Beasts Like Us

by Feral Sephrian

  “He didn’t,” Mateo said. “I do know enough that I know you should cut it short there.”

  “Honestly, Tommo, you’ve been a nuisance since we got here,” Dazi said. He had wanted to say that all afternoon, and he had run out of patience.

  “I’ve been a nuisance?” Tommo said, putting his hands to his chest. “I didn’t go blabbing to the first guy I met. I’ve been trying to remind you to have some cautious skepticism.”

  “And it has done nothing but draw negative attention to us.” Dazi squared his shoulders. “If you don’t shape up, we’ll leave you behind for the rest of the weekend.”

  Tommo frowned. “Maybe I want to be left behind. I’ve seen enough. These fake-skins may not be a threat right now, but the wrong word to the wrong person—” Tommo shot a pointed look at Mateo, “—could have them flocking to the reservation. You know what? That’s it. I’ll leave. I’ll fly home tonight. Kesi, come help me change. You can put my clothes in the car.”

  Kesi put her hand on his shoulder. “Tommo, don’t go.”

  “Nope. I’m not staying here. This place is creepy. Everywhere you go there are those weird dead-eyed fake-skin costumes and people sniffing each other even though their senses of smell are crap and everyone is pretending to be something they’re not, including us. I’m sick of it already. I don’t think I could bear another two days.” He exhaled slowly. “I’ll have to tell the rest of the tribe where you are. I’ll tell them you’re fine and not to send in the cavalry, but they’ll want a full scouting report as soon as you get home.”

  Kuhma nodded. “We would’ve had to tell them sooner or later. At least now they won’t worry about where we are.”

  “Unless they don’t listen to Tommo and try to come after us,” Kesi said.

  “We’ll keep in touch then,” said Dazi. “You’ll be a messenger when you get older anyway, might as well start now. Kesi can keep you up-to-date, call you if need be, and you can relate all the information to the tribe so they won’t have to send anyone else.”

  Tommo crossed his arms, but Dazi knew he couldn’t deny that logic. Everyone had their part to play in the tribe. Just as Dazi and Kesi were trained to be hunters and Kuhma was trained as a protector of the tribe, Tommo and others with bird skins were trained to be scouts and messengers. Tommo agreed to his role and went off with Kesi to change.

  “He will mention you, of course,” Kuhma told Mateo. “If we knew exactly what you were, he would tell them more, but he’ll most likely describe you as that guy who probably knows everything by now. They won’t like that.”

  Mateo started whispering in Kuhma’s ear. Dazi could pick up snatches of what he said, and it was nothing new. However, seeing Mateo so close to Kuhma like that, even for such an innocuous reason, Dazi felt jealousy and shame. Mateo was right. Dazi had been acting like a cornered animal since they got back, but in his defense this was all strange to him. He was used to being around his own kin, and keeping silent around anyone else. Here, he could say little truths, so long as he made it sound like wishful thinking. It made him feel sick to his stomach, and the guilt from upsetting Mateo wasn’t helping.

  From what Dazi heard, Mateo finished up his abridged life story with, “I feel safe and accepted here, and so should you.” Kuhma’s ear twitched and he narrowed his eyes, but he sighed acceptingly. “Does that mean you believe me?” Mateo said.

  “If I had no sense of smell, I would probably think you were a delusional fake-skin,” Kuhma said. “The main reason I haven’t knocked you out and made everyone else leave is because I smell the predator under your skin.” He batted at Mateo’s bare arm. “This is your fake-skin, as far as I can tell, and the real you is trying to break free. That’s why I don’t trust you.”

  Neither Mateo nor Dazi knew what to say to that. Dazi had suspected that Kuhma’s inner elk had a natural fear of Mateo’s jaguar. In their tribe, everyone knew each other’s scent so they would recognize each other in their animal skins. It prevented the hunters from accidentally killing their friends and helped those with prey-skins discern the hunters from real predators. Mateo’s scent was different. To Dazi he smelled fine because they were so similar, but to Kuhma, he must smell dangerous.

  Dazi stepped forward, trying to angle himself so he could easily come between Mateo and Kuhma if need be. “Kuhma, he has been coming here for four years and nothing bad has happened. He’s doing better than we are.”

  “And how long do you think—” Kuhma cut his sentence short and instantly turned his head to one side. A few seconds later, a pair of people in full costumes exited the doors behind them. Kuhma sighed again, this time in annoyance. “There is no privacy here, is there?”

  “Not really,” Mateo said. “That’s why I was trying to invite you guys to spend the night at my hotel room. That’s where Dazi and I were for most of the afternoon and nothing…really bad happened.” He licked his lips and avoided both Kuhma’s and Dazi’s eyes.

  Dazi would have said he forgave Mateo for what he did, but he didn’t want Kuhma prying. Kuhma was already staring at him in disbelief. “It wasn’t really bad,” Dazi said firmly. “It wasn’t bad at all. Now are we still going to this dance or do you want to follow Tommo’s lead and run home?”

  Kuhma tossed his head dismissively. “We can stay. If we’re going to fit in, we might as well make an appearance at the dance. Not too long, though. If I read the schedule right, it gets weird here after dark.”

  Mateo chuckled. “Well, yeah, but that’s because they host all the adult panels once the dance ends at ten. That’s when people can talk about erotic fanfiction and furry kink and all the things they couldn’t mention while there might be kids around.”

  The prospect of furry kink was something Dazi had both tried to figure out and tried not to think about. He couldn’t exactly agree with the notion that animalistic sex was taboo, since he tapped into his animal side in the heat of the moment, but he was attracted to human partners. For all he knew, furries might include real animals in their sexual adventures. Mateo said they didn’t, but if that meant furries were more like animals that wanted to have sex with humans, Dazi couldn’t decide which was stranger.

  Fingers snapped in front of Dazi’s face. “Dazi? An answer would be nice.”

  “Oh, huh?”

  Kuhma rolled his eyes. He repeated himself slowly, “I have the keys for the car so I need to go find Kesi. Do you want us to meet you and Mateo at the dance?”

  “Uh, sure.” At least Kuhma was referring to Mateo by name now. That was an improvement. “Ask Kesi if she wants to get dinner somewhere after this.”

  “She probably will. We barely ate lunch. The prices here are…excessive. You’d think for how much we paid to get in there’d be free food somewhere in this place.”

  “Yeah…” Mateo agreed. “That’s why Dazi and I got lunch at a little food mart on the way to my hotel.”

  Kuhma’s nose twitched. “Well, we can talk about that later. I’m going to go find Kesi.”

  “Okay,” said Dazi. “You know where the dance is?”

  “I’ll find it,” Kuhma said, gesturing to his ears. “Shouldn’t be that difficult.”

  Dazi followed Mateo to the dance hall. It was down in the conference hall’s lowest level. Kuhma was right. The closer they got, the more they could feel the bass from the techno beat through the floor. Eventually the music was audible as well, and Dazi could smell the sweat generated by the dancers.

  Mateo checked his bag in at the desk outside the double doors. “You sure you want to go in?” Mateo said. “It’ll be pretty crowded, so I understand if you’re not comfortable.”

  “I promised I would dance with you, and I intend to keep that promise.” Dazi smiled weakly. “What’s the worst that could happen, anyway?”

  Fortunately, that question didn’t come back to bite him in the ass. While the dance floor was indeed stuffed with people in everything from hoods like the one Mateo was now wearing to full fursuits, there were complime
ntary water dispensers around the edge of the room near tables selling glow sticks for a dollar each. Mateo threw down a five-dollar bill, so the vendor gave them a sixth for free. Fully hydrated and decked out in their glowing bands, Mateo and Dazi joined the fray.

  Dazi’s biggest concern was that Mateo would pick another dance partner, leaving Dazi to fend for himself, but Mateo took his hand and led him through the commotion until they found a circle of dancers that accepted them. There were two canid furries, a kangaroo, a guy wearing antlers like Kuhma’s with an oversized deer tail strapped to the back of his pants, and, to Dazi’s surprise, someone in a full shark suit. It reminded Dazi a little of the Mukua’poans’ ceremonial dances with all the jumping and stomping, but instead of a fire at the center, people took turns jumping in to freestyle while the rest cheered.

  Mateo stayed by Dazi’s side the whole time, which Dazi appreciated. It wasn’t necessary, as far as Dazi could tell. With all the flashing lights and the pulsing mass of people, anyone who was looking for him would’ve found it nearly impossible, and even his scent would have been indistinguishable amidst all the others. Dazi took that to mean Mateo wanted him close by for other reasons. Whether it was out of friendship or fear, Dazi didn’t know, but he hoped it was the former.

  The one problem with being hard to find was that Kesi and Kuhma had to send Dazi a text asking where he was in the crowd.

  “It’ll be easier if we meet them by the door,” Mateo said, raising his voice and speaking directly into Dazi’s ear. Dazi recalled how Mateo had groomed his ears at the hotel. He half-expected to feel the rasp against his fur, but this was neither the time nor the place, and Dazi had to get himself back into Mateo’s good graces first. He would start by getting his friends in line.

  Out by the check-in, Kuhma and Kesi were huddled where no one else would bother them. Dazi walked straight up to them and said, “Look, things need to change. Mateo is right, the more suspicious we act, the more suspicious we seem. There are plenty of Shoshoni reservations in the area, no one could know which one we’re from. On top of that, Tommo was right. Everyone here acts like they can smell like we do, but they can’t. To them we look, sound, and smell normal, but even someone with the dullest senses can tell when someone is being…dodgy.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Kesi said. “One of my biggest fears is that one of them can sense that we’re uneasy around them, and that they’ll try to figure out why.”

  Kuhma scowled pensively as the others turned to look at him. “You know how this works,” Dazi told him. “If you run from a predator, it chases you. When you stand still and don’t make noise, you have a chance it’ll pass you by.”

  It took a moment, but Kuhma capitulated. “But if I lose my hearing in there, I’m blaming you,” he said.

  Relieved, Dazi went along with his friends back into the dance. They formed their own circle, which a few others joined. Kuhma didn’t look too happy about that, but he allowed it. The only trouble came when someone in a duck fursuit came up behind Kesi and started grinding against her. She turned around and smacked him so hard in the beak she knocked his head askew.

  As the duck scrambled to fix himself, Kuhma took a threatening step forward. However, Mateo got there first. “What’s your problem, huh?” he exclaimed loudly, his voice barely audible over the music yet threatening as a full roar. Mateo puffed out his chest and put out his arms so he looked even larger. “Go find someone from your own order!” With his fingers extending like claws, his yellow eyes flashing under the strobe lights, and the way he curled back his lips in a snarl, Mateo seemed halfway transformed into a jaguar.

  Everyone near him took a step back, and the duck cowered for a moment before shoving through the crowd. Mateo relaxed, but shot a glare after the intruder. He let out a low chuff that Dazi recognized as a statement of, “That’s right, you’d better run.”

  “Damn,” Kesi remarked.

  “What did you mean about his ‘order’?” Kuhma asked.

  “Avian,” Mateo replied, coming back closer to their group so everyone could hear him. “He’s a bird, she’s a mammal. Granted, she’s one that could’ve ripped him to shreds like a real coyote with a duck, but there’s one universal signal among animals and furries: if I’m bigger than you, or trying to be, back the fuck off.”

  Dazi nodded. He made a mental note of that. From what he had observed today, Dazi surmised that fake-skins followed the unspoken laws of animals more than they did the general rules of human society. Oddly enough, he figured this meant he would be safer reacting with his bestial reflexes than his human suspicions. He closed his eyes and silenced the outside world, or did his best to, at least.

  Inside himself, not too deeply buried, Dazi found his mountain lion and asked for its guidance. It told him there were many strange things here, but nothing that was stronger or more dangerous than he was, except for Mateo. The mountain lion remembered being side by side with the jaguar, and that he was longer and heavier. They both remembered the jaguar’s strength as he attempted to mount them. The mountain lion found the incident bothersome, but not of too much importance. Dazi felt something else entirely.

  “You okay in there?” Mateo’s hand was on Dazi’s shoulder. “You’re spacing out.”

  “What? Oh, yeah, fine. Picturing Kesi shredding that perv.”

  “And I would’ve, too.” Kesi shrugged and smiled. “Thanks for stopping me.”

  “Y-You’re welcome.” Dazi wasn’t sure whether it was the gratitude or the notion that Kesi would have actually mauled someone that bewildered Mateo, but he sort of stared at her for a few seconds, then shook his head and said, “I’m going to get water, anyone want to come with?”

  “I will,” Dazi said. “You two stay here and hopefully we’ll find you again.”

  At the water cooler, Mateo asked, “Are Kesi and Kuhma…together?”

  “No, but Kesi is dating Kuhma’s first cousin. Kuhma promised him he would bring her back safe.”

  “Ah.” Mateo sipped his water. “Was he the only one you told about where you were going?”

  Dazi chewed his lip. It was already sore from all the secrets he had bitten back that day, but it was a nervous tic, something he couldn’t control. He also couldn’t seem to control the urge to tell Mateo everything. “Pretty much. We told everyone else we were going to Las Vegas for the weekend. It’s not uncommon for some of us from the reservation to go, so…”

  “What were you going to do if you were in danger here?”

  “Send Tommo ahead, warn people, the rest of us would gain as much info as we could, then run home and plan our defense.”

  “What will you do now?”

  Honestly, Dazi’s thoughts were still on survival. There was no immediate threat, so long as he and Kesi and Kuhma kept a low profile and didn’t draw unnecessary attention to themselves. To do that, they were going to need help. “Stick with you, I guess. You know what to do, we don’t.”

  Mateo nodded. “Right now, the thing to do is dance. Come on.” With a smile, he took Dazi’s hand and led him back into the crowd.

  * * * *

  Chapter 8

  The rest of the evening went better than Mateo expected. His dominance display seemed to have impressed Kesi, and now that Kuhma knew the basics of his life story and shapeshifting abilities Kuhma’s only problem with him was that he was a jaguar. Mateo’s grandfather had told him a story once when he was a cub, in which a jaguar and a deer built a house together, but soon lost each other’s trust and the two species had been wary of each other ever since. If there were any truth to the tale, it would explain why Mateo didn’t feel entirely secure around Kuhma either.

  Dazi had taken Mateo’s earlier rant to heart, at least. Even with all the sweat and human smells filling the dance hall, Mateo kept himself close enough to monitor Dazi’s scent. He, too, was sweating from all the moshing and dancing, but he didn’t smell half as panicky or defensive. Mateo couldn’t put a word to it other than “balanced.�
� Something had righted itself, though he wasn’t sure what. It didn’t matter. Mateo didn’t want Dazi to get himself in trouble. He had taken a liking to him, and inside his jaguar growled at the thought of losing him to a foolish mistake.

  Kesi and Kuhma agreed to spend the night at Mateo’s hotel room, which put his mind at ease. After they grabbed some dinner from the food mart, they went to his room and he locked the door. They didn’t have much with them, and most of it stayed in their car. He even had some extra pillows in the closet. Now his only concern was his occasional tendency to sleep-shift and how they would react to it. Kesi suggested they all shift and sleep like that, since that had been their intention to begin with.

  “How do you usually deal with this when you’re away from home?” Dazi asked.

  “I wear loose clothes to bed, lock the exits, put something that smells like food in the bathroom to try to lure myself in if I sleepwalk as well, that kind of thing. I haven’t had any issues with it in the past, but I don’t know how I’ll react with others in the room.”

  “I could sleep on the bed with you,” Dazi offered. “I probably smell more familiar, and I’d be more able to stop you from doing anything bad.”

  “Besides, wouldn’t going to sleep already shifted be safer?” Kesi asked. “If you go to sleep human and wake up as a panicked jaguar, why not go to sleep as a jaguar instead?”

  Mateo took a deep breath and swallowed it. He wanted to look to Dazi, but if he was going to see anger or chagrin concerning what happened earlier, he would rather not look at all. “Night is the time of the jaguar. My human mind may be tired, but sometimes my jaguar gets restless. I think that’s why I sleep-shift. And…Kuhma, don’t take this the wrong way, but…if I smell…food with my jaguar nose, I…well, I would advise you to kick me in the face if that happens. If you break my jaw, it’ll reset when I shift back.”