“Have you ever considered,” the tiger asked with utmost reasonability, ignoring any talk of lists, “that perhaps people aren’t discriminating against you because you’re a mutant—they’re discriminating against you because you’re a jerk?”

Having finished with his posterior, the tiger pinned its swishing tail down with a paw, and began giving it the bath it so clearly protested. Tails: a creature lumped in with ‘cat’ in biology books, but really quite opinionated entities unto themselves.

“I have, in fact, and it turns out that that is true in a few, overly-sensitive cases, but as I’m only a jerk to people who are a jerk to me, I only become a jerk to the people who dislike me a few weeks after they encounter a friendly-to-fanatic switch, and decide to flip it. Or, on occasion, their demands encounter a reasonable-to-absurd switch. Though that one often leads to the fanatic switch, anyway.” Allison had at some point drifted mostly from addressing Caleb-the-tiger-puppy to addressing herself, or possibly some alternate self that was actually interested enough in philosophy to justify her frequent dives into it. “Kind of a shame that the switches seem to all break after one use.”

It was extremely tempting to drop a pillow on the tiger again, but the pillow was still on the floor, and would have been extremely difficult for her to subtly pick up. Also, it was a tiger now. Antagonizing the tiger--more than she already was--seemed like not really the best thing to do, so she kept her attention on removing the stuff from her feet, using the sheet since there wasn’t anything else in reach except a cotton ball, which was already soaked with something, and a cloth that she didn’t in the least trust to be clean.

The tiger paused, tongue tip out of mouth, looking at the girl from the corner of his eye. Red-headed, not misshapen by human standards. All limbs in the proper places and of normalized proportions; perhaps it was even possible for the males (or confused females) of her species to consider her attractive. No visible signs of a lobotomy.

Yet there was a certain glassy look to her eyes, and it sounded like she thought the words coming out of her mouth had—what was the word?—meaning.

“Yeeeah,” the tiger said, rubbing a last paw over its head. “So. Why were you running around like a bare-foot lunatic?”

He said “like a,” to take the edge of off “exactly like a.”

“Stress relief.” Had Allison had a free hand, she would have waved the question off as literally as possible. As it was, one of her hands was occupied with holding her foot still, while the other attempted to remove the bits of torn skin that the nurses had clearly intended to leave until they simply dried and fell off on their own.

Really, she had no idea why every medical professional she’d ever encountered with a blister did that. Leaving bits of dead (okay, soon-to-be dead) flesh hanging off her couldn’t possibly be a good thing, and it was painful. Though, only slightly more so than attempting to pull them off herself.

Allison did not approve of the Sanctuary’s nurses. Hopefully the doctor was more reasonable.

Assuming Caleb-the-menace didn’t threaten to eat her if she stayed, or something. Or maybe assuming she did. Allison was under no illusions that her stubborn streak was a health benefit.

Once a foot had been--mostly--de-dead-skinned and the blisters covered in bandaids, she carefully maneuvered it back down to dangle slightly above the floor, stretching it out to test the bandaids’ placement and get blood back into the muscles before letting it relax and pulling her other foot up to repeat the process. “And what were you doing sleeping outside, under a bush, as a puppy?” She did not ask how he’d survived long enough to get to the bush. Spectacular as the feat was, he’d probably take the question as a sign that she cared, and that was a line of teasing she just didn’t have the patience to go down at the moment.

“Stress relief,” said the girl who was picking the still-living flesh from her mangled feet.

Stress relief. Of course. One should always attempt to give themselves lacerations, sprains, concussions and/or contusions as stress relief. Though she’d only managed the first and the last with her relaxed swing through the trees and sedate barefoot strolling, he sensed it was not for want of trying.

>> “And what were you doing sleeping outside, under a bush, as a puppy?”

“Looking at the stars,” he answered, with a proper tiger deadpan. “Now are we doing this tour, or what? ‘Cause I need to tour my room for some pants.”