Welcome to Gaia! ::

Jamal was going to reply, but he was cut off (like so many other times) by that simple sleep command. Its effects were immediate; he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground, his momentum making him slide across the shiny floors until he slumped harmlessly into the wall in a tangled heap of arms and legs.

Jamal awoke with a groan, a hand reaching up to rub at his eyes as he struggled to sit up against the headboard. Something didn't feel right, but he wasn't sure what. He felt like a zombie.

The smell of fresh paint got his attention first since it was so strong on his sensitive feline-esque nose and only the faintest tinge of burnt cinders was detectable. He glanced around, a sullen expression on his face. At least he was back in his duplex.

A growl left his maw as he hauled himself off the bed and stood up, his muscles sore from his little stint in the lab. He wanted to be angry about that, but he couldn't be for some reason. It was like the tiger had receeded back into the very corner of his mind and was unable to even help him feel bitter. He felt very much void of ANY emotion.

It had been a week.

A week of dodging people and staying home. A week of eating at obscure times so she wouldn't run into someone. A week of anger, self-pity, and way too much thinking. She had wound herself into a rather unstable state, but somehow, she had finally convinced herself to go out and finally visit Jamal. He wouldn't mind right? He wouldn't be bothered by how she looked.

Besides, the squirrel demanded daytime fresh air and sunlight, even if her skin and eyes didn't quite agree.

She had found that by trying to put her glasses on out of habit, the surroundings had become blurry. Back off she realized that her vision seemed 20/20, if not better. However, she had also realized the pain that light seemed to bring, and was wearing sunglasses on her trek over to Jamal's.

Shoes were hopeless, which bothered her the most, but her jeans were baggy enough to fit in the overly large foot. A hoodie with Owl's shop log was also worn, not because she was cold but to hide herself from the sun and everyone else. She wasn't brave enough to walk around with a tank top quite yet, hence the visit to Jamal's.

Once there, she raised a relatively hairless hand to knock, cigarette burning silently between her lips as her tails, which couldn't really be hidden, twitched and flicked on their own accord. Mostly it looked as if they were trying to make shade for her.

The squirrel woman opened the door cautiously, taking off her sunglasses and slipping them in her hoodie pocket for now as she stepped in. Within seconds she was hit by a wall of heavily mixed smells, and it was hard for her to even discern until she saw the state of Jamal and the sheet.

So that's what sex smelled like, she smile slightly but didn't take down the hood quite yet. "Hey," she murmured softly, unsure of what to do. Fear still swam around in her stomach like a thousand butterflies that had been lit on fire, her nerves seemingly causing heartburn.

Her nose had continued to work on identifying the smells until the last one had been pegged, causing her eyes to go wide as she simply stared at the bed.

"Kaveri," she breathed inwardly to herself, a pained look in her eyes.

Piercings, ample curves, tattoos, and very open with her sexuality. Kaveri had reminded Antony so keenly of herself, except for both the lack of drinking and seeming inability to deepthroat anything, that she had even developed a liking for her. However the one key difference kept repeating in her mind as she took a shaking step backwards.

Kaveri hadn't changed.

No fur covering most of her body, no freakishly large feet, no ugly, muzzled face, and certainly no eyes that looked like hers. Antony's paranoid fears had been confirmed: somehow he had already seen her changed and had been quickly replaced with the new and improved (not hairy) Antony, Kaveri.

A sliver of her mind told her that she was being irrational and that Jamal wouldn't do that to her, but that voice was smothered in favor of the unconfident, paranoid one.

Suddenly, at the squirrel's bidding, Antony turned and fled, not bothering to shut the door behind her. She stumbled every so often over her feet as hot tears of shame and hate burned at her eyes. In her eyes, she had become something monsterously ugly and ********, and that those smelly bedsheets had proved her right.

The fact that he realized her name only seemed to confirm her beliefs, and she ran faster, which wasn't that fast thanks to her awkward body position and legs. Her cigarette had been discarded at some point, and her running caused her hood to fall down, revealing the white fur and her large ears, not that her massive amount of tails didn't give away her change.

She didn't answer him when he called after her, unable to bring herself to face him like this. And she had accepted him when he changed, not immediately gone off to find her a 'normal' person to ********. In fact, Antony herself hadn't been exactly picky, after all, she and Pyroth had had sex, and he was much furrier than she.

But she didn't think that he'd do that to her. They were friends too right?

Antony shook her head, not noticing a tree root directly in her way, her toes catching on it and sending her into the air. Somehow, she managed to land on her hands and feet in an otherwise strange position. The fall had lost her time, but her urge to get to the safety of her duplex caused her to scramble to her feet and continue her fleeing.

She had to get to safety.

Antony ran, squirrel ignoring his cries and pushing her onward, away from the predator chasing after him. It spied a nearby tree, and the urge to climb to safety won out as she leaped up the trunk, grabbing hold of the lowest branch to haul her up.

When she had done this outside of Billy's duplex, it had gone fluidly and hadn't been too hard. Unfortunately, despite the added balance and agility her tails brought her, the clown feet were her downfall.

Literally.

She landed on her back with a grunt, breath knocked out of her sharply as she layed there hand going to her chest as she gasped for air.

The squirrel regarded him with fear, and she tried to inch back away from him. Tears were running down her face as she shook her head, shaking from the fall and attempting to take deep breaths like he said.

His expression didn't look like one of disgust like she had thought, but rather one of concern. She was hot in the hoodie, especially in the sun and after she had just been sprinting, and she too started to pant somewhat, able to smell how she reaked of sweat. Her nose caught the scent of the replacement on him, and she automatically cringed away from the smell.

"You got a replacement," she finally murmured shakily, unable to look him in the eyes as her hands lifted to angrily wipe away her tears from her furry cheeks. To her, Kaveri was exactly like her, at least from what little she had learned of the pierced woman. Also, she knew she wasn't wrong with the scent, having been immersed in it during their little show at the Beach Bar.

As soon as she could, Antony attempted to stand up and inch towards her duplex. The squirrel still demanded distance between itself and the tiger man. Once a predator, always a predator.