Dragoncrest Cliffs granny helped me take the wise route

she was still for a time, savoring the way the saltwind preened her fur. her thoughts adrift alongside chani’s — thinking of daughters too, but of a different nature.

if she could only shed this skin as they did in stories; slip into the silkstream garment of her cousins under the yellow lull of a gravid moon —

i plan to. sobeille answered, forging ahead of her wandering thoughts with the careful bite of a lower lip.

she did not mind sharing. it was more — ah, she thought of firemother.

if only there was some way she could reproduce in the fantastically unintimate manner of a fish! lay her eggs in a bundle of stones under the rush of riverwater, and have a male secrete his sperm over her clutch while she stood watch.

the biological word she was looking for was external insemination. the thought of a man inside her — changing her body in ways she could not — repulsed her.

we will see what man dat is, dat deserves us both. sobeille commented dryly, for truthfully her esteem in chani was high, and in herself possibly higher. what kind of man you be t’inking you like? she asked as she twirled a spiral pattern in the loose sand with a paw; her own mind did not turn to the pleasing musculature of a masculine figure.

instead, she thought of ajei.