[Issue 11] Hair of the dog that bit you...

[Narrator]

When Stephanie awoke, the bear wasn't anywhere to be seen. In fact, she wasn't quite certain where she was. Did it just look different in the daylight?

In front of her on the ground was a piece of paper, pinned into the soil by... a single golden-brown feather.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

Stephanie got up and rubbed her face, groaning--an action that quickly made her realize she had remained wolfed out even after getting knocked out which usually wasn't the case.

Ugh...this is awful...wait... what the hell is that?

Steph lumbered over the the paper and picked it up in her clawed hands.

[Narrator]

It seemed small in her hands, even compared to previous times she'd shifted. It was handwritten, in eccentric penmanship.

Pay her back.

The feather fluttered to the ground.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

Steph growled. Payback sounded damn good...

No...wait. These...these are friends. Teammates...

Steph stared and her hands again. She took a deep breath and tried to shift back to hr human form.

[Narrator]

It proved difficult. She managed a few fitful starts, but her body seemed almost to push back towards the monstrous.

Meanwhile, the feather lay in the grass.

It rather smelled of Nailah.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

"I...am....not...an...animal," she forced herself to say aloud.

The smell of her opponent from the other night was certainly distracting her from her attempts to focus on her humanity.

[Narrator]

And oddly, she came to realize the scent was not only coming from the feather.

No, that scent had been spread around quite a bit. Almost as if the haughty tawny-furred one had been staking out territory...

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

"Damnit. Bitch can't even give me some space, can she?" she said to the feather.

Because everyone talks to themselves out loud...

[Narrator]

The feather, perhaps smugly, did not offer any reply.

It was hard to quite find a direction that the scent wasn't. Not the cliffs to her left certainly. Not the creek to her right, either. She was deep inside this staked claim. One almost wondered how she got there.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

"How the hell did I get here..." she muttered, "...this wasn't where the bear was last night...was it?"

[Narrator]

That was when she spotted a trail through the underbrush where she must have been dragged, also evidenced in the grass ground into her pelt on one side.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

Steph picked up the feather and sniffed, also sniffing around the trail to see if she could find a scent she didn't know who might have dragged her.

[Narrator]

The feather still smelled rather of Nailah. There were other scents here, but they were much harder to follow.

[Stephanie Kaltiera]

"Why the hell would she drag me into her own...no...has to be..." Steph trailed off into a low growl.

"I need to find her and settle this one on one with no one else getting in my way," She told the feather, which she crushed in her fist and started to follow the strongest trail of her scent.

[Narrator]

After catching the scent it was easy enough. As she tracked, she heard the sound of running water, revealed to be a creek when she got closer. Soon, she spied a tawny form lying serenely near the shore. Professor Weaver was... bigger than she remembered.