A fierce banging on the door causes Tammy to open his eyes, but he can’t get up. Not only is he far too tired and stuffed for movement, but Avi’s laying sideways over him, her back arched across his stomach. The significantly taller girl weighs a lot thanks to her strong bones and dense muscles. As Tammy pushes, she barely budges.

A voice screams from outside and is automatically translated. “[Get up you little freeloaders!]” It’s the receptionist for the motel.

“Free… loaders? What’s he talking about?” He taps Avi’s face, “hey, Avi, get up. You gotta hide your tail.”

“Hmghmmmm…” She rolls to her stomach, now lying over Tammy’s chest, and stretches her arms and legs, unbothered by the pounding of the door. “A little longer…”

“No, Avi, he’s yelling at us.” He jostles her some more, but it doesn’t work. Her body, though so much smaller than her siblings, is absurdly tough. Through her clothes, her flesh feels like hardened leather or stone.

Avi responds by switching positions and holding Tammy tight, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pressing the side of her face against his, and draping her leg over him. The end of her tail wags, “mhm,” she groans with a sleepy smile, “so yell back.”

Tammy’s face crumples, his heart races. After one more attempt to free himself, he takes a deep breath and shouts, “go away! We’re sleeping!”

The pounding against the door stops for a moment, then the man starts screaming expletives. The adults in the Barabba Tribe are careful not to swear in front of him, so with that many words he can’t understand mixed in, Tammy wonders if his automatic translation is failing. It’s hard to follow the receptionist’s words, but he stomps away before long.

Once his footsteps fade, Tammy’s head falls back on the mattress, and he sighs in relief. He puts a hand on Avi’s back, “I sent him away…”

“Mhmhmmhm,” she groans, then licks the side of his face.

“A-Avi?”

“Mhmm, I’m suuuuuch a good cook…”

Tammy’s eyes open wide, memories of her people consuming human flesh flood his brain. The scent of burning hair, the sight of holding a severed leg up and biting straight through bone, the nausea that came when he first tried human brain, and the subsequent hours of crying that followed him puking it up. “A-Avi!” He cries and desperately presses against her stomach.

Hearing the panic in his voice, Avi’s eyes shoot open and she leaps off the bed, landing deftly with her tail ready to be launched at any intruder. “T-Tammy?!” She yells, eyes flickering in a daze. But there’s nobody in the room. “What’s… wrong?”

Tammy sits up and backs away to the other side of the bed, holding his wet cheek. “Y-you… licked my face and said it was tasty…”

Avi continually scans the room before eventually her eyes fall on Tammy. “Th-… that’s it?”

He silently and frantically nods up and down, not averting his eyes.

“…” She relaxes her tail and shoulders. “Sorry, um, I don’t understand what’s upsetting about that. Can you explain?”

Tammy takes a deep breath. “You… eat people.”

She cocks her head. “…and? You’re not ‘people’, you’re Tammy.”

“Y-yeah, but you were asleep and drowsy. What if you bit me unconsciously, not knowing it was me?”

She smiles, “I always know when it’s you!” Her tail wags, and she crawls to his side of the bed before sitting back, crossing her legs. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Tammy narrows his brow.

“Well, I mean,” she blushes and looks away, “maybe I’d just give you a nibble.”

Tammy takes a few deep breaths to steady himself, then pulls his hand away from his face. “O-… okay, I think. When you jumped up just now, you didn’t stab me, s-so maybe you really can tell it’s me.”

“Yeah!” She says brightly. “Maybe I can!”

Tammy sighs and casts such doubts from his mind. If Avi was going to eat him, she’d have done it by now. It’s not good to doubt his partner like that.

Then the door opens.

A quick unlock with a key and a swift opening, the two children are too engaged in their conversation to react in time.

A tall man in a vibrant blue uniform, a faint beard, a stern look in his eyes, and a distinctive badge pinned on his chest. He’s holding a compact shotgun with a pump, perfect for maneuvering in a tight room like this.

Tammy gasps at the gun and immediately throws his hands up, directing the man’s eyes to him. Avi’s eyes turn calculating, she clicks her teeth, her tail rattles, the needle pointed towards him. Any of her siblings would have immediately shot their tails forward and killed him before he could pull the trigger. But then again, none of her siblings would have been caught in the first place.

“[Got a complaint from the man downstairs.]” He says in a thick accent. “[Says you skipped on your payment for the second day and wants you out.]”

“O-oh!” Tammy says, “sorry about that,” he forces a smile and shuffles closer to Avi, reaching his left arm over to pat her back while his right arm is still high. “Y-you hear that, Avi? We just forgot to pay for a second day!” He gulps hard and turns back to the man, staring down the side of the shotgun barrel as it’s pointed towards Avi. “I-err, we’re terribly sorry about that, sir. W-we didn’t intend to cheat the owner. We’re, um, just drifters, you see. Ignorant about the ways of the world and such. W-we can go downstairs right now and pay him for this night… and a little something extra for the trouble, of course.”

“[Sorry, kid,]” his attention is squarely on Avi. She looks ready to pounce, and his years of law enforcement tells him that her tail is dangerous. The boy seems harmless, and he needs to pull the trigger the second she does something stupid. “[The owner wants me to arrest you two, so that’s a no-go.]”

Tammy thinks for just a second, “what if we bribed you to… not arrest us?”

The man frowns. “[Piece of advice, kid. You say you don’t know the ways of the world, and it shows. Don’t explicitly call it a bribe when you’re about to bribe someone. You gotta be more creative and use better verbiage.]”

“Um,” Tammy’s mind races, “to show you… what law abiding citizens we are, I’d like to… return some money I found lying on the ground?”

“[Hmm… good enough.]” He keeps the gun trained on Avi. “[Tell your little girlfriend to stand down. I don’t trust her pose or her face.]”

Tammy gulps, “Avi, it’s okay. Calm yourself, he isn’t going to do anything.”

She slowly lowers her tail, and the man lowers his gun even slower.

“[Good. Now, we’re all friends.]” He smiles, “[just a sheriff and some dutiful citizens. Go get that money you wish to ‘return’.]”

Tammy sighs, releasing the tension in his shoulders as he lowers his arms. “Whew, glad we got that settled.” He circles around the bed to their stuff. The money pouch is resting on their lazily discarded ponchos, amidst a pile of food and trash.

“[Looks like you two had a fun evening.]”

“Haha,” Tammy forces a laugh, “all the food? Yeah, we uh, walked here. We wanted to take a few days break before we set out again.”

“[You walked here? Kids as small as you?]”

Tammy approaches with the money pouch, “she’s really strong. When I got tired, she carried me.”

“[Hm. What species is she anyway? I’ve never seen someone with that kind of tail before.]”

“Uh, I dunno,” Tammy says with a convincing shrug. “We’ve just always been together. Neither of us have parents, y’see. I didn’t even know we were different species until a few months ago. Just figured that girls had tails, haha.”

“[Interesting.]”

Tammy stands on the man’s left side and holds up the money pouch with both hands. “I’m, ahh, not sure how much money I ‘found’ earlier. How much do you think went missing?”

Avi is still on the bed, watching. The door is open to her front left, the man is standing beyond the foot of the bed in front of her, and Tammy is standing to her front right. Tammy’s head is barely taller than the foot of the bed. The butt of the man’s shotgun is pressed against his right shoulder, with his left hand on the pump, under the barrel. If Avi pounces, he could quickly flick the shotgun up and shoot her.

The man smiles and looks into the pouch. He whistles, “[got quite a lot. Where’d two squirts like you get it from?]”

Tammy lets off a radiant smile, “on the ground.”

“[Heheh, of course.]”

The man lowers his shotgun fully, then takes his dominant right hand off his weapon to focus on sifting through the bag of money. Tammy positioned himself perfectly, ensuring the man must be turned to pull money out. He thinks everything is perfectly settled, he’s just dealing with two dumb kids who surely can’t be a threat to himself. He’s worked in the rest stop for 20 years and has dealt with every problem that’s come his way. He threatens people a little, they pay him off, he leaves them alone. That’s just how it goes in the Gurant Empire, it’s a nice little system where everyone walks away safe and sound.

Once the process starts, he has no expectation that Avi would leap off the bed at him.

His hand is off the trigger, his shotgun is faced away, and his reaction time is delayed due to the surprise.

Avi slams into his side, thrusting him back into the wall and grabbing his shotgun, preventing him from putting his hand on the trigger. Avi is still small, but she’s deceptively strong for her height. The man struggles, but can’t force her off. Tammy quickly runs past them to close the door.

“[D-dumb creature!]” The man shouts, but Avi quickly brings her tail around to jab him in the jugular. “[Gygh!]”

It’s not a slash, or a gouge. With surgical precision, Avi inserts her tail into his vein, then discharges an anesthetic. It’s not a well-made serum, but she injects a lot of it. She pulls her tail out, and the puncture wound is so small that he barely bleeds. He brings his knee up and hits her in the stomach, but he can’t wrestle control over the shotgun or break free.

It’s not long before his strength fades, and he passes out onto Avi, landing on her shoulder.

“Phew,” Avi huffs, “he was pretty strong.”

“Yeah, but you got him!” Tammy says, cheerfully. “So, what do we do now?”

“We gotta kill him, of course.”

Tammy pouts, “right. That’s… what Mr. Kashier said.” He takes a deep breath, “b-but hold on. We need to do it right, in a way that can’t be traced back to us.”

Avi raises an eyebrow, then throws the unconscious body onto the bed, “what do you mean?”

Tammy paces back and forth, “we need to kill him, but we can’t have anyone find his body.”

Avi cocks her head, “I could eat him?”

Tammy looks at her, eyes wide, then shakes his head and continues pacing, his brain working overtime to avoid something so disgusting. “Uhh… no. Hear me out,” he nibbles the tip of his thumb to help himself think. “There are people coming and going through this rest stop all the time. If we kill him and leave his body in this room, the receptionist will sell this room to the next guy, and that next occupant will find the sheriff’s dead body. That occupant will tell the receptionist, and the receptionist, having sent the sheriff to us, will know we were responsible.”

Avi nods, and hops to sit on the foot of the bed. “Makes sense.” As the boy paces back and forth, her head follows his every move.

“So, the receptionist will tell the authorities that we killed him, and they’ll send patrol cars down both roads, looking for us.”

“Patrol cars?”

Tammy ignores her, more so talking himself through his logic. “There’s no way we could make it to a city in time so, when the patrol cars fail to find us, they’ll realize that we escaped into the forest.”

Avi’s eyes open wide, and she rattles her tail, “and that’s bad!”

“So we need to avoid that. Kill him and hide his body.”

“Without eating him, for some reason.”

“Yes.” Tammy is wracking his brain for an explanation on why she can’t eat him.

Avi doesn’t even think of questioning that and instead thinks of where to hide his body. “If nobody goes out into the forest, couldn’t we kill him out there and leave him?”

“…yes!” Tammy’s eyes brighten and he looks to Avi with a smile that she quickly returns. He takes his thumb out of his mouth. “Okay, perfect. So I’ll go down to the receptionist and clear up any misunderstanding. I’ll bribe him to let us stay another night, tell him that the guard taught us the ways of gurant society. We’ll leave once it’s dark out, the same way we came. If we leave the sheriff’s body out in the forest, it’ll be days before anyone realizes that he’s missing. At that point, even if the receptionist did know it was us and filed some report, we’d be long gone. They’d assume we charted a bus or whatever and made it to the next city, they wouldn’t assume we fled into the forest.”

Avi gives him a sly smile, “and you tried to say you’re not smart.”

Tammy nods repeatedly, “good, good. That fixes everything. The tribe is safe.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Avi raises her hand. Tammy looks at it for a second, then excitedly gives her a high-five.

****

Night falls, and the pair stand on opposite side of the large window, peeking out from behind the curtains.

“We can’t stay here another night,” Tammy says, again. “I used the rest of our money to bribe the receptionist, so this is our last night. We need to leave now.”

“Yes, but there’s still a lot of people out there. How are we supposed to sneak out while carrying a body?” The rest stop is flooded with bright white lights; every inch is illuminated. There’s still a lot of activity out there in the streets before the parking lot. On the other side of the street from the motel is a diner, and it’s full of hungry customers, some even drinking in the streets outside.

Tammy looks carefully at the patrons, “they’re in high spirits, and it seems they all know each other. They’re certainly friendly with each other. But look at their clothes! It’s all mixed. No uniformity. Different shoes, different pants, different tops.”

Avi looks across the curtain and glass to see Tammy’s exposed eye, “what relevance would that have?”

“Well, they’re all friendly with each other, which should indicate that they’re, well, friends. But if they’re friends, what kind of friends are they? Work friends? Do they all work in this rest stop? If they did, then there’s only so many clothing options here, so they’d be wearing similar clothing. But since they’re different, we can determine that they don’t work here. They no doubt come from the city and are probably migrants.” He smiles proudly.

“…which tells us?”

“Oh, sorry. If they worked in this rest stop, then they’d recognize the sheriff as we try dragging him out. But since they’re not locals, they won’t recognize him at a glance. We can make a lie that he’s our drunk dad, and we’re just taking him home.”

“Oh!” Avi rattles the end segment of her tail, “that makes sense!”

“But!” Tammy’s eyes go wide and he grips the curtain. “If they’re strangers, and I think they are, that means they’re naturally friendly! Look at how these strangers are so chatty with each other, drinking outside! What if these friendly people see two kids struggling to take their drunk dad back home and offer to help? What if they want to escort us home? What would we say?! What if-“

“Okay, calm down.” Avi leaves the curtain and walks to her husband, grabbing his shoulders and gently pushing him against the wall. She bends forward at the hips until their eyes are level. “Let’s think more simply.” Her voice is steady and calm, giving off a rare sense of reliability. “Can we sneak out of here without anybody spotting us?”

Tammy looks deep into her sharp red eyes. “Most likely not, no.”

“Is there a way to make it so that, if they do see us, they won’t care to interfere?”

Tammy gulps, “we just don’t know. There’s no way to be sure.”

Avi nods. “Then…” She rocks her head left and right. “So, let’s say they see us, and then they come to investigate. What do you think would happen?”

“They’d know we’re planning to kill him!” Tammy cries.

She raises an eyebrow, “how?”

“We’d lie to them, and they’d see through our lie!”

She cocks her head, “how?”

“Huh?”

“How would they see through our lie? You’ve determined that they’re strangers. How would they figure it out?” She swipes her tail to the sheriff, “is he supposed to tell them? He’s unconscious. If they offer to help, we’ll just refuse.”

Tammy looks at his wife, processing her words. Then he glances to the man before returning his gaze to Avi. “That’s… true! So long as we keep our story straight—or, rather, so long as I do since you can’t talk to them—then who are they to question us?”

“Exaaaaactly,” Avi smiles. “So how do we sell the deception?”

Tammy slips out of Avi’s wall-press and paces around the room, mumbling to himself. After a moment of this, he resolutely looks up at her eyes. “Okay! We each get under one of his arms, and drag him out, heading away from all the commotion in the diner. Both of us doing it would hide the nature of your strength a little. If anyone comes up to us, I’ll do all the talking. I’ll avoid giving any firm answers at first, until I know what the other person knows. If they don’t know the sheriff, then he’s our dad and we’re taking him home after a long night of drinking. But, if it’s a random person who does know the sheriff, then we don’t know who he is, we just stumbled upon him in our motel room. Since he’s law enforcement, we’ll play it off like the previous occupant beat him up and left him unconscious or something.”

“We’re not the same species though. We don’t even really look alike.”

Tammy raises an eyebrow, “so?”

“…it’s genetics. The look of a child is a mix of the mother and the father.”

Tammy’s face crumples in confusion, “but you don’t look that much like your parents. And none of your siblings look that much like them either.”

“Well, yeah, but we’re bone-tails. We choose what genes get passed down to our children.”

Tammy’s brow narrows, “what? How does any of that even work?”

Avi squints, “were… you told where babies come from?”

“N-no,” Tammy blushes.

Avi recoils slightly, smiling, “haven’t you been receiving lessons for months? Is this the one thing they never taught you?”

Tammy rubs the back of his head, “I’ve… asked a few times. Everyone just kept saying they’d explain when I’m older.”

Avi’s eyebrows curl upwards, and she looks down her nose at her small husband. “Oh? So this is the one thing I know that you don’t?”

“W-when did you learn that!?” His small pride hurt, he points at her accusingly, “you never even pay attention in lessons!”

She puts her hands on her hips and raises her chin, “Ioan told me, bragging about him going on a ‘needle night’ with his friends!” Ioan is her eldest brother, eight years older than her, and a needle night is when bone-tail youths infiltrate a village or city and use their tails to silently inject their genetic material in every sleeping person they come across. The one who injects the most civilians by morning wins.

Tammy scowls, “fine! Tell me!”

“Hmmm, I dunno.” Avi walks to his side and puts her elbow on his head, using him as an armrest and casually checking her nails, “a squirt like you is too young for information as sensitive as this.”

Tammy purses his lips, “it’s important that I know. I’m using this information to help us escape and not die.”

“Teehee, well alright.” She ruffles his light brown hair, “but only because your desperation is so cute!” She brings her tail in front of his face, waggling the needle. “We make a serum full of our genetic information, and then we inject that information into a human. If it’s a woman, she’ll get pregnant, with the baby growing in her belly. If it’s a male, then he’ll proceed to pass that genetic information onto a woman, and then she’ll proceed to get pregnant. Simple!”

Tammy frowns, staring at her needle. “…wait, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Hm?”

“Your serums don’t work on bone-tails, but both of your parents are bone-tails. So how did the genetic information get passed between Kashier and Chaya? And what about with humans? We don’t have tails to do what you’re describing.”

Avi looks at her tail, then looks to the guard, then looks down at Tammy, then returns her gaze to her tail. “Huh.”

“So basically,” Tammy says, smugly, “you don’t know either.”

“Tsk, of course I didn’t end up knowing something you don’t.” She walks to the body and throws one arm over her shoulder, “just lie and say we’re adopted or something.”

Tammy hurries over and gets under the man’s left arm, “hgk!” Tammy grunts from the strain, his legs already wobbling.

“You okay?”

“Y-yep!” Tammy is a seven-year-old boy. The guard is a fully grown man. Tammy grew up in a state-orphanage and was malnourished prior to being adopted into the Barabba Tribe. Even if he’s been getting growth serum injections from the tribe, they haven’t fully taken hold yet, so he’s still smaller and weaker than what even a normal seven-year-old should be. It’s a herculean effort to just stand with so much weight on his shoulders, and a lot of the guard’s body weight is on the ground since his legs are dragging behind the pair. His shotgun is in a holster behind his back, and Avi’s tail is tied around her waist, under her poncho.

Avi frowns and scoots closer, raising her arm against the man’s chest to take a bit more of his weight. “Better?” She says with a twinge of exertion in her voice.

“S-sorry…”

“It’s fine. One day you’ll grow up big and strong and be able to throw a joker like this around like it’s nothing! Now, let’s go.”

Tammy nods, and they head out of the hotel room. Avi’s strong enough to lift the man on her own, but the awkward way she needs to walk is where the effort comes from. By the time they start walking down the steps of the motel, she’s huffing and puffing down air.

Avi plants her right foot firmly on the top step, shifting all her weight to that leg, then slowly lowers her left foot to the lower step. Then she puts all her weight on her left leg and moves her right foot down. Tammy tries to do the same but requires Avi to take more weight off him.

Another step down, then another. After a few steps, the sheriff’s feet are still up on the top step, and there’s a lot more weight on the pair. They’re dragging him, the man’s weight is uneven.

Avi’s teeth are clenched tight as she steps down.

Tammy puts his weight on his back foot and steps down. When he tries to bring his back foot forward, the guard’s legs slip off the top step, and the weight pushes Tammy forward.

He loses balance and tips forward, his body locking up in shock as there’s too much weight on him.

“Hngh!” Avi swings her right leg up and kicks the outside railing, forming a barrier with Tammy’s chest hitting her knee. Her limbs quake in effort, she’s lifting the man, and Tammy, and balancing on one leg while the man is pressing forward on her back, threatening to send her tumbling forward too.

Tammy quickly regains his balance, and Avi slams her foot down.

“Th-thanks,” Tammy huffs, “sorry!”

Avi just nods, she can’t bring herself to speak.

They pair walk carefully down the steps, and Tammy doesn’t make another mistake.

By the time they get to the bottom, the two are already tired, but they can’t take a break. Walking side-by-side, the two head across the front of the motel, away from the diner across the street. A few people glance their way, but nobody calls out or heads over. They disappear around the corner of the motel but there’s a man heading their way! It’s too late to turn around, they can’t cross the road, they need to pass this man.

Tammy gulps, preparing himself to speak, and Avi’s eyes are focused, ready to kill if necessary.

The man’s hands are in his pocket, hunching forward.

They get closer, and closer.

“G-good evening, sir,” Tammy says with a nod and a bit of strain in his voice.

The man doesn’t even glance down. He walks right past them, then turns the corner on his way to the diner.

“…” The two continue walking.

Avi whispers, “hey… do you think people in the empire… just don’t really care about things that aren’t their business?”

Tammy frowns, “I’m kinda getting that feel, yeah.”

“Hngh,” she jostles the man to adjust his weight, “they take bribes really easily, at least.”

“Yep. And come to think of it, nobody even asked us questions about who we are or where we came from. Even this guy didn’t, I was the one who told him we hiked all this way.”

From there, they reach the offramp that leads to the road. There aren’t any vehicles leaving the rest stop at this time of night, and the streets are less populated since most transients are asleep. Once they reach the ramp, Tammy steps away from the body, giving Avi full control. She smiles at how much easier the man is to carry once she can get comfortable, and they rush up the onramp. They then circle around the edge of fence, scramble down the embankment, then disappear into the forest before anyone sees them.