Hungry
“Wait… So, they’re really not here?” Jared wondered aloud when he was done reading the letter. He looked up from it and into his closet where the skunk and wolverine onesies were hung. He double checked that there were no others and confirmed that it was the case. He read the letter again. Yes, Leland was telling him to go out and look for the other suits. He said they weren’t far, but they weren’t close either. Way to be vague. What did Leland expect him to do? Go out there stalking though the forest, looking for some animal suits? There were literally millions of acres surrounding Jared, nothing but unkempt wilderness bereft of any manmade landmarks he could orient himself with.
Of course, he’d spent a week traveling his territory end to end. If there was anything worth finding out in the many stretches he claimed as his territory, he could find it. But that didn’t mean Leland had left either of the two suits in his domain. “Not far but not close” could have been just about anywhere. Was Leland playing games with him now? Did he expect Jared to work for his transformations going forward? Maybe him being a tiger helped Leland make the decision. Tigers were supposed to be strong and brave. Maybe he would find some fun in such a challenge. Maybe even a little adventure.
Or maybe not. With the skunk and wolverine onesies hanging behind him in the closet, it made much more sense just to throw one of those on and go back to their respective worlds. He didn’t have to go out and risk stumbling into another tiger’s territory to accomplish that. Life as a skunkette had been easy and was very similar to what it had been like as a human. The wolverine world was a whole lot more brash and scarier, so he didn’t think he’d be going back there. As for whatever the other two suits would turn him into and what kind of worlds they entailed, there was only one way to find out.
Jared folded the letter up and placed it on a nearby table. He strode outside into the daylight, his four powerful tiger legs propelling him along. For a moment he recalled his awkward transition from walking on two legs to four, how he had to rely on muscle memory and forcibly unlearn bipedalism. Now here he was walking around like it was nothing, able to prance, leap, and pounce with all the power and majesty of your average Siberian tiger. He would lose that in the skunk and wolverine worlds. The two suits waiting for him could also very easily take it away from him, but again, he wouldn’t know that until he found them.
His stomach started to grumble. Rrrrrrrrrrrrr. Jared put a paw over it. Throughout the whole week he hadn’t caught or eaten a single animal. He didn’t have the stomach to kill anything, something his tiger instincts continuously begged him to overcome so that he wouldn’t starve. On more than one occasion he had stumbled upon deer and their trails. Instead of relying on muscle memory he would have to start fighting it as his tiger brain went into stalking mode, gearing to take down a juicy deer and eat it. Each time he had fought the urge, much to the chagrin of his empty stomach.
The suits are in the closet, he reminded himself. Three square meals a day plus modern luxury. You can’t beat that. And yet he couldn’t quite tear himself away from this place. A vast swathe of forest he could claim as his own, something he’d earned after a lifetime of fighting. To retreat into a world of leisure seemed wrong to the point of criminal. If he were to leave it eventually, as his growing hunger was starting to insist, he would at least spend one last journey through his territory before doing so. Going back to either the skunk or wolverine worlds meant he might never figure out what was in the two boxes Leland sent, and that wasn’t something he would allow to sit on his conscience.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 01 June 2024