She looks hesitantly at me, before gingerly grabbing my hand, her eyes locked half a body below mine. Sigh. I pull her to her feet, then grab the shower head and turn on the water. After quickly washing away the little pool of bloody slime, I turn to her. “Water.” Her fur is a lot more water resistant than the sparse hairs covering a human body, but with a bit of ruffles the water seeps in.

I’m not sure why she looks so guilty, as far as I can tell she only made a little bit of a mess. Well, I have scolded her for that several times the last days. Since I’m going to be a sort of parental figure I have decided to be fair and reasonable, or at least try to. When she does something she shouldn’t, I first ask for her account of the event. Then I try to make her understand why she shouldn’t do it.

Unfortunately she doesn’t always understand, and with her lack of knowledge too many things become ‘don’t do it because I say so’. Oh well. For now I just wanna make sure she is fine, then I can consider scolding her. She seems to be regretting whatever happened, and to begin with I’m not sure if it’s her fault. There, nice and wet.

I simply say “Eyes.” and she closes them. A bit of shampoo later, and the fur and hair on her head smells flowery. By now her tail is also lazily swishing back and forth, only stopped by me soaping it up. Well, I use shampoo on her entire body. I have considered buying some pet shampoo, but I like that she smells like flowers.

I spend a bit more time cleaning her crotch than I find comfortable, but take solace in the fact that she’s finally accepted the mind bond. My body, of course, has noticed what’s in front of me, but I ignore it like the other times I’ve showered her. Okay, she’s clean now, and it doesn’t look like she’s bleeding or anything.

“｢{Friendly, curious}What were you doing?｣” I’m pretty sure I know, but I ask for fairness sake, and perhaps to find out what went wrong. Her wolven face twists into a frown as her tail retreats between her legs. I give her time to decide how to respond, and I turn my attention to her groin. I spread her open and gently slide a finger over her opening, making sure not to invade or hurt her.

Hmm, no blood and the slime seems to be gone. Sniff, sniff. There is a bit of that smell, but it’s probably just lingering. I occasionally forget just how good my sense of smell is now, but I don’t think I would notice without the improvements. At least she’s not injured, I think. I stand up and put a hand on her shoulder, then repeat my question, looking her in the eyes. She averts her eyes. Time for a more direct approach, then.

“｢{Friendly, worried}Were you pleasing yourself again?｣” I ask, transmitting a scene I’ve seen several times the last days; the image of her shamelessly enjoying herself. The apartment only has one bedroom, so the closest thing she has to her own room in one corner of the living room. And I have to go through it to get to the other rooms. Not that she seems to care about modesty - I refuse to believe she doesn’t notice me given her acute senses.

She nods weakly. To the core of the ‘mystery’ then. “｢{Worried, curious}What happened?｣” She looks up at me and visibly swallows. Her eyes dart around before settling on me, then she transmits her memories.

I see myself leave the apartment. Things become blurry, then I feel hunger through her. In the kitchen a hand -Tåke’s- stretches out and opens the fridge. A memory of me appears, saying she can eat the leftover sausages if she gets hungry. She takes one from its plastic bag, then returns to her usual spot on the middle of the floor, slowly snacking on her food.

After eating half of it, another kind of hunger washes over her along with a novel use for the sausage. Not hesitating a moment, she decides to stick it in herself, but even I am startled by the sudden sensation of cold, and she drops it. She looks at it with both kinds of hunger, but hesitates as she recalls me saying several times not to take food from the floor after she dropped it.

After a moment, she gives up on it and goes to grab the last two sausages. One is quickly devoured, and the chill of the second is not as sudden as the first. I block the sensations in order to not be affected, and an indistinct time later a smell not quite like blood takes memory-Tåke out of her trance.

She sniffs the air and quickly locates the source of the scent. She looks down and removes her toy, immediately noticing the slimy substance with hints of blood. In a display of impressive flexibility, she bends over and stares at herself. Her tongue comes out; it tastes of iron. But not quite like blood.

She looks from her tool to her groin and a sense of dread slowly grows as she recalls how mad I got when she dropped one of the jars I was using to experiment with plant-based dyes. When she suddenly notices the red substance slowly flowing down her pelvis, she drops the sausage and scrambles to her feet, rushing into the bathroom.

She enters the shower area, or ‘cleaning rain room’ as she seems to think of it, and looks at the knobs. She tries to remember my attempt at teaching her to use them and twists one of them. Nothing happens. She twists the other, and cold water washes over her. She jumps away with a yelp.

After a moment of staring at the unceasing water, she enters the icy cold water and twists the knob again. Nothing seem to happen, and she twists the other just in time for the suddenly scorching water to last only half a second before stopping, just as suddenly as it came. For a moment she doesn’t know what to do, looking at the water all over the modern tiles. The knot in her stomach grows bigger, and in the end she sits down in the corner where I found her.

The entire set of memories were transmitted in only a few seconds, and I am left with only an overall memory of it, as if she had explained it with words, but more… intimate. I take a deep breath. Okay, so I can be almost a hundred percent sure she’s not injured. What else would make blood down there?

…

The answer would be obvious wouldn’t it? I can’t really deny it any more: It’s a period. Shiiit. I’m already basically raising a kid with the body of a teenager. I don’t- I really should’ve seen that coming, shouldn’t I. Wolves being in heat comparable to a period, though for humans the bloody stuff only comes if the egg isn’t fertilized. And with her not only mostly staying with me, but with both me and her aggressively chasing away canine males, it’s only natural that none are fertilized.

I feel a tinge of pity for her and any female wolfkin that may come later, as they seem to be affected by both the heat of a canine and monthly period of a human. Ahh- I really hope it isn’t monthly. Though, after this she will hopefully be a bit less aggressively clingy. Then again, if she has the libido of a human teenager…

Also, when we’ve finished uplifting the wolves, the resulting society should be rather interesting. At least if humans don’t force all their values on them. Some things would be good, to keep order and to reduce cultural friction, but we don’t need to force our rather subjective beliefs and taboos on them.

Hmm, I should really get some sociologists involved with the uplifting. And people who can argue about morality and ethics, and people with knowledge they will need to have a functioning society- Actually, it might be a good idea to make that Uplifting committee to handle those decisions. Yeah, less responsibility for me. It sounded like they were already gathering a diverse group, but that group will probably need to invite more people.

That’s for later, though. For now, let’s give her a reassuring hug. Despite intentionally standing a bit offset from her and trying my hardest to think of her soft and now flowery-smelling fur instead of the lowest point of contact between us, the mind bond makes it abundantly clear that her libido is nowhere near gone, and she’s doing the opposite of ignoring it.

I push her away. Agh! She has clearly been sexually frustrated lately, and while I’ve tried to keep a polite distance from it, I’m not exactly unaffected. Intellectually, I have decided to stay completely away from that kinda stuff until the Uplifting quest for her is complete, but emotionally she makes that very difficult. She so clearly wants it, so getting consent wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is whether or not it would be ‘valid’…

But, no. No. For now… I should close off a part of the living room with curtains, so she has her own ‘room’. And I should make a rule about using arbitrary objects as sex toys, just to make sure. Actually, I might as well get her a proper one. Maybe I should get one for experimenting with human forms as well? Either way, I’m not gonna go to that kinda store without a disguise.

While the initial shock seems to have faded, Tåke still seems a bit down, so the rest of the day should be a bit lazy. I make sure Tåke has calmed down, and make her wear her ‘indoor clothes’ to calm me down. Her ‘indoor clothes’ is a simple shawl and wrap skirt combo, covering up what should be covered as long as she doesn’t move too wildly.

“｢{Firm}Put on the underwear.｣”

She shakes her head fiercely.

“｢{Firm}I know you don’t like how it feels. {Firm, compassionate}But this is the kind you like the best! {Firm}But it’s just in case it’s a period//you bleed again!｣”

She looks at me, then the ‘boy shorts’, then back to me. She reluctantly reaches out and picks them up, worry at the the prospect of more bleeding at the front of her mind. At least she’ll wear them now. If it’s really a period I’ll need to buy stuff for that? I can make make very absorbent silk, though. Actually, if it seems to be that I should get her looked at by someone who knows about those kinda things…

Ugh, her not being a human, but not quite being a ‘mere animal’ makes things so tricky. Like, biologically, is she more wolf or more human? In between? Something entirely different? Will the lifespan be only a couple decades? Fifty years? Human-like? Longer? Which is one reason why the research project the psychologist mentioned sounds so interesting.

Oh well. Let’s see if I can’t make that ‘room’ for Tåke. Measure first. Then measure again. Only wanna cut once, after all. This corner will work. It does eat up my VR space, but if I plan this out it won’t be a problem. If I use something like curtains I can just pull them to the side, and she won’t have anything large standing around. That way I can still use the space. Not that I’ve been in VR lately.

I should also get something for her to sleep on. She seems to like the hammock, but I can’t really hang it here. A simple mattress on the floor could work, but let’s make that the plan B. Actually, how do I hang the curtains? If I connect it on two walls and hang the middle from the roof I can’t fully pull it to the side, and I might have to drill into the roof. Suction cups tend to not be very good…

Ahh, why am I thinking about this mundanely? I can probably achieve it with some of my abilities. I could make it just hover, that’d be cool. A simple [Force Magic] enchant should be enough. No wait, I’d need to keep it at a stable height and not float around. So a simple enchant, connected to something to work as an anchor of sorts. Ooh, many ideas to be had in that direction. But let’s stop and backtrack before I dive too deep, and look for options.

Hmm, aspects, somehow? Or maybe make the curtain purely magical. An illusion, maybe? I think I could figure out some sort of proper sound magic, too. No, let’s keep a middle ground of mundane and magical. Huh, there’s spider web in the corner. Ooh, I wonder if a scaled up spider web would work. I can make it sticky, and it’d be easy to make small pockets for her to store her clothes in.

Yeah, now that I think about it that could be really stylish. I would wanna plan it out so that it looks intentional, but I think I might be able to look stylish, even. Or what if I combine it with the anchor and levitation idea? I’d want multiple anchors for stability, though. While I’m at it I could set those up around the apartment, then maybe hook them up to a larger magical array.

I could take all the needed magic away from the things I want to levitate, needing only a tag of sorts. I could later expand on the system to do a lot of things. So first I will want to make a basic levitation enchantment, then get it working with an anchor, then multiple anchors and offload the actual magic to the anchors, which would need to be connected…