“Impressed with yourself are you my little princess,” A voice on the edge of my consciousness speaks up.

“Not now Shiva, let me eat in peace,” I tell it.

“But then how am I supposed to experience such a lovely dinner if I am just supposed to sit in the back and not be a part of you,” she complains, “and besides I did like you asked for the past few days while you got settled, so I am now ready to resume my place living my life through yours.” Then she adds as a side note, “I miss bath time.”

I guess that my days of quiet are truly gone now which causes me to sigh, “At least I have someone to talk with all the time now.” I notice out of the corner of my eye that Alice is watching me with her cheeks puffed slightly; did she say something I missed?

“No she didn’t. Maybe it is because you are strange,” Shiva pokes at me.

“Not helping,” I respond, before looking to Alice to ask, “Is there something wrong?”

She looks away and mutters something under her breath that sounds like “not fair.” And she starts to look like she is sulking lightly while she eats her stew.

I look to Leyla for help with the situation and she just shrugs while avoiding eye contact, so I stare at her with trying to send the message of 'tell me' but she just angles herself away from me and starts to talk with the woman at the end of the table.

“So if I may ask, who are you?” she says.

“Oh how rude of me,” The woman says “My name is Marion Steele; you may call me Miss Steele though.”

“You know looking like you are going to eat them, probably isn’t the best way to get information from someone,” Shiva oh so helpfully informs me. So I turn my stare to Iris to see if she is an easier egg to crack.

She looks up to me and catches my eye, before looking around the table. After a few seconds she looks back over to me again before looking down at her plate, and she starts to fidget with the table cloth, casting glances at me out of the corner of her eye and quickly looking away when she sees I am still watching her. Like her sister she turns to Miss Steele and starts talking with her, “Well Miss Steele, What is it that you do here at common grounds?” Iris asks her.

And she replies with a knowing smile on her face, “Oh you know, a bit of this and a bit of that.” This causes Lady Ledoux to sigh under her breath while she refills her glass.

“See I told you so,” Shiva whispers to me and I sigh and look around the table to find someone else to talk to. Melodiana is happily slurping her stew up and Alice is still sulking next to me, leaving only Lady Ledoux as a possible option. So I ask Lady Ledoux in an attempt to make peace with her, “Is there anything that I can get you?”

To which she curtly responds, “You say that as if I would accept anything from a harlot like you.”

“What did you do to evoke such hostility from her?” Shiva asks

“By being my normal self,” I grumble to her.

“Ah that explains so much,” She sighs before continuing, “It really is so unfortunate.”

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it.”

“…I see.”

Melodiana is now looking back and forth between her empty bowl and the pot in the middle of the table and then to me out of the corner of her eye. “Just get some I made plenty with your appetite in mind,” I tell her sounding a bit sharper than I intended, and she blushes slightly while reaching for the spoon.

“Feeling a bit testy today hmm? Are you getting ready to go into heat?” Shiva jokingly asks while laughing at me further edging on my irritation, I mean really to be insulted in the place I was living, ignored without even so much as being mouthed later, not even being told ahead of time that we were having guest in the first place, and then taking it out on the only one at the table being civil with me... and dinner had such good prospects this evening to.

“Oh you’re so adorable when you get irritated, your ears lay back and the tips your tails start to twitch, and you start to make that little growling sound at the back of your throat,” While she is saying this I can feel her wrapping her presence around me as if to embrace me, which is somewhat comforting to me after all these years. “Oh and you might want to excuse yourself to the bathroom for a few moments, becaaaause everyone is looking at you now.”

Looking up and around I notice that indeed, everyone is now looking at me. “Damn,” I complain, probably sounds more like a whine. Alice looks like she is about to cry now, Lady Ledoux appears to be enjoying herself with another full glass in her hand.

Leyla and Iris are snickering to each other across the table, Miss Steele is watching me with a look of interest on her face, and Melodiana is looking concerned. “If you will excuse me for a few moments,” I tell the table while standing up, and I turn to leave the table of silent women.

I slip through the door of the bathroom and lean against it after I close it feeling the hard oak on my back and sigh, so much for living with any semblance of a normal life after that little display.

“It isn’t that bad my little princess,” Shiva says while trying to comfort me, while wrapping her presence around me again.

“It was,” I sigh to her as I get that sinking feeling in my gut.

“Then just be so adorable that they can’t resist you,” She says while laughing.

“Oh I am sure that will work,” I tell her while rubbing my brow and walking towards the sink. “Except for they are all women,” I say as I look up into the mirror and notice that I am looking into Shiva’s world and not my reflection. “That’s a neat trick, you will have to show me how you do it one day” I tell her.

“Maybe one day little princess,” She replies, maybe one day she will tell me why she calls me that as well. “It’s because you're spoiled rotten,” she cuts in and I just shake my head slightly.

She is laying on a cushioned bench facing toward me, looking every bit her usual self. Her light red hair is pulled into a very lose ponytail with around half of it draped around her shoulders and shaped around her soft striking features with that crooked little smile on her face. Her head is tilted to the side as she is resting her cheek on the back of her gloved hand. I can’t see much else of her body from the angle she is presenting to me, but I assume she is in her normal elegant black and white dress, or what she chooses to show as her normal dress. Actually I am not even sure if that is how she really looks at all, I sigh.

“Maybe one or two of them play that way…or maybe they would if you put a little effort into it,” She giggles before continuing, “and this is how I look for the most part.”

“For the most part,” I repeat choosing to ignore the first part of her statement.

“My breasts are actually bigger than what I show them to be.”

“Uh huh,” I say to her only half paying attention to the conversation that we have shared many times. As I head to the door I pause and put my forehead on the door for a moment to ready my nerves, when I catch some of the conversation outside.

“…heat if I had to guess,” One said, and in a single instant my determination to go back out this door and face them is gone.

“You mean she would actually go into heat? As in that is actually something that happens, and not her just trying to get out of things?” another voice asks, I can’t quite make out who is speaking, partially because the voices are muffled, and partially because I don’t know any of them well enough yet. I assume it is Melodiana though since she is the only one I have tried to get out of something using the excuse of heat.

“Only three days here and you are already trying to skip out on things,” Shiva sighs to me, “I thought you said you were going to try and change your ways.”

“It was early,” I protest, “and I did try, but the bed was so warm and comfortable.”

“You are going to get fat, if all you do is sleep and eat all day,” Shiva jests.

“I AM NOT getting fat…” I begin to shout at her and then my voice drops off as I recall the other morning and Melodiana saying very much the same thing and my dress uniform fitting tighter than normal.

“Has someone been teasing my little princess?” Shiva says mockingly and then continues more gently “Don’t worry too much about it. Any actual weight you gain has always gone to your chest thanks to your blood lines.”

“Muuuu…”

Back outside another voice has been speaking to the one that asked a question, “…happens a few time a year, during which a few of the beast races are more likely to conceive a child.”

“More likely to conceive?” the questioning voice asks

“Yes they are generally able to conceive at any time of the year, but there are far better chances of it happening during a period of heat,” One of the first voices replies.

“It is also apparently a heavily emotional taxing period of time for a lot of them,” A different voice says.

And another continues, “So I have heard as well, apparently the urge to…well breed for the lack of a better way of say it,” The voice pauses and I hear a slight laugh “and the conflict of not having a mate is very stressful to her race in particular, on top of the mood swings, or at least that is what I have heard among other stories, as not many of the people that go into heat are willing to talk much about it with outsiders.”

“Which is understandable, since even listening around this table none of us are able to accurately describe how it would feel, so how could we understand it if they told us.”

Another voice speaks up, accounting for everyone in the other room, and asks “Other stories?”

The first voice speaks up again “Of course, ones like walking in on someone in heat, tails in the air, taking care of their needs.”

“The little love bites on roommates, when they are well into their cycle and…wanting,” Another laughs.

At this point I pull away from the door and head back behind the separating curtains to consider my options.

“You could just go back out there like nothing happened at all,” Shiva tells me

“Not an option at this point,” I say while looking around the room, and think about the looks I would receive at the table, “Why does this type of place only ever have one door?”

“Well probably to keep perverts from getting in,” Shiva says, which causes me to roll my eyes and I notice something on the edge of my vision. There is a smaller window sill quite a ways up the wall.

“You know I am feeling like retiring early this evening,”

“Oh I have an idea. How about since we are already here, why don’t we take a bath?” Shiva asks with longing in her voice.

“Later, when everyone else is asleep or gone,” I tell her as I walk to the wall and prepare myself.

After a few seconds I step backwards a bit and then launch myself forwards quickly. As I approach the wall I kick off the ground and then quickly off of the wall to ease my ascent and I grab the side of the window and pull my hip onto the sill in a fluid movement. I open the window and slide through feet first before lowering myself over the edge twisting myself to face back into the bathroom. Before I push off of the wall I brace my legs on the wall, and I reach into the bathroom to pull the window to the point that it will shut on its own, and then I softly drop myself down onto the ground and hear the sound of the window locking itself.

“Well I am glad to see these last few cycles of inactivity haven’t made you to rusty,” Shiva pokes knowing good and well that I have kept up on my exercises.

I walk around to my room window and I pull a thin piece of wire that I have rolled in a pocket and I slide it through a crack between the windows and hook the latch on the window and pull. There is a satisfying pop as the mechanism slides loose and I slide the window up and climb through the window.

“You know it is a good thing there is such a big wall between these houses,” Shiva says, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“More of a fence than a wall,” I tell her as I slide the window closed and slide onto my bed while grabbing a book off of my night stand.