Chapter Six

Jasmine's POV

I swear, God has a terrible sense of humor.

I stared down at my very feline paws and grimaced. They were large, too large compared to the rest of me, and orange.

Orange I ask you.

And did I forget to mention the black stripes? I think I did. Well, there they were, up my legs and across my back, tail included.

That's right, I said tail.

Unless there was another creature that was orange and black striped that I didn't know about, I was suddenly a tiger.

Surprised? Yeah, me too.

Last time I check, if you were born a human, you staid a bloody human.

I needed the dirt under me with my claws and tried to remember how exactly I had gotten….where ever I was.

Trees were everywhere, leaves rustling in a breeze that I couldn't feel. The sky was almost completely hidden by foliage but I guessed it was about noon. The trees made it obvious that it was a forest, but how exactly had I managed to get to a forest? There weren't any forests in New York City, which is where I should have been.

I searched my memory for the events of last night and got hit with a ghost of a searing pain in the back of my head.

I was curled on the grass of a park, clutching my head. Someone stood over me, a man, something large in his hand. My pink Coach bag swung on his arm at the very edge of my fading vision. The man dropped the object and it hit the dirt next to me with a thud.

A rock.

"No…" I moaned, trying to stretch out a hand.

I was rewarded with a kick to the head and a black fog slid over my eyes.

I gasped and jerked back, tripping over my back feet and landing uncomfortable on my tail bone. Blinking away the spots that were soaring across my line of sight, I tried to make sense of what I just saw.

Had I been killed in a mugging gone wrong? If I had, it didn't explain what I was doing as a tiger in the middle of some random forest in who knew were.

"What the heck is going on?" I asked the thin air, not expecting an answer.

It really shouldn't have surprised me that I got one any way.

"I could ask you the same thing. I was under the impression that cats were supposed to be graceful."

I whipped around, looking for whoever had spoken.

"Up here," came an amused voice.

Looking up, I met the beady gaze of a little yellow canary.

I opened my mouth, but closed it again with a snap.

"What, cat got your tongue?" the canary asked cheekily as it hopped up and down on its branch.

"Oh, shut up," I huffed, "and keep your wise cracks to yourself or I'll be forced to eat you."

The canary just chuckled and shook his head. "My my, aren't you a prickly one? The name's Corny. May I be of service? You look a bit…hmm, lost."

I cocked my head at him, subconsciously angling one of my ears to hear better.

"That would be helpful…if I knew where I was going." I told him hesitantly.

If this wasn't some kind of weird dream, then I didn't know what it was. Might as well play along till I figured out what I was doing.

He winked conspiratorially at me and flapped down to a root protruding from the ground two feet away.

"A wanderer, eh? Just going where the wind blows you?" If birds could smile, Corny did right then. "I think we'll get along just fine, little kitty. If you don't have any where to go, why don't you come with me?"

There was a twinkle in his eyes and a kindness in his voice that had my mind made up. I liked the little canary; I would be a lot worse on my own, no matter whether or not this place was really or just in my head.

I nodded and trotted to keep up with Corny's pace.

Honestly? What else could I have done?

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Genevieve's POV

I poked my head out the tent flap and looked around. No one was in the immediate vicinity, which was good because I didn't know if we were allowed to wander around by ourselves. Either way, both of us were getting restless with nothing to do. Slaves were not kept for their aptitude of laziness.

We, Leah and I, were alone in the tent and had been all morning. Someone had come for Jeremiah shortly after Rohm's (the centaur leader) visit to feed him and I hadn't seen him since. I had been okay with that at first because I knew he had to be fed and changed and I didn't have the things to do it myself.

That had been yesterday. Now I was really antsy, wondering why they hadn't brought him back.

Reaching back into the tent, I felt Leah's small hand latch onto mine, clinging tightly.

I wasn't the only one unsure about this.

I gave a gentle squeeze of reassurance and drew her up beside me. She glanced around shyly and, upon realizing no one was looking, relaxed slightly.

She turned and smiled up at me, my lips twitched into a smile in response.

"Let's go." I said quietly.

A look around had us quickly turning right and farther from the center of camp. Neither of us was very good at socializing. As we strolled along, the tents got fewer and the spaces between them wider. The farther from people we got, the more relaxed I felt and

Leah even started swinging on my hand.

It was good to see her acting like the care free little girl she should have been, not the serious-faced-to-old-for-her-age girl she had been at the…that other place.

I bit my lip out of habit and tried to turn my thoughts to something better.

"Look!" Leah said excitedly, "flowers!"

Following her finger I saw a patch orange flowers a little way into the trees.

I gave a soft smile looking down at the little girl that was now as good as my daughter, since, as much as I didn't want to think about it, it wasn't very likely her parents would not escape. That meant that it was now up to me to take care of her and Jeremiah.

They're lives were in my hands.

As dramatic as that would sound to most people, it was true. In the world we lived in, the kind of schooling you got as you grew up was what you survived or died by. I grew up with a lot of harsh truths as a slave, most of which Leah already knew at four-and-a-half, but Jeremiah was only one. He was still as yet untouched by the dark side of life. If I had anything to do about it, it would be many years in the future before he knew anything about that.

I truly smiled now as I banished such depressing thoughts from my mind. Like I said, that would be quite a while from now.

"Leah?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to go pick some flowers?"

She seemed to think about it for a moment before nodding.

We walked steadily into the trees and I prayed the peace would last.

Life must like a good laugh now and then, and it must have seen me as an easy target.