The next morning, Clarissa decided she'd had enough. Natalie had ignored her the rest of the previous day, making a show of turning away when Clarissa had tried to engage her in conversation about the State Dairy. Natalie had only awakened them all once during the night, with her "Where are they??" screams, but it was enough to keep everyone on edge, waiting for the next howl of protest in the semi-dark. This morning had started with a fight between Monica and Jill in the adjacent stall, relative to Jill's not being in the mood.

Clarissa kept her face turned away from Natalie, not wanting her to see the tears flowing. She could feel everything that she had loved falling apart, and she knew it was her fault -- for all the damage she'd done, she might as well have brought a live grenade into the barn.

The morning milking had been a mostly silent affair, as the cows stood half asleep while Wendy squirted their milk into the pails. Even Wendy, who hadn't had to sleep out in the barn, seemed gloomy and quiet, sensing the anger humming like a sixty-cycle current in the background. She noticed, also, the pails seemed to hold less milk than the day before.

Even the weather seemed to understand how everybody felt. It confirmed their moods with heavy clouds, and a wet smell of impending rain. On the morning walk, Clarissa took the opportunity to try to start making things better. There wasn't time to talk to every girl, but she made sure she talked to one of the girls from each pair.

"Jenny, it's almost over, okay? Tom's going to snuff Natalie tomorrow, we'll all eat her, and that'll be the end of it. Okay? Tell Gwen, but really quietly."

Jenny smiled at Clarissa. "Okay. And if Tom ever gets the idea of buying another cow, let's all just kick him."

Clarissa winced, reminding herself for the thousandth time that it hadn't been Tom's idea. But she simply gave Jenny a quick kiss and trotted over to tell Kirsten.

Most of the girls seemed to be napping during the afternoon -- a couple of televisions were on, with the sound down very low, but Clarissa couldn't hear the usual giggles and murmurs of conversation. The murmurs had only lasted long enough for the three girls in the know to tell their partners about the impending resolution to the problem.

Clarissa looked across the stall at Natalie's back -- about the only part of her she ever saw anymore. She wished, at this late hour, there could still be some way to unravel the mystery. Something had happened to her, somewhere, sometime. She couldn't have been born this way. It couldn't be her fault she was like this.

She got to her hooves and crept as quietly as she could towards her stall-partner. Maybe, she thought, if she just lay down next to her and talked quietly to her. Never mind if Natalie answered or paid attention. Never mind what she was talking about. Somehow, something would get through.

When she was about three feet away, Natalie suddenly said, in her flat voice, "I told you I don't do girls."

"I -- I wasn't --" Clarissa knew her stammering wasn't helping her make her case, but she didn't know how to tell Natalie what she did want.

"Go play with your sisters. Read a book. Visit a national monument. Just go away."

"I -- I can't do any of those things. You know that. I'm just here with you. I want to talk to you."

"Not my problem. I'm not here with anybody."

Clarissa opened her mouth, then closed it again. I tried, she thought. You were right, Tom. It's not like we can wait until everybody likes her. She sighed heavily and crept back to her pad.

The evening milking went as quietly as the morning one. Wendy made two trips back to the bottling room carrying milk -- she found that making several trips with small pails was easier than carrying one big heavy pail -- and returned to finish up with Natalie and Clarissa.

As she sat on the stool next to Clarissa, she winced and held her stomach. She swayed a little on the stool.

"Wendy? You okay?"

"I'll be okay in a minute. Just let me get my breath." She reached out blindly and petted Clarissa's shoulder.

"Maybe Tom should do the milking."

Wendy shook her head. "Stop worrying. It's supposed to be another week -- Ow!" She trembled all over.

From two stalls away Gwen asked, "Wendy, what's wrong? Clary, what's happening?" Clarissa could hear a television being switched off.

Wendy said loudly, "I'll be..." Then she screamed and clutched her stomach.

Clarissa said quietly and urgently, "Wendy, the key, the key, you've got to unlock me, get the key, the key..."

Wendy, with tears streaming down her cheeks, mixing with blood from where she'd bitten her lip, fumbled in her shirt pocket and found the key. She dropped it on the ground as another wave of pain hit. After it passed, she had to wipe her eyes to see the key, and picked it up, breathing in gasps. With trembling fingers, she managed to unlock Clarissa's security chain. Clarissa took off without another word.

Wendy screwed her eyes shut as another wave struck, and was surprised when she opened them to see Natalie standing in front of her. "Let me go too! I'll get help, let me go! Unlock me!" Wendy, her whole body shaking, unlocked the padlock, as a chorus of shouts from other stalls washed over her. "Wendy, you'll be okay. Tom will be here in just a minute, hold on!"

Clarissa headed for the fields, not immediately sure which one Tom was in. She considered checking the house first, but that seemed unlikely at this time of day.

As she passed a stand of trees, she spotted him on his tractor, about a hundred yards away. Of course, didn't he just have to be in the farthest field? Just beyond him, the cultivated land ended and an unbroken forest began.

She screamed at him, but knew she couldn't be heard over the sound of the tractor. She raced to try to get in front, into his field of vision.

She swore -- there was no way to catch up. She'd have to wait until he reached the end of the field and turned around. Nearly out of breath, she trotted to the area where his next pass would bring him.

He saw her as soon as he turned, and cut the engine.

"Tom! It's Wendy! In the barn! She..."

There was no need to go on -- Tom was already on the ground running for the barn.

Clarissa turned to follow him back, but spun around again as a vague shape passed by the edge of her vision. What... "Natalie!!"

The girl was nearly to the edge of the trees. She didn't turn as Clarissa called to her.

"Natalie! Wait!"

Clarissa followed her into the trees. Both of them were slowed by the undergrowth, and Clarissa managed to get a little closer. The heavy cloud cover made the forest unusually dim for daytime, and Clarissa had to strain her eyes to keep Natalie in sight.

"Natalie! Where are you going!"

Natalie probably realized Clarissa was going to be hard to shake. Already winded, she had to find some way to get rid of her. She stopped and turned. "Home! I'm getting out of here and going home!"

"Where's home?"

"With my dad! Where I belong! You can stay with your damned cows!"

Again, Clarissa was struck with the sense that Natalie seemed to have no idea she was a cow herself. "Natalie, what the hell made you decide to be a cow to begin with if you hate it so much?"

It was the first time Clarissa had ever heard Natalie laugh. And she would have given anything not to have heard it. It was a high-pitched, unhinged sound.

"Decide? Why did I decide? You want to know all about me? Fine.

"My daddy was such a wonderful man. I've got four younger sisters, and we all thought he was best dad in the world. He'd read stories to us, and buy us the greatest clothes. Shoes, I must have had two dozen pairs of shoes. And he and Mom adored each other. You think you've got such a great family? You're nothing. We had it all. I was in high school, and I was going to go to college and be a doctor..." Natalie stopped a minute, and seemed to choke briefly, then went on. "My counselor said I could make it easily, I was getting all A's. I was on the school basketball team. Mom and Dad came to all the games, every one of them! And Dad yelled louder than the cheerleaders!

"Mom got drafted. I was almost at the end of my senior year. Mom didn't want to go. She wanted so much to see me in college. But she knew her duty, I mean, she reported, and she was snuffed, just like you're supposed to. We got some of her meat, and we all shared it. It tastes really special when it's your mom. You know?"

Clarissa nodded. Most families ate their mother, at least part of her. It was part of growing up.

"Dad... he knew how he was supposed to feel, but... he missed her. I mean he really missed her. He had part of her inside him, but it's like... that wasn't enough.

"He... changed. He wasn't the same. He started drinking. He lost his job. There was..." She stopped again, and made the choking sound again. Clarissa thought Natalie's voice was quivering, but it could have been the effect of the breezes through the trees.

"There was some money, but it was running out. He didn't talk about it, but I knew he was worried.

"One night, he was out at the kitchen table. He had his checkbook, and bills and stuff, and a bottle of brandy. He was just sitting there, with his chin in his hands, taking sips of brandy, staring at the bills. I asked him, I asked him..."

She closed her eyes tightly. She rubbed her right foreleg quickly against her right eye. When she opened her eyes, she turned slightly away from Clarissa, looking into the distance.

"I asked him if there was anything I could do. 'I want to help, Daddy. Just tell me how to help.' He didn't say anything, just stroked my hair. And cried. I'd never seen him cry before.

"I ran back to my room, and I told myself, I'll get a job. I'll hold off on college for a year, we can't afford it right now anyway, and I'll get a job, and every bit of the money goes to Daddy. I'll make Mom proud later, but right now my dad needs me.

"I... the next... morning..." She stopped and closed her eyes again. She was breathing in gasps. "When... I came out for breakfast... there was this man at the table, sitting there with Dad. I didn't know who he was. The other girls weren't up yet. I always was the first one up.

"Daddy... stroked my hair again... like the night before. And he said, 'Remember what we were talking about last night? How you want to help?'

"I said, 'Sure, Daddy.' He said, 'You still feel the same way?' I told him, 'Of course, and I know what I have to do.'

"He looked at the man, and I got kind of excited. This man's going to give me a job, I was thinking. My dad pushed a glass over to me. It had kind of a brown liquid in it."

Clarissa felt a horror come over her. She thought she knew what that liquid was. A glass of it was the last thing she'd held in her hand.

"I said, 'What's that?' and he said, 'We talked about it. It's not booze.' I didn't have a clue what he meant. I couldn't remember ever talking about any brown liquid. But I thought, I guess I just forgot. It must be something good. So I drank it..."

She was seized with a wheezing, gasping cough. Clarissa came closer, and was stunned to see tears streaming down Natalie's cheeks.

Suddenly Natalie wheeled around and headed farther into the forest.

"Natalie! No! You have to keep talking! You have to go on with the story."

"No! Fuck you! Get out of my life!" She was fighting to breathe. The battle against the tears was short-circuiting her respiratory system.

"Natalie, if you want to stop crying, you have to go on with the story!"

Natalie spun back around. "Why? You know what happened, don't you? You already know!" She couldn't disguise the sobs now.

"Yes, but tell it!"

"All right!" She was crying uncontrollably now. "I woke up... and I was alone... in the dark... I was in a bed, and I was naked, and my boobs hurt. They were throbbing. I tried to touch them... I couldn't figure out why I couldn't touch them. My arms felt so funny... I was trying to move my hands, and I thought, I guess my hands fell asleep, both of them, I can't move them... I tried to sit up, and I couldn't. I yelled, and some nurse came in and turned on the lights and... I could see myself. What was left of me. I yelled at her, screamed at her to tell me where I was. She says, 'You're in the State Dairy infirmary, dear.' I said, Where are my arms and legs? Where are they? Get them back..."

She said nothing more for several minutes, just trying to breathe, to clear her nose of snot. Clarissa moved towards her. Natalie's head shot upward and she glared at Clarissa. "No! I told you to go away! I'm going home and you can't stop me!"

"Natalie, no, that doesn't make sense. Your home is here! This is where you need to be."

"No! Home is where my dad is! I'm going back to him!"

"Natalie, you can't go back to him! He sold you to the Dairy to pay his bills! He didn't want you!"

She screamed, "Don't you get it? I want him to want me!!!!" Gasping for breath, she shouted, "I want him to look at me and say, You're my daughter, and I'll never do anything to hurt you! Don't you understand? He has to want me!!!"

Clarissa started towards her, and froze as Natalie's left hind leg suddenly waved wildly when the ground disappeared from under it. Natalie gave a gasping cry as she rolled to the side and disappeared from sight.

Clarissa ran forward and looked down. Natalie was lying on her back at the bottom of a shallow irrigation ditch. Clarissa breathed a sigh of relief as Natalie struggled to get up.

In a few seconds she found she couldn't. The ditch was hardly more than thirty inches deep, with steep sides that curved into a slightly rounded bottom. A girl with a complete body could easily have climbed out of it, but Natalie had no feet, knees, or hands to push against the earthen sides and lever herself out. Her hips and shoulders were wedged tightly against the sides at the bottom, and she couldn't turn over in either direction. All she could do was slap ineffectually against the walls of the ditch with the sides of her legs, which she did frantically, crying hysterically.

Clarissa thought at first she could help her out, but her own body had the same problems. She simply had nothing with which she could grab onto Natalie anywhere.

She tried to talk soothingly to the sobbing girl at the bottom of the ditch. "Natalie, it'll be okay. You'll be okay. It's just a little ditch. Nothing's going to hurt you."

"I've got to get out! I have to go!"

"Don't worry about that. Just rest. I'll get help."

"No!!! Don't leave me here, you can't leave me!"

"Natalie, I can't get you out of there myself. But I'll get somebody who can. Okay?"

"Don't leave me here!"

"Natalie, I have to, but I'll be back, I swear I'll be back."

She couldn't leave until she was sure Natalie understood she wasn't abandoning her. "Okay?" She waited.

Natalie, blinking away more tears, continually sniffling snot out of her nose, finally nodded.

Clarissa ran out of the woods, looking in every direction to see if Tom was in one of the fields. She hadn't heard the car leave, but with all the commotion with Natalie she realized she could have missed it. Or maybe Wendy's labor pains had passed and she was resting in the house with Tom.

She raced into the barn. "Where's Tom? Where's Wendy? Are they here?"

Karen gasped. "Clary! Where have you been?"

"Natalie's out there, and she's stuck in a ditch."

"Who the hell cares about her?"

Clarissa stopped, panting from her run. She looked straight into Karen's eyes. "I do, Karen. Okay? Where's Tom?"

Monica called out, "He took Wendy to the hospital, Clary. This is really it."

"But... so then who's here to take care of us?"

Jenny said, "We're kind of on our own here, Clary."

Karen said, "Clary, don't worry. We've got lots of food here. Maybe Dad or Jack will be here later, but we're okay."

"Natalie isn't okay! I've got to call Dad."

As she bounded out, Karen called out, "He's probably at the hospital too!"

She ran up the steps to the back porch. The doorknob was up over her head, but she braced her hind legs and worked her front hooves up the door until she could pinch the knob between her forelegs. It was locked. Damn it, she thought, Tom's so security conscious. Coming down from the porch, she saw that the gate in the yard's fence was closed as well. She had no way to leave the property -- except through the woods, but she'd have to go for miles that way. And the odds were, nobody would think to check on the cows until tomorrow. Not if they were all sitting in a hospital waiting room.

She ran back into the barn. "Natalie's going to need food. Is there a bucket in here?"

"Wasn't Wendy using one in your stall?"

"Right, right." She ran into her stall. The bucket Wendy had been going to milk her into was still sitting by the stool. She pushed the handle up with her nose, grabbed to with her mouth, and lifted it over the edge of the feeding trough. Backing along the length of the trough while dragging the bucket through it, she managed to get it about half full of grain.

She had to rest, just for a minute. She stood in her stall, panting, then picked up the bucket again with her teeth. The weight made her jaw ache, but she staggered out of the barn with it.

It took her half an hour to reach Natalie -- she had to stop several times to ease the tension in her jaw and neck muscles. As she approached the ditch, she could hear Natalie sobbing quietly.

She put the bucket down by the side of the ditch. "Natalie! Tom and Wendy are at the hospital. I can't get you out of there right now, but I brought some food. Are you hungry?"

The tears still seeping out of her eyes, Natalie nodded wordlessly.

Clarissa realized suddenly she had not thought about the final step of getting the food from the bucket to Natalie's mouth. If she simply poured it over her, most of it would miss her mouth and fall out of reach on either side of her head. She did, though, have vivid memories of Karen and Kirsten feeding her in her first days as a cow. She'd been a little more accessible, though.

She finally picked up the bucket in her mouth again, and put her foreleg out over the near edge of the ditch, feeling downward carefully for a place she could put it a few inches down the side. Her hoof sank an inch or so into the soft earth, and when she felt as if it was solidly anchored, she brought her other foreleg ahead and planted it a little further down the side. Step by step, she slowly walked down the side of the ditch. When she could get her head down far enough, she rested the bucket on Natalie's hip, and tipped it sideways so that the grain flowed out onto Natalie's stomach.

"Don't take any deep breaths, you'll spill the grain off you." Natalie sniffled and nodded. Luckily, her tummy was flat. The grain stayed in place.

One mouthful at a time, Clarissa began transferring the grain to Natalie's mouth. She swallowed a lot of it herself -- she hadn't eaten for hours either. Each time she planted her mouth on Natalie's, it did feel nice when Natalie's tongue licked the last loose grains off Clarissa's lips.

Natalie finally said, "Thirsty," and Clarissa had to pause to figure out the logistics of that. She finally took a big step over Natalie's stomach, and after getting both forelegs across her, she wriggled sideways until her left breast hung over Natalie's mouth.

She closed her eyes as Natalie sucked. It felt SO good -- Wendy had not even started to milk her before her labor pains started, and her breasts felt ready to pop. She shifted after a few minutes so that Natalie could suck from her other breast.

Once Natalie had had her fill and stopped sucking, Clarissa rested, her breast still in Natalie's mouth. Natalie could have moved her head to the side, but didn't. Clarissa looked down at Natalie. "I'm... thirsty too. Could I...?"

Still not letting go of Clarissa's breast, Natalie met her eyes and nodded.

This probably won't taste too good, but I don't care, she thought. Right now she'd drink poison as long as it came in liquid form.

She wriggled to the side and took Natalie's right breast in her mouth. It took a slightly different sucking motion to work against gravity, but Clarissa soon found the way. It was a little like getting water from a drinking fountain, with it spraying up into your mouth. Some of it ran out of the sides of her mouth and down Natalie's breast, and Clarissa paused in sucking to clean Natalie's breast with her tongue. It tasted as sour as everybody had been saying, but those people hadn't been as thirsty as she was. Besides, she knew it would help Natalie feel better -- her breasts had been so full they must have been throbbing.

The daylight, such as it was, was quickly fading now. It was actually a little early for sunset, but the thick clouds on the horizon had steadily cut out most of the fading light. Natalie suddenly started breathing faster. "It's getting dark!"

Clarissa paused, almost finished with Natalie's left breast. "I know."

"You can't leave me! Please don't leave me!"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Could you come down here?"

"I can't. I'd get stuck like you. One of us has to be able to leave and get food."

"No! Don't leave me! It's dark! It's dark!"

Clarissa suddenly realized Natalie was flashing back to that other time she had awakened in the dark -- alone, naked, not understanding why her body didn't work. "I won't leave you! I couldn't find the barn now anyway. I'll have to wait until morning."

"Keep touching me, okay? I have to know you're there."

"I'm touching you. I won't leave you."

Clarissa knew she needed to get to a more comfortable position if she was going to spend the night this way. She wriggled forward so that her breasts interlocked with Natalie's -- her own nipples touched Natalie's chest just above and below her breasts, and she could feel Natalie's nipples in the corresponding places on her own chest. She let herself sink down, compressing the soft cushions of both sets of breasts, her right foreleg anchored between the soft dirt of the side of the ditch and the soft skin of Natalie's side, her other foreleg beside Natalie's head. She let her hind legs slip backward, carefully, until the hooves slid out from under her and her tummy hit the ground with a thud that made her wince. Afterwards she felt comfortable, though. A gentle rain was finally starting to fall.

She was startled by a touch against the side of her head. She realized it was Natalie's foreleg, brushing softly against her hair. "Clarissa?"

"I'm here."

"You won't leave, will you?"

"I'm not leaving."

In a tiny voice, Natalie said, "Thank you."

"Get some sleep. In the morning I'll get us some more food. And see if anybody can get you out of here."

"Okay." Natalie's foreleg stopped stroking her and rested softly against the side of her head. The hypnotic patter of the rain was soothing. Exhaustion and the softness of Natalie's breasts against her own led her down the tunnel towards sleep. The rain fell harder.

"Clarissa!" Natalie's panicked voice woke her with a sudden start. She was already used to Natalie yanking her out of a sound sleep, but doing it with her own name was different.

"Wha..?" Clarissa tried to shake the sleep out of her head.

"Clarissa, there's water in here!"

"In where?"

"Here in the ditch! It's almost up over my neck!"

It was raining heavily now, and Clarissa could feel the runoff flowing past her hooves. "Shit!"

"Clarissa, get me out of here! You've got to pull me out!"

"Okay, wait, let me think!" She couldn't picture any way of getting a grip on any useful part of Natalie's body.

"Let me try this." She wriggled a little farther left and thrust her foreleg into the mud behind Natalie's shoulder. "Can you push back against that? Maybe you can sit up."

She could hear Natalie grunting, trying to bend herself. Clarissa had seen earlier how firmly wedged her shoulders were. "I can't!"

"Let me... shit, my hoof is stuck!" She gritted her teeth and braced her body, eventually pulling her hoof free of the squelching mud, by now three inches underwater.

"Clarissa, it's getting higher! The water!"

She drew up her other foreleg and rested it between Natalie's breasts. "Try to wrap your forelegs around mine. Pull!"

She could feel Natalie's hooves pinching against her leg from either side, hear Natalie grunting again, trying to hold on. Her hooves kept slipping away. "I can't get a grip. They're not long enough." Natalie suddenly coughed, and Clarissa could feel a spray of water from Natalie's lips. "Clarissa, it's up to my mouth! Get me out, get me out!"

"Hold on, get ready, I'm coming down there!"

"NO!! Don't, we'll both be stuck, we'll both drown down here!" She began coughing and sputtering again, as Clarissa turned sideways to the ditch and wriggled towards the edge. She took a deep breath and pushed herself over the side, feeling rocks scraping her side as she slid downward, holding her right foreleg and hindleg out as far as she could to catch the far side on the way down so she could stay tummy down. She landed on Natalie with an impact that knocked the wind out of both of them, in spite of the cushion of their breasts.

Before she could breathe herself, she could hear Natalie begin to wheeze again, spraying Clarissa's face with water as she spat it out. Natalie coughed and swallowed water with a gulp. "Clarissa!"

"Natalie, hold your breath! Close your mouth! Don't try to breath until you feel my lips. Understand?"

She heard a closed-mouthed grunt that she took to be assent. She took a deep breath and dropped her face into the rushing water.

It took her a moment to find Natalie's lips, and to be sure she'd really found them. Her mouth was fully underwater now. She pushed her lungful of air into Natalie's mouth. She lifted her head to take another breath, and breathed it into Natalie again.

The water was spreading out around her whole face now when she was breathing for Natalie -- she had to be at least an inch underwater. It seemed as if the rain had let up -- at least it wasn't pounding against her back with the same force. She knew that didn't mean the water level would drop anytime soon. It was rushing through the ditch, trying to pull her away from Natalie. She braced her forelegs in front of her, and gave Natalie another lungful.

"Natalie, let me know you're still there. Punch me in the side. Understand? Keep punching me." To her relief, she felt Natalie's foreleg bang against her side. She took another deep breath and took it down to Natalie. What was she, about three inches down now? Clarissa had no idea how long she could keep going. What happened when she herself was underwater? "Keep punching."

Suddenly her head seemed to explode. The back of her head. Something had crashed into it, carried by the current. She felt a buzzing in her ears, as if she were starting to lose consciousness. She forced the buzzing back. She had to keep breathing for Natalie.

She couldn't feel the rain at all now, but wasn't sure if that meant it had stopped, or she was just numb. The back of her head throbbed. She tried to force every thought out of her mind except Raise head, take breath, find lips, breathe out, raise head...

The water was lower. It wasn't running up along her back anymore. "Natalie! Water going down. Keep punching me." Natalie's punches seemed weaker, more vague, more of a brushing now. Clarissa could feel the water sluicing over her buttocks now, still lower than before. Her head hurt so much. That buzzing feeling was back. "Natalie... almost..." That was the last she remembered.

Natalie struggled to lift her head out from underneath Clarissa's. She held her breath as long as she could, and a tickling feeling across her raised forehead told her the water was down that low now. Lungs nearly bursting, she made one more effort to raise her head a little higher, and felt the water flowing around her nose. She breathed out as forcefully as she could to clear her nostrils, hoping she wasn't misinterpreting the feeling. It took all her willpower to breathe in -- yes! That was air, not water!

Within minutes the water flow had dropped to the point that she was able to drop her head back against the mud and breathe freely. Should try to wake Clarissa, she thought. Make sure she can breathe. Then she fainted.

When Natalie opened her eyes, she could see a shaft of sunlight poking down through the leaves of the trees. Clarissa was still lying full-length on top of her, her head next to Natalie's. She wriggled underneath her. "Clarissa -- wake up."

A wave of fear washed over her. "Clarissa, come on. Get up, sleepyhead. Come on, no jokes now, okay?"

Clarissa's head slipped a little further to the side. Natalie could see a trail of blood down the side of her neck. "Shit! Clarissa!" She shook underneath her. "CLARISSA!!"

She broke into tears. "No, no, you can't do this, you said you wouldn't leave me! Clarissa..."

She couldn't understand what was happening as she felt the weight of Clarissa being lifted off her. Beside the ditch, a large shadow was blotting out the sun. She felt strong hands gripping her under the armpits. She fainted again, her cheek lined with streams of muddy tears.

She opened her eyes. She seemed to be in a livingroom. A nice livingroom. She was on a sofa, atop a bedsheet spread over the fabric. A pang of sorrow rolled over her. She had lost something. Something. Oh no! It was...

"CLARISSA!!!"

She heard feet running down a hallway. A large man came into view.

She looked up at him. "Who are you?"

"Sam Martin. I'm Clarissa's father. I'd guess you'd have to be Natalie."

"Where's Clarissa? Please, where is she?"

"She's in the bedroom. She's..."

"Take me to her! I want to be with Clarissa!"

"You probably need..."

"I need to be with her! Please?"

"Okay. You need help getting up?"

She tried to sit up, and a wave of dizziness knocked her back down. "Yes. Please, could you help me?"

He lifted her off the couch. "Can you stand?"

"I think so."

He set her down on her legs. She fought back another wave of dizziness. "I think I'm okay. Where is she? Please show me."

"Okay, this way."

She followed him down the hallway, stumbling on shaky legs but able to navigate.

Inside the room, she recognized the vet who had examined her a few days earlier. He was just finishing wrapping a cloth bandage around the unconscious Clarissa's head. She was laying on a mattress next to what Natalie took, correctly, to be Tom and Wendy's bed. Natalie had no way to know it was the same mattress Clarissa had awakened on after her conversion.

Natalie crept closer, her eyes never leaving Clarissa. "Will she be okay?"

Doc Follett turned to her. "Good to see you up and about, Natalie. Thought we might lose both of you for awhile..."

"Will she be okay??"

The vet looked back at Clarissa's sleeping form. "She lost a lot of blood. That was a nasty cut on the back of her head. I gave her some whole blood, and a dozen stitches. She'll wake up hurting, so I gave her something for the pain. I believe we've made it past the hard part. At least she's got some color back in her face."

"Would it be okay... can I stay with her until she wakes up?"

Follett looked up at Sam, who nodded. The vet nodded to Natalie in return. "Just don't expect much response anytime soon."

Natalie crept over to the mattress and lay down on it, facing Clarissa. She moved in closer, draping her foreleg over Clarissa's side, and began waiting, her eyes fixed on Clarissa's. Follett packed up his bag, shook hands with Sam, and left. Sam took up his own vigil in a rocker across the room.

It was about two hours later when Clarissa's eyelids fluttered. Her eyes opened briefly and she closed them again.

She felt good, but a little puzzled by the face she'd seen, the one that had broken into a big smile as she watched. She'd seen the face before, she felt sure, but never smiling.

She felt a little more clear when she opened her eyes again, about ten minutes later. "Nat -- Natalie?"

That same ecstatic grin was there, as Natalie nodded her head. "How do you feel?"

"My head hurts. I think."

Behind her, Natalie could hear the rocker squeak as Sam Martin got to his feet. She continued looking only at Clarissa. "Do you need anything?"

"Little thirsty."

Natalie wriggled along the mattress until her right breast was poised in front of Clarissa's mouth. Clarissa opened her mouth as Natalie arched her back and pushed her breast forward, and Clarissa began sucking.

Clarissa giggled. She said, in a voice muffled by Natalie's nipple, "Still that sour stuff. Seems like it's better than it was, though." She continued sucking.

Natalie brushed her foreleg lightly against Clarissa's shoulder. "I think it'll get a lot better."