Lion Head Mesa fucked around and got attached to you

Pregnancy had made her clumsy, but even so, Serein was diligent in her self-assigned task. It was only a few days prior that she had discovered the first of what would turn into many bones of wolves long gone. In the time since, Serein had transformed her den to something less like a home and more like a study in the most essential anatomy of the deceased.

She turned a rib bone over between her paws, gnawing at the ridged end of it. Her swollen belly was pronounced in this position, prone on her side. Serein paused to pluck an errant tuft of fur from her bared skin. Redness bloomed over the tender flesh, but she hardly noticed. She'd been plucking herself bald for days now, driven by the least glamorous of instincts.

Serein had the ability to make Disa say and do stupid things. Something about the glum mother-to-be inspired her to push the limits of her social skills, and the results never quite landed. Her compliments were often just statements, and it was difficult to see them as positive observations - you are round, you have a face, you do not smell so bad today.

She shuffled back to Serein's den now, feeling that she should qualify that round was in fact a good thing - a biological triumph. 

Late-stage pregnancy had the dusky female looking like a blimp attached to four twigs. Disa could not help but stare as she drew near - the skin on Serein's belly had stretched, making small saucers out of her nipples. There were so many. "You have big nipples," Disa announced, because that paired so well with round.

Serein had grown fond of Disa in spite of herself. The woman showed up seemingly only to catalogue the changes in Serein's body in that blunt, toneless cadence of hers. Today it was big nipples. She glanced up with the hint of a grin forming around the bone still lodged between her molars.

After a moment she let the bone slip out of her teeth. Hello, Disa, she said softly, tilting her head as she studied her packmate. They're sore, too. And leaky. No one mentions that part.

Disa, similarly, found that she was comfortable in Serein's presence.  The had the soon-to-be mother's grotesque physique to talk about, so conversation never ran dry - much like her nipples, apparently.

"That seems wasteful," she commented with a frown. Perhaps they ought to catch the dribble and feed the pack. "Does it hurt? The belly."

Sometimes. It itches more than it hurts, Serein frowned at her own belly. The fur turned brittle and thin, so I started pulling it out... She reached down to pluck another clump of fur she'd spotted, as if to emphasize her point. It came out easily, though it left a few spots of blood that she was quick to clean.

My body is gross now, she announced, pulling the rib bone closer to continue her gnawing with renewed enthusiasm. How's the garden? Not as gross, I bet.

Serein's fur came away like dead grass, exposing more raw skin. Without knowing it (but very much hoping to), Disa finally said something comforting: "Fur grows back."

She slumped to her side, pulling a thin bone from the scattered scraps on the ground around Serein. Just to hold.

"They garden is very gross," she assured her packmate. "It's full of fish and bones and dead plants. I make piles. They smell. Then it gets very hot." She flexed her paw around what was likely a piece of vertebrae, frowning.

"It makes a black thing. Plants like it," she finished. It was the only gardening skill she had; a custom among the scattered tribes of her home to keep prey close to the desert.

The little wolf's ears suddenly perked up. "Do you know any poisonous plants?" It was a weird thing to ask a stranger, she  had discovered - there was always a look - but Serein was on track to be family.

Serein's gnawing intensified as she listened to Disa's vivid descriptions. She was thoroughly enjoying herself; eyes half-lidded, ears flicking in every direction, bone cracking noisily between her teeth. Then the question registered, and she stiffened.

I don't kill anymore, she asserted first, an echo of the words she'd exchanged with Kemal on that first day. Then she shifted, letting the bone drop again to really look at Disa. For a long moment she only studied the woman.

Yes. I know many poisons. It was my job, before.

Disa's face lit up - but in the way supermarket lights switch in the early hours of the opening shift. Cold, detached interest. She wondered briefly why @Kemal would entrust her with the garden when she knows so little, and Serein knew so much.

Perhaps he thought her dim, and expected little more than mud. Disa does not mind.

"It's a poison garden," Disa clarifies. "I have put rocks and skulls." Just to make it clear. "I like nightshades," she continues, gaze drifting. "I know thorn-apple, and belldonna. They are very bad. Other things just give you hot poo, or take your eyes. I met a healer that told me about poppies and Azaleas. There's stoneseed," she eyes Serein's swollen belly. "Tell me more things. I can grow it, and you don't have to kill anyone. They are just plants. Then someone eats them, and they are poison."

Slowly, she began to nod. This was fine. Serein didn't really mind if Disa wanted to kill wolves with poisons, so long as she didn't try to poison Kemal or the children. It was only that Serein herself would not, could not be the catalyst for another wolf's final breath. She had promised.

What poisons do you want to know? The killing kind? Serein paused, then added: I know those better than the pooping kind. But there are fewer. And some do both, depending on the subject's consumption... She trailed off, momentarily lost in remembering.

"Any," she requested, dropping the bone to focus wholly on Serein. "But nothing like the green. Soul-stealers. I do not like those." A shadow passes over Disa's blank face, and for a moment she looks grim.

The green? Serein echoed, frowning slightly. She'd never heard of that one. But — My favorites are mountain-laurel and water hemlocks. Deadly and pretty. Water hemlocks are green plants with little clusters of tiny white flowers. Mountain-laurels are pink and white, they have broad shiny leaves.

Both of them kill, she added after a brief pause. Even just a little. Don't put it in your mouth, if you find some. Use your paws and then wash them with water and crushed yucca root.

Mountain-laurel, water hemlock, yucca. Disa filed them away carefully. Her mind was a steel trap for this sort of information; as a human toddler, she would have been very into dinosaurs or trains.

Of the green or its psychoactive friends, she said nothing more.

"I will find them. And also a husband." OK? Weird aside?  "Do you know good plants?" the botanist-in-training pressed. There was a garden to be established by the lake, outside Verapaz territory, and Disa was not keen on anyone pilfering her poisons.

Disa did not elaborate. Serein might have pressed for more information, but at the woman's next words, she stopped short. A husband. Her jaw tightened. Heat spread up her chest, through her cheeks, and for a moment she felt as if she might be sick.

Why do you need a husband? The words came out a little too sharp, and Serein looked away. She wasn't jealous. She was all but betrothed to Kemal. She couldn't be jealous.

If Disa brought a man home, though, she didn't know that she could keep the vow she'd made to herself.

The subtle tension in Serein's face passed Disa by. She gathered the bone between her paws again and gave it an experimental chew. It made her teeth itch pleasantly.

"Why do you need a husband?" came out angrier than Serein had intended, but her packmate was as adept at interpreting tone as she was reading facial expressions. 

The question confused her a little, though.

"For babies. And he can carry all the poisonous plants. Then I won't eat them and die." This was a good use of a husband. Disa hadn't thought much about it; at some point, she needed a mate - to be put to use in whatever manner she saw fit. Neither Serein nor Easy had made pups or the process of growing them seem particularly appealing, but neither was the desert, and Verapaz needed loyal bodies. 

'You have a husband," she reminded Serein, pupils swimming to the top of her grey eyes as she chewed and nibbled. "Sort of."

Serein was silent for several long moments. She didn't know what to say. She couldn't admit, even to herself, why the notion bothered her so much. But it would be easy enough to poison him, she thought, if Disa made him carry all the poisons.

Will you still visit me? She asked finally, turning back to look at Disa with an uncharacteristic vulnerability. It was the only thing she could think to say, though it didn't even begin to cover the true extent of her anxiety. She did not want to poison some poor man. But what else could she do?

Disa stopped chewing. Serein was asking very weird questions. Why would a husband affect how Disa spent her time? To her knowledge, The Act as a perfunctory meeting of genitals - beyond that, when {Husband} was not performing his assigned gardening duties, Disa imagined he would do whatever it was that men did. Patrol. Pee. Preen? She wasn’t sure.

”Of course,” she therefore said. ”You are my friend and my packmate. I will help you with your babies, and you will help with my babies. Verapaz will be very big and the husbands can visit us.” The weird little wolf squinted, cogs spinning rapidly inside her skull. ”Only sometimes. We will be very busy because of babies. Sometimes they vomit, and you eat it.” According to Easy, who had seemed very knowledgeable.