Chapter 271: Is She Eating Poop?

Althea’s entire face screwed up.

Her eyes clamped shut, her nose wrinkled all the way up to her forehead, and her tongue came back out of her mouth and stayed out. Then she opened her eyes and looked at her mother.

Tera actually flinched.

That was the look of a cub who had just worked out that she had been deliberately deceived by the one person in the world she trusted most.

Althea raised one hand and pushed at Tera’s chest, head cranked all the way to the side, as far from the bar as her neck would go.

"Nas-ty!"

"Althea, it’s—"

"Nasty!"

"It’s not nasty, it’s—"

"YUCK!"

She shoved so hard she launched herself clean out of her mother’s arms. She hit the floor on all fours, scrabbled, and then bolted the entire length of the shelter to the far wall, where she turned around, sat down, and began scrubbing at her nose with both hands as though her nose had anything whatsoever to do with the taste of chocolate.

Tera stayed crouched exactly where she was, holding the chocolate bar, flabbergasted.

’...Wow. Okay.’

The two reactions she had gotten so far were nothing she had expected.

This was crazy!

Then she turned and held the bar up toward Nadia, whose eyes were following the chocolate bar with a transfixed look.

Her nose was twitching nonstop, and Tera wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing.

"Do you want a bite?"

Calis looked concerned, his hold on Nadia tightening as if she were his own cub. "Is that okay? It really doesn’t seem like she will enjoy it too."

Nadia, however, leaned forward to take a bite.

She went completely rigid.

A shudder rolled through her entire body, starting at her shoulders and travelling all the way down, and her tail shot bolt upright into the air. Her little jaw worked once. Then her tongue came out, and she licked her own lips, slowly, and her pupils blew wide open.

Nadia’s head jerked up, and she looked straight at her mother with her eyes gone absolutely enormous.

And for a reason Tera could not have explained to anybody, a shudder went through her too.

She might have just opened Pandora’s box.

’Oh no.’

Nadia grabbed the bar, and Tera nearly screeched.

"WANT!"

"Nadia—"

"WANT! WANT! WANT! I WANT!!!!!"

"Whoa—whoa, wait, wait, wait—"

Tera’s jaw dropped, and she soon found herself struggling to keep a ferocious cub from dragging the chocolate bar from her hands.

"Give! Give It!"

Calis tried to pull Nadia away. "Na—"

"Give it to me, Mommy!"

Nadia planted both feet flat on Calis’s chest and kicked.

She launched clean off him, sailed through the air of the shelter with the bar clutched to her chest, and landed on the mat in a crouch. Calis staggered back a full step, arms still curved around the exact shape of a cub that was no longer in them, and the look on his face was pure blank shock.

Tera’s was no better. She was still holding on to the little wrapper from which Nadia had broken most of the chocolate.

The little bear cub slobbered all over the bar. She sucked on it and licked it and smacked her lips and made small delighted noises the entire time, and chocolate went absolutely everywhere. Up both cheeks, across the bridge of her nose, down her chin, into her hair, onto her hands, onto the floor.

She rolled over onto her side with it and carried right on.

"Hehehehehehe..." Nadia giggled as she feasted on the chocolate. "Hehehe."

Across the shelter, Althea had stopped scrubbing her nose and was staring at her sister in open horror.

How could she possibly enjoy that?

Tera had not moved.

’What the hell is happening?’

That was the precise moment Ermin and Xavi walked into the shelter.

They came in mid-conversation, and both of them stopped dead in the doorway.

On the floor of their mate’s shelter, their daughter was lying on her side, smeared from her forehead to her chin in a dark brown substance, holding a wet brown lump in both hands and enthusiastically licking it.

The conversation ended.

"IS SHE EATING POOP?" Ermin stared at Calis and Tera. "She is eating poop! Why are you not stopping her?!"

Tera raised her hand. "Ermin—"

"NADIA." Xavi was already across the room. "NADIA, DROP IT. DROP IT RIGHT NOW—"

"WHERE DID SHE EVEN FIND IT?" Ermin had both hands in his hair. "WHOSE IS IT?"

’WHOSE?!’

’HAVE MY CUBS EATEN SHIT BEFORE?!’ It was Tera’s turn to be mortified.

As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t been an absent mother at all, and she had never seen her cubs eat poop. Neither had her mates mentioned it before.

Why did they sound like this was not new behaviour?

Calis started, "IT’S NOT POOP—"

"IT IS IN HER MOUTH, TERA!"

"HEHE," said Nadia, who kept munching on it.

Tera felt like a mother who had just exposed her cubs to drugs.

Was Nadia already high on it?!

Xavi paused.

He had gotten within arm’s reach of Nadia and gone down on one knee to take the thing off her when his nose worked.

"Ermin. This does not smell like poop."

Ermin stopped mid-pull of his own hair. "What?"

"It does not smell like it." Xavi sniffed once more, frowning harder.

Xavi reached out for the lump in his daughter’s hands.

Nadia spun her entire body away from him, hunched over the bar with both arms wrapped around it, and screeched at the top of her lungs.

"MINE!"

Xavi froze with his hand out.

"Nadia—"

"UMPH!!"

She shuffled further along the floor on her knees, back turned to all three adults. Nadia curled protectively around her prize and went straight back to business.

"Num, num, num, num, num!"

Aside from her daughter’s newfound addiction, Tera was slowly disturbed by the mess she was causing in her shelter.

Xavi slowly lowered his hand.

He looked at Ermin, who looked back at him. Neither of them had ever been told mine by that cub in their lives, about anything, and certainly not in that voice.

Both of them turned and looked at Tera like she was supposed to have all the answers.

She faced them with absolutely nothing useful on her face.

Then Ermin’s eyes went down to her hands.

She was holding a strange torn object, and the same thing that was smeared on Nadia’s face seemed to be what Tera had on her hands too.

The two of them started walking toward her.

Tera laughed nervously and lifted the wrapper slightly, like that explained anything.

"Okay. So, this is just one of the many things—"

Ermin was not listening to any of that. Ermin was staring at her hands with a look of pure horror.

"Tera..."

Calis, understanding why Ermin looked at Tera like that, quickly interjected. "It is not poop."

Ermin looked at him.

"I also tasted it."

Ermin’s jaw dropped.

"It is not poop," Calis continued. "It tasted nasty."

A silence landed in the shelter.

Both Xavi and Ermin turned their heads, very slowly, and looked at Nadia.

Nadia’s eyes were half closed in what could only be described as bliss as she kept on making the same smacking noises.

Over something that tasted nasty.

"Nasty?" Ermin’s voice came out faint. "Then why is she—"

"I don’t know," Tera said.

"She is enjoying it."

"I know."

There was a tug at Ermin’s leg.

Althea had crossed the entire shelter at speed and was now gripping his legs to haul herself up against him.

She was reaching for his arms with the urgency of a cub who had important information to deliver and had finally found a responsible adult.

Ermin bent and scooped her up without even looking down.

Althea immediately pointed at her sister.

"Nasty!" she reported.

"Yes..."

"Nasty!"

"Yes."

She pressed her face into his shoulder, thoroughly vindicated.

Ermin looked at Tera’s hands, hesitating until Xavi ran one finger straight through the chocolate smeared across the back of her hand.

"Xavi—"

He put it in his mouth.