Reborn as a Side Character in the Beastworld

Chapter Twenty

A couple days later, Winston received a report. The males he had sent to my village had found it completely abandoned. Only the graves of the dead remained. No one in the investigating party got ill and they were not able to find the source of the illness. So, I mourned for my hometown in my heart but put the anxiety I'd had for the residents away to the back of my mind.

A few days after that, Kit opened his eyes. They were a beautiful honey brown like Ryan's had been and seeing them made me choke up with emotion. Kit started to explore our den with renewed vigor. He no longer crawled, but walked. The cub got into literally everything. We had to start putting certain herbs way up high so he couldn't reach them. He tried to eat everything. He wasn't nursing as often. He would instead eat small pieces of meat Winston would bring home.

Another surprise was that his cognitive abilities had increased exponentially. As I was also a fox, I was able to understand my son. He was able to communicate to me desires and needs. They weren't complex sentences but it helped to know what he was feeling. Poor Harvey and Winston had to guess if I wasn't around to translate. Thankfully, that wasn't often. Kit was a complete mama's boy. He followed me everywhere.

It made intimacy with my mates a little difficult, but we managed. I made sure to find a private moment with each of them at least once a week while kit was distracted by the other.

When we thought he was strong enough, I resumed my walks to the stream to meet with the other females of the village whom I hadn't seen in over a month. Of course, I was always accompanied by one of my mates. Kit was introduced to the females and they all gushed over how cute he was. Almost everyone in the village was a leopard, so having a rare fox cub around was a real treat. Poor kit's tail and ears were harassed daily.

Eudora's two cubs were a little older than Kit but after their first meeting, they got along well. They treated him like a little brother and taught him how to catch crickets. Eudora and I weren't very close but we tolerated each other just fine for the sake of our cub's socialization.

The weather was beginning to get colder. Soon the rainy season would end and the cold season would begin. I wouldn't be able to take my walks for much longer. Both Winston and Harvey went out more often hunting or foraging so we would have enough to eat and enough furs to stay warm.

Today was one of those rare warm ones. So, Kit, Harvey and I packed a picnic basket with a honey rhubarb pie I'd been able to piece together and walked to the stream. It was the first pie I'd attempted after I'd had Winston build a small crude clay oven for me. With its burned edges and crumbling crust, it wasn't pretty to look at, but it should taste just fine. I wanted to share it with the other females and see what they thought. Who knows? maybe baking could become my new past time.

With positive thoughts, we soon arrived at the stream, but the overall atmosphere was a bit strange. Before I could see her, I heard Eudora yelling. It wasn't uncommon for her to raise her voice, but a male's voice was yelling back. When they came into view, Eudora was face to face with a beastman I recognized right away. It was the tall bastard that Muir had rescued me from. Both were red in the face as they argued with each other.

I sidled over to only other female there, Eve. "What's going on?" I asked quietly.

She leaned over to whisper back. "Eudora and her brother are fighting again."

"That's her brother?" I asked in surprise. Eve nodded. "Does this happen often?" Another nod.

"Eudora is always scolding her brother for one thing or another." She shrugged. "It changes every time. And her brother blames her for his inability to get a mate. He said she makes him look bad but in reality, we all agree that he's not very good mate material. He's too arrogant."