Chapter 4

Growing Pains

Running up onto the nearest table, Snow looked around at the other ducks.

"I can talk."

Then before any of them had time to recover from that shock, she darted off the table and under the nearest couch. Nosedive tried to catch her, but she was too fast.

"There! Now do you believe me?"

The other ducks looked at each other with stunned expressions. This creature that they had assumed was just a wild animal, was in fact…an intelligent being?"

Nosedive crouched down by the couch and tried to coax Snow to come out. Grin walked over and lifted the couch up. Wildwing grabbed Snow by the scruff of the neck and lifted her into the air before she could run away.

"How long have you been able to talk?"

Snow looked around at them nervously. Wildwing finally set her down on the table again, except that this time it was surrounded by all of the ducks, so she couldn't escape.

"Well?" Wildwing persisted. "Do you understand the question?"

"I understand," Snow answered as she stood tensely in the center of the table. "I have only started speaking today."

"But how long have you known how to speak?"

Snow shook her head.

"I learned from you."

Wildwing sat back and glanced at Tanya who seemed as bewildered by this as he was.

"What did you say earlier?" Nosedive asked Snow. "You asked a question or something."

"I asked…Why am I different? I am not like you. I saw my…my picture in the glass."

"You mean, your reflection?" Mallory asked.

"Yes, reflection," Snow repeated.

"Well, you're not a duck," Mallory replied. "You're some kind of cat from another universe."

"And you, you are ducks?" Snow asked timidly.

"Yes," Wildwing answered.

"But I am not?"

"No," Wildwing again answered.

This seemed to be a big concept for her - though none of them could understand why. Snow's head drooped, and she lay down very submissively on the table.

"Are you going to eat me?" she asked.

"Eat you?" Duke asked unable to hide a laugh. "Why on Earth would we do that?"

"Because I am not like you. Or maybe you will send me away."

This idea seemed to make her equally sad.

"Um, Snow, as long you behave yourself, we're not going to send you away…or eat you," Wildwing insisted. "It doesn't matter if you're a duck or not."

"It doesn't?" she asked lifting her head a little.

"No way, you belong to…I mean with us," Nosedive interjected. "Unless you wanna go back to your home planet that is."

"Home planet?" she repeated with a confused look. "But I have always lived with you."

"Uh, no, actually you haven't," Duke corrected. "You don't remember being on Jorark's ship? That's where Nosedive found you."

Snow didn't seem to understand what he was talking about.

"I have no memory of this. I thought that I always lived here, but I am not like you. I must have forgotten where I came from before. I only remember you."

"You must not have a very long memory then," Tanya said. " 'cause you've only been here a few weeks."

Snow's ears drooped.

"Are you going to send me back to this forgotten place?"

"No," Nosedive said quickly. "You're staying with us. Don't worry about it, Snow."

He reached out tentatively to pet her head, and she went to his hand, rubbing against it gently.

Wildwing called Tanya away from the table and over to the far side of the room.

"When you said that these cubs become attached to their pride, even if that means becoming attached to beings who are not the same species, I didn't realize that meant that she was going to start speaking our language and having a complex because she look different than us."

"I didn't know that's what it meant," Tanya said. "But maybe it's a good thing that she can speak our language."

"Yeah, except that Nosedive just told her that we could keep her forever, but we don't know that yet," Wildwing insisted.

Tanya suddenly hushed him, but it was too late. Snow was staring at them with her ears perked up. She ducked her head and lay back down on the table looking worried again. Tanya led Wildwing out of the room.

"I may have forgotten to mention that she has super-sensitive hearing," Tanya whispered.

Wildwing sighed.

"Yeah, that would have been good to know."

"I know what you mean about not knowing if she can stay, but it's part of her nature to become extremely attached to someone or a group of beings that she has the earliest memory of. If we don't reassure her now, she's going to be very depressed. Her whole existence depends on her 'pride,'" Tanya explained.

Wildwing rubbed the back of his neck.

"All right. But we're gonna set some rules right now. And if she can't follow them, then she can't stay."

Tanya nodded in agreement. Wildwing walked back into the rec room with her and headed straight for the table.

"I'm sorry if you overheard that," he said to Snow. "And I want you to stay with us, Snow. It's just that you have to follow some rules if you're going to stay."

Snow sat up, giving him her full attention.

"What do I have to do?"

"Well, the only thing that worries us is the fact that you're going to get bigger as you get older. Right now, it's very easy to keep you in the Pond because you're so small. But you're going to get bigger and stronger someday. And I want you to promise me that you're not going to hurt me or any of the other ducks, got it?"

"Hurt?" Snow repeated uncertainly.

"Great, it's the only thing that she doesn't understand," Mallory sighed.

"It means that you can't bite or scratch anyone," Tanya explained. "You could really hurt one of us even if you didn't mean to. Your claws are very sharp, and they will be dangerous when you get older."

Snow looked down at her paws.

"I can never use them?" she asked.

"Not on any of us," Wildwing insisted. "That's the rule."

"I don't want to…to hurt you," Snow finally managed to say.

"Of course, you don't," Duke interjected confidently. "We know that. This is just a precaution."

"Here's another rule - you can't ever…under any circumstances leave the Pond without permission from one of us, got it?"

"Yes, but are you going to leave?"

"Sometimes we have to, but just for a little while," Nosedive said. "And we always come back."

"What else?" Snow asked.

"You have to follow orders. Everyone on this team has to follow orders, or we wouldn't have a team at all," Wildwing said.

"I will, and I know that you are the leader," Snow insisted.

"You do?" Wildwing asked looking surprised.

"Lions on Earth have a social order too," Tanya said, looking at Wildwing. "It makes sense that she would look for and identify a leader, especially since she wants to be a part of our..uh, pride. I think she knows that she has to gain your acceptance before she can be allowed to stay."

"Well, you can stay as long as you follow those rules," Wildwing insisted.

Snow's ears perked up again, and her mood seemed to improve.

"I will, I will!"

Later that night, Snow seemed so grateful to Wildwing for allowing her to stay that she insisted on following him to his room that night. It wasn't until Wildwing opened the door to his room that he realized she had followed him. Snow bounded inside and jumped up on his bunk.

"Uh, Snow, it's great that you had such a good day, but maybe it's time for you to get your own bed."

Her tail drooped as did her ears.

"So you want me to leave?"

"Well," Wildwing began hesitantly.

Then suddenly an old pillow and an empty box caught his eye.

"No, but you are getting bigger. And someday you need to start sleeping in a bed of your own. Here," he said as he laid the pillow in the box and fluffed it up for her. "Why don't you try this just for tonight, okay?"

Snow jumped down from his bunk and climbed into the box. She walked over the pillow several times before finally settling down. Wildwing waited until she looked comfortable before he finished getting ready to sleep and climbed into his own bed.

He settled into a comfortable position on his back with one arm lying across his chest and the other resting beside him. Suddenly, he felt something soft and warm move beside him. Wildwing opened his eyes and saw Snow nestling in-between his arm and his side. She closed her eyes and quickly seemed to drift off to sleep.

"Well, maybe one more night won't hurt," Wildwing sighed with a faint smile.

After breakfast the next morning, Nosedive set a bowl of milk down in front of Snow has he had always done before, but this time, she merely stared at it.

"What's the hold up? You like milk, remember Snow?"

Snow leaned forward and began lapping up the milk with her tongue, but after a few minutes, she stopped.

"I can't eat anymore."

"But you just said that you were hungry?" Dive protested.

He sighed and opened the fridge to put the carton of milk away, but Snow suddenly pounced on one of the lower drawers. It slid open and Phil's T-bone steak appeared inside. Phil had been pushing himself to stay with the limits of his new diet this week, but he planned to reward himself at the end of the week with this steak.

Snow pounced on it hungrily and lifted it out onto the floor. Nosedive shut the refrigerator and watched somewhat nervously as Snow began to devour the raw steak. At that moment, Tanya and Duke walked into the galley. Their eyes were drawn to Snow, who seemed oblivious to everyone else.

"Well, I guess we know she's not a vegetarian," Duke said.

"Oh boy, Phil's gonna be mad," Tanya sighed.

"What do we do?" Nosedive asked, looking for their help.

"How long has it been since she's eaten anything?" Tanya asked.

"The last time I fed her some milk was before she disappeared a couple days ago, so I guess she's really hungry. I just kinda hoped she stick with milk for awhile longer."

Snow finally stopped and looked up. She seemed to realize that they were talking about her and didn't seem overly pleased.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"See, that steak actually belonged to someone else," Duke explained. "We were just storing it here for him."

"Sorry," Snow said as her ears drooped. "I was just so hungry."

"Well, you're not a baby anymore," Tanya said as she looked at Duke and Nosedive. "I guess you're going to need some more mature food. I'll go see what the Internet suggests for growing lion cubs."

"Aren't you going to finish?" Nosedive asked as he looked down at the small piece that left of the steak.

"What if someone else wants it?" Snow asked warily.

"Eh, trust me, no one else is going to eat it now," Duke reassured her. "It's all right. You can have it. Nosedive and I will stop by the store and get a new steak for Phil."

Mallory walked in at that moment and saw the red stains on Snow's white fur – not to mention the mess on the floor.

"Well, that was a fast change in diet. I hope you two will have an explanation ready for Phil for his missing steak."

"We'll handle it," Duke insisted.

Snow began cleaning her paws and her face with a guilty expression.

"You might want to disappear for a little while," Mallory suggested with a smile to Snow. "Phil's coming down here to talk to us about some publicity stunt in an hour or so."

Snow stared back at her with mixture of surprise and confusion.

"Disappear?"

"Yeah, you know that vanishing act you always pull when you don't want someone to find you?" Nosedive said. "How do you do that anyway? It's like you turn invisible…even from the Mask."

"I don't understand. Are you telling me to hide?"

"Anyone can hide," Duke said. "But you just completely disappear, Angel."

Snow still didn't seem to understand.

"Don't tell me that you've forgotten that too?" Mallory asked. "Don't you remember the times we looked and looked and couldn't find you? But then you'd just show up, as if by magic or something."

Snow shook her head.

"I can't disappear."

They stared at her in bewilderment until Duke finally realized…

"She's forgotten how. She's too old to do it anymore."

"But just last week she was disappearing to her heart's content," Mallory protested. "Is your memory always going to be this short-term?"

"No," Tanya said as she walked back into the conversation while staring at her Omnitool. "I finally have access to that information about her species that was encrypted. It says that leopantala have stages of growth, but the first two stages are very short in length. Snow has passed the first stage, which we could call infancy. Just as we don't remember being babies, neither does she. She can't do the same things that she could last week because she has grown out of those abilities. And even though she can't remember that stage of her life, her brain is now developed enough for her to process speech and to start retaining long-term memories."

"So how long is this second stage going to last?" Mallory asked.

"Well, this second stage, which I'm going to call her childhood, will last about two months."

"Two months?" the others repeated.

"Whoa, that's a short childhood," Nosedive said as he lifted Snow into his arms.

"Then what?" Duke asked.

"Then she'll go into a middle phase…sort of like being a teenager. She'll grow bigger, and she won't look like a cub anymore."

Duke covered Snow's ears as another question crossed his mind.

"Tanya, if she grows that fast, how long is her actual life span?"

Tanya brushed his hands away from Snow's ears.

"She can still hear you. And you don't have to worry about that. She may grow up quickly, but she could live to be seventy years old. She might even outlive us."

"What do you mean?" Snow asked. "I don't understand this 'outlive.'"

"Well, uh Snow, someday we're going to…" Mallory began reluctantly. "The truth is that everyone….well, everyone dies at some point. We can only live so long, and death is a natural part of life."

"Death?" Snow asked. "What's death?"

The ducks looked at each other hesitantly. Suddenly Grin walked into the galley to grab an apple from the counter. He stopped when he saw the others watching him. Nosedive walked over to Grin and thrust Snow into his arms.

"Here, ask Grin to explain it you. He's good at that kind of stuff."

Nosedive started to hurry away, but Grin grabbed his sleeve and restrained him.

"Explain what?"

"Death. What is death?" Snow asked again as she climbed up onto Grin's shoulder.

Grin sighed and thrust Nosedive into the nearest chair. Tanya, Mallory and Duke waited to see how their teammate would answer Snow.

Walking over to the sink, Grin picked up two pots and set them down on the table. Then he lifted Snow from his shoulder and set her down beside them.

"What do you see, little friend?"

"Flowers," Snow replied as she walked past them, shaking her small wings and causing the flowers to stir in a slight breeze.

"What are the flowers doing?" Grin asked.

Snow glanced at him with a confused expression and then studied the flowers closely.

"Growing?"

"Yes, growing. What do they need?"

"Water,"

"And…"

Snow looked at the flowers again and then back at the special lights that Tanya had positioned above them.

"Light."

"And…"

"Dirt?"

"Yes, dirt. It's their home. They need all of these things to stay alive."

Grin turned around and stretched his hand to catch hold of a pot on a shelf against the far wall. Then he carried it back to the others and set it down. Snow walked closer to it and sniffed it warily. It was also filled with soil, but the only things in the soil were the remnants of a dried up plant. Its leaves were shriveled and brown. It was utterly without color or beauty.

"This is death, little one. When flowers stop growing, they die. It no longer makes any difference whether I water this plant, or whether I give it light or soil. The same flowers that blossomed here before will not grow again. Although new flowers may grow in their place, the old ones will not come back."

Snow's ears were flattened against her head as she backed away from the dead plant. She glanced at Grin and the other ducks.

"And you're going to…to die?"

"Everyone does at some point, Angel," Duke assured her. "These bodies…they only work for so long."

Snow glanced back at the flowers.

"But if you take care of them, they don't die," she insisted. "I can help take care of you. I can fix things when parts of your bodies stop working."

"Healing? So you remember how to do that?" Mallory asked.

"Healing, yes. I can do that," Snow insisted eagerly.

"Even flowers that receive the best care don't last forever," Grin insisted. "And besides little friend, forcing life to go on when it is time to let go does more harm than good."

Snow's ears drooped.

"Will your time end soon?"

"Not likely, Angel," Duke said with a smile as he ruffled her fur.

She licked his hand and lifted her ears a bit, but an unsettled fear rested in her eyes.

About a month and a half passed as Snow continued to grow and soon she was the size of an Australian shepherd. At this point, she was still small enough for the ducks to pick up, and she could partially sit on their laps or at least sit beside them quite comfortably on couches.

She had grown more active and energetic. When Phil was busy in his office, the ducks had taken to letting her come upstairs to the hockey rink and play around with them on the ice. One such afternoon, the ducks were engaged in hockey practice, but Snow had been allowed to join.

Nosedive skated after Mallory as she guided the puck towards the goal. He tried to steal it, but Mallory skillfully maneuvered it away from him. Duke managed to catch her while she was distracted, and he stole the puck while quickly speeding past her.

But then Duke had to move quickly to avoid being boarded by Grin. He sailed the puck towards Tanya to let her take it, but Snow suddenly slid into their midst and seized the puck with her teeth, thrusting her body away from the ducks with her large back paws.

"That's not fair, Angel," Duke protested, though he smiled.

"Just remember, no claws on the ice!" Wildwing called from the goal.

Snow obeyed and kept her claws sheathed so she would not leave deep scratch marks in the ice. She had learned to use the pads on her large paws to slide and steer herself, but she often had to use her wings and her tail as well to steady herself.

As she slid over to Nosedive, she dropped the puck, and he took back possession of it. He took a shot when he skated close to the goal, but Wildwing blocked it.

"You'll have to be faster than that, Dive," Wildwing said, smiling.

"Just taking it easy on you, bro!"

Nosedive skated back to Snow and stopped.

"Thanks for the puck. You've definitely improved," he said. "At least you don't move like Bambi on ice now."

Snow stared back at him.

"What's a Bambi?"

"Something you'd probably eat," Mallory said with a laugh.

Snow still shot them both a look of confusion, but then her ears perked up, and she slid over behind Grin and hid as best she could.

The ducks watched with some surprise, but then they heard a door at the top of the Pond open and close. Phil walked in, talking on his phone, and waved to them. The ducks started to relax again, but then they saw Captain Klegghorn walk in behind Phil.

Wildwing skated closer to Grin.

"See if you can get her out of sight," he said. "We'll see what Klegghorn wants."

Grin nodded and slowly moved towards the exit with Snow hovering near him. When they reached the locker room, Grin punched the code for the elevator.

"Who was that other human?" Snow asked.

"He is a police officer. He enforces the law in this city," Grin explained.

"I thought Wildwing and the rest of you did that," Snow said. "Tanya said you help keep the city safe when you are not playing hockey."

Grin sighed.

"The humans need a little help sometimes."

"I know why I am not supposed to let the crazy one called Phil see me, but why should I hide from this police man?"

"Klegghorn does not like aliens," Grin answered simply. "He finally got used to us, but that took time. He would probably not be happy to see you, little friend."

"Not so little anymore," Snow said, drawing herself up and spreading her wings, though she had still not learned to use them.

"Exactly," said Grin.

Author's Note: I'll get the next chapter uploaded soon! Please write reviews! Feedback is important to me. Thanks!