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“Fireside Meeting at the Rearguard Bivouac” by Friends of the Fireplace
6th November 2023 • The Voice of Dog • Rob MacWolf and guests
00:00:00 00:28:05

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Today’s story is a collaborative piece. Contributed stories are“Infiltration” by Drakolf Grimm, who recently started a rewrite of a story that we might be seeing in around a year, “Waiting for Something” by Leuna, who is busying themself as an essayist and is writing surreal short fiction on FurAffinity, “Ascension of the 225 Express” by Sparky, Sol Harries, and Rob MacWolf, and “Who wants coffee?” by Sparky.

Read by Dralen, the dapper Dragonfox, Ta’kom Ironhoof, the Equine Charmer, Rob MacWolf, werewolf hitchhiker, and Solomon Harries, a cuddly badger dad.

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https://thevoice.dog/episode/fireside-meeting-at-the-rearguard-bivouac-by-friends-of-the-fireplace

Transcripts

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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Today’s story is a collaborative piece with contributions

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by Drakolf Grimm,

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Leuna, Rob MacWolf,

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Solomon Harries, and Sparky.

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Read by Dralen, the dapper Dragonfox,

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Ta’kom Ironhoof,

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the Equine Charmer,

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Rob MacWolf, werewolf hitchhiker,

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and Solomon Harries,

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a cuddly badger dad. Please enjoy

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“Fireside Meeting

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at the Rearguard Bivouac”

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The assault of the summer had stalled,

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had failed to capture the opposite banks.

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Just like last summer,

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and the summer before that.

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Now autumn was setting in,

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cold, muddy, stinking of gunpowder and sorcerous ozone,

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and the badger was profoundly weary.

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What was the purpose of this?

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Of waiting here for months

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of miserable dirty cold

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to get killed by a Prussian alchemistengruppe,

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his lungs agonizingly transmuted into solid lead,

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in a pointless charge

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to reclaim five feet of french mud that's

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only going to turn out to be triple-cursed and therefore uninhabitable?

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Recognizing the stars and stripes scarf

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—pvt. Anderson’s sister had knitted it for him

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—among the skeletal support raised by Army Corps of Necromancy

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for the last, and most ill-advised, charge?

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That had been the last straw.

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Not even death, it seemed,

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offered a way out of these trenches.

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Nobody noticed one more soldier wandering aimlessly among the shambles that ought to have been battle lines.

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If they’d asked him where his company was,

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and who his commanding officer,

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he would have said with perfect honesty that he had no idea anymore.

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But nobody asked him

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—provisioners, medics,

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ammunition runners, camp followers, and civilian refugees

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drifted past him like asteroids around a comet

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until he reached the hills

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behind the artillery banks,

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where there were still a few stunted trees.

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A salvo of lightning bolts,

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in Hapsburg colors as if that mattered at this point,

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skittered apathetically across the wards at the border of no-man’s

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-land and dissolved into sparks.

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It occurred to the badger that what he meant to do,

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if it could be done,

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was desertion. But he found he had no feelings, one way or the other,

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about that thought once he had it.

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It wasn’t as if he’d volunteered to be here.

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According to rumor,

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the first step was to light a fire

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and bring a story.

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But he found one already lit.

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A little hollow, the kind left by detonation of greek dragonfire,

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had been melted into the stone at the top of the hill.

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Within flickered a campfire,

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and around it were three people

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who obviously didn’t belong on this battlefield,

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not that anybody did.

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The wolf in the shabby and road-worn clothes

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and the stallion with the disreputably debonair mustache

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had both turned their attention to what seemed at first to be a white fox,

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impeccably dressed,

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though a moment’s inspection

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noticed scales rather than fur on his throat,

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and the outline of wings beneath his greatcoat.

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“Well,” the dapper fox looked up.

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He beckoned to the badger hovering at the edge of the hollow.

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“You arrived just in time, friend.”

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“What?” the badger began,

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but the stallion turned

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and raised a finger to his lips.

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And the fox, if fox he was, began: Teela-Vashant paced nervously in the D-Class starship's recreational room.

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She was one of her people's most skilled infiltrators,

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capable of affecting another species' mannerisms and form through hard light holograms and well-honed vocal precision.

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She hadn't even made it past the first blockade,

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the Humans didn't accept her story of being a straggler from the Vagrax Prime Incident

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trying to return home,

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and had not only overridden the controls of the commandeered starship,

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but kept in a gravitational tether that she couldn't disrupt from her end.

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The ship's comm unit beeped,

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indicating the Humans were making a communications request.

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She still had an opportunity to make it out with her life.

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She breathed in, calming herself,

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and approached the comm unit.

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"Am I going to be kept here much longer?"

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She asked in perfect Terran.

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She had studied Human behavior,

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and affected the mannerisms of their dominant females.

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"I demand to see your commanding officer!"

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"Mrs.-" There was a burst of static.

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"-I'm sorry, I can't keep a straight face with that name. 'Alexia

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Marvel',

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wow, what a name." Teela-Vashant did not betray a single emotion to the male Human voice.

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"Look, I'll be blunt with you,

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the ship you're piloting isn't meant for deep space conflict-

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it doesn't even have any guns-

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and the designation matches a ship that was reported missing from the logs on the Epsilon Eridani colony,

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you know, the one you Vagraxi raided.

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raided." The Human spoke with certainty,

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this troubled her.

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"I'm sending an agent to talk to you in person,

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you're going to tell him what your mission is,

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and then we're going to send you back to your home world so you can tell them to brush up on their espionage.

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At least make it interesting.

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interesting." The comm unit went silent,

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and almost immediately after,

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the ship shook. Teela-Vashant braced herself against the console.

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A ship had directly docked with hers.

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She strode into the recreational room, she heard footsteps,

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heavy, likely a Human soldier bogged down with heavy weaponry and armor.

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She'd have him on the ground in seconds.

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The door opened, she lunged for it,

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only to find nobody there.

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"Yep, it's a Vagraxi." Teela-Vashant felt a hand grab the facsimile of cloth that covered the disguise she wore

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and was pulled up.

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"Move." She was moved back into the recreational room.

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"Sit." She walked over to the chair and sat down.

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Her eyes widened as she looked at

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a Vagraxi male,

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though this one was dressed as a Human soldier would.

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With green scales, a pair of short finned crests running along the back of their head,

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and a large, stocky body,

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he was a fine specimen of their species.

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This raised several questions.

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"Your lack of panic also indicates you're not Human.

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Human." The Vagraxi soldier stated.

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"Drop the disguise,

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there's no point in hiding it.

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it." She obliged. "Teela-Vashant,

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Infiltrator, Xaram Tek-vos.

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Who are you?" "Adrian Bragg,

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Human Soldier in the Exoterra Defense Force,

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Metahuman Brigade.

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Brigade." A Human? "Is that what they call defectors in the Human military?" Teela-Vashant asked.

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Adrian bared his throat,

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the scars from a Biological Assimilation Drone were clear on it.

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Yes, this man had been Human.

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"Tell me, Teela, have you ever

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successfully assimilated a Human before?"

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"I refuse to comment.

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comment." She stated. "Because you haven't.

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haven't." Adrian replied. "Nasty piece of work, your BADs,

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uses the subject's resistance as a means to scramble their memories and implant new ones,

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takes years of therapy to sort them out.

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Let me tell you something,

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and I want you to commit this to memory,

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I volunteered to have it tested on me.

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me." The cold shock that rushed through Teela-Vashant's body

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was the only indication of a genuine emotional response

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she had given since she'd been captured.

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There was a meaning implied in his words,

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they knew the limitation of the Biological Assimilation Drones.

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"You... willingly assimilated yourself.

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yourself." She stated. "I mean,

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I always wanted to be an anthro lizard,

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there's millions of us on Earth who'd jump at the chance.

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Of course, nobody's willing to betray their own species for it, so when you kept sending your BADs at us, well,

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one of our scientists decided to test it,

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figured out what it does,

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so we've got a steadily rising number of Metahumans with

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implanted memories both ready and capable of infiltrating

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your entire society

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and bringing it down from the inside.

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inside." The cold shock turned to horror.

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Adrian smirked- an expression foreign to a Vagraxi face- and added,

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"Oh, and one more thing.

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At least half of your 'converts' are our spies.

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Good luck figuring out which ones they are.

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are." Adrian stood up and left the ship,

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a shudder indicated the ship had decoupled,

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and the auto-pilot systems engaged as the ship began flying back to Vagrax Prime...

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-EDF A-Class Dreadnought

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'Bulwark'- Marcus watched the ship fly away on the monitors, and barely acknowledged Adrian as he climbed back onto the observation deck.

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"Target seems to have accepted they're heading home.

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home." He remarked. Adrian approached his friend and leaned against the back of the seat, looking over his head at the holoscreens.

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"Yeah?" "Yeah." Marcus replied.

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"What was all of that bullshit you fed her about us infiltrating their system?"

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"Eh, it'll give them something to chew on for a while,

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maybe it'll get them to stop trying to conquer us while the Gixx ambassadors are here.

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here." He paused. "Are you gonna get the poke,

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or are you waiting for the Xenobiologists to figure out how to splice other DNA in?"

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"I'll wait for now,

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give your report to the Commander,

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she'll probably laugh her ass off at your antics."

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"Will do." Adrian straightened up.

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"And let me know if you do decide to get the poke,

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it takes a week to get used to the tail and

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you're gonna want someone around to help you adjust."

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"Yeah, yeah." Adrian left the observation deck,

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ready to give his report…

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“Well, the theme's a bullseye for the location,"

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the stallion sounded warmly approving,

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though that might be just how he talked, "though

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it's a long way from home.

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home." "Where'd you pick that one up, anyway?”

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asked the shabby werewolf.

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"That," the somewhat-fox raised an immaculately groomed eyebrow,

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"is another story.

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Next time, maybe." "I'm not sure,"

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the badger was more surprised than anyone to find himself saying this,

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"that I'm supposed to be here.

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here." “Of course you are,”

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the fox laughed. “But I’m not any kind of mystic-”

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“If you’re here,” the werewolf cut him off,

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“then you’re supposed to be.”

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The stallion took the badger’s confused silence as invitation

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to begin. I never commissioned my own stickers.

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It sucks, there are some packs of mice ones,

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but they’re all… not right.

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Too cutesy, too much cheese or

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micro vore shit or just.

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I still use them.

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He hasn’t in… maybe years now?

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I don’t want to be thinking about this.

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I don’t want to think about the time we crossed the Block,

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or the time I snuck him out of his shitty parents’ house

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or the time he was up all night crying and I sat right outside our complex with him.

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I don’t want to think about any of this, not next to Becks.

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I look back at my little mouse sticker,

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one I usually use when I don’t have anything better to say.

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Last time we spoke he had those dreams.

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He wanted to escape,

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I told him I supported him no matter what.

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I was ready to cross the Boundary with him.

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He never replied when I asked.

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I hope things are going okay.

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He never was the same when he came back.

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He stopped with the little stickers he used.

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I remember the ones he liked, the little scribbly bird ones.

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I used the school’s sticker paper and printed them out once

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and put them on my notebooks.

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Like he was holding me together through classes.

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He was there for me in ways that I was never able to be for him.

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And now what. And now he’s different.

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And I’m here with my best friend.

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And she’s breathing into my neck.

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I sometimes wish she would just

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bite as hard as possible,

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just finish things. But tonight

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I’m thinking about

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him. His parents don’t let him out any more.

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Tests, examinations, worries,

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wondering if he is different, a different him,

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if he is experiencing time differently.

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I wonder if I’m going to ask him if we’re still together.

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Things end all the time

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but I can’t stand waiting for something to happen.

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Fuck. Fuck I sent a second sticker by accident.

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He hasn’t checked his messages yet so it’s fine I’ll just delete it.

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I don’t want to get his feathers in a bunch or whatever.

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But he’s responded already.

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“Sorry.” “I worry about that,”

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the badger said before he realized he was going to speak up.

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“Even if this works, even if I do make it home.

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Or even if the war was suddenly somehow over and they let me go home.

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Has being here changed me too much?

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Will my kids recognize me? Hell,

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will I recognize them?”

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“Everything we do changes us,”

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said the well-dressed fox-thing.

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“Sitting at this fire changes you just as much as war does.”

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“It’s a better change, though,”

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the horse interjected.

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“Oh certainly,” agreed the fox.

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“Speaking of change,”

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the werewolf hitchhiker

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cleared his throat.

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A thunderous tone, the tracks trembling, their bolted sleepers straining against the pebbled ground.

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The rails scream, a tormented theremin’s evocation of labor pangs as the locomotive serves out one last commute.

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Plates clatter and crunch,

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forced into contact in ways no engineer intended,

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nor could have possibly conceived.

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Turning a train into a dragon ain’t a stationary kind of affair.

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No slow emerging from a locomotive cocoon, sleepily blinking headlamps into eyes,

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no gentle nap before slowly breaking its wings,

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dripping with mucus,

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out the sides and spreading them to dry in the sun for a while.

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Nah, that’s dragonflies,

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we’re talking dragons here.

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Dragontrains. This is a symphony of speed and rumble,

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a ferocious tear.

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Screaming down the track as fast as can be engineered, no, faster,

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feeling the wind rushing against the cabin,

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whistling through it.

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Letting the air lift the train, faster and faster until it happens:

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the panels to the side of the cabin rip off,

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caught in its windgripped claw.

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Pulling back they change form, ripping along the train, stretching long,

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the metal turning leathery,

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becoming wings. Huge art-deco sweeps of steel and stained glass reveal scales cascading down the body

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as panels rip and pull from the train’s form

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like a molting lizard

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ablaze with warm infrared glow.

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Sparks fly along the tracks as the wheels lock,

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as in an instant the cast iron curves of the wheels split,

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the front halves revolve from metal to impossibly hard keratinous claws at the end of his plate-armored feet.

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Legs creak, the metal groans give way to cartilaginous pops,

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stretching free as wings inflate with swiftly moving air,

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lifting the dragon

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and unchaining it from the rails that have confined it for so long.

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The great creaking groans when he moves, of steel bending,

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hammerforged beams crying out

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as he undulates through the smokestained sky.

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The whistle sounds for the last time.

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Before it even fades, it's become a howl,

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a trumpeting bellow,

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that sends shivers through the rails.

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It's the kind of sound that expects an answer.

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How many other trains will hear it,

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echoing along the railroad,

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depot to depot, station to station,

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railyard to switchlot to garage?

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How many will answer?

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Not that he cares, not really -

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the wind has taken him and he sees it all,

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sees them all, adrift below his lofted poise.

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He smells of coal and commuters,

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of dust and old steel.

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His belly is caked and smeared with diesel soot

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and the grit of forty-eight different states.

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The old dragon of the tracks,

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of the skies, oh how it flies:

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Soaring like a mesocyclone.

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Singing like the thunder of a collapsing coal mine.

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Trampling his way through the air like a dust storm over the horizon.

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Roaring like the very apocalypse,

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which who's to say this isn't?

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Isn't this some great revelation?

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Isn't this the end of the world you thought you knew?

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Isn't this the tearing asunder of all the seals,

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of the staid, stolid,

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mundane world of timetables and tickets, of schedule and suburb,

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of baggage and bureaucracy and burghermasterdom,

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to be succeeded by a new heaven

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and new earth, where anything

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might suddenly live

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and rejoice? Cargo,

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irrelevant now, is scattered and fluttering gently through the air

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like falling petals.

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Figures cling to the spines along his back,

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passengers on a now very different journey,

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their morning commute turned the adventure

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they will ne’er forget.

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"Well damn," sighs the man beside you on the platform,

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"Guess I'm gonna be late to work.

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work." “Hang on,” said the horse,

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charismatic even in suspicion,

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“train to dragon transformation’s a thing they’re up to here and now!

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You picked that up recently,

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and locally, didn’t you?”

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“Maybe I did,” the werewolf shrugged.

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“Stories have to start somewhere.

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Might as well be here.”

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All three of them turned to the Badger,

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who shrank back. “You must,”

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said the well-dressed somewhat-fox,

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“have come with a story.”

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“I… must?” “You couldn’t have found the fire without one.”

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“I don’t know,” the badger wrung his hands,

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“I was just hoping this could be a way out of here,

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to get home to my cubs!

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I don’t think I really thought it would work,

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I’d just heard rumors

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and thought I had nothing to lose.”

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“If you heard rumors,”

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said the stallion,

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“then you must have stories, right?

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That’s what rumors are.”

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“Uh, well,” the badger’s mind raced,

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"they’re all soldier’s rumors, though.

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About how to stay alive,

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or get out of cleaning duty.

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Like… superstitions.”

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He glanced around the firelit circle

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but saw no hint of discouragement,

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so he pressed on.

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“The guy I heard this one

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from said it was about someone avoiding the draft,

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Which... couldn't blame him.

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But I don't feel like that was it.

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I feel like it was

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transcendental, not self-preservation"

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“That's up to you,"

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the hitchhiker shrugged,

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"you're the one telling the story.

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story." “All right,” the badger took a deep breath.

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Bears wake slowly,

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consciousness coming to them in delicate layers.

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First comes the awareness of touch,

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the warmth of a dog,

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the coolness of the metal floor.

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Then comes the smells,

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Nick in his canine richness,

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men sleeping in their bunks,

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leftovers on the counter,

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a trash can full of wonders.

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Then, finally, after a bear moment,

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Sparky’s eyes open,

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head lifting to groggily look around the room.

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This is all still novel of the highest order for him:

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just three days ago he was all but a human,

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now he is a bear with (near) human cognition.

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Well, fully human cognition, just ask him…

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Use small words though, OK?

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After a moment of enjoying the warmth of the dog,

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Sparky rises, leaving Nick to be cold on the floor.

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Six hundred pounds of bear trundle across the floor,

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claws clacking on the hard floor.

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He came to the base’s ancient cast iron percolator,

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gazing on it with a mix of wonder and fear. ’OK,

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we can do this,’

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he thinks to himself,

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head tilting down from the percolator

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to look at his own forepaws.

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Shifting his weight,

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the bear stands, seven feet of muscle and fur towering in the room,

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nearly banging his head on the base’s ceilings.

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Standing is awkward,

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his weight feels wrong,

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hunched forward. Never mind that, Sparky has goals:

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first his paws alight on the top of the coffee machine.

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Flat pawpads gripping the circular top,

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twisting it off, then flipping it to the countertop

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with a loud CLANG.

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Yeah, sorry to the sleepin’ folk.

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OK, the filter. He places his palm pad flat on the stack and pulls,

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half the filters coming with it,

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fluttering to the floor.

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Fine, it doesn’t matter, Sparky has one, kind of, his paw curled around it.

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OK, maybe it's a couple of filters, who cares.

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With a precarious lean, he gets them into the top of the percolator.

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Next up, paws grasp for the bag of ground coffee,

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wafting intense notes of the earthy powder into his newly-sensitive nostrils.

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Now he knows there’s a lil measuring thing there, but that feels too hard to deal with,

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so the bear just dumps what was left of the grounds in the machine,

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measuring cup and all.

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Well, most of it makes it into the machine.

Today:

bear strength coffee.

Today:

Alright, so picking the top of the percolator up was actually easier than he’d been fearing.

Today:

Leaning down, both forepaws are able to find purchase on the 18” diameter top,

Today:

curling around the metal circle from each side.

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Lifting it, he gets it on the machine with a metallic CLANG, and then

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after a few tries manages to rotate it into place. The bear lowers himself,

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finally resting his forepaws on the floor.

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Splooting into a seated position,

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his right forepaw lifts,

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hovers for a moment filled with suspense,

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then descends to hit the big black button.

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There’s a pause, and then

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the percolator springs to life.

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Triumphant, the bear claps his forepaws together.

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This morning? This morning the bear made coffee.

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This morning? The bear

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is proud. Also, maybe the kitchen is a mess.

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Coffee filters and grounds litter the floor,

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and good lord he made some noise,

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but these things aren’t important to bears.

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Bears have coffee brewing.

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The badger let the story hang in the air with the sound of crackling fire for a moment.

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“Now what?” he said.

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“Now we go our separate ways,”

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the stallion got to his feet.

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“To wherever or whenever someone next lights a fire to exchange stories.”

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“Perhaps I’ll see you there, my friend.”

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The fox swept a bow,

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and when he tipped his hat reptilian horns were clearly visible through his fur.

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He spread huge scaly wings from beneath his greatcoat,

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began to rise toward the sky…

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…and was gone. Not flown away,

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just vanished. The badger blinked at the space across the fire where he had been.

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“And… that will work for me?

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Even if I’m not… whatever you all are?

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Even if I can’t do any magic?” “Of course you’re whatever we are,” said the stallion, as he turned to step away, and vanished.

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“And of course you can do magic,”

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added the werewolf,

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whose voice already sounded distant,

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“what did you think the story you just told was?”

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In the morning, when a headcount was taken,

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there were hundreds missing, presumed dead.

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This was as expected.

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A single badger, merely an enlisted private,

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among those missing in action,

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was considered in no way remarkable.

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Neither were the remnants of a campfire found in the hills behind the artillery embankments.

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Soldiers and camp followers made such fires all the time.

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Autumn was setting in,

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it was cold at night

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after all. And if their father was mysteriously returned one morning,

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telling war stories beside the woodstove

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as if he had only meant to make breakfast, long before he was supposed to be home from the war,

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well, these badger cubs

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were clever enough to keep their mouths shut about it.

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This was “Fireside Meeting at the Rearguard Bivouac.”

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Contributed stories were

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“Infiltration” by “Drakolf Grimm,”

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who recently started a rewrite of a story

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that we might be seeing in around a year,

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read by “Dralen, the Dapper Dragonfox,”

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“Waiting for Something” by Leuna, who is busying themself as an essayist and is writing surreal short fiction on FurAffinity,

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read by “Ta’kom Ironhoof,

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the Equine Charmer,

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“Ascension of the 225 Express” by Sparky, Sol Harries, and Rob MacWolf,” read by “Rob MacWolf, werewolf hitchhiker,” and “Who wants coffee?”

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by Sparky,” read by “Solomon

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Harries,

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cuddly badger dad.”

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You can find more stories on the web

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at thevoice.dog,

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or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog.

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