you, I certainly wouldn't be playing at it like a love-sick human.  When I want you, I'll let you know in no uncertain terms.  It's not the custom of my kind to play games about it, and we don't assign the same significance to it that the humans do.  It's simply something that is very enjoyable, and if you keep making me talk about it, I may change my mind."
	That effectively cowed him.  "I'm sorry, but you're moving a bit too fast for me," he said carefully.
	"Obviously.  Don't assume something just because you think you know what I'm thinking, cub," she told him gruffly.  "What I consider important is much different than what you do.  The faster you understand that, the quicker you'll learn."  She gave him a look.  "Actually, just shapeshifting a while will show you that.  The cat in us, it's stronger when we're in the cat shape," she told him.  "Alot of things I'm talking about will make more sense when you see them through eyes closer to my own."
	"I have a question," he said.
	"What is it?"
	"Are you always this cross?"
	She gave him a look, then laughed.  "Not usually," she said.  "To be honest, I'm a bit nervous about you, and a bit worried for you."
	That broke a small chip off the big block of animosity he felt for her.
	"Worried?"
	"Tarrin, I didn't wish this on you, but we can't change the past," she told him with a sigh.  "What matters to me now is helping you learn how to live with it.  I didn't do it by choice, but I was still the one that changed you.  I have to take responsibility for that.  And that means that I have to help make it as painless for you as I can."
	Now he was mad at her.  He'd built up a perfectly acceptable reason to hate her, and she'd managed to destroy it with that one eloquent sentence.
	They travelled for the rest of the day moving in a southerly direction, through virgin forest that had probably never known the footsteps of man.  Tarrin listened to Jesmind during those times that she spoke, describing the trick of willing the change into cat-shape, and warning him in advance about how the change would affect his body and mind.  When he wasn't listening to her, he was watching her.  He had to admit that he was fascinated by her.  He was used to dealing with strong women, but his mother was nothing like this.  Every move she made was like a demonstration of her power, and she carried herself as if she owned the world.  Every little move she made was a clear symbol of her dominion.  She was strong, wise, authoritative, and she knew it.  But on the other hand, her movements and some of the looks she gave him were not overbearing, but interested, curious, compassionate.  She was a woman of strength, but she didn't beat him over the head with it.  She was content with herself and her life, and that fact was obvious in her demeanor.
	"I'm starting to think I have a hole in my shirt," she said bluntly after a time.
	"What?"
	"You're staring at me," she told him.   "If you didn't notice, that makes our kind a bit uncomfortable."
	"Sorry, just seeing what it looks like from the outside," he told her.
	"The same as it does on me," she said.  "Except for certain differences," she added as an afterthought, motioning at her breasts.
	Tarrin looked away from her, wondering at the wild changes of attitude he'd felt towards this woman just since the morning.  From hate, to distrust, to suspicion...and now to the first inklings of respect, and even a bit of trust.  He trusted this woman, he discovered.  In very many ways, he was a child, and almost instinctively, he was reaching out to someone that he thought could make everything better, someone to quiet the fears, someone to put an arm around him and guide him.  Jesmind represented that person, he realized.  She was that person, the only person, that could help him make sense out of the chaos that had become his life.  Her sincere regret and resolve to help him had helped break down the anger he'd felt for her just that morning, allowing him to look on her with new eyes.
	And look at her with new eyes.  She was beautiful.  There was no doubt about that.  And he was starting to dread having to disrobe in front of her.
	"The cat is strong when we carry its form," she told him later that day, after his long contemplation of her and his situation.  "The longer we stay a cat, the stronger it gets.  Expect to have to take a lesser role concerning some of the instincts when in that shape.  But for you, I think it will help, because those things that try to affect your mind now will be much clearer to you when you allow them to express themselves, instead of bottling them in."
	"I hope so," he said sincerely.
	"Have you been having dreams?"
	"Yes, but I can't remember them," he replied.
	"They do go away, in time," she assured him.  "They're your mind getting used to the instincts.  As you settle in with them, the dreams will get weaker and weaker, until they go away."  They stopped for a moment next to a huge oak tree, that was on the edge of a small clearing that was dominated by a fallen log and a large carpet of moss.  The light was starting to dwindle.  They had walked all day.  "This looks like a good place to stop," she said.  Then she pulled the strings of the laces on her white shirt.
	"What are you doing?" Tarrin asked.
	"I'm taking off my clothes," she told him with a steady look.  "You do the same.  Chop-chop, I want to get you through this at least once before sunset."  And with that, she pulled the shirt over her head.
	Tarrin made himself look.  In just a moment, there wasn't going to be anywhere on her that would be safe to put his eyes, and he wasn't about to fuel her amusement.  She stared right at him as she pulled her long, thick red hair out of the neck of the shirt, and he returned her gaze with the same calm.  He did well, right up until she unbuttoned her trousers.  He looked away right as she pushed them over her hips, working on the laces of his own shirt.
	"Look at me," she commanded.  "It won't do you any good not to look.  You're going to see me, no matter how hard you try not to."
	He met her gaze shyly, and she smiled at him.  It wasn't an amused or malicious smile, it was one of compassion.  "I know it makes you uncomfortable, but the quickest way to get over that is to meet it head on," she told him.  "Don't look at my face.  Look at me, all of me.  I'm not embarassed, so you don't have to be either."
	She stood there calmly as he did as she said.  He looked at her.  From toes to the top of her hair, he looked at the muscular form of her body.  He noticed that her muscles were very defined, but not overly developed.  She did have a washboard stomach, but it gave her a very slender waist compared to her full hips, and the muscles in her back heightened the seeming smallness of her middle.  She even turned around slowly for him, allowing him the full view.  He noticed how shapely her backside was, even with the white-furred tail sticking out of the top of it.  Just like his own tail, the fur on her tail stopped right at the base of it, with no fur anywhere else.  "Just one thing, Tarrin," she said.  "Looking is one thing.  Touching is altogether different."
	"I didn't even think of it," he said sincerely.
	"I didn't say it was bad," she said huffily.  "I just said it was different."
	"It sounded like you meant it was bad," he grumbled.
	"Then I'm sorry," she said.  "But touching is the same for us as what looking at a naked woman does for a human male," she warned him.  "It goes for you as much as it does for me.  Believe it or not, I think you'll find that standing there with no clothes on isn't half as bad as you think.  Even with me standing here.  But the instant I touched you in a place you considered to be intimate, well, let's just say that it would give you a different reason to blush."
	He blushed anyway, pulling off his shirt.
	"The same goes for me," she said.  "I don't recommend you putting your paws on my more sensitive parts, unless you want to fend me off with a stick."
	"I find it hard to believe that," he said with a sniff, unbuttoning his trousers and steeling himself for the act of disrobing in front of her.
	"It's been a long time since I've had a man," she warned bluntly.  "Believe it or not, human women get the same urges as human men.  Well, among my kind, females get that urge even more often than human men, and we're not afraid to go after what we want."  She crossed her arms, waiting deliberately.  "I'm being nice to you because you're still unfamiliar with what's happened to you, but if you'd have been any other male, we'd be--"
	"I thought you didn't want to talk about it," he said through gritted teeth.  In one fast, jerky move, he whisked off his trousers, and stood there, self-consciously, under Jesmind's appraising eye.  "And why is that?"
	"Is what?"
	"Why do the women, um--"
	"Oh, that," she said.  "Because there are seven women for every man."
	"What?"
	"There are seven females for every male," she repeated.  "So we have to share."  She put a finger to her chin, staring at him in a way that made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.  "Turn around," she ordered.  he did so, gritting his teeth.  "My," she said.  "My, my, my."
	"What?"
	"You've got a very handsome body, Tarrin," she complemented.
	"Can we get on with this?" he asked plaintively.
	"You're ruining my fun, do you know that?" she said with an evil little smile.
	"I'm glad one of us in enjoying this," he growled.
	"Just give it time," she told him.  "The best way to get used to it is to just do it.  And it gives me something nice to look at."
	"Do you mind?" he demanded.
	"Not at all," she said, looking him up and down in such a way that he blushed to the roots of his hair.  She laughed then, and then motioned at him with her paw.  "Alright, I guess I am being mean," she admitted.  "Watch what happens.  After you see it, I think you'll be able to do it easily enough."
	He watched as she hunkered down in a squat, her arms lowering to the ground in front of her, and then she simply shrunk, so fast it happened in the blink of an eye.  A rather large white cat was sitting on the ground where she'd been standing.  There was another flash, this one of expansion, and she was again standing before him.  "That's all there is to it," she told him.  "To make it happen, you have to want it to happen, and you have to will it to happen.  You already know how to do it.  It's in your blood.  You just have to make it do it."
	"Alright," he said.  He thought about what she did, how she changed.  He wanted to do the same thing, so he kept telling himself to change in his mind, over and over again.  But nothing was happening.
	"Don't just think it," she said.  "Want it.  Will it."
	Clenching his paws into fists, he closed his eyes and willed it to happen, using all the concentration skills taught to him by his parents.  he felt the oddest sensation, a cool sensation, as if his body had been changed into a liquid.  He felt it actually flow into that other shape, the liquid filling the new vessel.  There was no pain, just that flowing sensation.  And then it was over.
	He opened his eyes, and he was given a new point of view of the world.  One much closer to the ground.  Everything was in vibrant color, and the world opened up to his senses as his instincts seem to advance from the corner of his mind where they usually sat.  He was closer to them that way, and he could feel them in a way that he'd never felt them before.  And after a few seconds of that intimate contact with them, he didn't feel quite so afraid of them.  He looked down at his paws, seeing a pair of cat's legs underneath him.  He looked at himself, this way and that, getting an idea of how it felt to have four legs instead of two, getting used to having fur all over his body.  "You're a handsome cat, Tarrin," Jesmind said appreciatively, then she hunkered down and shifted into her cat form.  She was slightly smaller than he was, he noticed, and her smell was the smell of a cat, not the smell of a Were-cat.
	"How does it feel?"
	Tarrin was a bit surprised.  She had not used sounds or words or movements, but he just seemed to understand perfectly what she was saying to him.  And he found it instinctively easy to reply to her in the exact same manner.  "Strange," he told her in that unspoken manner.  "How are we talking?"
	"I've never understood the specifics of it," she said.  "We just know what other cats have to say.  It works with normal cats too, from housecats to lions."
	"Odd," he remarked, sitting down sedately.  He felt the urge to start cleaning his fur.  Though the idea of licking himself seemed a bit unusual, nonetheless he felt perfectly at ease with the concept.  That was definitely the instincts of the cat impressing themselves on his consciousness, as she said they would.
	"What do you think?" she asked, walking up to him and sitting down in front of him.
	"It feels...right," he said after a moment.
	"Then you won't have any trouble," she told him.  "To change back, you just will yourself back.  It's that easy."
	"It'll be more comfortable to sleep like this," he remarked.
	"Now you understand why I talked about getting rid of the clothes," she said with a light manner, grinning at him in the manner that cats smiled.  "Change back, Tarrin.  Make sure that you can do it easily."
	Tarrin nodded to her, and this time he kept his eyes open.  He willed himself back into his bipedal form, and he changed.  His vision blurred and grayed over at the same instant that he felt his body go liquid again, and it cleared with him looking down at Jesmind's cat form.  "Very good," she told him in the manner of the cat.  "Now change back, and let's go hunting.  I'm hungry."
	"Hunt, as a cat?" he asked.
	"Cats are excellent hunters," she said proudly.  "And I have a taste for squirrel.  So let's go get one."
	"Eat a squirrel, raw?"
	"You'll understand once you change back," she told him huffily.
	Tarrin again willed the change, and he was surprised at how easy it was that time.  It just took wanting it, and thinking about making it happen, and it happened.  He sat down again in his cat form in front of her.
	"It's easy, isn't it?" she said simply.
	"Yes, it is," he agreed.
	"Now, let me teach you how to hunt, cubling," she told him, assuming a matronly role.  "The meat is worth the effort."

	Jesmind was right.  Raw squirrel did taste good.
	Tarrin lay half-awake in the darkness, with Jesmind curled up beside him, against him, sound asleep.  They'd found a large hollow log to nest in for the night, where it was dark and warm and snugly cramped, just the way that cats liked dens.  He drowsily mused over how complete the domination of the cat was on him while in its form, how things that would have turned his stomach or made him flinch just seemed to be second nature to him now.  The hunting was actually rather easy, for he already had a solid understanding of the basics.  All Jesmind had to do was teach him the tactics and nuances of doing with stealth, speed, claws, and teeth, rather than a bow or sling.  Once he'd caught the squirrel, he killed it with a bite to the neck to asphyxiate it.  Then they ate it.  And Tarrin had felt like it was the most natural thing in the world.  All those little things that cats did made perfect sense to him now.  It was like he was blind for not realizing it sooner.
	That was the Cat, and he knew it, but in a way, he welcomed it.  He hoped that this closer communion with what was inside him would let them co-exist peacefully together.  Introducing each other, as it were.  And maybe stop the dreams that haunted and terrorized him, the dreams that were the reason he didn't want to fall asleep, no matter how desperately his body and mind cried out for it.
	Jesmind yawned and stirred against him.  He was a bit surprised when she raised her head and licked his cheek, then kept at it.  He closed his eyes and put his head down, letting her groom him, accepting her attention completely.
	She groomed his cheek and neck, then put her head back down against his shoulder.  "Now go to sleep," she ordered in a gentle tone.  "I'm here to watch over you."
	Tarrin closed his eyes, and soon he was fast asleep.

	Sunrise poured a stream of rosy light right into the log, and into Tarrin's eyes.  He opened them blearily, letting them adjust to the light, and he wondered at it.
	He'd slept through the night, without a single dream.
	Jesmind was sleeping beside him, with her head resting against his shoulder.  And there was a strange smell in the air.  It was a musky smell, an unwashed one, and from the smell of it there were several of them.  Whatever they were.  Leaving Jesmind asleep, Tarrin inched out of the hollow log, testing the air with his nose.  They were very close, whatever they were, almost within earshot.  When he heard the first rustling, he backed well into the log, back beside Jesmind, who was still asleep.
	After a few moments, he could hear voices, and they weren't human.  They were canoid sounds, full of yips and barks, and Tarrin had been taught by his father about them.  That meant that the smell was of Dargu, the dog-faced, goat-horned Goblinoids.  He saw one padded, dog-like foot come down right outside the log's opening.  He didn't know their language, only knew how to identify it.
	"Jesmind," he called in the unspoken manner of the cat.
	"I know," she replied calmly.  "Just leave them be, Tarrin.  They're not looking for us, and I hate killing anything before breakfast.  That isn't breakfast, that is," she added absently.
	"But--"
	"Just lay back down, Tarrin," she told him.
	There was a cry from outside, and Tarrin saw the edge of his trousers as they were picked up.  "They know we're nearby," he said sourly, "and they know I'm not alone."
	She seemed to consider that.  "Maybe we should do something about it," she decided.  "If they're with those Trolls, I don't think that we want them knowing where we are.  Besides, I'm not giving up my clothes.  But if we do this, they all have to die, Tarrin," she told him.  "All of them.  Even the wounded.  Are you capable of it?"
	He was quiet a moment.  "I am," he said grimly.
	"Alright then.  Let's crawl out of here.  You go one way, I'll go the other.  We'll get them between us, change, and attack.  Remember, no mercy.  We can't let them know we have alternate forms."
	"Alright," he said.
	The black and white cats slithered unnoticed from the hollow log and split up.  Tarrin hunkered down and darted from bush to tree, working himself out to the edge of the Dargu pack as he took stock of them.  There were about eight, armed with spears, clubs, and one with a rusty sword.  They were snuffling and checking out their clothes, putting their dirty hands all over them.  He'd have to wash them after that.  The sword was no danger to him; it was the clubs that were the real threat.  Weapons of nature, the rough treestumps could deal real damage to him.  Besides, the raw impact of a club could knock him out just as easily as a human, and then he would be helpless.
	Once he was in position, Tarrin waited a few seconds for Jesmind to get into position, then changed form.  It was so easy to him, he didn't even think about it.  He struck from behind, without warning, and his clawed paw reached around the Dargu and cut its throat with a single claw just as quickly as any assassin's knife.  The Dargu died without a sound, slumping to the ground, and the others had yet to notice.  Tarrin picked up the already dead Dargu and hefted him over his head, feeling hot blood pour on his shoulder, then he threw the dead creature into the backs of his companions.  They fell to the ground in a bloody pile, grunting in surprise and the shock of the impact.
	Total chaos erupted at that instant, as Jesmind struck from her position of concealment.  Jesmind fought with an elemental style that Tarrin could see was self-learned, but it was no less deadly.  She ripped the throat from her initial victim, then darted in and did the same to the nearest enemy before it could react.  Tarrin drove right into the heart of the Dargu concentration, wreaking havoc with his clawed paws and feet, fighting in the forms of the Ungardt hand style, modifying them as he went to take advantage of his claws.  Fighting in the familiar forms seemed to calm him, help him control the bloodlust that raged through his soul, dying to be released, and it allowed him to maintain himself.  He caught the wrist of a club, yanked the creature forward, and then broke the arm.  Then he whipped it around by that broken arm, and it spun over onto its back as it howled in agony.  Tarrin finished it with a stomp right to the neck, crushing the windpipe.  The Dargu at first fell back, then pressed in, and then fell back as their weapons were batted aside or evaded, and Dargu fell by the second to the clawed Were-cats' devastating attack.  The last few turned to flee, but Tarrin knew that there could be no mercy in this battle.  His life depended on it.  He grabbed one by the ponytail on its head and yanked back hard enough to snap its neck as Jesmind rushed forward and tackled another, her claws flaying it alive before they hit the ground.  That left one, and it had a few steps on Tarrin.  Tarrin simply picked up a fallen club, sized up his target, and hurled it at its back with his unnatural strength driving it.  It hit the Dargu squarely in the back of the head, and it hit with sufficient force to spray the surrounding trees with red gore.  The dead creature tumbled to the ground, and was very still.
	Jesmind blew out her breath, carefully sizing up the bloody mess.  "Good," she told him.  "You know how to fight.  That's something I won't have to teach you."
	"I know how to fight," he said tightly, looking away from the bloody carnage they had wrought in a surprisingly short time.
	They washed themselves of the blood in the nearby stream, and Tarrin dunked his clothes and beat most of the dirt out of them, and wrung them out as best he could.  They were still wet when he put them on, but there was little else he could do.  Wet leather chafed and itched, but he wasn't about to go nude.
	"Much better," Jesmind approved as she donned her own wet shirt.  She'd taken his idea and done the same thing.
	"You think there are any more of them out there?"
	"Thousands," she replied, "but they usually live farther north.  They'd only come down here for a reason, and with those Trolls that were chasing you, I'd say that you were that reason."
	"I don't see why," he complained.  "I'm just a farmboy from a secluded village."
	"I don't know either, and I don't really care," she said.  "We'll have to make for a city.  We need humans around us, with their steel to scare off the Goblinoids."  He saw nothing wrong with that idea.  Until he could continue on in safety, heading for the Tower was out of the question.  It was too far away, and these creatures had obviously been placed previously...as if the placer had known which way he would go.
	Of course he did, Tarrin realized.  There was only way to get to Suld from Marta's Ford.
	One way for a human.
	"Darsa is on the coast," Jesmind thought aloud.  "It's actually pretty close.  About four days' travel.  And they're expecting us to go south, towards Ultern, not west."
	"So we should go west," Tarrin said.
	"But my home range is east," she fretted.  "I hate going the wrong way."
	"If you want to walk through them, then go right ahead," Tarrin told her.
	"Hush," she said absently, billowing out her wet hair to help dry it.  Tarrin was struck again quickly by Jesmind's raw beauty and physical perfection at that moment, as she scrubbed her hair to and fro to get air through it, the move accenting those breasts that Tarrin couldn't help but stare at when he thought she wasn't looking.  He didn't understand why or how he could look at her as a guardian in one way, and as a partner with the same eyes.  She was almost like his mother, and he wouldn't even dare to think of his mother the same way he caught himself thinking about Jesmind.  He thought that maybe it was because she was a female of his own kind that made him think that way, the only one that he knew.  But it could be anything, and he knew that.  He still wasn't familiar enough with this new life to understand the nuances.
	She gave him an intent look, then put her arms down casually.  "I guess that we will go west for a time, then turn south again," she acceded.  "We may not have to go all the way to Darsa.  It'll depend on whether or not we're followed."
	"I guess that'll work," Tarrin acquiesed.
	They turned west and started at a very brisk pace that was almost a run.  Jesmind urged him into a loping, jog-like pace that ate up the ground, and he was shocked at how easily he could maintain it.  They ran for most of the morning, farther and faster than a horse could manage it.  The trees flew by as they ran along game trails, and the whole world seemed to center down to the sharp watch for tree limbs and turns in the trail, or picking out a path when they had to travel through virgin forest.  Their clothes dried relatively quickly with their speed blowing air over it.  About midmorning, Tarrin started to get tired.  "Can we stop for a while?" he asked her.
	"I guess," she said sourly.  They both slowed to a walk.  "We'll find a stream and fish out some lunch.  We'll rest while we eat."
	They found one, a pretty little stream with a waterfall that was twice Tarrin's height feeding a large pool.  Silvery shapes darted to and fro in the water, which was decidedly icy to the touch.  Tarrin guessed that the stream was fed right from the Skydancer Mountains, with their ice and glaciers in the higher elevations.  Jesmind had him fish out some lunch as she drank farther down, and when she returned, he had three large trout sitting on the leaf-strewn bank.  "Only one more," she told him, cleaning and paring them as Tarrin took five minutes to snag the last one.  She handed him a flank of fish as he sat down.
	He gave her a curious look, a question coming to mind that he'd been meaning to ask her for a while.  "What do you do?"
	"Do?  What do you mean, what do I do?"
	"Well, what do you do?  When you're not here with me, anyway."  He took another bite.  "You know, do you make things?  Or sew, or what?"
	"Ah," she said.  "I don't work for a living, Tarrin.  Unless you want to call hunting and gathering work.  I do have a little garden behind my house, but I admit I'm not there too often.  I like to roam around alot.  I guess as we get older, just sitting at home isn't quite as sedate as it used to be."  She pulled a bone from her mouth and tossed it aside.  "It's bloody boring, truth be told.  I've never had a child, so I've never really had the urge to stay in one place too long.  Mother really gets after me over that," she grunted.
	"Over not being married?"
	"Tarrin, we don't marry," she told him tersely.  "My three sisters all have their own children, and I think my brother Jarlin has sired about twelve.  I'm the oldest, but I don't have any children to present to my mother.  Well, except for you, but you're not the kind of child she wants.  Mother's a busybody, and she probably won't let off of it until I hand her a baby.  She tracks me down about every twenty years or so just to see if I'm pregnant or already have a baby, and if I don't, why I'm not trying to track down a male."  She made a face.  "Last time, I just went home around the time she started looking for me, just to save myself the trouble.  That's where she always starts to look."
	"Well, how do you earn money?" he asked curiously.
	"Money?  I've been around a while, Tarrin," she told him with a grin.  "I have money.  I keep most of it at home, buried in a safe place.  But I don't really use it too often.  I can provide my own needs.  About the only things I ever buy are clothes, and the occasional steel tool."  She finished her last bit of fish, and leaned back.  "Why all these questions about me, anyway?" she demanded.
	"I don't know," he said.  "You're a Were-cat, so maybe if if I learn about what you do, then I'll know what I'm supposed to do."
	She laughed.  "Cub, do whatever you want.  If staying in your den all your life is what you want, do it.  If you want to spend your life travelling, do it.  The only things you can't do are what's proscribed by Fae-da'Nar."
	"What are those?"
	"It gets involved, but the core of it is not to give the humans reason to hate us," she told him.  "Butchering villages, preying on humans, killing people for no reason.  That kind of thing.  What would give us a bad reputation."
	"Oh."
	"The real mess is when you have to learn about the other Fae-da'Nar," she grunted.  "You have to learn the basic customs of the others, and things like that.  It's so we don't have misunderstandings and start fighting among ourselves."  The wind had blown a strand of hair up inside her ear, and it was flicking reflexively to clear it.  Tarrin reached up and pulled it free for her.  "Thank you," she said absently.  "I see your hair is still growing," she remarked.
	Tarrin made a face as he swung his head back and forth, feeling it sway behind him.  "I hate it," he complained.
	"I'll braid it for you," she offered.  "That keeps it more or less under control"  She got up and knelt behind him, taking his hair into her hands.  Hands, he realized.  There was no way she could put her Were-cat paws into his hair like that without him noticing the difference.  But a look down showed him that her tail was still there.  "You can change only your hands?" he asked.
	"I can," she said.  "But I can't get rid of my tail or put on human ears without going full human.  Some of us can, some of us can't.  It depends."  She pulled his hair back and started separating it.  "It's alot easier just changing your hands, I think.  It's not as much of a strain."  Tarrin looked down at his paws.  "Don't even think of trying," she warned.  "When you're as young as you are, you could only do it for a few minutes, and even then it would be excruciatingly painful.  Save it for when the gain is worth the pain."
	"Alright," he said, bowing his head and letting her braid his hair.
	"Tarrin," she said.
	"What?"
	"If you don't get your tail out from between my legs, we're going to have a disagreement."
	"Sorry," he said sincerely, blushing somewhat.  "It does what it wants most of the time."  He took control of his rebellious limb