"Hello? David?" I poked my head into the psychiatrist's office, half-expecting to be told to leave. Was I supposed to be back here? Yes, I reminded myself. I'm here for a reason.

"Hm? Can I help—oh! Yes, sorry, I remember now. Do come in."

I stepped into the office, dipping my head slightly to him. I'd been here how many times now? Five? And I still had butterflies in my stomach. I snorted ruefully to myself as I settled down on the couch, ‘accidentally' letting my coat hang open. I hadn't worn anything particularly lascivious, just a t-shirt, but at that angle it would do the trick.

Maybe it was David that was making me so nervous? I peered at the white wolf sitting behind the desk. He was handsome in a wizened sort of way—well-dressed but not pompous and he had these darling little gold spectacles for reading that perched on the end of his nose just so. Submitting to someone to get your brain picked was a humbling experience. Maybe that's where the butterflies are coming from, I lied to myself.

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" David's voice was kind, if a bit worried. His eyes kept roaming south of mine. I tried not to purr. "You've told me enough about your ordeal that I should be able to follow it."

I sighed wistfully. He's right. There's no reason to keep putting it off. "...you're right." I closed my eyes, giving him an excuse to stare and me an excuse to let him.

Despite myself, my breath quickened. The image of my disheveled calico self stretched out helpless on his couch while his eyes roamed over me, my tail swishing invitingly on the red fabric, knowing I had no power to say no if he asked to put me under... I briefly wondered if David could see the little nubs of my arousal poking out of my shirt.

When he cleared his throat I knew that he could. "Ah... hm. So, you were saying? How did all of this ‘brainwashing' start?"

I took a deep breath, surprised at how reluctant I was to answer. "It started a few years ago, on Valentine's Day..."

I frowned at the boxes of candy hearts to my right, letting my eyes roam instead to the magazine rack at my left. ‘Britney Has Crosseyed Quintuplets!", read the headline. It wasn't that bad, relatively.

The Ready-Cook meals hit the black conveyor with little thumps. Their bright logos stared back at me accusingly—you're alone!, they said. You spend too much time working! You've got nobody! I told them to shut up. They wouldn't so I growled. The cashier's nervous yip brought me back to reality. "Uh, that'll be $24.85, ma'am."

I growled again. I wasn't any older than he was. "Here. And don't call me ma'am."

"Yes m—uh, yes sir." The mutt took the money and didn't meet my eyes. I sighed, scooped my change out of the little automatic return, and pushed my cart out into the parking lot.

The asphalt was still a little wet from the just-melted snow; I found my way to my car above glistening half-reflections of the moon, mrring softly to myself at the unexpected beauty of it. The purple newly-night sky seemed to deepen in hue by the brightness of the moon, leading the eye naturally toward it; like a painting, but real. Beauty found in a convenience store parking lot, but beauty none the less.

I dropped the last bag into the trunk of my little red car and shut it with a thump, then crawled up on top. Why not? I was in no hurry. I had no one to meet, nowhere to be. So I stayed. And thought. And looked at the full moon—it really was very pretty. Maybe, somewhere up there, somewhere amidst NASA's broken toys and their precious footprints, there were some answers. I searched the surface with my eyes in search of them.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Mhmm." I replied without thinking, still focused on the moon. "Beautiful."

There was a pause. I thought whoever it was had left.

"It's really fascinating. So easy to just lose yourself in it on nights like this. The way the sky seems to lure your eye back whenever it leaves. Go on, try to look away—can you?"

I snorted and shook my head slightly. Talkative shoppers—was there anything worse? But I didn't look at him. I tried a little but my eyes kept coming back to the moon. Maybe I thought if I ignored him he'd go away.

"So, what brings you out here, looking so deep into the moon, losing yourself in it, feeling yourself float up out of your body into the warm, white glow?"

"Buy... buying groceries." I heard myself say. "Lonely. Wanted to get out of the house." I didn't want to listen to him. I wanted to lose myself in the moment, to let the glow of the moon wash over me.

"That's it," he murred approvingly. "Let the moon's glow cover you, that's the way. Like a warm blanket, warm and relaxing in the night air." A pause. Then, softer, "...you remind me of someone, you know. Someone very close to me."

"Mmm?" I perked an ear up. Something about that caught my attention. I hadn't really been listening.

"I said, isn't it warm out? And the full moon besides. Beautiful weather tonight."

"Mmm." Yes, it was. "Like... a blanket." I smiled dreamily, feeling the moon's glow cover me.

"You really do remind me of someone. The way you're relaxing so completely for the moon, floating further and further into the glow. I bet if I count backward from ten, you'll relax completely, won't you? And fall right asleep. More and more each number I go, deeper and deeper, so when I get to one you'll be completely asleep. I bet you can't stay awake."

"If you... say so." I smiled up at the moon. Sure, my eyes were getting a little tired from looking up at the moon so long, but it was worth it. He'd lose his bet.

"Ten, you're so warm in the moon, so warm and relaxed in the glow." He waited a beat. "Nine, your eyes are getting so tired, it's so hard to keep them open, but you must, you must keep them open and keep looking at the moon. Eight, so tired, so warm in the glow."

I let his words wash over me. He wouldn't psych me out. I just smiled up at the warm glow of the moon, feeling my body relax further and further, each part in turn; first my feet, then up my legs, then my thighs and stomach, then my chest and shoulders and arms. All so sleepy, so relaxed.

My eyes shut when he reached one.

"Can you hear me?"

"...yes." My reply was slow and faraway. I only dimly heard myself give it.

His voice was concerned, now, but in a strange way. Like he was nervous. "...and you really are lonely?"

"Yes." My voice was still far away, but it came faster this time. It knew the answer.

"You believe he hypnotized you in the parking lot?" David seemed skeptical, but worried.

"I didn't know anything about that then, but yes. I did it to myself with the moon, he just took advantage."

David's gasp made my eyes open. The ceiling of the office was depressingly boring, black dots on white squares. "You mean he...?"

"No!" I was surprised at the strength of my outburst, tried to smooth it over as startlement. "No, nothing like that. He would never—no. He just asked me a few personal questions. I gave... more honest... answers than I would have ever done to a stranger."

"Then what happened?" David seemed genuinely concerned. I lifted my head off the pillow and perched it on an arm, preferring David to his ceiling. The white wolf's ears turned a bit red but I steadfastly refused to acknowledge my provocative posture. It was all accident as far as he knew.

"Nothing much. He drove me home and talked me out of it gradually, said he didn't know what had happened to me but that he didn't think I ought to drive. He drove a... a something? It was big, but I don't remember the specifics."

"And this was the white fox you told me about?"

"Mm-hmm. White fur, black tips here and there. Blue eyes. About yea tall." I half-heartedly motioned with my hand.

"Please, continue."

"He got me home safe, I asked him in for a cup of coffee, we talked some more. Then he went home. I was conscious and aware for all of it. He never ‘took advantage' of me." I only barely managed to keep my voice from sounding sad at the last two bits. I grinned to cover it. "I added my number to his cel when he was in the bathroom. Took a picture of me sticking my tongue out for the contact entry."

David nodded. "It seems a little unusual so far, but harmless enough. There's more?"

"Yes. Much more." I sighed, sitting up. "I'm sorry, I don't feel like I can keep going for now. It's too jumbled." I tapped the side of my head.

"Ah. Then perhaps we should let it rest for the day?" David had perched on a stool by the couch while I was talking, nice and close, but now he was folding up his notepad. I reached up and gently took his hand.

"I was thinking a cup of coffee might clear my head, actually. Where's good near here?"

His ears turned red when he answered.

It was weeks later when I found myself on David's couch again. I had told him the start of it all—how I had gone out with the fox, how I had begun to fall for him. I was sure to pad the details, drag out the conversations, but was it on purpose? I had never quite smoothed out those butterflies in my stomach, never quite abandoned the giddy nervousness. Still, I had to continue. I had to tell my story. And so here I was, about to make the next big step, once again afflicted with some very cold feet.

I bit my lip and forced myself to speak. "That night, when he and I came back to my apartment, he made a... a suggestion."

David's ears perked up at my tone. I could almost hear him think: finally, something important. Finally, some payoff from listening to all of this. "Yes?"

I swallowed. "He asked me if I remembered what had happened on the night he met me. If I remembered how wonderful I felt. If I wanted to feel it again."

"And did you?"

"Oh God yes." It came out in a rush before I realized how it sounded, but my eep and mouth-covering hands couldn't get the words back in. I let them sink back to my sides and forced myself to continue. "Yes, I did. Badly. It might have been something he said that night, that he told me to forget, but I didn't feel that deep. People just have a need to..." I trailed off, shrugged. "To be completely open, I guess."

David nodded. "So you let him hypnotize you for intimacy?"

"Among other things." I grinned predatorily at David. He shifted uncomfortably.

"Do, continue."

"He took me deep. Very, very deep." I sighed at the unbidden memory. "Deepening exercises for the better part of an hour. Then, when I thought there wasn't anything left of me but a warm, content little lump of darkness deep down in the smallest, safest part of my mind, he began to talk. To tell me a story—his story, though I didn't know it at the time."

My name was Cassandra, at the time. My calico coloring was gone, my cat's tail replaced by something bushier. My tits were a little bigger, too. It's funny, the silly things you notice in the strangest times. My head swam; I woke up slowly, tried to focus on the blurry images chasing each other ‘round my field of vision. Places I'd been and people I'd known wrestled for the right to be real. Was I at home, in bed, entranced, with my fox? Or was I Cassandra?

The image of Cassandra's Victorian bedroom eventually won out among the rest, coalescing before my eyes piece by piece. First the soft quilted blankets, then the gilded bedposts, then the hardwood floor and beautiful paintings and ornate mirror with the angel motif, then the walls to hold them up, then finally the doors and windows and the outdoors sky. He described them to me and I saw them, one by one.

I rubbed my eyes a moment but stopped short, surprised to find the orange-red fur of a fox. Cassandra was a fox, but I wasn't. Hadn't I been something else? As my mind slid deeper into trance, the worry faded—the feeling was strange, indescribable even. ‘Trust' is perhaps the closest I can come. Even in this limited space of forgetful fantasy, where I didn't know who he was, where I didn't even remember my own name, I trusted him—my love, the one holding me in the real world. I had been someone else, I would be myself again soon, but for now... for now, I was Cassandra.

I pulled back the sheets to stand, but paused, surprised to find Cassandra nude under the covers. I let out an appreciative murr at my curves— it would seem Cassandra enjoyed the sight of herself. Her eyes kept drifting to her snatch, seemingly unused to the trimmed downy-white fur surrounding the moistening lips, a bit excited by the still-fresh sensation of cool air on her sex. And then the door opened.

My instinct was to pull back the sheets and cover myself but Cassandra's hands stayed put. As I lay there, staring at the man so bold as to barge into a lady's private room unannounced, I realized I knew him. He was a tall wolf, fur as white as freshly-fallen snow; though I couldn't see it from here, I knew he had a little gold earring on one ear. He was also wearing too much. His name...

"Leon Thurlow." My voice was lighter than normal, more musical. Full of happy recognition. I smiled up at him and beckoned him to bed, spreading my legs wide to give him a good view, tracing my fingers over the silky-smooth fur on my thighs, letting them wander down to my already-puffy lips. Showing him where to go. He grinned and undid the buttons of his tunic.

My breath came hot and fast in my throat, quickened by the way I was acting, the uncontrollable sense of need flooding my body's senses, the way I knew how he'd feel inside me before he ever touched me. It felt so real and when I reached up to him and pulled him to the bed, a flash of longing went through my mind—not just Cassandra's. It made me moan.

I didn't know this man, but Cassandra did, and it was real, so real to me. The way his fingers pulled on the small of my back just the way I like it, the way I could work his clothing off without looking, sex so familiar that it reminded me of crawling into a warm bed on a cold night. When Cassandra gasped and pressed against him I was too far into it to tell us apart.

My legs folded themselves around his back, resting against his tail as he positioned himself. When he pushed forward, I didn't just feel him enter Cassandra, I felt him enter me. It was my lips his girth pushed apart, my sex that tugged on his member as it passed, my contented sigh-moan as he made me deliciously full. I could feel, smell, taste every inch of him.

My body rocked with his thrusts, knocking against the headboards of the bed as he hilted himself inside me again and again, my sex kissing the base of his shaft even as our tongues danced in my mouth.

I almost whined when the memory faded.

The bridge of my fox's muzzle and the blue of his eyes were the first things I saw when my eyes fluttered half-open. His body arched over mine, giving his tongue welcome access to my right nipple. The left one glistened in the light of the bedroom. I learned he was in me when I felt my sex squeeze something hot and hard.

"Leon?" My voice was slurred and tired.

His eyes met mine and I moaned, surprised at how magnetic I found them. "Shh, love. You're too sleepy to stay awake. Even now I'm fading away," and he was, "losing focus as you slide back into trance."

I nodded.

I opened the corner of one eye, back in David's office. He was writing notes down as best he could there on the stool, shifting uncomfortably, trying to find some room for the massive tent in his pants. I grinned and let my story lapse, dealing with my more immediate needs. "He talked me back down into a trance. Down deeper, he said. He said... it was getting harder for... me t..."

I let my words trail off and began to mumble softly to myself. I had done this so many times for real, surely I could fake it—couldn't I? David seemed to notice, reached out to touch my shoulder, but he hesitated. I shifted in that hesitation, slid back against the wall, and let my hand drift up under my shirt. Waiting to see what David would do.

He reached for me again and I was ready for him. I opened my eyes all the way and locked with his, letting mine appear glassy, unfocused; I held his gaze for a half-second before pulling him off his stool. His knee jabbed my thigh uncomfortably but I was too far into it to care as I locked lips with him and fumbled at his belt.

His hands flailed about next to him, unsure how to act, what to do. I didn't give him any time to think. By the time he grabbed my shoulders I had unzipped my own pants. When he said "No, stop, wake up, you feel yourself waking up!", I was guiding his willing member into me. He cut himself off when I slid down him, letting my sex kiss the base of his shaft, reaching a hand down to fondle his sack as I rode him in his own office couch. What would Freud think?

"Hahh! What are you doing? Hhn—this isn't right!" I struggled not to smile as he pawed at me helplessly. He wanted this, wanted it badly, but his morality caused him to stop—but he wouldn't hurt me, wouldn't use force, and without that he had no way to stop me. The butterflies only made it more thrilling.

"Take me—hahhh—take me deeper!" I moaned out under my breath. "Deeper and deeper, down and down, deep, deeeep..." My thighs rolled up and down, pressing against him firmer and firmer each time, trying to get him as far in me as possible.

The rest of the session became a blur. So much for faking the trance.

I don't know how much later it was when I finally became aware of my surroundings. We were still on the couch, sprawled in a tangle of soiled clothing. My finger was idly circling his nipple. I think he was halfway entranced himself, though that might have been my imagination.

"Hmm?" I sighed an almost-question.

David's head turned to mine. "Are you awake?"

"Yes... did I miss something fun?" I purred on him, then wriggled around, finding a better place to rest. I felt him shift under me, too. I let the question hang in the air. "I... after my..." I shrugged. "I have certain needs, now. That's why I'm here." I licked his nose. "I'd apologize if I offended you, but I don't feel that's the case."

David murred under me. It was so easy, so easy to imagine his fur as my own fox's white... I tried to push the thought away. David helped by speaking. "Can you continue with your story?"

"His story." I corrected the psychiatrist automatically without even really knowing I had done it. "...yes, I probably should. He took me under many more times after that first night, each time telling me a bit more about this Cassandra person. He described meeting her with him as Leon, he described growing close to her. He told me of her empty existence as a noblewoman, he told me of the love they shared—comfortable, physical mostly, but love nonetheless. I was always Cassandra. Then, one night, the perspective shifted—subtly at first, but... well, you'll see."

Cassandra looked down at herself, at her flame-orange fur and white downy middle, at the ample swell of her breasts and the gentle mound of her sex, and felt for the first time in her life as if she were looking at something foreign.

Over the months and, eventually, the years, Leon put Cassandra under hundreds of times. She didn't like theater, he didn't like hunting; they had little else to do. Cassandra relished Leon's stories and living them vicariously was a thrill she had scarce known in her sheltered life. Constant sex. Constant adventure. Constant trance.

The change came about slowly, then suddenly, as they say. Little by little, Cassandra had lost herself in Leon's memories. Then, one day, she simply remembered being Leon more than she remembered being herself. The white wolf was natural; the fiery vixen, the dream. It couldn't have been hard. She had hated her life.

And so there she lay, the noblewoman alone on her bed, waiting for Leon to come home once again, waiting to begin another night of sex and memory. Waiting to leave her false life behind. The estate felt foreign. Her family felt estranged. Only Leon's life was real, only Leon's family mattered to her. She knew she had lost herself. She just didn't care.

That memory burned bright in my mind, as if the fox had emphasized it to me, perhaps to say ‘See? She gave herself willingly.'

I got the impression that he didn't often feel the need to explain himself.

It was strange, watching Leon's death from Cassandra's body. I knew Leon's side of his encounters with Cassandra. His life, his personality, his wants and loves and lusts and needs, all now housed within Cassandra's body. Not instead of hers—more covering hers, changing hers into his. Leon was dead but I was alive.

And no matter how many times I told myself that, I never quite shook the feeling that it was me down there in the coffin. Leon Thurlow, the same white wolf I'd seen in the mirror most of my life, lay dead before me. But I was alive. I was Cassandra now. And standing there, seeing the grave, the truth finally dawned on me:

I had beaten death.

I had won. God would have no soul to take from that dead flesh.

I saw the beautifully carved box they laid me in. I appreciated its almost-purple brown, marveled at its noble cost. I saw my delicate flame-furred fingers trace lines down the corner as it was carefully positioned over the grave. I watched through my veil as they put the old me under the earth. I wept for myself as they said the kindest words I'd never heard, all the great things a man hopes friends think but doesn't get to hear. I tossed a rose down on my grave. I didn't particularly like them. I just thought it was appropriate.

It was hard to keep quiet when my mother told my grave ‘goodbye'.

I told myself it had been worth it, that someday I could tell her that Leon Thurlow lived on in this vixen. I was lying.

I learned something else there at the funeral: now that I knew how to avoid it, I did not ever want to die. I wouldn't—couldn't—risk what I'd won. Not for anything.

"Cassandra had agreed to it, in a way." Strange to talk about one's self in the third person—the voice was the noblewoman's. "She loved going under so much, did it so often over the years, that her personality just sort of faded away. I was a drug to her, an escape from the troubles of her rapidly-weakening family name. I took over slowly, then suddenly, as they say. I did love her, after a fashion. It wasn't like anything that I know. But I did love her. I still do."

I flicked an ear at the grave I was speaking to and let my tail swish. "I'd had many loves over the years like the love I'd held for Cassandra. Distant, physical, comfortable loves—the love of familiarity, of sex, and of life everafter in one case. But one..." I choked. Time was short, I had to leave, but it was too painful. It had just happened. Talking about it like it was the past made it real, made it the truth in a way I hadn't been prepared for.

I closed my eyes and continued, not caring that my voice was breaking. "One of them was different." I brushed snow from my muzzle, watched it slide off my fur to drop to the sloped grave-marker.

Lisa Thurlow 1723-1774, it said. No mention that she was my mother. They ought to mention that on graves, I thought, when the deceased was someone's mother. I had laid a rose there, too. Because Lisa liked roses. I thought it was appropriate.

I was stalling.

"I fell in love, mom." It came out in a rush. I hugged myself, rubbing the shoulders of my cloak. The soft snow fell from my tail in waves as I shivered against the cold. "It's hard to believe, isn't it? I promised I'd tell you when I fell in love. I keep my promises." I sneezed into my hands and sent up a great plume of white.

"She was a fox—like me, only gray; lighter fog-gray down the middle and darker ash-gray everywhere else. Little patterns ran down the border like waves on a beach. You'd never know they were there unless you knew to look. Gorgeous and ample, tufts in all the right places, piercing green eyes, kind and fragile and clever and perfect. That she never married was a scandal."

I shook my head and shivered, still not quite used to the way the cold bit Cassandra's body. "I knew our love was forbidden, that women couldn't be with women. I just didn't care. I'd beaten death—the rules didn't apply to me. I loved her, she loved me, what else mattered? I felt her flower in my arms, helped her find at last the peace she'd been denied her whole life."

Cassandra's eyes grew distant, losing herself in the memory. "Anything, we could do anything. We could go anywhere, love anyhow we pleased. Muzzle to muzzle, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, tongue to sex, night after night. The outside world couldn't stop us. It was just sex at first but it became so, so much more."

I paused a moment, reluctant to continue. Knowing how the story had to end. "She was an unhappy woman out of touch with her own sexuality. I was giddy with the power my stolen life held. We fell into each other like a children's puzzle, a perfect and complete union; each found the other impossibly intoxicating." Cassandra closed her eyes. "There weren't any walls. I shared with her everything. ...almost everything."

A sob wracked through me, made me clutch my bags close to my chest. "It wasn't enough. Rumors spread about us, but we ignored them. We didn't care. I said we were right to love each other and she believed me and, for a time, I really was right. Our love was fierce, pure. But they didn't stop—the rumors grew louder, more insistent. People talked about us."

"This morning, in church, someone called us witches." I looked over my shoulder, suddenly fearful that someone was listening. There was no one. I turned back to my mother's grave.

"He says he caught us consorting in the moonlight and that I made him sleep so we could get away. I had told him to forget that, but he didn't. They grabbed for us. She held the door shut for me so I could get away." I stopped, mouth scrunching up, tears brimming in my eyes, unwilling to speak further. I forced myself to continue. "...I ran, mom. I left her."

My head hung low, unable to make eye contact even with the headstone. It was a long moment before I found the breath to continue. "A friend is taking me to the docks. I'm boarding a ship for the colonies. I... I won't be able to see you again, mom. If I don't leave, they'll catch me." I paused. "When I get to the new world, they'll might catch me anyway. I have to change who I am on the voyage. Like before, going from Leon to Cassandra." I gave the stone a pat.

"I'll see you again, mom. I promise. You'll just have someone new to meet when I do."

We—my love and I, a white fox and his cat—were sitting on a bed, huddled together, suspended impossibly in the winter sky. Another hypnotized fantasy but not so long ago. Years instead of generations.

"That was incredible." I raised my hands up—they seemed to be my normal cat's hands, but I almost didn't trust my senses. When I had been... when he'd made me believe that I was Cassandra, it had been so real. The vixen's body, her hands, her fur and her tail and her sex, they'd hadn't just been mine—they'd been me. I remembered the sex. I remembered the funeral. I remembered talking to Leon's mother's grave.

The aurora borealis danced around us on the bed, the shimmering curtains of light providing a kind of modesty between us and the stars. My tail swished behind me. It looked almost prismatic under the shimmering waves of the aurora, the colors of the light and my fur blending together in subtle swirls.

But I was too busy staring at his beauty to appreciate my own—I remember that distinctly. His stately calm, his trim but not bulky body, his stark-white coat with only a few black tips here and there, his luxurious tail and kind face, his well-kept and, if one looked closely at the fur, defined chest. But most of all, his eyes. His deep, impossibly alluring, aurora-reflecting eyes.

I'd been conditioned to love staring at those and it had worked superbly. If I looked much longer I would slip back into unconsciousness.

I leaned my head over the side of the bed, instead—poked it through the through the aurora and looked down to my house far below. I could even see the bike-rack on my little red car in the driveway. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the chimney of my home. I turned to my fox, gasped at the way the aurora lit up the tips of his fur to lend him a soft, shimmering glow. I hadn't noticed it before.

I felt I should speak. "...I'm still hypnotized?"

His voice was soft and his reply was simple, but it sunk deep, deep into me. "Yes."

I let out a breath, eyes half-lidding. My mind had a hard time distinguishing between commands and conversation. I locked eyes with him. He wasn't a wolf anymore—he was a fox now. The real one. The one he was in modern life; the one I'd met on St Valentine's day, a month and a half ago, who'd swept me off my feet in more ways than one. The one who'd taken me shown me things I'd never thought possible and who filled my days with sex and left my life a blurry, lusty whirlwind.

I hadn't stopped staring into his eyes. Dimly, I realized I had been trying to lose myself in them. Trying to remember what he'd told me to put me under. I stated it simply, helpless to do it on my own. "I want to see more of your life." Crystallized experience, the best moments of years condensed into a format I could digest. The best drug in the world. I knew well what Cassandra loved in it.

"Of course." He smiled. "We have all the time in the world."

He bade me turn over and put my head in his lap, and as he stroked my ears he began to whisper into them. I smiled and listened, relaxed and trusted, feeling my eyes get heavy, heavier, so heavy, slowly closing as I relaxed and trusted him, feeling that delicious warmth spread down from my ears into my soul. The beauty around me faded as my mind obeyed his commands.

I awoke to the same stroking but a different bed. He told me of a luxurious sailing ship taking us to the new world, and as he described it, the world my eyes saw expanded. I became aware of the gentle rocking of the waves, the cabin we stayed in, the bed we slept in. I could smell the salty sea winds, recall the nagging sensation of a sliver from the wooden planks.

My own body began to take shape: a tigress, bigger than I was used to, well-proportioned but with a more earthy beauty than Cassandra's. My name was foreign—unpronounceable, but very pretty. And there, stroking my ears, were a pair of familiarly delicate flame-colored hands.

I was purring a deep, contented rumble. Afterglow crept in as my fox told me how the tigress felt, caressing my being like a gentle tide. One I'd gotten very used to. A glance to a table nearby showed me a glistening glass dildo made for two. I smiled up Cassandra, reached up an arm to stroke the side of her face. She shook her head and pulled my hand gently down.

The vixen cooed to me, telling me to relax, to let the tension drain out of my body. She kept stroking me and the afterglow felt so good... I lost track of time, just laying there, my head in her lap, her hands stroking my fur, my purr spreading through my whole being. Her hands roamed freely but always stroked through my fur, weaving the contented spell down deep into my flesh, down to my bones and soul. When she began to count, I tried to stir, afraid I'd fallen asleep. I found I couldn't.

I asked her what was happening but my voice was slurred, weak. She stopped counting and resumed stroking me. The afterglow was so thick. It was hard to focus my thoughts. I tried to get up but my body was heavy, so heavy. She was kneading my tits now and it felt too good, too good to disturb. I forgot my question. This time, when she counted to one, I counted with her. My eyes fluttered shut.

I sat up, lifting my head out of the vixen's lap, surprised to find myself still a tigress. We weren't over my house anymore, either; the bed was suspended over a starlit ocean, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky this time. I tried to ask a question, but what came out instead was a gasp.

I turned to Cassandra and the vixen smiled back at me. Slowly, I understood. I was still the tigress, this was still the dream. But in this time and on this boat, this tigress had dreamed a dream like mine. The tigress asked the question I wanted to. "You brought Cassandra here too?"

Cassandra nodded.

"Are... are you her?" Fear welled up in us both, bubbling and frothing. The tigress was afraid of the vixen. I feared the tigress's fear.

Cassandra's voice was soft and musical, just as I remembered it when I'd been her. It soothed me and held my mind just as sure as the real fox's voice had. "It's more accurate to say that she is me, in a way."

"Will you take me, too?"

Cassandra smiled. "A lifetime from now, perhaps, but there's more of the countess—of me—to share." The vixen leaned back and beckoned for me. The tigress wanted to stay put, but her body betrayed her. It crawled forward, helpless under the vixen's spell. The very action and the struggle to stop were turning the tigress on and me in turn. By the time my head was back in Cassandra's lap and her finger was in my cunny, I was dripping wet for her. For him, back in the real world.

"But..."

"Shh. Relax." Cassandra licked my ear gently, never stopping her finger. "Just relax and trust me, just listen and relax, it's so easy to listen, so easy to just trust me and relax, so easy..." I felt my mind fogging again, easier this time. "You're so close, so close to release again, aren't you?"

I whined under her hands, helpless as a kitten even in this powerful body.

"That's right, shh..." She added a second finger, then a third, thrusting them gently into me.

"Hahh... hah... noooo, let me go, I... hhh... I don' want to fall asleep..." Cassandra leaned forward and took my left nipple into her mouth, suckling and flicking her tongue over the tip. "Nnhh!" The tigress was panting, now, eyes half-lidded, body relaxing, helpless to fight the conditioning it had received. "Nnhh....."

I saw the glistening drops leak out around her fingers before I realized I was cumming, before I felt the lazy, misty climax wash over me. My pussy rippled along her fingers. "Ahh, there... you're letting it go, letting it all go... shh... so deep..." The tigress sighed as she did as she was told.

I felt myself slip away as Cassandra—as Leon, really—shared a story with the tigress. Now that he knew what he was doing it went a lot faster in the telling.

I eyed David carefully as I suckled his member. His breathing was slow and regular, just like my fingers on his furred sack. His hands had long since forgotten their notepad. I pulled back, waited for the strand of saliva connected my lips and his member to drop down to his inner thigh. "So close now, almost deep enough to cum, but not quite... not quite deep enough yet... deeper and deeper, David. Each breath bringing you deeper. Let them come as fast... or as slow... as you want them to." I slid back down to his base.

He wouldn't have release until he was deep enough. I'd made sure he believed that. Now all I had to do was keep going until he did.

His legs shuffled listlessly in front of me as I slid my mouth up and down his member, engrossed in the feel and the smell of him, trapped in his inner thighs by circumstance and my own arousal and need. I liked being trapped. I stroked his sack in long, slow movements, then grinned around his manhood. His balls were tightening.

I pulled my head back one last time. "Now, David. So deep, so ready." I took his entire length into my mouth and began to swallow, rippling my tongue over the underside of his shaft, pushing the tip against the back of the roof of my mouth. Feeling him give himself completely to me.

I leaned back off of him when he was done, petting his deeply sleeping form, and began to tell him a story.

The New World loomed wide on the horizon, a thin band of land stretching as far as the eye could see. I looked up at Cassandra—at me, really—and began to talk to myself.

"We could run. We could get away."

Cassandra shook her head. "We can't. This is the only way that's safe."

I tried to growl but it turned quickly into a wail, angry and sad and helpless. It seemed tigresses didn't like being powerless outside the bedroom. "Why?!" I punched the ship's rail. "Why does it hurt so damn much?!" I sniffed, rubbing my muzzle with my palm, snarling at my sore knuckles.

Cassandra shook her head. "...I don't know." She sniffed, then gave a small laugh. "Stop it, you're making me do it too."

"We could run, Cassandra. We beat death. You don't have to die."

The fox whirled on me and in her eyes I saw my pain reflected a hundredfold. "Did we?" Her voice was hushed, low, but full of all the meaning she could press into it. We weren't talking about Cassandra.

I winced, nodding my head, no longer trying to hide the tears.

Cassandra knew what I felt, of course. She hugged me close. "Shh... There's no other way."

I sobbed, pressing my head into her touch. "I know. I just wish it didn't hurt so much."

Cassandra hadn't made eye contact as she was tied to the wood. We hadn't even spoke for a week out of fear I'd be implicated. And the pain... Whenever I looked up at the pyre, I didn't see Cassandra. All I could see was her. My love back in the Old Country. I hadn't even gotten to say goodbye. I dared not whisper it now, lest someone hear me and repeat what I'd said to the priest who'd chased us all the way from England to see her burn. He'd been coming here anyway. Things had gotten bad for the Protestants back home. The chance to do God's work with fire and gore had just lured him here early.

Cassandra had been caught and I had not, of course. I was as safe as could be as a new woman. Nobody suspected a thing of the tigress. The vixen burned alone. I didn't feel much when the old me died—certainly nothing like what I'd felt for her.

"They say we'll not pay the tax." The skunk's comment was off-hand and half-heard, but the tigress nodded.

"They do say that."

"There'll be trouble." His furtive glance told me much, much more than his words. His black fur glowed soft orange in the reflected light of the burning.

"There already is," I growled, content to let him misinterpret my words.

When the trouble with the Crown started, I seized the opportunity.

I snarled as I threw the lantern and laughed when it broke on the pew. The oil splashed out in a storm of broken glass, the now-free flame racing close behind it, coating wood and hymn alike in bright red light. My hand reached for my tinderbox. I had time for one more.

"What are you doing?! Stop!"

My grin hardened. I looked up to see the priest. Brief flashes in my mind: him speaking at the burning, him leading Cassandra to the pyre, then Cassandra's image blurring together with... hers... from so long ago. I was certain: The same man. A small polar bear, runt perhaps, white as his holy cloth and a bit out of shape. He clutched his vestments close to him as he screamed at me.

"Fool! Damned fool! You--!"

"No, YOU!" I made the word a roar. I stood slowly, letting the burning church frame me for its priest, letting the fear of god sink into him as he realized just how doomed he really was. My powerful tigress's frame towered over him. Were he fully-grown, the match would be close. He was a runt.

The bear backpedaled, but only slightly; his back straightened and he met my gaze evenly. Somewhere deep in his flabby intolerance he'd managed to find courage. One of his hands held a bible up at me. "You—you'll be killed for this, witch! You'll burn!"

I screamed, tackling him to the floor. I grabbed his wrist cruelly, digging my claws into his flesh as I slammed it against the wood floor. His fingers stopped working and his book dropped to the floor. I snatched it, cupped it in my palm. I wished it was rock but paper would do. I lifted it, held it over my head, and smashed him across the face. I think I broke his nose. Blood stained his muzzle suddenly and dripped off the book gradually.

The courage drained from his face. His hands moved listlessly under me, like he was trying to hold them up. "I—I'll forget I saw you! I won't report you! If it's the church you hate, the burn it, fine, but spare me! Why—why kill me?"

I brought the book down again and again, watching as his muzzle got shorter and shorter under the barrage, bits of teeth and gore buckling under the weight of my blows, the red patch of fur growing to cover his whole face. Eventually, finally, I leaned back and dropped the book, panting from the exertion.

I pondered the answer to his question there, kneeling over the corpse of the man who'd taken her away from me, my body lit well by fire from all sides. A loud crash sounded behind me as a ceiling beam fell burning to the floor. The impact sent clouds of smoke and dust and embers swirling up around me.

"Because you really, really deserved it."

"You're a good man for doing this, Ryan."

The skunk dipped his head, ever-bashful. "Aw, don't worry about it. Any decent man would do the same." The cellar door closed with a thunk. The fugitive family would be safe there until nightfall, when it would be time for them to move again. I stooped for a moment, pushing on the coarse wood and making sure it was sturdy. I frowned at the dust covering the striped fur on my hands.

"I wish it were so. I do." I looked up at him. "I know you look up to me, Ryan. You look to me for guidance, and I try to lead you right. But I want you to know that I look up to you, too." I paused a moment, lost in memory as I looked at the way the dust softened the black of my stripes. It almost looked like waves. "I wish I had half your loyalty."

The skunk hugged my shoulder, sensing something was wrong without knowing what. The tigress let her head rest against Ryan's shoulders and sighed against the coarse leather fabric.

"A—"

He cut me off with a gentle "Shh," and gave my ear a small lick. "Call me Leon." I was back in the present.

I squirmed on the fox's fingers cupping my sex, my hips moving of their own accord. He tried to pull his hand free but I growled in protest—my own growl, a weaker thing than the tigress's, but he relented. Slowly, I remembered the tigress's old fear—the one she'd had before he'd taken her.

"You... you took her, became her, didn't you? First you were the white wolf and you took Cassandra, then you were Cassandra and you took the tigress. Are you going to take me like you took the others?" I couldn't doubt him, couldn't mistrust him. Couldn't stop loving him. I simply wanted to know. His arm kneaded my chest absently, stroking me there and teasing the nipple. And just like the tigress, I couldn't bring myself to pull away. It felt too good. I loved him too much to fear him.

He paused a long moment, unsure how to reply. I wriggled uncomfortably, trying to get my sex some friction on his hand. "Shh." He slipped a finger in me; I bit my lip to stifle a sigh. I felt so helpless in his arms—helpless to save myself, helpless to stop from trusting him, from loving him no matter the cost. "Shh, don't worry." My squirms slowed, my addled mind taking it as a command. He winced when he saw, then added a second finger, moving his hand slowly in and out. "I would never, never hurt you. I love you."

I chewed my lip a little. "I don't want to die," I said.

He locked eyes with me and suggestions from earlier compelled me to stare. The pain I saw there made me start. "You won't. Never. We'll live forever, both of us. You'll see." He inserted a third finger and added a quarter-turn to his thrusts. My hips rolled deeper, more urgent, but I concentrated on the conversation.

"What—hahhh—what happened to the countess? And to the tiger lady?"

"They lived full lives. One for Cassandra, two for K`zhandri—the tigress, that is." I gasped when he flicked his thumb over my clitty and that turned to panting when he did it every thrust. My hips moved again and again, my breath coming in gasps too fast for me to reply. "There are many more stories to tell. I'd like it if you knew them." I whined as I came, pussy rippling along his fingers, wishing I was milking his cock instead. My flesh melted in his arms as the tension flowed out of me, the climax leaving me panting and dazed.

I knew it was the trance that made me trust him so completely. It didn't matter. As the world faded before my eyes, I asked a question. "If you were male, then female, and you're male again now, wouldn't that mean that eventually you'd show me a...?"

He chuckled. "Yes, it would."

It was a poor fit, like a too-large glove, I found. The skunk's body was ‘mine', technically. The world was taking a long time to form; my mind kept getting details of the skunk wrong, Leon kept having to clarify this or that, but eventually I had a clear picture of ‘myself'.

The skunk was lithe, quick; called Ryan, he had a runner's body. His hands were my hands, his strength was my strength. He was weaker than the tigress had been, but his was a quicker power, surer of itself and not as subtle. As far as my deeply snared mind was concerned, I was male. It was easily the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. I wondered how Leon had ever managed to deal with it when he took Cassandra.

When I finally accepted my new body, Leon was able to fill in the rest of the world more easily, whispering suggestions into my ears back in reality to fill in the fantasy. I was on a bed in a luxurious mansion in the New World and the bed wasn't mine. My clothes were drab compared to my surroundings, but they were the best I could afford on a postman's salary.

The room became clearer. The only light came from a warm, inviting fireplace; there were books on the wall, some art objects, but they were hard to make out. I was on my stomach on the blankets, my feet resting on the pillows, my head resting in the tigress's lap at the foot of the bed. My hands were tied to the bedposts by silk scarves. Before I could even test my bonds, a thick fog settled over my body and mind. The skunk had already been entranced.

My eyes moved to the fireplace again, focusing on the dancing flames as the tigress pet my head and purred. "Concentrate on the fire, Ryan. Feel it draw your eyes into it, where you're warm and safe, you're warm and safe inside the fire. You're already deep, so deep, hearing only me, but you need to go deeper, much deeper into the fire."

My face was slack, a small line of drool hanging down out of my mouth; my eyes were pointed at the fire but weren't focused on anything. "Feel the fire tug at you, feel me tug at you. I'm the fire, you're deep in me, so deep." But I wasn't. Was I? It was becoming even harder to think. I was asked to go deep so I could dream but even in the dream I was told to go deeper.

"You're warm and safe, so deep for me." Ryan was as aroused as he'd ever been; the sensation was curious, all stiffness and heat and need and no softness or wetness at all, but I was too distracted to think on it. "Remember making love to me, feel the old feelings come back, pulling you into the fire, into me, deep and safe and warm." Ryan shifted a little, sighing, as the tigress stroked his head, growing harder and harder under her touch.

Dimly, I knew that my fox was taking me deeper in real life even as the tigress took Ryan, that no matter how deep I'd gone I could always go deeper. The tigress lazily teased my nipple but it didn't produce the reaction it normally did. It felt dull and sort of warm... "Deeper, deeper..." around and around, her finger went...

My fox controlled my whole reality, told me what to see and feel, but I felt myself sliding deeper, deeper still, snared by the imaginary tigress he described for me the same way I'd been snared by him.

Me-the-skunk and me-the-cat slid down into a black oblivion, in the past and in real life, unconscious in my modern home and in the lap of the tigress in the story. We stayed there for a long, long time. Moving from person to person, life to life, dodging death again and again.

Marrying. Waiting, worried, for the skunk to come home. Weeping when he didn't. Cheering bittersweet when Lee finally surrendered, a year too late. Finding love again, a gentle bear carpetbagger who needed a second chance. Becoming a widower, fresh pain at being alone, then falling in lust with a young spitfire lynx working for the Garfield presidential campaign. On and on, driving the one-hundred-fifty-seventh automobile (according to the salesman), petitioning for peace away from Europe's wars, fighting in the Philippines, a whirlwind romance with communism before flipping hard to the power of the dollar. Living, killing, dying, having children and losing loved ones, over and over again.

Then meeting myself, from his eyes. In one single, shattering instant, I knew all my worry had been for naught. He felt nothing for me but pure and vulnerable love, stored in his battered soul for centuries, built up and too scared to come out lest he be hurt again. He'd loved the people he'd known over the years, but he'd only really loved one—the woman who'd burned in England. He saw a little of her in me and fate hadn't even given him a chance.

"Wake up, love. That's it, you can do it. Come back to me." His voice rang in my soul, crystalline and pure, and I tried. Oh gods, I tried. I was so far down, down in the deep warmth with K`zhandri and Cassandra and Ryan and the dozens of other people he'd been in his immortal life. I began to float back up but it must have taken hours to get anywhere.

My eyes opened, weakly at first but with growing confidence. I was in my home in the country, in my time, in my body. It was winter outside, there was a fire in the fireplace, and a fox was with me. Leon. All was as it should be, my mind said, but it was still confused—was it really awake? The number of times I'd woke in a foreign body were cluttering my thoughts.

I'd been someone else dozens of times, in dozens of roles. I tried hard to piece together all the information... and then, all at once, I simply did. My eyes shot open. "I remember everything." Lifetimes. All those stories, all that he'd made me experience under trance, those people had been real. They were all in him. And they were a part of me, now, too.

I remembered being them as he took them, I remembered being them as he changed them. I remembered lifetimes of love and sex and it threatened to overwhelm me, to bury my personality with his memories. Something kept me afloat. Gradually, I realized what it was: him. Something he'd said, some command he'd given me, something made me different from the rest. By now the countess and the tigress and the skunk had had all had their personalities drowned, buried by his. But I was different. And as I looked at him, remembered being him, I knew why. "How long was I...?"

"A long time, but what matter? We'll live together forever." My fox motioned at the calendar, then kissed me on the nose. "Happy Valentine's day."

A whole year? True, his features were very familiar. A warm glow surrounded the way I thought of him. My body certainly was used to him—his smells, his manners, his look and feel. I glanced around. A broom was tilted in the corner, the same place I'd kept it before he took me under. It was covered with cobwebs and dust. He probably left it that way just to drive the point home.

"That's amazing," I breathed, meaning it completely. "I've... I've been under for a whole year?" He coughed a moment before answering.

"More or less. You've been awake for most of it, but you were living memories. We strolled around in the forest when you were in a town. We made love in here while you were in a mansion. I've been with you for all of it." He snorted briefly. "I've washed or replaced these sheets more times than I'd care to count." My fox watched me intently, his expression rapt, the little black tips of his ears perked up for my every move. I reached my hand out slowly, cupping his muzzle, feeling my pads push the white fur, trying to be sure it was real.

"What about my job?" I tried to put concern in my voice but I laughed instead, giddy and gloriously, completely happy. I was his, body and soul, brainwashed and loving, too damned content to worry. He'd cheated to get me but I knew with impossible certainty that he'd meant it. Purring, I threw my arms around my fox, nuzzling him, enjoying the feeling of him in real life for once. "And why am I so happy?"

He wrapped his arms around my back, pulling me tighter. "It's all taken care of. I've had lifetimes of wealth. Neither of us will ever want for anything." He gave my ear just a little lick, then whispered. "And as for the second question... love, remember. You're going to live forever." He meant it. I squeezed him tight as I could, tears brimming in my eyes.

I had lost count of how many people I'd been. Well, that's not precisely true—I can remember their stories, even remember being them, and I'm sure if I counted I could have a number. I just haven't. Right now, I was Cassandra, but I wasn't in the manse being taken by Leon. I was in the boat and I was taking the tigress and I couldn't wait to finish the memory so I could go back to the bed in the clouds and have my fox again.

Cassandra was a little wet, but not much. I was dripping in real life. The way my hands slowly massaged the tigress's breasts, feeling her stiff nipples against my palms, feeling her helpless under my hands, whispering commands to her, continuing the cycle—it was getting me hot. So hot. I understood: He was wiring the tools I needed straight into my soul and searing them there with lust.

I leaned forward and took one of the tigress's nipples into my mouth, sucking on it gently while the tigress repeated commands to herself. There were three things, now. There was the fox telling me the memory, and there was me, but there was lust, too. Not for the tigress but for the control I had over her.

Cassandra leaned back, a small strand of saliva connecting my mouth to the nipple I'd left. "That's it, K`zhandri. Keep going deeper and deeper for me." I felt my hand take hers and move it to my sex. Oh gods yes. Make her make me cum. Please oh please oh please—oh! The cat's fingers slid into my sex and the moan Cassandra let out was too quiet by half.

"You know the whole story, K`zhandri. You have my memories, you know who I am. Feel yourself sink into my personality. You remember being me so much because you are me, now. The way I was is now the way you are. Someday, you'll pass us on to another life, but for now, you're me." The tigress sighed and her eyes rolled back into her head, the cumulative effects of dozens of deep sessions taking hold, molding her personality into a mirror image of mine.

Around me, the ship began to break apart, piece by piece, floating away up into the night sky. The wood spun slowly, drifting out in all directions, fading into the mist. Soon all that was left was the bed, and then it, too, floated up and away from the waves, wafting into the night sky, lifting us higher and higher. The tigress didn't even notice, she just kept pushing her fingers into my pussy. I was too distracted to feel much of it.

In a moment, we reached the cloud cover, the thick fog making my fur slightly damp and pressing up against me just a little, just enough, the lightest silk imaginable. We drifted up out of the cloud into the night sky and Cassandra and K`zhandri were gone. We had replaced them. I was purring contentment and his fingers were still inside me.

"Why did you stop the story?" I asked.

"Because those are my memories, love." Leon kissed me, gently, before continuing. "I don't have to give you all of my experiences because I'm not going to make you me. I think," he kissed me again, more passionately this time, "that we ought to make our own memories. Where would you like to go?" His free hand swept the horizon. "I can take us anywhere, anywhere you'd like."

I cocked an ear. "Aren't you still on my bed? You won't see any of it."

"That's okay." His smile hid something sad in his eyes, just a flicker of, too short for me to guess at what. He coughed. "You can bring me somewhere fantastic later. We'll have time. You know how I've stayed alive all these years, now. You'll find someone, imprint yourself on them. We can live forever, be together forever. But for now..." he locked eyes with mine, spoke a trigger phrase; his words became indistinct. His voice trailed off but he was still speaking.

I struggled to speak, forced slurred words out through the trance. "I like them, though. You..." I sighed, "your memries... keep gving thm... hhh." I laid back and was silent, letting the induced bliss wash over me. He nodded none the less. I smiled.

The bed drifted forward, parting the clouds in a long, lazy V. I slid off his fingers, laying him down on the bed, moving to straddle him, my body working of its own accord. I slid myself down on his member, watching as the lips of my sex slid down his length, gripping his base and hilting him deep inside me. The clouds started to fall away. I slid up and down lazily, gasping in wonder as the bed left the world, both my hips and the bed moving faster and faster, stars flying past us at an incredible rate, distracting me from the pleasure and letting me last longer.

He seized my hips, thrusting up into me, his commands complete. I got control of my body back. "What do you see, love? Describe it to me." Pain returned to his eyes—that's what I'd missed earlier. I frowned but the sex was too distracting for me to focus on it for long.

I squeezed him tight and sighed as his member slid almost out of me, tugged all the while by the walls of my sex, replacing his pain with joy. "I see stars, an endless sky of stars, more than I've ever seen. We're getting closer to an endless billowy cloud of something, hahh," his hands slipped inward, teasing at my clitty as I rode him. "Ahh, it's orange and red and there's light coming from it, oh! Stars! Oh, I wish you could see this! There are stars inside the cloud!"

The bed came to a rest, surrounded by impossibly huge pillars of mist and lights, blanketed in the soft glow of newborn stars. I started to roll my hips in time with his thrusts, keeping us together but in constant motion; my hand reached down between our legs, stroking his sack, gripping it gently and letting my pads send shivers up his spine. Warm wetness covered my fingers, glistening orange in the stellar light, matting his soft, downy fur. He touched my hand lightly; caressed it as I caressed him. My tail wound itself around his leg and, privately, I thought to myself that I liked my real body better than the ones I'd remembered.

I looked down, grinning at the way the orange light blurred the spots of my calico together, knowing what it meant to him. To me, in a way. This memory was ours. Someday, we would both tell a deeply hypnotized lover of this moment. Better make it count. I smiled at the thought—my eyes closed and the urge to ride faster grew.

He broke first. Turning us over, Leon started thrusting in long, hard strokes. His fur had a warm orange glow to it under the light of the nebula. I bucked into him, meeting his strokes instead of moving with them. Gasping at the impact each time. Warmth built between us quickly; my body was already overexcited from working on K`zhandri and I wanted, needed to cum with him. I reached up, tilted his muzzle down, met his gaze.

"But—hrnn—the stars, you should watch them when you come."

"I am." Behind his head, rocking with the motions of his body, were spread before me the splendor of the heavens—but I didn't just want to remember stars and sex. I wanted to remember him, too. His little gasps and pants as his head rocked with our lovemaking. The shimmering heavens reflected blue by his eyes. Even if I didn't have to be him I wanted him to be a part of me. "Make me come?"

"What?"

"Don't wait for it to happen, make me do it when you do it. Tell me to come when you do."

He nodded and closed his eyes, panting with exertion, leaning over me and pushing into me, slipping in and out of my sex with soft, wet sounds. The pleasure built with each thrust, each time his head rubbed against my g-spot, but I couldn't come. My breath turned to gasps, my gasps turned to moans; his tail twitched in the air as he held himself back, aware of my predicament but wanting to keep me on the edge as long as he could.

The fox's eyes shot open, met mine; his lips spoke a command I couldn't hear. The pleasure crescendoed, swelling throughout my body; my eyes rolled back in my head as my cunny squeezed him in smooth ripples learned under hypnotic instruction. I could feel every inch of him twitching in me and hugging me close as I melted into his touch, wrapping him in my arms, a moment of glorious love and impossible sex seared forever in immortal memory.

The waves the light of the nebula made shimmered over us both.

"Happy anniversary." He smiled at me, the aurora borealis once again framing his muzzle.

I flicked an ear at him "It's Valentine's Day again?" He nodded, coughing a bit. "Time sure goes quickly. I wonder how that old broom is doing?"

"I had it put to good use, don't worry. Don't worry about anything. I want today to be perfect." I stroked his face and he nuzzled into my hand, sighing. "Where shall we go?"

"All this time and I haven't once taken you anywhere." I put my other hand on his face, stroking him evenly, one of his favorite induction techniques. "Where do you want to go?"

His eyes fluttered—his mind knew too well the power of hypnosis for him to resist any attempt at it for long—but he grasped my hands, pulling them away, if reluctantly. "Not today."

I cocked an ear at him. "Why don't you want me to take you?"

He turned away. "I'll tell you someday, I promise. For now, I want to make you as happy as I can. I want to show you the most beautiful things in the world, fill your mind with new memories instead of my own. I want to make sure you'll never, ever pass from this world."

"Soon?"

"Hm?"

"You'll tell me soon?" He didn't look back at me. I wondered why but didn't ask.

He hesitated before nodding. "Yes, soon." The same sad something was back and in his voice... I couldn't place it. He coughed again, and I smiled—poor fellow was probably just a little ill.

Light streamed down in flickering beams that barely reached this far underwater. Large icebergs floated around us, suspended in the blue stillness of the Antarctic Ocean and lit only by the few thin rays of sunlight. I lay on my chest by the kneeling fox. His member bobbed in the corner of my vision as I took in the splendor surrounding us.

The bed was moving gently with the waves, almost imperceptibly. Just enough to give the sunlit ice an impression of motion. We'd been to many places, tried many fantasies, but we kept returning to this one. He knew it was my favorite. I'd never said so; somehow, he knew. We'd come here on Valentine's Day and we were coming here again today. I dimly wondered what made this occasion special.

I also wondered how he was going to take me this time. We'd made a game of it. Each time we made love in the arctic, he would try to re-hypnotize me within the fantasy without using the real trance to command me. He'd promised to tell me the answer to my question if I could resist him. I hadn't won yet. Hope sprang eternal.

His hands tugged my ears gently, moving my face back to his crotch. I purred, ready for this trick; I slid forward, taking him into my mouth before he had a chance to do any commanding.

"Ohhh... that's good, that's very good..." he breathed as I rubbed his head against the roof of my mouth, bathing the underside of his member with my tongue. My hands cupped his balls gently, kneading them, keeping him distracted with new sensation, drilling the vibration of my purr into his very soul.

He panted for quite a while before he spoke again. "That's it, keep going." His hands found my ears again, stroked them at the base. I frowned. I wanted to be talking, to lead him into trance, but my mouth was too busy and I couldn't pull back without losing momentum. "Keep sucking, nice and steady." I planned to. He was trying to trick me into releasing him, giving him back the initiative, but I wouldn't have it.

I focused, cleared my mind of all distraction. Up and down, up and down, tongue slathering the shaft, caressing his sack, "up and down, tongue slathering the shaft, caressing his sack," so on and so forth until I couldn't tell which of us was saying the mantra.

He was rolling his hips, now, gently fucking my mouth as I repeated the mantra in moans around his manhood. I wanted to know what he was keeping from me too much to stop. My eyes were glazed, unused even in the fantasy; my thoughts were a lusty blur. The rhythm was all-consuming, up and down, up and down, it was all I knew.

David mumbled to himself somewhere above me as I stroked his thighs, suckling him without letting him get too excited, trying to match the fantasy the way I'd been taught. My fingers dove in and out of my snatch, working me to a shuddering, stifled climax, getting it out of the way now lest it distract me.

Kneeling there at the base of the couch, juice leaking out around my fingers, mouth wrapped around the member of a white wolf, feeling him sway back and forth helplessly above me, whining as a sudden bout of aftershocks made my pussy spasm... then silence, release, and focus for what had to come next.

"I lost, didn't I? I was so sure I had you that time." I pouted at Leon when I woke back in the aurora.

He smiled anyway. "It isn't a fair game. You're so used to me hypnotizing you that you slip into trance no matter what I do. You've been under the better part of every day for a long time. The sound of my breathing is even enough, if we're quiet." He was still panting. I must have really given him a workout; his speech was coming with great effort, as if the activity had taken a lot out of him.

"Next time!" I shook my fist, grinning, knowing that even if it wasn't true it didn't matter. Let him keep his little secret for now. We had for ever. I leaned back on my hands, sighing up at the night sky. Forever. It was a powerful word when it was literal. An eternity of bliss, together forever and no death to do parting.

He coughed a little. "No, that's okay. I think... I think it's time." I looked back at him and cocked my ear to one side, waiting for him to continue. His voice had a weariness to it that I hadn't heard from him before. "Love..." He closed his eyes, a sad expression on his face. "Do you remember how I told you we would live together forever?"

I nodded, worried. "Yes?"

He met my look and smiled wanly, expression full of profound sadness. My gaze was trapped by his eyes.

"I lied."

His head tilted back suddenly and let out a ragged wheeze, pain he'd been holding for far too long. It was as if his body had been waiting for the truth. The trigger phrase shattered the illusion around me, sent me back to the real world. The real bed, the real fox, the real blood spatters on the fur around his mouth, the real sunken look beneath his eyes. The truth that he'd smoothed with suggestions so I wouldn't see that he was dying.

I rushed to him, scrabbling across the bed as quick as I could. I caught him before he fell, but only in time to watch the light leave his eyes. They still held me for moments even after. I cried around my stare.

The cancer took him two weeks after Valentine's Day on the third year of our forever.

David's attention was absolute. I kept talking. "The funereal was in England. I didn't mind the jet lag; I... I remember being worried about that." Leon had said that details were important. "His will had a stipulation: that he be buried in an unmarked grave at a certain place in a certain cemetery. They laid Leon to rest next to Lisa Thurlow without ever knowing why. I couldn't tell them."

"I tried not to cry. I tried so hard." I nodded. "He wouldn't have wanted me to cry."

"When I put a rose on his grave, the sound that came from me wrenched up from deep in my soul, somewhere down in my core. I beat my fist on his grave and I couldn't stop asking it why he'd had to go. I didn't get any answer from the stone."

My voice chokes at that. Wetness brims in my eyes but I force myself to continue. "I should have known. I should have known he was sick. He'd came to me to make me into him, I knew that much. But the bastard loved me and I never saw what that meant!" I squeezed the side of the couch, claws making little puncture marks. "He should have gone to someone else, he should have saved himself!" My arm moved again, shaking with grief. Worse than last time. I rode it out, struggling to speak the words.

I stroked David's face gently, almost reverently. The matted fur of my fingers left little wet streaks. Tears or sex, I couldn't say which. "I can't let him go. I love him too much. I have to have him back." I hugged the white wolf, rocked him back and forth, almost as apology. "We have to have time, real time together. I have to have our forever back. I love you, you know I do, but I love him."

Cold feet again. I had to do it. I paused, took a deep breath, and met David's gaze.

"You know the whole story. You have his memories, you know who he was. Feel yourself sink into his personality. You remember being him so much because you are him, now. The way he was is now the way you are. Someday, you'll pass him on to another life, but for now, you're him."

Tears stream down my face as I hug him close. He shakes, his body spasming for no reason. Perhaps because it feels the occasion demands movement. In his eyes I saw the places and people I'd told him of, all of it crowding his mind, all in a rush as he struggled to remember. Slowly at first, then suddenly, he remembered everything. The light of dawn streamed in through the office window, illuminating both my gray-touched calico and his slumped form.

Hesitantly, reverently, I kiss him, softly at first but then pressing greedily into the familiar touch. He returns the embrace, murring as he moves under me on the couch, sliding into me. I lean forward and push back, pressing my hips against his hips and my lips against his hips, kissing him deeply, melting into him there on the couch. On the bed in the sky. Floating up in the nebula, both our fur covered with waves, living in fantasy we can finally share—me and him, him and me, Ever After.