Track
He made a slow but inexorable trot towards the smell, his flat, pink tiger nose constantly twitching. Sniff-sniff-sniff. This was his hunter instinct unbridled, that primal part of his brain tapped into. That smell of recently cleaned floors, old clothes, and mothballs grew more distinct with each stride until he’d broken into a full gallop, his heart ready to beat out of his chest. It reached a pinnacle when he came across a small hill with an enormous, rooty tree on top of it. He didn’t see the box, but it didn’t take a supreme detective to know it was hidden there. Was it at the top? Could tigers climb? And even if they did, would he be able to in this body?
No time for questions, he continued his run towards the tree, climbed that small hill, and found himself at the base. There he circled the trunk and saw Leland’s package sitting between two gnarled tree roots. Jared’s name was written in what looked like permanent marker on the brown paper that wrapped around the box, also tied up in string. There wasn’t any letter that Jared could see. Full of elation, Jared came forward and picked up the box before immediately clawing it open. The paper and carboard all came apart in a storm of shreds, exposing the treasure that lay inside.
It was a centaur suit like the tiger one Jared had put on when he was a wolverine; he could tell thanks to the six limbs that dangled from it. As for the species, that was a little less clear. Smooth, blonde fur like a lion’s covered the lower half of the body, but the upper half was completely without fur. It was just rubbery skin like he would expect a Halloween mask to be made from. Though the material was obviously fake, it felt eerie rubbing it between his fingers. He noticed the front side of the torso was textured like a fit man’s torso, featuring squared pecs and cut abs. The hood part was made of the skin material too, but featured a set of long, black hair that came down to the neck. It all would have made sense to him before, but after becoming a tigertaur he would expect the upper half to achieve tigrine (or in this case, leonid) features too, but they were absent here. If this suit would turn him into a liontaur like he thought, then what made it different from the tiger suit?
None of that complexed him more, however, than the pair of feathery wings which grew from the back of the lower half. They hung limply with the rest of it. The feathers were incredibly long like an eagle’s. Jared picked one wing up and stretched it out as far as it would go, achieving a span of about four feet with just that wing. OK, so this is definitely not any creature you can find in the human world. It shouldn’t have surprised him to see what had to be a fantastical creature after what he’d become, but this vexed him completely. He could tell that the tigertaurs suit was at least a tiger and nothing else. What he held in his hands was an amalgamation of at least three different creatures. So what the hell was it?
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 03 June 2024
