"Where are we?" Pumyra demanded. She walked away from their now-silent zipcraft, her feet sinking in soft, sepia-colored mud. Rain pattered through leaves and into standing water that gleamed brownish-green. She wrinkled her nose. "What stinks?"

Slithe shot her a veiled look, dragging an empty canvas bag out of the cockpit. "Clarg patch," he said. "Sswampss."

Bag in one hand, ax in the other, he jumped to the ground, splashing into green water and black muck.

She put a fist on her hip. "I know that, slug breath. I meant, what are we doing here?"

"Ssuppliess."

She was getting a little tired of his sullen, one-word answers. Was it her fault he was an incompetent slob? She crossed her arms. Tapped her foot impatiently. Tried to ignore how the mud splashed up her furred shin.

Uninterested in her opinion or her impatience, Slithe ambled away from her, following an invisible path between mossy pools, the rain streaming down his scales, his tail carving a track through the muck.

"We have supplies, you fool," she called after him. "Hey! We're supposed to be in Oxborough, not the swamps." She gagged. "I think you stepped in the clargs."

Slithe pointed with one long arm at what looked like a solid curtain of drooping branches and dripping leaves. "Oxssborough iss that way. Not far. The minotaurss and the lizardss have been neighborss for over a hundred yearss. We'll go there as ssoon as we pick up ssome bargaining material."

Pumyra blinked. Bargaining material? Whatever for? She'd assumed their plan would be the same one it always was: Barge in and demand the bull-men hand over the ThunderCats or she would destroy the town. Chances were good the minotaurs wouldn't, and she would, and she'd be on her way back to the Black Pyramid with one redhead in chains and the War Stone in hand. Done and done.

Obviously, Slithe had different ideas.

She hurried after him, the ground sucking at her feet, the sky drenching her hair, holding her tongue so that she could listen for an ambush. After a few yards, in which the jungle closed mistily over the zipcraft, hiding it from sight, Slithe came to a stop. His thick tail swished through the reeds.

Pumyra pulled up short, loathe to run into his scaly hide. The clarg odor was strong enough to knock out a Thunderian mount at this range. "What?" she snapped.

"Shh," he said, laying a thick finger against his lips. His eyes glittered maliciously.

Though she would rather do anything than obey, all of her senses had clicked onto high alert. She crouched in the drizzle, ears pricked, eyes wide and searching.

Nothing. The swamp stretched out, blue and green and brown and gray. Quiescent, though secretive. Suspecting a prank, Pumyra glared at Slithe, whose wedge-shaped mouth split into a grin.

"What—" she started again, but something small and sharp punched her in the back of the neck.

Pumyra fell to her knees and one hand in the mud, her other hand fumbling at the point of pain that spread numbness through her neck and jaw. Some kind of dart, as hard and round as a seed, the wet feathers at one end sticking to her fur. She couldn't force her now-useless fingers to pull it out. She raised trembling eyelids.

Slithe hadn't moved, grinning like a warty fiend. He chuckled as she struggled to speak.

He'd tricked her! That slimy, corpulent, traitorous lizard!

Wait until she got her hands around his fat neck!

Hands that were no longer under her control, unfortunately. The numbness leaked past her elbows, buckling them. She croaked like a toad.

Lizards slithered out of the mossy shadows, the dripping trees, and the placid water. Crude weapons made out of tree bark, vines, and leaves dangled from their twig-fingered hands. Needles, formed from fishbones, gleamed deadly white from the barrels.

Women. The word buzzed like an angry bee in Pumyra's brain, which was now as numb as the rest of her body. These lizards were female. Smaller than the soldiers Pumyra was used to, their faces flatter, more snakelike, their eyes bigger, their frills longer and almost hairlike. Fans of mottled skin stretched between their upper arms and their shoulder blades.

She hadn't realized Slithe was bringing her, a cat, into the clandestine home of the lizards. A place that Claudus's armies had never been able to find in the swamps, back in the days of the Lizard Wars, when the cats had tried to eradicate their ancient enemies and failed. Where lizard women and their eggs had retreated into isolation and safety. The lingering threat of new generations was why Claudus had sent Grune and Panthro to find the Book of Omens in the first place, not that it had done him any good.

The women grouped themselves around their mutant kinsman, postures wary, gazes cold and distant, as Pumyra's eyelids slammed down and she toppled into rotting-vegetable darkness.

..::~*~::..

So close. Every time Felline thought they were about to find a solution, it danced away again, as elusive as a chib-chib in single moonlight.

She shaded her eyes. The sun rode low in the sky, setting fire to the snowfields on the Greater Barrier, the mountain range Ben-Gali had called the Hoarfrosts, lengthening the shadows in the market street. She stepped from the raised boardwalk into the next shop, whose door had been propped open in the hopes of enticing in a breeze. She'd been visiting each shop on the street in turn, hoping to hear something useful. If Ben-Gali no longer had the Hammer of Thundera, they should be able to pick up its trail, even if that trail was nearly twenty years old, or so her reasoning went. No luck, so far. Cheetara and Tygra, mirroring her from across the street, had to be just as hot and discouraged as she was.

This shop, a bakery, appeared empty at first glance. Felline's impression was of wood, dark-hued, polished to a velvety sheen. The counters and shelves crowded close to each other, casting long shadows. Her eyes weren't given time to adjust to the dimness, however, because the tip-clop of hooves on wood rapidly approached.

"Ben!" The name was an exclamation of pleasure. "I didn't expect you today!"

A minotaur in a frilly pink frock and matching bonnet rounded the corner from the back room. At the sight of her customer, she pulled up so short Felline thought someone must have yanked on her tufted tail. Her huge brown hands flew up to cover her muzzle. "Oh! I'm—I'm so sorry! I thought you were . . . someone else . . ."

She trailed off, her fuzzy ears flicking forward just as Felline heard a step behind her. Ben-Gali walked through the door. He wore a sleeveless shirt, sort of grayed and thinned out from too many washings, stretched across his lean but muscled torso. A cracked black leather belt cinched his baggy trousers around his narrow hips, rolled several times at the cuff. His black shoes, close-toed and hard-soled, bore scuff and burn marks. They clopped like hooves on the floorboards.

His closed eyes gave the impression that he'd walked through that door many times before.

"Brightheart!" he called, sounding exhausted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Do you have any oatbuns left? Thickhide's in a foul mood because the old man slipped his leash again and I didn't finish restoring those plow blades of Stampede's and—"

He stopped. Everything stopped. Just for a few seconds.

Felline gave him a sheepish wave.

Ben-Gali frowned at her as though she were a froog in a flower bed, and then he turned his attention to the pink-frocked heifer. "Anyway, he says we can't close shop until we get the job done and I thought a few oatbuns would improve his disposition."

Brightheart giggled. She bustled around, wrapping large iced buns in waxed paper and nestling them in a paper bag. "The way you two fight, it's nothing but love. I don't know why either of you don't just admit that you're peas in a pod."

He rolled his eyes. "He's a bull. I'm a cat."

"Don't mean Thickhide regrets picking you and your sweet mother off the streets, Ben, and you nothing more than a hungry little kitten in her arms. Poor dear tried so hard to do right by you. So small, you were! Look at you now. You're the best thing that ever happened to this town and he'd be the first to say so."

Ben-Gali crossed his arms. "Give it up, Brightheart. You're imagining things."

"Am I?" She giggled again, and then fluttered her eyelashes at him. "How about I throw in some egg salad sandwiches, then. I made a fresh batch this afternoon, just for you."

Really? Even though you didn't expect him today? Felline thought, amused at Brightheart's transparency, but also pitying her for it. Not so long ago, before they were exiled from their homes, Felline might have done the same kind of thing, living each day in a holding pattern, just waiting, and hoping, that the one she loved would appear. That he would speak to her. That he would choose her. That he would love her back.

"You are a darling, Brightness," Ben-Gali said with a grin. Then, reluctantly, he looked over his shoulder at Felline, who hadn't moved. "Er, would you mind selling me a few extra? You know. For a friend."

Brightheart snorted, but it wasn't a sound of hilarity. All of her hospitality vanished as her large, long-lashed eyes crawled from Felline's ears to her toes and back up again. All she said, however, was, "Hmph!" as she stuck her muzzle in the air. She packed the sandwiches in a way that suggested their soft, eggy goodness had personally offended her.

"Her name is Fluffy," Ben-Gali said over Brightheart's flouncing. He grinned when both women glared at him.

"My friends are waiting for me," Felline said. "You don't have to buy me dinner."

"Aw, come on," Ben-Gali said, turning on his charm the way some animals turned on a light. "I saw that tiger you were with, and his girlfriend, out there. You're spying on me, aren't you? It would be easier to do if I'm right in front of you."

"But not near so much fun. I can hear you from this distance."

"Ouch!" Ben-Gali pressed a hand to his chest. "You're a vicious one."

"And you're a liar," Felline said angrily.

"From the day I was born," he agreed cheerfully.

Felline rolled her eyes, and thought she heard him cough on a chuckle. He took her arm and steered her toward the open door. "Trust me, your friendsaren't missing you right now, Fluffy."

"My name is Felline. Not Fluffy. Fah-leen." Pulling her arm free, she pinned him with Stink Eye and held it until he raised his hands and backed obligingly away.

In an alley too small for a minotaur to squeeze into, half-hidden by a pair of rain barrels and stacked crates, Tygra and Cheetara wrapped their arms around each other.

Felline sighed. So much for gathering intel. There could be a shootout right there in the street and neither the prince nor the cleric would notice. Obviously, they didn't think that tracking the Hammer was important enough for them to have a direct hand in and had therefore left the job up to her. Typical!

Still, could she blame them? Privacy, even relative privacy, was a precious commodity these days.

She thought of the way Lion-O had acted earlier, when he, like them all, thought that he had found what they needed, and was then proven wrong immediately. His gloom had followed them all the way back to the Feliner. He'd shut himself up in his bunk, staring down at the Book of Omens as though hoping it would speak to him. Which it would if he'd open it. Which he wouldn't.

Felline put a hand to her forehead. Why bother with all this? Cheetara and Tygra were right. The Hammer was gone. She should have just stayed with Panthro. Maybe they could have made a head start on locating the last Power Stone. Though how they were supposed to keep it out of Mumm-Ra's hands without the Sword of Omens was a great big question mark.

Ben-Gali seemed content to watch Felline work through her spiraling thoughts, his eyes bright with interest.

"Welcome back," he teased when she resurfaced.

He was very handsome, she realized, unable to deny this fact with him standing so close to her that she could smell him. He was every bit as rugged as Tygra, with those thick brows and chiseled chin. His eyes were a steady, clear sky blue. Eyes she could fall into. Fall a very, very long way.

She shivered and broke the contact, both confused and exhilarated.

"Ben," Brightheart called, rolling the top of the bulging paper bag closed. Her bovine face lengthened with worry. "The sun is going down. Be careful out there, you hear?"

"Aren't I always?" Ben-Gali accepted the bag, brushed white fingers along her bigger hand. "Don't you worry. It'll take more than a lounge of lizards to pin me down."

Once more, Brightheart's gaze flicked in Felline's direction. Then it lowered. "Maybe that's why I am worried," she mumbled.

Ben-Gali turned to Felline and gestured toward the street. When she hesitated, he abandoned the playful tiger routine and spoke seriously. "She's right, you know. We don't want to be here when the lizards show up. You picked a bad night to come to town."

Oh, he'd meant actual, real-life lizards. Lizards that came here, to Oxborough. Why? Had they followed the Feliner? Was Mumm-Ra on to the ThunderCats and their mission here? No, he couldn't be. Pumyra couldn't spy for him anymore. Perhaps a reptile presence here was a completely unrelated occurrence. In which case, did they appear on a regular schedule? Nightly? Weekly? Monthly? Why? Where did they come from?

"Your face is fascinating," Ben-Gali said, snapping her into the Here and Now. "I can practically hear you thinking."

Too confused—Flattered? Maybe? her brain suggested, but she punched the thought down—to reply, Felline regally preceded Ben-Gali outside. Cheetara and Tygra were nowhere to be seen. She deflated, looking up and down the boardwalks without hope. The shadows stretched longer than before, violet in the flaming sunset. She touched the locator clipped to her belt. Panthro and the kittens, holding down the fort in the Feliner, would see if something happened to her. It would be fine, then, to go alone with this strangely charming tiger. Wouldn't it?

Ben-Gali nudged her arm. "Come on, I know a good place to stay out of sight and talk."

"You want to talk?" She raised skeptical eyebrows.

He rolled his eyes and propped the bakery bag on his shoulder. "Sure. You think other cats pass through here often? I can't help it. I'm curious. Admit it, you are too. That's why you came looking for me all by your lonesome."

"I wasn't alone," she contradicted him, but she was curious. Who wouldn't be? "Fine. Let's go, then."

Ben-Gali made a delighted, What, really? face that instantly disarmed her. He flashed another, sweeter smile and then led the way off the boardwalk.

Mournfully, Brightheart watched them go from the bakery door.

A/N2: Many, many thanks to allurascastle - without her help, I would not have been able to smash this update into shape. I hope I did a little better this time around. Your suggestions were wonderful! :3 So, we're slowly moving forward. I'm still not giving up until this story is finished! *determined face*

Reviewer Thanks! rosewhip889, Darwin, KelseyAlicia, Lionessa, Atea1793, Heart of the Demons, Billamon, Blacktiger93, Champion of Justice, Hestia28 (heeheehee, I am having so much fun reading everyone's reactions to my Ben-Gali - if nothing else, he's entertaining! *hugs back* Thank you so much!), The Night Whisperer, St4r Hunter, FallingStar5027 (three times! Woohoo!), Seeds of Destruction, AndrianaWarrior7, and allurascastle. YOU GUYS. Sixteen reviews on that last update! A personal best! Even though it's not up to me. LOL. I love you all so muuuuuch!

This is neither here nor there, but both Exiles and Rebels are now available on Amazon. Check them out! 'Cause they're pretty.

Until next time,

Anne