Having been brushed and serenaded, Krysanthea looked more serene than I'd ever seen her.

"So did you like the brushery?" Nessy inquired, batting her eyes at Kristi.

"I... suppose that was… nice," Krysanthea admitted grudgingly, as her hand rose to touch her groomed feathers with something like appreciation.

"Yay," Nessy clapped. "Kristikins approval gained!"

"And you've just lost it with that comment," Kristi smiled.

"Boo," Nessy huffed.

"But seriously," the raptor eyed the husky. "I think that your music is doing… something to my perception."

"Something?" Nessy tilted her head.

Kristi fell silent for a moment. "It's making you more..." she trailed off, struggling to find the words, her claws fidgeting with the edge of the blanket nest.

"More what?" Nessy pressed, leaning forward with eager curiosity, her tail swishing behind her.

"More..." Kristi's feathers fluttered. "Appealing? Magnetic? I don't know how to explain it. I've never been the type to squee over boy bands or whatever, but your singing is doing something strange to my brain."

"Eeeeeeee!" Nessy demonstrated the fangirl-squee with exaggerated delight, tail wagging wildly. "Like that?"

"Precisely that, yes," Kristi said dryly with a wince. "It's like your music is awakening parts of my brain that I didn't know existed."

Nessy's eyes widened, a slow grin spreading across her muzzle. "Ohhh! So you're saying my awesome singing is making you feel things? Good things? Tell me more, scale-face!"

Kristi exhaled sharply, amber eyes darting to me and then back to Nessy. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"Say what?" Nessy's tail somehow accelerated its rabid wagging.

"I've always found you naturally..." Kristi paused, seeming to physically struggle with the admission, "...attractive. Pretty, even. From the first day I saw you in class. It's probably why I tried so hard to outdo you in school. To push you away. To crush you in every way I could imagine, to knock you off your perch as the social queen of middle and then high school as it were… to take away what belonged to you." She eyed me.

Nessy's jaw dropped, her ears shooting straight up in surprise.

"Yes, it was stupid and petty," Kristi let out. "I pretended to be all proper while I couldn't stop being jealous of you. Sorry."

"Ermahgerd, you're actually apologizing… to me?" Nessy breathed out, letting out a smaller squee and wagging her tail rapidly.

"Yes," Kristi exhaled. "You know, there's always been… something about you."

"Something nice?" Nessy leaned toward the raptor.

"Like this magic bullshit sparkly ghost string hanging between us now," Kristi waved a scaled hand at the pack triangle webwork. "Like it's always been there. A connection from me to you that I fought against with my entire being since my family would absolutely disown me if I told them that I… liked a dog with no connections to her name."

"Dang," Nessy said. "That's… so wow from so many sides."

"Umm… yeah. Anyways, this Riffweld skill of yours," Kristi continued quickly, as if trying to move past her confession, "it's amplifying that in an alarming way. Like I'm suddenly a teenage raptor or..." her scales darkened with a flush, "...in season."

"What?!" Nessy squeaked, looking absolutely delighted by this turn of events. "You mean like when…"

"Yes, you don't need to dig at it," the raptor hissed.

"But."

"Zip."

"Buuu…"

The raptor-girl grabbed the husky's snout with her hand and squeezed it shut. "I said zip it. Slayer, if any of this gets out, my social life is done and my family will probably bury me in a ditch or something."

I stared at the struggling, grinning husky being squished by the raptor with mild amusement.

"The point is, your singing is doing something unnatural to my perception. Making me trust you. It must be the Riffweld skill," Kristi said, releasing the husky's snout.

"I agree on that one," I said. "Nessy's music is somehow skewing her appearance in my eyes from merely pretty to absolutely visually irresistible."

"Awww, you guys are such nice," Nessy smiled.

"Right so we're both affected then," Kristi muttered, visibly trying to regain her composure. "And I'm not sure if mental effects like that are healthy."

"It's probably fine," Nessy waved her paw at us. "You're fine. I would never abuse your appreciation. Say, how much do you appreciate me?" She grinned at the raptor.

"I'd appreciate it if we could move on to the next card before this gets any more awkward," Kristi hissed out.

"No way!" Nessy bounced on the bed, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "You just admitted nice things! This is groundbreaking pack vibe development!"

The Bulwichu tree behind her flickered with pink and gold bulbee crystal flowers.

"I'm going to regret this for the rest of my life, aren't I?" Kristi groaned, covering her face with her clawed hands.

"I won't tell anyone anything, cross my heart and hope to die," Nessy bobbed on the bed. "I'd never betray a pack mate!"

"Alec," Kristi said in a tone that begged for the conversation to move on. "Grab a card already."

I held in my questions and drew another card and read it aloud: "'Truth: Which one person would you most want to be stranded on a desert island with, and why?'"

"Ooooh, desert island scenario!" Nessy's tail thumped excitedly against the bed. "Choose wisely, pack leader!"

I considered the question, looking between the eager husky and the embarrassed-looking raptor. "Honestly? Both of you, for different reasons. Nessy would keep morale up and probably befriend whatever wildlife lived there. Krysanthea, on the other hand, would actually get us set up with a hut for survival with her tactical thinking, planning and hunting skills."

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"A diplomatic answer," Krysanthea mused.

"But if you had to pick just one?" Nessy pressed, leaning forward with interest.

"If I absolutely had to choose..." I hesitated, genuinely torn. "Krysanthea. But only because I feel like she'd be more focused on actual survival rather than trying to make friends with sharks or something."

Nessy clutched her chest in mock offense. "Oi! I would never! Unless they were really friendly sharks!"

I laughed as did Nessy.

"Traitor," she made an overly dramatic pouting face at me.

"See, Kristi would be better at helping me survive on a desert island against other predators with her claws," I added. "While you could rescue both of us way fast with your magic nose."

"Fine, fine," the husky huffed, laughing heartily. "You win this round with your cheeky human logic, Mister. Your turn, Kristi!"

She thrust the remaining cards at the raptor. "Pick, pick!"

Krysanthea's drew a dare card: "'Dare: Give a packmate a full back massage for ten minutes.'"

"The bonding-powers have spoken!" Nessy crowed delightedly. "Pick who you will knead today!"

"I—" Krysanthea began looking between us.

Nessy wiggled her eyebrows at her.

Kristi flushed with violet and then straightened her shoulders with sudden resolve. "Alec."

I blinked as Krysanthea gestured for me to lie down. "You sure about this?" I asked, not wanting her to feel pressured.

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "I can handle a massage. Besides..." She glanced at Nessy, a competitive gleam in her amber eyes. "If I back down now she'll make fun of me harder."

"Yepperoni!" Nessy grinned, settling back to watch.

Somewhat awkwardly, I removed my borrowed ranger shirt and positioned myself face down on the bed. Then I sank into the embrace of Nessy-crafted nest as Krysanthea approached.

I glanced back at her talons.

"Don't worry," she said. "Raptor anatomy isn't exactly designed for gentle touch, but I won't cut you up."

The mattress dipped as she positioned herself, straddling my lower back. The weight of her somehow felt familiar, electric.

There was no tentative exploration—Krysanthea applied firm, decisive pressure from the start, her knuckles digging deep into my muscle tissue. She kneaded me with practiced ease, as if she'd done this many times before.

"See?" she said. "Talons are bent inward toward my palm. Only using my knuckles and the sides of my hands… plus elbows for pressure points."

"Ah that is… nice," I mumbled into the pillow as she worked a particularly tense spot between my shoulder blades with her feathery elbow. "You really know what you're doing."

"Naturally," she replied, a hint of pride in her voice. "Raptors don't do things halfway."

"Someone's enjoying themselves," Nessy commented with an amused voice, relocating to a spot right beside my face.

As Krysanthea's massage continued, something strange began happening. Flashes of memory—not mine, yet somehow familiar—flickered through my mind like old photographs coming into focus:

Krysanthea's hands on my shoulders, guiding me through a slow dance at the formal as I spun her around, whispering encouragingly, her amber eyes reflecting fairy lights strung overhead and her glowing dress from below...

The inescapable pull of her gemstone-like eyes. The realization that she would be a far calmer girlfriend then Nessy who constantly hypered around me, over-crowded me, declared me as her property and today confessed that I owed her myself because she saved me from drowning.

Sitting above the valley on a stone outcropping, pointing out constellations while Kristi corrected my mediocre astronomy knowledge with endearing nerdiness.

Her scales shimmering like a disco-ball in the sunlight as she pulled me into a secluded alcove behind the school, her lips meeting mine for the first time. Her kiss like an electrical fire, an explosion detonating across my nerves.

The memories were foreign and intimate, like pieces of a shattered mirror, fragments of a relationship I'd never actually experienced. They weren't just images but full sensory experiences—her scent, the texture of her scales, the rustle of her feathers, the sound of her laugh when I surprised her with flowers after her ranger certification.

"You're tensing up again," Krysanthea murmured, her knuckles pressing into a particularly stubborn knot. "Relax."

"Sorry," I managed. "I'm just…"

"What?" she prompted, leaning down so her tank-top covered chest pressed against my back.

"Remembering things again. Things that didn't happen to me. Moments with you."

Her hands paused momentarily before resuming their work as she straightened out. "What kind of moments?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.

"Dancing at the formal. Stargazing. Our first kiss."

Nessy made a choking noise beside us.

This time her hands stopped completely. "You remember that? How?!"

"Not sure," I clarified. "It's like watching a VR movie of someone else's life, except... I can feel everything. Smell everything. It's strange."

"It's 'cus you are a tree," Nessy said.

"Why is he a tree?" Krysanthea asked, resuming the massage with more direct kneading of her feathered elbow.

"Trees are nice to sit under," Nessy clarified with a reverent tone. "They provide shade and oxygen. Alec provides himself."

"Are you being Alec-obsessed, or is this… some kind of Scrutiosmia insight?" Kristi asked.

"I'm not obsessed!"

"Yea right. I've seen the Alec wall-shrine at your apartment."

"It's just a cute memory wall!" Nessy huffed. "This is magic insight, yes. He's a tree of Alec-ness!"

"Is he going to turn into a flesh tree with faces if he dies too often or something?"

"He already did."

"What?"

"I think that I killed an Alec that failed to reconstitute," Nessy confessed. "The conceptoid. He was an Alec that didn't make it, one who didn't have the will or the focus to be himself."

"Oh," I said. "Why didn't he have the will?"

"Probably because he thought of too many things or worried too much about others," Nessy shrugged. "You, on the other hand, didn't have anyone to think about, only had yourself to focus on. You did the impossible, pulled yourself from death by your own bootstraps. It's why you are the most Alec full of Alec-ness. That's why I found you. Hard times build character, see?"

She reached out and ruffled my hair. "My little tree of lost Alec souls."

"Is that what he is?" Kristi asked from above me.

"I think so," Nessy said softly. "Souls are very hard to smell, but I'm getting better at it."

"How many souls are in him?"

"I dunno. Lots?"

The idea should have disturbed me—the notion that I might be a tree of souls. Instead, there was something weirdly comforting about it. I suspected that the feeling was there mostly due to Nessy and Kristi being at my side. My protectors. My pack. It was strange how predators had…

"Hrm. It makes me wonder," I voiced after a quiet moment, "about the differences between our worlds. Like, why are humans and pradavarians considered different categories here? In my world, humans were the only fully sapient species. But here, it seems like the division is almost... arbitrary."

"Arbitrary?" Krysanthea repeated, sliding her fist along my spine. "How so?"

"You're all essentially human in build and intelligence," I explained. "Just with animal features mixed in. Hell, you have breasts like a mammal, which is exceptionally strange for a dinosaur from my point of view. From what I understood so far—humans and pradavarians are treated as distinct categories rather than variations of the same base type. So, why aren't humans defined as "pradavarians" too? Why is the Prad flag hanging at the ranger station next to the USA flag?"

"That's because we are totally different!" Nessy said, inhaling deep. "Humans… evolved from apes who evolved from earlier primates who evolved from small tree-dwelling mammals who evolved from synapsids who evolved from amphibians who evolved from lobe-finned fish who evolved from jawless fish who evolved from early chordates who evolved from simple multicellular organisms that evolved from single-celled life in the primordial oceans!" She somehow outputted the entire run-on-sentence without taking a single extra breath.

"And Pradavarians?" I asked.

"Pradavarians were created when the Slayer defeated the Leviathan born from the Wormwood Star crater," Nessy declared, panting. "He struck down the monster dragon and made a wish upon her crystalline heart—a wish for companionship and love. The Slayer created us specifically to love and protect humans, to be their perfect pack companions. That's why I'm your dedicated packmate and protector, Alec!"

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