Dark clouds blanketed the sky above the forest. The weather changed in the blink of an eye—rain began falling by dusk, and by night, thunder rumbled.
Song Xu, of course, just like before, hid beside the big snake, squeezing together with his tail. This time, she felt more justified than ever.
After all, before she was freeloading the nest; now it was her own. Free of charge!
In the first dozen times, she had consciously only touched Wumu’s snake tail, piling the tail over herself to form a safe little fortress. But this time, she reconsidered—since she had made efforts to become “legitimate,” she should receive slightly different treatment.
Her gaze locked onto the beautiful snake lying on thick green moss. She wriggled out from the pile of tails and slid with a whoosh into Wumu’s arms.
The skin of Wumu’s upper body also carried many black patterns like those on his snake tail. On him, they resembled some kind of mysterious markings. Simply put, there was nothing covering his upper body, so when Song Xu leaned over, she pressed directly against his abdomen.
If she were in human form, she would probably feel awkward for a moment or two. But she was in squirrel beast form, wasn’t she? Fearless.
The thunder outside wasn’t fierce, only occasionally letting out a muffled rumble, as if going through the motions. So the squirrel wasn’t too frightened. In the gaps between thunderclaps, she could even focus for a while on the snake abs beneath her paws.
There, cool, soft scales transitioned gradually, making one want to flip them open and see how skin and scales were connected.
Before the next thunder sounded, Song Xu’s little paws wandered to the black patterns along the big snake’s waist. The texture of his skin was actually similar to the scales on his tail—not like normal human skin, different from hers.
As Song Xu absentmindedly stroked him, her thoughts drifted elsewhere.
She suddenly thought of her dad. If he knew his daughter had found a partner right after coming of age, he would probably be furious.
Through this, she briefly thought of her former world.
She wasn’t someone prone to melancholy, and her family relationships weren’t close, so what she missed most were various modern conveniences and delicious food. She really wanted to eat fruit—sweet fruit of all kinds. In this season, tasty fruits in the forest were far too scarce.
Saliva, along with tears, flowed down.
A squirrel’s tail could never stay still. It swayed along with her wandering thoughts. Wumu felt all kinds of furry paws and fluffy tail brushing against his stomach. He endured for a while but couldn’t hold back anymore, reaching out to press down on the restless squirrel.
Caught off guard, Song Xu let out a squeak. After coming back to her senses, her four paws flailed wildly—just as thunder boomed outside. The squirrel seemed struck by the thunder, instantly going limp and motionless. Seizing the chance, Wumu kneaded the squirrel into a fluffy ball and pressed her down with his snake tail, finally gaining some peace.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. Once the thunder faded, the squirrel made a comeback. The tiny little thing slipped back in front of him again, still occupying the position on his abdomen.
Wumu opened his mouth, wanting to say something. After holding it in for a long time, he still couldn’t squeeze anything out. Song Xu lifted her head and met his gaze. Seeing his expression, she felt secondhand frustration for him.
“What do you want to say?”
“You don’t want me staying here? Snake tail or snake belly, they’re both parts of your body anyway. It doesn’t make a difference where I stay, right?”
“Or you don’t want me to be in beast form, and want beastman form instead? If so, just say it.”
Wumu: “……No……”
Song Xu: “If it’s not that, then what? Your body feels uncomfortable? The moss isn’t comfortable? There are little bugs underneath biting you? You don’t like thunder either?”
All the sentences Wumu would need a long time to organize burst out of Song Xu’s mouth like popping beans. Wumu couldn’t keep up with the rapid-fire questions, so he could only use actions to indicate: he grabbed Song Xu’s sweeping tail, stopping it from brushing against his waist and abdomen.
Song Xu looked enlightened. “Oh, you want to touch my tail? Go ahead, touch it. I’m very generous. The feel of fur is different from snake tail, you know. Try it.”
Seeing the “that’s not it,” “I want to refute,” “how do I say it” look appear on his face again, Song Xu secretly laughed.
Wumu: “Don’t… move.” After one “you’re bad” had made Song Xu laugh for an entire day, Wumu became extremely careful with every word he spoke.
Song Xu obediently hugged her own big tail. “Okay, I won’t move.”
This was the first time he had accurately expressed his request, and also the first time Song Xu had so readily followed it. Wumu felt a strange sense of delight—turns out, speaking really does work.
It only worked for about a short while.
Not long ago, the squirrel who had hugged her own tail and said she would absolutely keep it under control and not move around to disturb him, lost control of her body after falling asleep, plowing straight across his chest.
In her dreams, she faithfully reenacted her entire day’s activities: climbing trees, running, scratching dirt, gnawing grass stems.
Wumu became the tree she climbed, the grassland she ran across, the dirt she scratched, and the grass stems she gnawed.
She even chased things in her sleep. Wumu couldn’t hold her down. He comprehended a kind of “can’t afford to provoke, can afford to hide” spirit and slithered to the side to avoid her, but the sleeping little squirrel rolled around, and before long, stuck back onto him again.
Is this what a partner is? With the tip of his tail being held in the sleeping squirrel’s arms and gnawed with crunching sounds, hurting a little, Wumu wondered in confusion.
In the beastman world, finding a partner was a very simple matter. Most of the time, it was because of physiological impulses. If two were suitable, they would quickly form a pair, usually not lasting long. Every season, many partners would separate and switch to someone else.
Even as partners, they were often not very intimate. Only during reproduction would they rub ears and cheeks together. The rest of the time, they would not cling to each other.
But she was not like that.
The snake who was touched and pressed by the squirrel every day couldn’t understand why she was like this.
But he realized that he did not dislike it, did not dislike the quiet dark forest becoming noisy. If he truly disliked it, the squirrel would be inside his belly, not lying on top of it.
After waking up, Song Xu discovered that her cheeks were very sore, as if she had gnawed tree bark all night.
The squirrel was bewildered: what happened?
Looking at the snake again, he looked listless, like he had been ravaged all night.
Outside, it was still drizzling. Song Xu didn’t like going out in this kind of weather. She lazily ate some of the food she had stored, then played near the cave entrance.
When it rained, many little insects would appear inside the stone cave. These small creatures didn’t care that this cave belonged to a terrifying big snake. Once they found a suitable place to shelter from the rain, they would stop. Many little bugs clung to the stone walls where rain couldn’t splash, winged ones, and beetles were the most numerous.
There were all kinds of little insects in the forest. If someone were afraid of bugs, they wouldn’t last three days living here before collapsing. Fortunately, Song Xu wasn’t afraid. Not only was she not afraid, she also enthusiastically caught a few bugs on the stone wall to play with.
Actually, many small insects were also on a squirrel’s menu, but she didn’t like eating them.
Pinching the bug she had caught, Song Xu knelt beside Wumu and said mysteriously, “Look, it glows.”
In the dim corner, there were indeed tiny points of fluorescence on the bug’s shell. Wumu didn’t know what was so interesting about this kind of bug that could be seen everywhere. There were many of them in the forest at night, especially on summer nights.
He showed no reaction. Song Xu didn’t mind either. She pressed the glowing bug onto the stone wall beside him. “Alright, you stay here for now and glow for Wumu.”
After saying that, she ran back to the stone wall to look for other novel things. Once she found something, she would come back and share it with the snake.
The novel things in her eyes were all very ordinary in Wumu’s view, but she was always excited and happy, as if those ordinary things, once she talked about them, truly had special characteristics he had never noticed before.
By evening, the rain stopped. Song Xu washed a stone bowl in a small nearby stream. Seeing that the colorful stones at the bottom of the water were pretty, she flipped over some stones.
“Wumu!” She hugged the stone bowl and hurried back. From the cave entrance, she loudly called his name. “I found a good thing!”
Putting the stone bowl aside, Song Xu ran to Wumu’s side, manually turning his body that was facing the stone wall so that he faced her, making him look at her closed palms. “Guess what’s inside?”
Her hands were cold from soaking in the water. Her hair was wet, not sure if from sweat or water.
Seeing him look at her without speaking, Song Xu giggled and spread her palms. “Ta-da! Look, it’s a five-pointed star stone!”
This smooth black stone had naturally formed into a five-pointed star shape, extremely neat.
“Do you know what a five-pointed star is? It’s the stars in the sky. The stars in the sky are this shape, so this might be a star from the sky that fell down and got picked up by me.” Song Xu seriously lied to the snake.
There were legends in beastman tribes about the stars, the sun, and the moon. The sun guided directions, the moon was the homeland of beastmen, and the stars were their departed relatives.
“I’m giving this star to you.” Song Xu pulled Wumu’s hand and placed the five-pointed star into his palm.
After giving the little gift, Song Xu promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t the first time she had given Wumu something. She had casually given him all kinds of random little trinkets before.
But at night, Wumu took the initiative to place her in front of him, pressing her tightly against his chest.
Song Xu, who had planned to go sleep in her own nest since there was no thunder tonight: “……”
And the snake even took the initiative to place the tip of his tail into her hand. Song Xu was drawn by the tail tip. All day, Wumu had been hiding the tip of his tail under his snake body, so she hadn’t noticed. Now that it was right in front of her, she realized the shape of the tail tip was a bit wrong—like it had been bitten a little flat, with tooth marks on it.
She suddenly understood why her teeth and cheeks hurt.
Song Xu, incredulous: “I bit it? I bit you like this, and you didn’t even wake me up in the middle of the night?!”
Not waking her up, and still wanting to sleep together today—snake really was clingy.
On thunder nights, she usually didn’t sleep very well and would even have nightmares, inevitably tossing around a bit at night. Song Xu felt a little guilty. To avoid gnawing on snake tail again at night, Song Xu transformed into beastman form, resting her head against Wumu’s chin and pulling his arm over to wrap around her waist.
