They were at it for a few hours before Shadow had to stop to deal with some of her bodily needs. She was both hungry and in need of relieving herself. Normally she would just run off into the woods for a while to address both of those issues, but that wasn’t really possible here in the village. Luckily, over the course of her questioning, she’d learned a whole slew of new things, and one of them was definitely relevant.

'So, I’m hungry, and I need to poop, should I use that?' She asked, pointing at the chamber pot under the bed.

Annie laughed and showed her how to use the device, and after a little finagling, her business was done. Next was food.

'How do we get food here?' Shadow asked. Annie was already getting ready to leave and she wanted to know before getting cut off from her ability to write.

“Well, for you, we’ll be heading to a butcher. They butcher animals, which is a way of saying they cut animals apart into different specific parts and sell them.”

Annie’s face fell a little as she explained.

“Not my favorite place to visit, but it’s where we need to go to get you a good meal, my little carnivore.” She said it with a smile despite her dislike of the place, giving Shadow a quick rub on the head.

Shadow had learned about the term carnivore over the course of their travels. Apparently, her theory about the non-meat being bad for her was true. Shadelings were “obligate carnivores” which meant she ate meat, and only meat. She could handle eating plants a little bit, but too much would make her sick.

Apparently for shadelings (or maybe just her, it was hard to check), ‘too much’ was really not much at all. She’d tried to eat a little bit of Annie's or Jonas’s meal a couple of times, because they smelled so interesting, but she would always end up with an upset stomach. One bite was all it took to make her ill.

She’d decided to restrict herself to just licking their food if it smelled good after that, but Annie had politely told her that humans found eating licked food gross, and she didn’t want to waste food just because Shadow wanted to lick it. That had been the end of her forays in human plant-based foodstuffs.

Instead, when Shadow was curious about how a meal smelled, Annie would cook up whatever meat Shadow had managed to find for herself and season it the same way as the human meals. That was basically the best of both worlds. She really loved eating seasoned meat. It didn’t necessarily taste better than it did raw, but it was a great way to mix things up. After eating the same kind of rabbit for a few days in a row it was nice to change up the flavors a bit.

She was a little concerned with all the coins Annie was using for her though. Annie had paid for the room, and now she was going to pay for her food. She appreciated it but wondered how she could pay her back. She hoped the coins weren’t too hard to get.

Over the course of the journey, she’d made herself useful scavenging up herbs and berries for the humans, and could feed herself just fine, but if everything in the village worked off these coins...

She would need to come up with a new way to help if this was going to be a regular thing.

“Let’s go,” Annie said, after getting her clothing adjusted to her satisfaction.

Shadow would have to ask about it later.

Annie opened the door and just about ran into Jonas.

“Oh! You’re back! We were just heading out to grab some food for this one,” she mentioned, gesturing toward Shadow.

“Good. Mind if I join ya? Just let me drop this off first,” he said, tapping his much fuller-looking backpack. “Should have enough to last us till we get to Leeside.” He glanced around for a second, checking to see if anyone was nearby before looking at Shadow. ”Even got some salted meat for you. You may not be able to hunt as freely now that we’re leaving the forest.”

Shadow was curious about that, but they were already starting toward the stairs. She’d ask later.

Going down the stairs was slightly more harrowing than going up them. She could see just how far down she might fall, and the stairs seemed a lot steeper from this angle.

Despite her nerves, she got down without any real issue, although it took a bit longer with how tentative she was being. The journey wasn’t what she’d call relaxing. Better than climbing down a tree but not much.

I’ll have to get used to that, assuming all the taller houses have them.

Before long they were out in the street again. It seemed like word had spread, and they had quite a few people pointing and waving at them.

Jonas spoke up as they left the Inn.

“I found a butcher down the road,” he said, pointing in the direction of the business. “We should be able to grab something there.”

After a short walk down the street, they entered the butcher’s shop. The smell was already making her mouth water.

Wow, I’m hungry.

Shadow could identify the scent of a few different types of animals she’d run into before, most of them were larger than what she could hunt herself, but she did smell a few rabbits. A quick glance around and she spotted their carcasses hanging up a little deeper in the shop. None of them had any skin, though.

She tore her eyes away from the meat before it became too tempting to resist. She was already swallowing her saliva to prevent drooling. She really just wanted to pounce on it and dig in, but was aware that this meat was the butcher’s and they needed to trade for it. Speaking of which, she made sure to pay attention to how Annie went about making a purchase. She’d been distracted when Annie had paid for the room, and she still wanted to see how it was done.

But despite her intentions, her plans were stymied again when someone entered the door behind her. That someone was decidedly not human. She stared at it, her mouth hanging open slightly. Him. She could smell the difference. He was… he looked like a big… scaled… monster? He was structured more like a human though. He stood on his back legs and had a deer slung over his shoulder, holding on to it with one hand.

His face looked just like the face of the lizard things she'd fought with her swarm. Long and toothy. His hands had claws, but sported opposable thumbs and were clearly quite capable of gripping things. He was wearing clothing just like the humans did, minus the shoes. His feet were bare. His legs were shaped more like hers, but he was clearly more comfortable standing on them. He even had a tail! The man (lizard?) walked up and started waiting in line behind them as Annie and Jonas bought the meat. The lizard-person looked down at her and raised an eyebrow (eye ridge? There was no fur there.), his eyes glancing from her face, down to her collar, and then her belt and pouches. She noticed him sniff at her a little.

He… how is he just walking around looking like that? Aren’t giant reptiles monsters?

They were definitely capable of doing damage, and this one looked fierce.

She looked up at the butcher, and if the man had noticed the new arrival he certainly didn’t seem to care.

The lizard-man looked up at her humans.

“This thing yours? Tame?” He growled with a deep voice.

He can talk! That’s unfair! Also, I’m not a thing.

Her face fell a little at the term, but she could tolerate it. She'd heard it more than a few times in passing since coming here.

Both Annie and Jonas turned around to look at the lizard-man, looking a bit surprised at the sight of him, but not alarmed.

This person is normal then?

“Yes, this is Shadow. Think of her like a dog in the body of a shadeling, thanks to her magic collar,” Annie said, stepping forward to meet the man. Jonas took over purchasing the meat.

“Is she now?” The man crouched down, reaching a hand forward palm down. His expression remained serious, as far as she could tell. She wasn’t sure the lizard-man’s expression was translating right. She was basically keyed in on human expressions, and assuming from there.

Her emotions were warring a bit. She was incredibly jealous that this monster man could apparently walk around just fine without having to hide what he was at all. Even so, her curiosity won out. She wasn’t about to turn down an invitation to study this new type of person more closely. She approached him and sniffed his outstretched hand before rubbing into it. Or tried to, at least. He wouldn’t let her get her mouth too close and moved his hand to rest on the back of her neck. It made her a little nervous. He had claws, and his hands looked even stronger than the humans’.

“Easy there.” The man lightly gripped the back of her neck as she tried to move past for a closer look at the rest of his body. She stopped moving. Her heart rate elevated a little bit. There was an implicit threat there.

He glanced up at Annie. “Been nipped at by one too many Shadelings to trust her much further than that. Really is something interesting you’ve done here. You say she’s like a dog, but she's still moving like a shadeling. Ain’t acting anything like one though.”

“Ahh… yes, relating her to a dog is just a simple way of explaining it. She does effectively have the temperament of one, if not the exact mannerisms.”

“So I see.” He released her and started to pet her a bit, but wouldn’t allow her to get any closer than she was, stopping her if she tried.

“Alright, we’re ready to go,” Jonas said, stepping away from the butcher with a cut of meat tied in string.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, sir! I’m afraid we must be off,” Annie chimed with a smile.

“Yeah, pleasure.” The lizard-man nodded, leaving Shadow be and stepping around her to move to the butcher’s counter.

As Shadow’s group headed out her head was buzzing with the implications of what she’d just seen.

“I’m surprised to see any beastkin up this far north,” Annie remarked as they headed back, and Jonas nodded in acknowledgment.

"Never seen one like that before. Some sort of crocodilian?" Jonas asked back.

"Perhaps. I haven't seen that type either."

Shadow stared up at Annie. How had she not been told about this? Wasn’t this perfect? That man had basically been a monster, right?! Couldn’t… couldn’t she just pretend to be one of these beastkin? They apparently even came in different types!

Oh... the restrictions hurt so much right now, especially if they might not have been necessary. She was practically crawling out of her skin wanting to demand an explanation. Her hunger was essentially forgotten. The walk back to the inn was agony. As soon as they made it up to the room she almost threw herself onto the chair, writing out her question in a messy sprawl.

'I should be a beastkin!' she asserted, looking up at Annie with wide, imploring eyes.

She didn't like the pained look she was getting back after Annie had read what she wrote.