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How Not To Become Lunch: 17 - Keep a Cool Head
In the minutes before her predator class, Fiona was walking down the hall. She’d just left Jack on his way out to PE, and she still had the small smile on her face from their conversation. But it wouldn’t last long. She hadn’t been in the best mood that day.
She took a detour into an adjacent corridor; before class, she had a pitstop she needed to make. It was her big lunch from yesterday. She’d gotten most of it out that morning, but she could feel a bit of it still trailing through her system. It wasn’t unusual for a large meal to require multiple ‘visits’, but she was hoping this would be the last of it. This was one meal she was ready to put behind her.
She walked into the bathroom absentmindedly and picked an open stall, closing it behind her. There was the faint sound of fabric against fur as she went through her practiced motions. She could feel her body already preparing for release as she went to sit down.
*EEP*!
A sudden and unexpected cold clutched the end of the werewolf’s tail. She yipped quietly and leapt up. Putting a hand to her mouth, she hoped fiercely that no one else had been around to hear that. And then sighed deeply as she realized what she’d just done. She might have groaned in self-pity, or whimpered in disgust, had her embarrassment not kept her completely silent.
Dipping your tail in the toilet, great job Fiona.
She felt the tainted water soaking through her fur and hurried uncomfortably, compelled to get dressed and get clean as quickly as possible. As soon as she’d rebuttoned the back of her waistband above her tail, she opened the stall and walked as casually as she could toward the sinks.
To her relief, it seemed she was alone after all, but she still rushed. If anyone else came in, seeing her cleaning her tail like that would be a pretty clear sign of what had just happened. That’s not to say she wasn’t thorough, though. Most preds had an impeccable sense of smell, and the last thing she needed today was for people to start calling her ‘toilet tail’ or something.
Eventually, after a number of washes, she was satisfied that the scent had been cleansed. She dried herself and prepared to return to her stall when she realized that she’d taken so long that her class was probably just about to start.
With an aggravated sigh, she turned toward the bathroom entrance. She clenched the muscles of her lower abdomen. She was a predator, they could hold a lot, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t pester her all period.
She walked back out into the hall and started briskly towards her class. When she arrived, Ms. Ivy was already present, but she had made it just in time. She took her seat just before her teacher glanced away from the clock and called the room to attention.
“Alright students, today we’ll be finishing our lesson on marked prey, following yesterday’s homework assignment.”
Ugh, Fiona huffed to herself and sunk a little lower into her chair. She’d known it was coming, but she’d really been hoping she’d be able to focus on anything else.
“I already know most of you managed to complete the assignment, many of you made it a point to show me firsthand, for a few of you it still shows, but now you all will be showing me secondhand. We’ll start with an essay. It should be at least a page long, it should cover your hunting process and your result. Be as detailed as you’d like. But I do advise you: don’t over-exaggerate yourselves, and don’t be afraid to admit your mistakes. You’re here to learn after all.”
The dryad teacher, poised like a blooming flower at the head of the room, took a pause. But before she continued, a hand went up.
“Yes?”
“What about if we couldn’t get a marked prey to eat?” asked a young harpy with a hint of embarrassment.
“For those of you who didn’t manage it, I trust you at least made some attempts. You can write about those,” she replied. Her tone suggested she had been planning on addressing that point, but she didn’t speak too harshly. Questions were a necessary part of learning, after all, and a good predator was nothing if not patient.
Another hand went up, this one a bit more sharply. Ms. Ivy nodded in the student’s direction.
“Don’t you think this assignment was a little unfair?” The boy’s words caught the room’s attention, or mainly his attitude. He was clearly a bit upset and he was letting a tinge of emotion leak into his voice.
“Oh?” Ms. Ivy inquired, apparently choosing not to take issue with his tone.
“For the predators that can’t mark their prey?” He clarified, gesturing toward the girl who had raised her hand before him. She was a harpy; a toothless pred, one unable to leave a predator’s mark.
“Oh, no- I didn’t mean it like that, Ms. Ivy,” the girl muttered hastily.
The dryad put up a gentle hand to silence her, still looking at the boy. Though he had drawn attention to the harpy’s species, it was the species of the student asking the question which was far more telling.
The boy was a human, a human turned predator. There were several of them in the class; a number of the more advanced magic users in the school ,who had decided to start learning the many spells necessary to gradually transform their bodies, with the hopes of being able to hunt like the many preds that surrounded them.
“As I said yesterday, those predators unable to leave a mark of their own were to try and obtain marked prey from others.” The teacher spoke calmly, maybe too calmly. She might have left it at that, but the boy spoke again.
“That’s what I mean. Preds with teeth can go and mark anyone or anything they want, that’s much easier than having to fight another predator.” He was definitely speaking a bit more adamantly than he should have been.
He doesn’t know the spell yet, does he? Fiona thought.
To most natural preds in the room, it might seem that this kid was sticking up for the less fortunate. But she knew a bit better. Humans had teeth, of course, but they weren’t predator’s teeth. There were spells they could use to sharpen them, lengthen them, strengthen them, but the spell required for a human to leave a true predator’s mark on their prey was a tricky one. She could remember Jack mentioning that- or rather, complaining about how Ms. Caster had spent half a period talking about it.
He didn’t get one, she reasoned, seeing through his facade. And besides, he’s missing the point.
“That’s largely true,” Ms. Ivy replied plainly.
“So then isn’t it unfair that some preds get better grades just because they have teeth?!” he insisted. “Whoa!!”
Startling everyone in the room, the insolent student suddenly shot three or four feet into the air, flipped upside down with a yelp and knocked over his chair. The rest of the class quickly noticed a green root, holding him by his foot and slowly snaking its way down his leg. Tracing it back led the eyes of startled students across shadowed floors and around floor molding, winding inevitably back toward Ms. Ivy herself.
“I think you’ve missed an important lesson,” she said, her calmness now menacing, though her voice hadn’t actually changed. “Nature isn’t fair. Hunting isn’t fair. It certainly isn’t fair for the animals and humans we prey upon, which I’m sure has something to do with why you attempted to become a predator in the first place. But it isn’t fair for us either. We’re all born different; some predators have clear advantages over others.
“This class teaches you about being a predator. A predator doesn’t catch prey when they’re outmatched, not out there, and not in class. Natural predators understand this balance instinctively, and any predator only improves when they learn to use the abilities they do have to their advantage.”
Ms. Ivy carried the boy slowly between the heads of his classmates toward the front of the room.
“Look around and you will see plenty of approaches: ambush, traps, stamina, poisoning, deception. Perhaps if you weren’t so intent on outcompeting other predators so directly, you might have also had the thought that teamwork might be a very effective approach as well. A number of toothless predators in the class simply asked other students for help. Their ability to befriend or cooperate with others was one they were able to leverage to their advantage, to catch a particular prey that otherwise would have eluded them. The success of a hunt is determined only by whether you’ve claimed a meal, and by whether you’re still in shape to catch another once it digests.”
He arrived a few inches from the teacher’s face.
“A predator has the skill to catch meals, if they don’t have that skill then they’re prey. That’s the only real difference. ‘Fairness’ has nothing to do with it. It applies not to predators or prey. It only applies to one thing.”
The teacher paused and looked him unblinkingly in the eyes.
“A meal. Stomachs treat all meals equally.”
Ms. Ivy’s face suddenly stretched open shockingly wide, exposing a gaping, leafy green, toothless maw. It wasn’t like the jaws of a more animalistic predator; it lacked many of the familiar features, and it didn’t stretch and deform under the pressure of incoming prey. Instead it moved before the prey even arrived, expanding gracefully yet swiftly, almost as if it were blooming in an instant. Her floral body swelled, making ample room for the meal she was ready to receive; she simply lowered the boy inside.
There was a bulge of sorts. Large and prominent, but completely smooth; unperturbed by the usual shifting lumps and valleys of a wriggling prey. Her enlarged throat resembled the stem of some huge plant; even and round and vibrantly green. The bulge spread down her upper body as her innards opened up to allow her meal easy passage into her belly, guiding the nutrient-rich food where it needed to go, much like the stem of an ordinary plant.
It wasn’t until the bulge reached the bottom of her stomach that some signs of her former student started to show through. Her expanded midriff started to shrink, forming up around the boy’s head, molding to his shape, even down to the bump of his nose and the curve of his mouth. Her belly compressed around her meal as the bulge receded back up her throat, leaving behind the stark contour of the child within.
Her vine-like appendage withdrew from her mouth just as her neck returned to its normal, petite size, and her face retook its usual, more humanoid appearance. The unmistakable outline of her meal was clear for all the class to see. It wiggled slightly, but the boy inside had no space to struggle. Aside from that, one could hardly tell the meal she carried was still alive- at least for the moment.
“As for the rest of you,” Ms. Ivy said, not missing a beat, even while her class sat stunned. “Write well regarding your hunts. A predator won’t catch every prey they chase, and your grade for this lesson will not depend solely on whether you made a successful catch. It certainly won’t depend on whether you marked that catch yourself. Just show me you’re learning to use your skills as a predator. This one had many chances, don’t waste yours.”
…
That had been… unpleasant, for Fiona. Not watching her teacher eat a student- that was actually somewhat satisfying considering she’d never really liked the kid- no, the unpleasant part had been the essay.
She’d forced herself to go cold, emotionless; she’d described the entire event with clinical detail, as if it had happened to someone else. But she had to be detailed just the same, and her feelings couldn’t help but peek through when she was forced to describe the taste… That fact only served to aggravate her.
But luckily it was over. It was all over. Yesterday was over, the essay was over, and now that class had finally ended the lesson on marked prey was over too, and she could finally put the whole incident behind her. As she walked toward the exit, distant and drained, her eyes downturned and unfocused, she felt a bit of happiness at the thought that it was time to meet up with Jack again. That did always seem to cheer her up, at least a little. She’d start feeling better as soon as she got out of that room.
“Oof!”
She made firm contact with something hard, knocking her already downturned muzzle roughly into her chest as she also felt something jab her in the gut. Angry and alarmed she pushed back hard with her arms and when she could point her snout straight again she opened it with a loud bark, almost more of a roar. Stumbling away from her, she saw the vague figure of another student, and she shouted.
“Watch where you’re going will you!?”
Fiona glared as the kid caught their balance, up until they showed their face. It was a raccoon girl, with rounded patches of black and white fur surrounding big eyes, widened with shock and fear. The girl only gave Fiona a single, frightful glance before turning and running out the room the way she had been shoved, not speaking a word.
Fiona stood there frozen for a moment, before a pit slowly formed in her chest at the realization of what had just happened. She’d just screamed at some random kid in the middle of school, with half her classmates still around- just because they’d run into her. No, she’d even been the one to run into them!
The werewolf bit her lip and took a sharp breath. She couldn’t bring herself to look around to see anyone’s reaction, she just turned her snout back toward the ground and started walking again.
…
“And that’s what happened,” Fiona said with a sigh. But it wasn’t a heavy sigh, for she was already feeling much better. Jack had seen to that.
The two of them were standing outside the lunchroom as other kids passed in and out. She’d spent the last period- between when Jack had first cheered her up and now- deciding on exactly which details of the story she’d share and how. Having told it to him now, there were a number of things she’d left out, things he didn’t need to know which would probably just make him uncomfortable, but she’d told him about the raccoon girl and what she’d said, and it felt good to get that off her chest.
Fiona looked at Jack. He’d been watching her with a sympathetic frown, listening without saying a word, but he showed an encouraging, understanding smile as she looked up. She smiled back. It felt behind her now, truly, and having talked about it she found it didn’t seem quite so bad anymore.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”
“Alright.”
They walked casually through the lunchroom doors and looked idly over the crowd of other students, chatting loudly with their friends. They got in line and bought their school lunches and started toward their usual table as they usually did. But on the way Fiona stopped.
“Actually… Jack, you go sit with Ozzy for a minute. I’ll catch up, I just want to say something to someone.”
Jack looked at his friend a little inquisitively, her eyes seemed to be caught on something a few tables down, but he went with it.
“Sure, see you there.”
They split up and Jack went to sit down, but he kept his eye on her.
“Hey Jack,” Ozzy greeted as he arrived. “Fiona’s not with you?”
Fiona stopped at a distant table on the pred side of the lunchroom, and that’s when Jack caught a glimpse of a gloomy raccoon girl, sitting there and staring off into space. He smiled.
“She’ll be here in a minute,” he told Ozzy. “She just had something to take care of.”
“…Well that sounds ominous,” Ozzy replied.
“Oh- no it’s nothing like that,” he said with a laugh. “You know I wish you’d relax around her a little more, she’s actually really nice.”
“Yeah, I know, but… she’s still a predator, you know?”
Jack thought for a moment, looking back at her friend as she talked, too distant to hear.
“You get used to it,” he replied.
The raccoon girl began to smile, and Jack looked away.