Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie, Let Wild Cubs Run

Story by Picklessauce69 on SoFurry

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Another cutsy idea for SPARTASTICUS


"Finally! I thought school would never end!" Jessie's voice crackled out with a purring giggle. She threw her hands up above her head with a celebratory spin. As usual on a Friday afternoon, the final bell that freed them from school sent a wave of kids pouring out of the building and onto the common grass space.

Within the writhing masses of the entire student body fleeing from their weekly chore and racing into their weekends, a single trio of friends lingered on the steps to find each other and prepare for the trip home.

Jessie, the lioness, reached the designated meeting place first with a gleeful stretch into the sunny air while the youngest of their group, Katie quickly found her.

"That was the longest day ever!" She complained, spreading her arms out and rolling her shoulders back as she basked in the taste of fresh air hitting her nose. No more did she breathe in chalk dust and gym socks with every inhale, but the sweet scent of the freshly mowed lawns and distant hint of rubber tires from the bike racks.

"I think you said that last Friday too," Jessie pointed out, grinning as she hiked her backpack onto both of her shoulders and dropped her skateboard from beneath her armpit onto the ground. With one foot, she rocked it back and forth as both the girls turned their eyes to the exiting crowd. "Do you see Abby yet?"

Katie turned, skimming for the familiar cheetah, but she didn't see her speckled fur within the masses of anthro cubs. "Nuh uh. Did she have something to grab from the art room?"

"Oh! Right! Her project, she should be out soon then-"

Sure enough, catching the back of the funneling pack of students, Abigail Dixon appeared with her backpack swinging from one arm and a small pottery dish in the other. "Hey! I thought maybe you'd have ditched me by now!"

"Never!" Jessie laughed, rolling her eyes. "That'd make for an awkward sleepover!"

"Well, we can't have that!" Katie interjected though she quickly followed it with a nervous smile. As the newest of the group, she sometimes worried she might say the wrong thing, but Jessie and Abby quickly agreed, chuckling and waving towards the sidewalks out in front of the school.

"Since we're all here, should we go?"

"Yeah! Let's ride!"

One by one, they mounted their chosen tool of transport. Jessie kicked her skateboard forward, easily stepping up onto the rolling surface with familiarity while Abby swung her leg up over a high bike, quickly standing up onto the pedals and pumping forward. Last, Katie hung behind for the short minute it took her to slip into her roller blades, throwing her tennis shoes over her shoulder, strung up together as she took off after her friends.

"Guys! Wait up! You forget that I have to put these things on!" She complained, but with laughter in her voice.

Side by side, they sped past the other cubs lingering around waiting for parents to pick them up or for the second wave of buses and down into the residential streets towards Jessie's house, the location for their planned slumber party for three.

"Is your dad gonna cook for us tonight?" Abby asked, remembering the last time he made barbeque with a rumble in her stomach. Jessie just laughed, glancing over her shoulder and pumping her foot off her skateboard to keep her speed. "I dunno! We might get pizza, I don't know if he has any work."

"He's a police officer, right?" Katie interjected, sidling up beside the other two girls on her bike, pedals rolling easily.

"Yeah!"

"That's so cool. I bet you're like never scared of anything at home then," Katie finished, imagining briefly the hulking Red staring down a burglar. It made her chuckle.

"Hah! Yeah, my dad would smoke anyone who bothered us! Everyone knows it! You'd have to be dumb to mess with the Stamp house!"

Turning around a bend, they arrived in front of the familiar house to the sight of Jessie's father Red already outside, waving them greetings as they pulled up. "Well, if it isn't the toughest girl gang on the block, huh?" He pulled Jessie into a brief hug as she hopped off her skateboard, letting it roll up onto the grass.

"You know it!" She laughed, leaning into his side. He sipped from a steaming mug, coffee lingering on his breath.

"You girls ready for a slumber partayyyy?!" He sang, opening the door and leading them inside to the rhythmic beat of three heavy backpacks thunking onto the entryway floor one by one and the following patter of shoes flying off from impatient soles.

"Yeah!"

"Are we getting pizza?!"

"Already ordered it," Red winked, chuckling. Keeping these three happy was easier than he'd thought it could be. "But, as soon as it comes, I've got to go file a pile of paperwork down at the police station. Can I trust you girls to take care of yourselves?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Stamp!"

"Yessir!"

He laughed at them, leaning onto the counter as they filled him in on the day in overlapping circles. Their voices hummed around the room, loud and echoing, spilling onto each others' to fill in the holes of each narration. By the time they'd run out of school day to share, the doorbell rang.

"Pizza!" Three hungry cubs dove towards the delivery boy, leaving him suddenly empty handed and wide eyed by the time Red got his wallet out. Red shrugged with a laugh, as though to say, "It's out of my hands here!"

"Okay, enjoy your food, girls!" Red headed towards the door, grabbing his briefcase in one hand and the car keys with the other. "Be safe. Call me if you need anything. Ice cream in the freezer." He paused, pointing a finger at Jessie. "And hey, don't be ashamed to use the life rings if you need 'em. No shame in staying afloat."

"Okay, Daaad!" She whined, rolling her eyes, but she hopped off her stool to give him a one armed hug, keeping her greasy fingers away from his button up shirt before he headed out into the early evening, leaving them to their own devices with the knowledge that they could swim in his absence, as long as it was safe.

An hour later, after the fullness from the pizza started to fade, the girls were splayed across the couch. "Now what do we do?"

They all turned to the window in unison to inspect the environment. The sun was starting its sinking disappearance in the sky, leaving streaks of orange and purple in its wake as it traveled.

"No one is around... the sun is setting, we should play Wild Cubs!" Jessie offered up, looking eagering between Abby and Katie. Katie's eyebrow raised, confusion coloring her face while Abby lit up with devious excitement.

"What is that?" Katie asked, looking across at the two friends who'd she'd just started hanging out with more.

Jessie and Abigail met eyes, giving a conspiratorial glance between each other. "Once, in a jungle, there were two cubs who were stranded and had to survive together!"

"-In the wild," Abby continued, launching off of Jessie's introduction. "They ran around in the rain and swam and hid from poachers and-"

"And they were just free and wild! And that's what Wild Cubs is! We become wild cubs too!"

Katie furrowed her brows, giving a beat of thought before shrugging. "Okay, I guess I can play!"

"Yay!" Jessie instantly hopped up to her feet with Abby quickly copying her. Both their paws rose up to the hems of their shirts, grabbing on and yanking them upwards. Instantly, Katie's face returned to a full, scrunched expression of confusion.

"What are you doing?" Katie blurted out, staring at them with wide, confused eyes.

Jessie and Abby froze, pausing with their stomach exposed, their shirts each half raised and frozen in place. "Ooh! Wild Cubs don't wear clothes, just loin clothes-"

"-Or modern underwear!"

"Won't someone see?" Katie hesitated, looking up at the two, slightly older girls.

"Nooo! Our yard is covered! It's a jungle, remember? There's no one around to see the wild cubs!" Jessie laughed, yanking her shirt upwards and flinging it over her shoulder. "Come on! It's so fun!"

Katie still looked slightly unsure, but only for a few seconds because the expressions on the other girls entirely convinced her. She wanted to be in on whatever fun they were having! So, she hauled up onto her feet and grabbed onto her t-shirt's bottom edge. She hesitated a beat, just lingering there gripping onto her shirt before she sucked in a fierce breath and yanked it upwards.

In a fluid motion, she exposed the soft expanse of her flat stomach, revealing the thin, tightly packed fur that coated her body. Down her back, the marks and coloring of her species appeared, revealing more color than her pale stomach.

Jessie grinned, happy they had convinced their new friend to partake in the game. She stretched, relishing the feeling of her bare fur already without the topcoat of her top pressing over the fluff.

Without her shirt, the comfortably warm air of the living room touched to the small dots of her pink nipples hidden in the thick furs of her golden chest. To her side, Abby was stripping down at the same time, finishing the final yank to get her t-shirt off over the top of her head next. Without hiding beneath her cotton shirt, her cheetah spots suddenly popped into view.

A bit slower, Katie finished wrangling her shirt off over the top of her head. All standing side by side shirtless, the girls took a moment to meet eyes with giggling excitement before they each bent over, grabbing unceremoniously at their shorts and pants and yanking them towards the carpeting.

Jessie gave a free wiggle to kick her shorts off her feet, no longer embarrassed by the cartoon-decorated panties she preferred. Instead, she gleefully wiggled her butt towards Abby, showing off the small sharkies that were swimming over her rump.

Beside, Abby's pants slipped towards over pure, white bottoms fitted with a teensy bow in the very center. "Those are so cute!" Jessie squealed, poking lightly at the small bow atop her friend's crotch.

Bravely joining their near nudity, Katie flung her shorts off the ends of her toes with a little kick. Her panties looked more like a boy's with small lines outline the chubby shape of her pelvis and clinging to her legs like tiny shorts.

"Now!" Jessie waved a hand into the air. "It's time to adventure as WILD CUBS!"

They charged forward, heading out into the yard in just the mere, meager coverage of their panties. Their chests and legs stayed utterly naked as they flung open the back door and stepped out into the embrace of the cool night beneath the setting sun.

"I feel so freeeeee!" Abby sang, spinning around with her arms spread out and fingers wiggling through the air, as though trying to feel the slight bite of the cold on every inch of her fur. Her feet scuffled through the grass, kicking up the slightest bit of dew clinging to the strands.

To each of her sides, Jessie and Katie each fled into the cool night as well, skipping and spinning around with the abandon of lively cubs without a care in the world. Within minutes, all the energy they had gathered from the pizza was rapidly being spent on cartwheels and tumbles through the cool dim night.

"Wild cubs!"

"No school!"

"No rules!"

Gleefully, they shouted out their pact, building this imagined world around them. "We've got to survive out here in the wild!"

"Thank goodness we hunted down that pizza earlier!" Katie interjected, giggling as she tripped and rolled onto the grass, just staying on the ground and rolling about instead of standing back up.

"Hey! Since it's not raining and it's all dark, wanna sneak to the pool!?" Jessie offered up, grinning over at her friends and wiggling her entire body with nervous, eager energy. She glanced around the yard, easily seeing the street from where they played. For some reason, knowing that they weren't entirely hidden already and truly had to sneak was thrilling to her. "It's just like hiding from the poachers!"

"Yeah! Let's do it!" Abby jumped up and down, spinning back towards the house for their shirts. Her small nipples were stiff in the chilled air, poking out through the speckled fur of her chest where the spots were smallest and faintest. Her nipple, in the dim light, almost looked like just another cheetah speckle.

Katie followed their lead, rushing towards the fence with her shirt fluttering out behind her as she struggled to wrangle it over her head while in full motion. As they run, the chilled wind of the coming night kisses their legs, ruffling up through their fur both feline thick and gazelle thin. It makes the skin beneath feel alive, tingling with this free exposure.

The moon above lights their path, along with the edges of the street lamps reach, but they ignore this modern mark that would break their enclosure in the imaginary world.

"Quick! We have to hide! Those poachers are coming!"

"The water will mask our scent from them!" Abby interjected, leaping into this new game without pause. She knew by now how to keep up with Jessie's imaginative and bold mind. Katie, too, quickly fell right in line. "We should dump our shirts! They'll have our scent! Let's hide them to distract the dogs!"

"You're right!" They paused all together, clustered at the edge of their yard with dangerous closeness to the visibility of the road. Moonlight glinted off their eyes and teeth as they smiled with both. Once more, they yanked up the thin shirts, dropping them into the leaves of the massive bush at the corner edge of the yard. "Now, they'll track us right to here! They'll never know we made it to the pool!"

"Especially not if we're super fast!" Abby broke in, laughing as she charged towards the in-ground pool at the back center of the yard. Jessie and Katie took off after her, blissfully enjoying the wind rushing over their nearly naked bodies.

"I'll jump in first!" Jessie breaks in, claiming the right to dive into the deep end right away from their lead up. She kicks up her speed, sending some grass fluttering into the air as she drives up her speed. She pictures jungle branches cracking around her, scratching at her arms while mud squishes beneath her feet. "Ahhhh!" She hollers out a soft battle cry before she launched into the pool, turning her running posture into a smooth, long dive.

"Me next?!" Katie broke in, rushing to the edge of the pool.

"Go! Go!" Abby urged her. "They're coming!"

Katie squeaked with playful delight and thrust out her hands, guiding herself as she hit the edge of the pool, jumping and dove in a twisting spiral into the water, her feet the last thing to slip under the cover of the blue.

Last up came Abby in the line up of each of their dives. She was still running, having taken a loop around a nearby tree to "distract" the poachers hunting dogs. She didn't want to lose her running start by stopping to wait at the edge of the pool while Jessie and Katie jumped first. She pivoted back now, running towards her launch point.

Her eyes tracked forward, watching the edge of the pool as it came closer. Much like Jessie, her mind was thick with the imagined world around her. In the back of her mind, she could hear the snap of twigs and the dog whistles as the hunters tried to use mutts to find her scent trail. She just drove her heels down harder, spraying grass and mud up to mask the distinct scent of her body.

"Ready?" She called forward, checking to make sure her friends had paddled out of her jumping space before she hit the small lip of the pool and stretched her body out flat, coming into a near perfect skim dive that took all the speed from her running and put it right into her journey through the air and into the pool.

Perhaps though, it was too much speed.

The instant she hit the water, a gush of the exploding liquid whisked the pale white panties clinging to her hips right over the swell of her thighs and right down her leg. Like a small bird, they fluttered through the air above the pool, landing right onto the cold marble at the edge instead, leaving Abby entirely nude as she struck the water.

Jessie and Katie, paddling to stay above the water and witnessing the whole thing, couldn't help but burst out laughing at the sight of their friend losing her knickers. "Did you see that?" Katie asked through her giggles, kicking her legs harder to make sure she didn't eat water from giggling.

As Abby surfaced she just glanced at their laughing faces and scoffed. "Pfft, I was just discarding the last thing with my smell on them!"

"Sure! Sure you were!" Jessie teased back, laughing as her sass earned her a splash of water to her face, and just like that, the poachers slipped from their mind and a full splash battle launched across the surface of the pool.

While above them, the sun completes its journey through the sky and the entire sky settles into a pale orange of falling twilight, the girls play with utter freedom and abandon. Leaping into the pool, diving for rocks, and splashing each other senselessly, they burn through their final stores of energy within an hour as the sky darkens more and more with the passing minutes.

Finally, when they find themselves lingering at the shallow end panting more than anything else, they finally break the spell. "Should we go in? I'm tired." Jessie proposed, earning two eager, but weak nods from her friends.

So, they hauled out of the pool. For a moment, the trip all stood in the silvery moonlight dripping onto the grass and catching their breath. The night was utterly silent around them, nothing but distant frogs croaking in the spring evening and the sound of their owns breaths to fill the air with noise.

"We played a long time," Abby muttered, yawning slightly.

"I'm beat!" Katie agrees, looking down at her wet toes in the grass before she started walking with the other two towards the house.

"There's towels right inside," Jessie assured them, feeling the night chill starting to tickle through her fur as well. They all stomped into the house together, digging out towels and wearing them up the stairs towards Jessie's bedroom. With each step, their conversation dwindled more and the lure of sleep pulled stronger and stronger at them.

"I think... I ran out of all my life blood," Abby mumbled, letting out a long yawn as they closed the door to Jessie's bedroom behind them.

"You're telling me," Katie murmured back, grabbing for her pajamas before she started to scrub at the water in her fur, drying away the wetness still lingering from the pool. Jessie and Abby do the same, each girl bent over and twisting around to reach the droplets of water clinging to their ankles, backs of thighs, and between them toes before they pulled on soft, warm pajama pants.

"Mmm... warm..." Jessie muttered as she slipped into thick flannel pajamas and buttoned the shirt almost to her neck.

"I think we should have another sleepover next weekend," Katie proposed as they all started to wriggle down into the shared bed, heaving the covers up to cover every inch of them from their toes, chilled form the wet grass, to their shoulders, where their wet hair dripped icy kisses.

"You're so right!" Abby agreed, squashing at her pillow to manhandle it into the perfect position to cradle around her neck as she laid her cheek down onto the soft cotton.

"Isn't there a new movie coming out?" Jessie proposed, kicking the covers until they settled neatly over her toes, fulling enveloping them and tucking beneath her ankles so she knew she wouldn't kick a foot out from the blankets and out into the exposed air where everyone knew monsters could eat your toes!

"Do you think we could go?" Katie rolled over, facing Abby in the dim light of just the moon spilling through the window. She could see individual eyelashes catching the silvery glow and the gleam of the felines' eyes in the dark room.

"I think we could. We can ask my dad to take us." Jessie yawned, voice slowing more as her face sunk into the pillow. Faintly, the smell of chlorine tickled her nose from Abby's hair spilling down the pillow beside her face. "Maybe we can bike there after school."

"I'd need to ask my mom, I don't know if I can yet..." Katie murmured, stifling another yawn. "Then, could we get ice cream and have a movie night?"

"Popcorn too..."

"We can show you the jungle movie.."

Katie smiled in the darkness, feeling her eyes sink closed. "I'd like that."

"It's a plan then. A cinematic weekend-"

"Movies and movies and snacks."

"Perfect."

Finally their voices whispered off into nothing as sleep took them all. The house around them fell entirely silent save for the symphony of their exhales whistling out from noses and gushing from open mouths. Their limbs started to tangle together, piling up and sharing warmth in the small bed as night fully launched.

An hour later, driving beneath the dim sparkle of the full moon, Red hummed to himself. "I wonder what those girls got up to..." He muttered allowed, pulling up to the house to find it dark and silent. "Well, good. They put themselves to bed at a-" He had to glance at his watch, "- well, a semi-decent time."

Stepping out from the car and closing the door with a muted slam, Red turned his attention towards the yard. Instinctively, he started to walk down the line of the fence, checking for anything abandoned by the girls in their play. "They were out here.." He realized with a laugh, seeing the mud foot prints kicked up in the grass. "Never can just... lounge around inside, these ones. Have to run." He said it like it was a bad thing, but a smile broke is face to say otherwise.

Then, just about to turn back, he spotted something sticking out from the corner bush. He scooped it up, eyebrows knitting together. "Their shirts?"

He turned, heading into the house with a calm confusion. But, once he made it to the upstairs room he only saw the three girls all snuggled together, breathing in a sort of hushed unison. Katie had flung an arm over top of Abby so far that it cupped around Jessie's shoulder while Abby had slipped off the pillow and buried entirely into Jessie's warm scruff, barely visible beneath her hair and blankets. "Safe, happy, and better yet asleep.." He concluded, giving a shake of his head at their discarded tops.

"Lord only knows what they were up to." He added, heading back outside to drop the shirts back into their hiding spot in the brambles. He glanced around the yard, trying to draw up some idea of what they had been doing outside without their shirts. "Probably just swimming," He mused, but somehow he knew there was more to it than that otherwise they have left their shirts on the edge of the pool to be tidied up.

At the end of the day, he just chuckled and headed back inside, looking forward to his own bed as he gave a final roll of his eyes at their games. "You know what they say. Best let sleeping dogs lie."