For the first few months I was here, I’d get a little twitch in my paw when someone mentioned something off the Internet. A twitch in my paw and a little shift inside me at a sudden-yet-averted context-shift. I could look that up, I’d think. I could answer their question, or laugh at their picture.
For a while, I’d countered it with lies. An “Oh yeah, ha ha” here and a “Yeah, I saw that” there. The anxiety that I’d mess up and be called out got to be too much for me, though, and I switched from that to nervous silence.
I replaced that twitch early on with the gesture of brushing back over my cheeks. At first, it was obvious why: when I got to town, my face was still freshly shaved, and for the first few weeks, the freezer-burnt marks of the brand were plain. Soon, though, it became more of a habit than a coping mechanism. I’d brush my pads over the fur and feel the edges of the shaving, and once they became imperceptible, I’d trace my claws through fur, trying to sense where the brown fur ended and the white, branded fur started.
Anything—anything—to keep from touching the Internet. It would be too easy for me to just log back on. The temptation to peer into a life that no longer existed was too great. My very existence here in this town depends on that life no longer existing. I’d destroyed it, and destroyed all that tied me to its remains.
And yet here I am, panicking in the bathroom at Starry Night.
There’s a soft tap at the door, and I rush to straighten my skirt and apron, peeking in the mirror to make sure I haven’t visibly cried.
Aurora’s there when I open the door, standing a scant few inches taller than I.
“Sorry, I’m…” I shake my head. “I’m all done.”
The coyote tilts her head quizzically, a movement that brushes against old memories. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I am.” I stand up straighter and smile apologetically to her. “I will be.”
We slide past each other and I make my way behind the bar again, busying myself with wiping down the already-clean espresso machine, just to give my paws something to do. Not many people ordering coffee at six at night. This late in the season, the sun sets early too.
Stefan hikes himself up onto the bar, the wolf’s tail flagging off to the side. “You alright there, kiddo?”
“Yeah.” I nod eagerly, then decide eagerness isn’t what I should be going for, and turn it into a shrug. “Just stomach stuff. Nerves, maybe.” I laugh, and it sounds too loud.
“You bolted right off, yep. Anything bring it on?”
I look around, checking on the occupants. We’re down to me and Stefan, a young fox couple, and Aurora of course. “Just…just something a customer…something that bear said. Or saw. I don’t know.”
Stefan’s brow furrows, and I watch as the his tailtip tap arhythmically against the wall where it joins the bar. “Saw? How do you mean?”
“He had a tablet, and I guess I caught a glimpse. He was talking about it to someone. Someone on the phone.”
“Mm, yeah, I remember. What’d you see?”
“I saw my—” My words catch in my throat. I saw my husband. I saw my name. I saw the picture from my ID. “I saw my hometown.”
The wolf grins and leans back on his paws. “Home, eh? You don’t seem like the girl who’s eager to go back.”
At this, I laugh in earnest. “No. Not at all.”
“What about it piqued your interest, then?”
I hide my racing thoughts with a shrug, and come up with a half-truth: “The headline had the word ‘police’ in it.”
Nodding, Stefan slips down from his perch on the bar. “Fair enough. Weird day in here, anyway. I’mma close down after this—” he gestures vaguely toward the customers, “So feel free to head out whenever you want.”
I think of the bus back to Adam’s and being alone with my thoughts. I could walk, but that’d just mean more time turning that glimpse of an article—something about “police” and my old name, something about how long it had been—over and over in my head. “I’ll stick around, help clean up and stuff.”
Stefan shrugs, “Sure thing. Maybe I’ll take off early, then. You okay closing up?”
“Mmhm,” I nod, tamping down anxiety with a jokey grin. “Wipe everything down, put all the food away, put the chairs up, steal all the money from the drawer…”
The wolf laughs. “No more than ten percent, please. And girlie,” he reaches out and pinches my ear between his claws. “Get your ears pierced with all sorts of crap or something so you can turn into a real punk. You’re too wholesome-looking to be thieving.”
“Adam suggested the same thing. This town must be in sore need of a punk.”
“Yeah, all we’ve got is Aurora.”
The coyote flips him off without even looking away from her book. He laughs.
Stefan’s really good at disappearing when he’s not needed at work anymore. If he doesn’t have to be there for closing, he’ll be nowhere to be found.
Oh well, that’s fine. I don’t imagine I’ll be here much longer anyhow.
I start by cleaning down the bar and arranging all those bottles of flavored syrup for the drinks. Next comes flipping over the “open” sign and wiping down the empty tables, stacking chairs upside-down atop them.
The fox couple picks up on the hint quickly and we settle their tab.
I make a quick pass of the bathroom, but it’s clean enough as is, so I mostly just wipe down the sink.
Back out in the café, I turn off the soft indie pop on the house speakers, and then something clicks within me.
I clutch at the edge of the bar as all of those emotions, eight or nine months of them, crash into me. All those months of living in at least some state of fear, all those days of holding back on feeling anything else, they all add up to time past-me only borrowed. All those past-due feelings make themselves felt now.
My grip on the bar tightens as I gasp out a stifled cry, and then I’m crumpling to the floor, wedged between the milk fridge and the end of the bar where Stefan had been sitting only a half hour ago. Anxiety crescendos into panic, and then far, far beyond that. My muscles are tensing, and my perception of the world, my entire awareness, is shrinking to something the size of a coin, chalk-white pain smelling of snow.
I come to on my side, gasping for air and choking on sobs. I’d been sobbing the whole time, apparently, as my cheeks and the sleeve of my shirt are soaked. Drooling too, from the looks of it.
My body hasn’t figured out how to move, yet, but I can see a dark, angular shape above me. I try to push away, but all I can manage is to tense up further.
“Hey, hey, chill. It’s okay.” Aurora. It has to be.
“Mmnglh.”
“Let’s get you upright, at least a little. See if you can stand.” She helps lever me up until I’m leaning back against the bar. “Come on, legs out. You uh…you fell over. Let’s at least get your legs in front of you.”
I can’t figure out how to work my voice, so I just continue to moan and sob as the coyote helps get my skirt untangled and my limbs out from under me. She slips her paws up under my arms and starts to lift.
“N-nnn,” I manage and clutch at her arms—far too tightly, if her wince is anything to go by. Too filled with terror, too struck by a sense of impending death to control myself.
She relents and settles back down, then gives into my tugging and slips her arms around my shoulders instead. There’s a little uneven rocking motion as she slides her legs out from under her, and then she’s drawing me in against her.
I don’t really know how long I stay like that. The only thing describing the passage of time is my sobbing. Aurora is a warm bulk against me, something to wrap my arms around, some bit of stability. She doesn’t coo or shush, just rests her head against mine in silence. A kind, patient silence. A silence with no expectations.
Eventually, I run out of sobs, and settle into a gentle, almost calm sort of crying. Aurora gives me a bit more time before carefully leaning back. Letting our arms slip from the embrace at least enough so that she can look at me. Her smile’s kind, rather than pitying. “Come on, let’s get you up, okay?”
My joints are loose hinges, too well oiled. Finding a way to be upright without wobbling onto the floor again proves difficult. It takes a few tries, but I wind up with my butt parked against the edge of the bar, tail crimped behind me. I leave my shoulders leaning forward to maintain my grip on Aurora. I’m loath to let go of her, so it takes another fumbling second for me to find a way to do so.
“Sorry,” I croak.
She shakes her head and rests her paws on my shoulders. Once she’s sure I’m steady, she steps away and grabs a plastic to-go cup from beneath the bar and fills it at the sink. She takes one of my paws in hers and guides my fingers around the cup, making sure I’m holding on before she lets go. “Drink. You cried yourself empty.”
I nod and sip at the water. It feels too full in my mouth. Too thick. It slides around like oil. When I swallow, I realize how thirsty I truly am, and finish the rest of the cup in one go.
Aurora, meanwhile, finishes closing up; all that was left was her table, so there’s just two chairs to put up.
I refill my cup from the tap and straighten up, trying to dispel the wobbliness in my hips and knees, to shake off the dark sense of panic. “Thanks Aurora, you didn’t have to—”
“But you’re in no shape to,” the coyote cuts me off, laughing. She tucks her book and papers back in her bag and slips back behind the bar again. Shrugging her bag’s strap up further, she snakes an arm around my back. “Let’s get you home, though, okay? You good to walk?”
“Mmhm. I can take the bus, though. Don’t need to walk.”
“I meant to my car. I’ll get you home.”
If I open my mouth, I’ll start crying, so I just nod.
Aurora’s car is very…her.
I don’t really know how to put it otherwise. It’s sensible, as she is; it’s filled with books and stacks of paper, as her bag is; it’s not messy, but it’s got a lot going on beneath its simple exterior, like her.
Still sniffling, I wait as she moves a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip from the passenger seat to the back. Then I swipe my tail and skirt out of the way and slouch into the seat, clumsily clicking the seatbelt in place with one paw, the other still holding the half-full cup of water.
The car smells of her too. My nose is doing about as well as anyone’s would after so much crying, but I can tell that much. It smells like when she held me. It smells familiar, like something from years ago. Years and years. I have to swallow down a rising wave of guilt and terror.
The coyote settles into the driver’s seat and gets all buckled in before giving my thigh a squeeze in her paw. “Adam’s, right?” she asks, smiling. “One of the cabins?”
I nod. “Thanks again for driving me.”
Aurora waits until she’s reversed out of her spot and turned onto the road before answering. “No way I’m letting you walk, and goodness knows I know how awful crying alone on a bus is.”
“Yeah, probably not a good look,” I say. I can’t quite laugh yet, but I do manage a sort of “heh.”
“You are a bit of a mess.”
I look down over my shirt and skirt. They’re both rumpled. My shirt’s still damp from my tears, and my skirt has picked up a stain from the floor behind the bar—probably old coffee. I can only imagine how my face looks. I grin. “Fair.”
I let Aurora drive as I focus on rehydrating. I want to just gulp down the water, but I’ve made enough of a mess of myself tonight. No sense risking a spill. Probably better for me that way, anyway.
It’s about a forty-five minute walk from Adam’s to Starry Night, and about twenty-five on the bus. I never realized how long the bus took, though, as it takes us less than ten minutes to get back to the long-stay. I laugh at the thought.
“What’s up?” Aurora says, pulling into the dirt-road drive, heading around the back of the suites toward the cabins.
“Just thinking. First time I’ve been in a car here. Only ever ridden the bus or walked.”
Aurora grins and pulls into a space in front of the cabin I point out. “Bit faster, yeah. Still, it’s a pretty enough walk.”
The car turning off leaves us in relative silence, my ears buzzing in my stuffed-up head from the lack of noise. My thoughts seem to be surrounding a blank space. Circling and swirling around it, around nothing. A black pit containing all the things I could think about my old life, of being discovered, of having to go back.
“Hey.” Aurora. She’s smiling. That’s a good thing to think about instead, that smile. “Let’s get you inside.”
I fumble for my buckle and start to protest, but stop before I say anything. The coyote, the scent of her, it’s all so comforting; might as well let her help. A few more moments together, at least.
Aurora levers herself out of her seat and strides quickly around the front of the car. I’ve got the door open by then, but there she is, ready to help me out of the bucket seat. I grin, feeling bashful, and take her offered paw.
She’s got a bit of a wag going on, too, but I try not to read too much into that.
I lean on her as we walk the handful of steps to the door of the cabin. Once there, I fish in my apron pocket for my keys—I’d taken to wearing my work apron with the skirt for the utility of pockets—and let myself in.
Let us in. No discussion about whether she’s coming in, too. She just is.
I flip on the lights and cringe, both at the sudden brightness against the dusk outside and the mess. I’ve been using my suitcase as my clean clothes drawer since I moved in. It’s just got a day’s worth of clothes in it, though. Next to it on one side is a pile of dirty clothes, and on the other, a folding drying rack holding a pair of jeans, a shirt, and two pairs of panties hanging off the corners.
Fuck.
I turn to apologize to the coyote, but she hasn’t noticed the laundry at all. Doesn’t even seem to notice me.
I follow her gaze, then cringe in earnest.
Fuck.
“Holy shit. Those paintings are yours?”
“Yes,” I say, trying not to sound too humiliated.
“The coyote?”
I can’t come up with a reply. We stand in expectant silence: Aurora’s eyes locked on the paints and ceiling tile, burgundy, with her silhouette in black; and me, with my eyes locked on the floor and my tail tucked in against my leg.
She turns, mouth open to ask again, when I grab at her paw and rush to cut her off.
“Yes, I mean. Yes. You’re just…you’re just always there.” My eyes well up with tears—I’m surprised I have any left—as words keep coming, and I keep holding onto her paw. “You’re just always there and so familiar and I don’t know— They let me paint the ceiling, and I don’t know— I should’ve asked, I’m sorry— I don’t know, you’re just one of the only constants in my stupid fucking life and I didn’t even talk to you until I—”
“Whoa, hey!” she says, raising her voice to cut off my stream of babbling. She looks startled, but not angry. “It’s totally okay but—hey…”
I’ve started crying in earnest again. Looking a fool, standing there holding a girl’s paw, tears pouring down your cheeks. I manage a strangled laugh, though it’s caught up in a sob. Looking fucking crazy.
Perhaps as an echo from the café, Aurora takes charge. She guides me over to my bed and sits me down on it before settling in next to me and just holding me, arms around my shoulders.
It doesn’t last long, and doesn’t get a tenth as bad as the crush of panic at Starry Night, but it still takes me a few minutes to get to the point where I can speak again. “Sorry, Aurora.” I pace myself, so I don’t just start babbling again. “Didn’t mean to do that. Just such a mess today. My life’s a mess, and it all hit at once.”
“Tell me a bit about your life, then,” she asks, low voice kind. “I want to hear.”
I feel my face tighten in an ugly rictus, teeth bared and whiskers bristled. It’s been months, but the freeze-brand scars over my cheeks give a twinge of protest. “There’s nothing.” As the sobs pick up again, dry now, I have to eke out words between. “There’s nothing there. I’m just…paper. Paper thin with no substance. No substance at all.” I trail off and take a few gulping breaths to calm myself, forcing my expression into mere hopelessness, rather than that grimace of self-loathing.
Aurora watches me, and, after I’ve gotten my crying under control, opens her mouth as though to say something, then seems to think better of it and leans in to kiss me instead.
I jolt and tense up. I hold my breath. My mind goes blank. That sensation of being about to cry fills my chest, never mind the fact that I’d already crying.
Then I just lean into the kiss. Return it. No discussion about it; it feels familiar, fulfilling. I’m calm. Still at last.
Aurora seems comfortable taking the lead, using her paws and subtle shifts of her weight to guide me to lay back on the bed. Once I’m there, she leans up from the kiss and grins down to me with just a hint of silliness. “You feel substantive to me.”
I’m wrong-footed by this and it takes a moment to parse. Once it clicks, though, I giggle. “Thanks.” I feel stupid just leaving it at that, though, and add, “That was nice.”
“Mmhm.” Still grinning, she leans into give me another quick kiss, then moves to kneel on the edge of the bed, tugging me by the paw. “Come on. Scoot.”
I laugh and swipe at my face with the sleeve of my shirt—I must look a mess after all of this. Still, I scoot further up onto the bed at the coyote’s bidding. “Alright, alright. How come?”
Aurora shrugs, her grin softening into a kind smile. “I got you thinking less about whatever’s up with your life, right? I hope so, at least.” I nod, and she continues, “The least I could do is also let you be comfortable on your bed instead of half hanging off of it.”
“Good point,” I laugh and haul myself up onto the bed, flopping back against the pile of pillows. I’d bought more once it was clear I was staying here a while, and I’m thankful for it now.
Aurora moves too; as I make room, she moves up onto the bed to kneel next to me. “Doing better?”
“Yeah, thank you.” After a moment’s thought, I ask, “Why’d you do that?”
The coyote frowns down to me, ears splayed in embarrassment. “I wanted to. It felt like it would work, and like it would be okay. I should have asked, though. I’m sorry.”
“No!” I realize how loud that was and smile sheepishly up to her. “No, it was nice. Real nice.”
That slightly silly grin comes back, tugging on buried memories. Memories of a latrans smile. “Good,” she says, leaning in to press another kiss to my muzzle. I return this one more readily than the last, sliding my arms up around her shoulders.
This goes over quite well. Aurora seems to have taken it as a sign, and leans down over me more assertively, paws planted to either side of my shoulders. After a moment’s hesitation, she leans up a little further onto her knees and shifts one up over me until she’s straddling my waist. She’s bigger than me, weighs more than I do. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself, but her weight is more comforting than heavy.
“Wait,” I murmur, twisting my head slightly to pull away from the kiss.
Aurora immediately tenses up, ears canting back. “Uh, sorry, I don’t—”
“No, no. You’re fine,” I mumble, searching for words. “Don’t know why…why this is…doing what it is. Working. Stopping me from crying and all. Taking my mind off stuff.”
She stays silent above me. An expectant silence she waits for me to fill.
I hunt for words as best I can. “Maybe I just…I don’t know. I haven’t touched—or been touched by—anyone since I made it out here. Before that, even. It feels dumb to say, I guess.”
Aurora gives a short bark of a laugh at that, then lays her ears back again apologetically. “Sorry. You mean not at all?”
“Well, sure, I mean. I shook paws with Adam and Stefan, whatever. I’ve touched, yeah, but just nothing like this.”
At that her expression softens and she nods. “Been a while, huh?”
I nod.
“And this is okay?”
I nod again and lean up to give her a quick kiss. “Yeah, very.”
She nods, muzzle dipping to turn that motion into something of a nuzzle, and I can feel her nose tracing along one of those white bands of fur on my cheek, then under my chin, dipping down to tease at the coil of blue fur—faded now to a pale aqua—peeking up above the scoop-neck of my shirt. Her soft, low voice is muffled by my fur. “This is okay, too?”
Without tucking my muzzle uncomfortably low, all I can really see are her ears, so I lean forward to place a kiss between them, fur and familiar scent tickling at my nose. “Mmhm.” I’ve given up saying more.
Aurora responds with a kiss of her own against my sternum. It’s a ticklish sort of feeling, and my squirming gets a giggle, muffled as before against my chest. She settles down from her crouch above me, bringing her paws from by my shoulders to brush along my sides as she rests more fully against my front. I slip my own arms from around her until it’s just my paws on her shoulders.
The sheer exhilaration of physical contact seems to be filling my mind—or at least that empty void within that I’ve only been able to tiptoe around—with something new. Something else. Something other than low-level anxiety. I can close my eyes and not wind up in some horrible hopelessness. I don’t have to think, I can just be here. Goodness knows why, but I can just be here.
I jolt to awareness from my wandering thoughts and tense up, and Aurora’s paws pause halfway up my sides. Her fingers and claws are buried in my fur with t-shirt cloth bunched around her wrists. We both hold still in that silence, a few long seconds of just our breaths. For once I don’t rush to fill it with words, and simply settle back down, relaxing into her grasp.
The coyote hesitates a moment longer before edging her paws upward further, inching shirt up over fur. Keeping my paws on her shoulders as best as possible, I arch my back enough to let her slide my shirt up.
The exploration continues in fits and starts from there. Kisses along the blue diamond and down over my chest. Aurora shifting her weight. Me tugging my shirt off to keep it out of the way. Soft coyote nose tracing spirals in my fur. One lasting sensation, a singular point of focus.
The skirt, though, requires coordination. Aurora and I have to exchange a few glances, one or two half-words, and some soft giggles before the garment winds up bunched around my waist, spilling in pools of cotton to either side of me. And then there we are: me, with shirt off but for one arm still stuck through a sleeve, skirt bunched around her waist; and Aurora, looking nervous but excited, wagging as she looks up at me along my front over a pile of rumpled skirt.
“So uh…” I begin.
“Mm?”
“Mm.”
Soft noises. Gestures of paws. The warmth of a tongue, slender and attentive. Finely-tapered coyote muzzle. Lithe, arched weasel back. Quiet moans and subtle shifts to express what works and what doesn’t. Paws finding places to rest, to touch, to brush and stroke.
And then something new, something different clicks within me. A rising swell of pleasure, and a sudden, uneven tumble of memories. A shuddering gasp and an attachment of name to place to time. A contraction, then relaxation of muscles and a line drawn between two points. A connection.
Panting to catch my breath, and glimpses of high school, of nervous first times. Memories of a muzzle and an attentive tongue. That same muzzle, that same tongue
A warm glow, and a name surfacing to memory.
I collapse back onto the bed, slack, and stare down over my front. Aurora stares back just as intently shifting her weight forward once more, retracing her route of kisses in double time.
“Wait, you’re—”
“Aurora. I’m Aurora.”
I start to speak, but she cuts me off.
“I’m Aurora. You’re you.”
I swallow compulsively, feel fear caving in my insides, terror at having been recognized, caught. “But you were…we—”
“I know who you were, and you know who I was, but I’m Aurora. You’re you.”
I fall silent, paws clutching at the duvet in search of something solid. Aurora leans up for the final kiss, more tender than heated, more earnest than fumbling. I smell her, and taste myself.
“We all have reasons to disappear,” Aurora murmurs.
We’ve settled back onto that stack of pillows I’ve collected. My skirt’s still bunched up between us, but I’ve managed to toss my shirt to the side. She’s gotten her arms around me once more and her cool nosetip is teasing along those brands again from where she lays beside me.
“I suppose,” I begin, then shake my head as if to throw away a bit of the non-speech. “So you came out west and transitioned out here.”
A faint nod, nose exploring a line perpendicular to the stripes of my brands. “I tried back home, a bit after high school and, uh…us. My heart was half out here by then anyway, though, and no one wants a mopey, trans coyote, least of all my parents.”
I nod. There’s still that hint of a name—I can think it, but would have a hard time saying it—and that memory of a tapered muzzle between my thighs.
Memories from nigh on twenty years ago.
A high school fling. Two dates, a night together, and drifting apart. She had seemed so uncomfortable with herself. We’d… Well, tonight had more than made up for that.
“And you?”
“Mm?”
“Why’d you disappear?”
“I don’t know.”
Aurora lifts her head a little, a hint of a grin turning the corner of her mouth. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t.” I tilt my head to press my nose to hers. “I think that’s what got me today. I saw that thing on the news. About Jarred, about myself. About home.”
She nods, nose against nose and stifling a yawn.
“And I just don’t know why,” I murmur. “I unwound all of that life and came here, and I think, when I saw it, I realized I don’t know why I did it.”
“Were you happy, back home?”
“No.”
Aurora tucks her muzzle up under my jaw and hugs her arm around me a little tighter. “Neither was I.”
I brush my fingers across her arm, plowing a furrow in gray-tan fur, then smoothing it back down. I push down memories of that gawky and shy coyote, and revel instead in the comfort of Aurora.
So many months of panic following so many years of discontent. So much time alone. And now, comfort and peace.
Muzzle tucked over hers, I ask, “What about me did you remember?”
“Your paintings.”
“Have I changed that much?”
“I mean, you looked like someone who could’ve been, uh, who you were. But it was your paintings.” She yawns in earnest. “The lines. The shapes.”
The burgundy-and-black ceiling tile is behind me. I think of looking, of disentangling myself from the coyote’s arms, but there’s something much better here in front of me.
“And you?” Aurora sounds sleepy. “What tipped you off about me?”
I think of all the things I could say—the warmth of her breath, the trail of kisses, the way her nose drew lines through my fur. The way she rested her cheek on her paw, staring out the window. The softness of her form. Her very scent.
We lay together in silence. A comfortable silence. The first in a long time.
The End.
“Disappearance” first appeared in Restless Town, an anthology of contemporary furry short stories set in the fictional town of Sawtooth, ID. You can find the book — and read several of the stories — here.