<html> <head> <style> .hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } </style> </head> <body class='hmmessage'>    "Hiya, cutie."   Drift groaned, his head aching, and a rock of some sort digging into his side.  He opened his eyes and a pair of vulpine faces looked down on him.  His vision swam for a moment more before the two faces joined into one, a dusky-furred vixen backlit by the moon.   "Are you all right?" she asked, brow furrowing with concern.  "That was one nasty hit you took."   "What happened?" he asked, his voice slurred and groggy.   The vixen laughed.  "You ran into my tree, you silly oaf.  Here you come galloping along and, whammo, right into the branch I was sleeping on.  Quite a way to wake a girl up, I must say."   Her hands came up, gesturing a mighty collision as she spoke, and Drift's blurry vision noticed something odd about them.  They were big, and oddly shaped- Wings!  The samoyed blinked his eyes clear, rubbed them just to be certain, and gaped.  This was no vixen!  Large, leathery wings stretched from under her arms all the way down to her ankles, the last two fingers of her hands greatly extended as the ribs of those wings.  "You're...  what are you?" he asked, trying to sit up.  The motion didn't work out quite as well as he'd intended, since his taur body didn't quite bend the right way for what he'd originally had in mind, and he instead rolled to bring his feet under him once he remembered what form he was in.  "Oww..."  His right hand darted to his head, which ached tremendously.  Already, he could feel a lump forming just ahead of his right temple.   The strange fox-creature put her hands on his left shoulder, gently helping to prop him up.  "Easy, easy now.  Take it slowly.  You really clobbered yourself... you've been out for nearly five minutes."  Her voice was soft, airy, and very feminine.  "I was about to call for the healers and to the hells with waking up the neighbors."  Her left wing rested against his chest and belly, and she gently stroked her wing-fingers over the gleaming white fur.  When she saw him looking down at her wing in confusion, she stopped and ducked her head, her voice embarrassed.  "Sorry...  you're just so handsome," she said.  "All that soft, white fur, all silvery in the moonlight..."   A window slammed open in the house further down the street, and a woman stuck her head out, yelling, "You wanna keep it down?  People are trying to sleep here!"   "Oh, shove it up sideways, you battered old hag!" the strange fox yelled back.  "I'm tending an injured person here!"   "Is that what you call it now, you freeloading hussy?  Keep it down or I'll call the Watch on you!"   "Yeah, yeah, bite me, you frog-faced witch!  Not everybody got through the winter with a nice, cozy house intact, alright?  Shut up!"   Drift watched the exchange through several rounds of insults, impressed with his companion's creativity.  He hadn't heard somebody curse like that since his father died.  When the window down the street finally slammed shut, he leaned closer and asked in a conspiratorial whisper.  "Should I applaud?"   She gave a sheepish smile and rubbed the back of her neck, the move displaying an impressive wingspread.  Her fur was dusky dark, with a russet red around the neck, really kind of pretty in its own way.  Her head was delicately vulpine, with pointed ears and a long, narrow muzzle, and eyes as dark as a deep forest pool.  Drift found himself gazing into them for several long moments, completely forgetting what he was going to say, before he glanced down and noticed something else.  His ears flushed a brilliant red, his face burning with embarrassment as he looked sharply away.  "I'm sorry, miss, I didn't realize you were...  um...  er..."   The winged vixen's laugh was like brook water over rocks, and she draped a wing modestly over herself.  "Sorry...  I wasn't expecting visitors, so my clothes are still up in the tree.  With these wings, it's so hard getting dressed..."  She fluttered the other wing in front of him, letting him get a good view of the leathery-winged limb.  "And in answer to your earlier question, I'm a bat.  A fruit bat.  Alexis is my name, but you can call me Jinx if that's too much of a mouthful," she said, folding the wing along her arm until only three fingers showed and offering it for a handshake.  "And while we're exchanging questions, who are you and what were you doing out running this late at night?  Or should I say this early in the morning?  And..."  She paused, tilting her head around to give his taur body a long, meaningful glance.  "What on earth are -you-?"   Still blushing, Drift carefully shook Alexis' hand.  "Alexis is fine.  Lovely, even.  Please, call me Drift.  Drift Edward Snow."   "Drift Ed-" she echoed, and then shook her head, smiling.  "Puns.  Why did it have to be puns?"   Drift laughed, and then continued.  "I take a run during the night because there's less traffic for me to dodge, and fewer people watching.  The wall sentries think I'm nuts, because I use the streets along the wall as a lap track, but I can live with that."   "You can live with that because you -are- nuts, you silly dog.  Sane people don't go for a run in the middle of the night."   "Of course.  Sanity is boring."   Alexis laughed again.  Drift liked that laugh.  He liked how the moonlight looked on her cheek.  He liked how her eyes sparkled with mischief when she talked, which only made it worse when she caught him staring.  She didn't seem to mind, though and gave his side a tweak where his rump would have been were he still in morph form.  "And this?" she asked, the tips of her teeth just visible in a playful smile.   "A friend of mine discovered this.  It's called a taur form.  Short for centaur.  More height, more strength, more feet."   "Yes, I noticed that," she said with a soft giggle.  Even with him lying down, she still barely came up to his shoulder.  Her wing-fingers stroked his chest a bit more before she pulled them away, ears dipping with embarrassment.  "Well, try not to run into any more trees, okay?  I need my sleep."   Drift chuckled, equally embarrassed, and scratched behind an ear.  "Sure thing.  I'll try not to shortcut through any more orchards."  After a few moments of awkward silence, he asked, "Are you sleeping out here?"   "Yeah.  It's more comfortable than the inside.  Too many people, too many closed spaces.  With arms like these, I need a lot of elbowroom."  She stretched her wings wide... and then hastily covered herself again when she saw Drift look away.  "Sorry...  I have a bad habit of talking with my hands.  You take care, okay?"   "You, too," Drift replied, still not quite looking at her.  "Um...  will you be here again tomorrow night?" he asked.   "Sure, as long as it's not raining.  If it is, I sleep up in one of the towers.  -Not- the bell tower, of course."  She chuckled, staggering a few steps and shaking as if she'd just had a large bell rung next to her ear.  "I -like- my hearing."   Drift got to his feet, steadying himself against an apple tree until a dizzy spell passed, then nodded.  "Okay.  Mind if I stop by again, Alexis?"   "Sure thing, cutie," the bat said with an impish smile.  "Just try to knock a little more quietly next time, okay?  Gotta think about the neighbors, y'know." <hr />Can you find the hidden words? 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