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Lightning

Chapter 2 - The Offering

By H. A. Kirsch

--

The fair only stayed in Potter's Clearing for another week. Trevor considered going back every single day, and shot the idea down with some various excuses. He didn't want to walk; he didn't want to take Sam along again; eating fair food would make him fat. The one that stuck every time when he settled on it was that he didn't want to attract attention again. He wanted attention from the strange country-gentleman Caroyan, Dr. Brasseri, and yet he didn't want to have any more random encounters with people who thought poorly of him. Running into Marshall was a wild-card.

He ran the time out, the fair left, and that solved his immediate problem. Day by day, the end of summer approached. Sam alternated between prancing about proclaiming all the amazing things she would get up to once Beginning School started - none of which had anything to do with what it actually involved - and having tearful fits about how she didn't want to go to Beginning School ever.

Day by day, Trevor forgot all about the strange altercation: the fight that had somehow led to him finishing all over his neighbor's face under a bush, the electrical demonstration led by a lizard, and most of all, the strange things he'd seen with his eyes closed. He still saw them, or variations of them, all of the time. Instead of assuming they were the hallucinations of a brain-fried dullhead, now he knew they were not. That gave him all the more reason to suppress the fact that he'd encountered something unknown instead of merely something mad. Madness made sense, in that it was madness. The unknown off the edge of the future, on the other hand, had no sense to be made yet.

One afternoon, a particularly drizzly and stifling day, Helena stormed into Trevor's room and smacked him awake.

He barked, tottered in his chair nearly falling, and his tall dark ears flicked about. "Oww! What are you doing, woman?"

"Call me woman again and I'll smack your muzzle off your head with a brush handle!" She then brandished the object of violence. "How can this hurt, it's but a letter! Some courier just brought it. For you, at that. What are you doing, getting a letter." She tossed it onto his desk, inches away from where he'd dozed off into a book on literary poetics.

Trevor's head spun as he rejoined the waking more fully, and he fumbled the letter around. It was indeed addressed to him, Mister Trevor de-en-Seince, written in proper calligraphic script with some flourishes that he'd never seen before. The back of the letter was sealed with a wax stamp featuring what at first appeared to be a coat of arms, and at closer inspection was a very small wood-carved portrait of a lizard.

He opened the letter and found even more of the florid scripting, along with strange marks about the sides of the page. Helena, instead of leaving, leaned over to peer at it. "What is all of that?" Her golden eyes went from slits to side pools. "Oh! Oh that's Caroyan honor marking! What are you doing getting a letter from one of them? I don't want any of that war business leaking into my house." Despite the strong words, she stood with her hands at her sides and put on a humorous pout instead of a purely serious one.

"Caroyan... you mean..." Trevor felt like he was pushing through mud inside of his brain. He scanned to the end of the letter for the signature. Dr. Altius Brasseri! "The lizard guy from the fair. What's he want with me?" Trevor then started to read:

"Salutations, fine Sir. Based upon your interests that we discussed at my exhibition recently, I cordially extend an offer to work as a research assistant for my project supported by the esteemed Hopsmoth University. I understand that Castleton is not too far a trip for you by coach and should be little burden. As a research assistant, you will be granted lodging, sustenance, and a stipend, along with research credit on publications and inventions. Signed, Doctor Altius Brasseri."

"The qualifications must include 'be able to read a letter'," Helena scoffed. Trevor then smacked her back with the paper. "What on earth were you discussing with this person? At the fair? You and Sam were going on about some lizard playing with scratchbolts. And now they want you to go to Castleton? To Hopsmoth? I couldn't get into Hopsmoth if I stood on my toes and begged to wash dishes in the dormitory! I only have Garren retained to bore knowledge into you because he enjoys pie." Helena was attempting to turn a hobby knack for baking into an actual career.

Trevor frowned. "Don't sell yourself so short, Helena. You're the smartest person I know. Even smarter than Professor Garren. I know he's obviously a retired professor and from Hopsmoth at that, but really, he'd misplace his tail if it weren't attached to his body."

She hooked her black hand onto her hip and cocked it to the side. "Well. This is an odd turn of events. Are you going to do it? On one hand, it probably beats loafing about out here. On the other hand, I don't know, I'm not sure about places like Castleton. I've heard lots of things."

"Castleton is the largest city in the prefecture. It's the oldest city in the prefecture. It's the place that founded the prefecture. It... they came up with enlightened liberty and sortition!" Trevor's brain served up the most erudite and intellectual things he could think of. Ahh, what's sortition again, something about serving in governance, he thought, squinting to himself.

"Uch, politics," Helena scoffed, and this time turned to actually head to the kitchen. "The only thing politics is good for is sending me a 'please stay out of sight' check on the monthly, and letting me sell pies instead of being forced to give them away." Helena received a payment from Trevor's father - from the First Military Order, actually - in exchange for taking care of Trevor; she supplemented the meager income with gourmet baking from home that had become quite popular in the village. "It certainly did my sister no good, nor your sword-wielding velour-draped medal-stuck flea-bag of a father. And if he ever shows around here again, I'll say that to his face." Once more, her face was more humorously twisted than truly serious. Trevor regarded the look as very similar to Sam's when she was disgusted and yet profoundly interested.

Most creatures would have become irate at the insult; Trevor grinned. "I guess I agree with that. And," he then thought about the letter, and its offer of something that he could barely contemplate. "I don't know, I wasn't really expecting anything. I guess I'll sleep on it."

"Good luck. You'll sleep on anything."

--

The arctic fox was definitely correct: Trevor, since his accident, had gained the dubious skill of falling into a doze or outright unconsciousness in any any all possible circumstances. Shortly after being struck by the sky bolt, he had almost drowned by falling into the bowl of cold vegetable porridge he was eating, which had insulted Helena's cooking skills and earned him a tanning from a broom handle, and later a profuse apology as she realized he was unable to help himself. Book study? Chores? A warm evening outside? A cold afternoon in front of the fireplace? While bathing? Trevor could fall asleep in them all. He had, at least a full handful of times, fallen asleep while standing upright, though leaning against something such that he wouldn't slide down.

Unfortunately for the moment, Trevor was completely unable to sleep. Shortly after receiving the letter, a late summer thunderstorm rolled in. It had been six years since the accident, and the maned wolf could usually stand to be in his bedroom without risking a panic meltdown even during a rainstorm. This time, he climbed under his bed, heart hammering in his chest, mane ruff brushing constantly at the framing above. Every flash made him gag and feel like his throat was constricting; every crash of thunder made his ears pin flat to his skull.

Then something grabbed his foot and he barked and banged his head up against the frame.

"Yay I found Trevor!" Sam squealed and dropped herself to the floor with a splattering of hands and knees, then stuck herself under the bed sham. "Why are you hiding?"

"Why do you think I'm hiding?" He growled. "And how did you find me?"

"You're so long your legs stick out! Are you hiding from the storm? Helena says you should stop doing that because being arfaided of stuff is a waste!"

"It's 'afraid', and it's not a waste. I was already hit by lightning once. If I get hit again, I'll probably be dead. You don't want me to be dead, do you?" Trevor narrowed his eyes at her.

"I could dig a hole in the garden and bury you in it and grow flowers with your brain like Mikky did his pet rabbit! That was a rabbit garden! You could be a... a... maney wolf garden!"

Trevor sighed, and with the breathy groan came much of his discomfort. "Sam, that's not really... well, I guess that actually is what happens. I think you're a little confused by a wild fox garden, which isn't dead foxes, it's fox poo."

"Ewwwwwwww! I don't poo in the garden! Mom says you're going to college to play with lizards and she's scared of lizards so she thinks it's a bad idea but doesn't want to tell you and told me not to tell you that but I don't care because adults always try to hide stuff! And you're an adult and you're trying to hide so stop it!" She then pulled his tail.

He took the pulling in stride and simply reached back and pulled it out of her diminutive grip. "I don't like storms, Sam. That's kind of obvious. And..." He sighed again. "Do you remember that strange lizard man from the fair?"

"He elemnified me! My ears tingled! I was fluffiest!"

"Yes, that one. Apparently, he remembered my name, and where we live, enough to send a courier with a letter. He seems to think I would make a good research assistant, which I think is hilarious, because I don't think I would make a good anything, least of all a research assistant."

"You're a good brother! You took me to the fair and got me a toad leg to eat and told off those dullheads who were mean to you! And you let me talk to that cat who didn't have any fur and smoked stinky weird stuff."

Trevor tried valiantly not to grin and roll his eyes, and his cousin's unrestrained energy broke him nonetheless. "I'm not your brother, I'm your cousin. If I go off to Hopsmoth, Sam, you won't be able to annoy me all the time."

"That's okay I can annoy Mikky, he's the same age so if he gets mad and pushes me I can push him back! If I push you I'll just hurt my finger!"

"And if I don't go to Hopsmoth... I guess I'll just stay here. And. And." Trevor's head felt empty.

"Turn into a maney wolf garden!" Sam exclaimed this with an unsettling amount of glee considering.

Trevor frowned at the double implication. "When you say it like that, I guess I don't really have a choice to make." While lightning still flashed outside, the urgent cracks and blasts of wind had dissipated and there was now just a steady rumble of rain on the house.

He slid out from underneath the bed and looked around. He felt a moment of burning shame from having done something like that as nearly twenty years old. It was much more appropriate for Sam. He looked at Sam, and she cocked her head back at him and put her hands on the floor, then fluffed her tail around. "Sam, there's gonna be mud outside. You're a white snowfox. You're gonna get so dirty if you go outside!"

Sam's eyes went wide and her ears twitched. "Nnnnnnnn mom's gonna be mad if I get muddy!"

"What comes out when it's muddy though?"

Sam continued lashing her tail around, hard enough that it made a dry 'fwip' through the air. She then screwed her face up into several different contortions, then took a huge inhale and pursed her thin black lips to keep from exhaling right away. Her ears turned red inside and she blurted out: "TOOOAAAAAADS!" She leaped up and bounded out of the room and out the front door, chided helplessly by her mother to at least put on some boots.

Now alone, Trevor stood up, then draped himself into his desk chair. He sighed, then looked down at the letter, creased in several unnatural places after having been used as a gesturing slapper. He drew out another piece of paper, inked his pen, and started to draft a response.

"Dear Dr. Brasseri," he wrote, except he wrote it as 'Mr.' Brasseri first, tried to correct the M into a D, tried to make it look like a pen malfunction, then crumpled the letter stock and withdrew another one.

"Dear Dr. Brasseri,

I accept your offer. Please let me know when and where I am to arrive in Castleton.

Sincerely, Trevor de-en-Seince." He realized he had left a large gap between his first and last name, contemplated crumpling the paper, contemplated writing his middle name - his father's first name - and then decided against that as he didn't want to associate himself with the militaristic wolf. Instead, he wrote with quote marks, "Lightning".

--

Trevor's decision to heed the invitation was taken surprisingly well by Helena and Samantha.

Helena teased him about his prospects and the fact that now she had more room for expanding the kitchen to make more desserts, and then gave him a long hug and sincerely wished him well so that he would actually find his own way.

Sam cried for exactly thirty seconds, and then spent the next hour interrogating Trevor about things that he had no answer for, as he knew exactly as much about his potential position as had been written in the letter.

There was the difficult situation with Professor Garren - who clearly would see through the Hoposmoth association Trevor was sure was not real - although it solved itself with a coincidence. The professor decided to take a guest teaching engagement hundreds of miles away, and regretfully had to postpone further tutoring for the indefinite future.

Trevor had no other friends to tell, with exactly one exception: Marshall. Helena was a single mother with a mildly secret reason for having a maned wolf in her house; Adrian Llewelyn was a legal counselor who worked with the Constable Prosecutor's office for the area; neither of them would have any business living right next door to the other if not for the planner for their 'development' putting two class groups right next to each other with not even a walking path between.

He stepped out of his house and knocked on the door at the Llewelyns, then pulled the gold-cord ringer. A sonorous chime sounded in the house, followed a moment later by a much more muted one upstairs. No one answered. Nevertheless, he tried the door knob and found it unlocked. Trevor did not fancy himself to be too mischievous, however he immediately got the nervous knot in his stomach that pulled up on his balls which he'd had almost from the first time he ever set foot in the cheetahs' house. Oh, I hope his father isn't secretly home, he thought, Marshall could be, I think he's home from his university prep academy for the summer. I wonder what they do; maybe they teach how not to fall asleep in a book.

He opened the door and peeked around inside the foyer. Adrian's cloak, cane, hat, and boots were definitely not present - there was even a very faint boot-sole shape on the wooden floor where the latter ought to be, where the polish had aged less in the sunlight. Marshall's riding jacket and boots, however, were still present.

Trevor was surprised at how much he remembered about the first time he'd been left in the foyer by Helena after she introduced herself to Marshall's father and then left the two boys to their own devices.

_I looked at his riding boots. I didn't have any like that at the time, only laced field boots. I just stared at them, no laces, just solid midnight leather from sole to cuff, shaped for a leg, faint creases, polished. _

_"What are you staring at? Are you a fox? You're too tall. You must be one of those guara things." _

_I didn't say anything. _

_"Well, go on, are you staring at my boots? Father says I must always cut a high appearance." _

I felt backed against the wall, even though I couldn't move from being bent half over.

_"Are you dull?" _

_I could finally speak: "They're very nice." _

_"Hmmf. They aren't even polished." _

I don't know what possessed me: "I'll do it."

"What? Maybe you are dull after all. Your shirt's sewn crooked and you smell like dullweed and my father has lots to say about people like that."

_'It's not my fault', I wanted to say, and did not, because my mouth was water. Not dry, watering. 'I didn't make my shirt. 'I can't help that when I piss, it smells so much, no matter what I do, any little drop anywhere, and there's always one left over. Maned wolf piss smells like dullweed, that's not my fault either.' I looked at his boots, then back at him, then back at his boots. I felt worse than backed against the wall; I was hard, and at the wrong angle, and it hurt. _

_"Well? You said you'd do it. If you don't, I'll tell my father you smoke dullweed and he'll drag you across town by those ears, to JAIL. He's a counselor." _

_I felt like I was going to cry - that vibrating buzz that preceded a gasping sob - except I was so hard still. _

"You dullhead, you can't even move. Come on, our parents obviously want us to play as neighbors."

"What are you doing? Really? This again?"

Trevor gagged and let out a pitiful high whine, bent over, ogling the cheetah's boots. "Ahhh, your door was open."

"It was not. I heard you turn the knob. Father's not home and I was trying to nap, but it's too hot," Marshall chuffed, hands on hips. "Well, what do you want? To come get me back for the other day? Really, I had nothing to do with those awful canines more than my father wanted. 'Hang out with them', he said. 'You should get in good favor with the constabulary and their families.' What nonsense. Talk about boot-licking."

"I'm not talking about anything!" Trevor blurted, then covered his muzzle.

"You're right not, so why are you here? Seeing if I have a new pair?" Marshall reached out a black stockinged toe and nudged over the instep of one of his equally black unworn boots. In addition to the black linen stockings, he wore fitted cream linen riding pants, a yellow and black brocade vest, and a fine silk buttoned shirt. His shirt was slightly rumpled in places, likely due to the aforementioned catnap.

"I ahh, well, actually, I guess I thought to tell you, that I'm... that I'm... I'm leaving."

"Leaving! Leaving where? Certainly not my foyer. You just came."

"I'm... going to Castleton. I have a," Trevor said, squinted, and tucked his tail before forcibly wagging it out. "Research opportunity."

"Research! What would you research?" Both Marshall and Trevor looked over at the cheetah's demonstrated boot. Marshall then scowled. "Hfff. You end things like you start them."

Trevor quivered inside, again with that vibrating feeling he'd had so many times since seven years ago when - a year before the accident - he had been introduced to his new neighbor. He felt the rush of emotion, like he was about to sob, like he was trapped, and yet it was titillating. "I... what are you saying?"

The cheetah twisted himself and managed to step his stockinged foot most of the way into his boot without using his hands to help, then bent over to pull and adjust. "I'm saying, if you stand there long enough, my father will find you cradling your hardness and ogling my boot and he'll have you arrested for indecency." He then pulled the second one on. "Come on, then."

Trevor followed as Marshall led back in the house, and paused as the cheetah went to go through a door behind the kitchen and pantry. "What are you doing?"

"If we go up to my room and he comes back, he'll come to see me right away. If we're in the cellar, he'll just assume I'm not home when he doesn't find me up there."

"Won't he see your boots gone right away-"

"Oh, do shut up and just follow me." Marshall picked up a fume lighter from a shelf and lit a small oil lamp, then carried it down with him. The cellar, unlike the rest of the house, was hardly fancy, a stonewalled room lined with shelves and full of stored items. The slender cat walked behind the furthest wooden standing rack and put his hands on his hips. "Now then. What happened. I think you licked them? Back then? That's what's in your head? Do that again."

Trevor already had his head hung forward and shoulders up, and loped forward to drop to his knees. He reached forward and cradled around Marshall's right boot heel, and dropped his slender muzzle to press his lips along the boot toe and then licked with a wide swipe. After a few more licks, he was so entranced in what he was doing that he didn't notice right away when Marshall dropped something onto his ears. He flicked one absently, then again, and then reached up and took the item. It was a handkerchief. He didn't need to be told what to do, and buffed where he had just licked along the round top of the toe. He then licked further along towards the instep, and repeated.

"You're more obedient than our cleaning servant. Father's always having to instruct her what to do. On the other hand, he always instructs everyone, hmm," the cheetah said, standing hip cocked, his other boot at an angle, his head tilted down so he could look at both and watch Trevor. He slipped a pair of fine black leather riding gloves out of his vest pocket, and pulled them onto each hand. Then, he squeezed at his bulge, hiding the curved shape in his linen breeches with his hand. "When you're finished with that one, take your cock out. I want to see it. Do you have a pair of gloves?"

Trevor looked up, eyes fixated on the cheetah's self-groping. "Ahh, no, it's summertime."

"Hhfft! No excuse not to dress to impress."

Trevor continued his lick-and-polish over every inch of Marshall's right boot. His tongue was slightly raw, though he moved to start on the second before remembering what the cheetah said. He kneeled back and started to undo the front of his own breeches. He had to pull his cock free, and the length throbbed upcurved after he did it.

"One moment. I bet..." Marshall abruptly stepped away and rummaged through a few things over by a work table. He returned with a pair of brown gloves. They weren't as dress-fancy as Marshall's, though still smooth leather, creased with wear and yet clean. "Perhaps my father's shooting gloves will fit you. He has rather big hands." He tossed them at Trevor like he was discarding something into a bin.

The guara snatched them, looked at the leather, sniffed at it, then slid them on as well. They did indeed fit, although they were almost too tight. Marshall stared intently at the proceeding. "I..."

"Go on, stroke yourself." Marshall tapped at a small wooden stepstool with his other foot, nudging it forward, then stepped onto it. "Finish all over my boot. Then, spit-polish it clean." Trevor balked with a soft whine. "What, is it because it's my father's gloves? That's why I want you to stroke yourself with them. Besides, gun oil smells rather strongly."

Trevor's heart was now pounding into his ears. He hung his head forward again, staring down at his leathered hand as he cradled and stroked at his shaft, sliding the foreskin to and fro as he kneel-crawled into position to where he was aiming at Marshall's boot.

"What's this research opportunity you have, you said?" Marshall had his hands on his hips again as he spoke, the heat in his voice only slightly evident as a purr. "How is it that you abruptly have something interesting to do beyond sitting for your cyclone storm of a cousin?"

Marshall's denigrating tone made Trevor tip his ears to the side and drew a frown on his face, though at the same time, it made him throb in his hand as he stroked. After just a handful of motions, clear pre-seed oozed out from his tip. "It's... I'm not really supposed to talk about it, it's ahh, secret."

"It's bullshit is what it is. This started after that fair. I bet you're mixed up with carny folk. I bet you would tend to the asses pulling their wagons or something, with how you dress."

Trevor growled now, though he only worked himself faster. "That isn't it at all."

"Perhaps you're the boot-black for the showmaster then. That would suit you even more, seeing as what you're doing right now. You came here to do it. I bet you would finish on my boots even if I weren't home. I bet I could be anyone and you'd still do it." Marshall now looked conflicted about what he was doing to himself, let go, grasped again, then finally took down the front panel of his own riding pants. A streamer of pre-seed already stretched from the wet splotch in the fabric to the head of his shaft. He chirped as he started to stroke openly.

"That's not true, it's not," Trevor whined again, through his teeth. Damn you, curse you by all five fucking gods, you hot-headed bird-chirping shit of a brat. Of course it isn't true, I'm close because you're insulting me, Trevor thought, and then pinned his ears back worried he may have simply said it out loud. The further embarrassment did him in, he groaned and gripped at the base of his shaft, and aimed the swollen head towards Marshall's instep. He grunted through his teeth and tried to suppress the sound as much as possible, holding his own muzzle as creamy seed spurted out onto the black leather. It was a hard enough shot that one went entirely past and slapped the stone floor, while several went up the shaft of the boot. He sniffed at the glove leather, reeking as described of gun oil, tanned scent still in place, along with a familiar yet not the same male smell as came from Marshall himself.

"Now... now lick it..." Marshall said, audibly hiding the heated strain in his voice.

Trevor, despite having just finished, had enough of an echo of lust that he leaned down and licked up one strand of his spunk.

"Ahh, let me see it on your tongue when you... nnrgh!" Marshall abruptly brought his other hand forward of his shaft, and as he gritted his own muzzle, a soft, audible splatting came from his palm. Trevor continued to lick, head turned to the side so he could do it openly.

This is disgusting. Marshall is wretched. I'm a pervert, the guara thought. He then swallowed, continued with the remaining streaks of his seed, then cleared his throat and spat onto the streaked leather, and began to buff it with the handkerchief.

Marshall held his hand up to himself, made a disgusted face, and then licked every inch of his gloved hand clean with his fingers splayed and curling. "Mmm. I suppose you're going to come back to visit for the holidays, from whatever you're doing. That'd be enough. I'll just have to do this myself in the meantime. You ought to run along before my father returns."

Trevor grunted and got up, stuffed himself back into his breeches, and thanked himself that he had saved up some small jobs money to buy a pair of leather ones. Aside from the feel of sliding into the tanned hide, and despite how they still looked like rough work wear, there was no indication he'd just enjoyed himself unlike Marshall's quite wet-spotted pants. He nodded curtly to the cheetah, and then quickly hurried out of the house. He did not run into Marshall's father.