"About bloody TIME!" -Everybody. Sorry this has taken so long, everyone. I'll try to speed up my post rate on this, in future ^^. But for now, we get the final part of Day 4, in which Josh finally gets to play with his new friends, and much other fun stuff occurs.

(If it wasn't clear to everyone, the end of this story is a dream induced by high stress and a sudden shift in hormones)

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Story Text: (Download for better formatting)

Two Weeks, Day 4: New Friends (Part 4)
Josh had never had to go to the bathroom so bad in his life. He whimpered into the orange flannel of his crib, whimpering and trying to struggle against the covers. It was dark, very dark. The lion’s eyes didn’t adjust, quickly or at all, and, in the blazing dark, Josh felt the contents of his bowels slide out all at once. The back of his diaper filled suddenly, and Josh, blinking, felt his bladder loose involuntarily.
“Waa?” Josh said, “waagaa?” He slowly rocked his head back and forth. There were huge bars above him, stretching almost to the ceiling, and, above even those, was a hanging plastic mobile. On it were toy space ships, stars, and planets. The lion looked first one way, then the other in search of the others, Ramadan, Ostia and Psudo. He had only known the three of them for less than an afternoon, but already he noticed the absences.
Josh’s full diaper stunk badly, and he felt much, much wetter than he could remember being. It seemed like the diaper spat out all his urine whenever he moved, and then absorbed it again. It was only as the lion was contemplating the dreadfully uncomfortable position he was in, sitting in a mess of his own making, that he felt the churning of the contents of his belly, and the scratchy dryness in his throat. He was hungry, very hungry, but there was nobody around to feed him. Why wasn’t someone there to feed him?!
Josh sniveled a bit. He kept opening his eyes, closing them, opening them again. He needed mommy, but mommy wasn’t there… Why wasn’t she there?! She had to be here… he needed her, but, no matter how much he blinked, mommy didn’t appear. Eventually, as fear became hopelessness, Josh gave in to the most basic instinct he had and cried, cried like he had never cried before. It was a long, careening wail, the kind that only the brutally insistent needs of a baby can summon up, and it was an impressive one, to boot. Here he was, sitting in his own filth, the mushy mess squishing around in his diaper with every movement, hungry, thirsty, and, worst of all, alone! Why had she left him alone?!
Josh heard the sound of light steps in the hallway outside his room, then saw light creep in from beneath the door. The light turned off, and the door opened. At last, there she was. His mommy. Karen. Josh’s crying started to subside as the lioness, towering in her immensity, pulled down the bars of his crib and, ever so carefully, unbound him from the bundle of sheets that he had entrapped himself in.
“Oh, it’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay. Mommy’s here, mommy’s here,” the big lioness said, looking down into her precious cub’s face, “please hush, little one. Don’t wake daddy, he can be very cranky.” Her voice went from calming to slightly urgent as she mentioned his father, whom he rarely saw. Josh didn’t care about daddy. Daddy never changed his diapers, never fed him his bottle. That was what mommy did…
“Baawwaa bawwaagawwaa,” Josh said, conscious mind trying to reassert control over his overpowering infant emotions. Mommy just hushed him, putting a finger against his lips, silencing him instantly.
“Are you wet, little one?” Karen asked in her soft, sweet voice. Seeing as her husband, Josh’s father, had staunchly refused to let her seek employment outside the home, she could sleep in until whenever she wished, which slightly lessened the obvious detriments caused by being kept up all hours of the night by a needy child.
The mother set her cub down on the moonlit terrace that led out over their suburban backyard, further soothing his nerves. Karen knew that Josh loved the moonlight, and, luckily enough, this was a bright, beaming full moon night, strong enough even to calm a feisty little cub like Josh.
“Sheesh, you need a change, badly,” the bigger lion said, grinning, “don’t go anywhere, I’ll get the things.”
Josh’s mother walked away over to the supply cupboard and started gathering things as Josh, mostly in control again now that the usurpation of his babyish tantrum was over, wiggled around in nothing but his full diaper. The moonlight cutting through the darkness, Josh looked himself over. It was an odd feeling, really, it was. As a fitness enthusiast, Josh had seen hundreds of commercials and ads promising that, if someone were to throw huge amounts of money at a special diet, or program, or piece of patented equipment, they could drop as much as twenty pounds a week or more. It was all bollocks, of course, but, even so, Josh’s current rate of loss blew them all out of the water, and the cosmetic age-reduction industry, besides. Even in the most odd science fiction could someone propose to the public a treatment that, somehow, could cut sixteen years and a hundred and seventy pounds off a lion.
Josh didn’t have much time to further his train of thought because, just then, his mother, with whom he hadn’t talked since he moved out, came back, a Disney’s Lion King diaper in one hand, and powder in the other.
“Let’s get you fixed up,” she said, smiling happily in the moonlight, “my precious little cub.”
He lion’s vocabulary was so intense, so familiar that Josh had a hard time separating it from Windrifa’s in his head, as though the two occupied the same file in a computer’s registry. She slowly untapped his diaper, which, in the light, Josh could see was printed with a pokemon of some kind or another.
“Oh my, you are quite the stinker,” she whispered at him, giggling as the smell of messy diaper wafted up to assault both of their nostrils. “Don’t you worry, I’ll have you back in bed in a moment.”
As she had said, Karen had him cleaned up in record time, wiping down his pathetically downsized male parts and nether regions before removing the diaper, disposing of it, pushing the new one in, powdering him down, and taping the crinkly, absorbent undergarments up around his waist.
“Cubby want a suckle?” Karen said, slowly and lovingly caressing her son’s belly, bringing him back to remember the tearing hunger and thirst, clawing at him. He would have nodded, but he didn’t need to. His eyes said it all. The big lioness put one hand on his belly to steady him, then slowly wrapped him in the blanket he had been lying on, one that he hadn’t even noticed was there. “Perfect, all bundled up. Comfy?”
Josh, with mounting discomfort, watched as his mother sat down next to him on the terrace, then, careful as a mother hen, hefted him up onto her lap. The lion had a front row seat to watch his mother, still young, barely thirty, open up her bra to let one large, lactating breast hang out. He started to squirm, started to wiggle as he realized he was expected to nurse from his own mother’s teat.
No… NO! Josh screamed inside, but was as tightly wrapped in swaddling as ever, and could only watch as her nipple got closer and closer, only an inch in front of his face, “don’t nip mommy, sweetheart,” Karen cooed as Josh’s instincts and reflexes took over, latching onto the nipple and sucking in on the warm, rich maternal milk. The calming effect on the child was as instant as it was prolific. All the stress left Josh’s body, all the tension slipping away. It was paradise. The lion didn’t even know how long he had been at it before it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
No sooner had the door creaked open once more than had the gruff, conquering voice of Josh’s father rang out, “the fuck are you doing up? Get your ass back in bed, NOW,” he nearly screamed; a very, very large lion in his mid forties, a child of another age.
“I’m nursing him, he was thirsty,” Josh’s mother said in her own, completely justified defense.
“I don’t give a fuck. It’ll do him well to learn what it’s like early,” Horatio, Josh’s father said in his voice like gravel.
The lioness scowled at the fuming male, very nearly in a rage, “If I don’t get him fed now, he’ll be squalling the rest of the night.”
“Did I say you could talk back to me, bitch?” he said, taking a large step forward. Karen pulled back instinctively, “if you wake me up one more time to come to the runt’s whims, you know damn well what’ll happen.”
“Yes…” Josh’s mother said, hanging her head, “I’ll be right in.”
“Fucking right you’ll be, bitch,” he said, slambing the nursery’s door so hard that it shook the whole house.
“I-I’m so sorry… little one,” Karen said, sniveling, only when she was sure he was gone, “So, so sorry…”
Josh wanted to do something, to say something comforting, but no words came. He could only look up into his mother’s face, stricken with tears, and wonder what had happened to take away that strong, loving figure from him, and replace it with this crying stick figure.
Suddenly, with all things made clear to him, Josh did the only thing that could be done under the circumstance: he cried. He cried and cried and cried until his eyes hurt. Then he opened them, and, still bawling like the newborn he had been just moments before, looked up into the half curious, half concerned faces of Ostia, Ramadan, and yes, even little Psudo.
“You okay, Josh?” Ramadan asked, looking down at the bawling, shuddering, incoherent little lion, curled up in the fetal position in the covers.
“What did you do?” Ostia asked Psudo in a stern, accusatory sort of voice, “what the heck happened to him?”
“I- I just tried some guided imagery…” Psudo stammered, “You know, just to make him feel like a cub.”
“So what the hell happened?” Ostia continued, berating the little owl to the point that his diaper started to sag with fullness.
“I- I dunno! His memories hijacked the simulation, then he messed himself, then he started crying. That’s never happened before…” Psudo said, Josh still murmuring wordlessly on the bed. His thumb had found its way to his mouth, and the discolored seat of his diaper sagged precariously.
Ostia sighed, “one more wetting and I think he’s going to leak, even through that dragon diaper of yours, Ramadan,” she said, starting to ebb into caretaker’s apprentice mode. “There there, sweetie, you’re alright. It was just a bad dream, nothing to be afraid of,” Ostia cooed, slowly lying down beside him to maintain herself as someone like him, not a threat, “It’s okay… It’s okay…”
The others followed her lead. Just as he had before, Psudo snuggled up in the space between the crying lion and the all too calm otter. Ramadan laid his prized wool comforter over Josh, and then wrapped the lion in both arms, holding him close, “you’re fine, Josh, your friends are here,” the dragon said, rumbling with pleasure.
Gradually, with the combined efforts of his new, true friends, Josh was consoled to a state of shocked inhibition, as opposed to outright shuddering mental disjointed agony. It was Ostia who broke the silence, starting to deepen after a few moments with nothing but Ramadan’s rumbling chest to fill the void.
“Who do you feel, Josh?” The otter asked, as somberly and affectionately as she might, and got an answer almost before the words had left her mouth.
“Little…” Josh said, the word jumping out of his mouth like an Olympic diver off a forty foot board, “helpless…”
Ostia hugged him closer, and whispered in his ear, “tell me what you saw, Josh… what happened?”
“It was… my mother,” Josh stammered between sobs, the crying coming in fits and starts instead of all at once, now.
“Yes?” Ostia said, wanting more, but not ready to press him. In the end, there was no need. Josh went from speechless to ecstatic in a few seconds, spilling out everything he had bundled up inside him, everything he had carefully stored away in an airtight freezer for his seven years and ten of life, the pressure inside gradually building up to near terminal levels. It was a release unlike anything other, a titanic orgasm on rocket fuel made of E, an outburst so vast and seemingly unending. It might have taken hours, it might have taken minutes. Josh didn’t know. All he knew was that he was pumping the life’s blood of his years out into the plain, all his sins and sorrows out for the world to see, and waiting for the world’s judgment. When he was done, his heart torn open to pour the decades of memories, emotions and turmoil out onto the sands, and Josh’s tired, wavering tongue no longer could form words, the lion stopped, and looked into the otter’s face. It was unreadable, like something carved out of stone some centuries ago.
“You… really trust us, don’t you, Josh?” Ostia said, softly, trying to maintain her cool demeanor.
Josh nodded, he couldn’t really do anything else, “I… I never thought I could talk about that stuff…” Josh said. He had spared no detail. Not the beatings he had received as a child for losing a fight, for getting caught while stealing, for anything and everything his father could use as a legitimate excuse, not how he had drowned his sorrows in booze and drugs and pretty girls, the scars still visible even years after his father’s death.
Ramadan and Ostia looked at each other over Josh’s head, solemn as undertakers. “Then we’ll trust you, Josh,” Ostia said, “would you like to hear our stories, Josh?”
The lion didn’t have words to speak. The emotional discharge had left him almost calm and restored in his mind, a huge, unseen weight carried for his entire life was finally no longer entirely his to carry, nor did the path that he needed to carry it seem indefinite, any longer. Josh couldn’t think of anything to say but the obvious, if uninspired, “yes… if you’d tell me…”
“Tomorrow,” Ostia said, and put a finger against Josh’s lips, “for now, be quiet.”
“What?” Josh said, but compulsively shut his eyes as the door to the nursery swung open, the scant light of the hallway seeming like a blazing spotlight after the near total darkness of sleep. Windrifa didn’t talk as she entered the room on silent, quick moving feet. She slowly and meticulously looked over the three sleeping cubs in their slumber.
“Come on, you four. I could clearly hear one of you crying a moment ago,” Windrifa said, knowing but not accusatory. “Which of you need a change?”
The four of them grumbled, eventually all answering in the affirmative. Everyone needed a change in some form or another, they were a pack of messy, squishy, crinkly cubs. No question about it.
Windrifa pulled down the bars of the crib, and, slowly, everyone herded out and back onto their feet. Josh had had a hard time walking in the dragon’s diaper at the best of times. With legs dulled from hours of sleep and inexertion, he stood almost no chance. Oddly enough, Josh didn’t feel too embarrassed about dropping down onto all fours on the E-Z wipe hardwood floor. If he knelt, it left him at about the same height as Psudo, who waddled along in his own thick, My Little Pony diaper, tail feathers swaying back and forth with every step.
Windrifa walked over and turned the lights on in the nursery. They weren’t overly bright, but it was still enough to startle the eyes of the four cubs, “alright, all of you. You had a long nap, and you were all good, so I’ll push back your bedtime a while. Would you rather play together, or just watch a movie tonight?” Windrifa asked in perfectly good spirits. The drowse and bedazzlement suddenly wore off as a result of a delayed bedtime, and the four cubs, including, surprisingly, Josh, all stood if they were not already standing, and headed out the door and to the right for diaper changes.
Windrifa followed behind, carefully herding the four rowdy cubs onto their changing tables and, for good measure, using the waist straps. There was much grumbling about this, mostly from Psudo and Josh, but nothing punishable so the eagle let it be. She checked and changed each of the four of them in turn. Psudo was put into another of his pony diapers, happily supplied by Windrifa’s own ex-caretaker, Ramadan, in one of his special ones, Ostia’s had puppies on the tapes, and Josh’s had Simba, from The Lion King, a choice in diaper tapes that Josh didn’t even notice, so happy was he to be put into undergarments that didn’t revoke his ability to walk.
With the tedium and minutia of diaper changing completed, Windrifa doled out the two options for evening entertainment: another round in the playpen, or a nice relaxing movie.
“I’m kinda tired to play with toys…” Psudo observed, a sentiment that was agreed with in full by his fellow cubs. It had been a new and unusual day, especially for cubs that weren’t used to being separated from their caretakers for more than an hour at most.
“A movie it is!” Windrifa chimed in, and gave all their diapers a check before digging through each of their bags, and going out to Josh’s dresser, to produce each of them a very fitting sleeper. Josh’s was orange, and in the shape of, of all things, a lion, the faux fur mane adding insult to injury by reminding him of the icon of pride that he had lost. Ramadan’s was unremarkable, a lighter blue than his scales, but with feet and mittens, something that Josh’s didn’t have. Psudo got the worst off, and everyone knew it. The little owl actually shrieked in discomfiture as his mother showed him the purple unicorn sleeper with hooves and a tail that he was about to be forced into. Despite the obvious bad karma, the other three couldn’t help but giggle as the little owlet was forced into the adorable, if girly, garment. Ostia went calmly into hers, trying to mimic Windrifa’s reserve and patience. Hers was a bright green with flowers and butterflies. Josh thought she looked cute in it, then stopped himself.
Cute? He thought to himself, Oi vey… Not sexy, not attractive… Cute. Hell, if this keeps up I’ll be brain-dead in a month…
One by one Windrifa unstrapped the cubs, and put them into their nighttime garments, by force, if necessary, but that was only the case with the cub least able to fight back: Windrifa’s own reluctant sissy of a son, Psudo.
“Hmph…” The owlet said, crossing his hooves and trying to ignore the snickering and snide jars of his friends as they poked fun at his pony costume, “Windrifa! This isn’t fair…”
“Fair has nothing to do with it,” Windrifa said, picking little pony Psudo up over her shoulder, “you broke the rules, you knew what would happen if you got caught. There’s nothing unfair about it.”
The owlet grumbled as he was carried into a room that Josh had never seen before. He followed between Ostia and Ramadan through the door immediately to the right of his nursery, and across the hall from the big bathroom. This door led through a short hallway to another door, which, in turn, left them in a strange mix of an entertainment room and a study. It had dimly painted walls, blood red with wood paneling, and was a far cry from the rest of the house, which was all in earth tones and colorful murals and tiling. The floor, also unlike the rest of the house, was fully carpeted, except for a small office space with two book shelves, and a writing desk facing a fireplace. To Josh’s shock and awe, the desk supported the most beautiful thing that Josh had ever seen: a 16” Toshiba laptop. If he played his cards right, Josh knew it would be his ticket out of here.
Also inside the room was a big red couch facing a truly impressive sixty eight inch flatscreen television built into a cabinet that looked like it was made of real mahogany to match the wall paneling.
“Wow…” Josh said, looking around.
“You get all the luck…” Ostia grumbled, “our place isn’t nearly this nice.”
Windrifa ignored the statement, “alright, everyone. I’ll go make some popcorn for all of you. Ostia, hold onto Twilight Sparkle,” she said, waving a hand at the little purple unicorn who was slowly ebbing away towards the bookcase, “Josh, you get to pick out a movie.”
The group didn’t so much object to Josh’s privilege as movie picker, which he appreciated. Wow, these guys are much more laid back and mature than my old friends… Josh thought, waddling over to the cabinet and opening the bottom. Before him were hundreds, maybe as many as a thousand encased DVDs and video cassettes with children’s movies going as far back as Fantasia. Wow… he thought, shaking his head and searching. There were dozens of movies that he remembered from his childhood, left on by babysitters who would rather work on their English 1 homework than do their job properly, especially after cancer won a long and bloody five year bar brawl with his father, and his mother had to get a job to support the two of them.
As much as he searched, nothing popped out and shouted PICK ME! At him. In disappointment, Josh hung his head. He had failed the simplest duty: pick the movie everyone watched. Even worse, Josh’s favorite childhood character, Simba, was staring right back at him, an embroidered badge on the chest of his sleeper, and on the diaper he wore beneath it.
Wait… Simba. Josh thought, why the hell didn’t I think of this before?! He asked himself, suddenly frantic as he searched through the discs. They had to have it. HAD TO.
“Jeeze, slow down. You’re gonna hurt yourself,” Ostia said. She had sat down on the couch, Psudo on her lap. Ramadan, what with dragons preferring hard surfaces over soft, had opted to lie down on the floor, leaving just enough room on the couch for Josh to lie down. Perfect.
Windrifa had come back with a heaping bowl of popcorn and another, equally impressive bowl of chips, setting them down on the table just as Josh touched on the two disc special edition of the best Disney film ever.
“Aha!” Josh said in triumph as he pulled it from the rack. It had Simba, Timon and Pumbaa on the cover. He never cared too much for the other two, probably because they weren’t lions, but Josh had always loved Simba. He still loved Simba.
Not waiting for either approval or Windrifa, Josh turned on the TV and the chrome, expensive looking DVD player before putting the disk down into the tray and pushing it back in, too eager and impatient to not.
“Hey, Lion King!” Ramadan guessed, even before the start menu rolled, probably from the empty case that Josh left at his feet, “Yay, I love this movie.”
“It’s overrated,” Psudo grumbled, “Hunchback of Notre Dame was a much better movie, and the villain didn’t turn into a whiny sissy halfway through the movie…”
“Look who’s talking,” Ostia said, bouncing the little owl up and down on her knee to make him feel every bit of padding under his pony sleeper, “hey, we could watch My Little Pony! How about that?”
“NO!” Psudo cried,starting to struggle against his captor as Windrifa came back in, three sippy cups and a bottle of apple juice under one arm, and one of those baby door bouncers under the other. It was too big for anyone but Psudo. The owl’s battle with Ostia’s right arm intensified as Windrifa hung the bouncer from a hook in the ceiling, just to the right of the couch. He stood even less of a chance against Windrifa than he did against Ostia, and, in short order, Psudo’s entire lower body was engulfed by the rubberized plastic bouncer, the elastic ropes keeping him always on his toes, or else a few inches off the ground. Josh wasn’t too happy to see the little owl humiliated so openly and publicly, hell, he had nearly wet himself about being changed in front of others, but there was clearly nothing he could do besides offer his apologies later on.
Josh went to take his place on the couch, but was staunchly blocked by Windrifa, who took the last seat. He looked over the prospects, snuggling up with Ramadan would likely provide a comfortable enough, if brutally hot, place to watch the movie, but it wouldn’t do the film justice. Seeing his confusion, Windrifa giggled and pulled Josh down over her lap. He purred as the chips were put down on his belly and, at last, the famous opening scene of Walt Disney’s best played on the big LCD screen.
Josh was ecxtatic. For all his love of the film, Josh hadn’t seen The Lion King in over a decade, since his father had dubbed it, and its murder, treachery and violence, a bitch’s film. Surely, once someone turned eight they should be watching children’s movies, at least! Like Terminator, or Alien, Or Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker.
Josh felt more in tune with the world around him than he had felt ever in his memory, maybe even ever. It was exhilarating, scary, funny and cute. The lion laughed as Simba woke up his father, and actually shouted at the TV as Scar set him up to die, as though the lion cub might hear him. He wept when Mufasa died, all just as he had as a cub not much older than Simba.
“Hey, sit still,” Windrifa giggled. Timon and Pumbaa had just run through a bunch of birds, the long memorized signal that the best song in the film was about to start, and Josh, full of caffeinated juice and snack foods, couldn’t hold still. And, when that one, all important part of the film played, the lion simply couldn’t help but sing along.
“ Hakuna Matata!” Josh exclaimed, commanding all the attention in the room as, in a fit of giddy joy, Josh hopped down off Windrifa’s lap when she wasn’t paying attention, and mimicked the motions of the characters on scene perfectly as though he had been animated along with them, even getting down onto all fours to prance around, heavily padded butt in the air as the room filled with ripe hilarity and mirth.
“Hey, that might make a good nickname for you,” Ostia said, piping up as the song, and Josh’s wonderful performance wound down, “Simba.”
“I think it’s cute,” Windrifa said, giggling.
“It’s stupid…” the unicorn in the door bouncer in the corner said, trying for a moment to get his feet underneath him and stand straight. The plastic crotch piece between his legs prevented any such thing, and he settled back into his original mood of defiant poutiness. “Could at least give me some popcorn…” Psudo said, having been denied any munchies for his tendency to interrupt, and constant desire to add his own film commentary when it wasn’t asked for. As punishment for these heinous offences, the little owl in the pony suit had been fed applesauce from a cup instead, a much less coveted dish.
“Hush up and eat your appleasauce,” Ostia snickered. When she turned her attention back to Josh, he was blushing fiercely, and looked confused.
“Simba…” the lion said aloud, “I’m Simba…” Josh walked slowly back to the couch as the movie progressed, sitting down against an arm of the couch and no longer paying quite so much attention as he had. Eventually, Ramadan sat down next to him, eventually working the lion onto his lap and wrapping his wings around him, encasing the encumbered lion in the tendons and webbing.
The rest of the movie passed in a daze for Josh, who was stuck very deep inside his own head. Only four days had passed since he had woken up, diapered and dressed up like a baby, sleeping in a crib, and nearly every important part of his being had been brought into stark question since then. Who was he? What was he doing with his life? Who were these people? What did they really want with him? All were questions. The lion, as yet, had few answers.
As the movie wound to a close, with the final confrontation between Scar and Simba, Josh was in a state of near sleep from the dragon’s heat, and steady, rumbling heartbeat, slowly lulling him into calm and quiet. So deeply entranced was he that he had long since stopped paying attention to what was going on around him, and was, instead, lying in a field of imaginary savanna grass, like the kind in the movie, as calm and peaceful as his feral ancestors would have been. Josh rolled onto his back in the grass, batting his paws at the sparse clouds that marred the clear, blue sky, grinning, and then got up onto all fours. “Huh?” he said in surprise, eyes going wide as he realized that he was face to face with another lion. A little cub, maybe a year old. It had a glowing smile across his face.
Josh, not yet aware that he was daydreaming, rolled over onto his side, perplexed by the new arrival, who casually waltzed over and rubbed against Josh’s belly like a housecat, exposing its heavily diapered backside. It came back again, and nestled close against his belly, rolling over playfully. It was inviting him to play…
Josh scoffed. He was a lion, an adult lion, and was not about to stoop to playing with a yearling cub. When he ignored it, the cub waddled its way on all fours over to Josh’s face and started licking the napping lion’s ears and nose, causing him to try and nudge it away. The cub persisted, seeing that he was getting frustrated, and then, finally, fed up, Josh stood, turned his back on it, and curled back up to get some shut eye.
“You couldn’t ignore me forever, you know,” Josh heard a sweet, youthful voice say. One of the big lion’s eyes opened, and he realized he was staring the cub right in the face. “You tried, and it didn’t work.”
“What are you talking about?” Josh mumbled, both aloud and inside his head, and the cub giggled his playful laugh.
“You really are silly, especially for a grown up,” the cub yipped, rolling over onto its back and waving its paws in the air, then snickered, “but what am I talking about. You’re no grown up, heck, you’re as much of a baby as I am!” Joshed raised an eyebrow and turned again to get away from the bothersome child. “Not so fast,” the little lion said, somehow remaining right in front of Josh’s face, no matter how much he turned to get away.
“What?” the bigger lion said, agitated, baring his teeth and growling.
“I’ll go away and leave you in peace,” the cub said, grinning slyly and poking Josh’s nose, “but you’ve got to do something for me, too.”
“And you’ll bugger off if I do?” Josh replied, getting more and more frustrated, even going so far as to sit up onto his haunches and glare at his little pest.
The cub suddenly became bipedal, hopping up onto his back legs and waddling around, shrugging, “show me some love, once in a while,” it said, throwing its forepaws up and looking at Josh with a grin, “just a hug for now would do, and I’ll leave you alone. Promise.”
“A hug?” Josh said, incredulously.
“Mhm, that’s right,” the cub replied, spreading his arms wide and beaming.
“How about you scram, and I don’t hurt you,” Josh growled, not about to let the cub get the best of him… not now, not ever. The smaller lion looked hurt, and took a step back as though Josh might actually hurt him. His arms fell to his sides, and his lip started to quiver.
“That wasn’t nice…” the cub whimpered, sniffling, “I only wanted a hug…”
“Well tough rocks, kid, that’s life,” Josh said, going stern, and curled up again. He laid down again, dressed only in his grey trousers, and heard the cub start to cry. He tuned it out like he tuned out so many other things, and focused on sleeping.
“I only wanted a hug!” it shouted, taking two quick steps forward and pushing Josh’s vastly larger body, huffing and shouting.
“Well, you’re not going to get one by hitting me,” Josh replied over his shoulder, “now screw off, I’m trying to nap, here.”
The cub, again in front of his face, hissed at the bigger lion, “You’re going to regret that,” it said, and Josh ignored it, again, trying to forget it was ever there. The cub’s front paw shot out, its palm laid flat against Josh’s forhead, and the bigger lion felt a shock like being hit by lighting.
“Yeeeaoooww!” Josh shouted, jumping to his feet and backing away, the cub grinning up at him, “what the hell was that?!”
“You’ll see,” the lion cub said, smirking, “very soon, too.”
“What the hell are you…” Josh said, but was cut off in mid sentence as the plain grey trousers that he had been clothed in since he had woken inside of the dreamworld started to go dark around the crotch, warm and soggy with the strong scent of lion as he soaked them thoroughly. “W-what?! No!” Josh shouted, taking two steps back, the trousers totally soiled and clinging down either side of his inner leg with urine. “Eeewww!”
“Awww, did the widdle baby wet himself?” the cub mocked, still looking up at him, “I hope you didn’t make a messie in your underwear, did you?”
“I most certainly did not!” Josh screamed, defensive, and tried to hide the soaked insides of his legs from the little lion, who laughed heartily, then, without warning, he felt his bowels involuntarily loosen and release. “No!” the big lion shouted, his tail raising and the seat of his underwear filling with a squishy, foul smelling substance.
“He did, too! Liar!” the cub mocked, sniffing dramatically, “Who’s a little baby?”
“You are!” Josh shouted out in defiance, “You’re the one in diapers!”
“Pfff, but I’m just a little cub,” the lion cub said, giving Josh a perfectly innocent smile, and accentuating his puffy, chubby cheeks and pouty lips, “you’re a big, strong, adult lion, aren’t you? Big lions don’t go poopies in their underwear… but you did!”
“S-shut up!” Josh shouted in reply, his lip starting to quiver.
“Aww, is baby gonna cry?” Josh’s cubby counterpart mocked, “Come on, cry. Cry like the little newborn that you are, Josh!”
The bigger lion tried to formulate a reply, but only managed to shout out his defiance with a long, arduous, “NO!” before breaking out into full on tears. Josh had noticed two things before becoming completely incoherent: one, that his voice had lost its deep, rumbling nature, been replaced by a high pitched screech, and that the cub was taller than he remembered. Much taller. As he shrunk, Josh tried to shout out, but failed, his words divulging into babble as he lost balance on his legs and fell onto his back, his wet and messy underwear having morphed into a thick, bulky pamper. His last words of defiance were, “N-not a baby…”
“Yes,” the cub said, now the one looking down on Josh, “Yes you are… and, until you realize this, you always will be…” it turned to walk away, but said, over its shoulder, “sleep, now. But we’ll meet again. You’ll never escape me, but I’ll never control you… I suppose we must learn to live together.”