"Oh, also... since Mara is going to probably need a lot of rest because of her condition..."
"I believe the inn needs another pair of hands," she said. "Mara will need to slow down in a few months, and I’m going to handle the evening service on my own starting now."
Rex nodded once when he was about to leave. Marceline held his hand as he paused to look at her face, where he could clearly see her expression of frustration.
"Today... do you have ti in the night just for ?" Marceline asked, giving Rex a signal, which he got right away.
"You want what Mara is having right now?"
"Yes... since that bastard is ho... I guess you can punish him by making pregnant."
"Aight then." Rex let go of her hand. "But first, I need to check out that demi-human cheetah because I’m really curious."
"I’m going to ensure she works for you too, especially since you’ll be in the sa situation as Mara," Rex laughed.
...
He found her on his second pass through the area around the second bridge.
Rex knew that the small restaurant she was coming out of was owned by a man who had extre opinions about how he hired people. The way she left was the way soone would leave if they got the answer they expected but didn’t want.
She was exactly what Marceline had said she would be.
The cheetah-type’s ears were positioned higher than a typical human’s and possessed the sa expressive quality as those of cat-type demi-humans. They were currently oriented toward soone who was handling disappointnt with as much dignity as possible.
Her tail mirrored this: long, black, and spotted, it moved slowly and deliberately, much like tails do when their owners are mindful of their surroundings.
Rex noted that she appeared young, likely in her mid-twenties at most. She had the look of soone who was naturally agile and swift, yet seed to have gone without sufficient food lately.
Her clothes looked like they belonged to soone who had been making do with little and put cleanliness above all else, and she also wear a glasses.
Rex observed her as she checked the little notebook she carried, crossed sothing off, glanced at the next entry, and then looked at the address she needed to go to. The expression on her face during this process resembled that of soone moving through tasks chanically, rely completing the next step without concern for the outco.
But then his eyes were literally pulled towards her chest.
"Holy fucking shit... just by looking at it made my back hurt a lot." Rex said, comnting on her massive breasts that she’s carrying everywhere. "Now I can see why that bastard wanted her."
"He’s going for those massive succulent jugs..."
"Well... I’m wondering how it feels to have my way with her." Rex takes a deep breath. "Fuck it, let’s do it."
"Those massive succulent jugs are irresistible!"
He walked in the sa direction she was walking.
He was half a block behind her, not closing the distance, just moving in parallel, when the situation changed.
Bryan Bancey ca around the corner of the second bridge street from the north, walking with the specific quality of soone who had a destination in mind and was not looking at the general foot traffic.
’The fuck...?! He’s already here...?’
Rex could see that Bryan saw Linda.
The look on Bryan’s face when he saw her was not that of a man eting a professional acquaintance, a forr correspondent, or anyone with a straightforward connection to him.
Rex stopped walking.
Bryan approached her quickly and lowered his voice to say sothing direct. Rex couldn’t make out the words, but he observed their body language: Bryan leaning in, Linda instinctively shifting back, and Bryan’s hand reaching toward her arm before halting as her tail stiffened—a clear signal of the boundary set by cat-like demi-humans.
Linda’s response, when it ca, was loud enough to carry.
"I told you not to contact anymore," she said, and the quality in her voice was not the voice of soone managing anger but the voice of soone who was genuinely done with sothing and was stating that fact without embellishnt. "You told you were unmarried!"
"You told there was no one, but it turns out... you’re a disgusting human who pays won to do anything you want!"
Bryan said sothing else that was lower.
"I don’t want to hear your explanations." Linda said, "I’m not interested in a married man! I never was!"
"What you told wasn’t true, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you explain why it was okay."
She took a step back.
"Don’t follow ," she said. "If you do, I’ll fucking bite your face off."
The ears went back, the tail went straight, and she walked past Bryan and down the street like soone who had made up their mind.
Bryan watched her leave with the look of a man whose life had just gotten more complicated. Then he turned and walked in the other direction, looking like he needed ti to rethink how he felt about how the morning had gone.
Rex also saw him leave.
"Good job, you stupid hopeless piece of shit." Rex facepald. "You need a better A-ga... just like ."
After that, he turned around and followed Linda.
He found her again by the river, in the quiet part of the embanknt below the second bridge. There, foot traffic was light, and the stone walls on either side made it feel like she was temporarily away from the rest of the city.
She was sitting on the low wall of the embanknt with her notebook closed on her knee. Her tail was moving in a slow, irregular way, which is a sign that soone was going through a series of feelings rather than being in a settled state.
There was a noise coming from her stomach that wasn’t quiet.
She quickly placed her hand over it, as if embarrassed by an involuntary sound. Then she gazed at the river, resembling soone who had managed to remain composed during Bryan’s return and was now, in the relative privacy of the embanknt, allowing the full scope of her morning to co into focus.
Rex sat on the wall two ters from her.
She noticed him imdiately, her wariness surfacing like that of soone accustod to living on edge, wary of strangers who intruded upon quiet spaces. Her ears tuned in, tilting slightly as if to conduct a subtle assessnt.
"Calm down." Rex said, "I’m not that asshole you used to call Bryan."
She continued the assessnt for a mont. "I didn’t think you were."
"You had a difficult morning," Rex said.
She looked at him like soone who was trying to figure out if the observation was an intrusion or a point of contact.
"It’s nothing I haven’t already dealt with," she said, which was mostly true and represented the version of the truth she intended to start with.
Rex stared at the river. It had the exact quality of moving water in a city that had just been through a crisis.
It was still running and didn’t care about anything, which was either comforting or annoying, depending on what you needed from it.
"The restaurant on the second bridge street," Rex said. "They don’t hire demi-humans, you know?"
"They all could be pretty racist."
Linda’s expression changed to the particular look that appears when soone ntions an unspoken topic. "Well yeah..."
"Most of them don’t," she said. "A few do, but they’re fully staffed."
"How long have you been in Aethelgard?"
"Three months," she said. "I ca because I heard there was more work here than in the eastern provinces."
"And that was true... only before the attack, but now everything is closed for assessnt and reconstruction."
"What kind of job do you want?"
She looked at him for a mont to see if the question had a certain direction. "Mostly service work..."
"I’ve worked as a maid, done so kitchen work, and managed the household in general."
’Maid...? Now I’ve started to think about that failure bitch nad Lilith.’ Rex thought, and he was about to leave her alone, but then he was still interested in her cheetah traits.
Rex nodded.
"I don’t have an address or a reference in this city," she said. "That’s what every place asks for, and it ans I’ve had the sa conversation seventeen tis."
For a mont, Rex stared at the river again.
"I want to tell you sothing," he said, "about Bryan Bancey and the situation you were in with him, because you should have the accurate version rather than the version he gave you."
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