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The search for Rosetta's temporary home felt rather lonely. You hadn't expected just how used to Mary you had gotten over the past few weeks. The feeling didn't haunt you for much longer, though, as you found yourself by the children's tents rather soon. They weren't hard to spot, what with three of them having caved inwards and impaled upon their central poles.
Set up off the outskirts immediately nearby town square, the small encampment was made moot by a single large tent in the middle that had apparently been reserved for Rosetta specifically...
...but, as you rolled up the cloth door, you soon came to find had been taken up by her entire pack.
Rosetta lay off to the right on a thin blanket, her small lizard friend snoozing atop her with a kind of serenity you'd attributed only to Mary before, surrounded by a small carriage's worth of what looked like scruffy dogs.
Berry was the most obvious one, laying directly at Rosetta's feet with his ears attentive and swiveling even in his sleep. Your entrance forced both his eyes open and his head to pivot your way.
To Rosetta's left was a small fox kit, adorned with a tuft atop its forehead and a luscious collar of black fur, with a face nigh-identical to that of Tree's snoozing peacefully.
He was joined by a similar stranger to Rosetta's right, this one sleeping on its belly and seemingly snoring, sharing most of the Tree-lookalike's traits. Its position more prominently featured the wispy tail and little red boots you could just barely see tucked underneath Tree's collar.
In the back of the tent, laying its head directly next to Rosetta's, you could very clearly make out another fox kit.
This one's dark-gray eyes were open, glaring at you with the same unnerving suspicion you'd come to expect only from the armored birds. His expression made Stone's identity rather obvious.
The leer made it rather hard to keep your thoughts straight. Your suspicions being proven right helped nothing. Had you encountered this pack but a month ago, you'd have fallen to your knees in prayer and chased them as far away from any human settlement as possible.
Now you faced an even more pressing problem.
How would you convince a small town of god-fearing Christians to accept shapeshifting animals communing with the vulnerable in foreign tongues into their lives?
A sudden thought gripped your brain and piloted your course of action. Before you knew it, you'd started signing.[Stone Berry?]
You felt goosebumps seize your skin as an apparition of the Stone you knew yesterday replaced the image of the leering kit. Even as he began signing back at you in this new illusory form, you couldn't help but fixate on how those signs were being made without any true arm to trace the side of, or any fingertips to imitate the flapping of a mouth with.
