood men are much more clever than I would have ever guessed,” she praised with a slight smirk.

“It’s good to see you smiling,” Tim praised her.

The next day before dawn, Ben woke Anang up on the couch in front of a fire that was all but out. She opened her eyes, carefully checking her surroundings, then sat up with some much-needed assistance. “We need to get you over there before long, so let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”

She agreed somewhat passively, accepting his help into the bathroom where she disrobed unceremoniously right in front of him making him blush immediately.

“You’ve seen me without shifting for days now. It’s amazing to me that you’re still so scared of seeing me naked.”

“I try to convince myself it’s not a big deal because you were naked the first time I met you,” Ben joked nervously, but Anang only rolled her eyes at him. Ben helped her while she used a washcloth to wash her body, though she cringed at the scent of the Irish spring soap Ben had on hand. Once they were both cleaned up and ready, Ben helped her with her crutches across to his truck and then into the passenger seat. As they crossed onto the road, she watched with fascination as the woods gave way to open roadways and she leaned over looking at the lit dash.

“How does it do this?” she asked as he accelerated gently up to fifty-five miles per hour and down the road. Once again, Ben gave the best description he could, but she struggled with it, not understanding until Ben simplified it as far as he could.

“There’s a flammable liquid inside that we pour in. We light the liquid into flames and contain the flames inside the engine. That forces the parts inside to move and let’s the truck roll like it is right now.”

“Really…” she muttered under her breath, watching as the scenes around them sped by. “I’m not sure if I can run this fast,” she pondered.

“Well, let’s hope that Nenaginad can’t either,” Ben offered with a smile, and then turned back to the road.

When they finally reached the clinic, Ben pulled behind the building and up to a fire door where a man who was obviously of native American descent was sitting out drinking a cup of coffee and watching them with mild interest. Ben approached the man, shook his hand, and exchanged some cash, then watched as he retrieved Anang and escorted her slowly up to the building on her crutches.

“Remember it’s still dark,” Ben whispered to her before helping her out of the truck. “Don’t let him see your eyes until your inside the building and it’s well lit.”

Once there, Anang kept a relatively cool demeanor, though many of the different devices and fixtures inside the building left her awestruck. The man that let them in brought them to the radiology room and helped her up onto a table, then cleared her lower body so that her leg could be properly scanned. She was perfectly calm until the man grabbed Ben to lead him away from the x-ray machine when she grabbed his wrist, making it clear that she didn’t want him to go, showing genuine fear in her face for the first time. He reassured her, then peeled her fingers from him and retreated back to the side room with the technician who ran the machine and then returned with Ben a moment later to reposition Anang. Once again Ben found Anang clinging to him when it was time to retreat, and this time it was even more difficult for him to separate them both, but a few minutes later she was finally finished and using his help to get sweatpants back on.

From there, they went to an exam room, but before Ben could enter with Anang, the tech grabbed Ben and pushed him back into the hallway, closing the door behind Anang. “Let me ask you something,” he began, though there was no sense of questioning or politeness in his voice.

“What’s up?”

“Is she part native American?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?” Ben asked, and then had to take a step back as the man began pushing him.

“Have you ever heard how many Native American women go missing?”

“Uhhh… actually, yeah,” Ben Stammered, already not liking the direction this conversation was going.

“I’ve seen a lot of messed up shit slip in here when I do these kinds of jobs, but she looks an awful lot like I’d expect a kidnapped Native American woman to look like,” he accused. Ben stared back at him, hands already up in surrender, and the man shoved him again, demanding answers. “Well? Nothing to say for yourself?”

Ben stammered trying to figure out just how to respond when the door to the room reopened and Anang poked her head out with a confused look on her face. “Aren’t you coming in, Ben?” she asked, using the door to hold herself up.

“I don’t think he needs to be in there with you,” the tech answered without even looking at her.

“Why?” she asked with an air of befuddlement. The tech turned and looked at her, now also not quite understanding how to respond.

“He’s questioning whether I’m really here to help you,” Ben explained with intense awkwardness.

“He’s the only person who WOULD help me,” she told the tech, who was again surprised by her response.

“I don’t think he needs to be there,” the tech insisted.

“I… need your help,” Anang admitted directly to Ben with intense embarrassment while blushing very deeply.

“No, he doesn’t need to be in there,” the tech insisted, refusing to let go of his vision of being the hero of this grave injustice.

“He’s stopping you from coming in here?” she asked Ben, who looked at the angry tech, then nodded to Anang. She rolled her eyes and sighed with frustration. “Just crush his skull,” she ordered Ben in a voice that showed a complete lack of patience.

“I’d really rather not,” Ben laughed very awkwardly back while the tech’s eyes nearly fell out of their sockets after going so wide.

“He’s stopping you from coming in here. Fine, then just break something else,” she determined with finality. Now the tech nearly fell over himself at how casually he’d heard her simply command Ben to inflict massive bodily harm on him. Ben put his face in his palm, and then tapped the tech on the shoulder.

“Does she really sound to you like someone I kidnapped?”

“N-no, I guess not,” he admitted.

“He is in your way. Why are you being so gentle with him?” Anang asked with even more impatience.

“Let’s maybe… have a talk about being a bit less aggressive,” Ben suggested to her, but she only rolled her eyes at him and sighed impatiently.

“Y-yeah,” the tech agreed, then allowed Ben to pass quite eagerly before he left them alone in the exam room.

“Don’t look at me with those scolding eyes,” she complained to him as he helped her climb up onto the exam table.

“This is why we asked you not to speak up unless you needed to,” Ben informed her with exasperation.

“But I DID need to speak up,” she complained. “I… couldn’t climb up here alone,” she added with immense embarrassment and frustration.

“Around here, we don’t just crush people’s skulls. We talk things through and we only do something physical if we absolutely have to and there’s no way to avoid it.”

“But he was challenging you,” she insisted, groaning with pain as she attempted to lift her broken leg enough to be able to lay down on the exam table. Ben stepped around to the other side of the table and assisted her, laying her down with great care. “He questioned your honor. You should have killed him where he stood for that,” she lectured.

“We don’t do that here,” Ben tried to explain. “They would lock me in a cage for the rest of my life for doing anything even close to that.”

“Then kill them too,” she declared with frustration. “Why must you be so gentle with absolutely EVERYTHING?” she demanded out of pure exasperation. “No man should ever let his honor be questioned like that. None! Everything about your people is so… so… fluffy!”

“Anang, look at me,” Ben ordered her very firmly, which seemed to shock her back into submission again under his strict tone. “We are here for one thing and one thing only, and I am going to do that, so either stop getting in my way or go back to the creek where I found you,” he ordered her. She gulped hard, clearly not expecting such a strong response and nodded submissively to him. “We are going to get you the help you need one way or another, and I am going to speak to them how I need to in order to get you that help. Do you understand?” She gulped, and then lay back closing her eyes, muttering something rather unpleasant under her breath in her native tongue.

“You know what?” Ben snapped at her with impressive calm, “if you’re going to cuss me out, you can at least do it in a language I understand.” She opened her eyes and stared back at him, focused quite intently.

“I won’t do it again,” she promised. Ben nodded to her and sat down, taking a deep breath while he processed the frustrating encounter. A couple short moments later, a man who appeared to be in his late fifties walked in and looked rather cautiously at the pair.

“Hi… I’m doctor Marquette. Did you… tell this man to crush my tech’s head?” he asked her quite meekly.

“I’m really sorry, Doctor,” Ben apologized profusely. “She’s just in an incredible amount of pain, especially since she’s been dealing with what we’re pretty sure is a broken leg for days now without any kind of treatment.”

“I go out on a limb when I do this, and I only did it because I know Tim Boyd personally. This could cost me my medical license and I’m not going to tolerate someone coming in here causing me trouble.”

“I promise that I won’t be any trouble at all,” Ben assured him humbly.

“Why don’t you wait outside?” the doctor asked coldly, but his eyebrow raised when Anang immediately grabbed his wrist, shaking her head no to Ben before he could even move.

“I shouldn’t have said it,” she admitted to the doctor. “I won’t cause you any more problems,” she promised. The doctor looked at her, struggling for a moment with the decision, but after some thought seemed to settle with the idea of finishing the job and pulled out the chart with Anang’s information on it.

“Anang?” he asked, looking at her and waiting for her to at least nod in confirmation, “Tim was right. You have a decent sized fracture, and a splint won’t do the job for what you need,” he shared, then put the x-ray up on the lit fixture against the wall to demonstrate the very clear break in her bone. “Even looking at you, I can see you’re very badly beaten up. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Coyotes,” she parroted back to him, not even bothering to try to act given the story she’d been told to offer. “They attacked me and I ran until I couldn’t anymore.”

The doctor continued to scrutinize her before he sat down and explained that he wanted to take a closer look at the remainder of her wounds, again suggesting that Ben leave, but once again Anang insisted against it fervently.

And so began an otherwise typical examination. The doctor was pleased enough with Tim’s work patching her up, but he had some advice on some of the wounds that looked like they might be inflamed and showing mild signs of infection, completely skipping over the nipples on her stomach because Ben had had the forethought to cover them with band-aids and bacitracin to hide them from unnecessary scrutiny. Anang followed as best as she could, but it was evident that she was struggling with many of the concepts the doctor was sharing, frequently turning to Ben to ask about how to follow the advice that was being offered. The doctor then fetched a bottle of antibiotics to help with fighting off any infections and finally the tech returned with the materials he needed to wrap Anang’s leg up in a cast.

Anang watched with near shock as they wrapped her leg up, trying her best to hide just how truly remarkable this experience was and when they were finished and the cast set and dry enough to be sent on their way she thanked the doctor with immense sincerity, even going so far as to bow submissively to him. Ben gave them both a little more cash for their trouble and were escorted out the back just as the sun was beginning to rise above the horizon.

On the drive back, Anang was fascinated by the cast, testing it repeatedly by pushing it against the floor underneath the dash.

“This is amazing,” she remarked with eyes filled with wonder. “The pain is so much better now! I can walk on this!”

“No, absolutely not,” Ben countered quickly. “The cast is there to keep the bone in place. We’re lucky that he didn’t have to set the bone. Don’t push that luck. Make sure you only go around on the crutches until your leg is healed.”

“But he said that would take two months!” she complained.

“By that point you should be able to put some weight on it again, but you still shouldn’t be walking on it. Trust me. If you don’t follow his advice, you might break it even worse and then you’ll have to start all over from the beginning.” Anang growled and muttered something in her native tongue again, but agreed when pressed on the issue by Ben.

Despite all that, her spirits were definitely lifted following the doctor’s visit, and Ben decided on the way back that a treat was in order, so he brought her to a small local diner for some breakfast. She hobbled in right behind Ben on her crutches, looking at the several people already there suspiciously, however the other restaurant goers paid her no mind and behaved as if she weren’t even there.

Ben grabbed them both a seat toward the back of the restaurant and helped Anang into the booth until she was tucked away as far back as he could make her while still leaving her face as well lit as possible under a warmly lit lamp. Once they were settled, he handed Anang a menu and began looking through the options.

“A really dumb question for you,” he mentioned very softly, and Anang lifted her head from the menu and peered at him with uncertainty. “Can you read that menu?”

“I can read,” she answered back just as softly, then buried her face in the menu. “The letters are different than I’m used to, but I do understand them. Are these paintings?” she then asked him after a moment and then showed Ben a picture on her menu. “It’s so real looking…”

“It’s a photo,” Ben answered her. “Not a painting.”

“What is… a photo?”

“Ummm…” he stammered, not quite ready to answer this particular question, then fished his phone out. “Well, it’s another machine we have that absorbs all the light around something and then it gives us an image kind of the same way a mirror shows you what you look like, but it’s set at one specific moment. Let me show you,” he said, lifting his phone to snap a picture of her, then turned the phone to her and showed her the results. Anang leaned over to look at it, again shocked.

“This is… me?” she asked him, touching her face as she compared the image.

“That’s you.”

After a moment to think, a waitress appeared to ask for drinks, and Ben took the liberty to order them both a V8 juice as well as water, while Anang seemed to have little understanding of just what he’d ordered until after the waitress was gone and he was forced to explain it to her. She remained skeptical, but agreed when Ben explained that he wanted her drinking liquids that were on this world thought to be healthier. He then asked about her choice of food, and unsurprisingly she chose the entrée with the most meat in it, made with diced sausage, bacon, eggs and potatoes. When the waitress returned again, he ordered for the both of them and then sat in silence while Ben turned toward the window to enjoy the sunrise. While he did so, she stared at her hands on the table at for a few moments. Then lifted her head and stared closely at Ben, deep in thought.

“Ben,” she began with trepidation, waiting for him to turn his head and meet her gaze. “Did you let that man question your honor like that simply for me, or because you were trying to avoid fighting him?” There was a certain amount of judgment in her voice and her eyes betrayed that she was clearly gauging him and how he would respond.

Ben was at first surprised by her question and after a couple seconds to process it, he opened his mouth to respond, but stopped before he could finish his first syllable and rethought his response.

“Anang,” he began with an unnerving calm in his voice that immediately made her raise an eyebrow. “When you finally get home, you act however you think best, but as long as you’re on this side? I need you to listen to me, because everything we’re doing is to try to keep the risk to everyone as low as we can. I need you to trust me on how things work on this side.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she pressed after a moment to process his response.

“Yes it does. What you suggested I do to that man isn’t something that’s acceptable here in any setting. What’s more, the way you said it will leave most people thinking that I am the one that is about to go over the edge, which means I’m likely to get arrested and locked up. Do you want to navigate this world on your own?”

“No,” she admitted ashamedly and lowered her head. After a moment to think, she looked up at him again. “You’ve been very kind to me, but no man should have to have his honor questioned like he did with you.”

“It boils down to what do we need to get done, and how much time do we have to do it. We have limited time to try to heal you before someone might come through again and search for you. Even in the best of circumstances that can happen in less than half the time it takes to heal your leg again. I’m less worried about what some idiot with a savior complex thinks about my honor than whether we’re ready when we need to be.”

“But he challenged you,” she insisted in a hushed tone.

“His challenge doesn’t mean anything to me. And I have other ways of dealing with him if I have to.”

“Such as?” she asked him suspiciously.

“Such as turning him in for seeing patients before clinic hours and for cash. He could lose his job and lose his right to work in his job.”

This answer seemed to finally quell her concerns and she nodded, sitting back in her seat and waited patiently for their meal to arrive. When it finally did, Ben smirked at her when he observed her separating out the meat from the potatoes.

“Do you ever eat anything other than meat?” she asked her with a laugh. She looked up at him from just over her plate carefully determining how she should react to his question.

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

“At least try the potatoes. Oh, and make sure you use the fork,” he added very quietly. “If you don’t you’ll draw attention to yourself.” She frowned and looked at the silverware, then picked one up in a fist and watched Ben carefully as he began his meal. Then after carefully observing him, she adjusted her grip of the eating utensil, but contorted her fingers in a way that left the fork pointing ninety degrees down from her hand toward the dish. Ben smiled, then reached across and adjusted her fingers accordingly until she was holding the fork properly and she stared at it rather perplexed before she again tried to mimic him, but this time successfully as she awkwardly steered her food to her mouth.

As luck would have it, she found she did actually enjoy the potatoes, though not nearly as much as the meat on her plate. Before long she was all but shoveling the food down her throat, and only slowed herself after Ben warned her several times.

“So what did you think?” Ben asked her on the drive back from the diner.

“I’ve never been to a tavern before,” she admitted. “The English have them, but my people aren’t usually welcome in them. It tasted very good.”

After that, Ben noticed her staring at him nearly constantly with no discernable expression on her face. He ignored her at first, but after a while of driving with her staring at him like that, he pressed her to speak up with whatever was on her mind.

As it turned out, she wanted to question him about what Ben had meant when he told her that the last four years had gone wrong for him and that he saw his second encounter with Anang as a chance to turn that around. It took her a couple tries to get the question out in a way that Ben understood, but once he did he simply told her that people had abandoned him one at a time when he tried to talk about what had happened to him that night, believing him to be insane. He added that what he went through was nothing compared to what she had, though she was curious enough that she pressed him on the issue until he told her the entire story from beginning to end.

He wasn’t finished until they arrived back at the cabin and he had helped her lay back on the couch to rest after an eventful morning. After another moment to consider his story, she looked at him, surprising him with her insight.

“My family believed me. And they stood by me. The people I cared about were willing to protect me until our village was destroyed and their families were killed. Yours simply cast you out because they didn’t believe your story?”

“A reputation for not being sane can cause a lot of problems in this world.”

“I have made it as long as I have because those that I loved gave so much for me. I would not have survived this long if they had simply cast me out. But you did.”

“No one was out to kill me,” Ben assured her with a smile, then encouraged her to rest a bit after moving around so much and the pain it had brought her. Ben remained on the property the rest of the day to keep an eye on Anang and do some work around the house while Anang tried to rest, though by this point she was recovered enough that she didn’t need the sleep, but not so much that she was up for a lot of movement. He did help her out for some fresh air a couple of times, though her guard was up each time as she used her exceptional senses to search out any possible threats nearby. She watched him change the oil on his truck as well as a couple of other minor pieces of maintenance, though for the most part she didn’t have much to say, even when Ben tried to make small talk.

Around dinnertime, Tim arrived with his friend, a less than average height man with a pudgy build and thick glasses. He was introduced to Ben as Oliver casually, and then immediately turned to Anang with a quite eager grin.

“I hear that I’m here to talk to you,” he explained eagerly.

“You can see how beat up, she is, right?” Ben asked protectively. Oliver turned to him with a deer in the headlights look and apparently no response. “She’s been through a lot. So maybe don’t treat her like this is just some juicy gossip.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that Tim wouldn’t tell me why I was coming out here, and he wouldn’t even tell me on the way over, which means whatever it is must be pretty big,” he explained, though he couldn’t help but let a grin slip through at the end of his explanation. “So I’m just really excited, you see. I flew all the way from Florida, and I was actually in the middle of investigating a house that I’m certain is haunted, I just needed a little more proof, but Tim said this couldn’t wait so I flew up, but Tim insisted this was much more worth my time. So anyways, there’ve been a lot of sightings of a lantern floating down a railroad not far from here, so I figured that this must be it. Tim and I have talked about that phenomena so many times, and I just knew it had to be something on that, because I’ve been working on that case for YEARS,” he rambled on incessantly to Anang, who could only stare at him with wide eyes and mild confusion.

“Oliver,” Tim now interrupted, forcing him to stop and shift his attention abruptly. “She’s been through a lot. Give her some time to relax a little, just get to know her a bit and when she’s ready to tell you her story, she will. It’s not about the lantern.”

“But why can’t you jus tell me? What’s the secret?” he asked, obviously unable to contain his excitement.

“When you figure it out, you’ll get it,” Tim insisted and pulled a chair up for Oliver to sit in front of Anang.

“So what’s your name?” he asked her quickly, but politely.

“I’m Anang,” she answered, watching a little awkwardly as he shook her hand without bothering to ask.

“Anang… is that an Ojibwe name?” he asked her eagerly, now looking her face over more carefully. Anang nodded yes and he smiled proudly having deduced his first bit of knowledge about her, then suddenly he paused and looked more closely at her face, then her pale, white hand. “Are you… part Ojibwe?” Anang raised an eyebrow at him.

“Part… Ojibwe?” Oliver nodded fervently to her, his excitement quickly building again, though he couldn’t quite understand why Anang suddenly seemed offended. “I am Anishinaabe,” she answered him with a certain level of indignation.

“Well… yes… but what I mean is…so which one of your parents are Ojibwe?” Anang sighed and looked at him with mild irritation.

“My parents are Anishinaabeg.”

“Oh… well… but your which of your grandparents were white, then?”

“White?”

“You know. Skin color. I can see some Native American features in your face, but you’re obviously more white than Ojibwe.”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, her irritation rising quite quickly. “White, as in the same as the English?”

“English?” Oliver asked, now growing confused and his jovial demeanor beginning to falter. “What I mean is white, as in European.”

“European,” she growled, now quite offended.

“Yes! You’re obviously more European than Ojibwe!”

“I am Anishinaabe!” she countered rather angrily. “My parents are Anishinaabeg, my grandparents are Anishinaabeg, my great grandparents are Anishinaabeg, and all my family has been and always will be Anishinaabeg!” she declared loudly and angrily, then began coughing and groaning from the pain caused by it and Ben quickly lunged in to assist her as she calmed down. As he did so, Ben dashed in front of the lamp, mostly blocking the direct light and though the room was otherwise decently lit, it was enough of a change that the glow in her eyes was at least noticeable and that was when Oliver finally noticed her amber eyes and he froze, staring at her, though obviously struggling to articulate just what it was that had triggered him.

“She’s more Ojibwe than I am,” Tim explained to Oliver, and this served to confuse the man even more. “At least, by the standards you normally think of them.”

“But she’s part of the Ojibwe tribe…”

“Born and raised,” Tim confirmed, though Oliver was now fully focused on Anang’s face and trying to reconcile the pale, white skin with what were much more obviously now facial features that were distinctly native American.

“I didn’t mean to…” he began apologetically, but stopped cold when she looked back up at him directly, and though it was faint, those amber eyes were now staring directly at him with a steady glow. Oliver was suddenly transfixed on her eyes and unable to move while his mind struggled and strained under the pressure to explain what exactly he was seeing. When Ben noticed Oliver’s reaction, he eased Anang back to recline a little and recover. “Where are you from?” Oliver eventually managed to ask in a pathetic voice.

“Near the Wild Oats Fort,” she replied simply, which confused him even more. Noticing how Oliver was fixated on Anang’s amber eyes, Tim now walked around to block the light behind Ben, casting Anang in even greater shadow and forcing him to accept what his eyes were telling to be as fact.

“What are you?”

“I am Anishinaabe,” she repeated rather impatiently. “What you call Ojibwe.”

“But… are you human?” he asked her with tremendous fear.

“Him also?” Anang asked Ben, but he petted her shoulder and encouraged her gently to grin and bear it. “I am human, like you, but also not like you.”

“Then what are you?” he asked, then the pieces finally began to lock into place and he fell out of his chair. “Those eyes… You’re a dog man,” he gasped.

“I am not a dog!” she insisted with even greater offense.

“What I mean is…” he stammered, but this time Ben intervened.

“She knows what you mean. She doesn’t like that nickname we’ve given them.” Oliver was now suddenly beside himself and struggling for words with every ounce of his soul.

“But you… you’re appearance… you look just like one of us,” he eventually managed to gasp in fits and starts.

“Not quite. You’ve noticed some of the differences,” Tim contradicted.

“You can change shapes?”

“Not right now,” she answered him honestly. “I’m too injured and weak.”

“I’ve never heard of one of her kind coming out from hiding,” he remarked with awe to Tim.

“They aren’t in hiding,” Tim answered back.

“We have little reason to hide from you,” Anang added. “You are not a threat to us. We simply do not normally have encounters with you.”

“You’re from another world? This is why you called me,” Oliver said to Tim. “You want me to pinpoint the fold I theorized. You’re trying to get her back home.”

“Not yet,” Ben countered. “One of her people did this to her. She can’t go back until we find a way to deal with him.”

“We need see if there’s a way to determine if we can detect when the veil thins enough for someone to cross over,” Tim added.

“He’s coming for you?” Oliver asked Anang, who nodded slowly and cautiously.

“If he can discover that I passed through waterfall.”

“That must be what you must call the veil, the space time fold I’ve been trying to discover.”

“So how close are you to detecting it?” Tim asked Oliver.

“Close. Very close,” Oliver answered in a hushed tone, still focused intently on Anang’s eyes. “At this point, I’m just trying to come across the right set of circumstances to determine the right readings that indicates when the fold is occurring and where. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, though.”

“Anang can smell it,” Tim tempted Oliver, and he immediately took the bait.

“You can?” Anang looked to Tim, then to Oliver and nodded again.

“I actually can’t smell it, but I tell where scent disappears when the waterfall appears.”

“Ooooohhhhh,” Oliver muttered, nodding heavily as he processed her statement. “That’s why it’s a waterfall to you. It washes out scents, just like water does.” Again, Anang nodded, confirming his deduction. “If you can tell me more about how you can sense it when it happens, I think I could detect it. In fact, I might be able to do more than just detect it.”

“Like what?” Ben asked while helping Anang with a sip of water to sooth her throat after her coughing fit.

“Up until now, I’ve never had any real proof that the space fold exists. Just conjecture and theory and what little we’ve been able to piece together from government involvement,” he explained, and then there was another flash in his expression as another light bulb went off. “This was why there was suddenly a burst of chatter about activity up here recently, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Tim answered point blank. “We ran into them the other day out in the middle of Ben’s property and they were anything but friendly.”

Oliver’s expression once again shifted to one of concern and he asked for details of the incident, then once he had all his questions answered about that, Oliver turned to Ben to lecture him. “Don’t stand up to those guys,” he warned Ben. “Among our community, most people who push them end up disappearing. They usually put up with it once when it’s the first time, but if you run into them again, I suggest you walk the other way and leave them alone. They don’t have to get permission for anything, let alone being on your land. And they already know everything about you. They’ve been through your phone calls, your text messages, your emails, everything before they ever set foot on your property.”

“I’m under the impression that they were out here four years ago as well,” Tim suggestion, which Oliver confirmed.

“Definitely. Maybe not those men specifically, but they sent someone out here to investigate. That’s why the one mocked you for not going hunting in so long. They’ve been out here multiple times and it’s only recently that anyone has even been around to see it, but I do remember someone talking about their vehicles being spotted in this area back then. We were trying to figure out what they were investigating, but we never got a clear idea of what it was. Jesse suggested it was a dogman, but I didn’t believe that. It’s true that dogman sightings happen in the region, but we’re a little outside of the area where they’ve been reported. I have a very detailed map of sightings,” Oliver boasted, hardly noticing that Anang wasn’t impressed in the slightest, especially after hearing the word ‘dogman’ again. “But don’t push them,” Oliver warned Ben again. “They don’t answer to anyone that you can get in contact with and even if you could, they wouldn’t care. I’ve heard of cabins and houses burning down, and suspicious car accidents and people just flat out disappearing or found dead in the woods.”

Oliver then turned back to the matter of his space-time fold. “If you can tell me where you think you might have crossed over, I might be able to get a reading, and if you explain the conditions around the fold when it happens, I might be able to predict it, and more, if I can get clear readings of it, I think I might be able to affect it. If our theories are correct, it moves and it shifts, so I might be able to close it, or even move it.”

“If we can block it, that would really be something,” Tim considered with optimism.

“Be careful,” Oliver told Tim. “They had an idea of where the fold occurred this time probably because they left behind something to detect it. We’re pretty sure that the government CAN already detect it, and maybe more, but we do know they go nuts whenever we think there is an instance of a fold materializing, so they’re still in the learning stages of it. So if you are able to move or block it, they’ll probably be able to detect that too and that will especially get their attention.”

“We may not have a choice,” Ben argued, and then he encouraged Anang to explain her story of her times crossing over, which left Oliver more than a little worried. When all was said and done, Oliver determined his next plan of action.

He decided he would come back to Ben’s property the next day and investigate both sites where Anang had slipped behind the waterfall with equipment he had brought with him. He felt that the risk was relatively low that they would encounter the agents from the other day, but he would first visit the site of the first encounter and then make their way to the area where Ben and Tim had run into those agents to investigate there. He had walkie talkies, so if they were able to determine the coast was clear, they would radio back a signal to Tim to bring a spare piece of equipment and that would be when Anang would be escorted out into the woods try see if they could trace back to where she had come through.

His next actions would depend on what they were able to detect and once Oliver had enough time to analyze the data, he would return either to look for more information, or share what he could about what he had learned.

“Aren’t you worried that those agents will discover you’re here?” Ben asked.

“No,” Oliver answered freely. “They know who I am and what I do, and they know I’ve gone to more than one of Tim’s speeches and that we know each other. Since they know that Tim and you are friends, they won’t be surprised to hear that I’m coming out here to investigate a sighting. I think they’d only get suspicious if we started at the creek where you found Anang or where those agents were searching.”

“Do you think they have any idea that Anang is here?” Ben questioned.

“No,” Oliver also answered with certainty. “If they even suspected something had come through and was still here, we wouldn’t be talking about this. They would do whatever it took to find her and take her in, including faking a disaster. When they start to even think that there’s something to Anang, you’ll know really fast.”

From there, the conversation turned to Anang, who shared in detail everything she knew about the waterfall, her personal experiences with it and how she could tell when it was occurring. Oliver wrote detailed notes and asked constant questions about it as she went all the while wearing an expression like a child in a candy store with a golden ticket to pick out all that he wanted from the shelves. It was Anang’s descriptions of the separate caves behind the waterfall that really pulled him in, however.

“If it takes you to more than one different world, maybe that’s why sightings here are so random,” he pondered aloud while scribbling in his notebook. “But still,” he considered, stopping mid letter in his note taking as something seemed to trouble him in her descriptions.

[CKent45]

Once Oliver had mined all of the information he could dream up from Anang’s mind about the space time fold, he turned his questions to more mundane matters of how society worked on Anang’s world while Ben, Tim and Oliver shared details on theirs. Oliver’s first question was trying to pinpoint where Anang lived, which she said was within a few hours walk from where Ben’s cabin was. This didn’t sit quite well with Oliver, who pressed on a more clear direction, relying on his limited knowledge of the terrain in the area and that was when he discovered that the Terrain they knew didn’t resemble the terrain Anang did.

This led to Oliver pulling up a map on his phone, but this only confused her, mostly because of the boundary lines between states that she didn’t recognize at all. It took some effort due to the lack of signal at Ben’s cabin, but eventually Oliver was able to provide a satellite map. It was when he zoomed out on the map to show most of North America when Anang’s confusion really peaked. “Where are the ice plains?” she asked, looking over the map repeatedly and, “What are these?” she asked, pointing to the great lakes.

“Those are the great lakes,” Oliver answered, along with a brief description of them, but this did little change Anang’s confusion. “Have you seen a map like this before?”

“Yes, but ours are drawn, not a… photo… like this one.”

“But this does look like North America to you?” She nodded, though she seemed to be just a little unsure of herself.

“There are ice plains here,” she explained, pointing around the map to almost all of Eastern Canada and then after some thought also to the North Eastern United States. “And there is the ice sea all through here,” she explained, pointing around from Eastern Pennsylvania circling through the middle of Michigan, up through North Eastern Wisconsin, Minnesota and all the way up through Canada in a sea of fresh water that surrounded a massive glacier that covered most of the northern end of the continent. There were also a few major rivers missing, one being a river similar to the Mississippi that extended northward to a finger of the ice sea that extended down from Manitoba into North Dakota.

“So we’re near this ice sea?” Oliver asked.

“Yes. It is a few days walk,” she confirmed.

After more discussion of the geographical differences between the two worlds and some explanation to help give Anang a better lay of the land in this world, they moved on to other discussions, such as why a full blooded Anishinaabe who was born and raised within an intact tribe like Anang spoke English, though this was an easy answer.

“The English force us to go to their schools,” she explained.

“Well that sounds familiar,” Tim griped with more than a hint of bitterness.

Anang then went on to explain that the English conquered the lands her people inhabited around when her grandfather was a young man. There were a number of wars, but in the end the English won and corralled the Anishinaabe into varying regions, but every decade or so they would come back and negotiate a smaller parcel of land while the English took over more and more of the land.

“I’m curious,” Tim interrupted. “Were your people further East and they migrated back into this region sometime after the English arrived?

“Yes,” Anang answered, “There was a prophecy that we would find our new homes toward the setting sun near the ice sea,” and then went on with her explanation.

The Anishinaabe had been broken up sometime around her father’s time into separate bands and communication and trade among the various groups was drastically reduced as the English took over more and more lands across the continent. To further control the tribes, the English would send missionaries to force the children into schools where they were taught their language as well as a number of other basic educational subjects, though the intention of the schools was actually to try to create a rift between the generations of Anishinaabe and sever the culture into something that was more easily controllable.

Fortunately for the Anishinaabe, the English weren’t strong enough to really accomplish all their goals with the schools, but the Anishinaabe children were at least less likely to try to wage war after being forced to enroll in English schools.

Another point of difference was the distinct lack of the French in the northern and western portions of North America. Anang explained that on her world the French were a nation of people across the great sea to the East that the English had managed to eradicate and destroy in a series of wars before crossing to the Americas. Once the English arrived, they began setting up colonies that spread within a couple generations. Life in the beginning was relatively peaceful with the English until they decided they wanted more land and resources and began pushing the native tribes back. Anang’s people were pushed right up to the glaciers, so they had to migrate westward, which resulted in wars with those native tribes whose territories Anang’s ancestors were now encroaching upon.

The English had set up colonies in the Americas extending through much of the continent, though Spanish conquerors had vast swaths of land south of where Anang’s people lived. Once they had determined many of the major differences between Anang’s world and theirs, Tim and Oliver departed, leaving Ben and Anang to settle one more issue.

“Now that you can move around a bit, I need you to decide whether you want to stay out here on the couch in front of the fire, or to take a bedroom,” Ben explained. Anang was uncertain what he meant by this, so he described the layout of the cabin, which had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a laundry room and finally the bathroom, which she had already seen. Then he helped her around the cabin for a proper tour for the first time before he restated his question.

“But the fire is here. I’ll be warmer here,” she answered once she was reclined again on her spot on the couch.

“There is a heater that runs through the entire cabin. You’ll be warm in the other rooms as well, and there are blankets there too. I only put you up in front of the fire because I thought it would heat your body up better after I found you. It’s up to you, though.”

With a little bit more encouragement, she let Ben carry her to one of the spare bedrooms again and try the bed out, which she was stunned by how soft and comfortable it was. The blankets were light and soft and left her nearly speechless and the pillows were a luxury that she could barely fathom. She made repeated remarks that she doubted even the royalty of her world had such comfortable furniture, but she still hemmed and hawed over it as she was quite unaccustomed to sleeping anywhere but near a fire in the peaked lodge that her family shared with two others from her village. In the end, she chose the couch as it was more familiar, and bedded down for the night quite happy and content with the luxury she was already enjoying.

The next day, Tim stopped in and looked after Anang while Ben took another job for some cash, but this time Tim brought along the other elderly Native American man (Paul) who had seen a dogman before. This man was much more prepared than Tim or Oliver had been and could really only sit and stare at Anang slack jawed once he had managed to grapple with the fact that he was staring an actual dogman in the face, and not only that it quickly became apparent that she spoke better Anishinaabemowin than he did.

When Ben returned home he found the three of them sitting at the table (though Anang was propped up with pillows to make it more comfortable) comparing their histories and folklore with each other. Interestingly, while the timing of their migration westward was delayed by the differences in when the English of her world arrived in North America, the rest of their heritage appeared to be eerily similar. In fact, their stories were so close to each other that when Ben walked in he found them speaking in their native tongue and finishing each other’s sentences as they told the tales of their people to each other.

After making some tea for the two elders, he sat down with them and was surprised when it was Anang who abruptly ended the conversation and forced the other two men to speak in English.

“No, it’s alright,” Ben assured her, but Anang only seemed to become irritated with him.

“It is disrespectful to speak in front of someone in a language they can’t understand,” she insisted. “Do you let everyone disrespect you?” she demanded to know of him.

“It’s not about respect,” Ben answered back while pouring her a cup of tea. “Tim and Paul’s tribe was stripped of as much of their culture as the American government could manage to take away from them. Many of the tribes here had to rebuild those cultures from left over stories and tales left behind for them. Getting to speak to someone who grew up the way their ancestors did is a treat they probably never thought they would enjoy. I want to let them have that,” he assured her.

Anang was taken aback by his answer, though she still remained skeptical. Both Tim and Paul, however were quite satisfied with Ben’s response, and Tim was more than a little appreciative.

“They took most everything from us,” Paul explained to Anang. “Where you come from, they will try to do the same to your people, by the way it sounds. They even came close to destroying our language.”

“And you still can be friends with one of them?” she asked in reference to Ben.

“All that was a long time ago,” Tim informed her. “We have a lot of memories of some of those things, but even by our time things were changing and some of his kind were starting to come along and wanted to help us rebuild what we’d lost. The worst of it all was centuries ago now. I’ve had a number of good friends who are waabishkiiwed.”

“I’ve never even seen one before who was unshifted,” she remarked, glancing over to Ben. “The school masters were extremely strict with us. They treated us like…” she started, then cringed, not wanting to finish her sentence.

“Let me guess- dogs?” Ben asked her. Anang lifted her head and stared at him, then nodded to him.

“Oh,” Paul grunted with sudden realization. “That’s why it hurt so much to hear your own people calling you that.”

“Yes,” she answered in a soft, weak voice.

“I hope you can understand- no one here can shift forms,” Ben added. “We don’t mean any disrespect.” She nodded to him and then turned her focus back to her tea again.”

“It tastes like the leaf stew the English drink,” she commented.

“Yeah, the Americans fought a war over this stuff with the English here,” Tim added dryly.

A few minutes later Oliver finally arrived and gathered Ben up to investigate the site of Anang’s first excursion across the veil four years before along with some directions from Anang on where she might have slipped behind the waterfall.

The walk out there was uneventful, though Ben kept his hand ready on his rifle at all times while Oliver quizzed him about the encounter from four years ago. Once they reached Ben’s deer stand, Oliver walked around with some equipment, finding next to nothing, then traded devices to get the same result, then again and then finally on the fourth attempt he found some readings that were of interest to him.

“It’s very faint,” he told Ben, “but it looks like there’s still some evidence of an event here, he said. He walked around, then up and down a path that just so happened to match the one where Anang had made her egress from their encounter.

“It was dark, but I think that’s where the dogman went that night,” Ben confirmed and watched as Oliver traipsed around until he was able to determine a couple of trails that coincidentally led in the same direction that Anang stated she’d gone before finding herself back on her side again.

“It’s very faint,” Oliver reported after taking a number of detailed notes. “In fact, it’s so faint that I wouldn’t normally even give it any credence if I wasn’t able to find direct trails.

“So what do you think?” Ben asked him.

“This is some of the best evidence I’ve gotten, but it’s not strong enough for me to dial anything in. Would you mind taking me where you said those men were the other day?”

They then marched through the woods until they arrived at the point in the trail where Ben noticed the men searching and then Oliver began again, though this time the device he used at the previous location was largely unresponsive. Oliver searched through his bag, producing a Geiger counter and used it, following it along until he reached a spot with trampled down vegetation where Ben had been subdued and the Geiger counter began ticking.

“There’s low level radiation,” Oliver reported. “Nothing to worry about, but… I think they did this on purpose to kill any trails that might be here. Oliver recalibrated his equipment and struggled for some time, but after a number of attempts, he was finally able to get readings again. “It’s here, but I can’t get anything clear because of the interference.” Ben then approached and looked over his shoulder, then nudged Oliver and glanced in the direction where he had found Anang in the creek bed. Oliver nodded and recalibrated, then eventually seemed to find the trail he was looking for and began to follow it.

“So if these guys are some sort of government agency like you said, what are the odds we’ll find something they couldn’t?” Ben asked as they slowly trudged along in the direction of Anang’s hiding place.

“About as good as them,” Oliver answered. “We don’t know what they know, but we do know that they’re always investigating at least as hard as we do when we come across sites like this. If they had bothered to give you any kind of respect and asked you to take them where you had your sighting four years ago, they probably could have found it. But instead they did it all in secret and wandered around searching for a needle in a haystack. I may not know exactly what I’m looking for, but thanks to you I at least have some kind of idea of where to look,” he said, then stopped and shifted equipment again. From that point forward, he was taking readings on two different devices and his eyes were wide and full of greed as he began taking up the trail directly to Anang’s hiding place without any more guidance on Ben’s part. Half way there, Oliver stopped and back tracked, recalibrated and then set back on the trail again until they came to the creek bed and Oliver approached Anang’s hiding place without any further direction from Ben.

“Something definitely happened here,” he reported excitedly. “I’ve never gotten such good readings before on any of my hunts!”

It was at this point that Oliver felt it was safe to bring in Anang, so he radioed back to the cabin, asking Tim to bring over a bag that was sitting on the back seat of his car. Oliver then had Ben sit down and wait while Oliver searched up and down the creek bed in search of other clues, all the while tittering over the data he was recording.

When Tim, Paul and Anang arrived, Anang was barely able to function any longer on her crutches and was relying heavily on Tim and Paul to help her along. Ben had to actually carry her down into the creek bed over to her hiding place and there they stood while Anang discussed what she remembered before reaching this location and digging in to hide. She recounted her steps before that as best as she could, then they sat put while Tim and Oliver trekked back over the trail they’d already covered for some time before returning and reporting it was time to head back with Ben Carrying Anang on his back for the hike.

Once back in the cabin, Oliver began plugging his equipment into a laptop computer and downloaded the results. As he did so, he reported his findings to the group.

“I can’t quite pinpoint the spot where Anang crossed over because of the interference from the radiation those agents spread, BUT, I did learn something important. There wasn’t a single place where Anang crossed over. I think this is why she was confused on where she was going when she was running from them. The space-time fold doesn’t cross over in a single place. It’s more like several layers that move and shift as you pass through. At some points, it was thin enough that she was mostly here, others where she was mostly there again, but when she finally made it through, it was exactly like crawling out from underneath a waterfall you’d crossed through. This is why it’s so hard to find or predict and each time someone comes through to our side, it’s going to be different.”

“Can we get her home?” Ben asked Oliver. Anang lifted her head while reclined on the couch and looked at him, a slight smile crossing her lips as she glanced at him.

“THAT is going to be difficult,” Oliver answered. “If I’m right, that night you saw her a few years ago, she didn’t’ cross all the way through. You were still sitting in the edges of this waterfall. Anang’s people are right about so much that I’m just going to assume that they’re right about the dangers of crossing all the way through. Last time she found herself inside of the waterfall and wandered through mostly to our side but then found her way back. This time she completely emerged on the other side. I can still see some of the readings I had out on the trail on her, but the amplitude is shifted. I think that crossing through from our side is much harder than from theirs, and she might be stuck. At least for now.”

“Do you think we can eventually find a way to get her back through again?” Ben pressed firmly, and again Anang smiled slightly over his dedication to getting her home.

“I think so? But not based on anything I’ve seen from my own readings. It’s more based on second hand stories I’ve heard. It’ll take some time.”

“I can’t go back right now anyways,” Anang interrupted. “Nenaginad would find me immediately and kill me.”

“We’ll work on that too,” Ben promised her, then shifted back to Oliver again. “But we do need to find a way to get her home.”

“I have to think about it,” Oliver answered him, showing great regret. “And I’ll probably need some help figuring it out. BUT, I think that I can figure out how to invert the fold.”

“And what does that do for us?” Tim asked.

“The fold is moving. It comes and goes. If we invert the fold while someone from the other side is standing still inside of it, it SHOULD push the fold back over them and leave them standing on the other side again. I think…”

“Can’t they just come back through again?” Ben asked.

“Not right away,” Oliver replied. “They’ll probably have to wait until the next time it appears to even try.

“That’s… amazing!” Tim exclaimed, beaming with joy.

“How long?” Ben asked.

“I’m not sure. But I’ll make it my top priority. If it works, then we can just… shove them back under the waterfall and they’ll pop back out the other side again! We can kick them out of our world!”

“That’ll be a lot more effective than trying to shoot the bastards,” Paul added. It was clear in his eyes that he was reliving something from his past as he said it.

Oliver and the others left later that evening after thoroughly covering all the bases of what their next steps were. Oliver was both excited and frustrated because on the one hand he had clear empirical evidence of dogmen and his theory about the space-time fold they slipped through, and on top of that, he had the experience of actually meeting one and learning directly from her. On the other hand, he would need to be exceedingly careful about who he shared any of this information with for fear that the government agency involved in studying these phenomena might get some glimpse into exactly what he had discovered.

While he wasn’t able to give anything resembling a prediction of when the next fold might occur, he was confident that Anang would have some time to recover, so he assured them both they could rest easy for the moment at least.

Oliver was going to take his data and discoveries and analyze them, and then start working on a way to invert the space-time fold, leaving much more mundane tasks related to the care and recovery of Anang to Ben and the others.

The next day, Ben helped Anang up and get her cleaned off as the bandages and stitches still stopped her from properly freshening up. He made her breakfast, and Anang was more respectful of everything he cooked for her, but still strongly preferred the meat above all the rest. After breakfast, Tim again showed up to watch over Anang while he took another couple of jobs not too far from the cabin and then Ben returned with a used car in tow that he said he’d picked up with the intent to fix and then sell. He pushed the vehicle into an outbuilding on the property and worked in there with Anang sitting in a lawn chair bundled up in winter clothes and a blanket next to a propane heater while he toiled away to get the engine running again. Ben paid her little mind as he worked, but Anang watched him intently, mostly in silence with little to no expression.

“You’re not much for conversation, are you?” he asked with a mirthful smirk in the middle of the project.

“This is the most I’ve talked since my village was conquered,” she answered, but still with little emotion showing on her face.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean any offense,” Ben assured her, then continued on with trying to fix the car again.

Another day later things were still quiet and Ben finally decided it was time to get her out of the cabin again and took her on a trip up to the reservation to meet with Tim and his friends up at the shop they tended to hang out at. Most of the conversation there was Ben explaining just what a reservation was, but once all her questions were answered she seemed to understand that this was the logical end point of where her own people were headed in her own world.

When they arrived at the shop, all four men were sitting and laughing softly over some shared joke as Ben and Anang pulled up. One (Stanley) made a comment in his native tongue as he normally did as Ben helped her out of the truck and Anang turned to look directly at him as he spoke, clearly understanding his every word and it was here as they stood in shadow away from the shop lights that the other two of Tim’s friends saw her glowing amber eyes and stopped dead in their tracks. They remained in shocked silence as Ben and Anang approached, though Tim and Paul were accustomed by now to the dogman among them and offered what assistance they could to help her over. Tim produced an extra chair and sat her in it and fetched her some hot tea to keep her bones warmed as they crowded around the fire and lit up as many lights around them to dampen out Anang’s eyes as much as possible.

“So you’re really one of them,” the final member of Tim’s friends (Daniel) muttered as she settled in and relaxed after the pain and struggle to hobble up to join them.

“Where I’m from, you are the ones people have difficulty believing exist.” Stanley then commented something in his native tongue, and though Anang was very polite in her demeanor and tone when she spoke to him also in that language, it was evident that she was lecturing him. Stanley quickly took offense and barked at Anang, but Anang was once again very polite in her response and left Stanley sitting and stewing in silence. “You know their language. He has shown us respect, we should do the same,” she added in English to make sure Ben was up to speed, however Ben paid the comment little mind and instead leaned in to warm his hands by the fire. After a moment to sulk, Stanley again muttered something in his native tongue, but this time Anang didn’t even bother to look at him, which seemed to only injure him further.

The others all sat chuckling at Stanley’s stubbornness, but after a few moments to bask in the shared joke, Paul broke out a pack of cigars and a box of matches. He just finished lighting his own and was in the middle of lighting one for Tim as he leaned in when the law enforcement officer from a couple weeks prior pulled up and climbed out of the car.

“You’re bringing your girlfriends now?” he asked Ben with an air of disapproval.

“Evening Gary,” Paul commented while unwrapping his own cigar from the wrapper to wait his turn.

“Paul,” the officer called back unemotionally, but then turned his attention back to Ben. “You know this is our land, not your party spot, right?” he lectured Ben.

“I’m just here to hang out with some friends,” Ben answered the officer before turning his attention back to the fire. Stanley then muttered something in his native tongue to the officer, but the officer ignored it and remained fixated on Ben.

“So how long you planning on being here tonight?”

“Not too long,” Ben answered, the warmth and politeness now drying up from his tone.

“That’s not an answer,” the officer declared, and then pulled on Ben’s shoulder. Ben now immediately stood, clearly ready for a fight, which caused Anang to lift her head, both in surprise but also with a certain level of satisfaction.

“I was invited,” Ben declared back. “I’m not causing anyone any problems.”

“We have a casino. You could at least make yourself useful and spend your time and money down there if you’re gonna be on our land,” the officer said as he pressed his finger into Ben’s chest. Ben’s jaw clenched and he leaned into the confrontation until the mood suddenly shifted and the other four sets of eyes in attendance turned to look at Anang as she leaned forward in her seat, completely ignoring the pain and watching the pending fight with immense eagerness and a voracious hunger for impending violence.

“If he does, he’ll be locked up,” Tim warned Anang. This comment was enough to catch the attention of the officer, who turned to Tim, then looked over to Anang looking at her closely for the first time. He now found himself stuck in a mental loop as he tried to process conflicting features in her face. Anang only growled with frustration at Tim’s caution that once again stopped Ben from standing up for himself and she glared angrily at the officer, almost as if she were holding back a wall of bloodlust.

“Who are you?” he asked Anang, who then looked to Ben. Ben smirked at her mischievously and then nodded to her and after a moment to think, she looked back to the officer and answered him in her native language, which was a massive surprise for the man and stunned him into silence over the unexpected turn of events. The officer looked around at the other men, who were all now suddenly busying themselves with the process of lighting up their cigars and actively ignoring the conflict. With no one else left to lean on, he turned back to Anang who was glaring at him impatiently and he attempted to speak back in the same language, but by the way he stammered and struggled it was obvious that he was anything but fluent in the language. Anang’s face suddenly turned from one of anger to one of disgust, which left him blushing quite heavily, and this earned him another tongue lashing from Anang in their language.

“Are you… part Ojibwe?” he asked her, which further disgusted her.

“Ojibwe,” she mocked back at him. “I am more Anishinaabe than you are,” she answered with disdain.

The officer then turned, his ego bruised, but also without any further retorts in mind and he began to walk away with his tail tucked between his legs.

“Hey,” Ben called out before he got much more than arm’s length away. “Come on, we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Why don’t you stay and hang out for a few minutes? We can smokum peace pipe,” Ben joked with a shit eating grin, but the other four men suddenly stopped again and all stared at him as conspicuously as was humanly possible, turning the air both silent and awkward.

“Did you really just say that?” Stanley demanded for the first time in English wearing a sour expression. “That shit is fucking offensive! Who the fuck do you think you are coming on to an Indian Reservation and saying shit like ‘smokum peace pipe?’ The fucking gall!” Stanley excoriated. Anang’s face suddenly went awash with surprise herself and she sat back in her chair, uncertain how to respond. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!?!?”

“Well, it was a joke. Apparently a bad one,” Ben answered back calmly and politely.

“Jesus Christ. Watch your fucking mouth when you come out here,” Stanley lectured once again. The officer smirked after seeing Ben so thoroughly repudiated for his insensitive comment and lifted his head again, but then turned to go back to his squad car only to stop again when Stanley called out to him. “Naw, come on! You can spare a few minutes of your time. Come back!”

The officer hesitated, but after a moment to think, he walked back up to them and accepted a fresh cigar and took his time unwrapping it. A moment later, he was leaning over the barrel with the fire in it and accepting a light from Tim and slowly puffing the cigar to a full light. Before long, they were all standing there with cigars, breathing the smoke in and puffing it back out again in big billowy puffs of smoke.

“Yeah,” Stanley said with a contented nod. “There were go. We smokum peace pipe.” The officer looked at Stanley with a confused, contorted expression, then the other three older men began snorting and snickering, while Ben’s expression was one of betrayal. “What?” he asked of Ben.

“How is it funny when you say it, but I get chewed out?” Ben asked with hurt.

“Cuz I have comedic timing,” Stanley answered calmly, and then took a long puff on his cigar. “You’re just a dumbass,” he finished, which caused all of the older men to laugh even harder. Ben joined in with little resistance, while the officer slowly allowed the joke to take seed and began laughing as well, breaking the tensions and after watching them all, finally Anang allowed herself to smile at their interaction and then chuckle softly to herself while watching them.

After settling down, Stanley decided to push just a little harder, saying in a deadpan voice to Ben, “Bet you’ve been dreaming of making that stupid peace pipe joke since you were a kid watching looney tunes cartoons. How’s it feel to wait your whole life to use that stupid joke and fail completely?”

“I’d imagine about the same as you felt the first time you were with a woman,” Ben answered back with surprising calm while the officer’s face and eyes went wide and Anang nearly fell out of her chair. Paul, Tim and Daniel, however, all broke out into such uproarious laughter that Tim nearly fell over and Paul and Daniel had to take a seat. Stanley blushed a little, and then muttered something in his native tongue.

“He said that was a good reply,” Anang informed Ben, who smiled and bowed slightly to her in thanks. The reservation officer stayed long enough to finish his cigar and share a couple more laughs and some more proper introductions to Anang with the group before setting off again on his patrol, leaving the six of them alone once again. Most of the rest of the night was spent getting to know Anang better by the remaining two gentlemen that hadn’t already met her before and by the time they were headed back to Ben’s cabin, Anang was wearing lingering soft smile as she stared out the window and watched the dark landscape speed by her.

Three nights later, Ben and Anang returned to the shop Tim and his friends hung out at and found two young women around Anang’s age waiting to meet the girl they’d heard rumors about. Anang was shy and reticent at first, but within a half an hour or so the girls convinced her to come inside the shop where they could socialize a little more privately. They pushed her to take off the layers she was wearing to stay warm in the cold air, and then they offered immense amounts of sympathy over her many injuries, asking how she was so badly hurt.

Anang explained that she had been chased by a man who was trying to kill her, though she left out details of who he was or the background for why he was trying to kill her. When the two women (named Liz and Deanna) asked where she was from as they had never seen her before, Anang, she relied on some advice from Oliver and told them she was from a small community near Forts Folle Avoine, which was as true as he could translate her village’s location without explaining that it was on an entirely different world.

This time when Gary the tribal law enforcement officer arrived, he actually stopped and enjoyed a cigar without any prompting as well as checked in on Anang to awkwardly hit on her. Anang was largely oblivious to the attempt, while Liz and Deanna were quick to usher him out and scold him for hitting on a woman so much younger than him.

Anang did everything in her power to simply remain quiet and observe rather than engage unnecessarily, however after a number of conversations with her over the previous days to explain how things worked in his world, Ben was now openly encouraging her to be more social so long as she was careful not to speak on anything that might lead others to go down the path of questioning her identity and origin.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, Anang settled in to a regular routine with Ben, gradually becoming more ambulatory and even eventually graduating by choice from the couch in front of the fire to a bed. Her first night in the bed was difficult as she struggled to find a position that was comfortable, but though it took her a great deal of time to fall asleep, once she was out she remained completely knocked out until Ben arrived in the morning to wake her. By the end of that time frame, she was even able to take her first shower, which were another luxury she’d never even imagined before, and she would have remained in there had Ben not retrieved her due to the risk of water running into the bag surrounding her cast or soak into her many cuts and lacerations. Another interesting development was her skin, while still quite pale, was softening considerably and her hair was developing a rather vibrant sheen, which her new friends were quite complimentary of.

Just over three weeks after Ben found her, Anang was able to move around quite well on her crutches and all but one set of her stitches had been removed, though she was still struggling with some pain from the ribs she had broken and her leg was still out of commission in the cast. She’d gotten used to many of the creature comforts of this world and she was especially fond of hot showers, though she absolutely refused to use the Irish Spring soap Ben had on hand and with the help of her new friends Liz and Deanna she had started them both on an all natural lavender soap. Not only did she adore the smell, but it had the benefit of helping to mask her scent when she lathered heavily enough up on it, so Ben obliged her by buying several bars. Also over the course of that time, Ben and Tim convinced Anang the importance of learning about any weak points her people had while shifted so that they could attack them there when they finally came for her and in exchange, they promised to teach her in detail everything she wanted to know about the thunder sticks Ben’s people carried. She was hesitant at first, but having a complete understanding of these weapons before she returned home was too tempting an offer to pass up as it meant a clear understanding of the threats when one of her people crossed through the waterfall.

After a little more than three weeks one evening, they were sitting at the dinner table eating a meal of pot roast that Ben had slow cooked through the day when Anang paused from shoveling meat into her mouth like a starving puppy to look at Ben with a question in her eyes.

“I’ve met so many of my own people here,” she began, referencing their now regular trips to the reservation to meet with Tim and his friends where a growing crowd was beginning to show up each time, most of them curious about this new woman that spoke their native tongue completely fluently, but also because it was becoming a very popular spot to hang out in general. “But only a few of them have names from our own tribe. Why is that?” she asked. “Is it because so many of them have bred with your kind?”

“That might have something to do with it,” Ben pondered, picking through his food at a much more civilized pace. “Remember the different phases the Ojibwe went through here that got them to where they are now?”

“You know I prefer to be called by the name we call ourselves,” she scolded while pointing her fork at him.

“It’s habit. Plus, I never feel like I’m saying Anishinaabe quite right.”

“You are doing very well. For waabishkiiwed,” she encouraged. Ben laughed her comment off and shook his head at her before continuing on.

“Well, I’m not completely sure about this because I haven’t had a whole lot of experience with the Anishinaabe before I met Tim. I think some of it might be what you said. I think another part is how much of their culture has been stripped away over the years, and I think a final part is that I’ve heard that some Native Americans sometimes have their tribal name and an English one for everyone outside of the group, which is helpful because a lot of us have a lot of trouble with Anishinaabe words.”

“You think our language is difficult?” she asked him.

“I’m having trouble with it, but maybe I’m not the smartest person.”

“You seem very smart to me,” Anang complimented while staring down at her lap until Ben slid her plate forward slightly to encourage her to continue eating.

That night, Anang found herself in bed at an early hour and asleep quite easily. Late into the night, however, she woke with a start, though she remained completely still as she listened and smelled around her with painstaking care. After a few moments, she rolled over and leaned up to the window, cracking it open and putting her nose up to the crack before closing it as carefully and quietly as she could, then hopped on her good leg with surprising stealth over to Ben’s room and up to his bed before falling onto the bed and grabbing his arm.

“It’s happening,” she whispered into his ear as he woke with an immense start.

“What is?” he whispered back.

“The waterfall. Someone can pass through,” she warned him as softly as she could.

“You’re sure?” She nodded emphatically, and then he rolled over and grabbed his rifle, made sure it was ready for action as quietly as he could, then repositioned himself to be able to aim at the window.

For several minutes, they remained completely still and silent, even trying to control their breathing, but when she queued him that nothing was nearby, he got on his hands and knees and peaked out the window. Not seeing anything, he cracked the window again and had Anang use her senses to search for any threats. When she could find none, he opened the window wider and asked her to listen, though he relaxed quite a bit as he heard the distant sound of life rummaging around in the woods. Anang was able to identify a couple of small animals in the immediate area, but there was no sign of threat, so he withdrew, set up a large pile of pillows and made sure the door was barricaded, then sat down, propped up with his plush construction and sat ready with the rifle. Anang followed his lead and covered all that she could of them with blankets, and then she leaned against him, curled up against his body and hugged his arm while they waited for the next change in events.

It was two hours later when Ben realized that Anang was fast asleep against him and seemingly now without a care in the world while Ben sat watch. He remained up until sunrise, when Anang woke again and looked up at him with an expressionless gaze. “You alright?” he asked her in a whisper and she nodded, still staring up at him. “Is it still happening?” he asked her. Anang smelled the air, then accepted some assistance to the window and opened it, only a little at first, then completely and she stuck her head out, looking around and assessing the dimly lit morning air.

“It’s over,” she assured him.

“OK. I’m gonna get a little more sleep for a while, then,” he informed her and crawled back into bed, but was more than a little surprised when he found Anang crawling in with him and snuggling up against him. He looked at her, trying to understand just why she was still clinging to him, but she just stared back with those same expressionless eyes as if everything were perfectly normal.

All being said and done, Ben let himself drift off to sleep again with Anang holding on tightly to him until he finally was ready to get up and go about his day again a few hours later.
The very first thing they did once they were awake and moving around was get in the truck and drive to a location where Ben could get reliable signal and then he sent a message to Oliver using a code word Oliver had left with them in the event that there was another appearance of the veil.

They then returned to the cabin and prepared for the day with a light breakfast and showers. Over their meal together, Ben was a little more observant of Anang after spending the night in bed with her wrapped around him, but she behaved as reserved and distant as she normally did, apparently thinking nothing of sharing a bed with a man for a night.

To their surprise, Tim arrived at midday to report that Oliver was making the trip back up to see them and would arrive by the next morning and also with a message that the kinds of agents they had seen when Anang appeared normally didn’t show unless something came through the veil.

Ben did manage to get a short job in the mid afternoon and left Tim to look after Anang and returned that night where the three of them shared a dinner. Then after dinner and Ben went to bed early due to how little sleep he’d gotten the night before, and was just beginning to drift off when he heard his door open and then the sound of crutches moving across the floor before being gently set down against the night stand and then he felt Anang gently slip underneath the covers and wrap herself around his arm just as she had the night before. He lay there like that for a few moments, then pulled that arm up and wrapped it around her, but much to his surprise, she only took this as an invitation to curl up and snuggle against him laying her head on his chest and settling in for some much needed rest.

The next day Ben awoke to find Anang in the exact same position as when he went to bed. He turned to look down to see her head turned toward their feet and using his chest as a pillow while she was curled up half in a ball. This slight movement was enough to bring Anang to, and she craned her neck upward and stared at him with the same emotionless expression she normally wore.

“Everything okay?” he asked her and received a simple nod in response.

Oliver arrived during breakfast with a thin layer of sweat on his face after a frantic trip where he drove straight through the night. Ben offered to let him get some rest, but Oliver refused, too eager to investigate the area so soon after a space-time fold had occurred. The three of them set out across the property based on Anang’s interpretation of where she sensed the waterfall and before long, Oliver’s instruments were spiking, showing considerable activity that hadn’t faded quite yet. He took reading after reading, switching out device after device and scribbled notes frantically for hours and once they were confident that no others had entered the area, Ben hoisted Anang up onto his back to carry her as her crutches weren’t very reliable on the uneven terrain and her ribs hadn’t fully healed yet.

Hours later, they returned to the Cabin to find Tim and Paul sitting on the front step to the porch and invited them in for some lunch. Oliver took a much-needed shower, and when he came back, he filled the others in on his progress since they’d last met.

“I can definitely invert the field,” he informed them up front, then reached into his bag and withdrew a small, rectangular device he’d cobbled together. “All you need to do is get this device somewhere in the thick of the field and trigger it with this remote,” he informed them. “Make sure that the dogman is right next to it though before you activate it,” he finished, though his head jerked to Anang who’s face was right over her plate and she’d only lifted it to glare angrily and growl unpleasantly after hearing the word “dogman.”

“Sorry,” he apologized immediately, becoming instantly sheepish. Anang grunted unhappily, then began shoveling food into her mouth again, intent on ignoring him. “Just make sure the device is as close to the… intruder as possible, but also in the midst of the field.”

“And how do we know where the field is?” Ben asked.

“I’m working on something to detect that,” Oliver answered excitedly. “But, after pinpointing three separate locations, I think it’s safe to say that there is a limited space where the field can exist. I think this cabin is just outside of the affected area. Once I have the data in my computer for this last event, I’ll print out a map for you showing the levels of the field. I’m positive all three overlap, so the next time it appears, just get somewhere inside of where those appearances overlap and you should be good. After that, all you need to do is make sure the intruder is as close to the device as possible.”

“What if we just stuck the device to him,” Tim posited. “Like put something on the back of it like glue or tape?”

“That would be perfect!” Oliver exclaimed. “BUT,” he added quite firmly, then turned to Anang, “I need to warn you. I’ve been combing over my data for weeks, and while I’m positive this will invert the field, I don’t know for sure what that will do. I hope it will reverse the flow of the field and pull it back over him and deposit him on the other side, but I don’t know. What I can determine is that you began to show activity on the electromagnetic spectrum when we were walking through where the most recent field was earlier, so I know you are effected.”

“Does that mean there is a way for me to go back through the waterfall?” she asked, struggling to keep up with the explanation.

“I think so. I’m almost certain you could, but probably not without some extra help because you’ve come all the way through and stayed through for so long. But it doesn’t matter- it still causes you to vibrate in the field, but it does nothing to me or Ben. We can’t pass through.”

“So if he.. triggers… this thing… I might get pushed back through to my side?”

“I don’t think so, but maybe. That’s actually the best case scenario.”

“She would be alone there,” Ben pointed out. “And still injured.”

“Yes, but like I said, that’s the best case scenario. I’ve been going over all of my data and comparing it to the caves you mentioned behind the waterfall when you cross through. It doesn’t make sense given the data I’m seeing. I’m missing something, but I don’t know what. My point is, DO NOT be anywhere near that device when it’s activated, Anang. Nothing good can come from it. I don’t know if it will push you back to the other side and leave you alone there with your enemies, or if you’ll get caught and stuck in the field, or if something else might happen. So whatever you do, make sure you are nowhere near that device when it goes off. I’m willing to take a chance that it might hurt someone who’s trying to harm you, but I’m not willing to take a chance on you. We’ll find another way to get you home and make sure it’s safe for you. So promise me that the moment you see this device turn on, you will get as far away as you can.”

“It could hurt me?”

“It could,” Oliver confirmed. “Or worse. I’m sure it will work. I’m sure this will invert the field; I’m just not so sure what inverting the field will do anymore. I’m pretty sure, though, even if it doesn’t hurt him and send him back, it will give you time to deal with him.”

“And detecting the field?” Tim asked.

“I need some more time,” Oliver insisted. “Maybe a few more weeks. But thanks to Anang, I have everything I need to be able to figure out how to detect it AND bring us right to the center of it.”

“So exactly how big is this field?” Ben asked.

“There are four different layers,” Oliver explained enthusiastically. “The center layer is about eight to nine meters across. That’s the point where you actually cross through to another world. The other layers you need to kind of navigate through them and they will move and bend, sometimes over each other. You have to pass through each of them first before you can successfully cross. The second layer extends out from about the eight or nine meter mark to as far as twenty meters. But like I said, it’s always moving and fluctuating. The next one can go to about twenty-five meters and the last one can go as far as fifty.

“So we’re looking at something that’s about one hundred yards across?” Tim asked.

“It depends,” Oliver answered him. “It’s not circular, and the shape doesn’t stay the same. It moves a lot like a kaleidoscope. Navigating through this isn’t easy. You either make it through on just dumb luck, or you have insanely good senses that let you make it through.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly what I’d hoped for, but this is pretty good news,” Tim celebrated while patting Ben on the back.

“So do you think you can contain this guy that’s after Anang?” Oliver asked.

“We can kill him,” Ben reported grimly. “There’s no way we could contain him. With Anang’s help, we should be able to take him down. Once she’s back on her feet again that is.”

“Well, she’s healed a lot since I met her. Can you shift now?”

“I’ll break the cast,” she answered him. “I have to stay in this form until my leg is healed.”

“But you’re strong enough otherwise?” Oliver pressed, and Anang nodded in response.

“She’s healing very nicely,” Tim added. “She won’t have much use for us for much longer,” he added with a smile a wink to Anang. Anang smiled back, but lowered her head slightly submissively.

After that, Oliver took a break to sleep in the final room of the house and Ben, Anang and Tim went out onto the property to practice shooting, giving Anang finally some real life experience with firearms versus only dry firing and explanations up to this point. All went very well until Anang sat at a bench with the rifle and stared down the sights as instructed, but when she was instructed to fire on the target, she struggled.

Her first shots at twenty-five yards were horrible when they went down to check the target, but most hit the paper. The biggest issue was Anang was quietly trembling from the experience, though she refused to discuss it and she turned down offers to stop. Eventually, they moved the targets out to fifty yards, and that was when the real problems began. Anang didn’t get a single shot on target no matter how she was coached. Both men were thoroughly confused, given the fact that Anang eventually dialed her shots in at twenty five yards to at least hitting the target, but nothing seemed to work for her at double that distance. Then, on a hunch, Ben took out a target and began writing on it. When he was done, he walked a short distance away and pinned the target to a tree and went back to Anang and asked her to read it. Both men were absolutely shocked to discover that she couldn’t read anything but the very top line, written in extremely large letters with a sharpie, and even that was difficult for her. Even more shocking was how none of her issues with seeing were a surprise at all for Anang.

After some discussion to root out the issue, Anang finally explained that her eyesight was perfectly normal for her people. They could see a little better at night, due to their unique eyes, but they relied almost solely on their ears and noses to track down prey and anything else out in the wild. Good eyesight wasn’t really necessary, so none of her people thought anything of the fact that they couldn’t see things at a distance, especially during the day.

“Well that’s great,” Tim grumbled unhappily. “How the hell do we explain her eyes to an optometrist? There’s no way that he won’t notice immediately how different they are form ours.”

“What are you saying?” Anang asked him, utterly bewildered. “You can change how well you see?”

“Yeah,” Ben answered as if it were obvious. “You’ve seen the glasses some people wear on their faces. That let’s them see as good or even better than the best eyes of our kind. And some people wear special lenses right on their eyes and others get surgeries to see that well.”

“You can do that?” she gasped, utterly flabbergasted.

“Well, at least we know they’re not completely perfect killing machines,” Tim mused.

“Yeah, but what good does that do us? We already know she can smell and hear as good as the best animals we’ve ever heard of, and even with the deer we can’t really cover our scent, we just kind of douse it until our own scent doesn’t seem as big of a deal to them. So we can’t really hide from them, even if they can’t see.”

“Yeah, but we’re not fighting deer,” Tim reasoned. “Nenaginad is still going to need to see in order to sink his claws and teeth into us.”

“I can see you just fine from here,” Anang pointed out.

“Gimme some time. Maybe I can figure something out to use this to our advantage,” Tim insisted.

[CKent45]

Two days later was Halloween and when Ben and Anang arrived at Tim’s shop they found the four men still sitting out in front around the fire, but the shop itself was fully lit and bouncing and thumping with the activity of a party.

“What is this?” Anang asked, uncharacteristically concerned.

“Oh, right. Today is Halloween,” Ben recalled while searching for a place to park and becoming squeamish as he realized that there were no spaces under the light. Ben went up and down the parking lot, not willing to allow Anang to traverse the space in the dark where her amber eyes would be apparent and eventually decided to pull up and let her out directly in front of their four friends. Anang resisted, not wanting to approach the group without Ben, but Ben insisted, pointing out that if she didn’t others were likely to pour out of the building after noticing their arrival and then they would see Anang making her way through the shadows with glowing amber eyes.

She accepted his reasoning and let him walk around the front of the truck and open her door, then help her out and escort her up to Tim and his friends, who were waiting patiently. They accepted Anang and helped her into a seat and then Ben hopped back in his truck and drove it to the end of the lot to park. Before he could return, however, Liz, Deanna and three other women from on the reservation all dressed in costumes rushed out to greet Anang, who simply smiled politely and listened as she normally did while they talked her ear off.

“Where’s that white guy?” one asked her. Anang turned to look over in Ben’s direction but before she could answer, Tim did the honor for her.

“He had to park his truck at the end of the lot because no one was willing to leave a spot open for Anang.”

“Oh,” Liz replied with wide eyes and a guilty expression. “I’m so sorry, Anang! I forgot you’re on crutches!”

Stanley began to speak in his native language, but stopped mid sentence and restarted in English after realizing that much of what he was saying was going over their heads. “The white boy figured it out for you,” he scolded. They rolled their eyes at him, then grabbed onto Anang to drag her inside where a number of younger people like Anang were mingling surrounded by loud music and flashing lights.

“You know her ribs haven’t healed yet, right?” Paul added angrily as Anang reflexively resisted being pulled on, stopping them in their tracks.

“I thought we were just going to sit around the fire like we always do,” Anang said in a half pleading voice to the elder men. Tim and Paul then took her arms and gently led her to a bench to sit and catch her breath while Liz and Deanna sat down flanking her and the remainder of the young women stood and watched.

“You’ve become rather popular here as of late,” Tim explained. “And it’s Halloween, so your friends wanted to celebrate, so they started arriving and before we knew it, they’d set up a party inside.”

“Oh come on!” Deanna complained bitterly. “You guys always just sit here and smoke your cigars! This place is so dull! Is it so bad just to make it fun just for once?”

“Your music is awful,” Daniel complained.

“Better than that ancient garbage you listen to!” Another girl fired back.

“How could you?” Anang suddenly burst out loudly and accusatorially. All the girls suddenly sat upright and stared at her with shock and fear. “They are our elders! In my family, we never spoke to our elders like this! My brothers and I would be absolutely ashamed to speak with such disrespect!”

“You sound like one of THEM,” one of the other girls accused to a chorus of soft snickers, but Anang stood firm, standing up on her one good leg and pointing at her with a fierce, scowling expression.

“We will all be their age very, very soon,” she lectured. “Imagine how YOU will feel when YOUR grandchildren speak down to you after all you do and all you sacrifice for THEM! Think back when you were children. It feels like it was a lifetime ago, but they were still elders while we were just infants, and they looked over us and protected us, and now it is our turn to be standing and looking over the young and protecting them, but instead all you do is come here into their lodge and you speak down on them. I have had everything ripped away from me, but I would rather die alone than reject my elders, especially when they helped me and healed me when no one else would even look at me! This is NOT our way!”

Tim and the others each stood silent with pursed lips and glances back and forth to each other, surprised, but also impressed by Anang’s words.

“Alright, alright,” Tim said gently, stepping in between them all. “Things aren’t all black and white here. There can be a little of both. We can have some fun and party a little, and maybe not make us old timers feel like complete relics,” he offered politely.

“They should thank you for even being allowed in your lodge,” Anang insisted.

“We’ll work it out,” Tim assured her, then helped Liz and Deanna up and walked them back to their friends. “Give us just a minute. She’s become a little protective as of late, so can you just give her a minute to calm down and we’ll talk to her?”

Liz and Deana both looked to each other, nodded and turned, but they’d only gotten a couple steps before Liz turned back and looked at Anang. “I didn’t mean it,” she told Anang with genuine remorse. “I know you’ve been through so much more than I could imagine, and I know how much they’ve done to help you. I didn’t mean it.” The girl who’d spat about Daniel’s music also nodded in agreement, then stepped inside to give Anang some much needed space.

“You were too gentle with them,” she told Tim, though there was a certain begging quality to her voice when she said it.

Tim then spoke to Anang in his own language and she listened for a good long moment as Ben approached, wanting to know what he’d missed in his short absence. Before long, Anang was nodding in understanding of Tim and replied a short comment in their language signifying she would accept his words.

“It’s been a while since one her age stood up for us,” Paul pointed out. The others simply nodded and Stanley explained the situation to Ben succinctly, but quite well.

“Do you wanna go join them?” Daniel asked Anang, but Anang lowered her head.

“It’s so loud. Even from here it hurts my ears.”

“I can go talk to them,” Ben offered, but Stanley stopped him before he finished his first step.

“They’re less likely to listen to you than us,” he pointed out.

As promised, Liz and Deanna returned after a few minutes wanting to take Anang in tow again, but this time they were far less pushy about it. With few other options, Anang was simply truthful and told them that she had very sensitive ears and that the loud music hurt them, which Liz was very sympathetic about, but Deanna was highly skeptical of. Ben tried to speak up on Anang’s behalf, but they all but ignored him, just as Stanley had predicted. This left it to Anang to prove how sensitive her ears were, so she simply told one to whisper in the other’s ear and Anang would tell them what she had said. When she delivered exactly on her promise, both women were shocked at Anang’s ability, though they still had no real idea of the actual extent of it. That being said, Deanna was finally convinced and returned inside to turn the music down to a level that Anang could manage with. Once the sound inside dulled, Anang visibly sighed with relief and Liz became much more forceful in dragging her with again.

As she was being pulled forward, Anang turned to Ben. “You’re coming as well, yes?” she asked him, but Liz gave her a begging expression.

“Does he have to?”

“Why can’t he?” she asked cluelessly.

“He’s not one of us,” she answered point blank.

“Just go and make sure you enjoy yourself,” Ben encouraged her. When Anang gave him a scolding look, he answered, “I have absolutely no interest in hanging out with people that don’t want to be around me.” Anang grunted unhappily, but she nodded and followed Liz in to join the others.

“Ten bucks says they’re gonna go out of their way to get Anang some action,” Paul posited.

“Who’d be stupid enough to bet against you?” Daniel asked.

“You okay with that?” Tim asked Ben, who just shrugged.

“We’re not anything. It’s not like I have a say in the matter.”

“Nothing?” Paul pressed.

“No,” Ben replied flatly. “Besides, it’s not lost on me that she’s healthy enough to transform into a seven foot tall beast if she felt like it.”

“That might actually be kinda fun,” Daniel pointed out.

“She’s A LOT more attractive like this than how they look in that other form,” Tim reminded them and both Ben and Paul nodded strongly in agreement.

Inside the shop, Liz and Deanna didn’t even wait a single minute before they were introducing her to local men who were immediately intrigued by her appearance. The first candidate for suitor started with asking about her Native American heritage and was stunned when she replied in their native tongue. In fact, at this point she only spoke to them in their own language before she realized that all in the room were completely captivated, but most were struggling to keep up as she spoke. She sighed and lowered her gaze before long as she realized that most at least knew SOME of their language, but few were fluent enough to keep up with her in conversation without her slowing down and explaining her words.

This of course only served to make her even more attractive to the young men in attendance who now were all vying for her attention and approval. They proclaimed all kinds of accomplishments, from athletics to academics to claims of heritage, though the one kind of accomplishment that she could only stare back smiling politely with a deer in the headlights look was the claims of conquering video games. She understood absolutely none of the lingo surrounding it, though she did glance to Liz as if she had some strange sense that this was not a favorable thing to pronounce to a woman.

Things actually got rather intense, and before long, though there were a few women in the room much prettier than Anang, there was a certain aura about her as well as how obvious it was how much stronger her connection was to their shared heritage that made her irresistible to the men. The prettiest women in the room knew exactly how pretty they were, while Anang would only blush and shy away when complimented on her attractiveness in a way that was nothing but appealing.

Before long, most of the women were crowded out away from Anang by the men, while young women who were used to having their pick of the litter were looking obviously bitter as they were suddenly ignored, and the few that had come with their boyfriends were outright fuming with anger.

Anang was of course obviously quite aware of what had just happened and the danger she’d just invoked upon herself by outshining the most attractive women in the room effortlessly, but she was also powerless to stop it now as well. Before long, men were propositioning to get in her pants, which Anang was absolutely appalled by, and doubly appalled when Liz and Deanna only encouraged her. When one man actually had the audacity to suggest a threesome with her and Liz, she had to close her eyes and look down, fully aware that the glow in her eyes was likely too strong to be overwhelmed by the light in the room.

It wasn’t so much that these men were unattractive or bad by our standards, or that their comments were too on the nose. In fact, they were quite skilled at seducing women, or at least they were by the standards of this world. They simply had no idea what exactly they were dealing with in Anang.

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to bed her, one man actually wrapped his arm around her and rubbed his hip against hers. She growled gutturally and she looked to her right shoulder where his arm was, her eyes glowing quite intensely and she even began to shift forms for the briefest of seconds before she looked down at the cast she was wearing and forced her body back and restrained herself. Thankfully no one noticed, but when she tried to peel his arm off of her and he refused to let go, she decided on another course of action.

“BEN!” she screamed fiercly at the top of her lungs, silencing the room. Almost immediately after, the door swung open and Ben and the others walked in to respond for her call for help.

“Anang?” Ben called out, just before spotting her and making a beeline for her location. He didn’t make it far, though, before two locals stepped in front of him and shoved him back.

“What are you doing here?” one asked forcefully.

“I was ASKED to come in here,” Ben answered back, and then tried to push through, but was shoved back again. “Move,” Ben ordered them both.

“You weren’t invited,” the other man blocking his path insisted.

“As soon as I’m done with whatever Anang wants, I’ll leave.” He then looked through them to Anang who was practically commanding him with her eyes to force the man holding her to unhand her.

“You don’t belong here, waabishkiiwed,” the man holding Anang called out, but was shocked when Anang lectured him loudly in their language and he blushed heavily suddenly, but this only made him double down, placing his other hand on her and firming his grip.

“You know what? You really should stop,” Ben warned fiercely. “You honestly have no idea who you’re fucking with,” he cautioned, though the three men took this as a warning about the threat that he posed, rather than Anang.

“Would you just act like a man for ONCE?” Anang demanded ferociously.

Ben grimaced at her with displeasure, then looked to the two men blocking his path. “Move,” he ordered them, but one man instead took a swing at Ben and clocked him with a right hook. Thankfully, Ben was able to take the hit and countered with a punch to the man’s gut, then kneed him in the groin that took him down, but not before his friend managed to land a left jab on Ben’s face.

Ben countered with a left cross to the man’s temple, then grabbed behind his head and began slamming his elbow into the man’s face until he crumbled to the ground and then stomped up to the man holding onto Anang while the others in the room were stunned to see Ben manage to hold his own in a two on one fight.

“Let go now,” Ben commanded, but the man instead flung Anang backward onto her back and lunged at Ben.

This man was actually more than a handful for Ben, and they traded hits for almost a minute before a battered and bruised Ben finally got the upper hand and knocked him down and commenced bashing the man’s face with his fists until Tim, Paul and Stanley swooped in to pry them apart.

Meanwhile, Gary the tribal law enforcement officer was already on the scene with his weapon drawn and his sights set on Ben while Deanna and Daniel did everything they could to explain the situation before Ben had a fourth fight on his hands.

It took a few minutes for everything to calm down, but when it did, Ben finally went to Anang, who was still sitting on the floor staring at Ben with eyes filled with surprise. “Don’t tell me how to act,” Ben ordered her, and she gulped while nodding, though there was also a slight smile on her lips as he helped her to her feet and collected her crutches for her.

Ben then needed to sit and some ice for his bloodied face while Anang sat and watched him quietly and the mood of the room dampened significantly. Gary was still quite upset and more concerned with Ben than the others in the fight, though when others consistently reported to him that Ben was only answering to Anang’s call for help and that Ben hadn’t swung first he finally reluctantly agreed to not arrest Ben. He still didn’t care enough to arrest the other guys, but it was at least enough to ward him off of Ben before he could dotingly cater to Anang.

There was a lot of hemming and hawing over the fight while Tim and friends did their best to sort things out with Gary, but things finally turned around when Ben looked up at a local man that was staring at him with no particular expression.

“Hey,” Ben called out to him. “I’m sorry I messed up your party. I didn’t mean to ruin the night for you.”

The man and a couple of others looked at each other, then that man looked to Ben and nodded stoically. “It’s ok. Not the first fight we’ve had,” he comforted Ben.

Once Gary was absolutely clear that Anang was perfectly fine and he’d done all he could to establish his credentials in the moment as a hero, he glanced at Ben, offered a stern warning, then left the scene and slowly the party began to pick up again, though this time a couple of the young men came out to join Tim and crew by the fire along with four of the young women. These few did take the time to get to know Ben and engage in conversation, but they spent most of their energy on getting to know Anang better.

When the evening was finally late enough that the party had dispersed, Tim walked with Ben back to his truck.

“Sorry,” Ben said genuinely to Tim.

“Don’t be,” Tim snapped back. “The moment that boy laid his hands on Anang there was no other option than for you to fight them off. We’re lucky that she didn’t transform right then and there and gut them like pigs.”

“I almost got myself arrested,” Ben pointed out.

“Bah. Even if you had, we would have had your back. We would have taken care of her and gotten you out. Besides, you’re a tough fucking fighter.”

“Not a good one, though,” Ben laughed, pointing to his already swelling eye.

“It’s good practice for what’s coming. Plus… I think you might have impressed Anang,” he whispered very softly into his ear.”

“You know she can hear us, right?” Ben asked. Tim looked over his shoulder back across the lot to Anang who was smiling and talking to the others back at the fire.

“I think we slipped this one by her,” he joked still softly, though as soon as he did, she lifted her head and turned in their direction and stared at them in confusion.

On the trip back, Ben couldn’t help but notice that Anang was staring at him rather than the road and the landscape of shadows speeding by as they drove. He waited for some time for her to speak, but when she didn’t he decided to break the silence himself.

“Thank you for not shifting and dealing with him on your own.”

“It would have ruined my cast,” she answered simply.

“Would you have done what I did to him, or worse?” he asked her.

“Worse,” she admitted freely.

“Well, thank you for that as well, then.”

“Why do you care? He deserved it.”

“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” Ben countered. “First of all, if you had changed, everything would have gone absolutely insane. You’d be running from reservation police on one leg while they hunted you like an animal and even if they didn’t get you, federal agencies would be arriving before long to finish the job. Me, Tim, Paul, Daniel and Stanley would be investigated for harboring you and I seriously doubt that I would be able to hide that I knew who you were. Second, even if you did survive, killing or maiming someone here will get you locked up, but in your case it might get you buried in a research project where they would experiment on you and cut you up. So thank you for not losing your temper.”

Anang stared at him silently after that for several minutes, hardly even blinking.

“You both fought better than I thought you could,” she declared softly.

“Well, we’re not completely useless on this side,” Ben joked.

“Did he hurt you?” she asked, suddenly showing visible concern.

“I’m fine,” Ben smiled casually back. “Actually, it’s nice for once to not need to hold back. But we can’t let this happen again. You’ve seen our weapons and you’ve seen our technology and what you’ve seen is just a tiny bit of what’s out there. If you get discovered you will never be able to run fast or far enough no matter how much more healed you are. Do you understand?”

“You look hurt,” she insisted.

“Just some bruises. It’s no big deal. I’ll just ice my eye and it’ll go away before too long.”

Once again that night as she had every night since the one when the veil had appeared, Anang followed Ben to bed and curled up inside his arm for a blissful sleep.

“Can I ask you something?” he said before she drifted completely off. She lifted her head and stare at him, waiting with an amber glow washing gently over his cheeks. “Why do you want to sleep with me lately?”

“Why? Do you not want me here?”

“It’s not that…”

“I used to sleep with my siblings every night. Especially when the nights grew long and the air grew cold.”

“Is that how you see me? As a sibling?”

“No.” Ben’s brow furrowed and he struggled to figure out a way through this dead end in the conversation while Anang continued to stare at him obliviously.

“So you just sleep with me because you’re cold?” he asked her.

“I feel safe here,” she admitted, blushing and shying away slightly.

“Well that’s good,” he responded with a warm smile. She returned it and then snuggled up against him even closer after feeling encouraged, but as her thigh brushed against the erection in his pants, her eyes shot wide open and she gasped at him.

“You’re attracted to me!” was all she could manage.

“Well… yeah,” Ben replied calmly, not even bothering to hide something that she could have just as easily avoided by not rubbing parts of her body against his genitals. “Is that a problem?”

She was visibly shaken, her brow furrowing and unfurrowing as if something monumental was straining her mind. “This is why you were asking why I was sleeping with you?” she asked after a long moment to try to process her thoughts.

“Yeah,” Ben admittedly quite freely. She now squirmed a little under the covers, clearly struggling with this latest revelation.

“I thought… you… but when I saw you four years ago… I thought you would think my other form was… ugly…”

“Well, I can’t say that I think that’s a great look for you, but when you’re in your natural state? I think you’re pretty. And I like spending time with you.”

Anang blushed and shifted again under the covers, obviously conflicted by her expression. “Our people are very different,” she finally told him with certainty. “I am not like the women you know. And you are not like the men I know.”

“Well, you asked if I was attracted to you, and yes, I am,” Ben again asserted. Anang again shifted beneath the covers and began to sink back, though her expression like usual was difficult to interpret.

“You said you want to send me back home,” she finally decided.

“Yes. Because you would be safer there, assuming we can deal with Nenaginad.”

“So you wish to send me away as soon as you can.”

“No. I’ll miss you. But I just couldn’t imagine you wanting to stay in a place where people couldn’t deal with who and what you are. I told you, I just want to help you. Why? Would you rather stay in this world?”

Her eyes shifted left and right, processing thoroughly what was being shared. “No, you’re right. It’s dangerous for me to stay here. But if I can heal, I might be able to go home.”

“That’s really what I want. For you to be where you want to be.” Her face scrunched up suddenly as if she’d eaten something sour.

“There you go again!” she belted out angrily. “Just when I FINALLY see you behave as a man would, you go and say something like THAT!”

“Anang, when have I ever yelled at you like that?” Ben asked back immediately and extremely sternly, shaking her and she seemed to shiver, though she still seemed confused. “Maybe you could try speaking to me like someone you respect instead of just screaming at me,” he commanded her. Again she was shaken, but after a moment to process, she looked back up at him again.

“A man takes the woman he wants,” she informed him bluntly. “He does not waste his time whining about where she wants to be!”

“The woman I am with will give herself to me,” Ben informed her quite calmly back, which seemed to stun Anang back into silence. “I will not force anyone to be with me, and I am not going to rule over someone and make them fear crossing me unless I get what I want. You want to know why I keep offering kindness? Because that is who I want in my life. Someone who can return that kindness. I can pay money to get a piece of ass if I really wanted it, so don’t lecture me on being manly and taking someone by force just so I can prove my masculinity to you. I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

Once again, she lay there staring at him, though for once he could see the wheels of her mind spinning in her expression. “I could shift. I could have killed you that night. I could do it now,” she informed him coldly.”

“I don’t fear you anymore.”

“But I could do it,” she insisted.

“And I still don’t fear you anymore,” Ben answered gently back to her. Her nose twitched as if searching for some kind of scent while she stared into his eyes.

“You could not stop me,” she declared coldly.

“If you want to prove yourself so badly then do it,” Ben told her, staring unflinchingly back at her. She was taken aback, clearly not ready for him to be so steady in his position. “Go on. Do it,” he challenged. She struggled and squirmed under the covers for a long moment before her expression turned much softer again.

“I need to save myself for my husband. He can smell if I’ve been taken,” she informed Ben as though she were apologizing. Ben nodded in understanding and said nothing more. She continued staring at him for a while longer quite intently until he seemed to relax as if ready to go to sleep. “Is that why you did nothing? Because you knew?” she asked him.

“I had kinda guessed,” Ben answered. “Around here, people don’t save themselves for marriage. Not anymore.” Anang again pondered, but moved his chin until they were staring at each other again.

“I was promised. Before I saw you that night. He and his family thought I was mad when I told him that you could speak.”

“Yeah, I had someone at the time too. She basically said the same thing.” Anang huffed gently to confirm his side of the same issue. She thought and then had another question for him.

“Did you take her?” Ben couldn’t help but laugh at her question, which irritated Anang.

“Yeah, I suppose you could say that,” Ben said. “I mean, I didn’t throw her down or drag her by her hair or anything, but yeah. I didn’t really ask,” he laughed. “But I just don’t feel the same anymore. I’m not going to take anyone, I’m not going to force them, I’m not going to beg, I’m not going to trick anyone or any crap like that.”

“Hmm,” she vocalized briefly, then lay staring at him again. After some more thought, she reiterated, “I need to save myself for my husband.”

“Well, at least you’re not disgusted by the fluff man wanting to have sex with you,” he chuckled, which gained him a confused smile from Anang, but no arguments. “Do you want to go sleep in your room?” he asked her gently. She peered up at him, her warm amber eyes glowing in the shadows and their gentle light lapping against his cheeks. She took a deep breath, then settled back in within his arm.

“I feel safe here,” she answered back softly before settling back in to go to sleep.

The next day Oliver stopped by again, who did more investigating around the property, but this time mostly on his own as he knew all of the most important spots now thanks to Anang’s acute senses. Late in the morning, Tim and Paul arrived to check in on Ben and his injuries from the fight. As expected, Ben was black and blue in a number of places and swollen, but Tim had a few herbal remedies he’d put together before heading over that actually began acting much more quickly than Ben expected. They discussed the impending confrontation with the other dogmen when they finally crossed over and went over weak points they had based on Anang’s knowledge and what they’d learned about her biology.

The basic plan was simple- when the fight finally arrived, they would prioritize killing whatever dogmen that came through, but if an opportunity came up to invert the space-time fold as Oliver had suggested, they would take it. This meant that Ben would need to start relying more on rifles that had more punch than his grandfathers Remington, which thankfully he had on hand. They made estimates based on what Anang described about dogmen that returned and died from their injuries so that they could make tests of rounds on targets they put together to try to approximate dogman physiology.

These were hardly their only weapons, however. Anang’s reporting of her ears hurting from going near loud party music inspired Tim and Paul, who cobbled together some speakers, wire and a sound system that they could use when the moment arrived. The plan was simply to overwhelm their hearing, which wouldn’t be too difficult given Anang’s report. They discussed testing Anang’s hearing to see if they could pick out any particular frequencies, but Ben talked them down from that plan as he didn’t want to use Anang as a guinea pig. That didn’t entirely dissuade Tim, though, as he then unexpectedly produced a dog whistle. Anang was bewildered by the strange tube and Ben was wary, but Tim insisted they at least try it. They warned Anang in detail about what they observed when they’d used them in the past, and also that he intended to use the whistle in the wrong way on purpose.

At first, Anang did little other than report that she could definitely hear the noise while the others could not, then as Tim adjusted it, it went from annoying, to quite irritating, to uncomfortable to finally actually painful. The next test was to try it again, though this time with Anang wearing ear muffs. While she could still hear it, the earmuffs happily saved her the pain from before, suggesting that this could be a useful tool when fighting Anang’s hunters.

Next were the stink bombs, which were more a work in progress. They used the out building and deer scent, spreading it around and blindfolding Anang while also dampening her hearing as much as they could with hearing protection. With no scents deployed, and relying only on her sense of smell, Anang proved to be shockingly accurate in finding whichever person she wanted, no matter where they went before letting her into the building. The first tests did little to alter this ability, but they did find that when they deployed enough scent, it did frustrate Anang’s sense of smell and once they even caused her enough trouble that she actually didn’t find her target, but they couldn’t do this consistently. The trouble was deploying in sufficient enough quantity and figuring out the quirks of this, but at the very least they knew they could diminish the dogman’s accuracy with this sense.

That left sight, which Anang said wouldn’t be much of a problem. She explained that when hunting at night, her people relied much more heavily on their senses of smell and hearing, often going so far as to close their eyes while hunting for the simple fact that their eyes were dead giveaways to the hunter’s position. While their eyesight in the dark was amazingly clear due to their unique eyes, this only helped slightly with their ability to see at distance. That meant that while Nenaginad’s men were at a near comical advantage up close, from a distance that advantage was moot. The only thing that countered this was the dogman’s supernatural speed and agility, but with their two most important senses muddied, Anang assured them they would be quite clumsy in the field. This certainly wouldn’t neutralize them, but it would hamper them enough that as long as the marksman was on point, he could pick Nenaginad’s men apart before they closed the distance, so long as they started from a distance.

Then there was Oliver’s device. Tim warned vehemently against relying on these tactical advantages as any number of things could go wrong in the process of fighting and dogmen were anything but stupid. They very well could adapt, especially as the fight dragged on and they would only be able to provide so much scent to drown that sense out before they ran out. That meant that no matter the advantages gained or lost during the fight, Ben and Anang were to do whatever they could to draw Nenaginad’s men toward the center of the veil to be able to deploy the device, though this was also something that they practiced to act on in a manner that was a fluid as possible. The top priority in this instance, however, was to get Anang as far away from the center of the veil as she could get, to minimize risk to her should the device not work in a way that they wanted it to. If it turned out to be ineffective, she could at least use whatever distraction they gained to deliver a hit and run blow, but under no circumstances was Anang to engage in any prolonged hand-to-hand combat. They did hope, however, that a .357 magnum revolver carried on Anang’s person might help even the odds against the bigger, stronger of her kind. They also brought Kevlar vests for both Anang and Ben, though they had trouble testing an old vest regarding their effectiveness given the fact that to get any decent idea would have required Anang to shift to her other form.

They spent the better part of the day training and testing and Oliver did participate as best as he could once he was done with his investigations, and then they moved to the outbuilding again where Ben began work on the car he’d picked up again and the others sat around a portable firepit enjoying the autumn air.

“Hey Ben,” Tim called out more than an hour into his work. “So Anang wasn’t prepared at all for Halloween. What about Thanksgiving?” Ben immediately stopped what he was doing underneath the hood of the car and popped his head out.

“Crap,” Ben spouted, showing clearly that this was not something he’d considered yet.

“What is Thanksgiving?” Anang asked, and then got a brief history and description of the holiday as Ben joined them and sat in the circle.

“Well? How do you plan to handle that? I’m assuming you’re not such an outcast that your family will expect you to be there.”

“Yeah,” Ben confirmed, carefully considering this latest hurdle. “I didn’t want to bring Anang up with them because the only thing they’ll think is that she’s my new girlfriend no matter what I say and I didn’t know how to explain her.”

“Do you want me to take her for the day?” Paul offered, but Anang immediately denied that offer, telling him No.

“I’m already surviving on their good graces living out here while I get my life back together, so I’d be taking a risk not showing up and showing them that I’m at least grateful.”

“Sounds like you’re taking her with you, then,” Tim deduced. In the end, they agreed that the best course of action was for Ben to contact his family and give them as best a version of the truth as he could manage. They practiced what the story was, but Ben’s biggest concern was actually Anang’s table manners. She’d already shown herself very good at politely sitting in silence through conversation that she didn’t understand without raising any alarms in people. The only real issue was that even when they went in to the diner, she ate much more voraciously than your average person and she still struggled with silverware.

“Well, I guess we need to do a course in dinner etiquette,” Tim decided, “Unless you want to stay here alone or hide in his truck the whole day.” Anang growled and frowned at those alternatives, but much to her chagrin she agreed to learn to eat like “domesticated livestock” like the others of this world as she put it.

The following weeks were almost entirely uneventful. Ben’s injuries healed up quickly, and Anang continued to heal. Despite the results of their intimate conversation the evening Anang discovered that he was very much sexually attracted to her, she continued to become closer to him and as her ribs finally healed, she chose to no longer sit around the cabin resting and recovering and instead followed him just about wherever he went, including when he took jobs. This made things a lot easier in terms of making sure she was safe, and she also took enough interest that whenever it was feasible she lent Ben a hand whenever he was working on a project. This was especially true of the car he was fixing, and Ben took the opportunity to teach her how to conduct repairs and maintenance on vehicles.

The call to Ben’s parents was awkward at first, but went without incident and after some discussion his parents were supportive of Ben housing Anang. He stretched the truth a bit, but he explained that he’d met a speaker who talked about his paranormal encounters and not long after that Tim approached him with a native girl who had been cruelly abused and needed a place to stay to recover. Ben had taken her in with the understanding that the situation would be temporary and Tim and friends vouched for her character. In the meantime, she proved to be a respectful houseguest and was doing what she could in helping to make repairs around the property. Because she was essentially in hiding from her abusers, Ben asked if she could join them over thanksgiving dinner, otherwise he explained that he might need to stay with her as she was still nursing some injuries, chief among them a broken leg.

His parents were hesitant to accept her, but after some time to reconsider they called Ben back saying they were open to having her join them, but Ben’s father would be up within a couple days to meet her first. When he arrived on the property, Ben and Anang were out on a job for cash fixing a door that had been kicked in by an angry ex lover of a woman in town. He toured the property, finding the repairs and changes to be easy to find and to his liking, then let himself into the cabin and sat down for a cup of coffee to await their return. When they arrived, he stepped out to greet them and arrived as Ben was getting the door for Anang and helping her out while getting her crutches ready. Ben introduced them both and then they sat out on the porch getting to know each other, though Ben’s father was a little taken aback when he realized that she was bundled up in one of Ben’s jackets that was a number of sizes too large for her.

When Ben explained that she’d come to him with practically nothing, Ben’s father commented on how this jacket wouldn’t do for Anang, but was a little surprised when Anang simply told him, “I like it,” while clearly snuggling up comfortably deep inside the oversized jacket. When he asked about the abuse she’d received, Anang was light on providing details and relied mostly on Ben describing the many, many injuries she had when he first met her.

In the end, Ben’s father found Anang to be unusually reserved, but polite and charming in her own way. He observed her taking initiative in helping around the house and was overall satisfied. The coup de grass to receiving permission to bring this stranger along for Thanksgiving was when Anang began sharing stories and tales surrounding her Ojibwe heritage such as with a mythical hero named Wenabozho as well as singing traditional songs to him with impressive skill. He was fascinated by the tales she wove and as well as by the passion in her eyes as she shared these aspects to her culture.

He stayed the night, though Anang was more than a little frustrated by the fact that she needed to sleep alone again and the next morning after breakfast while Anang was preparing for the day in the bathroom, Ben’s father had a chat with his son. “She seems to really like you,” he commented, pointing how she practically hung off of Ben.

“Well, we’re from different worlds,” Ben answered.

“That doesn’t seem to matter that much to her.”

“It does. We’ve talked about it. I do really like her, but this isn’t a life she’s used to. Not only that, but I’m not really in the best place financially right now.”

“But you are working…”

“I’m getting more jobs. And I’ve been still submitting resumes. I haven’t gotten any call backs lately, though. And honestly, I haven’t been putting as much effort into it lately as I was when I first got up here,” he told his father apologetically. “But I did get five applications out this week.”

“You know, given the circumstances,” he said while looking toward the bathroom door, “I think that’s understandable. I think you’re doing a good thing. I wish you’d have kept us in the loop a little earlier, though.”

“I wasn’t quite sure at the time how long it would go. We didn’t even know she had a broken leg at first. She was that beat up.”

“But the cast should be able to come off soon?”

“We’re hoping so.”

“And will she be going home then?”

“I’d like for her to be able to stay until we’re sure her abusers can be dealt with. But we still need to see how healed the bone is once the cast is off.” Ben’s father nodded and sipped on his coffee while thinking the situation over.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you both on Thanksgiving,” he decided. “And make sure she knows she’s welcome as long as she needs to be.” Ben smiled appreciatively and then capped off his father’s mug again. “I think you should make a move on her,” he encouraged, which made Ben laugh.

“We’ve talked about it,” Ben assured his father. “We both know that she belongs with her people, and I’m not one of them.”

After he left, she was more than a little surprised when Ben turned to her and said, “I’m a little hurt. I haven’t gotten to hear any of these songs or stories before now.”

Aside from that, everything else had become routine. They practiced and planned for an eventual fight with Anang’s hunters, they visited Tim’s shop one to two times a week and the only real new development was that Anang’s new friends liked to come down to Ben’s cabin to visit on the weekends.

Thanksgiving went off without any major issues. Ben’s father prepared them all for Anang, speaking nothing but positively about her. However, Anang was quite embarrassed halfway through the day after the entire family watching her follow Ben around wherever he went and remaining ridiculously close to him at nearly all times when several women of the family made a point to draw Anang away to tell her what a great couple they thought she and Ben would be. She sang Ojibwe songs for them with hours of tales and folklore that had everyone, especially the children, hooked on her every word as she slipped seamlessly between English and smatterings of Anishinaabemowin to teach them terms as they applied to her stories.

The only close call they had was in the middle of one of her tales when Ben’s aunt interrupted her to press Anang on political issues revolving around the formation of the reservations along with trapping and fishing rights. Needless to say, Anang was completely unequipped to field such questions, especially when she started getting into specifics such as protests in the 1970’s and conflicts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Anang stalled when confronted in rapid succession with several issues, and she both surprised and impressed the entire family when she simply told them, “These are things I cannot change. I only wanted to share what I treasure about my people. I rarely have opportunities to show your people the things I love so much about the Anishinaabe.”

His aunt was stunned by her response but still then pressed on wanting to know Anang’s thoughts on a pipeline that was encroaching on Lakota land, and Anang was again forced into a corner, but as usual she smiled very softly and politely, then took a contemplative pause before answering.

“I haven’t had much experience with the Lakota. They don’t come to us for help dealing with the waabishkiiwed often and we do not agree on many issues. Do you not like the stories of Wenabozho? I could tell others…” she offered, which finally put his aunt on the defensive and shut her up.

Afterwards, Anang took a break to stand on his parent’s deck with Ben looking out at the cloudy November skies over some hot cider. “What is a pipeline?” she whispered to him somewhat frantically.

“It’s… a tube. It goes underground for miles and miles and the gas you saw me fill my truck with flows through it.”

“Oh,” she muttered, processing the concept, though still somewhat confused. “And this is bad?”

“It can be,” Ben answered her. “The truth of the matter is I’m not quite sure who is right about that one. I don’t think they actually crossed the line into Lakota land, but if the pipe leaks that doesn’t really matter that much. It’s complicated.”

“The English always love twisting words and how they act with us. They cannot help but push just enough to anger us, and then claim they are the victims because they followed their endless agreements exactly,” she complained.

“Yes,” Ben agreed after looking at her and carefully considering her accusation.

The next challenge came at the dinner table where Ben’s brother made a derisive comment about Ben hallucinating and going crazy in the woods. Anang perked up instantly when she realized that he was speaking of her first encounter with Ben, and looked at him searching for some cue about how to respond. There was an awkward silence, but once it passed that opened up the conversation to make several biting comments of Ben’s losing his job and not being able to find another after spiraling into a collapse all from his psychotic episode. She looked over to Ben, who was already red with anger, and then his father before she spoke.

“I do not wish to be disrespectful. I am very thankful for being welcomed here and for the opportunity to share the stories of my people,” she told him, which brought the entire table back to silence again.

“Do you have something to say?” Ben’s father asked tenuously while Anang stared at him with a clenched jaw and angry eyes.

“In my family, no man would accept such disrespect in his home, not even from his own brother. You could expect that man to break his jaw over such disrespectful words so that he will think twice before speaking them again.”

Her statement shocked the entire family and they all stared at her in stunned silence until Ben’s mom finally found a counter. “Well in our family, we don’t resort to senseless violence.”

“So then there is always an excuse for dishonoring your son,” Anang accused coldly. “I have watched him time and again accept such dishonor all in the name of helping me. I did not expect to see him forced to do it again with his own family in the home he was raised in.” This once again shocked the family into silence which she let them bath in for a good long moment before she continued. “My people have MANY tales of the kind your son had four years ago. We accept there are things that we do not understand and we expect to sometimes see things that we cannot explain to be of this world. I too have seen these things with my own eyes. Do you want to mock me as well?” she asked, which left everyone now entirely speechless. The silence was awkward until Ben’s teenaged younger brother finally smirked.

“So you’re nuts too?” he asked, calling her bluff, which caused Anang to fume, and then Ben loudly put his fork and knife on the plate.

“You know what? She’s right. You hounded me for years over what I saw,” he told his brothers sternly. “And I put up with it. And for what? So I could keep putting up with it? I’ve asked you to not make fun of me, I’ve begged you. I’ve talked to you and it doesn’t change anything. So you tell me why I shouldn’t knock your teeth out, or is it just that you feel like you’re entitled to mock me for the rest of my life? Because I’ve tried to do this in a civilized manner, but all it’s gotten me is cast out. So what do you say? Wanna put your money where your mouth is?” he challenged.

“Maybe it was a mistake for you to come today,” Ben’s mother asked leaning over the table, but was again shocked when Ben’s father reached in front of her and pushed her back.

“I think this has gone far enough,” Ben’s father declared. “I’ve had my fill of everyone relentlessly attacking Ben when all I’ve seen is him giving nothing but kindness. Whether you think he saw what he saw that night is beside the point. He was hurting and the worse his life got, the more everyone piled on him. If you think it was a mistake for him to be here today, then it was a mistake for me to be here too. I’m not going to tolerate this anymore. He didn’t bring up that night. You did. He didn’t pick a fight, you did.”

The teenage son immediately bristled at his father standing up for Ben, but his father beat him to the punch. “Gimme the keys to your car,” he demanded. “You’ve lost your privileges. You can either apologize to your brother or you can lose more.” His wife was floored and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he had another question, this time of Ben’s sister. “I’ve wondered: who spread the stories of Ben’s dogman sighting to his coworkers?” he asked, staring directly into her eyes. “As soon as his family and friends started telling him he was nuts over that he didn’t want to talk about it. He shut up about it so he didn’t cause any more trouble about it. So who kept spreading the rumors?” he demanded of Ben’s sister, who was suddenly shrinking back with a beet red face. “Well?”

Wh-when… W-well… Shannon knew them and…”

“Yeah, we all know what a piece of shit Shannon is, and we all know how great of friends you stayed with her despite what she did to Ben, but did you or didn’t you?” She suddenly lowered her head and began crying.

“I didn’t come here to ruin dinner,” Ben interrupted his father.

“You didn’t,” his father answered angrily. “You didn’t start this and I’m finishing it,” he declared.

“None of this excuses calls for senseless violence at the dinner table,” Ben’s mom finally interjected.

“Was it senseless violence on Halloween when Ben fought with the men that were grabbing me and trying to have their way with me?” Anang asked her. “Where is the line where he can behave like a man?”

“He did what?” came a gasped reply from the other side of the table while the others now turned to Ben.

“I do not condone violence,” she insisted.

“Ben did not throw the first punch, and now I finally understand why. So would you have preferred they stomp on his head and throw him into a ditch? Because that is what they would have done if he had not fought them. Not to mention how I…” she began, but stopped mid sentence, not wanting to share too much.

“Maybe he should have avoided being in such a place to begin with,” Ben’s mother told Ben derisively.

“This was on Anishinaabe land. Do you have something else to say about my people?” Anang challenged. “It’s perfectly fine. I am accustomed to being called a savage.”

“I like her,” Ben’s uncle commented dryly, which gained him a number of soft chuckles, including Ben’s father.

“Everybody stop,” Ben’s father then ordered after forcing himself back into a state of composure. “It’s time to own up. Ben’s not the only person around that town to report seeing things. It’s been going on since before my father bought the land. Until you can prove he didn’t see anything, maybe you can just learn to shut the hell up,” he said, looking to his other children sternly. “By the way, Ben,” he commented causally while shifting gears and picking his fork and knife up again, “I’m glad you fixed that rotted drywall in the living room at the cabin. That’s been bugging me for years and I just never got around to getting it done.”

Ben smiled and about half the table now changed gears to discussing this more mundane matter, while the others in the room that had just been standing against Ben were now ignored in the conversation.

After dinner, Ben’s father and mother were sitting at the table and she was attempting to quietly reprimand him for earlier when they both noticed Anang hobble into the kitchen and begin working on the dishes before anyone else had even bothered. “Are you still pissed at her?” he asked his wife, who could only stare in frustration. “Imagine if Shannon had supported him like her.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then excused herself to the kitchen and gently ushered Anang away telling her, “sweetie, you shouldn’t be on that leg more than you have to be. We’ll take care of this.”

When she was escorted into the living room and given a seat on the couch, she blushed suddenly when Ben’s cousin walked up to her and said, “you ARE a savage! And it’s fuckin’ awesome!” followed by a good deal of laughter.

Finally, when it was time to leave, Ben’s father stopped them both at the entryway. “I haven’t spent any time up there in a long time. I think I’d like to do more of that this winter. Is that alright with you?” he asked, which Ben happily agreed to with a smile.

[sallyfourth]

Anang always makes me think of Angua von Überwald from the Ankh-Morpork night watch. I really love the tender way that Ben cares for her. It's very touching.

Seeya!

[MrWitness]

Ckent45... Real Superman of story writing since you started the story here I'm visiting this site almost everyday just to check for updates.

[CKent45]

Anang always makes me think of Angua von Überwald from the Ankh-Morpork night watch. I really love the tender way that Ben cares for her. It's very touching.

Seeya!

Wow, the legend herself appears! AND, you're posting Trophy Wife here, which gives me a fresh chance to comment on it from the beginning!

I've never read those books- Disc world, right? You have quite a respectable repertoire of fantasy fiction, but I don't know much about Angua von Uberwald. Any resemblance wasn't intended, but I have to admit I'm curious now. From what little I know, she's an interesting character. I'm also thrilled that you found Ben's caring for her touching.

Anang's personality is loosely based on a literature professor I once met in college who was visiting us as a guest speaker after we'd read one of her novels and a book of her poetry. She had an amazing presence to her and what amazed me most about her was how little she actually spoke. She mostly listened to us while my classmates dissected her writing and compared it to her biography, but when she did speak, it was profound, but not in a way you would expect. Every word spoken by my classmates, I could see her absorbing every one of them and I could see imagination coming to life as she listened. It changed my entire perspective about writing. And yes, she was also Native American, but not Ojibwe.

Ckent45... Real Superman of story writing since you started the story here I'm visiting this site almost everyday just to check for updates.

You flatter me, sir. Sorry for the delay. I've been going over the next chapter because I want to make sure I get it right before posting. I think it's about ready, though, so it will be coming VERY soon. Either tonight or tomorrow morning.

[sallyfourth]

Uhhh... well, I'm not too sure about "legend". Other than both characters being werewolves and a slight similarly in their names there's obviously no connection. But I still see "Anang" and think of Angua. I think you would enjoy Discworld. I stand in awe of Pratchett's imagination and gift with words.

As to posting more of Trophy Wife here, I'm on the fence at this point. I had thought this was a more... active forum than it seems to be. I thought that posting here might broaden the audience but I'm not seeing that yet. If I were to post other chapters here I would clean up the grammar and tweak the odd word, which takes time. I'll probably give it a few more days but in the end I think it would be a better use of my time to simply post the link to chapter 1 on my DA page. All of the chapters are now linked to the Next chapter and the Previous chapter to avoid the nightmare of navigating DA.

Seeya!

[CKent45]

The following Monday, they went to the clinic again to follow up with the same doctor that had treated them after Anang first appeared. He cut the cast off and she frowned quite unhappily at the poor state of her withered leg that hadn’t been seen in almost two months. They ran the x-ray, this time with no trouble from the tech and then doctor Marquette shared the results with them both.

“It’s healed mostly. It’s still not quite there yet, but I’ll let you decide whether you want another cast on or not. It’s not ready to be walked on, though.”

“Can she be on it at all?” Ben asked, knowing how crucial it was to get her as close to fully mobile as possible as quickly as they could.

“She can walk with the crutches. If you want to buy a walking cast… I suppose that would be okay. But don’t push it. It’s still not there yet, so you could end up breaking it again if you push your leg too hard.”

Anang obviously wanted the cast gone for good, but she did listen carefully both to Ben and the doctor about the risks. In the end, she asked Ben if he would buy the walking cast for her with the promise that she would continue to exercise patience in regards to her still healing leg.

The doctor then took the time to perform a near complete physical on her for the first time now that all of her key ailments were behind her. She avoided exposing her stomach, which would have revealed her four extra nipples, but he did examine her more sensitive areas, and took blood tests as well as vitals to get a decent assessment of her overall health. At the end, Ben looked at her chart to see that she was listed as a perfectly healthy young woman of 22 years that stood just under 5’5” tall and weighed 105 pounds.

When they returned to the cabin, they settled in and Ben had her soak her leg in the bathtub and deal with weeks of dead skin and irresistible itching. That afternoon Tim arrived, as did both Liz and Deanna, who were excited to see the results of her doctor’s visit. They protested when Ben refused to let them in the bathroom where Anang was bathing, claiming they were all girls so there was no reason they couldn’t see her, but Ben insisted, demanding that they give her some privacy.

When Anang finally emerged in the same sweat shorts and t-shirt Ben had lent her at the very beginning of their adventure together, they were exuberant and dragged her hopping along to the couch in front of the fireplace to chat and gossip, while also massaging her injured leg and helping her regain motion of it again after having it been completely immobilized for nearly two months.

Ben and Tim took the chance to speak privately to tour the property and check on their many preparations. Eventually Liz and Deana finally left after dinner, just as Tim’s three friends were arriving which allowed them to sit in the living room in front of the fire and regroup based on the latest updates.

“It’s safe to say that we’re on borrowed time at this point,” Tim informed the group. “We’re overdue for the veil to appear again and Oliver is driving up here as we speak to hopefully be on hand when it happens. The question is, will they think to come through the veil in search of Anang?”

“I think so,” Anang answered him in a lifeless voice. “I was too injured to get far and they knew it. If they still haven’t found my body, then the must have sensed just like I did that there was a waterfall that night and Nenaginad will insist on finding me. His entire excuse for conquering my village was my first time crossing through. If he thinks I have gone through again, he will need to come for me to maintain his power.”

“Will he come himself?” Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered openly. “But when they come, it will be in a hunting party. I was not nearly strong enough to fight them before, and I’m certainly nowhere near strong enough now. I can barely use my leg and the only reason I insisted on getting rid of the cast is that I don’t know how painful it will be to shift and break through it.”

“If we thin out their numbers, how many can you take on?” Ben asked her.

“I’m no match for any one of them. It does not matter if they are in a group or alone. They are all bigger, stronger and faster than me.”

“What about the guns?” Tim pressed.

“They will hurt them. With enough shots, they will eventually be killed. I cannot say how many it will take, though. Maybe just a few. Maybe more.”

“We have traps set up and down the property now. We can scatter false scents and we can drown the entire forest up with sound that will make their ears bleed,” Tim assured her.

“And Anang’s as well,” Ben pointed out. “Don’t forget, she’s still our best weapon. We need to be careful about disorienting her.”

“I think we can get her on her feet again,” Stanley suggested, though he was a little hesitant as he said it. The others turned and looked at him while he waited with uncertainty. “I can make a plaster mold of her leg in her transformed state, and I can use that to mold an iron boot for her. I won’t make it too thick, so she’ll be able to move around in it easily enough. She’ll be on her feet, more or less, but still nowhere near what she would normally be at. It would be like running on the cast you had, only harder.”

“Yes,” Anang answered immediately, though her eyes betrayed how nervous she was.

“So the question is, do we just go on as normal, or do we take shifts posting guard?” Paul asked. “Or do we just clear the property and when they come through they can just meander around?”

“My scent is weaker and different from the soaps you gave me,” Anang told Paul, “but they will not have to go far before they pick out something familiar. Eventually they will come to this cabin and they will decide that I am here. They may destroy everything and burn it to the ground, but if they are patient? They will wait for us to return and kill us then. Even if it means passing entirely through the waterfall.”

“In other words, if we run, they’ll still try to hunt us down and in the mean time, we’ll have just invited a pack of angry, pissed off werewolves into the area,” Ben posited.

“When they start to realize how soft most of your people are, they will not be kind to them,” she warned.

“They’ll learn and they’ll adapt, just like any other human being,” Ben decided. “I don’t think we can run from this and even if we can, someone else is likely to take the hit for us.”

“So you’re staying,” Tim stated. Ben nodded quietly in return.

“You do not have to do this,” Anang interrupted, suddenly with tear filled eyes. All five men were shaken at this uncharacteristic emotional reaction from the always calm and observant Anishinaabe woman. “You have already shown me more kindness than I should have received. You do not have to do this.”

“Well I’m fuckin’ doin’ it,” Ben declared without a second thought.

“Yeah, fuck this asshole,” Daniel added with a laugh. “Anang’s like a daughter to me. I’m gonna fuckin’ kill that bastard!” which caused the others to laugh and nod in agreement.

“We know the shifts happen at night, usually around the last drops of sunlight to a little after midnight, and then the next window is from about three in the morning to just before sunrise. We’ve got three locations and they are all overlapping each other, so we have a good idea where. So the only question is which day?”

With their minds made up, they got to work on their final preparations. That night, Stanley took them back to the shop to make a mold of Anang’s leg and Anang stood there will all the men around her, but her eyes were on Ben as she stood there in just those same sweatshirt and t-shirt, favoring her good leg, seemingly afraid. There was silence as they stood waiting to see Anang in her transformed state for the first time.

“Go ahead,” Ben encouraged, rubbing her back.

She smiled and hesitated, then looked up again. “I can’t remember ever going this long without shifting,” she commented. “You like this form,” she said again, stalling.

“I like you,” Ben assured her. “That will be you too.”

Anang nodded and took a deep breath, then released it. She closed her eyes, and then opened them, but when she did the glow was strong enough even to see under fluorescent lights. Then, despite preparing themselves, they all gasped as Anang suddenly began transforming in one fluid motion. Her face grew dark, her nose and mouth began protruding forward as her fangs revealed themselves, her thighs tensed into dense muscle while her lower legs thinned and reversed at the knees. Black fur emerged from nowhere around her entire body and her torso stretched and the muscles around her shoulders and chest inhumanly swelled and increased in density and her height increased dramatically until she was looking down on them all for the first time from a staggering seven feet, two inches.

The entire process took less than five seconds, but it was as if time was standing still as they all gawked at this new, alien beast in front of them. She looked around the room with eyes that seemed to beg for acceptance. It was Ben that broke the shocked silence.

“Your coat looks so much better than the last time I saw it,” he complimented while petting her arm. The creature turned and stared down at him, then her lips turned upwards into that same sneer he’d seen four years ago, though somehow this time it didn’t seem nearly as sinister. She then hopped around a little on her one good leg, whimpering a little from the pain and accepted a few helping hands to lay down and let Stanley begin the mold of her leg.

She lay there like that on her side with her head down and avoiding eye contact with Ben until he began petting her back over the t-shirt that was now stretched to the breaking point and was already showing some tears in the fabric. As he stroked her back to comfort her, she lifted her eyes and stared at him almost like a faithful German shepherd would toward her human at the veterinarian and her tail, which was poking up out of the back of her loose sweat shorts moved briefly.

Stanley needed to make three attempts to make the mold before he finally got it right and then gave the all clear for Anang to be able to move freely again. The instant he did, Ben was surprised to see her immediately and fluidly shrink back down to her more human looking form.

“I thought after so long cooped up like one of us you would want to enjoy being able to shift again,” he said to her warmly while helping her sit up. She looked up at him and then the others standing around her, and then accepted a fresh t-shirt, which everyone was polite enough to turn around while she changed into it and slipped a bra back on.

“I was always taught this form showed nothing but weakness and vulnerability,” she began almost absent mindedly as she pulled the T-shirt into place. “I was taught to never show this form unless I had to and if I did anything otherwise it was an open invitation to be killed. Especially for a woman, it was seen as if you were asking for it. My family has seen me like this, and the families we shared a lodge with have seen me like this, but otherwise? No one. I’ve hidden this form my entire life from prying eyes, never allowing anyone to see what I looked like without willing my body to change for the rest of the world’s approval. The few of my people I have seen in this form were because they were too weak to shift any longer and they only sneaked out of their lodges because hunger overwhelmed their sense of shame. But this is my natural state. This is how I was born. This is how I must rest, and how I must sleep. This is how I must give birth to my children, and for the first time… I feel beautiful like this,” she admitted while fighting back tears.

“Oh, she’s more human than even we thought,” Tim complimented while hugging her and kissing her on top of her head. She looked at him, confused by the gesture, but smiled just the same. “So what do you think, Ben? Is she beautiful?”

“Well, she’s not a 10,” Ben pointed out, smirking when she cocked her head at him, “but 10’s are nothing but an absolute pain in the ass. You are beautiful,” he complimented simply, which made Anang blush and smile while tucking inward and shrinking back a little.

“What is a 10?” she asked bashfully.

“10 means top of the scale from ugly to beautiful. 10 is the most beautiful a woman can be,” Tim answered.

“Oh,” Anang commented, lowering her head and showing her disappointment, but Ben took her chin and lifted it again.

“You’re better than a 10. On the outside, there are women who are prettier, yes, but you ARE very pretty. And on the inside, you’re a 20,” Ben told her. “Don’t worry so much about the scale. It doesn’t tell the real story of how you appear to people.”

She offered a confused smile that seemed to be edging toward collapsing into a full on grin. “Am I close to a 10?” asked him meekly. “On the outside?”

“Pretty close,” Ben humored her with a playful grin. “But remember: there were 10s in the room with you on Halloween night, but all eyes were on you, weren’t they?” Anang now blushed quite heavily and lowered her gaze, being overwhelmed by their compliments.

“I like that this world likes to see me the way that I came into my world,” she told them with a soft smile.

The remainder of the preparations were to improve communications to, from and around the property of Ben’s cabin. That night at the cabin was tense as even Anang said she could feel the air changing and she wondered if the waterfall would appear soon. Still, though, they slept well enough with Daniel taking the first shift in the evening until just after 1 am sitting in a deer stand and Ben taking the later from a little before 3AM to sunrise and thankfully it went without incident. When morning came, Tim and Paul arrived with walkie talkies and an antenna that helped relay cell phone signals onto the property enough so that Ben could get reliable coverage for the first time. They spent the morning programming their radios and testing them at varying points, while also staging them in places where they would be the most useful. It was around noon when Stanley showed up with Anang’s metal boot, which was exactly as promised and painted with a matte black to better blend in with her coat. Anang transformed again and slipped it on, enclosing it around her leg with hinges and fastening it in place with buckles that Stanley had welded on. She walked around a little on all fours while the four men watched and she tested it, then tried to run a few times, much faster than any of them could run, but with nowhere near the speed she moved at when Ben had first encountered her. She made a few leaps, impressing everyone when she jumped a good ten feet into a tree, then from tree to tree deep into the woods before coming back, removing the boot and transforming down into her much smaller human form.

She was concerned that the boot didn’t let her move at anywhere near her normal abilities, however at least she was on her own two feet again and able to move with a limited amount of agility. Oliver was also on hand investigating and taking readings to try to predict when another space-time fold would occur, but he couldn’t manage to come up with anything concrete.

Two more nights passed and the cabin was quiet with no more incidents. It was the third night around 11PM that Anang woke suddenly with a start and sat up rigidly. “It’s happening,” she reported, tensing as she stared out the window into the half moon. Ben grabbed his phone and texted the others, and was surprised when Paul answered immediately back from out in the woods that a mist had appeared from seemingly nowhere. A moment later, Tim and Stanley were reporting they were on the way, though likely they would arrive after everything was all said and done because of the distance. Ben grabbed his hunting clothes, which were hanging out on the porch and threw them on and carried Anang on his back in little more than Kevlar vest, shorts and a T-shirt to his closest deer stand, and they looked out into the mist enveloping the woods under the moonlight.

“It will take them time to find their way through,” she whispered to him.

“Here’s hoping they don’t show up,” Ben said with a smile, and then ran his fingers through her raven locks. “Remember what we told you. Only hit and run attacks and once the device comes out, get the hell out of dodge.” Her brow furrowed, but she nodded then slipped off of his back, shifted forms and buckled her weak leg in her boot. She then grabbed Ben and in a single leap, grabbed onto the tree and set him in his stand.

She looked around the forest, sniffing intently and her ears high, tense and twitching for even the smallest of noise, but for several minutes there was nothing as she crouched down at the back of the stand, half hanging on the tree and half curled up by Ben’s hip.

The air was still and thick. Ben continued to listen and scan the horizon the same as he would for a deer, but all he could see was a serene forest that was perfectly familiar, then something odd happened. It was difficult to pin the moment it did, and in fact it didn’t seem to be a single moment, but the forest itself almost looked as if it moved gently and subtly until the familiar landscape was no longer so familiar anymore. There were some ridges and slopes that Ben could recognize, but others that were entirely foreign, as if random parts of the terrain had suddenly been replaced. They stayed like this for quite a while, not Ben or Anang moving so much as an inch, though everything else aside, all continued to seem normal.

Sometime after twenty minutes of waiting, Anang’s ear twitched unexpectedly and Ben could hear a sudden, brief crunch of leaves in the distance, but nothing else. More time passed and though Ben couldn’t hear it, Anang’s ear twitched again and he raised his rifle, scanning for any threats. There was more waiting, listening and scanning, and then Anang tensed suddenly beside him and shut her eyes tightly.

They were here.

Just like the scenery, they didn’t appear all at once. There was a crunch of leaves sporadically, then Ben saw the first glimpse, though it was vague, almost as if it were only half there. It looked like a thick, long, muscular arm, but it vanished, though it was impossible to explain when it had appeared or disappeared.

And then glowing amber eyes staring about fifty degrees off from their location and roughly 100 yards away. The form around them seemed to warp before a monster nearly identical to Anang, only larger, beefier and decidedly more ferocious looking seemed to materialize as he walked soundlessly into existence within the brush.

Then the forest went silent with dread as every other creature in the region caught its scent and hunkered down wherever they were and froze in place as if their lives depended on it. A moment later, Ben could see something in the shadows further out and then he could see one single amber eye glowing as it scanned its surroundings.

Ben held still, searching to see if any more appeared, then Anang lifted up her hand and took the barrel of the rifle with her thumb and forefinger. Slowly and deliberately, she pulled the barrel to the first creature, who was standing mostly still, assessing the environment, then to another location in the shadows off to the left where two amber eyes appeared briefly, scanning the environment, then back to the second creature Ben had spotted and finally to the right, between the first and second, where Ben could only see a menacing figure standing in the shadows. Ben tipped the barrel slightly to let Anang know he’d seen what she needed him to, then set his sights on the nearest creature.

They looked almost like statues standing there at random spots around the forest, and Ben did his absolute best to imitate them, even going so far as to intermittently hold his breath. This standoff lasted for several minutes before two seemed to turn toward each other in the distance. Those two then turned around and seemed to have decided to go back where they had come from when the nearest one a hundred yards away suddenly lifted his snout into the air and let out a loud, deep grunt. The other three froze and lifted their snouts and then the nearest one’s face snapped directly toward Ben and Anang, those menacing amber eyes glowing directly at them.

It let loose a guttural call that was long, deep and half howl and half roar and then the other three were instantly trained on their exact location. Ben watched the nearest one crouch slightly and then…

BANG!

Ben’s first shot was right between the creature’s eyes, causing it to howl in horrendous pain, and the other three creatures scattered, disoriented by their comrade’s sudden screams of suffering. Unfortunately, this only seemed to stun and then anger the creature, who stood upright again and let loose another roar, but got another shot between the eyes for his trouble, which this time seemed to knock him down with a loud series of whimpers.

The others were now moving without any hesitation or attempt at stealth toward them, but they all dropped to their knees and grabbed their ears when more than a dozen speakers suddenly began blaring all at once, then they became even more bewildered as canisters around the forest began popping and scent began dispersing through the air in such amounts that even Ben found himself gagging. Ben got another angry creature between the eyes when it was scanning to attempt to get its bearings again before another shot rang out from the other side of the zone and another creature yelped in pain. Ben checked on Anang, who was already wearing hearing protection to spare her sensitive ears and sneering wickedly down at her pursuers while also trembling at the chance to get a small taste of her own revenge.

Ben and Paul continued trading off shots one after another as the creatures slowly came to the realization that they had walked directly into a trap and they were so disoriented that they were having trouble picking a direction that would lead them to safety.

Then the first one went down with a pain filled groan and Anang muttered to Ben in a deep, growling voice, “he is dead.”

With three to go, Ben continued taking what shots presented themselves, though it was becoming clear that the creatures were learning and seeking cover as best as they could, though they still seemed to be confused by where all the these bites were coming from. Then one made a break for Paul’s direction moving along at terrifying speed. Ben’s first shot missed, then he clicked his radio and called out, “incoming.”

In response, two more shots rang out from the distance in succession and the second one made the creature howl in pain, though it still advanced. Ben managed to get one more shot on it, startling it and making it turn its head around toward him, but this gave Paul the opening he needed and he began unloading, his shots increasing in frequency as the creature closed the distance before it finally crashed down in agonizing groans of pain.

Two down.

The remaining two bristled and turned their attentions back toward Anang and Ben, dodging from tree to tree after realizing the thunder sticks could be stopped by them. Ben got a couple glancing shots at one and managed to get the other between the eyes again, but they continued to advance. “Ready,” Anang declared under her breath while Ben continued to fire right up to the point where his magazine was empty and he was forced to reload. Just as he did, the nearest creature leapt up with horrifying power across and up to them, but Anang launched out at him like a coiled spring, ripping several painful gashes at it with her claws and teeth while it was midair before disappearing into the brush.

“COWARD!” it howled at her, staggering to its feet while the other leapt at Ben just as he locked his next round into the chamber. Ben unloaded five shots as it plummeted toward him, but had to drop to the left of his seat as it lunged in, punching the tree trunk with its claws and sending splinters of wood in all directions. Ben placed another two haphazard rounds into its ribs, startling it and he could see its eyes wide with shock, but it ripped its claws out of the tree again, then swung down directly into Ben’s chest and he grunted loudly as he felt the wind beaten directly out of him.

Both were stunned, however, when they realized the Kevlar had done its job, though it was thoroughly clawed through, and Ben pulled a handgun from his armpit and fired seven shots in rapid succession at him, fully unloading all of his ammo into it. Meanwhile, the creature lunged at Ben again, and taking them both out of the stand, tumbling down from the tree stand and into the brush below with loud thuds.

The other creature was staggering around snarling with his ear twitching when he chanced upon one of the speakers and looked at it with a peculiar gaze. He picked it and crushed it in his hands and was even more amazed when the deafening sound was no longer as horrendous, but before he could enjoy his discovery, Anang had leapt out from the brush and ripped a number of painful gashes into its back before disappearing again into the foliage.

On the ground beneath Ben’s tree stand, the other creature was forcing itself to its feet with immense bloodlust in its eyes and a deep rumble emanating from deep within its lungs. Ben rolled over and gasped for air and struggled to get to his knees and the creature leaned down and gripped Ben’s shoulder and lifted him up by it with such force that it made Ben scream in pain. But before the wavering creature was ready to move its other, clearly injured arm, Ben plunged his hunting knife through the creature’s wrist and twisted it until the blade broke. The creature screamed in pain, and when it did, Anang emerged again; leaping onto its back, plunging her claws deep into its ribs and then swung around with her other arm, shredding its throat with her claws.

During that time, the other creature had managed to crush several other speakers and the sound was now tolerable enough that it regained its bearings and exploded into the brush after Anang as she dashed off.

Anang was not nearly fast enough to keep her distance, so she circled back out onto the trail and headed directly back toward Ben, who took the shot with his rifle the instant it appeared on the trail. The creature was undeterred, however, and continued in its path, taking two more haphazard shots as it intended to entirely ignore Ben, so as it passed Ben swung at it with the butt of his rifle, stunning it to a near stop and Ben struck once more, cracking it in the head with it again, driving it face first into the dirt. The creature swung back and hit Ben again in the chest, knocking him through the air several feet and he crashed to the ground in the brush, then the creature stood and its ears perked, searching for its prey.

“ANANG!” it growled menacingly.

Then Ben called out, “You fucking asshole!” and forced himself up with all his might into a sitting position. The creature turned and looked at Ben in utter disbelief that this strange, useless, fluffy creature had actually spoken. “You know how long I’ve been looking forward to fucking kill you?” Ben asked loudly, then climbed to his feet and aimed his freshly reloaded pistol.

The creature trembled, still in disbelief, but there was nothing resembling fear in its gaze. “Big words,” it grumbled in a sub harmonic voice that rumbled through Ben’s bones. “Little man,” it declared, then winced at the first of Ben’s shots in the chest. The creature stepped forward quickly, but its movements betrayed its injuries and Ben emptied the pistol into it again, though it did little to deter the creature who pounced on him and pinned him to the ground just as Ben pulled out the device and slapped it to the creature’s chest. It glanced at the device, but when it sensed no pain from it, it pinned his arm with its knee, drew its claws back to strike, then Anang leapt out from the brush, digging her slashing claws into its back, but the creature swung around, hitting her with immense force and knocking her flying back more than a dozen yards as Ben dropped the trigger for the device in the tussle.

“RUN!” Ben ordered her, but Anang’s jaw hung as she watched the creature draw its arm back in preparation to pierce its claws directly through Ben’s chest. She rolled over and roared in pain, limping with all her might to close the distance and leapt at them just as Ben managed to slam the trigger with the back of his hand.

Everything happened at once.

The device on the creature’s chest instantly buzzed and then popped with an electrical discharge and the air all around them seemed to almost invert in terms of lighting and color. The mist glowed and churned as if turning in on itself and a faint aurora could be seen overhead. A bright electrical charge dispersed through the creature and radiated outward and hitting Anang as she soared through the air to intercept it and that charge’s impact seemed to slow her, but then all movement around them also seemed to shift as though time itself were churning in a series of counter revolving pools. Debris kicked up to Ben’s left seemed to fly away in fits and spurts, while the debris to his right moved in slow motion.

The creature began his strike to drive his razor sharp claws through Ben’s chest, but his body seemed to be warped through time, moving slowly and irregularly and only moving forward a little more than an inch a second from Ben’s point of view. Not that this was of any help, though, as Ben was thoroughly pinned, but only temporarily. The strangest thing of all was the creature seemed to be contracting within itself and it lurched slightly as its animalistic form seemed to suddenly revert backward slightly, then forward again into the same form Ben had been fighting, but through it all, the creature continued to recede in all directions.

Anang was hardly immune to this and she too began to contract, though she would contract, then expand slightly, then contract more as she strained and struggled to force her animalistic form to remain in tact just like the other creature.

Ben watched in disbelief as the dangerous creature shrank before his eyes, but not quickly enough to do anything about his fatal claws plunging down at him inexorably and Anang’s presence was closing the gap far too slowly and unevenly for comfort, also apparently caught in a similar maelstrom of time that allowed her to move at a mere fraction of the speed that Ben was able to perceive. She was also shrinking much more slowly and her shorts, kevlar vest, t-shirt and metal boot were starting to fall loose around her dwindling body, which was contracting as if it was bending and warping through reality a couple of inches of height at a time, then reversing and expanding very slightly before contracting again. The creature was roughly five feet tall when Ben felt its claws make contact with the already shredded Kevlar vest. His chest was compressed slightly when Anang finally made contact with the creature, only instead of being roughly a foot shorter than it had been, she was now roughly six inches taller, easily knocking the creature free by her much larger, but still shrinking mass as they both hurled slowly through the air off towards Ben’s left.

Paul came running up with his rifle at the ready as it all began and nearly dropped his rifle when he saw Anang’s battle with the creature recommence, only this time with Anang holding the clear advantage, and what was more was that with every instant, that advantage was swiftly increasing despite Anang’s rapidly decreasing size.

By the time Anang had fully passed over Ben’s torso, her metal boot had already slipped off and fell with a painful thud onto his body once released from Anang, who seemed to be slipping forward, backward and then forward in time in slow motion while the creature’s size was spastically decreasing in tiny fits and spurts.

As they continued to sail through the air, Ben watched in shock as he saw Anang’s sweat shorts gently fall free from her plummeting and shrinking body and the rigid Kevlar vest hung precariously around her dwindling torso. Anang struck the creature with drastically reduced claws due to her rapid regression back to her human form while the creature had all but lost his beast like form by this stage and looked more like an angry, harry midget who wore a look of sheer horror covering all of his face. She gouged out a massive chunk of his side, but by the time her next hit landed, her claws were gone and the now two foot tall miniature man was gulping from dull finger nails gouging his skin. Anang tried again to regain her beast like form, but it quickly faded and by the time they hit the ground rolling over each other, the creature was a pathetic looking pale little man of less than a foot tall and Anang was dropping below four feet tall fully reverted to her human form as the Kevlar vest flopped loosely around her dwindling body and her severely oversized t-shirt whirled like a loose sail caught in a gale wind.

With her beast form completely gone now, she began punching and screaming primally at the tiny creature as they both continued to shrink, with Anang slowing to a stop at roughly half the height Ben had known her at for the last two months and the creature all but disappearing under her fists at only a few inches tall.

By the time she’d finished beating the tiny man to a blood covered pulp, the entire effect around them had dissipated and Anang was sitting there in nothing but a comparatively giant t-shirt that had fallen completely off her right shoulder and she was tangled in and she was gasping for air while her injured leg twitched off to the side. The entire landscape around them was back to how it should have appeared and the cool air suddenly began moving again.

Paul was too shocked to even move and he finally did drop his rifle, while Ben rolled over, completely ignoring the pain and injuries and began staggering and crawling toward her with eyes filled with anguish and disbelief.

Anang gained enough of her breath that she finally stopped and began to take inventory of her situation. “Why did he become so tiny?” she asked aloud in a high-pitched voice that was familiar, but well above its familiar tenor. She then looked at her hands, still befuddled. “Why is it suddenly so difficult to shift?” she asked.

“Anang,” Ben called out as he ambled clumsily over to her. She turned, happy to hear the familiar voice, but then her eyes widened.

“Why are you so large?” she asked, even more befuddled, then she noticed her tent sized shirt, her naked injured leg and she scanned the area, immediately noting that everything around her was completely out of scale. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!?!” she screamed at Ben as he finally reached her and knelt both in front of her and around her.

“Anang…” Ben gasped, reaching for her, but she fell over, staring up with shock and fear at the giant before her. “How did this happen?” he asked aloud as Paul stumbled up, his jaw still hung so low it might have fallen off.

“What do you mean how did this happen? You did this! It was that THING that Oliver gave you! What did you do??? WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!?!?!?” she screamed, then flailed her little fists impotently up at him, most failing to do anything simply because her reach was now too short. “Undo it! Undo it! Turn me back!” she screamed as the tears began to flow freely. Paul shook from the shock, but he gathered enough wits to take out a flashlight and he recovered the trigger and the device.

That is to say, what was left of the device. The electric jolt was enough to burn it to little more than cinders. If Paul was careful, it wouldn’t crumble in his hands, but everything about the device was now charred and brittle, almost as if it had been laying out in the elements for decades, and there was a hole in the casing that showed the circuits inside were fried and a charred black. When he brought the device to them, Ben lowered his head and closed his eyes, immediately regretting his actions and Anang broke out into sobbing tears.

“Undo it! Undo it!! Turn me back!” she begged, but no matter how many times she pressed the trigger, it was all completely inert.

Ben gathered Anang up into his arms once she’d calmed down enough to let him near her and wrapped her in his jacket to warm her up. Then they investigated the scene. There were three bodies present, and the fourth had somehow disappeared. Two of the bodies were still in their animalistic form, but oddly hard and rigid to the touch. The third was the final creature that had shrunk down to a tiny fraction of its size. Anang had thoroughly pummeled the creature, and it was hardly recognizable as a person and it resembled a tenderized chunk of meat more. They guessed that it had stopped shrinking around four inches tall. They investigated the location where the final body should have been, but all they found was trampled vegetation and a few dried smatterings of blood. It was clear that whatever had been there was gravely injured, but there was no trail of any kind and no signs that anything had moved at all from that spot. It was just simply… gone.

When they returned to the cabin, Anang was still horrified by her reduction as she gawked with tear filled eyes at the once familiar place that had been her home for two months. Ben untangled her t-shirt and pulled it up over her shoulder in order to cover her exposed breast, but its hold there was tenuous at best and she sat there on the table, her tiny feet dangling far above the ground.

All of Ben’s energy went to consoling Anang and reassuring her while searching her miniature body for signs of injury. Thankfully, her injured leg was no worse off than it had been before the encounter, however that knee already was showing a pretty big contusion. Anang was mortified and barely responsive as Ben tended to her while Paul could only crash down into a chair and stare out into the air blankly.

A short while later, Tim and Stanley arrived together, storming in upon seeing the house fully lit. They first saw Paul and Tim called out, “where are they?” once they saw that he seemed to be none the worse for wear. All he could do was nod in Ben’s direction, and they turned there. “Ben! Are you alright? Where is Anang? Was she hurt?”

Ben lifted his head and turned to look over his shoulder, but words were still failing him. “Where’s Anang?” Stanley asked frantically again.

“She’s here,” he told them, wobbling on his feet.

“Was she hurt?” Tim asked again, stepping forward. Ben looked back down at Anang in front of him, then over his shoulder, but his expression showed that he had no idea how to answer that question, so finally he took a step to the side, revealing the now half sized Anang.

Both men needed several seconds to register the situation. At first all seemed well, Anang was there, she was whole and the blood and bruises on her seemed minimal, but something was off. And then it hit them. Not all at once to be sure, but in stages, and not together until Stanley suddenly blurted out something in his native tongue that was obviously a string of curse words.

This was enough to snap Anang out of her daze, and she suddenly was overcome with shame and embarrassment and began pulling her tent size t-shirt up to cover herself.

“What the fuck could do this?” Tim asked upon approaching.

“Oliver’s device,” she whimpered up through sudden tears.

“The other guy is mouse sized,” Paul interjected numbly and Tim and Stanley turned and stared at him. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was like everything was collapsing in around them and squeezing them down as it went.”

Daniel arrived shortly after that and Tim and Stanley caught him at the door and brought him up to speed on the porch before letting him in to see their other friends. Tim’s next step was to message Oliver, insisting they see him immediately, however there was no response. With nothing else to do, Tim, Stanley and Daniel gathered the three survivors in front of the fight and little by little, they drew out the gory details of the entire encounter.

Once they had a full account, Tim pushed Ben and Anang into the bathroom to clean up, with Ben doing most of the work to freshen Anang up, and then sent them to bed, promising Anang that they would do everything they could to fix her situation as soon as Oliver arrived. Anang literally cried herself to sleep laying on top of Ben’s chest, but the blanket was pulled up high and she was warm there with the steady beat of his heart to lull her frazzled mind.

“I’m so sorry,” Ben apologized breathlessly to her before she finally fell asleep. “I’m so sorry Anang. I never wanted anything to happen to you.” Anang nodded ever so slightly in response and petted his warm chest before she finally allowed herself to drift off.

[sallyfourth]

I really do love this part. Not a sexy shrinking sequence at all but a very convincing and terrifying night battle.

Seeya

[MrWitness]

Hell yeah!

[DocRick]

I really do love this part. Not a sexy shrinking sequence at all but a very convincing and terrifying night battle.

Seeya

Has there been ANY shrinking in this story? If there was, I missed it.....