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  "description": "NOTE: This is an incremental continuation of my novel-in-progress \"The Beach House\"! \n\n[b]You can find all parts of this story here:[/b]\n[mediumpool]101857[/mediumpool] \n\n---\n\nA bear named Jack is traveling for the first time in his adult life. He's on his way to a remote island, where he's planning to spend the summer taking care of a beach house that's been loaned to him by his best friend's family. His friend just happened to leave out [i]one important detail[/i] about the island. Despite traveling with the intention of getting away for a while in order to work on recovering and moving on from a recently-ended engagement, he's now thrown into a world for which he is radically unprepared, and has to realize the cultural differences of this resort and its inhabitants against his own assumptions, prejudice, and understandings. On the island, he meets a female Lutrai (Rikia) and her son (Tempesta), who live separately from the tribe, to better keep Rikia's secret about her son at bay.\n\n---\n\n[i][b]The Beach House[/b][/i] is a heartfelt erotic romance story about a bear's ongoing struggle with mental health and taboo sexual and romantic desires. It follows the bear's journey of rediscovering his capacity for trust, honesty, intimacy and love in the wake of a devastating breakup, all filtered through the lens of the [i]Before the Fall[/i] universe.\n\nAs always I welcome and am absolutely thrilled to receive any feedback you might have and work! I work hard to integrate my readers' feedback as well as I can into my work!",
  "description_bbcode_parsed": "<span style='word-wrap: break-word;'>NOTE: This is an incremental continuation of my novel-in-progress &quot;The Beach House&quot;! <br /><br /><strong>You can find all parts of this story here:</strong><br />\n\t\t\t\t\t<table cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' style='display: inline-block;'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<table cellpadding='0' cellspacing='10px' style='margin: 5px; background-color: #eeeeec; border-radius: 10px;'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t<div class='widget_imageFromSubmission ' style='width: 120px; height: 112px; position: relative; margin: 0px auto;'>\r\n\t\t\t\t<a onMousedown='setActivePool(101857)'  href='/s/3654278' style='border: 0px;'><img src='https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5624/5624295_beforethefall_the_beach_house_part_one.jpg' width='120' height='112' title='BtF: &quot;The Beach House&quot;, Chapters 1-3 by beforethefall' alt='BtF: &quot;The Beach House&quot;, Chapters 1-3 by beforethefall' style='position: relative; border: 0px; ' class='shadowedimage' /></a>\r\n\t\t\t</div>\r\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t<div class='widget_imageFromSubmission ' style='width: 120px; height: 112px; position: relative; margin: 0px auto;'>\r\n\t\t\t\t<a onMousedown='setActivePool(101857)'  href='/s/3714183' style='border: 0px;'><img src='https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/5731/5731551_beforethefall_tbh-vol2.jpg' width='120' height='112' title='BtF: &quot;The Beach House&quot;, Chapters 4-5 by beforethefall' alt='BtF: &quot;The Beach House&quot;, Chapters 4-5 by beforethefall' style='position: relative; border: 0px; ' class='shadowedimage' /></a>\r\n\t\t\t</div>\r\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t</tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<td colspan='3' style='color: #999999; font-size: 8pt; text-align: center;'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpool: <a href='/poolview_process.php?pool_id=101857'>The Beach House Series</a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div style='margin-top: 5px;'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tby <span class=\"widget_userNameSmall \"><a class=\"widget_userNameSmall\" href=\"/beforethefall\">beforethefall</a></span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t</tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t</table>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t</td>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t</tr>\n\t\t\t\t\t</table>\n\t\t\t\t\t <br /><br />---<br /><br />A bear named Jack is traveling for the first time in his adult life. He&#039;s on his way to a remote island, where he&#039;s planning to spend the summer taking care of a beach house that&#039;s been loaned to him by his best friend&#039;s family. His friend just happened to leave out <em>one important detail</em> about the island. Despite traveling with the intention of getting away for a while in order to work on recovering and moving on from a recently-ended engagement, he&#039;s now thrown into a world for which he is radically unprepared, and has to realize the cultural differences of this resort and its inhabitants against his own assumptions, prejudice, and understandings. On the island, he meets a female Lutrai (Rikia) and her son (Tempesta), who live separately from the tribe, to better keep Rikia&#039;s secret about her son at bay.<br /><br />---<br /><br /><em><strong>The Beach House</strong></em> is a heartfelt erotic romance story about a bear&#039;s ongoing struggle with mental health and taboo sexual and romantic desires. It follows the bear&#039;s journey of rediscovering his capacity for trust, honesty, intimacy and love in the wake of a devastating breakup, all filtered through the lens of the <em>Before the Fall</em> universe.<br /><br />As always I welcome and am absolutely thrilled to receive any feedback you might have and work! I work hard to integrate my readers&#039; feedback as well as I can into my work!</span>",
  "writing": "BEFORE READING: Please start at the beginning with Part One, here: [url=https://inkbunny.net/s/3654278]https://inkbunny.net/s/3654278[/url]\n\nContent Warning: Cub/Boylove, aroused cubs, sexualized fantasies about cubs, public nudity/arousal (adult and cub), masturbation (adult), oral sex (adult).\n\n[center][b]Before the Fall[/b]\n[t][b][b]“The Beach House, Part Two”[/b][/b][/t]\nby beforethefall [Inkbunny][/center]\n\n\n[center][t]Chapter 4: Meet the Neighbors[/t][/center]\n\nHer smile still lingered in his mind as Jack woke to find a straining erection standing from his lap, nearly a foot of thick-rooted ursine flesh that had been drooling a stream of precum into his bellybutton for long enough to make it a slimy, slick pool of natural lubricant. The memory of the nude, athletic young Lutrai woman standing in his doorway last night had haunted his fitful sleep all night, steadily being warped and remixed into new and even more enticing scenarios in the bear's pent up stress dreams. He closed his eyes against the daylight filtering through the sheer curtains in the eastern-facing front of the one-room house and lowered a hand to grip his cock's base, pulling up to well nearly an ounce of precum from his flesh and into his palm. Then, he stroked down slowly, with a flex of his core and an arch of his hips pressing his arousal through his fist as he smeared the natural lubrication over himself. A deep sigh left him as he closed his eyes again and began to smoothly pump his hand on himself while he listened to the surf crash on the beach just a hundred meters away from his open windows, with the cries of gulls peppering the breezy early-morning quiet.\n\n[i]A little relief, first. Then we can start the day.[/i]\n\nJack reasoned with himself that it was a simple indulgence on his first day of his summer-long vacation. Arguably, it was a tactical move as well; if he were to try going nude today, this might help prevent any unwelcome arousal in public places. He caught himself distracted by anxieties, and drew a deep breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. He let the still-dancing image from his dream play out for him again, the enticing image of the beautiful young otter woman swaying her hips as she walked away, his mind's eye tracing her curves and the exotic markings that accentuated them. His hand caressed again over the contours of his own throbbing arousal as he imagined his fingers caressing her curves. His free hand scooped his tufty-furred balls into its palm and rolled them gently, his hand cupped beneath their curve as he imagined the Lutrai woman's perfect breasts laid in his paws instead. His thumb's claw teased the piercing at the base of his sheath as he thought about caressing her breasts' supple weight in his palm and teasing her pierced nipples. As he pleasured himself, the steady rise in pitch built; a smooth, slow stroking gave way to a more purposeful, heated pumping as the bear sat up and scooted to the edge of the mattress. Ruining the skunks' bed was absolutely not acceptable; nor was ruining their rug; he grunted as he leaned down to pick up his discarded tie-dye t-shirt that he'd arrived in; a sacrifice that would be only barely sufficient for his needs in the moment, but it would have to do until he could find a better-suited vessel.\n\nPrepared, the bear leaned back atop the bed again, now openly pumping himself as he huffed and panted and the fantasies drifted from the Lutrai woman to her son. The sight of his jiggling boyhood was still fresh in his mind, followed by the wonder of what it might look like erect, and then how the boy might respond to its hardness. He wondered about its taste, and the boy's smell, up close and intimate. He wondered if the boy could even experience an orgasm at his young age; surely the kit was still too young to produce anything along with an orgasm, but [i]what if[/i]..? For a brief moment, he was whisked away into the fantasy of such a young boy being perfectly capable of ejaculation. One who would seek it out, even, an eager and willing participant to sexual exploration and play. A playmate that desired nothing but good feelings and intimate friendship and occasionally a big bear's muzzle buried in his lap... \n\nThe bear grunted as reality came roaring back to his awareness; he'd caught himself off-guard; he hadn't noticed the rising tension, the tightness building under his balls. Despite urgently pulling the shirt to his flaring glans, he missed the first rope of seed; mostly-clear fluid marbled with a little thread of thicker white that leapt from him and landed in a thick streak across his chest and stomach with the first building pulse of his climax. With the fabric pinned against his throbbing glans, he worked himself urgently with his slicked hand as he surrendered to the peak; a stifled grunt and the stiff blow of air from his nose as a buck of his hips rocked the whole mattress. He desperately tried to strangle the immense volume and pressure of his ejaculation back with a clenched fist around his shaft's midpoint as his orgasm took him, but the hot, thick surges of his seed still poured up from him and into the barely-adequate t-shirt's fabric by the pint. The colorful cotton garment grew heavy and hot as it soaked through with the sheer volume of the bear's climax, mostly containing the surges that managed to escape despite Jack desperate attempt to hold it back by brute force. He desperately tried to keep quiet with the open windows, though a few stiff huffs and grunts issued forth, still, during the shuddering intensity of his peak as he desperately tried to hold it back.\n\nAs he slowly came down, Jack's heart pounded in his chest and his hips jerked on reflex with the aftershocks of his climax, each fresh twitch bringing up another massive oozing of thick, pearly fluid. The shirt was hopelessly saturated with the sheer amount of seed it had absorbed in spite of the bear's attempt at forceful restraint, and Jack let the shirt drop to his stomach before he lazily milked his arousal with smooth strokes from base to tip, and watched several more ounces ooze out to pool atop the saturated fabric, only slowly seeping into the shirt as a thick, pearly drool oozed out of the fabric and into his fur. His pulse slowly recovered as he laid atop the bed, thankful for the gentle breeze through the windows, and he spent several long minutes simply catching his breath, before bothering to sit up again.\n\nThere was marked effort in standing; he had moved the mattress to the floor last night due to a well-founded mistrust of unfamiliar bed frames in homes owned by species of lesser weight classes than his own, but with a quiet grunt he stood to his full height and, still holding the sodden t-shirt to his slowly slacking arousal with a paw cupped beneath it to catch the dripping, he went to the bathroom to relieve the other cause of his morning wood with some difficulty at finding a usable angle in the too-small half-bath. Though the shirt wasn't in much better shape after being wrung into the toilet bowl, it no longer threatened to drip the potently-scented bear cum on the skunks' woven rug that covered the wooden-board floor of the tiny beach house. The bear cast a timid glance out of the back window, which revealed an empty yard and the tiny ridge of dunes, with the beach and sea beyond. The cold-water-only shower was situated on the back patio, a sure tell of the place's perpetual warm weather, though despite a reed partition that kept it relatively private, the bear wasn't yet sure about the idea of showering outdoors with neighbors nearby in spite of the novelty of such an act. He could smell his own semen and sweat though, and knew he had little choice in the matter of cleaning himself up before daring to venture further than the yard. The screen door creaked open, and the bear gave another worried glance around before he quickly made the five-foot walk to the partitioned shower against the back of the little house.\n\nThe lack of hot water was worrying at first, but Jack found himself rapidly acclimating to it; it wasn't so different from a jump into a pool on a warm summer day, with the added bonus that it hastened his softening member's retreat to its sheath. As the bear pulled the large double-flare glass plugs from his ears and carefully set them in the soap dish, a pang of guilt began to set in about his morning's fantasy; the boy was cute, yes, and sure a simple bit of imagination didn't harm anyone, but the fact that he'd just sexualized such a precious little boy bothered him for some reason. It didn't bother him enough to prevent a future instance of the same surely, but it nagged at his conscience as the bear washed out his sheath and carefully cleaned the heavy-gauge ring in its opening, then the matching ring in the web of flesh where his sheath met his sack. Why [i]was[/i] it an issue if he fantasized about a little boy, or anything else he wanted to? It's not like he'd molested the boy or exposed himself to him, even if, in that moment, the thought of doing so may have aroused him. It was just a harmless fantasy, right? Could it really be so wrong? The same argument could go for the boy's mother; he had thought about her too in that moment - but why didn't he feel guilty about that? Sure, if he admitted it outright to anyone, the idea might be questionable, but for some reason the thought of having stroked himself to the thought of her body was far less troubling. The bear made a face as he rinsed the semen-soaked t-shirt out as best as he could and hung it over the partition to dry in the sun. He carefully cleaned around the ring in his lower lip, then removed and cleaned the retainer in his nose, before shoving his whole head under the flow of water to begin scrubbing his purplish-brown head-fur out. A couple months ago in a fit of inspiration and the blind search for his identity now that Emma was no longer in the picture, he'd dyed over his brown headfur with a high-saturation purple. Now, the dye job was fading back to the bear's usual reddish-brown, with the paling purple standing out more in the highlights and the few spots it had stained the back of the lighter, endearingly-termed ‘grizzly-gray’ collar marking that ran in his family.\n\nAs he showered, his attention drifted to the young lilies he'd brought with him the day prior, tucked out of the direct sunlight in the corner of the shower stall. They were doing well, better than when he'd first arrived - likely thankful to be in a space that kept their roots cooler, but he'd have to get them in the ground today if he wanted them to bounce back well. After a fruitless hunt for soap and realizing there was none to be found, Jack doubled down on scrubbing himself out with his claws and a thorough rinsing of water, then shut the tap off after he was satisfied he'd rinsed himself thoroughly enough to make due without. Methodically, each piece of removed jewelry was inspected, cleaned, then returned to its appropriate hole as the bear stood in the shower stall. With his fur still dripping, he pulled his swim trunks back on and tied the drawstring under the curve of his belly before he stepped out from behind the partition and into the small picket-fenced back yard. He surveyed the little path toward the beach that he'd planned on lining with the lilies; the soil in the yard was almost exclusively a loamy, sandy soil that Jack assessed should do the flowers well so long as they were watered once or twice a week. The bear had even distracted himself yesterday by digging a few shallow, experimental holes yesterday to make sure there weren't any surprises beneath the initial sandy layer, and ended up finding a sufficient space that he guessed would allow the lilies to thrive on either side of the well-worn old board trail through the oat grass and between the low dunes on the way to the beach, proper.\n\nThe bear pulled the lilies out of their shady spot in the corner of the shower and brought them to the edge of the path, then knelt in the sand and used his bare hands and well-suited claws to dig little holes for the young plants. One by one, he carefully extracted a lily's starter plug from the black plastic nursery container and gently loosened its root ball before he tucked each into its very own little hole, using the breadth of his hand to estimate about eight inches of spacing from its neighboring lily. It was quiet, repetitive, meditative work, and there in the salty air, as the morning sun rose on the other side of the island the bear finally felt his near-constant undercurrent of guilt and anxiety start to fade. He'd almost completely forgotten why he was feeling guilty and anxious by the time the final lilies in the full box of young plants were planted.\n\n“Good morning, neighbor,\" a voice called from the yard on the other side that little loosely picketed fence, situated behind the little house that shared a wall with his own. The friendly, older male's voice called with the barest hint of a French accent, and Jack started slightly, but when he turned, he found a friendly older otter smiling at him from the other side of the fence and holding two cups of coffee. \"I saw you from the window, and thought you might not have had a chance to go shopping in town yet. Would you like some coffee?” the neighbor asked as he held one of the cups out toward the bear. Jack's stomach gnawed at him briefly, as if to answer a desperate affirmative on its own.\n\n“I can't imagine much that I'd like more right now, actually,\" the bear laughed as he pushed himself up to stand. After taking the two strides to greet the otter at the weathered fence, he accepted the offered cup. “Thanks, uh - it's good to meet you. The name's Jack.”\n\n“So we've heard; the skunks wrote to let us know you'd be here. Welcome to town, Jack. You arrived on the ferry yesterday, yes?\" the otter wondered as Jack busied himself with taking a sip of the still-too-hot, steamy black coffee with great appreciation. The neighbor continued, \"I'm Roland, the wife's around here somewhere - ah, come say hi, Jacquelin!” the male called, and soon the wife appeared from behind a rosebush, watering can in hand. As Jack should have expected, but failed to, she was as nude as the male was, though Jack hardly flinched this time. The relief earlier that morning probably helped with that, he was sure, but it seemed like it was genuinely getting easier to handle, too.\n\n“Yeah, yesterday. Good to meet you both! I'm already indebted,” Jack admitted as he lifted the cup of coffee and paused for another long sip, trying his best to take his time.\n\n“Oh, hardly. It's a cup of coffee, hon,” the elder female laughed. “Lovely to meet you Jack. It'll be nice to see a bit of color on that side of the fence, too. The skunks aren't much for gardening,\" she said with a smile, and Jack laughed.\n\n“They mentioned they wanted to put some flowers in. Least I could do to try and pay them back for letting me borrow their place for the summer. I love your yard though,” Jack admitted. He hadn't taken much time to look across the fence, but now that he'd had the opportunity, the wealth of potted plants, flowers and landscaping that had been done impressed him - as well as a near-obsessive amount of yard garbage, sundials and wind chimes, rain gauges, gnomes, gazing balls, flamingos, and statuary geese dressed in festive beach clothes. They even had a small deck extended off the back porch of their side of the house, atop which a modest bit of patio furniture was placed, the metal re-painted several times over with well-worn and festive colors.\n\n“Well, if there's anything you see that we could divide or take a cutting of for you, please let us know. We're happy to spread the love,” Roland chuckled as Jack finished the cup of coffee and looked a bit mournfully into the mug as Roland offered to take it from him. Jack returned it without question as Roland asked, “Would you like another?”\n\n“Oh, no, but thanks, I should get these watered in and maybe get to town to pick up a few staples of my own,” Jack admitted, stretching a little once Roland had taken the empty mug. “Good to meet you both again though, and good morning as well. I'll keep your offer in mind,” the bear said with a warm smile to Jacquelin as she gave a grandiose gesture to her yard, as if to offer it for the bear's selection.\n\n“Oh, Jack. Before we part ways for too long, dear,” Jacquelin started with a slightly more serious tone which stopped Jack in his tracks as Roland slipped back inside to put the empty cups away. The bear returned to the fence as the elder female otter leaned in from her side.\n\n“Hm? What's up?\" Jack asked, more casual than he'd expected to hear from himself to a serious-sounding beckon.\n\n“Ah, well; we know you're new to the island and all, but... Well. We'd like to ask you to [i]try[/i] to understand that most of the natives here do have certain… [i]expectations[/i] in spite of our efforts to be welcoming to outsiders,” Jacquelin said, with a pointed glance down that had to be repeated before Jack processed the subtext.\n\n“Ah, shit - shoot, sorry, uh, right, uh…sorry, I get it - it's rude, I've just been, uh…” Jack immediately found himself stammering over himself as his capacity for higher thought recoiled in horror from the embarrassment.\n\n“Shy? Nervous?” the otter asked with a smile that inspired a broad bristling of her lutrine whiskers.\n\n“…Yeah, I guess you could say that, uh,\" Jack stammered, before he simply sighed. “No- you're totally right. I've been rude by putting it off for so long. Long enough,” he said aloud as he untied the drawstring of his swim trunks, then drug them down to his feet and picked them up from the ground once he'd stepped out of them. He stood, sheepish yet fully bared before the older otter woman who laughed in a surprisingly kind-spirited way.\n\n“See? That wasn't so hard,” Jacquelin smiled. Jack fidgeted a little awkwardly, but after dusting his hands over his fur and straightening it where it'd been pressed out of shape by the swim trunks, he shook his fur out and seemed satisfied as the usual shaggy spike of his still-damp grizzly fluff was restored.\n\n“Yeah, I suppose not--” Jack began, cut off by a sudden exclamation from nearby.\n\n“Jaquelin, dear! Avert your eyes, the neighbor is out in his back yard [i]naked[/i]!” Roland shouted as he returned outside, only to crack a broad grin at Jack's mortified expression. A second later, Jack cracked and started to laugh; he'd been gotten, and good, and Roland and Jacqueline joined him in laughter readily. “Ah, sorry,\" Roland continued, \"I couldn't help myself. Glad to see you finally settling in, Jack. Just don't forget your towel, and you'll be fine,” the elder otter grinned his reassurance.\n\n“Uh, oh, right. Towel. To sit on, right?” Jack said, thinking back to the flier's guide for first timers. He briefly thought of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well, and immediately decided against making any particularly geeky references to the older otter couple.\n\n“Yeah, that's the one. Or, you know, if you're going to swim, or, god forbid, something … [i]embarrassing[/i] comes up,” Jacquelin said with a reassuring smile. “It happens sometimes, and it's okay, so long as you don't go flying a flag nobody's asked to see.\"\n\n“Yeah, uh, thanks,” the bear mumbled. He suddenly felt so exposed, to the point of impropriety. [i]What if[/i] he'd sprung an unexpected bone in public?Jack knew perfectly well it'd be a hopeless effort to conceal it with just a towel without it being absolutely obvious. It was thrilling, in an unexpected way; the sensory experience alone was alien, the warmth of the sun on his backside, the subtle waft of the breeze in his pubic fur. The knowledge that the pair of thick stainless-steel rings in his sheath would call attention south occasionally, and nothing would stop any casual glance that happened to stray there. Roland settled back in beside his wife at the fence as they chatted, and drew the bear's thoughts away from his anxious spiraling again.\n\n“Well, now that you're a proper islander,” the male otter said, offering a grin, “Would you be interested in joining us at a bonfire tonight? We tend to get together with the neighborhood the day after the ferry comes, in order to gossip about the mainland and any new news, and the comings and goings on the island, of course. It's a good way to get to know the neighborhood, since you'll be staying a while.”\n\nJack hadn't expected such an invitation. As he was still acclimating to even being unclothed outdoors - much less, being casually so in the presence of near-strangers - the invitation to a social event in such a state spiked his heart rate again. He froze a bit dumbly in the moment, for some reason incapable of responding.\n\n“It's fine, really - no pressure, Jack,” Jacquelin took over from her husband, “If you decide to join us, it's on the bay side of our little branch of the island. Just walk a bit further from town on White Sands Way, and there's a path that leads between the properties, and to the big beach. Not far down along the rocks, you'll find us in the cove around sundown. You can bring anything you'd like to share; there's always plenty to eat, though libations are always welcome among the younger folk especially.” Jack snapped out of it, and shook his head to clear his thoughts.\n\n“Oh, right, uh… I'd love to, really. I'll see you there,” Jack said, mustering up as brave a smile as he could, to which Jacquelin and Roland both looked pleased to hear. “H-hey, uh, this might sound a little stupid to ask, but it's safe to swim here, yeah?” Jack gestured toward the nearby water, as if to specify.\n\n“Not accounting for how good of a swimmer you are,\" Roland started, “it's safe enough on this side for anyone who's capable in the water, so long as you know how to get out of a rip current on your own. They can get nasty with the tides on this side of the island.”\n\n“Oh, yeah, we used to visit the beach a bit when I was a kid,” Jack mentioned, remembering well the couple times he'd been pulled out further than he'd wanted. “Just swim up the shore a little ways to get out of them, right?”\n\n“He's a natural!” Jacquelin teased, and Roland laughed.\n\n“You ought to be fine, so long as you don't try to go out when the surf's high. There's a reason the big public beach is in the bay. If you'd be more comfortable with a lifeguard, maybe swim there.\"\n\n“Oh- there's a public beach, too? Jeez. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, literally surrounded by ocean, right?\" Jack asked rhetorically while chuckling. \"Thanks again for all of your help. And the invitation. I'll look forward to seeing you tonight,” Jack said, flashing an appreciative smile to the older otters.\n\n“We'll be looking forward to it, Jack,” Roland said, before he and Jacquelin got back to their own morning routine in their garden.\n\n---\n\nA long morning swim helped ease the remainder of anxious nerves, as Jack adjusted to his newfound trial of a nudist lifestyle. He felt less exposed in the water; it felt more natural, even, as he swam out just deep enough that he couldn't reach the sandy bottom with his toes any longer, and rode the swell of the waves before they broke on the shore. Sailboats and yachts regularly cruised along the island's periphery near the horizon, and Jack even saw a pod of dolphins swimming only a couple hundred feet away, though they didn't approach, nor seem particularly curious about him. Jack considered that maybe that was for the best, given he was still getting his knack for deep-water swimming back. Thankfully, his confidence in the water came back quickly due to his species' natural affinity for water. As he stood in the sand and walked out of the water, the bear shook his fur out as the surf rolled around his ankles, and spent several minutes just watching tiny clams dig back to the surface with each wash of water over the wave-swept sand that buried the again. By the time he'd broken their spell on his attention, the bear found that his natural fur oils had allowed the water to shed straight out of his fur, and the lack of soap in the shower abruptly made sense. Detergents and soaps would strip the natural oils from his fur that provided natural waterproofing. It would only be a modest sacrifice of teddy-bear softness for the near-flawless waterproofing, and in a place like Sol de Vida, he imagined the latter would prove far more valuable. He shook again and brought his fur back to a fluffy, damp spike easily that made him confident the sun could finish the job quickly. He trudged back up the beach and to the house, picking up the trail at the top of the beach and walking between the little lilies he'd planted that morning, smiling more. In a few weeks they'd be twice as large and probably in bloom; they were already looking better.\n\nIn that moment, Jack considered that this place might be equally as good for him, as he realized that, in spite of a bit of anxiety about his nudity, the usual roiling undercurrent of more formless, anxious dread that nearly perpetually haunted him was absent for the first time in months.\n\nHe headed into the house and fetched an oversized beach towel from the closet, folded it, and laid it across the sturdy wooden chair at the table. He sat down with a glass of water from the tap as he pulled his journal open and picked up a pen.\n\n[quote]It's been a weird 24 hours. I learned on the ferry that this was actually a nudist island, so thanks for the heads-up, Duncan. Not even a phone I can call the mainland with to chew him out remotely. I'll just have to maul him the next time I see him in person.\n\nMet the neighbors this morning. Nice couple, Jacquelin and Roland, a couple otters. They're into gardening too, so, hey, we've got that in common. They invited me to a bonfire tonight too. Weird enough; I met a couple other otter folk yesterday too, though they're Lutrai, so not quite the same - a girl named Rikia. Her adorable son practically drug me straight off the ferry and into her little yatai. It's so cool, and she makes some seriously awesome food. They've got these incredible markings all over them too, the both of them. Real exotic islander tribal stuff. It's pretty rad, just head to toe drawings and runes. I've never seen anything like it, this like wild and untamed art, just everywhere. I kind of love it.\n\nI need to go apologize for being rude yesterday. I really made a FUCKING ASS out of myself. She was as nice as she could've been I guess, and way nicer than I deserved. Shit, she even brought me a bento box for dinner last night while I was hiding out and trying to bury my shame. Shit, she even apologized to ME for whatever reason, for not giving me a warm enough welcome. She seems cool like that; thoughtful, you know, but maybe a little stand-offish or guarded or something. But I kind of get it, right? Like here I am this tourist fucking…bumming around in jeans and a t-shirt with bags full of clothes in a nudist colony. She probably thinks I'm some total creep. Maybe I am, I don't know. [s]She gets me fucked up in the head though like Em did when we first met, and that scares the shit out of me.[/s] There's something about her though; it reminds me of the first time I met Emma. It's probably nothing, but I'll be damned if it doesn't make me about sick with nervous energy, as if I needed any help with that.\n\nI feel so fucking ridiculous, no matter what, now. Being naked in public is so foreign- but I feel like a shitheel when I'm clothed too, so fuck it. I went nude for the first time this morning, and like Rikia told me last night when she stopped by, it's probably just easier to commit and get used to it. The neighbors helped talk me into it. Just a little work in the yard and a swim so far, but I need to go into town and get some things, and figure out what I'm going to bring to the bonfire later tonight. I wonder if I'll see Rikia and her son Tempesta there. I kind of hope I will.\n\nWish me luck, me.\n\nI've been here for less than a day and I can already tell that life here is different from anything I've lived before. Not just the nudism thing, that's part of it but… I haven't talked to my neighbors back home in years. Much less just chatted across the fence over coffee. That was nice. Life here seems slower, more relaxed and open. Totally different from AVH.\n\nSure beats the shit out of the childhood trips to Pensacola or Galveston or Savannah that I was on about the other day, too.\n\nPS: I'm so fucking glad I made the decision to not bring a camera on this trip. Crisis averted.[/quote]\nJack looked up from his journal and saw the clock had, somehow, ticked forward an hour. It was creeping on Noon already, and he'd spent the last twenty minutes of that hour doodling the sun marking he saw on Rikia's back in the margins of his journal from memory. He looked around the little one-room house and sighed, getting up to straighten the place a little. Dirty clothes on the floor, which he easily picked up and chucked into the closet atop his duffel bag full of clothing to remain there, unused. The bento boxes from the night before were washed and stacked on the table, waiting to be returned. He pulled his backpack out and emptied it, moving the few articles of clothing from it into the closet as well, and took inventory of what he would use, here. His three-tier organizer of plugs and jewelry, and the bag of random other accessories; bracelets, anklets and necklaces would come in handy to allow him to express a bit of his aesthetic identity without clothes. He laughed as he realized what the unfamiliar-feeling box in the front pouch of his backpack was as he pulled it out; a brand-new box of XXXL “Ursa Major” condoms that must have been stashed there by Duncan when he wasn't looking, the fucker. At least his friend had gotten the size right, though Jack didn't anticipate putting them to use, and not only because he wasn't a fan of using them.\n\nHe unpacked the modest few toiletries he had brought; a salt-crystal deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and a tiny bottle of piercing care oil. He took them to  the bathroom, and took a moment to rinse the salt crystal and rub it under his arms liberally, then carefully unscrewed the ball off the end of the four-gauge stud through his tongue and pulled the jewelry out. He brushed his teeth at last, and rinsed his mouth out before he put the stud back in, satisfied that he was more properly freshened up - at least, free of bear-morning-and-coffee-breath, before going back to unpacking. He'd stocked up on a couple ounces of weed for the trip, which were checked over before they were tucked away safely in a high cabinet along with his glass pipe, three packs of papers and a lighter. He turned the backpack upside down and dumped the final few items out, a pocket knife, an old convention badge for a small science fiction and fantasy writers' convention, and the backer for one of the enamel pins attached to the front of the backpack, which he took a moment to re-affix before he started assessing what he'd actually need for an average day out.\n\nIn went a bottle that had been refilled with the cloudy, chalky, highly mineralized local tap water, as well as his wallet, the pocket knife, and the flier that he was given the day before by the friendly rabbits. Then his journal and pen, as well as a couple of his composition books which were filled with half-finished stories and outlines, in case he might wind up with both opportunity and inspiration in sufficient balance for him to get some writing done. As he was stuffing the bento boxes into the main compartment of the backpack, a gentle knock rapped at his door. He couldn't recall if he was expecting anyone, but as Jack went to the door and opened it, the familiar sight of the small lop-eared rabbit couple from the ferry greeted him, and a quick smile spread on the bear's face. \n\n“Oh, hi - Uh, Jack and Bonnie, right? Come in!\" The bear said, urgently greeting his guests and only briefly fretting in the hopes that the potent scent of bear sweat and semen from earlier had properly dissipated, and he'd not just gone nose-blind to it. Part of him was frustrated that his venture out to town was being further delayed, despite the simultaneous relief for an excuse to put it off for a bit longer. The rabbits stepped into the little single-room house and Bonnie offered up a wooden window box that was brimming over with a waxy-leaved plant with small, furry-looking star-shaped flowers in clumps all over it.\n\n“Hi Jack! It's lovely to see you again,” Bonnie said, holding the box up for Jack. “As promised; a housewarming gift. We didn't have much on hand, but I hope you'll enjoy it,” the rabbit said. Jack hastily cleared space on the table to accept the offering and set it down in the cleared spot, before he offered seats to the others.\n\n“Oh, thank you! Uh, come in, sit if you'd like, sorry about the mess - I was just getting settled in,\" Jack said, fussing at the table and palming the box of condoms, which were hastily stuffed into one of the kitchen drawers. \"Everyone here has been so friendly,” Jack uttered, a bit sheepishly. “What's this, though?” he wondered, carefully sitting back on his towel-covered seat and looking closely at the plant.\n\n“We thought we'd bring by a little addition to your garden is all; or the indoor decor,\" the male rabbit joked.\n\n“It's a wax plant,” Bonnie said. “Nothing too complicated to take care of, but if you like it, I've plenty more where that came from, and they're easy to propagate. You'll want to keep it in a western window inside, or a space up off the ground outdoors,\" she said with a warm smile, watching the bear lower his head and take a deep sniff of a cluster of flowers. Jack's stomach growled in protest at the sweet scent; the bear hadn't even had breakfast yet.\n\n“Uh, duly noted, jeez. It smells fantastic,” Jack said, picking it up and carrying it over to the windows that faced the beach. He hung the box from the window sill using the attached hooks, and carefully pulled the curtains open to let the sun in. “I'd, uh..I'd offer you guys a drink or something, but honestly I was just about to go out to pick up some necessities,” the bear chuckled. “Unless you'd like a glass of tap water, which I have to admit is kind of a lot to get used to.” The bear offered a sheepish grin, as the rabbits both laughed.\n\n“Oh! No - don't worry about it, we won't keep you. Keeping a cooler stocked with water's the way to go, dear,” Bonnie assured, “The tap water's fine enough for washing up with, but I don't think anyone here drinks it willingly, despite the fact that it's supposedly safe to do so. Thomas will get you sorted out.”\n\n---\n\nJack stood with his thumbs hooked into the straps of his backpack, simply regarding the island's general store with a great appreciation in the moment. He couldn't remember the last time he saw a doorway he didn't have to duck or suck in his belly to fit through, and he just had to soak in the beauty of that feature all on its own. The slight ruffling of the fur on his balls as the breeze blew through the market street reminded him of his nude state, but by this point it was only a bit of background nerves that kept at him despite his confidence that it would pass in time. His nerves were similarly eased by the sign in the window that read “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Pants, No Worries”, which made him smile.\n\nJack stepped forward and pushed open the glass-and-wooden door, then stepped inside to see the red elk proprietor standing proud behind the counter, with a broad grin on his face already.\n\n“Hey, new comer! Welcome to Sol de Vida. Name's Thomas,” the elk said with a certain sort of amicable gruffness in his voice, “Let me know if you need help with anything.” \n\n“Well, that explains the door for this place being the right size,” Jack said with a flashed grin at the elk who gave a knowing upward tip of his head in recognition, the elk's antlers standing a full foot taller than the bear, even. “Jack, good to meet ya'. I think I can find my way around, but I'll do just that if I need to.\"\n\nIt was another novel experience. Another that made him feel as naked as he was. Something so pedestrian as a little grocery shopping while wearing nothing but the backpack on his back and a handful of piercings thrilled him in its own right, but at the same time, he found himself still struggling for the [i]point[/i] of it; what this community saw from the practice that was so enriching beyond the base level of novelty he felt as a newcomer. Maybe that was something that would come in time. He hefted a case of bottled water and two bags of ice onto the counter, a can of ground coffee - of which there was only one type to choose from - as well as two packs of his favorite indulgence, fresh from the mainland; powdered mini donuts. They cost three times what they did back home, but it didn't matter to Jack in that moment, the familiar breakfast was more important than the cost.\n\n“Uh, can't help but notice there's no frozen stuff,” Jack admitted, looking back to the store as if to resurvey. There was hardly even a refrigerated section; simply two cases the size of residential refrigerators with a few basics in them; milk, butter, eggs, cheese, a handful of different lunch meats; all much more expensive than the bear was used to.\n\n“No frozen stuff out front, hardly any refrigerated,” the elk confirmed with a chuckle. “I'm the only place in town that’s got power save for the clinic, so not a whole lot of folk are in the market for frozen and refrigerated stuff, else they'd spend a fortune on ice. We got good food, and plenty of it around still, it's just all fresh, canned, jarred, pickled, or on ice out in the market. Lookin' for anything in particular, though? There's a few things in back that I don't keep out here.” The bear shook his head after a few moments' thought, and picked up a big jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and jar of jam, as well as a case of his favorite cup noodles.\n\n“Yeah, that makes sense,” the bear admitted as he shopped, “You'd think I would've intuited that by the fact that I wrote by lantern-light last night. Not looking for anything in particular though, just wondering what's on the menu.”\n\n“Yeah, there's surely a cooler around there somewhere, if you're rentin' the place from a resident,” the elk laughed. “You might need some propane too if you're gonna' cook at home. We can fill you up if you need it. Same for lamp oil; we sell the little bottles, but if you bring your empty bottles in, we'll refill them for you from the bulk barrels we get and save you a heap. It's not cheap, but we've got some frozen meats from the mainland in back, nothing special though. Ground beef, ground chicken, sausage, some bone-in chicken.”\n\nJack considered this advice, and couldn't help but chuckle to himself. Maybe this would be a bit more like camping and backpacking than he'd initially thought. Either way, there was a steep learning curve that he felt he was just getting started on. It wasn't an unwelcome change of pace, though.\n\n“Got it,” Jack said, “How much do I owe you?” he asked the elk, who rattled a few things into an old mechanical register.\n\n“Let's see, with the peanut butter and jelly…seventy bucks,\" the elk said without flinching. Jack flinched for him.\n\n“Ow. Okay. So what am I doing wrong?” the bear chuckled, and Tomas let loose a loud guffaw.\n\n“Luxuries, big guy. Bottled water, peanut butter, jelly, sandwich bread. Even the cup noodles are nearly two bucks apiece,” he laughed, “You can save ten bucks alone by bringin' up some containers for drinking water and refilling them from our filters instead of goin' with the bottled stuff from the mainland. A quarter a gallon, that way; I'd bet there's a couple big water jugs in the place you're staying. The ice is cheap enough already, and, well, the other stuff's take-it-or-leave-it, really; it is what it is. As far as food goes, most folk just browse the market in the mornings and pick up what they need for the day and keep it on ice, y’know. Some fruit, veggies, maybe a couple fish. Or they eat at the local eateries. The locals know how to make a lot out of a little if you haven't tried the local cuisine yet. Maybe the cheapest way ta' go while you're figurin' out the home-cooking menu.”\n\n“Man, okay. This should be in the flier,” Jack joked to the elk, who threw his head back and laughed again. “Just, uh. Just the coffee, ice and donuts. I'll come back once I figure out the water container thing. Oh! I was going to get a bottle of rum and some pineapple juice too for a bonfire,” he said, as he put back the extraneous ‘luxuries’ he'd been hoping to make staples out of. \"Unless you have any cost-saving secrets on that one too. The elk laughed again.\n\n“Ha! Start brewin' at home, maybe. But for a bonfire? No glass on the beach, big guy, but I'll sell ya' rum either way. Anyhoo, beer goes a lot further for the dollar here, especially if you buy the big case of cans. Folks like the stuff they can just toss in the cooler and go,” the elk suggested as he casually leaned his hip against the back of the counter. “Besides, beer's the cornerstone of civilization, y'know. After the price hike from having to pay for it to get shipped in, I really can't price it too much past cost, or else there'd be riots in the street,\" the elk joked.\n\n“Alright, deal. Hey- uh, the little restaurant at the end of the boardwalk. Riki's Tiki? When does she open up?\" Jack asked, remembering the bento boxes in his backpack only once he'd started thinking about how he was going to carry all this home.\n\n“Ah, yeah. She opens when she opens, never really any set pattern, save for lunch n' dinner on ferry days n' shipment days,” the elk said, before clocking the bear's puzzled expression. “Oh, right, uh. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sorry, you stay here long enough and you just sorta' start clocking time by what's goin' on in town, man. Anyway, you oughta' catch her around at some point. If there's a bonfire tonight, she'll probably be out fishin' on the reef at some point today.\"\n\n“Tuesdays and Thursdays, got it. Thanks,” Jack said, trying to take it all in. He looked down to the ice and case of beer, a can of coffee and his two pitiful packs of powdered donuts that he wasn't about to give up at this point. “Should I even ask what I owe you at this point?”\n\n“Only one way to know. Fifty-six bucks; but at least the coffee will last a couple weeks, right?”\n\n“At least there's that, yeah.” Jack dug into his backpack's front pocket and pulled out his wallet, and counted out a few bills. He was thankful that he'd brought plenty of cash with him now, realizing he hadn't seen an ATM anywhere and given the limited availability of electricity, that was likely to be a fool's errand.\n\n\n[center][t]Chapter 5: The Bonfire[/t][/center]\n\nJack had spent nearly an hour picking through his jewelry and accessories for the evening. He settled on two pairs of glass plugs for his ears; one glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, and the other a sort of bubbly soda glass that was as blue as the sea here in midday. He wore his favorite necklace with an opal pendant, and matching bracelets with opal beads, stacked with a few others that echoed the ocean-water, sea-foam, sandy, fishy, weathered-wood beachy vibes. He'd even changed the retainer out in his nose, to a bull-ring style piece of stainless jewelry that matched the ring in his lower lip, and mirrored the vertical-horizontal orientation of the two piercings lower on his body's center line. Despite his careful preparation, the mere presence of a handful of accessories around his wrists and ankles, plus the piercings, did nothing to help the fact that he still felt naked; thanks to the fact that he was, in fact, fully nude save for those carefully-chosen accessories for the evening. \n\nJack's walking slowed as he spotted the cove, and realized how many people had gathered there. He'd found several coolers at the house stacked neatly in a storage closet, as well as two seven-gallon water-jugs that fit perfectly within one of them, with room for ice on all sides. Another cooler, one equipped with chunky wheels that rolled atop the sand without sinking in, he had stocked with the beer and another bag of ice, and was towing it behind himself as he approached the cove. Just in case the beer wasn't as much of a hit as Thomas had suggested it would be, he'd also pre-rolled a few joints and had them tucked away in his backpack along with a lighter. If anything, it would prove a nice night-cap on the walk home along the beach. He'd also packed a large, tightly-woven blanket, and the towel he'd been carrying around all day.\n\nAs he approached the crowd, there was a tense recollection of a college house party he'd gone to as a freshman. He knew nobody but the person who'd invited him, who was so occupied by drinking games that Jack found himself completely without a lifeline. He groaned with dismay at the memory of him just drifting steadily further from the gathering of people until he'd found himself sitting on the back steps, smoking and wondering what was wrong with himself as he petted the house owner's sweetheart of a beagle mix. He was never particularly good at this sort of thing, but over the course of his college years he realized most of the engineering kids were more like him than those frat kids at the house party. He'd grown a lot since then, too; he eventually found his group, and got more comfortable. Jack heaved a slow breath in and out, and swallowed back the anxiety that had begun to roil again.\n\n[i]It'll be fine. People here are friendly.[/i]\n\nJack pushed ahead to where the rocky end of White Sands Way rose out of the beach and sheltered a little cove against a backdrop of a twenty-foot-high, rocky cliff where a few dozen people milled about. Several folding tables had been set up beside the impromptu parking lot for the sand-friendly wagons that everyone here seemed to have, and a wide variety of covered dishes were spread out on them, with coolers lined up on an end of the row of tables., and a scattering of folding chairs was littered around what would eventually be the fire. The Dulcettes were the first to greet him, having walked out a hundred feet or so from the crowd to do so.\n\n“Jack, you made it!” Roland said with a clap of his hand to the bear's back, soon walking alongside him and taking two steps for every one of Jack's.\n\n“I told you I would,” the bear laughed, “I brought some beer, hopefully that's okay.”\n\n“Oh, it's fine, hon! Come on, let's get you introduced to everyone,” Jacquelin said, urging Jack toward the pile of firewood that the residents were busy building up from disassembled delivery pallets, fruit and vegetable crates and driftwood, as well as a reasonable amount gnarled, dead wood that had been harvested from nearby, uninhabited mangrove-overrun islands.\n\nAs the Dulcettes introduced him around, Jack found himself quickly overwhelmed with the number of names he was assailed with, and eventually resorted to begging for peoples' forgiveness in advance of not remembering them all. This continued a while, but eventually Jack settled in with a group of younger adults from the island; natives - as they called themselves - who were eager to hear about the mainland and Jack's experience there, foreign as it was to them. It wasn't long until Jack was exhausted by trying to explain what exactly mechanical engineering entailed, and soon turned the inquisition in the other direction by asking how the others earned a living.\n\nHe quickly learned that specifically-defined work roles really didn't exist here amongst those who lived on the island full-time, though plenty of retirees, such as Jack and Bonnie, came with backgrounds in more traditional positions on the mainland before coming to Sol de Vida. Among the natives, however, loosely-defined roles were all that seemed to exist, with some exceptions. Kelly, the vulpine she'd seen at Rikia's yatai yesterday, was a nurse, and one of the island's key healthcare workers; she also bore several Lutrai marks of her own, as did her daughter. Lucas, the dingo near Jack's age, simply ‘fixed things’ around town and couldn't elaborate further; he bore a few of the Lutrai marks as well. Carlos, a strikingly attractive black panther a few years older than Jack, prided himself as a procurer. Several others in the group - Kyle, Indie, Danny and Melanie - simply shrugged and admitted to idyllic lives of hammock-lounged beach-bumming and occasional fishing or helper work as it either suited them, or couldn't be avoided. Richter, a male red kangaroo whose fur was a well-weathered, sun-and-saltwater-faded purple dye-job, was a professional surfer and international DJ who now lived in Sol de Vida for most of the year as he scaled back his travel-heavy careers in his ‘old-age’, a phrase Jack thought particularly funny given the kangaroo couldn't possibly be more than a few years older than himself.\n\nIt was Carlos, though, who shared the secret of the island's economy to the bear, as Jack sat on his blanket on the sand working on his fourth beer. The island wasn't primarily a cash economy; it operated on trade first and foremost. They'd accept cash, of course - it had its uses, especially when acquiring goods sourced from the mainland, but for local services and goods, value was measured in trade and favors beyond their value in currency. Carlos was a proud and highly successful middleman for this economy, at least by his own evaluation; he was a matchmaker that always had an ear out for peoples' skills and what they had to barter, and paired those offerings to others' needs around town, then got them connected. For a [i]price[/i], of course, which couldn't be expounded upon beyond the implication that Carlos was the sole manager of the bank of favors in Sol de Vida. Carlos took pride in the fact that he hadn't so much as touched real currency in six years, a point that was obviously repeated to the point of exhaustion as several others in the group finished that sentence in unison with him once he'd started it with rolls of their eyes. \n\n“Sheez. I guess, uh, put me on the list if anyone needs a machine or mechanism or something built or repaired. Doesn't much matter what,” the bear laughed. “Or some gardening… I'm going to have to come up with [i]something[/i] useful I can contribute if I'm going to manage to feed myself all summer,” Jack laughed. “That or get good at fishing.”\n\n“You're on the list, bro,” Carlos said with the barest roll of his r's that alluded to a life before Sol de Vida. Jack grinned back at him, then looked out toward the sinking disc of the sun on the horizon. His stomach growled as he saw someone pass with a plate heaped with food. \n\n“Alright, awesome - and enough drinking on an empty stomach, I've been smelling that food for too long. Thomas said I had to try the local food, and he doesn't seem like the sort of guy to ignore the advice of,” Jack said, and the small group of others laughed and urged him to get up, heading for the tables themselves. As the bear stood, he looked back toward the bigger gathering of people, scattered around the fire in little pods and pockets of their groups, and realized that there were quite a few younger kids were running around between them. The bear was happy to see that there were more than Kelly's daughter and Rikia's son on the island; in fact, nearly ten children were scattered around the cove, all under the age of ten or eleven and all the way down to three or four. He didn't see the familiar Lutrai boy, but did notice Kelly's daughter among the group, teasing two older wolf boys - brothers, by the looks of things - in the way that only a little vixen could get away with. She'd run around in the sand and the young wolves would chase her, and just before one would catch her she'd stop short in the sand and cause her pursuers to crash into her from behind. \n\nJack thought that if they weren't such little kids the game would be outright suggestive given their nudity; every time she got ‘caught’ she'd stick her butt out a little bit, and hike her tail. The boys - whichever one was lucky enough to catch her that round - would bound in and collide hips-first, collapsing down onto the sand with their arms around her, then they'd both laugh and get up and dust themselves off, and then do it all over again. Jack bet that they thought they were being so slick and getting away with it, but it was funny, and cute, and the few subtle grinds, and peeks of pink that he caught showing from the wolf boys' sheaths as they played with the vixen was very welcome. Then, he started wondering what the little group of youngsters might manage to get up to if they had a bit of privacy.\n\nJack realized he was staring, and thanked the heavens that he wasn't getting too overtly aroused by the time he caught himself. He caught up in the line and scooped modest - for a bear - helpings of each dish onto his plate. A little bit of everything regardless of first impressions, even if nearly none of it was immediately recognizable in spite of their component parts being identifiable. Canned bean salads, a small selection of olives and smoked fish, and fresh-grilled pineapple and fish saw the majority of the offerings alongside rustic, tough bread that necessitated a piece being torn straight off the boule-style loaf. Most of the offerings were not as expertly balanced or vibrant as Rikia's offerings from the day prior, but still quite delicious in spite of being tamer selections.\n\nAs he sat and ate, the group filtered back in around him though conversation had been replaced with commentary on the food and the quiet of a group enjoying a meal together as the bonfire crackled and hissed nearby, and the waves crashed as the tide rolled up the shore, bit by bit.\n\n“Jack!” a tiny voice shouted, moments before a little body impacted his back and he felt a hug from behind. Surprised, Jack nearly dropped his plate and turned, then lifted an arm and looked beneath it at the tiny naked Lutrai boy that was hugging against the bear's sheer mass. The bear held his flimsy paper plate steady with one hand and scooped the kid up against his side for a more proper hug, adoring the cute kid's eagerness as he laughed.\n\n“Hey, Tempesta! I was wondering if I'd get to see you and your momma' here,\" Jack laughed. He registered a few playful sounds from the gathering of other young adults around himself, and quirked an eyebrow, but didn't comment.\n\n“You're naked!” the kit blurted, which broke the brief tension made by the crowd's nonverbal commentary, and got Jack and a handful of the others to laugh.\n\n“So are you, dude! But yeah - I sure am!” Jack confirmed, still laughing. “I didn't know how rude it was for me to be wearing clothes on the island when I got here yesterday,” the bear admitted, ruffling the young Lutrai's headfur as he looked around for Rikia, briefly. “Guess that makes me a real ‘land-lubbah’, right?” Jack mused, appreciating their terminology. It fit, and Jack wasn't about to deny that.\n\n“Yeah it does!” the Lutrai kid giggled, sharing his brutally honest assessment. “You got glowy jellyfish in your ears!\" the little kit said, and Jack laughed again.\n\n“I sure do, buddy. You like 'em?” Jack asked as he leaned down. The kit stood up on his toes to look closer as he giggled and nodded.\n\n“Uh-huh! They're pretty!” the boy agreed, just before his attention was abruptly drawn elsewhere and he ran off to join the wolves and vixen who had moved on to chasing down ghost crabs in the sand and collecting them in a bucket to populate their growing sand-castle city.\n\n“I see ya' met Rikia, then,” Carlos laughed, lounging back on his blanket in the sand with his hands folded behind his back as Jack continued to pick at his plate, finishing off what he'd taken.\n\n“Oh, yeah. She seems nice enough. Hell of a cook, too,” Jack commented with a little laugh.\n\n“Ah, yeah,” the panther said with a grin. “Just mind your manners; she don't much appreciate bein' hit on, and she can be really savage when she wants to shut a guy down.” Jack couldn't help but laugh at that.\n\n“Oh, yeah. I think I got a taste of that already, and wasn't even hitting on her,” the bear admitted with a quiet bit of reflection. “She doesn't seem so bad though. I imagine she probably gets a lot of that,\" Jack admitted, just before he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to see Rikia sitting down beside him on his blanket with a broad, shallow wicker basket against her hip. It was full of ice, atop which shucked oysters were arranged on the half shell, as well as sliced lemons and a bottle of cheap hot sauce.\n\n“'ey, land-lubbah. what's that now? Ya' find yourself a pretty girl on th' island already?\" Rikia asked, and Jack felt a pang of panic in his guts that he'd been overheard talking about her. The others just laughed and gave wary ‘oooh's, which eventually put Jack at ease as he laughed along with them.\n\n“Yeah, you could say that,” Jack admitted with a knowing glance toward Carlos, who held his poker face well.\n\n“'eyy, ya' playin' coy though,” Rikia teased the bear, before pushing the basket into his hands. “'ere, take one n' pass this ‘roun’. Plenty more where that came from, too, yeah.” Jack looked down at the shucked oysters with worried consideration. He'd never had oysters before, they weren't something often encountered in his small Midwestern hometown, nearly seven hundred miles from the nearest saltwater body.\n\n“Uh…” Jack said, briefly dumbfounded. He was willing to try, but wasn't sure where to start; and despite the obvious simplicity of the task before him, anxiety roared back up in his chest and the bear froze for a moment that hung like an eternity in the bear's mind. A few friendly chuckles broke out in the group, and Rikia mercifully took the lead after only a couple seconds.\n\n“'eyyy,\" the Lutrai woman chided playfully, \"Baby-bear don' know how ta' dress ‘n oyster? Let mama Riki ‘elp,” Rikia laughed, before reaching over to squeeze a few drops of lemon juice into an oyster, then added a few shakes of hot sauce before lifting it up for the bear to take. Jack readily accepted, and passed the basket on as a few others in the circle chided and jeered at Rikia’s playful tease, while a couple others expressed playful wishes for Rikia to let them call her 'mama’, provoking a webbed middle finger to be thrust in their direction.\n\n“Uh, thanks. I've never had an oyster before,” Jack admitted, with a crooked grin as he surveyed the alien-seeming creature laying in its shell.\n\n“S'a'right, land-lubbah. Even Lutrai gotta' learn th' firs' time,\" the Lutrai smiled as the basket made its way around the circle, with each member of the little group of young adults dressing an oyster for themselves before passing the basket along. “So! Sure ya' at leas' know ‘ow to give a toast, yeh? Le’s ‘ave one,” Rikia asked, elbowing the bear as the basket made its way back to her, and she dressed her own oyster before nestling the basket into the sand. Jack was still recovering from the recent anxious spike, but as he realized he was being put on the spot, he thought quick, came up blank, and with slightly less-quick desperation, dug deep into his writer's instinct in spite of the fact that most of his writing was mid-tier erotica.\n\n“Shit, uh. Sure. Yeah, uh,\" Jack paused for a few seconds, then spoke up, \"Here's to new friends, new experiences, and with a little luck, a little love - or at least a little lovin',” Jack raised his oyster to the sound of laughter and varied approval with ‘hear, hear!'s from the group, and watched as everyone downed their oysters. He braced himself, then followed suit and turned the oyster up to slide from its shell and onto his tongue. The texture was [i]resoundingly[/i] off-putting at first, and Jack blinked his surprise before he caught the slippery-textured oyster between his back teeth and dug into its flesh with a surprisingly fresh, meaty crunch as he took a few chews and swallowed. The taste far offset the texture, though, and Jack soon understood their regard for the delicacy as he looked down at the now-empty shell's pearly interior in the firelight.\n\n“Not th' worst toast we've gotten from a visitor,” Lucas admitted, and Carlos and Kelly both agreed with a laugh as the group settled back into fragmented conversation. Rikia bumped her shoulder in against Jack's side and smirked up at him as he looked over to her.\n\n“Lookin' good, land-lubbah. Wan' so hard s'you were makin' out, wassit?” Rikia said. Jack took a long few moments to decipher Rikia's accent, far more prominent in the soft-spoken, close proximity.\n\n“Oh, yeah, I guess not. Kind of like you said, right? Like jumping into cold water, the worst part is the anticipation,” Jack laughed.\n\n“'eyyy, s'what I'm sayin',” Rikia laughed, turning to face him as she hugged her knees, with her broad tail curled demurely around her hip. “Y' settlin' in, then, yeh?”\n\n“Yeah, I guess so. Still trying to figure some things out. I went to pick up some staples at the store, but, uh. I think I'm sort of priced out of the island,” the bear laughed. “Carlos is gonna' help me find some ways to earn favors and food though, right Carlos?” the bear asked, and the panther just flashed a broad grin and a hang-ten at him.\n\n“Awh, yeah, Mr. Thomas' shop's pricy if ya' shop like a land-lubbah. Makes ‘is livin’ off tourists, mostly,” Rikia said, before Kelly chimed in, settling on Jack's other side atop his blanket.\n\n“Yeah, that and the beer,” Kelly said, smiling. Jack fidgeted between the two women who had both settled in close proximity. He could smell heat in the air but wasn't sure from which side. It was [i]not[/i] helping his efforts to stay modest, and he drew his knees up and together as he felt an erection growing. He'd been particularly sensitive to the smell of heat since puberty; specifically since the aptly-named Heatwave that had curious and lasting effects on pretty much everyone in his hometown, and had more prominent long-term effects on those who were still going through puberty at the time. As far as any doctors or experts could tell, the Heatwave was what he and many other males from his town had to thank for their near-absurd ejaculatory volume, even.\n\n“Yeah, for sure the beer,” Jack mumbled, remembering the steep cost as he tried to will away his erection, and found himself handily failing to do so as a fresh waft of that scent hit his nose. Jack gave an uncomfortable squirm, just before the little Lutrai boy and the young vixen bounded up to the group.\n\n“Look what Gramma Dulcette gave us t'play with!” the Lutrai boy announced to Jack, proudly holding up a deflated ball that had flashing red lights inside it. “Will ya' blow it up for us?” Jack's attention went to the ball and the bear smiled.\n\n“Oh, hey, that's pretty cool! Sure, give it here,” Jack said, holding his hand out for the ball. Once he had it, he hunted for the valve before pulling it open and hauling a comically deep breath in, and then blew into the ball, nearly fully inflating it in a single breath. As he was blowing, his eyes strayed south, where, unashamed, the Lutrai boy's penis stood up proudly against his stomach, fully erect from its sheath. There was no telling what the two had been up to while he wasn't paying attention, but given the show the young vixen was putting on earlier, coupled with the glint of slickness on the little Lutrai's boyhood, Jack's imagination had no trouble coming up with ideas. Jack had to force his eyes off of the boy's member and winced as he felt his own erection finally breach the opening of his sheath and nudge out into the open. If it kept growing there would be no missing it even if he tried to hide it.\n\n[i]Fuck, fuck, fuck..![/i] \n\nHe desperately changed the subject in his head as he hauled another breath in and blew into the ball until its surface was taut, and sealed the valve closed again before offering it back to the kids with a forced smile.\n\n“There you guys go. Knock yourselves out,” Jack said, trying to play it cool.\n\n“Come play with us!” the kids suddenly urged the bear. Jack briefly wondered why the kids were so fascinated by him, but it wasn't entirely uncommon. He was quite likely the largest person either of them had ever met; that was the usual point of interest kids found in him.\n\n“Maybe in a little bit, guys. But only if I can take a swim first,\" Jack said, trying to figure out how he was going to make it to the water in his state.\n\n“Kay!” the two kids chimed in unison, as they ran off to play in a tide pool.\n\n---\n\nThe evening wore late, and soon most of the children had been taken home and put to bed, save for Tempesta and Jannet, who had fallen asleep together atop Jack's blanket beside the fire nearly an hour ago; the perfect picture of young love. Jack sat with Rikia, Kelly and Lucas as they passed the second joint of the evening between themselves, providing ample social lubricant as the group sat just beyond the high tide mark, letting the crashing surf roll up around their feet as they chatted. Lucas coughed.\n\n“I'm serious, man. This stuff is worth its weight in gold around here, I can't believe you're just sharing it with us,” the coyote coughed again, passing the smoldering joint to Kelly again, who was obviously a much more experienced pot-smoker.\n\n“Nah, more'n'at,” Rikia said, her accent near-indecipherable as she'd grown more and more inebriated from the bear's offering.\n\n“Whatever. It's more fun to share,” Jack laughed, leaning back on his outstretched hands as the surf rolled up to his knees. Another lull settled over the group as Jack took a long drag and held the hit, passing the smoldering roach over to Rikia. He exhaled with a chuckle. “Shit, if I'd have known there was such a demand for the stuff here, I would've brought some seeds. Free the herb, you know.” Lucas laughed again, until he coughed into the crook of his elbow again and Kelly patted his back with a few solid slaps.\n\n“Ah, yeh. f'got y'did plants. Makin' sense now, y'd prolly know that'n too. Y'get th' lilies in?” Rikia wondered, before finishing off the roach's last pinch and snuffing the tiny bit of tarry paper out in the wet sand.\n\n“Yeah,” Jack said, finding her accent easier and easier to decipher as time went on, “All in the back path on the way to the beach. I hope the skunks are happy with it.”\n\n“Awh, they're a nice bunch, I'm sure they'll be happy with it,” Kelly chimed in as she leaned against Lucas' shoulder. Rikia scooted a bit closer to Jack, and lazily curled her muscular tail around his opposite hip as she shouldered up against the bear's arm. Jack froze for a few moments, at a complete loss of how to respond, before he looked down with a little smile, and scooched his arm back a little to let her nestle her shoulder up to his side. It was starting to get a little chilly out, though Jack suspected the Lutrai's fur was well-insulated enough against the breeze that the chill wasn't why she'd come closer.\n\n“Lilies're special t'Lutrai, y'know,” Rikia commented cozily as she gazed out over the water, the reflections of moonlight making it glitter.\n\n“Yeah? Is that why you've got a marking shaped like one?” Jack asked, debating whether or not to rest his hand on Rikia's hip. The others' caution shared earlier that night helped him decide against it.\n\n“'eyyy, land-lubbah. Y'stealin' looks again?” Rikia teased, horrifying Jack that he might have breached some other unspoken protocol. It was only when Lucas and Kelly laughed at the bear's flustered stammer that Jack realized he'd been had.\n\n“Shit, not cool, man. I'm too high to get teased like that,” Jack laughed, flopping back in the sand and rubbing the bridge of his muzzle.\n\n“Haa! Bu' yeh, m' mark says ‘ll do anythin’ ta' take care'a him, fer'evuh,” Rikia nudged her head back toward her sleeping son, spooned with the little vixen beside the smoldering embers of the bonfire. “Same's his mark says. ‘m gonna' be there s'long's I can fer ‘im. Even when e’s a big strong stud wit ‘is own kids,” Rikia grinned, her whiskers bristling in the night air.\n\n“That's actually really sweet,” Jack said, grinning at the thought of her devotion, though his stream of consciousness brought another question quickly to mind. “Hey; I heard Lutrai fur dye was permanent, is that true?” Rikia laughed, and Lucas and Kelly did too.\n\n“Yeh, land-lubbah. A blessin' fr'm Kij n' our prom'ses t'each othah' don' fade, n' thass' wha' they stan' for. Wan' see fer y'self?” Rikia asked, scooting to face her back to Jack as he sat back up with great interest as she revealed her Goddess sun to him. It seemed to shimmer with a wet sheen under the sun, but at night, the white dye caught the moon with a haunting, blue-white luminescence that he'd never quite seen before. He timidly reached out, and a carefully-blunted clawtip nestled into the fur over one of the markings, splitting the hairs and showing the bear the underside. Unexpectedly, the dye didn't simply lie atop the hairs, but it seemed to have bleached them all the way down to the root; or at least as far as Jack could see through the young Lutrai woman's incredibly dense pelt, short as it was.\n\n“Oh, cool,” Jack said, feeling a little silly for exploring with such childlike fascination, but he didn't let that stop him. “I really do love your markings. They're so pretty. I'd never expected there to be so many, all over, like you've got though. Especially on the little guy.”\n\n“Lots of blessings, lots of love with Lutrai,” Kelly chimed in, and Lucas followed quickly after.\n\n“You should see some of the elders, dude. Rikia's grandmother came to visit last year, and if you think Rikia's covered, you haven't seen the half of it,” the coyote laughed.\n\n“Yeh, ev'one's got th'own story, y'know,” Rikia said, smiling. “Ev'one gets the Goddess first, n', uh…\" Rikia hunted for a word, before she shrugged and leaned back against Jack's curious touch. “Eh, y'know. Firs' fish, firs' pearl, firs' wavedance,” Rikia commented, pointing out various marks on her arms and torso. “Firs' Kitseve gets, a, uh, fertility mark,” Rikia commented, casually scooting back against Jack's side and grabbing his huge hand to rest it on her bare stomach, over the whirlpool marking that was punctuated by the ring in her navel. Jack felt a twinge in his sheath and dug his toes into the sand to distract himself as he raked his claws lazily through the Lutrai woman's soft pelt. Kelly gave a knowing chuckle at that one, as did Lucas, and when Jack looked, they were showing their own fertility marks. Kelly's was right on her pelvis, far lower than Rikia's. Lucas' on the inside of his left thigh.\n\n“Woah, guys get them too?” Jack wondered aloud, briefly lost in childlike wonder as his heavy hand roamed aimlessly on the contours of Rikia's stomach. She was so fit, a slender, long torso with a core of muscle just barely hidden by insulating fur and the slightest little bit of subcutaneous fat.\n\n“Takes two to make a kit,” Lucas laughed. “Every Lutrai ends up getting a bunch of markings, man. Guys, girls, whatever. Once you're part of the tribe you're basically a canvas for the shamaness,\" he joked, and Kelly and Rikia both laughed.\n\n“Alright, yeah, that's fair. How, uh - is it okay to ask how you guys joined the tribe?” Jack wondered as he looked over to the others. Kelly scoffed dismissively to the bear's concern.\n\n“Well, yeah, how else are you gonna learn? Rikia invited us to Kitseve a couple years ago. We got initiated there. That's where Jannet got her mark, too, since I couldn't exactly leave her behind. Besides, she kept Tempie good company,” the vixen smiled.\n\n“Yeh, s' th'easiest way t'become Lutrai,” Rikia mused. “Otha' ways too, but none's ‘zactly simple s' comin' to Kitseve n' doin' what come natural,” Rikia laughed.\n\n“Jeez. Well, I don't know much about living as a Lutrai or joining tribes or anything, so I'll take your word for it,” Jack laughed. “It's such a cool look though. And I can tell it's meaningful too. I can respect that,” the bear said, soon realizing he'd relaxed more as the feeling of naked fur under his palm had become more natural and familiar. His thoughts strayed to Emma, and how his hand would settle on her stomach like this as they watched a movie or TV together. Before he could catch himself, he lowered his hand and planted it back in the sand, leaving the Lutrai woman leaning against his side. “Ah, uh. It's getting late,” the bear commented.\n\n“Wha', y'got big t'ings need done in th' mornin', land-lubbah?” Rikia challenged with a broad grin. Jack couldn't help but laugh. \n\n“Well, no, I guess not, but it's been a pretty full day,” Jack admitted, as he stifled a more genuine yawn. \n\n“Yeh, c'n 'magine's a bit ta' get used ta', y'know. A'right, s'late, I admit; walk m‘ome? Nah’ far from 'ere,” Rikia commented with a beaming smile. Kelly laughed as Lucas was whispering into her ear, then looked up to the others.\n\n“Rikia, would you mind if Jannet slept over at yours tonight?” the vixen asked. Jack didn't need any further explanation, and apparently Rikia didn't either.\n\n“'ey, you dogs; single'anded gon' bump up th' Sol de Vida pop'lation,” Rikia chided, making Kelly and Lucas both laugh, and Jack followed suit quickly. “Yeh, y'ave fun. C'mon, Jack, ‘ey wan’ take y'toast t' heart,\" Rikia urged as she stood. Jack followed her lead, and strode into the surf to wash the worst of the sand off of himself, before heading back up the shore and to the outstretched blanket, where the two kids were fast asleep; Tempesta on his back and Jannet with her head on his chest, the two loosely embraced still. Jack busied himself with dousing the bonfire with a couple buckets of water and stirring the embers into wet sand at the bottom of the fire pit, before helping Rikia load their coolers into her wagon. The bear bundled both of the children into the big blanket together and scooped them up against his chest, careful to not jostle them too much. The kids reflexively wrapped their arms around his shoulders and neck as Rikia led him up the path to White Sands Way.\n\n“So, mistah' gard'nah. Y'grow veggies n' ‘erbs n’ edible stuff too,  yeh?” Rikia asked, strolling slowly along while Jack effortlessly carried the children against his chest, wrapped in the blanket.\n\n“Oh, yeah. Most of that stuff is easy, with the right conditions,” Jack quietly murmured, careful to not wake the pups snuggled up to his chest. “Enough for your restaurant might be a bit of work though, depending on what you're trying to do,” the bear supposed; it was an easy guess.\n\n“Yeh, ‘magine gettin’uff for ev’ry day's a job, bu', y'know. Special ‘casions n’ a staple 'r two, maybe, yeh?” she grinned. Jack shrugged, and hefted the little vixen up a bit higher on his arm. She stirred and rubbed her face against his shoulder, giving a squeaky vulpine yawn into his fur.\n\n“Yeah, special occasions, for sure. If we can get some seeds, soil and pots, the rest shouldn't be so bad. Those chilis you like to cook with should be easy enough to grow,” Jack grinned as he strolled along the sandy, well-weathered boards of the path with RIkia. “Maybe even some citrus trees, or avocado plants,” Jack considered, as Rikia shrugged.\n\n“'ey, whaddever we c'n do,” the Lutrai woman said, tipping her head. “Tha's us,” she said, indicating the reed-walled hut, one of the last structures on White Sands Way, and easily the most primitive despite its good craftsmanship. Jack felt a window of opportunity closing, and finally spoke up.\n\n“Uh, hey. I was meaning to say thanks for the warm welcome, yesterday. And…sorry about the misunderstanding with the, uh. The whole clothes thing, and … you know. Being a stupid, rude tourist,” Jack said, his voice lowering to a low murmur as Rikia turned to him, as he held both the kits still against his shoulders. Her expression was odd, and one that Jack hadn't anticipated.\n\n“'Ey, ev'one gotta' start som'ere,” she said, grinning. “Yer doin' good, Jack; all's we ask is y' try. C'mon in; watch y'head, n' y'can put th' kiddos in th' hammock,” Rikia said, easing the door of her home open and inviting the bear inside. Jack had to duck considerably, but slowly squeezed through the doorway, and, after his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, he laid the two young kits together on the netting, still wrapped in the blanket. They embraced each other and shifted to get comfortable without waking. As Jack looked up, he saw Rikia standing in the rear doorway of the hut, holding two beers and gesturing for him to follow, which he did without question.\n\nThe rear door of her hut opened directly to the beach, the high-water mark just a dozen meters from the back door, if even that. Three enormous surfboards, easily twelve feet long, were propped against the back of the hut, two of which were heavily decorated in festive, colorful Lutrai markings. The rocky ridge at the end of the island was descending again to the sea, reduced to weather-worn sandstone boulders that dotted the beach beyond the high water mark. Rikia strolled out and sat on a low, smooth stone and patted the spot beside herself, just out of conversational earshot of the hut as the moonlight glinted off the rising tide. Jack sat beside her and looked out over the water as he accepted the offered bottle.\n\n“You surf?” Jack wondered as he settled in, having noticed the boards.\n\n“Yeh, only like 's m' r'ligion,\" Rikia flashed the little grin Jack was soon finding characteristic of her, “Lutrai call it th'wave dance. Stan' on th' water unner our goddess' light n' show ‘er ‘ow we know ‘er ocean, list'n t'it an' dance wit’ th' motion'a th' waves n' celebrate ‘er gifts ta’ us.” Jack had never thought of surfing as a religious practice, but with Rikia's explanation he easily saw its importance.\n\n“Woah. It must be amazing to see you out there,” Jack commented, at a bit of a loss for words. \n\n“'ey, you'll see it sure's rain n' sun. Mos' early mornin's'll see Ric out on ‘is liddle board too, leas' on th’ rougher side a' th' isle. ‘e likes th’ big waves,” Rikia mused with a gesture that invoked the idea of high surf well enough. “Lutrai board like th' calm water on th' reef, liddle swells n'  loooong rides,” she explained. Jack understood the physics of it well enough to not feel the need to seek further clarification.\n\n“I'll have to go for an early walk soon, then… It really is beautiful, here,” he commented, just to fill the silence as Rikia took a drink. Jack did the same as she scooted closer, only to nestle against the side of the bear's bulk again, just as she had earlier. She urged his fingers back to her belly, where she palmed the back of his huge hand and laced her fingers between his from behind.\n\n“Who is she?” Rikia wondered, unprompted. The question briefly baffled Jack. \n\n“Huh..?”\n\n“Who [i]is[/i] she? C'n tell by th' way ya' touch know a lady's curves, n' th'way ya' shy away back in th' cove. Y' known love, n' got mem'ry tha's still sore's a shark bite,\" Rikia said, gingerly pressing Jack's fingers back to her stomach. “This paw's used ta' bein' here, or was, once.” Jack sifted his claws through Rikia's tummy fur, tenderly outlining her bellybutton for a moment as he collected his thoughts.\n\n“You've got good intuition,” the bear observed with a defeated chuckle. \"Was. Not anymore,” Jack admitted, lazily sifting his toes into the sand, and finding rock a few inches down. “It didn't work out. Nothing bad, but, well. She moved on,\" Jack said, plainly. He didn't want to get into it, so late at night, and with someone he only barely knew.\n\n“N' you ‘aven’t?” Rikia wondered, nestling her tail along Jack's hip, “'r, maybe y'ave, n' ain' realize yet. [i]Was[/i],” Rikia reflected, making Jack chuckle sheepishly.\n\n“You sound like my counselor,” Jack teased, evading the question, secretly a little flustered by her powers of observation. The proximity had Jack feeling the slow stirring of erection in his sheath again, but he made no effort to will it away. He took another long drink from the bottle in his free hand.\n\n“S'at so bad? Was gon' be a shamaness, ‘fore…well. Things change. Y’know,” Rikia said, leaning her head back against Jack's chest as her head tipped up, and she took another drink from her own bottle.\n\n“Yeah. I know what you mean,” Jack mumbled, a little distantly. The drinks and weed had gotten to his head, and he was starting to get introspective in the late hour. “I guess I'm still figuring out where I want to go, now,” he finally admitted. Short and to the point.\n\n“Mnh. Step outta' old life, inta' new one. S'at why yer really ‘ere in Sol de Vida?\" Rikia wondered, though after a long pause, she followed up. \"…’ey, s'okay if ya' nah' ready to talk, eh?” Rikia wondered, tipping her head up to look to the bear. Gazing across the gentle surf that glittered in the moonlight, Jack let himself remain lost in quiet thought about Emma, and the bitter-sweet sonder that came with it for just a few moments longer before he answered.\n\n“Just thinking,” Jack admitted, finally fidgeting slightly as he felt the cool breeze off the water dancing over the emerging flesh between his thighs. Thankfully, Rikia had yet to notice it. “I think Sol de Vida is the first step, yeah. My friend thought this place would be good for me,\" Jack rumbled quietly as his thumb trailed a slow rift through Rikia's fur, just under her breast and down over her long stomach again. \"So, you said things change. Curious what you mean.”\n\n“Mm, yeh. Wasn' expectin' it, but, well. Th' guppy's a gift, n' love ‘im. But ’e was a surprise, inna' sense,” Rikia admitted. Jack could tell she was choosing her words carefully. “They, uh. They call it th' Heatwave, n', well. Long story short, th' need got away from me n' ‘is daddy. ‘fore I know, ’m fat n' on th' mainland, no money, surrounded by land-lubbahs, n' 'is daddy's headin' home t' fish for 'is island. S' big trouble - n'auh…\" Rikia caught herself, chasing the right word, \"S' '[i]complicated[/i]', but we can't live t'gether, there. So guppy n' me made a life ‘ere, n' keep th' way we know wit' our lil' tribe in Sol de Vida, n' visit 'ome when we can.\"\n\n“You were in the Heatwave? Small world,” Jack admitted. He could sense she didn't want to get into the details about Tempesta's father, so didn't press the matter.\n\n“'eyyy, dolphin inna' pod; knew ‘ere’s some'n special ‘bout you,” Rikia laughed. Jack did, too. “So, s'at mean 'ere's a lil’ Jack ‘re two run ’round summ'ere?”\n\n\"Uh…no, Em and I, uh… Well, we couldn't keep it. We both grew up in the city where the Heatwave hit hardest, though,” Jack said quietly, ruminating for a few moments longer on just how close he and Em came to having that life that she wanted together, if only they weren't so young when it happened. His fingers slowly curled in, until the palm of his fist was simply resting atop Rikia's stomach. She fidgeted at his big hand and pushed it open again, then nestled hers inside it, stretching her fingers' webbing back as she laced her fingers neatly between his.\n\n“'ey, ‘m sorry. Shouldn’ pry,” Rikia said. A brief silence welled with tension for a few moments. “Y'a cozy cuddler, y'know,” Rikia said, relieving the tension for a brief moment. \n\n“So are you,” Jack said with a smile as he looked out at the water again, his thumb tracing along Rikia's wrist as she held two of his fingers to keep his hand against her breastbone.\n\n“Plus, y''don' stink like land-lubbah,” she giggled faintly, arching upward toward the bear and giving a few playful sniffs at him. “Juss' warm bear boy n' ocean water. Propah.\" Jack laughed even more.\n\n“Uh, thanks. Not the first to say they liked that,\" Jack admitted. More memories of Emma welled up, and were shut back out as fast as they came. \"I've never been a fan of stuff that tries to make me smell different than I do. It all just seems to make me smell [i]worse[/i],” he chuckled a bit sheepishly, and Rikia smirked as she casually played with the bear's bracelets, leaving his palm flat against her chest. “This has been a pretty awesome night. Thanks for …well, everything. I'm glad you found this hopeless ‘land-lubbah’ tourist and made him feel at home,” Jack admitted. Rikia grinned. \n\n“'Eyyy, you ain'no tourist, n' I still feel bad fer callin' y'one. Nah, y' come here n' y'[i]see[/i] us, n' come in at our level, even if ya' took a bit. We gon' make a Lutrai outta' you yet, juss' you watch.\" Rikia smiled, before fidgeting slightly against the bear's side. \"'ey, wanna know somethin'?” the Lutrai asked, looking up to Jack again. \n\nJack looked down with a questioning noise, and Rikia beckoned him closer. As he leaned in, she leaned up, and met his lips with hers, stealing a kiss that the bear answered with a slight tip of his head and a brush of his pierced tongue against her lip as his eyes closed for a brief moment. His erection throbbed, nearly instantly aching-hard, and he could feel it pressing between the Lutrai woman's shoulder blades as she leaned against his belly. The kiss broke after a lingering moment.\n\n“[i]Shhhit[/i], uh, s-sorry,” Jack mumbled, and Rikia gave a faint little giggle, and playful shimmy against the nudging against her back as she grinned. The Lutrai reached up and reassuringly caressed the bear's ear, thumbing at the faintly glowing, glass jellyfish-plug in its lobe.\n\n“S'alright. C'n I see?” she hummed faintly as she turned and looked down, without waiting for Jack's confirmation. Jack's heart sank as she did so, quietly embarrassed at his reaction from the kiss and such simple closeness. It was only a natural reaction to the intimacy, but what if she thought he was being presumptuous? Not that he could help it. But, he was even less prepared for the impressed vocalization from the Lutrai woman. “'ey, Kij blessin's, look at'cha!” the Lutrai woman laughed, sitting up suddenly and turning to regard the bear properly, who started laughing sheepishly, himself.\n\n“I told you I got hit pretty hard during the Heatwave,” Jack admitted. He was fully erect, his beer-bottle-thick-based, flare-tipped bear erection standing out under his belly nearly a full foot and already oozing a clear strand of precum to the ground. “Sorry, uh… The closeness got to me, I guess,” Jack laughed, “It's, uh, been a while.” Rikia finished her bottle of beer and nestled the empty into the sand by the rock. Jack followed her lead, and did the same.\n\n“'ey, ain'othin' but a compl'ment,” Rikia admitted, pressing back to the bear's side, now turned to regard the massive arousal that jutted from his sheath. “'ey, glad s'mother folk ‘roun’ here with a bit a' jewl'ry, too, by th' by,” the Lutrai teased as she sank her fingers into the fur of the bear's thigh, and glided them inward as the bear relaxed a little. Her touch was confident but gentle, as her thumb traced along the ring in the base of the bear's sheath. “C'n, uh. Mnh,” the Lutrai woman paused, with a playful little flustered sound, utterly unique in Rikia's presentation, and unlike anything Jack had seen from the Lutrai woman thus far. “Sheesh. I, eruhh, d'you, uh…want s'm'elp? I got sof' hands,\" Rikia promised, causing a pang of ill-defined guilt to build in Jack's belly almost instantly.\n\n“Oh, h-hey, wait, no, you don't have to…” Jack stammered, and Rikia's puzzled expression made him stop and carefully reconsider his words. Jack leaned down and kissed Rikia again to reassure her, before he touched his forehead to hers and huffed a soft breath as he embraced her against his bulk. “I don't want to mess up our friendship, or whatever this is, is all. I like you, and don't want to, like…make things complicated.” Rikia listened to the bear, resting her cheek on his chest. She curled at his side and softly sifted her webbed fingers through the ruff of thick pubic fur under the bear's bellybutton, the back of her knuckles gingerly touching the spine of the bear's member with a slow, teasing drag through the steady issue of slimy precum that was drooling down his length.\n\n“'eyy,\" Rikia's familiar, playful chiding call came, \"I see where ya' comin' from. Don' y' go'n' run yet Jack; we ain' but juss' start a walk,\" Rikia smirked. “Lutrai han'shake, yeh? Lil' bit a' fun f' fun's sake, 'tween friends, lovers, anyone close'nuff, n' don' mean much'a nothin' thass' gon' make any'tin [i]complicated[/i]. Y'can worry ‘bout 'at if I ask ya' to put a baby in m'belly, or give m'a lily,” she teased as her fingers slipped down the side of his sheath and lifted one of his balls, the size of a navel orange in its fluffy sack. “[i]Kij bless[/i],” she repeated her impressed oath, \"Y' don' [i]look[/i] so big thank'ta th' ress of ya', but y're a [i]monsta'[/i],” Rikia laughed incredulously. Jack laughed along with her again.\n\n“Hah! Thanks, I think… But, y-yeah, alright, in that case…yeah, if the feeling's mutual. But I get to do you first,” the bear urged with a smirk.\n\n“'ey, a gennleman too,” Rikia mused as she stood to kiss him properly again, without forcing him to bend down to meet her this time. As she kissed him, Jack embraced her with a palm between her shoulder blades, with the other scooped under her rump to draw her close to him as their tongues played against one another for a few more seconds.\n\nRikia gave a giddy little squeal at the abrupt and effortless heft from the bear that lifted her up and laid her back atop his outstretched hands, until her legs easily hung over his shoulders and he supported her entire weight cradled in his flattened hands, his elbows braced to his knees for stability. Jack buried his chin between her thighs and his muzzle low on her stomach and breathed a deep, slow breath through his nose; beneath the all-natural, exotic warmth of the lutrai's body he could smell heat on her, the source of that intoxicating smell that kept wafting to him earlier, the lingering effects of the Heatwave that still called those who'd been effected together with a sense of near desperate need. His thoughts strayed again; if this did turn into something more, he knew they would have to be exceedingly careful, always, as their mutually high fertility all but guaranteed children if they lost control of themselves while she was in season. \n\n[i]No, not worth thinking about, now. That's a conversation for later. Focus.[/i]\n\nJack growled softly as he nuzzled along her stomach and pelvis, tucking his nose lower. Rikia twisted and laughed at the bear's deep snuffling, gripping fist-fulls of Jack's tough, scruffy fur on the back of his neck and sifting her fingers up through his headfur as the bear balanced her effortlessly on his palms. She arched her back and crooned out a sweet noise to the starry sky as Jack's tongue painted a long, slow stroke from her under-tail to her bellybutton ring, washing across her doughy folds with a single, brave stroke that made her gasp with excitement. The second broad washing of the bear's tongue applied more focused pressure, and the smooth, hard ball of his tongue's barbell dug smoothly through the groove of her plump, soaking sex and across the stud in her clitoral hood, eliciting a tense in her core that made her hips buck lightly in spite of the massive muscle's lack of finely-focused precision.\n\n“Mnh! Aw-yeh, juss' like that, mnh.” Rikia crooned. Jack was eager to follow her direction, breathing deep breaths of her intoxicating scent as he began to hungrily lap through her folds, focusing rolls and twists of his tongue against her pearl as it began to firm beneath its pierced hood, and Jack nuzzled the ring back down against it. The motion of his nose grinding to that pearl was answered with a grind up from the Lutrai woman who gasped and whimpered sweetly. She pulled his hair lightly and urged him to twist his muzzle to the side, her own thighs spreading wider to make room as she ground in response to the bear's broad-washing tongue. Jack flattened his tongue out and pressed up again, until his tongue-stud clicked against the stud in her clitoral hood again and he tucked it beneath, rolling the smooth, warm metal ball around her clit directly for just a single swipe, laughing through his nose at the Lutrai woman's giggling yelp of ecstasy that it brought.\n\n“Hyah~! D-do'at ‘gain,” Rikia giggled, fidgeting atop the bear’s hands who held her securely. Jack obliged, eagerly rolling the barbell piercing under her hood in the breaks between delving his muscular, broad tongue up into her heat-soaked depths with curling, deep swipes that reeled out her delicious, ocean-water-salty juices as she leaked openly for him. He felt her tremble, sensed her teetering, fluttering on the verge as he twisted his head in the other direction and attacked from a new angle. The Lutrai writhed and whimpered in his grasp, tensing until she'd simply latched onto his head, hugging around it and curled over the top of his muzzle and head as her hips bucked, and she stifled a cry into the nape of his neck as the bear buried his tongue to her cervix, grinding the hard ball of his tongue-stud against her insides while his nose smeared her slickness back against her own clit. The rush of fluid into his mouth and down his chin brought an eager, needy growl from the bear as he tasted Rikia's drenching heat, while she pulled his hair and ears and rode against his face desperately in her climax.\n\nJack redoubled his efforts as the Lutrai woman's hips ground forward against his nose, and she clutched his scruff and pinned his head in his lap with desperate urging that he answered with further urgent working of his tongue through her fluttering, tugging walls as she ground her clit to his nose. The Lutrai woman only eased up after nearly three minutes, gasping and giggling still as she leaned back and Jack caught her in his hands again, nuzzling along her lap and grazing deep, swiping strokes of his tongue over her folds still as she came down and crooned an adoring noise. \n\n“Ahyeh, haaa…ooh, ain't been treated like'at inna' while,” Rikia giggled, biting her lip as Jack slowly twirled his tongue piercing under her hood once more, making her toes curl again before he finally withdrew, and, despite the mess she'd made of his face, grinned at her with a playful, panting huff.\n\n“Haven't gotten to treat someone like that in a while either,\" Jack rumbled with a low, horny growl. \"You taste amazing,” he huffed, leaning forward to share the taste with Rikia via another kiss, which she urgently returned. Jack drew her to his chest and simply held her for several long moments as she regained her composure, and then stood, and took the bear's hands in hers.\n\n“C'mere, land-lubbah; down t' the water,” Rikia urged. Jack stood, walking behind her as Rikia lead him down to the shoreline and quite simply sat in the surf, tugging Jack down to join her. Jack knelt, and she pulled him into a kiss again, before urging the bear over her as she laid back, and the surf rolled up around her, sinking her slightly into the sand. Jack's knees dug deep into the sand on either side of her hips, and he braced his weight on a hand over her shoulder as they kissed. He could still smell her heat in the smears of her juices on his face, and as Rikia reached, Jack arched forward and pressed his achingly hard erection into her hands, both of which eagerly closed around it to feel his firmness, squeezing and testing its contours.\n\nJack gasped at the first touches and the exploratory polishing. Her fingers were incredible; nimble, with soft and supple padding coupled with short, velvety fur and stretchy webbing that conformed to the contours of his flesh. She took both hands around his length and stroked down, nestling her fingers into his sheath to tease the rarely-tended root of his arousal; a sensation that caused Jack to growl eagerly into their kiss. She then squeezed her hands together and pulled up in slow, milking pulls to help well his drooling precum into her hands, which she smeared back to his flesh with an urgent stroke as Jack's hips rolled forward. He could feel himself positively pouring precum onto her belly as the surf rolled up around the sides of her hips and thighs, but still well shy of washing it away. He'd never expected she'd know how to tease a bear's anatomy so effectively, but she made a very strong start with slow, smearing squeezes behind his glans and brisker back-and-forth stroking on his root with frequent pauses to nestle her entire, petite paw into his sheath to stroke and work at this usually-untouched root. The sensation made him lightheaded with ecstatic physical pleasure that he struggled to contain as his hips churned forward into each of those kneading strokes of her hand within his stretched sheath.\n\nThe kiss broke, and Jack let out an eager groan as he nuzzled to Rikia's chest and suckled her entire breast into his broad ursine maw, suckling it and raking his tongue's stud across the barbell through her nipple. He supported his weight on one paw, and the other closed over her opposite breast, urgently rolling it under his palm and caressing the swell as he panted, and Rikia crooned out sweet encouragement into his ear. His hips rolled in eager, deep strokes; it was never his best position, but Rikia met him halfway and polished the throbbing, rubber-hard erection expertly in her hands as Jack knelt over her with his shuddering hips setting the pace of her stroking. Jack panted with the effort, breaking his suckling kiss of the Lutrai woman's supple breast-flesh with a needy growl as his eyes focused on hers for a lingering few moments. Her gaze met his with a playful, intimate joy that Jack hadn't realized he'd been missing, and the welling urgency of his arousal built in his balls as he pumped forward again.\n\nShe leaned up, and kissed him again. He kissed her back, eagerly, and their tongues grazed against one another again as climax effortlessly took the bear. A subtle rumble and grunt rose from the bear's chest, an urgent stiffening in his arousal, and the first outpouring of pent-up seed arced in a heavy surge up the Lutrai woman's stomach and chest, splashing them both in the chin before the initial deluge tapered off. A delighted noise from Rikia came from her nose, and she redoubled her efforts as the second torrential pulse of seed poured out with even more volume and pressure, painting another streak up the bear's stomach and chest that splashed off his lower jaw and ran and dripped down over the Lutrai woman's breasts and stomach in a thick web, only to slowly roll down her waterproof fur and into the surf. \n\nRikia kept working on him, her sweet and joyful and [i]impressed[/i] sounding vocalizations tantalizing the bear's senses as he pressed harder into the kiss. Her fingers milked and stroked his length, focused on every sensitive place she'd found to help urge his climax on, milking him to absolute and utter completion. She stimulated him from root to tip as he poured his pent up need against both of their bodies, the eruption pooling in her fur again and again, and running down her body's curves in its own waves to be claimed by the rolling surf as it washed up around them both. He never ran dry. He wasn't sure he could, even, since the lingering effects of the Heatwave had made their mark upon him; but with the final pulses and throbs of his climax, their kiss finaly broke as the final thick rolls of seed fell to Rikia's stomach.\n\n“Aie, ha! Y'got Kij's blessin' f'sure,” Rikia giggled quietly, breathless with her excitement and laying back in the sand as another wave rose and rolled around her body. Jack just stared at her in awe for a long few moments, reeling from the moment as he panted hard to catch his breath, smelling his own sweat and seed on the air, mixed with what remained of Rikia's heat-scent smeared on his muzzle. He slowly sat up to survey the damage. Everywhere the water hadn't touched on her torso, Rikia was coated in a thick layer of the pearly slime from the bear, clinging to her fur stubbornly. The bear's own chest and stomach were similarly glazed in the bear's thick issue.\n\n“Hah!” Jack laughed, “Sorry, uh…I should've warned you,\" he said, slumping back slightly as unwelcome memories came flooding in as he started to feel guilty again, now for forgetting to warn Rikia. The couple one-night, mostly-physical flings he'd had since his breakup had all ended poorly, with a single cause. Even when giving ample warning ahead of time and getting confirmation with statements like ‘no, it’s fine, I like it' beforehand, the reality of the moment seemed to always resulted in the same thing. A poor, unprepared girl frozen in revulsion, simply holding him aimed at himself, or using a hand to deflect the worst of it, and making an awful face as she simply [i]waited[/i] for him to finish half-heartedly pulsing through the few pints of a mostly-failed - for him, at least - orgasm. The lutrai woman, in contrast, had proven a genuine lover of his issue, and even seemed to celebrate it with a certain sort of giddy, impressed joy and relish that Jack couldn't help but adore. It helped him choke back the guilt, but not as much as when Rikia leaned up and kissed him again, before dipping her head down to suckle some of the thick glazing of seed from the fur near the bear's collarbone and throat with a few slow licks and kisses. \n\n“Mm-mh, don' say sorry. S' a gift, n' …goddess, iss'a lucky gal tha' gets [i]that[/i] in ‘er belly,” Rikia laughed, before giving another eager lick up the bear’s chin, through the thick coating of seed to sample another taste. “Mnh. Le's get a swim ‘fore callin’ it a night, yeh? If an'thin' jus' ta' clean up,” Rikia crooned with a sweet little giggle. Jack grinned and couldn't help himself. He leaned down and kissed her again as he backed her down to the sand, then dug his hands under her in the sand and hauled her up against his chest, before simply stepping backwards into the surf until he was waist-deep. He simply fell back into the water with the Lutrai against his chest, for a very, very late-night swim together under the stars.\n\nBy the time the two had finished bathing in the ocean, said their far-too-awkward goodbyes, and Jack was towing his cooler home on the boardwalk, the stars had begun to fade in the eastern sky, which was rising to a deep blue that heralded morning's far-too-soon arrival.\n\nJack briefly thought about sitting down with his journal for a bit before trying to sleep, but thought it best to process his thoughts before committing anything to a page. Once he'd made it to the bed, sleep found him quickly, and not even the shrill nagging of the seagulls' cries in the early morning air could interrupt it.\n\n",
  "writing_bbcode_parsed": "<span style='word-wrap: break-word;'>BEFORE READING: Please start at the beginning with Part One, here: <a href=\"https://inkbunny.net/s/3654278\" rel=\"nofollow\">https://inkbunny.net/s/3654278</a><br /><br />Content Warning: Cub/Boylove, aroused cubs, sexualized fantasies about cubs, public nudity/arousal (adult and cub), masturbation (adult), oral sex (adult).<br /><br /><div class='align_center'><strong>Before the Fall</strong><br /><span class='font_title'><strong><strong>&ldquo;The Beach House, Part Two&rdquo;</strong></strong></span><br />by beforethefall [Inkbunny]</div><br /><br /><br /><div class='align_center'><span class='font_title'>Chapter 4: Meet the Neighbors</span></div><br /><br />Her smile still lingered in his mind as Jack woke to find a straining erection standing from his lap, nearly a foot of thick-rooted ursine flesh that had been drooling a stream of precum into his bellybutton for long enough to make it a slimy, slick pool of natural lubricant. The memory of the nude, athletic young Lutrai woman standing in his doorway last night had haunted his fitful sleep all night, steadily being warped and remixed into new and even more enticing scenarios in the bear&#039;s pent up stress dreams. He closed his eyes against the daylight filtering through the sheer curtains in the eastern-facing front of the one-room house and lowered a hand to grip his cock&#039;s base, pulling up to well nearly an ounce of precum from his flesh and into his palm. Then, he stroked down slowly, with a flex of his core and an arch of his hips pressing his arousal through his fist as he smeared the natural lubrication over himself. A deep sigh left him as he closed his eyes again and began to smoothly pump his hand on himself while he listened to the surf crash on the beach just a hundred meters away from his open windows, with the cries of gulls peppering the breezy early-morning quiet.<br /><br /><em>A little relief, first. Then we can start the day.</em><br /><br />Jack reasoned with himself that it was a simple indulgence on his first day of his summer-long vacation. Arguably, it was a tactical move as well; if he were to try going nude today, this might help prevent any unwelcome arousal in public places. He caught himself distracted by anxieties, and drew a deep breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. He let the still-dancing image from his dream play out for him again, the enticing image of the beautiful young otter woman swaying her hips as she walked away, his mind&#039;s eye tracing her curves and the exotic markings that accentuated them. His hand caressed again over the contours of his own throbbing arousal as he imagined his fingers caressing her curves. His free hand scooped his tufty-furred balls into its palm and rolled them gently, his hand cupped beneath their curve as he imagined the Lutrai woman&#039;s perfect breasts laid in his paws instead. His thumb&#039;s claw teased the piercing at the base of his sheath as he thought about caressing her breasts&#039; supple weight in his palm and teasing her pierced nipples. As he pleasured himself, the steady rise in pitch built; a smooth, slow stroking gave way to a more purposeful, heated pumping as the bear sat up and scooted to the edge of the mattress. Ruining the skunks&#039; bed was absolutely not acceptable; nor was ruining their rug; he grunted as he leaned down to pick up his discarded tie-dye t-shirt that he&#039;d arrived in; a sacrifice that would be only barely sufficient for his needs in the moment, but it would have to do until he could find a better-suited vessel.<br /><br />Prepared, the bear leaned back atop the bed again, now openly pumping himself as he huffed and panted and the fantasies drifted from the Lutrai woman to her son. The sight of his jiggling boyhood was still fresh in his mind, followed by the wonder of what it might look like erect, and then how the boy might respond to its hardness. He wondered about its taste, and the boy&#039;s smell, up close and intimate. He wondered if the boy could even experience an orgasm at his young age; surely the kit was still too young to produce anything along with an orgasm, but <em>what if</em>..? For a brief moment, he was whisked away into the fantasy of such a young boy being perfectly capable of ejaculation. One who would seek it out, even, an eager and willing participant to sexual exploration and play. A playmate that desired nothing but good feelings and intimate friendship and occasionally a big bear&#039;s muzzle buried in his lap... <br /><br />The bear grunted as reality came roaring back to his awareness; he&#039;d caught himself off-guard; he hadn&#039;t noticed the rising tension, the tightness building under his balls. Despite urgently pulling the shirt to his flaring glans, he missed the first rope of seed; mostly-clear fluid marbled with a little thread of thicker white that leapt from him and landed in a thick streak across his chest and stomach with the first building pulse of his climax. With the fabric pinned against his throbbing glans, he worked himself urgently with his slicked hand as he surrendered to the peak; a stifled grunt and the stiff blow of air from his nose as a buck of his hips rocked the whole mattress. He desperately tried to strangle the immense volume and pressure of his ejaculation back with a clenched fist around his shaft&#039;s midpoint as his orgasm took him, but the hot, thick surges of his seed still poured up from him and into the barely-adequate t-shirt&#039;s fabric by the pint. The colorful cotton garment grew heavy and hot as it soaked through with the sheer volume of the bear&#039;s climax, mostly containing the surges that managed to escape despite Jack desperate attempt to hold it back by brute force. He desperately tried to keep quiet with the open windows, though a few stiff huffs and grunts issued forth, still, during the shuddering intensity of his peak as he desperately tried to hold it back.<br /><br />As he slowly came down, Jack&#039;s heart pounded in his chest and his hips jerked on reflex with the aftershocks of his climax, each fresh twitch bringing up another massive oozing of thick, pearly fluid. The shirt was hopelessly saturated with the sheer amount of seed it had absorbed in spite of the bear&#039;s attempt at forceful restraint, and Jack let the shirt drop to his stomach before he lazily milked his arousal with smooth strokes from base to tip, and watched several more ounces ooze out to pool atop the saturated fabric, only slowly seeping into the shirt as a thick, pearly drool oozed out of the fabric and into his fur. His pulse slowly recovered as he laid atop the bed, thankful for the gentle breeze through the windows, and he spent several long minutes simply catching his breath, before bothering to sit up again.<br /><br />There was marked effort in standing; he had moved the mattress to the floor last night due to a well-founded mistrust of unfamiliar bed frames in homes owned by species of lesser weight classes than his own, but with a quiet grunt he stood to his full height and, still holding the sodden t-shirt to his slowly slacking arousal with a paw cupped beneath it to catch the dripping, he went to the bathroom to relieve the other cause of his morning wood with some difficulty at finding a usable angle in the too-small half-bath. Though the shirt wasn&#039;t in much better shape after being wrung into the toilet bowl, it no longer threatened to drip the potently-scented bear cum on the skunks&#039; woven rug that covered the wooden-board floor of the tiny beach house. The bear cast a timid glance out of the back window, which revealed an empty yard and the tiny ridge of dunes, with the beach and sea beyond. The cold-water-only shower was situated on the back patio, a sure tell of the place&#039;s perpetual warm weather, though despite a reed partition that kept it relatively private, the bear wasn&#039;t yet sure about the idea of showering outdoors with neighbors nearby in spite of the novelty of such an act. He could smell his own semen and sweat though, and knew he had little choice in the matter of cleaning himself up before daring to venture further than the yard. The screen door creaked open, and the bear gave another worried glance around before he quickly made the five-foot walk to the partitioned shower against the back of the little house.<br /><br />The lack of hot water was worrying at first, but Jack found himself rapidly acclimating to it; it wasn&#039;t so different from a jump into a pool on a warm summer day, with the added bonus that it hastened his softening member&#039;s retreat to its sheath. As the bear pulled the large double-flare glass plugs from his ears and carefully set them in the soap dish, a pang of guilt began to set in about his morning&#039;s fantasy; the boy was cute, yes, and sure a simple bit of imagination didn&#039;t harm anyone, but the fact that he&#039;d just sexualized such a precious little boy bothered him for some reason. It didn&#039;t bother him enough to prevent a future instance of the same surely, but it nagged at his conscience as the bear washed out his sheath and carefully cleaned the heavy-gauge ring in its opening, then the matching ring in the web of flesh where his sheath met his sack. Why <em>was</em> it an issue if he fantasized about a little boy, or anything else he wanted to? It&#039;s not like he&#039;d molested the boy or exposed himself to him, even if, in that moment, the thought of doing so may have aroused him. It was just a harmless fantasy, right? Could it really be so wrong? The same argument could go for the boy&#039;s mother; he had thought about her too in that moment - but why didn&#039;t he feel guilty about that? Sure, if he admitted it outright to anyone, the idea might be questionable, but for some reason the thought of having stroked himself to the thought of her body was far less troubling. The bear made a face as he rinsed the semen-soaked t-shirt out as best as he could and hung it over the partition to dry in the sun. He carefully cleaned around the ring in his lower lip, then removed and cleaned the retainer in his nose, before shoving his whole head under the flow of water to begin scrubbing his purplish-brown head-fur out. A couple months ago in a fit of inspiration and the blind search for his identity now that Emma was no longer in the picture, he&#039;d dyed over his brown headfur with a high-saturation purple. Now, the dye job was fading back to the bear&#039;s usual reddish-brown, with the paling purple standing out more in the highlights and the few spots it had stained the back of the lighter, endearingly-termed &lsquo;grizzly-gray&rsquo; collar marking that ran in his family.<br /><br />As he showered, his attention drifted to the young lilies he&#039;d brought with him the day prior, tucked out of the direct sunlight in the corner of the shower stall. They were doing well, better than when he&#039;d first arrived - likely thankful to be in a space that kept their roots cooler, but he&#039;d have to get them in the ground today if he wanted them to bounce back well. After a fruitless hunt for soap and realizing there was none to be found, Jack doubled down on scrubbing himself out with his claws and a thorough rinsing of water, then shut the tap off after he was satisfied he&#039;d rinsed himself thoroughly enough to make due without. Methodically, each piece of removed jewelry was inspected, cleaned, then returned to its appropriate hole as the bear stood in the shower stall. With his fur still dripping, he pulled his swim trunks back on and tied the drawstring under the curve of his belly before he stepped out from behind the partition and into the small picket-fenced back yard. He surveyed the little path toward the beach that he&#039;d planned on lining with the lilies; the soil in the yard was almost exclusively a loamy, sandy soil that Jack assessed should do the flowers well so long as they were watered once or twice a week. The bear had even distracted himself yesterday by digging a few shallow, experimental holes yesterday to make sure there weren&#039;t any surprises beneath the initial sandy layer, and ended up finding a sufficient space that he guessed would allow the lilies to thrive on either side of the well-worn old board trail through the oat grass and between the low dunes on the way to the beach, proper.<br /><br />The bear pulled the lilies out of their shady spot in the corner of the shower and brought them to the edge of the path, then knelt in the sand and used his bare hands and well-suited claws to dig little holes for the young plants. One by one, he carefully extracted a lily&#039;s starter plug from the black plastic nursery container and gently loosened its root ball before he tucked each into its very own little hole, using the breadth of his hand to estimate about eight inches of spacing from its neighboring lily. It was quiet, repetitive, meditative work, and there in the salty air, as the morning sun rose on the other side of the island the bear finally felt his near-constant undercurrent of guilt and anxiety start to fade. He&#039;d almost completely forgotten why he was feeling guilty and anxious by the time the final lilies in the full box of young plants were planted.<br /><br />&ldquo;Good morning, neighbor,&quot; a voice called from the yard on the other side that little loosely picketed fence, situated behind the little house that shared a wall with his own. The friendly, older male&#039;s voice called with the barest hint of a French accent, and Jack started slightly, but when he turned, he found a friendly older otter smiling at him from the other side of the fence and holding two cups of coffee. &quot;I saw you from the window, and thought you might not have had a chance to go shopping in town yet. Would you like some coffee?&rdquo; the neighbor asked as he held one of the cups out toward the bear. Jack&#039;s stomach gnawed at him briefly, as if to answer a desperate affirmative on its own.<br /><br />&ldquo;I can&#039;t imagine much that I&#039;d like more right now, actually,&quot; the bear laughed as he pushed himself up to stand. After taking the two strides to greet the otter at the weathered fence, he accepted the offered cup. &ldquo;Thanks, uh - it&#039;s good to meet you. The name&#039;s Jack.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;So we&#039;ve heard; the skunks wrote to let us know you&#039;d be here. Welcome to town, Jack. You arrived on the ferry yesterday, yes?&quot; the otter wondered as Jack busied himself with taking a sip of the still-too-hot, steamy black coffee with great appreciation. The neighbor continued, &quot;I&#039;m Roland, the wife&#039;s around here somewhere - ah, come say hi, Jacquelin!&rdquo; the male called, and soon the wife appeared from behind a rosebush, watering can in hand. As Jack should have expected, but failed to, she was as nude as the male was, though Jack hardly flinched this time. The relief earlier that morning probably helped with that, he was sure, but it seemed like it was genuinely getting easier to handle, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, yesterday. Good to meet you both! I&#039;m already indebted,&rdquo; Jack admitted as he lifted the cup of coffee and paused for another long sip, trying his best to take his time.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, hardly. It&#039;s a cup of coffee, hon,&rdquo; the elder female laughed. &ldquo;Lovely to meet you Jack. It&#039;ll be nice to see a bit of color on that side of the fence, too. The skunks aren&#039;t much for gardening,&quot; she said with a smile, and Jack laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;They mentioned they wanted to put some flowers in. Least I could do to try and pay them back for letting me borrow their place for the summer. I love your yard though,&rdquo; Jack admitted. He hadn&#039;t taken much time to look across the fence, but now that he&#039;d had the opportunity, the wealth of potted plants, flowers and landscaping that had been done impressed him - as well as a near-obsessive amount of yard garbage, sundials and wind chimes, rain gauges, gnomes, gazing balls, flamingos, and statuary geese dressed in festive beach clothes. They even had a small deck extended off the back porch of their side of the house, atop which a modest bit of patio furniture was placed, the metal re-painted several times over with well-worn and festive colors.<br /><br />&ldquo;Well, if there&#039;s anything you see that we could divide or take a cutting of for you, please let us know. We&#039;re happy to spread the love,&rdquo; Roland chuckled as Jack finished the cup of coffee and looked a bit mournfully into the mug as Roland offered to take it from him. Jack returned it without question as Roland asked, &ldquo;Would you like another?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, no, but thanks, I should get these watered in and maybe get to town to pick up a few staples of my own,&rdquo; Jack admitted, stretching a little once Roland had taken the empty mug. &ldquo;Good to meet you both again though, and good morning as well. I&#039;ll keep your offer in mind,&rdquo; the bear said with a warm smile to Jacquelin as she gave a grandiose gesture to her yard, as if to offer it for the bear&#039;s selection.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, Jack. Before we part ways for too long, dear,&rdquo; Jacquelin started with a slightly more serious tone which stopped Jack in his tracks as Roland slipped back inside to put the empty cups away. The bear returned to the fence as the elder female otter leaned in from her side.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hm? What&#039;s up?&quot; Jack asked, more casual than he&#039;d expected to hear from himself to a serious-sounding beckon.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ah, well; we know you&#039;re new to the island and all, but... Well. We&#039;d like to ask you to <em>try</em> to understand that most of the natives here do have certain&hellip; <em>expectations</em> in spite of our efforts to be welcoming to outsiders,&rdquo; Jacquelin said, with a pointed glance down that had to be repeated before Jack processed the subtext.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ah, shit - shoot, sorry, uh, right, uh&hellip;sorry, I get it - it&#039;s rude, I&#039;ve just been, uh&hellip;&rdquo; Jack immediately found himself stammering over himself as his capacity for higher thought recoiled in horror from the embarrassment.<br /><br />&ldquo;Shy? Nervous?&rdquo; the otter asked with a smile that inspired a broad bristling of her lutrine whiskers.<br /><br />&ldquo;&hellip;Yeah, I guess you could say that, uh,&quot; Jack stammered, before he simply sighed. &ldquo;No- you&#039;re totally right. I&#039;ve been rude by putting it off for so long. Long enough,&rdquo; he said aloud as he untied the drawstring of his swim trunks, then drug them down to his feet and picked them up from the ground once he&#039;d stepped out of them. He stood, sheepish yet fully bared before the older otter woman who laughed in a surprisingly kind-spirited way.<br /><br />&ldquo;See? That wasn&#039;t so hard,&rdquo; Jacquelin smiled. Jack fidgeted a little awkwardly, but after dusting his hands over his fur and straightening it where it&#039;d been pressed out of shape by the swim trunks, he shook his fur out and seemed satisfied as the usual shaggy spike of his still-damp grizzly fluff was restored.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, I suppose not--&rdquo; Jack began, cut off by a sudden exclamation from nearby.<br /><br />&ldquo;Jaquelin, dear! Avert your eyes, the neighbor is out in his back yard <em>naked</em>!&rdquo; Roland shouted as he returned outside, only to crack a broad grin at Jack&#039;s mortified expression. A second later, Jack cracked and started to laugh; he&#039;d been gotten, and good, and Roland and Jacqueline joined him in laughter readily. &ldquo;Ah, sorry,&quot; Roland continued, &quot;I couldn&#039;t help myself. Glad to see you finally settling in, Jack. Just don&#039;t forget your towel, and you&#039;ll be fine,&rdquo; the elder otter grinned his reassurance.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, oh, right. Towel. To sit on, right?&rdquo; Jack said, thinking back to the flier&#039;s guide for first timers. He briefly thought of the Hitchhiker&#039;s Guide to the Galaxy as well, and immediately decided against making any particularly geeky references to the older otter couple.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, that&#039;s the one. Or, you know, if you&#039;re going to swim, or, god forbid, something &hellip; <em>embarrassing</em> comes up,&rdquo; Jacquelin said with a reassuring smile. &ldquo;It happens sometimes, and it&#039;s okay, so long as you don&#039;t go flying a flag nobody&#039;s asked to see.&quot;<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, uh, thanks,&rdquo; the bear mumbled. He suddenly felt so exposed, to the point of impropriety. <em>What if</em> he&#039;d sprung an unexpected bone in public?Jack knew perfectly well it&#039;d be a hopeless effort to conceal it with just a towel without it being absolutely obvious. It was thrilling, in an unexpected way; the sensory experience alone was alien, the warmth of the sun on his backside, the subtle waft of the breeze in his pubic fur. The knowledge that the pair of thick stainless-steel rings in his sheath would call attention south occasionally, and nothing would stop any casual glance that happened to stray there. Roland settled back in beside his wife at the fence as they chatted, and drew the bear&#039;s thoughts away from his anxious spiraling again.<br /><br />&ldquo;Well, now that you&#039;re a proper islander,&rdquo; the male otter said, offering a grin, &ldquo;Would you be interested in joining us at a bonfire tonight? We tend to get together with the neighborhood the day after the ferry comes, in order to gossip about the mainland and any new news, and the comings and goings on the island, of course. It&#039;s a good way to get to know the neighborhood, since you&#039;ll be staying a while.&rdquo;<br /><br />Jack hadn&#039;t expected such an invitation. As he was still acclimating to even being unclothed outdoors - much less, being casually so in the presence of near-strangers - the invitation to a social event in such a state spiked his heart rate again. He froze a bit dumbly in the moment, for some reason incapable of responding.<br /><br />&ldquo;It&#039;s fine, really - no pressure, Jack,&rdquo; Jacquelin took over from her husband, &ldquo;If you decide to join us, it&#039;s on the bay side of our little branch of the island. Just walk a bit further from town on White Sands Way, and there&#039;s a path that leads between the properties, and to the big beach. Not far down along the rocks, you&#039;ll find us in the cove around sundown. You can bring anything you&#039;d like to share; there&#039;s always plenty to eat, though libations are always welcome among the younger folk especially.&rdquo; Jack snapped out of it, and shook his head to clear his thoughts.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, right, uh&hellip; I&#039;d love to, really. I&#039;ll see you there,&rdquo; Jack said, mustering up as brave a smile as he could, to which Jacquelin and Roland both looked pleased to hear. &ldquo;H-hey, uh, this might sound a little stupid to ask, but it&#039;s safe to swim here, yeah?&rdquo; Jack gestured toward the nearby water, as if to specify.<br /><br />&ldquo;Not accounting for how good of a swimmer you are,&quot; Roland started, &ldquo;it&#039;s safe enough on this side for anyone who&#039;s capable in the water, so long as you know how to get out of a rip current on your own. They can get nasty with the tides on this side of the island.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, yeah, we used to visit the beach a bit when I was a kid,&rdquo; Jack mentioned, remembering well the couple times he&#039;d been pulled out further than he&#039;d wanted. &ldquo;Just swim up the shore a little ways to get out of them, right?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;He&#039;s a natural!&rdquo; Jacquelin teased, and Roland laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;You ought to be fine, so long as you don&#039;t try to go out when the surf&#039;s high. There&#039;s a reason the big public beach is in the bay. If you&#039;d be more comfortable with a lifeguard, maybe swim there.&quot;<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh- there&#039;s a public beach, too? Jeez. I guess I shouldn&#039;t be surprised, literally surrounded by ocean, right?&quot; Jack asked rhetorically while chuckling. &quot;Thanks again for all of your help. And the invitation. I&#039;ll look forward to seeing you tonight,&rdquo; Jack said, flashing an appreciative smile to the older otters.<br /><br />&ldquo;We&#039;ll be looking forward to it, Jack,&rdquo; Roland said, before he and Jacquelin got back to their own morning routine in their garden.<br /><br />---<br /><br />A long morning swim helped ease the remainder of anxious nerves, as Jack adjusted to his newfound trial of a nudist lifestyle. He felt less exposed in the water; it felt more natural, even, as he swam out just deep enough that he couldn&#039;t reach the sandy bottom with his toes any longer, and rode the swell of the waves before they broke on the shore. Sailboats and yachts regularly cruised along the island&#039;s periphery near the horizon, and Jack even saw a pod of dolphins swimming only a couple hundred feet away, though they didn&#039;t approach, nor seem particularly curious about him. Jack considered that maybe that was for the best, given he was still getting his knack for deep-water swimming back. Thankfully, his confidence in the water came back quickly due to his species&#039; natural affinity for water. As he stood in the sand and walked out of the water, the bear shook his fur out as the surf rolled around his ankles, and spent several minutes just watching tiny clams dig back to the surface with each wash of water over the wave-swept sand that buried the again. By the time he&#039;d broken their spell on his attention, the bear found that his natural fur oils had allowed the water to shed straight out of his fur, and the lack of soap in the shower abruptly made sense. Detergents and soaps would strip the natural oils from his fur that provided natural waterproofing. It would only be a modest sacrifice of teddy-bear softness for the near-flawless waterproofing, and in a place like Sol de Vida, he imagined the latter would prove far more valuable. He shook again and brought his fur back to a fluffy, damp spike easily that made him confident the sun could finish the job quickly. He trudged back up the beach and to the house, picking up the trail at the top of the beach and walking between the little lilies he&#039;d planted that morning, smiling more. In a few weeks they&#039;d be twice as large and probably in bloom; they were already looking better.<br /><br />In that moment, Jack considered that this place might be equally as good for him, as he realized that, in spite of a bit of anxiety about his nudity, the usual roiling undercurrent of more formless, anxious dread that nearly perpetually haunted him was absent for the first time in months.<br /><br />He headed into the house and fetched an oversized beach towel from the closet, folded it, and laid it across the sturdy wooden chair at the table. He sat down with a glass of water from the tap as he pulled his journal open and picked up a pen.<br /><br />[quote]It&#039;s been a weird 24 hours. I learned on the ferry that this was actually a nudist island, so thanks for the heads-up, Duncan. Not even a phone I can call the mainland with to chew him out remotely. I&#039;ll just have to maul him the next time I see him in person.<br /><br />Met the neighbors this morning. Nice couple, Jacquelin and Roland, a couple otters. They&#039;re into gardening too, so, hey, we&#039;ve got that in common. They invited me to a bonfire tonight too. Weird enough; I met a couple other otter folk yesterday too, though they&#039;re Lutrai, so not quite the same - a girl named Rikia. Her adorable son practically drug me straight off the ferry and into her little yatai. It&#039;s so cool, and she makes some seriously awesome food. They&#039;ve got these incredible markings all over them too, the both of them. Real exotic islander tribal stuff. It&#039;s pretty rad, just head to toe drawings and runes. I&#039;ve never seen anything like it, this like wild and untamed art, just everywhere. I kind of love it.<br /><br />I need to go apologize for being rude yesterday. I really made a FUCKING ASS out of myself. She was as nice as she could&#039;ve been I guess, and way nicer than I deserved. Shit, she even brought me a bento box for dinner last night while I was hiding out and trying to bury my shame. Shit, she even apologized to ME for whatever reason, for not giving me a warm enough welcome. She seems cool like that; thoughtful, you know, but maybe a little stand-offish or guarded or something. But I kind of get it, right? Like here I am this tourist fucking&hellip;bumming around in jeans and a t-shirt with bags full of clothes in a nudist colony. She probably thinks I&#039;m some total creep. Maybe I am, I don&#039;t know. <span class='strikethrough'>She gets me fucked up in the head though like Em did when we first met, and that scares the shit out of me.</span> There&#039;s something about her though; it reminds me of the first time I met Emma. It&#039;s probably nothing, but I&#039;ll be damned if it doesn&#039;t make me about sick with nervous energy, as if I needed any help with that.<br /><br />I feel so fucking ridiculous, no matter what, now. Being naked in public is so foreign- but I feel like a shitheel when I&#039;m clothed too, so fuck it. I went nude for the first time this morning, and like Rikia told me last night when she stopped by, it&#039;s probably just easier to commit and get used to it. The neighbors helped talk me into it. Just a little work in the yard and a swim so far, but I need to go into town and get some things, and figure out what I&#039;m going to bring to the bonfire later tonight. I wonder if I&#039;ll see Rikia and her son Tempesta there. I kind of hope I will.<br /><br />Wish me luck, me.<br /><br />I&#039;ve been here for less than a day and I can already tell that life here is different from anything I&#039;ve lived before. Not just the nudism thing, that&#039;s part of it but&hellip; I haven&#039;t talked to my neighbors back home in years. Much less just chatted across the fence over coffee. That was nice. Life here seems slower, more relaxed and open. Totally different from AVH.<br /><br />Sure beats the shit out of the childhood trips to Pensacola or Galveston or Savannah that I was on about the other day, too.<br /><br />PS: I&#039;m so fucking glad I made the decision to not bring a camera on this trip. Crisis averted.[/quote]<br />Jack looked up from his journal and saw the clock had, somehow, ticked forward an hour. It was creeping on Noon already, and he&#039;d spent the last twenty minutes of that hour doodling the sun marking he saw on Rikia&#039;s back in the margins of his journal from memory. He looked around the little one-room house and sighed, getting up to straighten the place a little. Dirty clothes on the floor, which he easily picked up and chucked into the closet atop his duffel bag full of clothing to remain there, unused. The bento boxes from the night before were washed and stacked on the table, waiting to be returned. He pulled his backpack out and emptied it, moving the few articles of clothing from it into the closet as well, and took inventory of what he would use, here. His three-tier organizer of plugs and jewelry, and the bag of random other accessories; bracelets, anklets and necklaces would come in handy to allow him to express a bit of his aesthetic identity without clothes. He laughed as he realized what the unfamiliar-feeling box in the front pouch of his backpack was as he pulled it out; a brand-new box of XXXL &ldquo;Ursa Major&rdquo; condoms that must have been stashed there by Duncan when he wasn&#039;t looking, the fucker. At least his friend had gotten the size right, though Jack didn&#039;t anticipate putting them to use, and not only because he wasn&#039;t a fan of using them.<br /><br />He unpacked the modest few toiletries he had brought; a salt-crystal deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, and a tiny bottle of piercing care oil. He took them to&nbsp;&nbsp;the bathroom, and took a moment to rinse the salt crystal and rub it under his arms liberally, then carefully unscrewed the ball off the end of the four-gauge stud through his tongue and pulled the jewelry out. He brushed his teeth at last, and rinsed his mouth out before he put the stud back in, satisfied that he was more properly freshened up - at least, free of bear-morning-and-coffee-breath, before going back to unpacking. He&#039;d stocked up on a couple ounces of weed for the trip, which were checked over before they were tucked away safely in a high cabinet along with his glass pipe, three packs of papers and a lighter. He turned the backpack upside down and dumped the final few items out, a pocket knife, an old convention badge for a small science fiction and fantasy writers&#039; convention, and the backer for one of the enamel pins attached to the front of the backpack, which he took a moment to re-affix before he started assessing what he&#039;d actually need for an average day out.<br /><br />In went a bottle that had been refilled with the cloudy, chalky, highly mineralized local tap water, as well as his wallet, the pocket knife, and the flier that he was given the day before by the friendly rabbits. Then his journal and pen, as well as a couple of his composition books which were filled with half-finished stories and outlines, in case he might wind up with both opportunity and inspiration in sufficient balance for him to get some writing done. As he was stuffing the bento boxes into the main compartment of the backpack, a gentle knock rapped at his door. He couldn&#039;t recall if he was expecting anyone, but as Jack went to the door and opened it, the familiar sight of the small lop-eared rabbit couple from the ferry greeted him, and a quick smile spread on the bear&#039;s face. <br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, hi - Uh, Jack and Bonnie, right? Come in!&quot; The bear said, urgently greeting his guests and only briefly fretting in the hopes that the potent scent of bear sweat and semen from earlier had properly dissipated, and he&#039;d not just gone nose-blind to it. Part of him was frustrated that his venture out to town was being further delayed, despite the simultaneous relief for an excuse to put it off for a bit longer. The rabbits stepped into the little single-room house and Bonnie offered up a wooden window box that was brimming over with a waxy-leaved plant with small, furry-looking star-shaped flowers in clumps all over it.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hi Jack! It&#039;s lovely to see you again,&rdquo; Bonnie said, holding the box up for Jack. &ldquo;As promised; a housewarming gift. We didn&#039;t have much on hand, but I hope you&#039;ll enjoy it,&rdquo; the rabbit said. Jack hastily cleared space on the table to accept the offering and set it down in the cleared spot, before he offered seats to the others.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, thank you! Uh, come in, sit if you&#039;d like, sorry about the mess - I was just getting settled in,&quot; Jack said, fussing at the table and palming the box of condoms, which were hastily stuffed into one of the kitchen drawers. &quot;Everyone here has been so friendly,&rdquo; Jack uttered, a bit sheepishly. &ldquo;What&#039;s this, though?&rdquo; he wondered, carefully sitting back on his towel-covered seat and looking closely at the plant.<br /><br />&ldquo;We thought we&#039;d bring by a little addition to your garden is all; or the indoor decor,&quot; the male rabbit joked.<br /><br />&ldquo;It&#039;s a wax plant,&rdquo; Bonnie said. &ldquo;Nothing too complicated to take care of, but if you like it, I&#039;ve plenty more where that came from, and they&#039;re easy to propagate. You&#039;ll want to keep it in a western window inside, or a space up off the ground outdoors,&quot; she said with a warm smile, watching the bear lower his head and take a deep sniff of a cluster of flowers. Jack&#039;s stomach growled in protest at the sweet scent; the bear hadn&#039;t even had breakfast yet.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, duly noted, jeez. It smells fantastic,&rdquo; Jack said, picking it up and carrying it over to the windows that faced the beach. He hung the box from the window sill using the attached hooks, and carefully pulled the curtains open to let the sun in. &ldquo;I&#039;d, uh..I&#039;d offer you guys a drink or something, but honestly I was just about to go out to pick up some necessities,&rdquo; the bear chuckled. &ldquo;Unless you&#039;d like a glass of tap water, which I have to admit is kind of a lot to get used to.&rdquo; The bear offered a sheepish grin, as the rabbits both laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh! No - don&#039;t worry about it, we won&#039;t keep you. Keeping a cooler stocked with water&#039;s the way to go, dear,&rdquo; Bonnie assured, &ldquo;The tap water&#039;s fine enough for washing up with, but I don&#039;t think anyone here drinks it willingly, despite the fact that it&#039;s supposedly safe to do so. Thomas will get you sorted out.&rdquo;<br /><br />---<br /><br />Jack stood with his thumbs hooked into the straps of his backpack, simply regarding the island&#039;s general store with a great appreciation in the moment. He couldn&#039;t remember the last time he saw a doorway he didn&#039;t have to duck or suck in his belly to fit through, and he just had to soak in the beauty of that feature all on its own. The slight ruffling of the fur on his balls as the breeze blew through the market street reminded him of his nude state, but by this point it was only a bit of background nerves that kept at him despite his confidence that it would pass in time. His nerves were similarly eased by the sign in the window that read &ldquo;No Shirt, No Shoes, No Pants, No Worries&rdquo;, which made him smile.<br /><br />Jack stepped forward and pushed open the glass-and-wooden door, then stepped inside to see the red elk proprietor standing proud behind the counter, with a broad grin on his face already.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hey, new comer! Welcome to Sol de Vida. Name&#039;s Thomas,&rdquo; the elk said with a certain sort of amicable gruffness in his voice, &ldquo;Let me know if you need help with anything.&rdquo; <br /><br />&ldquo;Well, that explains the door for this place being the right size,&rdquo; Jack said with a flashed grin at the elk who gave a knowing upward tip of his head in recognition, the elk&#039;s antlers standing a full foot taller than the bear, even. &ldquo;Jack, good to meet ya&#039;. I think I can find my way around, but I&#039;ll do just that if I need to.&quot;<br /><br />It was another novel experience. Another that made him feel as naked as he was. Something so pedestrian as a little grocery shopping while wearing nothing but the backpack on his back and a handful of piercings thrilled him in its own right, but at the same time, he found himself still struggling for the <em>point</em> of it; what this community saw from the practice that was so enriching beyond the base level of novelty he felt as a newcomer. Maybe that was something that would come in time. He hefted a case of bottled water and two bags of ice onto the counter, a can of ground coffee - of which there was only one type to choose from - as well as two packs of his favorite indulgence, fresh from the mainland; powdered mini donuts. They cost three times what they did back home, but it didn&#039;t matter to Jack in that moment, the familiar breakfast was more important than the cost.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, can&#039;t help but notice there&#039;s no frozen stuff,&rdquo; Jack admitted, looking back to the store as if to resurvey. There was hardly even a refrigerated section; simply two cases the size of residential refrigerators with a few basics in them; milk, butter, eggs, cheese, a handful of different lunch meats; all much more expensive than the bear was used to.<br /><br />&ldquo;No frozen stuff out front, hardly any refrigerated,&rdquo; the elk confirmed with a chuckle. &ldquo;I&#039;m the only place in town that&rsquo;s got power save for the clinic, so not a whole lot of folk are in the market for frozen and refrigerated stuff, else they&#039;d spend a fortune on ice. We got good food, and plenty of it around still, it&#039;s just all fresh, canned, jarred, pickled, or on ice out in the market. Lookin&#039; for anything in particular, though? There&#039;s a few things in back that I don&#039;t keep out here.&rdquo; The bear shook his head after a few moments&#039; thought, and picked up a big jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and jar of jam, as well as a case of his favorite cup noodles.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, that makes sense,&rdquo; the bear admitted as he shopped, &ldquo;You&#039;d think I would&#039;ve intuited that by the fact that I wrote by lantern-light last night. Not looking for anything in particular though, just wondering what&#039;s on the menu.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, there&#039;s surely a cooler around there somewhere, if you&#039;re rentin&#039; the place from a resident,&rdquo; the elk laughed. &ldquo;You might need some propane too if you&#039;re gonna&#039; cook at home. We can fill you up if you need it. Same for lamp oil; we sell the little bottles, but if you bring your empty bottles in, we&#039;ll refill them for you from the bulk barrels we get and save you a heap. It&#039;s not cheap, but we&#039;ve got some frozen meats from the mainland in back, nothing special though. Ground beef, ground chicken, sausage, some bone-in chicken.&rdquo;<br /><br />Jack considered this advice, and couldn&#039;t help but chuckle to himself. Maybe this would be a bit more like camping and backpacking than he&#039;d initially thought. Either way, there was a steep learning curve that he felt he was just getting started on. It wasn&#039;t an unwelcome change of pace, though.<br /><br />&ldquo;Got it,&rdquo; Jack said, &ldquo;How much do I owe you?&rdquo; he asked the elk, who rattled a few things into an old mechanical register.<br /><br />&ldquo;Let&#039;s see, with the peanut butter and jelly&hellip;seventy bucks,&quot; the elk said without flinching. Jack flinched for him.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ow. Okay. So what am I doing wrong?&rdquo; the bear chuckled, and Tomas let loose a loud guffaw.<br /><br />&ldquo;Luxuries, big guy. Bottled water, peanut butter, jelly, sandwich bread. Even the cup noodles are nearly two bucks apiece,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;You can save ten bucks alone by bringin&#039; up some containers for drinking water and refilling them from our filters instead of goin&#039; with the bottled stuff from the mainland. A quarter a gallon, that way; I&#039;d bet there&#039;s a couple big water jugs in the place you&#039;re staying. The ice is cheap enough already, and, well, the other stuff&#039;s take-it-or-leave-it, really; it is what it is. As far as food goes, most folk just browse the market in the mornings and pick up what they need for the day and keep it on ice, y&rsquo;know. Some fruit, veggies, maybe a couple fish. Or they eat at the local eateries. The locals know how to make a lot out of a little if you haven&#039;t tried the local cuisine yet. Maybe the cheapest way ta&#039; go while you&#039;re figurin&#039; out the home-cooking menu.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Man, okay. This should be in the flier,&rdquo; Jack joked to the elk, who threw his head back and laughed again. &ldquo;Just, uh. Just the coffee, ice and donuts. I&#039;ll come back once I figure out the water container thing. Oh! I was going to get a bottle of rum and some pineapple juice too for a bonfire,&rdquo; he said, as he put back the extraneous &lsquo;luxuries&rsquo; he&#039;d been hoping to make staples out of. &quot;Unless you have any cost-saving secrets on that one too. The elk laughed again.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ha! Start brewin&#039; at home, maybe. But for a bonfire? No glass on the beach, big guy, but I&#039;ll sell ya&#039; rum either way. Anyhoo, beer goes a lot further for the dollar here, especially if you buy the big case of cans. Folks like the stuff they can just toss in the cooler and go,&rdquo; the elk suggested as he casually leaned his hip against the back of the counter. &ldquo;Besides, beer&#039;s the cornerstone of civilization, y&#039;know. After the price hike from having to pay for it to get shipped in, I really can&#039;t price it too much past cost, or else there&#039;d be riots in the street,&quot; the elk joked.<br /><br />&ldquo;Alright, deal. Hey- uh, the little restaurant at the end of the boardwalk. Riki&#039;s Tiki? When does she open up?&quot; Jack asked, remembering the bento boxes in his backpack only once he&#039;d started thinking about how he was going to carry all this home.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ah, yeah. She opens when she opens, never really any set pattern, save for lunch n&#039; dinner on ferry days n&#039; shipment days,&rdquo; the elk said, before clocking the bear&#039;s puzzled expression. &ldquo;Oh, right, uh. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sorry, you stay here long enough and you just sorta&#039; start clocking time by what&#039;s goin&#039; on in town, man. Anyway, you oughta&#039; catch her around at some point. If there&#039;s a bonfire tonight, she&#039;ll probably be out fishin&#039; on the reef at some point today.&quot;<br /><br />&ldquo;Tuesdays and Thursdays, got it. Thanks,&rdquo; Jack said, trying to take it all in. He looked down to the ice and case of beer, a can of coffee and his two pitiful packs of powdered donuts that he wasn&#039;t about to give up at this point. &ldquo;Should I even ask what I owe you at this point?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Only one way to know. Fifty-six bucks; but at least the coffee will last a couple weeks, right?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;At least there&#039;s that, yeah.&rdquo; Jack dug into his backpack&#039;s front pocket and pulled out his wallet, and counted out a few bills. He was thankful that he&#039;d brought plenty of cash with him now, realizing he hadn&#039;t seen an ATM anywhere and given the limited availability of electricity, that was likely to be a fool&#039;s errand.<br /><br /><br /><div class='align_center'><span class='font_title'>Chapter 5: The Bonfire</span></div><br /><br />Jack had spent nearly an hour picking through his jewelry and accessories for the evening. He settled on two pairs of glass plugs for his ears; one glow-in-the-dark jellyfish, and the other a sort of bubbly soda glass that was as blue as the sea here in midday. He wore his favorite necklace with an opal pendant, and matching bracelets with opal beads, stacked with a few others that echoed the ocean-water, sea-foam, sandy, fishy, weathered-wood beachy vibes. He&#039;d even changed the retainer out in his nose, to a bull-ring style piece of stainless jewelry that matched the ring in his lower lip, and mirrored the vertical-horizontal orientation of the two piercings lower on his body&#039;s center line. Despite his careful preparation, the mere presence of a handful of accessories around his wrists and ankles, plus the piercings, did nothing to help the fact that he still felt naked; thanks to the fact that he was, in fact, fully nude save for those carefully-chosen accessories for the evening. <br /><br />Jack&#039;s walking slowed as he spotted the cove, and realized how many people had gathered there. He&#039;d found several coolers at the house stacked neatly in a storage closet, as well as two seven-gallon water-jugs that fit perfectly within one of them, with room for ice on all sides. Another cooler, one equipped with chunky wheels that rolled atop the sand without sinking in, he had stocked with the beer and another bag of ice, and was towing it behind himself as he approached the cove. Just in case the beer wasn&#039;t as much of a hit as Thomas had suggested it would be, he&#039;d also pre-rolled a few joints and had them tucked away in his backpack along with a lighter. If anything, it would prove a nice night-cap on the walk home along the beach. He&#039;d also packed a large, tightly-woven blanket, and the towel he&#039;d been carrying around all day.<br /><br />As he approached the crowd, there was a tense recollection of a college house party he&#039;d gone to as a freshman. He knew nobody but the person who&#039;d invited him, who was so occupied by drinking games that Jack found himself completely without a lifeline. He groaned with dismay at the memory of him just drifting steadily further from the gathering of people until he&#039;d found himself sitting on the back steps, smoking and wondering what was wrong with himself as he petted the house owner&#039;s sweetheart of a beagle mix. He was never particularly good at this sort of thing, but over the course of his college years he realized most of the engineering kids were more like him than those frat kids at the house party. He&#039;d grown a lot since then, too; he eventually found his group, and got more comfortable. Jack heaved a slow breath in and out, and swallowed back the anxiety that had begun to roil again.<br /><br /><em>It&#039;ll be fine. People here are friendly.</em><br /><br />Jack pushed ahead to where the rocky end of White Sands Way rose out of the beach and sheltered a little cove against a backdrop of a twenty-foot-high, rocky cliff where a few dozen people milled about. Several folding tables had been set up beside the impromptu parking lot for the sand-friendly wagons that everyone here seemed to have, and a wide variety of covered dishes were spread out on them, with coolers lined up on an end of the row of tables., and a scattering of folding chairs was littered around what would eventually be the fire. The Dulcettes were the first to greet him, having walked out a hundred feet or so from the crowd to do so.<br /><br />&ldquo;Jack, you made it!&rdquo; Roland said with a clap of his hand to the bear&#039;s back, soon walking alongside him and taking two steps for every one of Jack&#039;s.<br /><br />&ldquo;I told you I would,&rdquo; the bear laughed, &ldquo;I brought some beer, hopefully that&#039;s okay.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, it&#039;s fine, hon! Come on, let&#039;s get you introduced to everyone,&rdquo; Jacquelin said, urging Jack toward the pile of firewood that the residents were busy building up from disassembled delivery pallets, fruit and vegetable crates and driftwood, as well as a reasonable amount gnarled, dead wood that had been harvested from nearby, uninhabited mangrove-overrun islands.<br /><br />As the Dulcettes introduced him around, Jack found himself quickly overwhelmed with the number of names he was assailed with, and eventually resorted to begging for peoples&#039; forgiveness in advance of not remembering them all. This continued a while, but eventually Jack settled in with a group of younger adults from the island; natives - as they called themselves - who were eager to hear about the mainland and Jack&#039;s experience there, foreign as it was to them. It wasn&#039;t long until Jack was exhausted by trying to explain what exactly mechanical engineering entailed, and soon turned the inquisition in the other direction by asking how the others earned a living.<br /><br />He quickly learned that specifically-defined work roles really didn&#039;t exist here amongst those who lived on the island full-time, though plenty of retirees, such as Jack and Bonnie, came with backgrounds in more traditional positions on the mainland before coming to Sol de Vida. Among the natives, however, loosely-defined roles were all that seemed to exist, with some exceptions. Kelly, the vulpine she&#039;d seen at Rikia&#039;s yatai yesterday, was a nurse, and one of the island&#039;s key healthcare workers; she also bore several Lutrai marks of her own, as did her daughter. Lucas, the dingo near Jack&#039;s age, simply &lsquo;fixed things&rsquo; around town and couldn&#039;t elaborate further; he bore a few of the Lutrai marks as well. Carlos, a strikingly attractive black panther a few years older than Jack, prided himself as a procurer. Several others in the group - Kyle, Indie, Danny and Melanie - simply shrugged and admitted to idyllic lives of hammock-lounged beach-bumming and occasional fishing or helper work as it either suited them, or couldn&#039;t be avoided. Richter, a male red kangaroo whose fur was a well-weathered, sun-and-saltwater-faded purple dye-job, was a professional surfer and international DJ who now lived in Sol de Vida for most of the year as he scaled back his travel-heavy careers in his &lsquo;old-age&rsquo;, a phrase Jack thought particularly funny given the kangaroo couldn&#039;t possibly be more than a few years older than himself.<br /><br />It was Carlos, though, who shared the secret of the island&#039;s economy to the bear, as Jack sat on his blanket on the sand working on his fourth beer. The island wasn&#039;t primarily a cash economy; it operated on trade first and foremost. They&#039;d accept cash, of course - it had its uses, especially when acquiring goods sourced from the mainland, but for local services and goods, value was measured in trade and favors beyond their value in currency. Carlos was a proud and highly successful middleman for this economy, at least by his own evaluation; he was a matchmaker that always had an ear out for peoples&#039; skills and what they had to barter, and paired those offerings to others&#039; needs around town, then got them connected. For a <em>price</em>, of course, which couldn&#039;t be expounded upon beyond the implication that Carlos was the sole manager of the bank of favors in Sol de Vida. Carlos took pride in the fact that he hadn&#039;t so much as touched real currency in six years, a point that was obviously repeated to the point of exhaustion as several others in the group finished that sentence in unison with him once he&#039;d started it with rolls of their eyes. <br /><br />&ldquo;Sheez. I guess, uh, put me on the list if anyone needs a machine or mechanism or something built or repaired. Doesn&#039;t much matter what,&rdquo; the bear laughed. &ldquo;Or some gardening&hellip; I&#039;m going to have to come up with <em>something</em> useful I can contribute if I&#039;m going to manage to feed myself all summer,&rdquo; Jack laughed. &ldquo;That or get good at fishing.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;You&#039;re on the list, bro,&rdquo; Carlos said with the barest roll of his r&#039;s that alluded to a life before Sol de Vida. Jack grinned back at him, then looked out toward the sinking disc of the sun on the horizon. His stomach growled as he saw someone pass with a plate heaped with food. <br /><br />&ldquo;Alright, awesome - and enough drinking on an empty stomach, I&#039;ve been smelling that food for too long. Thomas said I had to try the local food, and he doesn&#039;t seem like the sort of guy to ignore the advice of,&rdquo; Jack said, and the small group of others laughed and urged him to get up, heading for the tables themselves. As the bear stood, he looked back toward the bigger gathering of people, scattered around the fire in little pods and pockets of their groups, and realized that there were quite a few younger kids were running around between them. The bear was happy to see that there were more than Kelly&#039;s daughter and Rikia&#039;s son on the island; in fact, nearly ten children were scattered around the cove, all under the age of ten or eleven and all the way down to three or four. He didn&#039;t see the familiar Lutrai boy, but did notice Kelly&#039;s daughter among the group, teasing two older wolf boys - brothers, by the looks of things - in the way that only a little vixen could get away with. She&#039;d run around in the sand and the young wolves would chase her, and just before one would catch her she&#039;d stop short in the sand and cause her pursuers to crash into her from behind. <br /><br />Jack thought that if they weren&#039;t such little kids the game would be outright suggestive given their nudity; every time she got &lsquo;caught&rsquo; she&#039;d stick her butt out a little bit, and hike her tail. The boys - whichever one was lucky enough to catch her that round - would bound in and collide hips-first, collapsing down onto the sand with their arms around her, then they&#039;d both laugh and get up and dust themselves off, and then do it all over again. Jack bet that they thought they were being so slick and getting away with it, but it was funny, and cute, and the few subtle grinds, and peeks of pink that he caught showing from the wolf boys&#039; sheaths as they played with the vixen was very welcome. Then, he started wondering what the little group of youngsters might manage to get up to if they had a bit of privacy.<br /><br />Jack realized he was staring, and thanked the heavens that he wasn&#039;t getting too overtly aroused by the time he caught himself. He caught up in the line and scooped modest - for a bear - helpings of each dish onto his plate. A little bit of everything regardless of first impressions, even if nearly none of it was immediately recognizable in spite of their component parts being identifiable. Canned bean salads, a small selection of olives and smoked fish, and fresh-grilled pineapple and fish saw the majority of the offerings alongside rustic, tough bread that necessitated a piece being torn straight off the boule-style loaf. Most of the offerings were not as expertly balanced or vibrant as Rikia&#039;s offerings from the day prior, but still quite delicious in spite of being tamer selections.<br /><br />As he sat and ate, the group filtered back in around him though conversation had been replaced with commentary on the food and the quiet of a group enjoying a meal together as the bonfire crackled and hissed nearby, and the waves crashed as the tide rolled up the shore, bit by bit.<br /><br />&ldquo;Jack!&rdquo; a tiny voice shouted, moments before a little body impacted his back and he felt a hug from behind. Surprised, Jack nearly dropped his plate and turned, then lifted an arm and looked beneath it at the tiny naked Lutrai boy that was hugging against the bear&#039;s sheer mass. The bear held his flimsy paper plate steady with one hand and scooped the kid up against his side for a more proper hug, adoring the cute kid&#039;s eagerness as he laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hey, Tempesta! I was wondering if I&#039;d get to see you and your momma&#039; here,&quot; Jack laughed. He registered a few playful sounds from the gathering of other young adults around himself, and quirked an eyebrow, but didn&#039;t comment.<br /><br />&ldquo;You&#039;re naked!&rdquo; the kit blurted, which broke the brief tension made by the crowd&#039;s nonverbal commentary, and got Jack and a handful of the others to laugh.<br /><br />&ldquo;So are you, dude! But yeah - I sure am!&rdquo; Jack confirmed, still laughing. &ldquo;I didn&#039;t know how rude it was for me to be wearing clothes on the island when I got here yesterday,&rdquo; the bear admitted, ruffling the young Lutrai&#039;s headfur as he looked around for Rikia, briefly. &ldquo;Guess that makes me a real &lsquo;land-lubbah&rsquo;, right?&rdquo; Jack mused, appreciating their terminology. It fit, and Jack wasn&#039;t about to deny that.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah it does!&rdquo; the Lutrai kid giggled, sharing his brutally honest assessment. &ldquo;You got glowy jellyfish in your ears!&quot; the little kit said, and Jack laughed again.<br /><br />&ldquo;I sure do, buddy. You like &#039;em?&rdquo; Jack asked as he leaned down. The kit stood up on his toes to look closer as he giggled and nodded.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh-huh! They&#039;re pretty!&rdquo; the boy agreed, just before his attention was abruptly drawn elsewhere and he ran off to join the wolves and vixen who had moved on to chasing down ghost crabs in the sand and collecting them in a bucket to populate their growing sand-castle city.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see ya&#039; met Rikia, then,&rdquo; Carlos laughed, lounging back on his blanket in the sand with his hands folded behind his back as Jack continued to pick at his plate, finishing off what he&#039;d taken.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, yeah. She seems nice enough. Hell of a cook, too,&rdquo; Jack commented with a little laugh.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ah, yeah,&rdquo; the panther said with a grin. &ldquo;Just mind your manners; she don&#039;t much appreciate bein&#039; hit on, and she can be really savage when she wants to shut a guy down.&rdquo; Jack couldn&#039;t help but laugh at that.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, yeah. I think I got a taste of that already, and wasn&#039;t even hitting on her,&rdquo; the bear admitted with a quiet bit of reflection. &ldquo;She doesn&#039;t seem so bad though. I imagine she probably gets a lot of that,&quot; Jack admitted, just before he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to see Rikia sitting down beside him on his blanket with a broad, shallow wicker basket against her hip. It was full of ice, atop which shucked oysters were arranged on the half shell, as well as sliced lemons and a bottle of cheap hot sauce.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, land-lubbah. what&#039;s that now? Ya&#039; find yourself a pretty girl on th&#039; island already?&quot; Rikia asked, and Jack felt a pang of panic in his guts that he&#039;d been overheard talking about her. The others just laughed and gave wary &lsquo;oooh&#039;s, which eventually put Jack at ease as he laughed along with them.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, you could say that,&rdquo; Jack admitted with a knowing glance toward Carlos, who held his poker face well.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyy, ya&#039; playin&#039; coy though,&rdquo; Rikia teased the bear, before pushing the basket into his hands. &ldquo;&#039;ere, take one n&#039; pass this &lsquo;roun&rsquo;. Plenty more where that came from, too, yeah.&rdquo; Jack looked down at the shucked oysters with worried consideration. He&#039;d never had oysters before, they weren&#039;t something often encountered in his small Midwestern hometown, nearly seven hundred miles from the nearest saltwater body.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh&hellip;&rdquo; Jack said, briefly dumbfounded. He was willing to try, but wasn&#039;t sure where to start; and despite the obvious simplicity of the task before him, anxiety roared back up in his chest and the bear froze for a moment that hung like an eternity in the bear&#039;s mind. A few friendly chuckles broke out in the group, and Rikia mercifully took the lead after only a couple seconds.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyyy,&quot; the Lutrai woman chided playfully, &quot;Baby-bear don&#039; know how ta&#039; dress &lsquo;n oyster? Let mama Riki &lsquo;elp,&rdquo; Rikia laughed, before reaching over to squeeze a few drops of lemon juice into an oyster, then added a few shakes of hot sauce before lifting it up for the bear to take. Jack readily accepted, and passed the basket on as a few others in the circle chided and jeered at Rikia&rsquo;s playful tease, while a couple others expressed playful wishes for Rikia to let them call her &#039;mama&rsquo;, provoking a webbed middle finger to be thrust in their direction.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, thanks. I&#039;ve never had an oyster before,&rdquo; Jack admitted, with a crooked grin as he surveyed the alien-seeming creature laying in its shell.<br /><br />&ldquo;S&#039;a&#039;right, land-lubbah. Even Lutrai gotta&#039; learn th&#039; firs&#039; time,&quot; the Lutrai smiled as the basket made its way around the circle, with each member of the little group of young adults dressing an oyster for themselves before passing the basket along. &ldquo;So! Sure ya&#039; at leas&#039; know &lsquo;ow to give a toast, yeh? Le&rsquo;s &lsquo;ave one,&rdquo; Rikia asked, elbowing the bear as the basket made its way back to her, and she dressed her own oyster before nestling the basket into the sand. Jack was still recovering from the recent anxious spike, but as he realized he was being put on the spot, he thought quick, came up blank, and with slightly less-quick desperation, dug deep into his writer&#039;s instinct in spite of the fact that most of his writing was mid-tier erotica.<br /><br />&ldquo;Shit, uh. Sure. Yeah, uh,&quot; Jack paused for a few seconds, then spoke up, &quot;Here&#039;s to new friends, new experiences, and with a little luck, a little love - or at least a little lovin&#039;,&rdquo; Jack raised his oyster to the sound of laughter and varied approval with &lsquo;hear, hear!&#039;s from the group, and watched as everyone downed their oysters. He braced himself, then followed suit and turned the oyster up to slide from its shell and onto his tongue. The texture was <em>resoundingly</em> off-putting at first, and Jack blinked his surprise before he caught the slippery-textured oyster between his back teeth and dug into its flesh with a surprisingly fresh, meaty crunch as he took a few chews and swallowed. The taste far offset the texture, though, and Jack soon understood their regard for the delicacy as he looked down at the now-empty shell&#039;s pearly interior in the firelight.<br /><br />&ldquo;Not th&#039; worst toast we&#039;ve gotten from a visitor,&rdquo; Lucas admitted, and Carlos and Kelly both agreed with a laugh as the group settled back into fragmented conversation. Rikia bumped her shoulder in against Jack&#039;s side and smirked up at him as he looked over to her.<br /><br />&ldquo;Lookin&#039; good, land-lubbah. Wan&#039; so hard s&#039;you were makin&#039; out, wassit?&rdquo; Rikia said. Jack took a long few moments to decipher Rikia&#039;s accent, far more prominent in the soft-spoken, close proximity.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, yeah, I guess not. Kind of like you said, right? Like jumping into cold water, the worst part is the anticipation,&rdquo; Jack laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyyy, s&#039;what I&#039;m sayin&#039;,&rdquo; Rikia laughed, turning to face him as she hugged her knees, with her broad tail curled demurely around her hip. &ldquo;Y&#039; settlin&#039; in, then, yeh?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, I guess so. Still trying to figure some things out. I went to pick up some staples at the store, but, uh. I think I&#039;m sort of priced out of the island,&rdquo; the bear laughed. &ldquo;Carlos is gonna&#039; help me find some ways to earn favors and food though, right Carlos?&rdquo; the bear asked, and the panther just flashed a broad grin and a hang-ten at him.<br /><br />&ldquo;Awh, yeah, Mr. Thomas&#039; shop&#039;s pricy if ya&#039; shop like a land-lubbah. Makes &lsquo;is livin&rsquo; off tourists, mostly,&rdquo; Rikia said, before Kelly chimed in, settling on Jack&#039;s other side atop his blanket.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, that and the beer,&rdquo; Kelly said, smiling. Jack fidgeted between the two women who had both settled in close proximity. He could smell heat in the air but wasn&#039;t sure from which side. It was <em>not</em> helping his efforts to stay modest, and he drew his knees up and together as he felt an erection growing. He&#039;d been particularly sensitive to the smell of heat since puberty; specifically since the aptly-named Heatwave that had curious and lasting effects on pretty much everyone in his hometown, and had more prominent long-term effects on those who were still going through puberty at the time. As far as any doctors or experts could tell, the Heatwave was what he and many other males from his town had to thank for their near-absurd ejaculatory volume, even.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, for sure the beer,&rdquo; Jack mumbled, remembering the steep cost as he tried to will away his erection, and found himself handily failing to do so as a fresh waft of that scent hit his nose. Jack gave an uncomfortable squirm, just before the little Lutrai boy and the young vixen bounded up to the group.<br /><br />&ldquo;Look what Gramma Dulcette gave us t&#039;play with!&rdquo; the Lutrai boy announced to Jack, proudly holding up a deflated ball that had flashing red lights inside it. &ldquo;Will ya&#039; blow it up for us?&rdquo; Jack&#039;s attention went to the ball and the bear smiled.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, hey, that&#039;s pretty cool! Sure, give it here,&rdquo; Jack said, holding his hand out for the ball. Once he had it, he hunted for the valve before pulling it open and hauling a comically deep breath in, and then blew into the ball, nearly fully inflating it in a single breath. As he was blowing, his eyes strayed south, where, unashamed, the Lutrai boy&#039;s penis stood up proudly against his stomach, fully erect from its sheath. There was no telling what the two had been up to while he wasn&#039;t paying attention, but given the show the young vixen was putting on earlier, coupled with the glint of slickness on the little Lutrai&#039;s boyhood, Jack&#039;s imagination had no trouble coming up with ideas. Jack had to force his eyes off of the boy&#039;s member and winced as he felt his own erection finally breach the opening of his sheath and nudge out into the open. If it kept growing there would be no missing it even if he tried to hide it.<br /><br /><em>Fuck, fuck, fuck..!</em> <br /><br />He desperately changed the subject in his head as he hauled another breath in and blew into the ball until its surface was taut, and sealed the valve closed again before offering it back to the kids with a forced smile.<br /><br />&ldquo;There you guys go. Knock yourselves out,&rdquo; Jack said, trying to play it cool.<br /><br />&ldquo;Come play with us!&rdquo; the kids suddenly urged the bear. Jack briefly wondered why the kids were so fascinated by him, but it wasn&#039;t entirely uncommon. He was quite likely the largest person either of them had ever met; that was the usual point of interest kids found in him.<br /><br />&ldquo;Maybe in a little bit, guys. But only if I can take a swim first,&quot; Jack said, trying to figure out how he was going to make it to the water in his state.<br /><br />&ldquo;Kay!&rdquo; the two kids chimed in unison, as they ran off to play in a tide pool.<br /><br />---<br /><br />The evening wore late, and soon most of the children had been taken home and put to bed, save for Tempesta and Jannet, who had fallen asleep together atop Jack&#039;s blanket beside the fire nearly an hour ago; the perfect picture of young love. Jack sat with Rikia, Kelly and Lucas as they passed the second joint of the evening between themselves, providing ample social lubricant as the group sat just beyond the high tide mark, letting the crashing surf roll up around their feet as they chatted. Lucas coughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&#039;m serious, man. This stuff is worth its weight in gold around here, I can&#039;t believe you&#039;re just sharing it with us,&rdquo; the coyote coughed again, passing the smoldering joint to Kelly again, who was obviously a much more experienced pot-smoker.<br /><br />&ldquo;Nah, more&#039;n&#039;at,&rdquo; Rikia said, her accent near-indecipherable as she&#039;d grown more and more inebriated from the bear&#039;s offering.<br /><br />&ldquo;Whatever. It&#039;s more fun to share,&rdquo; Jack laughed, leaning back on his outstretched hands as the surf rolled up to his knees. Another lull settled over the group as Jack took a long drag and held the hit, passing the smoldering roach over to Rikia. He exhaled with a chuckle. &ldquo;Shit, if I&#039;d have known there was such a demand for the stuff here, I would&#039;ve brought some seeds. Free the herb, you know.&rdquo; Lucas laughed again, until he coughed into the crook of his elbow again and Kelly patted his back with a few solid slaps.<br /><br />&ldquo;Ah, yeh. f&#039;got y&#039;did plants. Makin&#039; sense now, y&#039;d prolly know that&#039;n too. Y&#039;get th&#039; lilies in?&rdquo; Rikia wondered, before finishing off the roach&#039;s last pinch and snuffing the tiny bit of tarry paper out in the wet sand.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah,&rdquo; Jack said, finding her accent easier and easier to decipher as time went on, &ldquo;All in the back path on the way to the beach. I hope the skunks are happy with it.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Awh, they&#039;re a nice bunch, I&#039;m sure they&#039;ll be happy with it,&rdquo; Kelly chimed in as she leaned against Lucas&#039; shoulder. Rikia scooted a bit closer to Jack, and lazily curled her muscular tail around his opposite hip as she shouldered up against the bear&#039;s arm. Jack froze for a few moments, at a complete loss of how to respond, before he looked down with a little smile, and scooched his arm back a little to let her nestle her shoulder up to his side. It was starting to get a little chilly out, though Jack suspected the Lutrai&#039;s fur was well-insulated enough against the breeze that the chill wasn&#039;t why she&#039;d come closer.<br /><br />&ldquo;Lilies&#039;re special t&#039;Lutrai, y&#039;know,&rdquo; Rikia commented cozily as she gazed out over the water, the reflections of moonlight making it glitter.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah? Is that why you&#039;ve got a marking shaped like one?&rdquo; Jack asked, debating whether or not to rest his hand on Rikia&#039;s hip. The others&#039; caution shared earlier that night helped him decide against it.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyyy, land-lubbah. Y&#039;stealin&#039; looks again?&rdquo; Rikia teased, horrifying Jack that he might have breached some other unspoken protocol. It was only when Lucas and Kelly laughed at the bear&#039;s flustered stammer that Jack realized he&#039;d been had.<br /><br />&ldquo;Shit, not cool, man. I&#039;m too high to get teased like that,&rdquo; Jack laughed, flopping back in the sand and rubbing the bridge of his muzzle.<br /><br />&ldquo;Haa! Bu&#039; yeh, m&#039; mark says &lsquo;ll do anythin&rsquo; ta&#039; take care&#039;a him, fer&#039;evuh,&rdquo; Rikia nudged her head back toward her sleeping son, spooned with the little vixen beside the smoldering embers of the bonfire. &ldquo;Same&#039;s his mark says. &lsquo;m gonna&#039; be there s&#039;long&#039;s I can fer &lsquo;im. Even when e&rsquo;s a big strong stud wit &lsquo;is own kids,&rdquo; Rikia grinned, her whiskers bristling in the night air.<br /><br />&ldquo;That&#039;s actually really sweet,&rdquo; Jack said, grinning at the thought of her devotion, though his stream of consciousness brought another question quickly to mind. &ldquo;Hey; I heard Lutrai fur dye was permanent, is that true?&rdquo; Rikia laughed, and Lucas and Kelly did too.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, land-lubbah. A blessin&#039; fr&#039;m Kij n&#039; our prom&#039;ses t&#039;each othah&#039; don&#039; fade, n&#039; thass&#039; wha&#039; they stan&#039; for. Wan&#039; see fer y&#039;self?&rdquo; Rikia asked, scooting to face her back to Jack as he sat back up with great interest as she revealed her Goddess sun to him. It seemed to shimmer with a wet sheen under the sun, but at night, the white dye caught the moon with a haunting, blue-white luminescence that he&#039;d never quite seen before. He timidly reached out, and a carefully-blunted clawtip nestled into the fur over one of the markings, splitting the hairs and showing the bear the underside. Unexpectedly, the dye didn&#039;t simply lie atop the hairs, but it seemed to have bleached them all the way down to the root; or at least as far as Jack could see through the young Lutrai woman&#039;s incredibly dense pelt, short as it was.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, cool,&rdquo; Jack said, feeling a little silly for exploring with such childlike fascination, but he didn&#039;t let that stop him. &ldquo;I really do love your markings. They&#039;re so pretty. I&#039;d never expected there to be so many, all over, like you&#039;ve got though. Especially on the little guy.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Lots of blessings, lots of love with Lutrai,&rdquo; Kelly chimed in, and Lucas followed quickly after.<br /><br />&ldquo;You should see some of the elders, dude. Rikia&#039;s grandmother came to visit last year, and if you think Rikia&#039;s covered, you haven&#039;t seen the half of it,&rdquo; the coyote laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, ev&#039;one&#039;s got th&#039;own story, y&#039;know,&rdquo; Rikia said, smiling. &ldquo;Ev&#039;one gets the Goddess first, n&#039;, uh&hellip;&quot; Rikia hunted for a word, before she shrugged and leaned back against Jack&#039;s curious touch. &ldquo;Eh, y&#039;know. Firs&#039; fish, firs&#039; pearl, firs&#039; wavedance,&rdquo; Rikia commented, pointing out various marks on her arms and torso. &ldquo;Firs&#039; Kitseve gets, a, uh, fertility mark,&rdquo; Rikia commented, casually scooting back against Jack&#039;s side and grabbing his huge hand to rest it on her bare stomach, over the whirlpool marking that was punctuated by the ring in her navel. Jack felt a twinge in his sheath and dug his toes into the sand to distract himself as he raked his claws lazily through the Lutrai woman&#039;s soft pelt. Kelly gave a knowing chuckle at that one, as did Lucas, and when Jack looked, they were showing their own fertility marks. Kelly&#039;s was right on her pelvis, far lower than Rikia&#039;s. Lucas&#039; on the inside of his left thigh.<br /><br />&ldquo;Woah, guys get them too?&rdquo; Jack wondered aloud, briefly lost in childlike wonder as his heavy hand roamed aimlessly on the contours of Rikia&#039;s stomach. She was so fit, a slender, long torso with a core of muscle just barely hidden by insulating fur and the slightest little bit of subcutaneous fat.<br /><br />&ldquo;Takes two to make a kit,&rdquo; Lucas laughed. &ldquo;Every Lutrai ends up getting a bunch of markings, man. Guys, girls, whatever. Once you&#039;re part of the tribe you&#039;re basically a canvas for the shamaness,&quot; he joked, and Kelly and Rikia both laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;Alright, yeah, that&#039;s fair. How, uh - is it okay to ask how you guys joined the tribe?&rdquo; Jack wondered as he looked over to the others. Kelly scoffed dismissively to the bear&#039;s concern.<br /><br />&ldquo;Well, yeah, how else are you gonna learn? Rikia invited us to Kitseve a couple years ago. We got initiated there. That&#039;s where Jannet got her mark, too, since I couldn&#039;t exactly leave her behind. Besides, she kept Tempie good company,&rdquo; the vixen smiled.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, s&#039; th&#039;easiest way t&#039;become Lutrai,&rdquo; Rikia mused. &ldquo;Otha&#039; ways too, but none&#039;s &lsquo;zactly simple s&#039; comin&#039; to Kitseve n&#039; doin&#039; what come natural,&rdquo; Rikia laughed.<br /><br />&ldquo;Jeez. Well, I don&#039;t know much about living as a Lutrai or joining tribes or anything, so I&#039;ll take your word for it,&rdquo; Jack laughed. &ldquo;It&#039;s such a cool look though. And I can tell it&#039;s meaningful too. I can respect that,&rdquo; the bear said, soon realizing he&#039;d relaxed more as the feeling of naked fur under his palm had become more natural and familiar. His thoughts strayed to Emma, and how his hand would settle on her stomach like this as they watched a movie or TV together. Before he could catch himself, he lowered his hand and planted it back in the sand, leaving the Lutrai woman leaning against his side. &ldquo;Ah, uh. It&#039;s getting late,&rdquo; the bear commented.<br /><br />&ldquo;Wha&#039;, y&#039;got big t&#039;ings need done in th&#039; mornin&#039;, land-lubbah?&rdquo; Rikia challenged with a broad grin. Jack couldn&#039;t help but laugh. <br /><br />&ldquo;Well, no, I guess not, but it&#039;s been a pretty full day,&rdquo; Jack admitted, as he stifled a more genuine yawn. <br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, c&#039;n &#039;magine&#039;s a bit ta&#039; get used ta&#039;, y&#039;know. A&#039;right, s&#039;late, I admit; walk m&lsquo;ome? Nah&rsquo; far from &#039;ere,&rdquo; Rikia commented with a beaming smile. Kelly laughed as Lucas was whispering into her ear, then looked up to the others.<br /><br />&ldquo;Rikia, would you mind if Jannet slept over at yours tonight?&rdquo; the vixen asked. Jack didn&#039;t need any further explanation, and apparently Rikia didn&#039;t either.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, you dogs; single&#039;anded gon&#039; bump up th&#039; Sol de Vida pop&#039;lation,&rdquo; Rikia chided, making Kelly and Lucas both laugh, and Jack followed suit quickly. &ldquo;Yeh, y&#039;ave fun. C&#039;mon, Jack, &lsquo;ey wan&rsquo; take y&#039;toast t&#039; heart,&quot; Rikia urged as she stood. Jack followed her lead, and strode into the surf to wash the worst of the sand off of himself, before heading back up the shore and to the outstretched blanket, where the two kids were fast asleep; Tempesta on his back and Jannet with her head on his chest, the two loosely embraced still. Jack busied himself with dousing the bonfire with a couple buckets of water and stirring the embers into wet sand at the bottom of the fire pit, before helping Rikia load their coolers into her wagon. The bear bundled both of the children into the big blanket together and scooped them up against his chest, careful to not jostle them too much. The kids reflexively wrapped their arms around his shoulders and neck as Rikia led him up the path to White Sands Way.<br /><br />&ldquo;So, mistah&#039; gard&#039;nah. Y&#039;grow veggies n&#039; &lsquo;erbs n&rsquo; edible stuff too,&nbsp;&nbsp;yeh?&rdquo; Rikia asked, strolling slowly along while Jack effortlessly carried the children against his chest, wrapped in the blanket.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, yeah. Most of that stuff is easy, with the right conditions,&rdquo; Jack quietly murmured, careful to not wake the pups snuggled up to his chest. &ldquo;Enough for your restaurant might be a bit of work though, depending on what you&#039;re trying to do,&rdquo; the bear supposed; it was an easy guess.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, &lsquo;magine gettin&rsquo;uff for ev&rsquo;ry day&#039;s a job, bu&#039;, y&#039;know. Special &lsquo;casions n&rsquo; a staple &#039;r two, maybe, yeh?&rdquo; she grinned. Jack shrugged, and hefted the little vixen up a bit higher on his arm. She stirred and rubbed her face against his shoulder, giving a squeaky vulpine yawn into his fur.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah, special occasions, for sure. If we can get some seeds, soil and pots, the rest shouldn&#039;t be so bad. Those chilis you like to cook with should be easy enough to grow,&rdquo; Jack grinned as he strolled along the sandy, well-weathered boards of the path with RIkia. &ldquo;Maybe even some citrus trees, or avocado plants,&rdquo; Jack considered, as Rikia shrugged.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, whaddever we c&#039;n do,&rdquo; the Lutrai woman said, tipping her head. &ldquo;Tha&#039;s us,&rdquo; she said, indicating the reed-walled hut, one of the last structures on White Sands Way, and easily the most primitive despite its good craftsmanship. Jack felt a window of opportunity closing, and finally spoke up.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, hey. I was meaning to say thanks for the warm welcome, yesterday. And&hellip;sorry about the misunderstanding with the, uh. The whole clothes thing, and &hellip; you know. Being a stupid, rude tourist,&rdquo; Jack said, his voice lowering to a low murmur as Rikia turned to him, as he held both the kits still against his shoulders. Her expression was odd, and one that Jack hadn&#039;t anticipated.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;Ey, ev&#039;one gotta&#039; start som&#039;ere,&rdquo; she said, grinning. &ldquo;Yer doin&#039; good, Jack; all&#039;s we ask is y&#039; try. C&#039;mon in; watch y&#039;head, n&#039; y&#039;can put th&#039; kiddos in th&#039; hammock,&rdquo; Rikia said, easing the door of her home open and inviting the bear inside. Jack had to duck considerably, but slowly squeezed through the doorway, and, after his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, he laid the two young kits together on the netting, still wrapped in the blanket. They embraced each other and shifted to get comfortable without waking. As Jack looked up, he saw Rikia standing in the rear doorway of the hut, holding two beers and gesturing for him to follow, which he did without question.<br /><br />The rear door of her hut opened directly to the beach, the high-water mark just a dozen meters from the back door, if even that. Three enormous surfboards, easily twelve feet long, were propped against the back of the hut, two of which were heavily decorated in festive, colorful Lutrai markings. The rocky ridge at the end of the island was descending again to the sea, reduced to weather-worn sandstone boulders that dotted the beach beyond the high water mark. Rikia strolled out and sat on a low, smooth stone and patted the spot beside herself, just out of conversational earshot of the hut as the moonlight glinted off the rising tide. Jack sat beside her and looked out over the water as he accepted the offered bottle.<br /><br />&ldquo;You surf?&rdquo; Jack wondered as he settled in, having noticed the boards.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeh, only like &#039;s m&#039; r&#039;ligion,&quot; Rikia flashed the little grin Jack was soon finding characteristic of her, &ldquo;Lutrai call it th&#039;wave dance. Stan&#039; on th&#039; water unner our goddess&#039; light n&#039; show &lsquo;er &lsquo;ow we know &lsquo;er ocean, list&#039;n t&#039;it an&#039; dance wit&rsquo; th&#039; motion&#039;a th&#039; waves n&#039; celebrate &lsquo;er gifts ta&rsquo; us.&rdquo; Jack had never thought of surfing as a religious practice, but with Rikia&#039;s explanation he easily saw its importance.<br /><br />&ldquo;Woah. It must be amazing to see you out there,&rdquo; Jack commented, at a bit of a loss for words. <br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, you&#039;ll see it sure&#039;s rain n&#039; sun. Mos&#039; early mornin&#039;s&#039;ll see Ric out on &lsquo;is liddle board too, leas&#039; on th&rsquo; rougher side a&#039; th&#039; isle. &lsquo;e likes th&rsquo; big waves,&rdquo; Rikia mused with a gesture that invoked the idea of high surf well enough. &ldquo;Lutrai board like th&#039; calm water on th&#039; reef, liddle swells n&#039;&nbsp;&nbsp;loooong rides,&rdquo; she explained. Jack understood the physics of it well enough to not feel the need to seek further clarification.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&#039;ll have to go for an early walk soon, then&hellip; It really is beautiful, here,&rdquo; he commented, just to fill the silence as Rikia took a drink. Jack did the same as she scooted closer, only to nestle against the side of the bear&#039;s bulk again, just as she had earlier. She urged his fingers back to her belly, where she palmed the back of his huge hand and laced her fingers between his from behind.<br /><br />&ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo; Rikia wondered, unprompted. The question briefly baffled Jack. <br /><br />&ldquo;Huh..?&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Who <em>is</em> she? C&#039;n tell by th&#039; way ya&#039; touch know a lady&#039;s curves, n&#039; th&#039;way ya&#039; shy away back in th&#039; cove. Y&#039; known love, n&#039; got mem&#039;ry tha&#039;s still sore&#039;s a shark bite,&quot; Rikia said, gingerly pressing Jack&#039;s fingers back to her stomach. &ldquo;This paw&#039;s used ta&#039; bein&#039; here, or was, once.&rdquo; Jack sifted his claws through Rikia&#039;s tummy fur, tenderly outlining her bellybutton for a moment as he collected his thoughts.<br /><br />&ldquo;You&#039;ve got good intuition,&rdquo; the bear observed with a defeated chuckle. &quot;Was. Not anymore,&rdquo; Jack admitted, lazily sifting his toes into the sand, and finding rock a few inches down. &ldquo;It didn&#039;t work out. Nothing bad, but, well. She moved on,&quot; Jack said, plainly. He didn&#039;t want to get into it, so late at night, and with someone he only barely knew.<br /><br />&ldquo;N&#039; you &lsquo;aven&rsquo;t?&rdquo; Rikia wondered, nestling her tail along Jack&#039;s hip, &ldquo;&#039;r, maybe y&#039;ave, n&#039; ain&#039; realize yet. <em>Was</em>,&rdquo; Rikia reflected, making Jack chuckle sheepishly.<br /><br />&ldquo;You sound like my counselor,&rdquo; Jack teased, evading the question, secretly a little flustered by her powers of observation. The proximity had Jack feeling the slow stirring of erection in his sheath again, but he made no effort to will it away. He took another long drink from the bottle in his free hand.<br /><br />&ldquo;S&#039;at so bad? Was gon&#039; be a shamaness, &lsquo;fore&hellip;well. Things change. Y&rsquo;know,&rdquo; Rikia said, leaning her head back against Jack&#039;s chest as her head tipped up, and she took another drink from her own bottle.<br /><br />&ldquo;Yeah. I know what you mean,&rdquo; Jack mumbled, a little distantly. The drinks and weed had gotten to his head, and he was starting to get introspective in the late hour. &ldquo;I guess I&#039;m still figuring out where I want to go, now,&rdquo; he finally admitted. Short and to the point.<br /><br />&ldquo;Mnh. Step outta&#039; old life, inta&#039; new one. S&#039;at why yer really &lsquo;ere in Sol de Vida?&quot; Rikia wondered, though after a long pause, she followed up. &quot;&hellip;&rsquo;ey, s&#039;okay if ya&#039; nah&#039; ready to talk, eh?&rdquo; Rikia wondered, tipping her head up to look to the bear. Gazing across the gentle surf that glittered in the moonlight, Jack let himself remain lost in quiet thought about Emma, and the bitter-sweet sonder that came with it for just a few moments longer before he answered.<br /><br />&ldquo;Just thinking,&rdquo; Jack admitted, finally fidgeting slightly as he felt the cool breeze off the water dancing over the emerging flesh between his thighs. Thankfully, Rikia had yet to notice it. &ldquo;I think Sol de Vida is the first step, yeah. My friend thought this place would be good for me,&quot; Jack rumbled quietly as his thumb trailed a slow rift through Rikia&#039;s fur, just under her breast and down over her long stomach again. &quot;So, you said things change. Curious what you mean.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;Mm, yeh. Wasn&#039; expectin&#039; it, but, well. Th&#039; guppy&#039;s a gift, n&#039; love &lsquo;im. But &rsquo;e was a surprise, inna&#039; sense,&rdquo; Rikia admitted. Jack could tell she was choosing her words carefully. &ldquo;They, uh. They call it th&#039; Heatwave, n&#039;, well. Long story short, th&#039; need got away from me n&#039; &lsquo;is daddy. &lsquo;fore I know, &rsquo;m fat n&#039; on th&#039; mainland, no money, surrounded by land-lubbahs, n&#039; &#039;is daddy&#039;s headin&#039; home t&#039; fish for &#039;is island. S&#039; big trouble - n&#039;auh&hellip;&quot; Rikia caught herself, chasing the right word, &quot;S&#039; &#039;<em>complicated</em>&#039;, but we can&#039;t live t&#039;gether, there. So guppy n&#039; me made a life &lsquo;ere, n&#039; keep th&#039; way we know wit&#039; our lil&#039; tribe in Sol de Vida, n&#039; visit &#039;ome when we can.&quot;<br /><br />&ldquo;You were in the Heatwave? Small world,&rdquo; Jack admitted. He could sense she didn&#039;t want to get into the details about Tempesta&#039;s father, so didn&#039;t press the matter.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyyy, dolphin inna&#039; pod; knew &lsquo;ere&rsquo;s some&#039;n special &lsquo;bout you,&rdquo; Rikia laughed. Jack did, too. &ldquo;So, s&#039;at mean &#039;ere&#039;s a lil&rsquo; Jack &lsquo;re two run &rsquo;round summ&#039;ere?&rdquo;<br /><br />&quot;Uh&hellip;no, Em and I, uh&hellip; Well, we couldn&#039;t keep it. We both grew up in the city where the Heatwave hit hardest, though,&rdquo; Jack said quietly, ruminating for a few moments longer on just how close he and Em came to having that life that she wanted together, if only they weren&#039;t so young when it happened. His fingers slowly curled in, until the palm of his fist was simply resting atop Rikia&#039;s stomach. She fidgeted at his big hand and pushed it open again, then nestled hers inside it, stretching her fingers&#039; webbing back as she laced her fingers neatly between his.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, &lsquo;m sorry. Shouldn&rsquo; pry,&rdquo; Rikia said. A brief silence welled with tension for a few moments. &ldquo;Y&#039;a cozy cuddler, y&#039;know,&rdquo; Rikia said, relieving the tension for a brief moment. <br /><br />&ldquo;So are you,&rdquo; Jack said with a smile as he looked out at the water again, his thumb tracing along Rikia&#039;s wrist as she held two of his fingers to keep his hand against her breastbone.<br /><br />&ldquo;Plus, y&#039;&#039;don&#039; stink like land-lubbah,&rdquo; she giggled faintly, arching upward toward the bear and giving a few playful sniffs at him. &ldquo;Juss&#039; warm bear boy n&#039; ocean water. Propah.&quot; Jack laughed even more.<br /><br />&ldquo;Uh, thanks. Not the first to say they liked that,&quot; Jack admitted. More memories of Emma welled up, and were shut back out as fast as they came. &quot;I&#039;ve never been a fan of stuff that tries to make me smell different than I do. It all just seems to make me smell <em>worse</em>,&rdquo; he chuckled a bit sheepishly, and Rikia smirked as she casually played with the bear&#039;s bracelets, leaving his palm flat against her chest. &ldquo;This has been a pretty awesome night. Thanks for &hellip;well, everything. I&#039;m glad you found this hopeless &lsquo;land-lubbah&rsquo; tourist and made him feel at home,&rdquo; Jack admitted. Rikia grinned. <br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;Eyyy, you ain&#039;no tourist, n&#039; I still feel bad fer callin&#039; y&#039;one. Nah, y&#039; come here n&#039; y&#039;<em>see</em> us, n&#039; come in at our level, even if ya&#039; took a bit. We gon&#039; make a Lutrai outta&#039; you yet, juss&#039; you watch.&quot; Rikia smiled, before fidgeting slightly against the bear&#039;s side. &quot;&#039;ey, wanna know somethin&#039;?&rdquo; the Lutrai asked, looking up to Jack again. <br /><br />Jack looked down with a questioning noise, and Rikia beckoned him closer. As he leaned in, she leaned up, and met his lips with hers, stealing a kiss that the bear answered with a slight tip of his head and a brush of his pierced tongue against her lip as his eyes closed for a brief moment. His erection throbbed, nearly instantly aching-hard, and he could feel it pressing between the Lutrai woman&#039;s shoulder blades as she leaned against his belly. The kiss broke after a lingering moment.<br /><br />&ldquo;<em>Shhhit</em>, uh, s-sorry,&rdquo; Jack mumbled, and Rikia gave a faint little giggle, and playful shimmy against the nudging against her back as she grinned. The Lutrai reached up and reassuringly caressed the bear&#039;s ear, thumbing at the faintly glowing, glass jellyfish-plug in its lobe.<br /><br />&ldquo;S&#039;alright. C&#039;n I see?&rdquo; she hummed faintly as she turned and looked down, without waiting for Jack&#039;s confirmation. Jack&#039;s heart sank as she did so, quietly embarrassed at his reaction from the kiss and such simple closeness. It was only a natural reaction to the intimacy, but what if she thought he was being presumptuous? Not that he could help it. But, he was even less prepared for the impressed vocalization from the Lutrai woman. &ldquo;&#039;ey, Kij blessin&#039;s, look at&#039;cha!&rdquo; the Lutrai woman laughed, sitting up suddenly and turning to regard the bear properly, who started laughing sheepishly, himself.<br /><br />&ldquo;I told you I got hit pretty hard during the Heatwave,&rdquo; Jack admitted. He was fully erect, his beer-bottle-thick-based, flare-tipped bear erection standing out under his belly nearly a full foot and already oozing a clear strand of precum to the ground. &ldquo;Sorry, uh&hellip; The closeness got to me, I guess,&rdquo; Jack laughed, &ldquo;It&#039;s, uh, been a while.&rdquo; Rikia finished her bottle of beer and nestled the empty into the sand by the rock. Jack followed her lead, and did the same.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, ain&#039;othin&#039; but a compl&#039;ment,&rdquo; Rikia admitted, pressing back to the bear&#039;s side, now turned to regard the massive arousal that jutted from his sheath. &ldquo;&#039;ey, glad s&#039;mother folk &lsquo;roun&rsquo; here with a bit a&#039; jewl&#039;ry, too, by th&#039; by,&rdquo; the Lutrai teased as she sank her fingers into the fur of the bear&#039;s thigh, and glided them inward as the bear relaxed a little. Her touch was confident but gentle, as her thumb traced along the ring in the base of the bear&#039;s sheath. &ldquo;C&#039;n, uh. Mnh,&rdquo; the Lutrai woman paused, with a playful little flustered sound, utterly unique in Rikia&#039;s presentation, and unlike anything Jack had seen from the Lutrai woman thus far. &ldquo;Sheesh. I, eruhh, d&#039;you, uh&hellip;want s&#039;m&#039;elp? I got sof&#039; hands,&quot; Rikia promised, causing a pang of ill-defined guilt to build in Jack&#039;s belly almost instantly.<br /><br />&ldquo;Oh, h-hey, wait, no, you don&#039;t have to&hellip;&rdquo; Jack stammered, and Rikia&#039;s puzzled expression made him stop and carefully reconsider his words. Jack leaned down and kissed Rikia again to reassure her, before he touched his forehead to hers and huffed a soft breath as he embraced her against his bulk. &ldquo;I don&#039;t want to mess up our friendship, or whatever this is, is all. I like you, and don&#039;t want to, like&hellip;make things complicated.&rdquo; Rikia listened to the bear, resting her cheek on his chest. She curled at his side and softly sifted her webbed fingers through the ruff of thick pubic fur under the bear&#039;s bellybutton, the back of her knuckles gingerly touching the spine of the bear&#039;s member with a slow, teasing drag through the steady issue of slimy precum that was drooling down his length.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;eyy,&quot; Rikia&#039;s familiar, playful chiding call came, &quot;I see where ya&#039; comin&#039; from. Don&#039; y&#039; go&#039;n&#039; run yet Jack; we ain&#039; but juss&#039; start a walk,&quot; Rikia smirked. &ldquo;Lutrai han&#039;shake, yeh? Lil&#039; bit a&#039; fun f&#039; fun&#039;s sake, &#039;tween friends, lovers, anyone close&#039;nuff, n&#039; don&#039; mean much&#039;a nothin&#039; thass&#039; gon&#039; make any&#039;tin <em>complicated</em>. Y&#039;can worry &lsquo;bout &#039;at if I ask ya&#039; to put a baby in m&#039;belly, or give m&#039;a lily,&rdquo; she teased as her fingers slipped down the side of his sheath and lifted one of his balls, the size of a navel orange in its fluffy sack. &ldquo;<em>Kij bless</em>,&rdquo; she repeated her impressed oath, &quot;Y&#039; don&#039; <em>look</em> so big thank&#039;ta th&#039; ress of ya&#039;, but y&#039;re a <em>monsta&#039;</em>,&rdquo; Rikia laughed incredulously. Jack laughed along with her again.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hah! Thanks, I think&hellip; But, y-yeah, alright, in that case&hellip;yeah, if the feeling&#039;s mutual. But I get to do you first,&rdquo; the bear urged with a smirk.<br /><br />&ldquo;&#039;ey, a gennleman too,&rdquo; Rikia mused as she stood to kiss him properly again, without forcing him to bend down to meet her this time. As she kissed him, Jack embraced her with a palm between her shoulder blades, with the other scooped under her rump to draw her close to him as their tongues played against one another for a few more seconds.<br /><br />Rikia gave a giddy little squeal at the abrupt and effortless heft from the bear that lifted her up and laid her back atop his outstretched hands, until her legs easily hung over his shoulders and he supported her entire weight cradled in his flattened hands, his elbows braced to his knees for stability. Jack buried his chin between her thighs and his muzzle low on her stomach and breathed a deep, slow breath through his nose; beneath the all-natural, exotic warmth of the lutrai&#039;s body he could smell heat on her, the source of that intoxicating smell that kept wafting to him earlier, the lingering effects of the Heatwave that still called those who&#039;d been effected together with a sense of near desperate need. His thoughts strayed again; if this did turn into something more, he knew they would have to be exceedingly careful, always, as their mutually high fertility all but guaranteed children if they lost control of themselves while she was in season. <br /><br /><em>No, not worth thinking about, now. That&#039;s a conversation for later. Focus.</em><br /><br />Jack growled softly as he nuzzled along her stomach and pelvis, tucking his nose lower. Rikia twisted and laughed at the bear&#039;s deep snuffling, gripping fist-fulls of Jack&#039;s tough, scruffy fur on the back of his neck and sifting her fingers up through his headfur as the bear balanced her effortlessly on his palms. She arched her back and crooned out a sweet noise to the starry sky as Jack&#039;s tongue painted a long, slow stroke from her under-tail to her bellybutton ring, washing across her doughy folds with a single, brave stroke that made her gasp with excitement. The second broad washing of the bear&#039;s tongue applied more focused pressure, and the smooth, hard ball of his tongue&#039;s barbell dug smoothly through the groove of her plump, soaking sex and across the stud in her clitoral hood, eliciting a tense in her core that made her hips buck lightly in spite of the massive muscle&#039;s lack of finely-focused precision.<br /><br />&ldquo;Mnh! Aw-yeh, juss&#039; like that, mnh.&rdquo; Rikia crooned. Jack was eager to follow her direction, breathing deep breaths of her intoxicating scent as he began to hungrily lap through her folds, focusing rolls and twists of his tongue against her pearl as it began to firm beneath its pierced hood, and Jack nuzzled the ring back down against it. The motion of his nose grinding to that pearl was answered with a grind up from the Lutrai woman who gasped and whimpered sweetly. She pulled his hair lightly and urged him to twist his muzzle to the side, her own thighs spreading wider to make room as she ground in response to the bear&#039;s broad-washing tongue. Jack flattened his tongue out and pressed up again, until his tongue-stud clicked against the stud in her clitoral hood again and he tucked it beneath, rolling the smooth, warm metal ball around her clit directly for just a single swipe, laughing through his nose at the Lutrai woman&#039;s giggling yelp of ecstasy that it brought.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hyah~! D-do&#039;at &lsquo;gain,&rdquo; Rikia giggled, fidgeting atop the bear&rsquo;s hands who held her securely. Jack obliged, eagerly rolling the barbell piercing under her hood in the breaks between delving his muscular, broad tongue up into her heat-soaked depths with curling, deep swipes that reeled out her delicious, ocean-water-salty juices as she leaked openly for him. He felt her tremble, sensed her teetering, fluttering on the verge as he twisted his head in the other direction and attacked from a new angle. The Lutrai writhed and whimpered in his grasp, tensing until she&#039;d simply latched onto his head, hugging around it and curled over the top of his muzzle and head as her hips bucked, and she stifled a cry into the nape of his neck as the bear buried his tongue to her cervix, grinding the hard ball of his tongue-stud against her insides while his nose smeared her slickness back against her own clit. The rush of fluid into his mouth and down his chin brought an eager, needy growl from the bear as he tasted Rikia&#039;s drenching heat, while she pulled his hair and ears and rode against his face desperately in her climax.<br /><br />Jack redoubled his efforts as the Lutrai woman&#039;s hips ground forward against his nose, and she clutched his scruff and pinned his head in his lap with desperate urging that he answered with further urgent working of his tongue through her fluttering, tugging walls as she ground her clit to his nose. The Lutrai woman only eased up after nearly three minutes, gasping and giggling still as she leaned back and Jack caught her in his hands again, nuzzling along her lap and grazing deep, swiping strokes of his tongue over her folds still as she came down and crooned an adoring noise. <br /><br />&ldquo;Ahyeh, haaa&hellip;ooh, ain&#039;t been treated like&#039;at inna&#039; while,&rdquo; Rikia giggled, biting her lip as Jack slowly twirled his tongue piercing under her hood once more, making her toes curl again before he finally withdrew, and, despite the mess she&#039;d made of his face, grinned at her with a playful, panting huff.<br /><br />&ldquo;Haven&#039;t gotten to treat someone like that in a while either,&quot; Jack rumbled with a low, horny growl. &quot;You taste amazing,&rdquo; he huffed, leaning forward to share the taste with Rikia via another kiss, which she urgently returned. Jack drew her to his chest and simply held her for several long moments as she regained her composure, and then stood, and took the bear&#039;s hands in hers.<br /><br />&ldquo;C&#039;mere, land-lubbah; down t&#039; the water,&rdquo; Rikia urged. Jack stood, walking behind her as Rikia lead him down to the shoreline and quite simply sat in the surf, tugging Jack down to join her. Jack knelt, and she pulled him into a kiss again, before urging the bear over her as she laid back, and the surf rolled up around her, sinking her slightly into the sand. Jack&#039;s knees dug deep into the sand on either side of her hips, and he braced his weight on a hand over her shoulder as they kissed. He could still smell her heat in the smears of her juices on his face, and as Rikia reached, Jack arched forward and pressed his achingly hard erection into her hands, both of which eagerly closed around it to feel his firmness, squeezing and testing its contours.<br /><br />Jack gasped at the first touches and the exploratory polishing. Her fingers were incredible; nimble, with soft and supple padding coupled with short, velvety fur and stretchy webbing that conformed to the contours of his flesh. She took both hands around his length and stroked down, nestling her fingers into his sheath to tease the rarely-tended root of his arousal; a sensation that caused Jack to growl eagerly into their kiss. She then squeezed her hands together and pulled up in slow, milking pulls to help well his drooling precum into her hands, which she smeared back to his flesh with an urgent stroke as Jack&#039;s hips rolled forward. He could feel himself positively pouring precum onto her belly as the surf rolled up around the sides of her hips and thighs, but still well shy of washing it away. He&#039;d never expected she&#039;d know how to tease a bear&#039;s anatomy so effectively, but she made a very strong start with slow, smearing squeezes behind his glans and brisker back-and-forth stroking on his root with frequent pauses to nestle her entire, petite paw into his sheath to stroke and work at this usually-untouched root. The sensation made him lightheaded with ecstatic physical pleasure that he struggled to contain as his hips churned forward into each of those kneading strokes of her hand within his stretched sheath.<br /><br />The kiss broke, and Jack let out an eager groan as he nuzzled to Rikia&#039;s chest and suckled her entire breast into his broad ursine maw, suckling it and raking his tongue&#039;s stud across the barbell through her nipple. He supported his weight on one paw, and the other closed over her opposite breast, urgently rolling it under his palm and caressing the swell as he panted, and Rikia crooned out sweet encouragement into his ear. His hips rolled in eager, deep strokes; it was never his best position, but Rikia met him halfway and polished the throbbing, rubber-hard erection expertly in her hands as Jack knelt over her with his shuddering hips setting the pace of her stroking. Jack panted with the effort, breaking his suckling kiss of the Lutrai woman&#039;s supple breast-flesh with a needy growl as his eyes focused on hers for a lingering few moments. Her gaze met his with a playful, intimate joy that Jack hadn&#039;t realized he&#039;d been missing, and the welling urgency of his arousal built in his balls as he pumped forward again.<br /><br />She leaned up, and kissed him again. He kissed her back, eagerly, and their tongues grazed against one another again as climax effortlessly took the bear. A subtle rumble and grunt rose from the bear&#039;s chest, an urgent stiffening in his arousal, and the first outpouring of pent-up seed arced in a heavy surge up the Lutrai woman&#039;s stomach and chest, splashing them both in the chin before the initial deluge tapered off. A delighted noise from Rikia came from her nose, and she redoubled her efforts as the second torrential pulse of seed poured out with even more volume and pressure, painting another streak up the bear&#039;s stomach and chest that splashed off his lower jaw and ran and dripped down over the Lutrai woman&#039;s breasts and stomach in a thick web, only to slowly roll down her waterproof fur and into the surf. <br /><br />Rikia kept working on him, her sweet and joyful and <em>impressed</em> sounding vocalizations tantalizing the bear&#039;s senses as he pressed harder into the kiss. Her fingers milked and stroked his length, focused on every sensitive place she&#039;d found to help urge his climax on, milking him to absolute and utter completion. She stimulated him from root to tip as he poured his pent up need against both of their bodies, the eruption pooling in her fur again and again, and running down her body&#039;s curves in its own waves to be claimed by the rolling surf as it washed up around them both. He never ran dry. He wasn&#039;t sure he could, even, since the lingering effects of the Heatwave had made their mark upon him; but with the final pulses and throbs of his climax, their kiss finaly broke as the final thick rolls of seed fell to Rikia&#039;s stomach.<br /><br />&ldquo;Aie, ha! Y&#039;got Kij&#039;s blessin&#039; f&#039;sure,&rdquo; Rikia giggled quietly, breathless with her excitement and laying back in the sand as another wave rose and rolled around her body. Jack just stared at her in awe for a long few moments, reeling from the moment as he panted hard to catch his breath, smelling his own sweat and seed on the air, mixed with what remained of Rikia&#039;s heat-scent smeared on his muzzle. He slowly sat up to survey the damage. Everywhere the water hadn&#039;t touched on her torso, Rikia was coated in a thick layer of the pearly slime from the bear, clinging to her fur stubbornly. The bear&#039;s own chest and stomach were similarly glazed in the bear&#039;s thick issue.<br /><br />&ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; Jack laughed, &ldquo;Sorry, uh&hellip;I should&#039;ve warned you,&quot; he said, slumping back slightly as unwelcome memories came flooding in as he started to feel guilty again, now for forgetting to warn Rikia. The couple one-night, mostly-physical flings he&#039;d had since his breakup had all ended poorly, with a single cause. Even when giving ample warning ahead of time and getting confirmation with statements like &lsquo;no, it&rsquo;s fine, I like it&#039; beforehand, the reality of the moment seemed to always resulted in the same thing. A poor, unprepared girl frozen in revulsion, simply holding him aimed at himself, or using a hand to deflect the worst of it, and making an awful face as she simply <em>waited</em> for him to finish half-heartedly pulsing through the few pints of a mostly-failed - for him, at least - orgasm. The lutrai woman, in contrast, had proven a genuine lover of his issue, and even seemed to celebrate it with a certain sort of giddy, impressed joy and relish that Jack couldn&#039;t help but adore. It helped him choke back the guilt, but not as much as when Rikia leaned up and kissed him again, before dipping her head down to suckle some of the thick glazing of seed from the fur near the bear&#039;s collarbone and throat with a few slow licks and kisses. <br /><br />&ldquo;Mm-mh, don&#039; say sorry. S&#039; a gift, n&#039; &hellip;goddess, iss&#039;a lucky gal tha&#039; gets <em>that</em> in &lsquo;er belly,&rdquo; Rikia laughed, before giving another eager lick up the bear&rsquo;s chin, through the thick coating of seed to sample another taste. &ldquo;Mnh. Le&#039;s get a swim &lsquo;fore callin&rsquo; it a night, yeh? If an&#039;thin&#039; jus&#039; ta&#039; clean up,&rdquo; Rikia crooned with a sweet little giggle. Jack grinned and couldn&#039;t help himself. He leaned down and kissed her again as he backed her down to the sand, then dug his hands under her in the sand and hauled her up against his chest, before simply stepping backwards into the surf until he was waist-deep. He simply fell back into the water with the Lutrai against his chest, for a very, very late-night swim together under the stars.<br /><br />By the time the two had finished bathing in the ocean, said their far-too-awkward goodbyes, and Jack was towing his cooler home on the boardwalk, the stars had begun to fade in the eastern sky, which was rising to a deep blue that heralded morning&#039;s far-too-soon arrival.<br /><br />Jack briefly thought about sitting down with his journal for a bit before trying to sleep, but thought it best to process his thoughts before committing anything to a page. Once he&#039;d made it to the bed, sleep found him quickly, and not even the shrill nagging of the seagulls&#039; cries in the early morning air could interrupt it.<br /><br /></span>",
  "pools_count": 2,
  "title": "BtF: \"The Beach House\", Chapters 4-5",
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