This month's themes are paw worship, emphasis on style, emphasis on physical detail.

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1

On a stone ledge, on the edge of a sunsetlit alley, there sits a White Wolf. He wears knee high boots with buckles and baggy trousers tucked inside them, a puffy undershirt of navy blue with an ornamented leather vest saddled over it, a feathered cap of maroon, all cotton and velvet. He holds with shaky paws a lute of warped wood, on which he strums a couple of strings. The first few notes sound bittersweetly uninspired; so do the following notes. But the music is played with a practised hand. It is the sound of a virtuoso in fall.

A fox I knew, who had paws
Perfect paws, without flaws

The notes fumble to a stop. The White Wolf stares shrewdly at the lute then firmly adjusts the strings. He attempts to posture comfortably, before playing a modified opener of the last tune. Sucking in shallow breath, he improvises another couplet.

The bear’s paws, whoppers
Burly, padded clodhoppers

“No, dammit.”

New scratch marks join the rest on the lute. The White Wolf restarts the music again and again, until the melody is as broken and bruised as his patience. A shout. A weak curse. A fox mother steers herself and her tittle-tattling cubs away from the alley.

Soon, the sunset is done, the music dead, and the White Wolf’s slouched in the darkness too far for the street lamps to light, clawing into his face.

Another failed performance.

A few civilians stroll the cobblestoned streets of that clocktowered boulevard and notice the White Wolf in the alley with shoulders heaving and sleeves soaked. A pity. The civilians carry on, mentioning the wolf’s familiarity or steering the conversation entirely.

Later, when he’s dried his tears he picks up his lute and begins to play again. A fox dressed in colorful noble’s robes passes by, and hears the music. The buckles of his boots fall silent. He clutches hard into his ironed silk white shirt, mangling the bottom of it with wrinkles.

“If that isn’t Mosaic’s famous improvisation…” Those boots pace into the alley. “Mosaic the Paw Singer… The Kitsurin Forest sensation.”

The voice and the boots edging his vision seem to aggravate Mosaic, but he has only strength enough to shoo the fox with his left paw. “There’s no sensation here. The ghost of the music is gone from me.”

“Why, great bard, why has the ghost gone? Why are you so soppy? Look at you. You have the pride of a homeless person.”

“You keep your mouth shut about the homeless.” Mosaic does not lift his head. “I was the sensation once, I’ll give you that. But I’ve sung all I can sing. Seems the gods have gone to inspire someone else.”

“Paw Singer, I’m Landon, Left Paw of the lynx Neera Fluffpads. We’ve been traveling Kitsurin trying to seek you out, so that you might sing for her… You might not know of Neera, but she’s been building a reputation on both the sides of the sea for having the greatest of paws in all the Continents North and South.”

“Best paws.”

“Interest you?”

“This Neera of yours. I’ve never heard her name pass mine ears till now.”

“Rumors of your songs carry across the sea, Mosaic. We sailed to the Northern Continent for you, so it’s been disheartening. But… when I heard you improvising lyrics just now… I knew…” Landon smiles hopefully. “Surely you still have some of that ghost in you? Your songs we’ve heard covered… they’re somewhere in those pitiful bones of yours, I’m certain!”

Mosaic’s eyes are thoughtfully glassy. “If this Neera of yours has paws worth singing about…”

“A goddess’ paws. When you see them, you will believe.”

Landon reaches out a paw for him to take, and there are two choices. Mosaic chooses to believe.

2

Under the golds and greens of the leaves of Kitsurin Woods, a bonfire blazes, danced around by White Wolves and foxes and kirin dressed in ghostly fabrics and silver necklaces and bracelets. Long flowing sleeves and buckled sashes whirl with grace to the playing of harps and flutes and tambourines of musicians, the merry music floating through the air, which is rich with the smells of barbecued kebabs and imported spices and sweet beers. Back a ways there’s a caravan with a ledge on the back of it, whereupon a couple of drinkers sit and socialize and cheerily clink glasses. These drinkers flank a large lynx, who’s at least a third more the size of anyone else. The lynx’s fur is a dusty snow color. The fur draping the length of her lower jaw flows like a pair of feathery earpieces. She leans back and smiles, a silver necklace round her neck soaking in the bonfire light. On her head billows the hood of a cloak of verdant green clasped with paw etched brooches, and beneath that cloak is a matching top and short skirt.

Her footpaws swishing teasingly above ground: they’re longer than the length of anyone here’s thighs. To handle their weight you’d have to hold them with two hands. Gorgeous footpaws, at that. On the soles, they’re a creamier shade of the dusty snow pelt, and have plush pawpads of marble black. They beg to be caressed.

She kicks her paws up and wiggles her fluffy toes with claws retracted. A couple of dancers notice the invitation. Arm in arm, they prance out of the merry-go-round bonfire dance towards her. The two of them, a wolf and kirin, they take the sides of her feet in their paws, and then nudge and rub their muzzles into the lush fur, and draw their tongues over the length of the savory furred flesh. In the tastes and fragrances of her feet, they become profoundly engrossed: the tones that bring to mind chai tea and peppermint, the pleasant musk of the female feline’s fur…

As the wolf and kirin submit to her footpaws, the lynx croons. She curls her toes around the males’ heads to hold them in the kneading flesh of her paws. The wolf and kirin begin to slurp and nuzzle, ruffling up their faces, murmuring how hers are a goddess’. At that, she laughs a frolicking laugh, and tells them that flattery is a skill requiring of more than untampered truth.

“Ahh…” she says, two figures appearing in the bonfires of her eyes. On the left her Left Paw Landon, on the right the Paw Singer himself, both of them on the approach. “It is true what they say of his fur. A bright white beneath the moon. It is almost as pretty as mine.

“Paw Singer, dear,” she calls out; “I’ve been restless, almost worried you were merely a myth of the north. But you are here now, the real Mosaic? And you will give me a sweet song? Sing of how my paws are the greatest in all the Continents North and South?”

She retracts her feet back, shooting a sly gesture of eyes at the wolf and kirin. They nod and step away, allowing the Paw Singer to step forward and witness her footpaws. Plainly, they’re past size twenty, thirty even—large, even in proportion to the lynx, who may lay anywhere between eight-and-a-half to nine feet tall.

Mosaic wipes some saliva from his lips with the inside of his arm. “I don’t think I’ve seen paws like yours since—”

“You never have.”

Neera slowly raises her foot, pressing the whole flat of it against Mosaic’s undershirt. Instinctually, Mosaic almost grabs it, but remembers the singer’s code, and staggers back with a minute moan.

The lynx snaps her fingers, and the music jerks to a stop. Everyone’s eyes snap toward her. “My paws are not the third best, the second best, nor the best since,” she says. “What are they?”

“The greatest North and South,” chants everyone.

“Again.”

“The greatest North and South,”

Neera purrs, turning to Mosaic. “And you, dear, will say so in my song…” She had shoved off the caravan, and was petting Mosaic’s chin in her velvety paws. “But I will not have you singing lies about me.”

Mosaic’s tail erects stiffly. “Miss Neera?”

“I know of your sorry singer’s code: look, but don’t touch. Dear, you’re going to have to get a little more physical than that.”

The crowd cheers, but Mosaic protests, “It’s not proper, Miss Neera…”

She tilts her head, staring into his eyes. “You have a musician’s block, I’ve heard. I will give you a song that will unblock you. I will give you your ghost, your reason to live. But before I give you anything, you will get down on your knees, and you will worship my paws as you would a goddess’.” Her stroking of his chin has become a needling grip. She releases him now.

Someone rolls drums. The crowd cheers louder. Neera smiles and turns from a speechless Mosaic, slipping past the drunken folk on the caravan.

Her voice calls back, “Do not be shy of paws, singer.”

What is there for me to lose? Mosaic follows her to the back of the caravan. She thrusts aside curtains, permitting the singer into the interior, where there’s a plush lavender chair accommodating of her size. She sits in it. The atmosphere is hazed with spicy incenses of cinnamon and rose and vanilla, which only seems to enrich the Paw Singer’s sense of beauty seeing the lynx’s footpaws, a sight exclusive to him. One of her footpaws she raises and wiggles the toes of at Mosaic, and his heart starts to drum. His mind goes to the lute in the case at his back.

The ghost has returned and speaks lyrics for his hands to play notes to and his mouth to recite. If he shrugs off this urge to play a song now, he shall lose it all, the legend of Neera Fluffpads and her paws, whose very toes…

This isn’t all he’s thinking, but neither is he only thinking, but he has taken off his lute case and now he hurriedly undoes the clasps, and as carefully as one lifts fine china, he lifts it out of the case…

“Oh, Paw Singer.” Her voice steals him from whatever daemon’s possessed him. “You have nothing to sing yet. Put your lute down.”

The words stab like a command. The Paw Singer’s hand slowly releases the lute and lets it drop on a puffy magenta pillow.

She smiles. “To me.”

The White Wolf drops to his knees before Neera’s footpaws. He feels hesitant to handle her lifted footpaw despite the invitation, as it feels to the singer like taboo. It could probably cover his torso, that footpaw…

Neera pushes the sole of the paw into his face, which almost knocks him over, but he breaks his fall by catching her around the ankle, and finds his face brightly blushing, stuffed deeply into the fur of the paw. The lynx is so large, the fur is so thick it’s like nuzzling a polar bear’s pelt—yet, so much more sensuous. She chirrs, and her paw is as warm as the sound, stimulating and cooling…

“Have you ever seen another mortal with paws like mine?”

The Paw Singer thinks, I don’t think I’ve ever come across paws more worthy of my knees bent…

There’s the second footpaw that prods against his cheek, as he holds the other foot up. He finds his face squished between the two foamy, heated creatures. He presses his thumb-claws into the sides of one. He licks into its folds, burrowing deeper and deeper with canine nose and splitting, drooling canines and his tongue lapping and slurping. Now and then he’s teased, thrust away from the object to be adored and savored, by the other footpaw. His fur gets ruffled, grows hot with the excitement of the blood. The leather vest he wore gets thrown over the lute on the pillow. He buttons his puffy undershirt, and there goes that too. And as he’s busy comforting himself, one of her footpaws sends him sprawling into a scattering of plump satin pillows.

She responds to a sensual growl with one of her own, drapes her hooded cloak on the chair, and then lithely bounds onto all fours and pads across the wood and swivels to face him. She kicks the plump black center pad of her hindpaw into his face, roughhousing.

With a blush the White Wolf gnaws over the smooth black beans of Neera’s powerful footpaw, cuddling and caressing the paw with his tiny handpaws. “No. I have never seen another, Neera.”

Her tail swishes. “Then are mine paws not the greatest?”

The Paw Singer prepares to respond when the lynx muscles into his face with her strong footpaw, waterboarding him beneath the layers of cushions and her paw stocking pound after pound of pressure on that sweet, warm kiss of padding. The singer groans into the muffler that are her paw pads, but the lynx only exercises more of the feral power of her springunloaded haunch.

“What’s that, my little toy?”

All that come out are whimpers. Mosaic’s communication of choice involves profuse head nods and his paws groping down the sides of her hindpaw. He hugs the top of the paw, blatantly contributing to the pressure on his face.

Apparently, she accepts this as a valid answer, and slackens the pressure, only for Mosaic to gasp with great arousal and speak. “If you would give me this pleasure again, after tonight, I would happily—”

“You’re satisfied, then? Have you realized my paws are beyond a mortal’s? That those you’ve sung for before me have paws inferior?”

Mosaic answers, luteless.

Songs of the past will pale when compared
To the pieces to come your paws have heired
Songs, sweet as gales now filling my lungs
Of the scent of your fur and the incense of myrrh,
I predict to procure while tonight is still young
But till sung, this singer shall giggle and grr
And nibble your fur and wriggle and purr…

“Myrrh, indeed.” Neera’s eyes narrow into smiles. “You turn even a simple yes into flattery. I wouldn’t mind keeping you around as a permanent toy, if this freestyling of lyric comes frequent to you.”

“Yes, and yes…”

“Hmmm?”

“These truly are a goddess’ paws.”

“And I am your goddess?”

“And my muse.”

When the Paw Singer says this, ripples of mass roll over the lynx’s pelt, but he does not notice this. Nor does he notice, over the course of an hour, that the lynx who was already large—having brought a new performer into her circle of worship to strengthen her influence—gradually grows larger. Within that hour he kisses over her paws, and when she’s gone back to her chair she points to a basin of steaming water, and he brings it to her paws and bathes them, and when he has dried them with a cotton towel he soaks them in oils and fragrances, massaging them, spilling compliments about her paws in absentminded compositions of lyric. Although her height of earlier is uncertain (between eight-and-a-half and nine-foot), she has certainly grown a couple of inches since meeting Mosaic, and so have her feet a couple of centimeters.

An hour and a half has passed when Neera hops out of the curtained caravan. A great cacophony of cheering greets her approach toward the crowd of the bonfire. Beside her a sheepish wolf lets her stroke his head.

3

“We have a new performer tonight,” the giant lynx says to the crowd. “And he has written a beautiful song for me. Now please, settle down for a moment, my lovely performers”—when she waves her paw, hushes of voices and instruments meet a pronounced silence—“and let him play.”

The crowd falls silent. Mosaic steps forward into the bonfire light. He holds in confident paws a lute of brilliantly glowing wood, with which he strums a couple of strings. The first notes sound the way ginger ales and apple ciders taste: hearty and sweet. So do the following notes. The music larks, capers, loves.

He sings, luted.

My soul rekindled by kindling soles
Of whom inspires me solely
The goddess of paws to me so kind
Who sought my song in Kitsurin
Saddened to see me low fallen
She lo, swept me off mine feet
I fell for hers, and ever since
Forever honed, mine unfettered verse
Of flush face wolf with paw of print
Upon thine cheek: that goddess Neera’s
Awesome kiss of priceless warmth
I’m prided saying proves Life’s worth

When Mosaic finishes his song, there is but the sound of that last note resonating, and then a sudden burst of cheers and the instruments and voices of the other musicians, and the gay galloping dances of the dancers, and melody picks right up where Mosaic’s ended.

The other singers sing.

The warmth of her paws
Like cocoa unthaws!
The fur of her feet
No ordinary fleece!
Ah what I would do
To for an hour or two
Have fun with those paws,
Or till summer unthaws,
Till November is June
And say never adieu

And Mosaic jumps into the music, with a solo.

The whole world North and South
Has none other as Neera’s
Heed these words, for I have sung
Of the softest paws beneath the sun
I have sung of honeycombs and hives
Woods where boughs of acorn thrive
Of bulbous pears and pearly plums
Watermelons large as drums
Of all the children Nectar had
But nothing sweet as Neera’s pads
So till the last harpstring is strung
May fame of Neera’s name be sung

The initiation is over. And now Mosaic is one of the forty-four who live their lives performing for the Goddess of Paws Neera Fluffpads, multiplying her reputation with every dance and song.

And so ends the Song of Paws. To this day, Neera Fluffpads travels the North Continent with the performers who worship her, spreading word of her paws, embedding her name in history, history that will become legend. And she travels with her favorite singer, Mosaic Paw Singer. Someday, all singers will sing their song.