Timothy and Ginger, Ch.1: Origins, Age Six
#1 of Timothy and Ginger
A growing timber-wolf cub begins learning about the differences between boys and girls from his oldest friend, a lioness girl by the name of Ginger. As their curiosity grows, more opportunities to investigate their differences begin offering themselves.
(This was a scenario that went from being thought about to having seven chapters completed within two weeks. While there are plenty of ways to continue, my muse seems to have wandered away for the time being. So, here's the first set of stories completed, and I hope you enjoy!)
We grew up together, Ginger and I. We were born in the same neighborhood in 1981, off in the suburbs of town, where our end of the street met the treeline that climbed up into the foothills.
Even by kindergarten, we'd heard all the jokes about dogs and cats being opposites, being enemies. My easiest defense - that we weren't a dog and a cat - tended to not hold up, despite its accuracy. I'm of timber wolf ancestry, with red-tinged highlights to my fur. Ginger certainly belonged to the feline side, but no one would call her family housecats to their faces. Her father's mane took the wind out of those jeering sails, leaving Ginger's leonine background undebatable.
I'd beat Ginger in age by about five months, but one might not know it by the way she took charge. As a pup my parents would gently tease about Ginger the Alpha, as I so frequently deferred to her. Our two families got along well, but Ginger and I fit like the sides of a coin. We played with each other more often than with anyone else on the block, and we'd spend time in the forest as soon as our parents permitted it. Still, for all the time we spent together, it was a couple years before I started to wonder how girls were different. In fact, I still remember what began that line of thinking. She was so embarrassed....
"C'mon, Ginger, hurry up!" I called, waiting impatiently for her to finish getting ready. We'd planned this little hiking trip after incessantly pestering our parents, and they'd agreed to allow us to wander in the woods for a couple of hours, bringing small lunches with us. While they'd been initially reluctant, all the neighbors along our little street were well-known, and we'd already demonstrated our ability to take care of ourselves, so at last they'd given in.
"All right, all right, keep your tail on, Timber!" Ginger replied as she stepped out of her house, closing the door behind her and hefting her small back over her shoulder. I rolled my eyes while I was waiting. In a fit of subtle absurdity, my parents had named me Timothy, Tim for short. Once she learned what kind of wolf I was, her choice of nickname was inevitable. At least she didn't use it all the time, and most of my other friends didn't quite dare to call me by the same name. An annoyed look and a low growl usually cut that quite short.
The two of us made a straight line for the woods after making quick farewells to my mother, who was watching from the door as we went past. I was dressed in tan shorts and a forest-green T-shirt with a light pack slung over my shoulder. Ginger was wearing a yellow-orange sundress, a color that complimented her fur quite well, and had a small pack of her own.
Dressed in shirts, shorts, and light packs with our lunches, we were set. The day was calm and cool without any clouds in the sky, although once we were within the woods the light was quickly shaded and dappled onto the floor through the thickening canopy.
"Let's take the longer trail this time," I suggested, and Ginger concurred with a nod. We'd recently learned during a guided trip with my father that the other trail looped around a pond large enough to swim in, as well as passing by a small clearing with very mossy climbable rocks. If we were gone for too long there would be trouble, but we still had a large portion of the day to ourselves.
We passed the time to the lake with great fun, scrounging our favorite walking sticks for a time, occasionally chasing each other, or simply chatting about our favorite TV shows. I'd just recently started watching Voltron, which was currently foremost among my favorites. I'd tried calling her Yellow Lion once; she responded primly that she was a lioness. After thumping me on the arm, of course. I hardly thought that was fair after she settled upon Timber, but... Alpha. Unless she was already uncertain, I had to be really motivated to stand up to her, and that didn't happen often.
The weather was not yet seasonable enough for swimming, if we'd even had a mind to. But our parents had warned us that we were not to go into the water unsupervised. My father wanted to spend some extra time making sure it was safe for us to play in it unattended, and hadn't yet had the opportunity.
After lunch and a short game of hide-seek-chase among the rocks in the clearing, we paused to get our breath. "Hey, let's have a staring contest!" Ginger suggested suddenly.
I gave her a lopsided look, then acquiesced. Still a little winded from my last sprint to catch her after being spotted, I still wanted to add another challenge. "Okay, but we've gotta do it while crouching," I countered with a wag of my tail. "If you stand up, fall over, or look away, you lose."
Ginger laughed and looked at me, her ears flicking in challenge. "You're *on*, Timber." We moved to face each other, our backpacks set aside, then squatted. "One, two, three, GO!" we called in unison, then fell silent, gazing into each other's eyes.
While eagles and lizards might be able to outstare us, Ginger and I were still quite evenly matched, our heritage of hunting prey giving us certain advantages in keeping our eyes unblinking. I gazed into her blue-ringed eyes, set on that pretty leonine face of hers, while she stared right back into my own brown eyes, our faces less than a meter apart, her ears perked forward in her intent focus. After a few minutes my legs were starting to burn, and a few more had my eyes starting to sting. Ginger matched me second for second, though, and I could only hope she was tiring.
Suddenly, my nose alerted me to a new smell, one I didn't recall scenting before, although it was nevertheless familiar. Helpless to avoid looking, and knowing I was about to lose anyway, I glanced down. Ginger's triumphant shout was immediate. "HAH! I won!! ..?!!"
The last sound she made wasn't a word, but a startled, unbelieving exclamation. Before she could react further, I could see what had happened. Below the hem of her dress was a small stream of water starting to splatter on the ground below. In her determination to win, she'd simply ignored the various pains of her cramping legs... and had overlooked using the bathroom at her house before starting on the hike in her hurry to leave. Lost in the surrounding tension had been the cramps of her bladder in her squatting position, which had finally given up and let go.
Her own nose flared at the scent of her pee, but she still didn't seem to quite realize what had happened in the excitement of having won the contest. Puzzled, Ginger lifted up her dress to try to see what was going on. As we were alone here, and I'd seen her in her panties before, exposing them to me wasn't a big deal... usually.
This time, low at the crotch of her white panties was a large damp spot, with a trickle of her pee dribbing out of the soaked fabric and adding to the small puddle beneath her. The origin of that dribbling stream was far lower than it would have been on me - at that age, I still remembered the accidents I'd had as late as the year before - and I, for the first time, wondered what she looked like under her clothes. The thought brought an unexpected twinge to my own groin, for reasons I didn't understand. Getting hard down there was not a new thing, but such events tended to only happen if I was wandering around the house with my hands in my pants, another habit my mother was trying to break me of.
With a shocked gasp, Ginger dropped her dress and started to rise, then shook her head in dismay and reversed her course, instead squatting down still further, balancing herself with her tail. "Don't look," she begged, and I could hear imminent tears in her voice as her ears were fully tilted back. Not sure what else to do, Ginger covered her face with her hands, twisting to one side so she didn't have to see me watching the whole thing.
Finally starting to react, I did as she asked, looking away from her. Nevertheless, my ears could hear the soft, insistent hiss of her stream under her clothes, defying any further attempts to stop it. I remained where I was, listening but not looking, until I could hear a soft, humiliated sob trying to emerge from her clenched teeth, and that broke my own shock. A second sob followed the first, while I quickly scooted up to her side, holding her shoulders and lowering my head to nuzzle at her as much as I could between her concealing hands, whining sympathetically. "It's okay, Ginger," I whispered, trying to reassure her. "I'm still your best friend...."
"I-I sh-sh-should h-have uh-used the b-b-bathroom," Ginger blubbered through her tears, her eyes still closed but her hands reaching up to grip at my arms. "C-can't... b-believe I f-forgot...."
"Shh," I whispered again. "It's okay, really. It just happened... it could have been me." One of my ears twitched again, noticing the cessation of that quiet hiss. I didn't look back to see, but my nose readily informed me that the lioness girl had really needed to go.
"B-b-but--"
"Ssh... No one has to know. I won't tell anyone...." My mind raced frantically and seized upon the first option that struck me. "We can say you were looking for fish in the pond and accidently fell in."
"You..." Ginger sniffed heavily, her tears receding as hope dawned, opening her eyes to look up at me. "You promise you won't tell?" she insisted, her voice also whisper-soft.
"Pack's honor," I affirmed, giving the lioness's shoulders a gentle squeeze with my hands. "C'mon, we'd better hurry if we want to go back to the pond and still be home on time."
Ginger sniffed again, then nodded. Standing up, I offered her my arm to help her back to her feet. Being upright again, she wiped the worst of her tears away while I fetched our packs, handing hers back over. In doing so, I could see that her dress appeared unharmed, but the puddle underneath her was sizable, and I was grateful for her sake that there was indeed a pond here.
Come to think of it, it was one of the first times I took the dominant role, leading her to the pond and helping her make what we hoped was a convincing soak due to an unexpected fall into the water. Much judicious wading and some scrubbing on her part helped disguise the scent of what had happened, and we managed to make it the rest of the way home without further incident.
Not much was discussed along the way; Ginger was still subdued over the incident, and my own mind kept circling around to questions about whether she was different, which I felt were... inappropriate to bring up right now.
While her clothing had dried a bit when we'd made it home, and just barely before our deadline (Ginger's father had made me nervous enough to wonder just how serious he was about the 'dead' portion), there were still some stern looks and grouchy reminders about not getting so close to the pool. That she hadn't been completely soaked and that I was still entirely dry helped corroborate our story, and in the end we were let off with that warning and a restriction of not being allowed to go to the forest for the next couple of weekends. Disappointing though that was, we still thought we'd got off lucky.