The kaibyou ate the rabbit babes up bones and all, then licked herself clean with a certain daintiness. She did all this while staring directly at Aaron, which made him simultaneously both more and less inclined to try running again.

When her whiskers were no longer red with someone else’s kill, she stood and began walking. She didn’t waste words on ordering him to follow.

Aaron caught a few flashes of the white calf trailing after them, from a considerably farther distance than it had used in following him yesterday.

The kaibyou grew tenser as they went. Her split tail lashed. She would dart ahead, then stop to stare back at him, her pupils blown wide. It made him feel rather uninvited on this little walk of theirs, even though attempts to walk slower, just a bit, just to see, were met with growling until he’d caught up again. Eventually she stopped moving forward all together, and just paced a line in front of him, her ears flat. Aaron stood rather still.

Just ahead of them was a large rock, covered over in moss. Apparently there was some sort of hollow under it, since said hollow started mewing. And, well. That would certainly explain her hesitance in allowing him close.

“I didn’t know you were having kittens,” Aaron said, not taking a single step closer.

“What cat would trust a human with that knowledge?” She paced again, back and forth, before disappearing down into her den. She brought out three little furballs, their blue eyes barely open. White flowers and the curled fiddleheads of tiny ferns grew from their bodies, as numerous as their spots. More spring children.

More targets for the Winter Lord.

“They’re very beautiful,” Aaron said.

“Flattery,” she hissed. But she relaxed, just a bit, as any preening mother would; licked the top of one kitten’s head. Made a face, and coughed a bit, as a flower petal got stuck on her tongue. It didn’t seem to hurt the kitten, who tried and failed at wobbling to its feet.

“Can they talk?” Aaron asked.

“Not yet. I don’t know that anything born of this forest can.” She looked down on her kittens, who’d been born to something she understood as little as him.

“They’ll be smart,” he told her. “Even the deer are.”

This inspired a snort, from a certain calf hiding poorly in the trees behind them. Its white fur did it no favors.

“My apologies,” Aaron corrected, “even the reindeer.”

“Smart enough to follow two predators, yes,” the cat said dryly.

“I’m vegetarian, actually,” Aaron said. And for all her teeth and claws, she didn’t know whether killing the calf would be safe. As she herself had admitted in front of it.

She eyed the white reindeer, who was eyeing her back. And still definitely using Aaron as the slower prey in their pair.

“Can you trust me to hold them?” Aaron asked.

She clearly did not, even if that was what she’d brought him here to do; this had to be why she needed his hands. She could carry them on her own. But only one at a time, leaving the others behind, coming back for each in turn. A slow, staggered way of moving that worked much better when something wasn’t actively out to kill them. She shifted her unblinking gaze to him as she licked each of her kitten’s heads into cowlicks of fur and flowers and ferns.

“You need to get to the forest’s edge,” she said. “As do I. I need a place I can hunt, without fear of trespassing some rule. I will scout ahead, and lead. And you will defend them with your life.”

He liked that she stopped the threat there. No gratuitous or my claws will be the last thing you see, or other unnecessary flourishes that crude folk felt the need to tack on.

“Noted,” Aaron said.

There weren’t any kitten-shaped Deaths about. Or kaibyou-shaped, or Aaron-shaped, much as he was starting to have a few questions for his own gentlemen. They might just be trailing the Winter Lord; making a social call out of this slaughter, as so many other Deaths had been. But a fellow could hope. And there were worse fates than carrying fuzzy kittens.

He took off his coat, which was going to be in rough shape by the time he managed to get out of here.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as he shook the rocks out of his pockets. A few he switched to his pants, but most he left, for lack of space to keep them.

“Making a carrier,” he said, tying up the long trailing edge with the sleeves, and trying to remember how those with babes fashioned their slings. Though three squirming kittens were going to be a bit different to carry than one human child. “Proper hands do have their uses, and you’ve successfully borrowed mine.”

The kaibyou huffed out a breath. But watched, and made entirely unnecessary suggestions on where to tuck and tie that he was already planning to do, thank you, just give him a moment.

She placed the first kitten in by its scruff, and sat back as if waiting for the squirming thing to fall straight out the bottom. Aaron waited, one eyebrow raised, for her to continue. The first kitten gave a protesting mewl as the second was dropped on its head. The third tried sticking all its legs out to avoid going in, and Aaron’s attempts to help were quickly met with their mother’s growl. He dropped his hands, and let her figure it out. Soon there were three warm bundles sorting themselves out next to his chest. And sorting their tiny claws into his shirt. Should he ever be in a position to fashion another cat carrier, he’d be sure to put more fabric between himself and his charges. Yet again, he missed his leather breastplate. He’d never had so much use for it back when he’d actually had it.

One of the kittens tried enterprisingly to climb over its siblings heads and up his shoulder. He pushed its fuzzy little head back down as gently as he could, as its mother’s gaze tracked his hand unblinkingly. Then she turned, and led the way.

They moved in bursts. The kaibyou scouted ahead, her nose to the air and mouth half-open, tongue curling, as she took in things his human nose couldn’t distinguish from the scent of earth and plants. And the occasional smell of blood, which he knew well enough. They came across other spring-blossom babes, wilting where they lay. At least she didn’t have trouble finding food. He ignored his own stomach, which was a stupid thing, gone soft as a proper noble’s. Maybe he should get back to eating fewer meals when he got out of here. Teach it a lesson.

…Maybe he should eat twice as many meals, and stock up on fat.

They stopped around midday near a stream, for her kittens to nurse and for him to drink. He did, after exchanging one-sided pleasantries with whatever might be living in this one. And leaving another of his dragon buttons behind. It wasn’t until the kittens were milk-drunk and sleeping back inside his coat that the big cat cautiously took her own drink, and he realized she was just as wary of the water as he’d been. And so she’d let him go first. Nice of her.

The reindeer calf was still trailing them, probably for lack of anyone else that would hit wolves over the head for it. It stopped often to graze, catching up again just when Aaron thought it had left them for good. It nibbled at the new shoots on the ground, and the budding branches it could barely reach, and the blossoms of those that hadn’t survived.

The little nubs on its head were sprouting into proper antlers, covered in fine moss instead of velvet.

They stopped for the night, which probably had more to do with his increased stumbling as the shadows grew than with the mountain lion’s own preferred time of travel. She found them shelter in the sprawling roots of a tree uprooted in some past storm. It was still growing: branches reached from its fallen trunk, like saplings sprung up in a row. The reindeer began denuding the farthest ones as the kaibyou scratched out a place under the upturned roots to hide her kittens. When he unslung his coat, she dragged it away.

Well. The kittens would have a soft bed, at least. Aaron would just have to go for a leaf nest again, and hope the calf would be up for more company tonight.

“Get over here, human,” the kaibyou called.

…She’d left enough room in the hollow for him.

He carefully settled in under the roots near her. Then held rather still, as she scruffed the back of his shirt and tugged him into her nest proper, until he was against her warm fur. On the opposite side of her body from the kittens, of course. But still rather closer than he knew what to do with.

“You’ve first watch,” she told him. “Wake me when your eyes become useless.”

She settled down, kittens against her side, two asleep and one kneading its paws against her belly as it nursed with eyes closed. Her own eyes were closed, too. But he didn’t think she was sleeping.

Somewhere outside the roots, he heard the calf scraping the ground as it picked its own spot to sleep. And crickets, and frogs, and other night noises less easily placed.

“You can tell that girl that coming here worked, after a fashion,” the kaibyou said, soft enough not to rouse her kittens. “We can still think. But none of us know the rules, here.”

“How many did you lose?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know; they were never mine to keep track of. We drifted, after the first days. The forest didn’t like us trying to stay together. Nor did it care for those who tried to act more human than they ought. We could not even drag dead wood to make homes, not even for mice. This is not a place for those in humanity’s habits, and we cannot reason with the lord here as we could our last.”

Aaron stared out into the encroaching dark. There was the rustle of a reindeer calf laying down. “Still,” he said. “Your children will think.”

She cracked one eye. Crinkled her cheek, as a kitten nuzzled up under her chin, one of its flower buds tickling at her whiskers.

“They will,” she agreed. “Though I’m not sure I’ll understand them.”

“That’s how children are supposed to be, I think.”

She chuffed.

“Why are you being so accommodating?” he asked, as he lay against her warmth.

“I miss conversations, kitten.”

“Do you miss being a regular mountain lion?”

“Do you miss the time before you could talk?”

He couldn’t remember that time. But that might be part of her point, as well.

“What was the four tails like?”

“He was a proud father,” she said, which was not at all what he’d expected. “Though he’d only the one kit left to dote upon after all his years. It was why he moved to that forest in the first place, the fool.”

“If the forest had another fox, why did you all have to leave?”

She did not answer immediately. Against his back, he felt her steady breathing.

“A two tails is not good for much more than her wit,” she said, her own forked tail curled around her kits. “And that one has little sympathy for those of little use.”