How It Started, II

There was no easy answer to this, an unprecedented discovery. The four adults stood in a circle, their faces lined with worry, staring down at the baby fox who was curiously looking up at them with her bright new eyes.

Aaron, who was the oldest out of all of them, often took a sense of control because of it. He sighed seeing the stalemate. "Tell the tribal head I guess. If he wants to get rid of it then it's not our fault."

Instinctively, Iris snatched her child back and rolled her into her arms possessively, as low growl hummed in her throat and her eyes narrowed on her spouse. Just because she couldn't shift to a fox didn't mean she wasn't a fox, and she wished she had the fangs to bite him suddenly. He had inadvertently made the decision, snapping her motherly instincts back from her shock.

"WE WILL NOT BE GETTING RID OF HER" Iris barked, baring her teeth even though there wasn't anything threatening about them.

"Then you'll want to keep your voice down before the whole village hears you yelling about the female child nobody saw you carry for nine months" Aaron sneered, but in a whispered, urgent tone.

The hierarchy of the household put the women at the top, and there was no use yelling or being dominant towards them unless you wanted to be kicked out. Yelling at Iris would gain him nothing, but she needed to stop screeching. Iris shot him another glare, but said nothing, as she knew he was right. Eventually the village would have to know, but not now.

Again, the four adults looked around at each other silently settling the matter for now. They would speak to no one of this. Not yet.

Hiram went back out to grab dinner; two shortwinged birds and their eggs were quickly hunted, skinned, and cooked for the family unit. Usually him and Asher would bicker about who had to do dinner duty, while Aaron would go to his guard post, but today, given the weird child was Asher's, Hiram wasn't going to bother him and Iris. Now clothed in animal skin skirts, they all sat around a fire in the middle of the round hut, pulling off pieces of meat and dipping it in salt as they considered the afternoon's events, the babies in a pile fast asleep.

"Maybe she won't even be able to shift into a person," mumbled Aaron as he picked at his meal. Peacocks were omnivores and would eat just about anything, but it still annoyed him that the foxes, also technically omnivores, never thought to bring home nuts or fruits for the night.

"That wouldn't make any sense then, you think she's just a wild fox that came out of a woman?" asked Asher, the first thing he really had to say about any of this.

It was an ironic question, as the fact that animals were birthed by human looking women made little sense in general, but in this world, it was normal. And in this world, they too did have wild, un-shifting counterparts to their beast forms, but there was absolutely no relation. The Beastmen and the wild animals did not acknowledge each other. They had no kinship. In fact, the Beastmen actively hunted the wild animals of their kind, as their preferred clothing was made out of the hides of their familiar forms, if practical. Tigers liked to wear tiger striped hide, fox wore fox fur. The birds had a harder time, though Aaron did tend to dress himself in a fox hide skirt adorned in his own tail feathers on the top edge.

The women weren't as set in their ways about their clothing, enjoying a variety of hide and fur styles, but even now, Iris was wearing a halter top that attached around her neck with a fox tail collar, the rest of it most likely fox leather with the fur skived off of it. Her long red hair was braided on top of her head with two peacock tail feathers hanging down, her brow furrowed at the idea of her daughter staying a wild animal forever.

"She's more than wild, she understands me just as well as the boys," Iris said firmly. "You know the kits pick up language quickly. She's not some rogue baby, she knows when I'm happy or mad just as well as the other three."

More strained silence was allowed for a few moments, until Hiram spoke softly. "Is this a blessing, or is this a curse, then?"

Asher answered this first. "Oh Hiram, where are you even getting this? We don't believe in that. We aren't apes and the Great City learned not to trust omens years ago."

He wasn't wrong. Though news did not travel quickly in a world without fast transportation or telephones, any village that wasn't entirely isolated knew what had happened to the City of Beasts, sometimes called Great City, the largest and most advanced settlement in the known region. A purely human girl from a different time and space fell among them, and a cruel and jealous Ape King had turned the entire city on her using magic and premonitions of destruction.

The girl fled with her spouses, and without her presence in the city, only then did it become utterly destroyed in an earthquake. The girl and her spouses then became the stuff of legends, especially in this immediate area, as the fox village was only a weeks casual walking distance from where the girl and her spouses created the next Great City. The story of the earthquake was a humble reminder to all Beastmen that omens, spells, and prayers did not do much in a world that did not truly believe in deities.

But that did not mean the female fox kit was safe. In an ancient world set in its ways, beasts would most likely not see such an anomaly as something to brush off. It was the stuff superstitions were made of. She may as well have grown three heads, or wings and breathed fire - that would be more believable, since dragons existed, at least in lore.  Mermen existed. Dinosaurs never died off here. But shifting females, to any local knowledge, did not exist. Much like the earthquake destroying the old city, if there had been a shifting female child, the news would have trickled down, even if years later.

Seeing the two fox men starting to bare their teeth over the fire, Iris shook her head. "Stop, both of you, stop. I don't even care if she's a blessing or a curse, fighting over what's going to happen won't do anyone anything. Let's just see. Pretend nothing is different. Forget you noticed. Call them all he, still call her Third. If Third transforms, then Third transforms and we figure it out then."

And that's how their family dealt with the discovery, for eight entire years. Not wanting anyone to notice anything different, Iris was overly protective of the children, not letting them out of her sight, many days not even out of her house, which was very unlike the average beast mother. Asher feared it would stunt the growth of the boys, but Iris was deeply afraid of someone catching onto the females' existence. Iris even had a clutch of eggs with Aaron, and the village did notice that the three peacock males were allowed out and flying without supervision. But Iris watched her fox children intensely, becoming increasingly paranoid.

But, at least it only lasted eight years, not sixteen.