Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

P enny didn't actually shift for the entirety of the next two days, but a lot of the time, it felt like it. She did sleep a lot, and in between, she ate a lot. Ashley's mom, Holly, was a good cook, and her husband Jeff was an incredible baker. And when she wasn't sleeping or eating, she was practicing shifting.

The clothes she'd borrowed from Ashley were literally a lost cause, but she didn't lose any more. The partridge settled down some as she got used to shifting. Whenever being totally overwhelmed by it all started to creep up on her, Penny remembered Ashley's huge soft furry head pressing gently against hers, the bear's rich gentle voice calming her. It was like a blanket of reassurance she could draw around herself, making everything less panicky, even when Ashley had to go to work in the evenings. Penny didn't mind staying with her parents for a couple of days: everyone had been right about how much easier it became with some time to practice.

The partridge, unfortunately, remained dumb. Less panicky, but dumb. Penny read a lot about birds over the days she stayed with Ashley's parents. It turned out that 'bird-brained' wasn't really an insult at all: bird brains were unbelievably complex, their ability to navigate in the air as well as on the ground requiring a genuinely amazing cognitive power.

Partridges, however, were not known for their flight abilities. They were ground birds, and although her kind—red-legged partridges—could get into trees, they mostly didn't. They probably weren't dumber than any other average bird, either, but the truth was, Penny's partridge was not a shining example of its type. "Shouldn't that mean I'm dumb too?" she half-wailed at Ashley on the morning of Christmas Eve.

"Obviously not," Ashley said, amused. "We'll have to find you some other non-predator-shifters to talk to. Maybe it's not so much dumb as just…cautious."

Penny sighed. "It spent twenty minutes last night obsessed over the straw in your parents' Nativity scene."

Straw! the partridge said, suddenly alert. Good for nests!

For what felt like the hundredth time, Penny said, It's ceramic. Not good for nests.

The partridge cocked its head at her, one eye and then the other, exactly as it had done the night before, and in its mind, pecked at the straw before wailing, The straw hurts my face! as if this was a brand-new revelation.

Ashley tried very hard not to laugh as Penny mournfully repeated the investigation and conversation aloud. "The only reason it stopped last night was it thought the Christmas tree lights might be a fire, or the sun, or possibly?—"

A snack!!! The partridge provided an image of green and yellow bugs, about the same size as an LED tree light, and apparently its idea of the world's most delicious snack. Not mine, it said severely. Good for chicks.

Penny sighed. "A snack. It thinks they look like something chicks would snack on. You know, it might be dumb, but it's really focused on nests and safety and food. It might be a good parent. Although I don't know how that would work, with me expecting to be on the road a lot."

Ashley rolled onto her back, dragging Penny with her. "You know…I'm not going on the road with you, right?"

Penny pushed up on an elbow, frowning down at Ashley. "Yeah, I mean, you've got a full-on job here…?"

Ashley sighed, relaxing. "Yeah. I do. And it's not that I mind the idea of traveling some, but I'm a homebody. I like to have my roots down. I know Bill's given up a lot for Gwen…"

"Has he, though?" Penny flopped down. "The way I understand it he was going nuts trying to run two businesses and even if Gwen hadn't come along he would have needed somebody to take over the pub. So that's not really giving it up for her. And Gwen says the brewery itself doesn't need as much day-to-day supervision, and that coming along with the band sometimes means he can use that as a chance to sell Thunder Bear beer to other places. So is it really giving all that much up? It's just a change. And, look." She kissed Ashley's jaw. "I don't want to ask you to give anything up either. The band is going to have to figure out where we want to be based if Gwen and I both end up moving to Renaissance?—"

Ashley squeaked and Penny pushed up on her elbow again, laughing. "Well, wouldn't that make the most sense? Your life is here and I bet even people in Renaissance need housecleaners."

"Or crime scene cleaners," Ashley mumbled.

Penny laughed again. "Again with the preferring not to have trauma. No, really, Ash. I may have to go into Denver for three nights a week so we can practice, but yeah, I'm thinking my home base should be here. Where you are." She gave the blonde woman a dippy smile. "With my mate."

Ashley squeaked again and pulled Penny down into a hard hug. "You should think about it, not make any rash decisions?—"

"Right," Penny mumbled into her cleavage, "because there's nothing rash about magically assured love at first sight or suddenly changing into partridges."

"—but I've been—" Ashley caught up to what Penny had said and fought down giggles. "Well, yeah. The shifter world isn't quite like the true human world, is it? Anyway, I've been worried since the first time I saw you, Pen. How was that going to work? I thought maybe I was wrong about the mate bond, because…how could it work?"

"It'll work just fine," Penny promised. "We'll figure it out."

"In that case there's only one more huge hurdle to leap," Ashley said into her hair. "The Ten Thousand Torbens Christmas Eve."

There were not really ten thousand Torbens. Penny knew it. If they would all hold still for a minute, in fact, she was almost positive there were a very countable number of them.

One, the partridge said desperately. Seventeen. Ninety-two. Four.

Four, Penny agreed. Nineteen. Seventy-two.

Oddly enough, that settled the partridge down a little. So did Penny whispering, "That one's Jon," to herself. "That one's Bill, he's easy, he's got the pompadour. Well, and also Gwen's hanging on his arm, and I've known him for months now. That's Luke, he's the really blonde one. That's Laurie," she said with a dubious glance at the other long-haired Torben man who was right about Ashley's age. "Maybe I've got Jon and Laurie mixed up."

"They're the idiots," Ashley said fondly as she came over with a couple of beers and heard the last of that. "Jon's hair is darker and Laurie's mouth is fuller."

"If you say so," Penny muttered just before she sipped the beer. "Dang, that's really good. Is that the Thunder Blunder?"

"Laurie's speciality." Ashley nodded. "He was trying to hurry something along and reinvented a crystal malt. What are they doing ?" The answer to that was obviously 'getting hot wings ready to eat,' but she ignored her own question, going on with, "How many others can you identify?"

Penny snorted. "Your mom and dad. Bill's mom and dad. Cassidy over there, but only because there aren't nearly as many girls as there are boys. I know most of the rugged older men must be your dad's brothers, but besides Bill's dad, I don't know which is which. There are like seventy of you, Ashley! And you all look alike!"

The partridge popped an image of a bunch of partridges in a row into Penny's mind. The birds all looked more less identical. We look alike too! We're cute!

Despite herself, Penny laughed. Bears are pretty cute, too.

Bears are dangerous , the bird informed her.

If not friend, why friend-shaped?

That was too much for the partridge. It stared at her, then tucked his head under its wing and ignored her.

"It'll be fine," Ashley promised. "Nobody expects you to remember everybody tonight."

"But they all know who I am!"

Ashley gazed down at her with sympathetic amusement. "You do stand out, Pen."

"Because I'm five two and you're all eleven feet tall! I don't stand out, I'm a small herbivore who can be easily squished by the rampaging ungulates!"

There was a long pause as Ashley visibly tried not to laugh, and clearly struggled not to correct everything Penny had just said. We'll be squished, the partridge said sadly.

"Bears aren't ungulates," Ashley finally managed.

"And they don't rampage and partridges aren't herbivores." Penny stuck her lip out. "You know what I mean, though."

Ashley bent to kiss that pouty lip and bumped her nose against Penny's. "I do. I also want you to remember you can shift into a partridge fourteen feet high at the shoulder and gut any bear in this room."

Penny brightened. "You think?"

"Yes. You can start with my idiot cousins," Ashley said as Jon and Laurie put effort into waving them down. "Do you want to see what they want, or should we pretend we didn't see them?"

"Since they're two of the ten people in this room I can identify, let's see what they want." Beer in hand, Penny dragged Ashley through the crowd to a table, where her cousins had laid out a generous spread of hot wings. Ashley took a deep breath and her eyes started watering as Penny leaned over the table and examined the wings appreciatively. "I love hot wings. You guys make these?"

"Yep." Jon slid into the booth and gestured for Ashley and Penny to sit in the other side. "This is it. We're gonna settle the question of who screamed too much once and for all."

Penny, already sliding into the booth, laughed. "The question of what?"

Ashley froze and stepped back. "I told you I'm done with that argument."

Laurie tied his hair back with a dramatic action and sat next to his brother. "So when we were kids," he said to Penny, "we went to Disneyland."

Penny brightened. "Oh my God. Is this the Disneyland Incident Ashley mentioned? I must hear this!"

Ashley, with a groan, said, " No. Dudes, we settled this at Disneyland, it wasn't a big deal."

"It was totally a big deal," Jon said. "So we went on one of the roller coasters," he said to Penny. "And we're all, like, nine, right? So prime screaming ages."

"Only Ashley, " Laurie said in critical tones, "screamed and screamed and screamed . So much that me and Jon didn't get a chance to."

Penny burst out laughing, saw they were serious, and laughed again, even more loudly. "You don't have to take turns screaming on a roller coaster!"

"That's what I said!" Ashley half-shouted. "We had to go on it again so they could scream!"

"But she didn't let us." Jon narrowed his eyes dramatically at his cousin, who still hadn't sat down.

"Of course I didn't!" Ashley said indignantly. "You don't have to take turns screaming on a roller coaster!"

"So you see what we've had to put up with all these years," Laurie said to Penny. "She won't take responsibility for her actions. But we're gonna settle this once and for all. The team who eats their way through the hottest wings without giving up wins the debate and ," he said with a bright hopefulness in his eyes, "has to bring the other team to Disneyland so they can scream all they want."

Ashley said, "Absolutely not" at the same time Penny said, "Oh, you're on ."

"Penny!"

"We're getting a free trip to Disneyland out of this!" Penny protested. "C'mon, sit down, we can take these guys!"

"I'm a total hot wings weenie and they know it! That's why they're challenging us to this dumb thing! No way! I already know I'm right! I don't need to settle up some twenty-year 'beef' here because it's obvious everybody can scream at the same time on a roller coaster!"

Laurie sniffed. "Chicken."

"Yeah, chicken wings ," Penny shot back. "Roll out the milk bottles, babies, you're gonna need it."

"Penny!"

Penny beamed up at her girlfriend. "Trust me, Ash. We've got this." Her partridge was eyeing the table with cautious interest and spreading its wings. Hot wings?

Different from yours, Penny assured it.

Yes, the partridge agreed. My wings are not hot. They are feathery.

That's right, pal. Penny laughed as Ashley, with a groan, sat down.

Her cousins threw their hands in the air, cheering. "Hot! Wings! Hot! Wings! Hot! Wings! YEAAAAH!"

They drew attention despite the general noise in the pub. Gwen came over to the table, Bill trailing along behind her, and raised her eyebrows. "You guys are having a hot-wings-eating competition?" She laid a twenty on the table. "I got twenty on the girls."

Laurie stood up, shouting, "We got ourselves a bet going on here! C'mon, come lay your money down, girls versus boys, who can handle the hot? Watch us settle a twenty-year-old beef with the most ruthless competition of all! Ladies and gentlemen, come on down!"

Penny, laughing, leaned against Ashley's shoulder. "Is this what he's like at the faires?"

Ashley, glumly, said, "Yeah. He's great at pulling in a crowd. Pen, honestly, I'm terrible with hot foods."

"Only like ten people have ever tapped out of that hot wings celebrity thing," Penny said cheerfully, "and I think only one of them was a woman. The odds are totally in our favor."

"I'm going to die." Ashley put her head on the table and Penny, laughing, rubbed her back.

"It'll be fine. I promise. Would your mate lie to you?"