12. Wendigo Adventure

	“Angun! Up! Up up!” The gentle, familiar nudging at your left side stirs you awake.
	“Big day, Angun! Awawa... up!” She nudges you a little harder this time. With your eyes still closed, you give your Wendigo wife a reassuring pat on the head. She doesn’t sleep much, so it isn’t uncommon for her to wake you earlier than you’d like out of impatience. You roll away from her onto your back, half still tired, and half playfully.
	“Angun no! Up now!” The Wendigo climbs on top of you now. Her hot, sweet breath tickles your neck as she earnestly nuzzles your cheek with her nose.
	“Fine, Aput. Fine! I’m getting up!” You are grinning too much at her innocent insistence to sound annoyed as you finally open your eyes.

	Your wife’s crystal blue eyes are mere centimeters from yours, her nose pressed against your own. She smiles happily down at you with a look of pure, devoted love. The silky white arctic fox fur she keeps wrapped around her fairly large breasts brushes up against your bare pectorals, revealing ample amounts of pale, perfect cleavage. You smile back at her.
	“Morning, Angun! Big day!”
	“How am I going to get up with you on top of me like this, hmmm?” You smirk.
Aput shows no sign of moving.
	“Hmmm… I wonder…”
	“Uwaa! Awawawawa!” She cries out as your strong, manly hands firmly grip her large, pillowy rear; you pull her to your chest with your arms and sit up easily, carrying her with you. Despite her D-cup breasts, soft healthy tummy, delicious white fuzzy thighs and lovely wide bubble butt, Aput is many inches shorter than you.

	Still tightly holding your Wendigo wife, you lift yourself off of the great pile of assorted furs that is your bed and walk around in a little circle.
	“Awawawa! Down Angun! Down! Awawawawa!” Aput’s snow white face turns pink and she wriggles around in your arms trying to escape her embarrassment.
	“Oh, but I thought you wanted Up?”
	“Down!” She pouts at you and points emphatically to the floor. With a grin, you slowly lower your wife and allow her dainty deer hooves to touch the floor. Still blushing, she shakes herself off, pats her soft snowy thigh fluff down, and straightens up, head coming barely to your chin. Her silvery-white hair is very long, reaching all the way down to her butt and despite her wild, sometimes almost feral personality she somehow keeps it eternally sleek, shiny and free of tangles. You pat her on the head again, gently rubbing the base of her right antler with your thumb. Her smile returns, and she nuzzles back at you.

	Dim, flickering light from an old looking oil lamp on a wide, stumpy log illuminates a few feet around you, but after that the light quickly fades to inky black darkness. Despite the lack of any open fire or any other sort of heating appliance, Aput’s coat dimension is always warm and comfortable.
	“Did the girls go out already?” Aput nods.
	“Babies excited!” The Wendigo’s eyes shine with a motherly glow and she gently sways her wide hips and thick thighs from side to side. A great swell rises in the pit of your stomach as well, and you fondle her fuzzy ears affectionately.

	As if on cue, the almost corporeal darkness off to your right rips open. The bright white light of a snow-covered forest streams in, and two tiny white puffballs scurry through the gap, closely followed by a third slightly larger one. A high, diminutive chorus of ‘awawawawawawa!’ fills the room as the bigger puff chases the two smaller ones around about at your feet.
	“Miki.” The larger one stops in her tracks and turns to you, a tiny white face with short black antlers peeping out of a fluffy white coat. “What did I say about hunting your sisters?”
	“Wawawa… sorry Papa…” She hangs her head and the two small puffs peek out from safety behind their mother’s legs.
	“Only playing!” one of them squeaks at you; the other one nods enthusiastically in agreement.
	“Aah. Sorry about that Miki.” You flash your eldest daughter a warm, apologetic smile. She brightens instantly and happily trots over to you, she is ten years old but only about as tall as your belly button.

	With a great, over-exaggerated groan, you lift Miki up by her waist and hold her in your arms, letting her rest comfortably in your warm, protective embrace.
	“So girls, are you ready for this year’s trip into town?”
	“Yes, Papa! Town! Awawawa!” your daughters chant in unison. The twins scurry over to you excitedly, hopping up and down at your feet, chattering loudly and hoping to be picked up as well. Yura and Yuka are five, and now about as tall as your lower leg and half your thigh.

	Easily supporting Miki with your right arm, you scoop Yura and Yuka up with your left. Your girls are all very light, despite your slightly lower than average height and average strength, you can easily hold all three of them at the same time. Aput throws her arms around the four of you, lovingly nuzzling her face against those of her daughters and against your chest. You gently rub your chin on the top of your wife’s head and just stand there together for a while, enjoying the warmth and comfy intimacy of your family.

--  --  --  --  --

	The walk into town is quite a long one. Your family’s territory is a very secluded forest way up north; the only inhabitants who share it with you are of the purely animal and plant variety. Carrying your house around with you in Aput’s coat is very handy as your Wendigos love roaming around the snowy forest as they please. You all have almost endless stamina too, especially your daughters. They’re on a level where you and Aput even get a little tired keeping up with them sometimes. You can move very quickly in your coat-man form, gliding through the forest while your wife stands at your ‘feet’ and peeks out at the world rushing by around her.

This form took a lot of getting used to, and if you think about it too much it still confuses you. You have great big, deep blue arms, but they just feel like your normal arms. If you stand just at the entrance to Aput’s coat dimension you are suddenly three or four times your usual height, yet your body still feels the same size. You can’t see anything but your arms when you look down, you even tried to cheat once and hold your lamp up by your elbow and then by your feet, but the darkness shrouding you stayed exactly the same. While in the coat dimension, you can feel the soft, pillowy inside of it that’s almost anywhere within arm’s reach as well as the seamless leathery floor, but at the same time it the shadows around you seem to extend on into infinity. You gave up trying to figure these out enigmas years ago, for your own sanity.

On the trek through the freshly fallen snow and great tall fir trees, Miki, Yura and Yuka are all over the place. Poking at strange bushes with sticks, hopping from stone to stone, chasing rabbits, chasing each other’s fluffy black tails, running way up ahead so they can slide down a nice steep snowbank over and over again, dashing back up to you so they can run circles around you and Aput and awawawa-ing all the while; they never seem to tire or lose their innocent curiosity. You do need to pause every so often to scoop Yuka out of an unexpectedly large drift, or gently redirect Miki back in the direction of town, or to hold Yura in the palm of your giant coat-man hand for a bit because she faceplanted after tripping over a sneaky root. These little delays are nothing but enjoyable to you though, you find great joy in being there to protect your little ones. No matter where you are in relation to your wife and daughters, if you focus a little you can always seem to hear them. This sense had developed slowly from the time Aput first ‘rescued’ (it had been a thoroughly terrifying ordeal really) you, by now you can always be aware of the safety of your most precious family.

After many hours, you finally exit the forest right on the edge of the town. It’s a very picturesque place, with a few neat rows of log houses, two wide main streets running perpendicular to each other with little shops and eateries on either side, and a big square with a massive fire pit in the middle where the two streets connect. The whole place is blanketed in a fresh powdery snow from the night before. As you start to walk down the northern main street, you can also just see the noontime sun glinting off a frozen lake that sits on the other end of town.

 Yura and Yuka timidly rush inside your coat and hide behind Aput’s thick, soft legs again; this will be their first year allowed out of the coat when you’re all in town and they are still quite wary of other people. Previously, Aput had kept them inside because of “Scary, awa!” though you know the real reason was more for the townspeople’s safety and not that of your daughters’.

Miki, however, is more than confident. She has been allowed out several times before; she follows her little sisters into the coat and gently pushes them back out again.
“Sisters, no! Town okay, see?” She waves at a passing Whitehorn who flashes the three of them a warm smile. The two little ones seem to relax a little, thought they both cling tightly to their older sister’s tail as she points to different things, showing them around. Miki is very familiar with the town by now. You and Aput are happy to stroll slowly down the street with your arms around each other and watch them scurry about.

Your first stop is at the tannery. Aput goes deep into the coat room to retrieve an armful of pelts from various animals (mostly foxes, deer and rabbits) she and the girls have hunted over the past few weeks. You stand outside patiently in human form as she haggles with a hard-looking Arctic Werewolf; some of the pelts will be given to the Werewolf for a small amount of money to spend around the town today and as payment for her labor, and the rest will be tanned and brought back with you to become extra bed fodder or clothes for the five of you. Your Wendigos wear very little as they are impervious to cold and feel clothing just gets in the way; you only wear a fur loincloth yourself as the cold no longer affects you either. The furs you bring home after you pick them up in the evening will last you through the imminent winter and well into the year beyond.

Aput eventually comes out of the tannery smiling widely, and you stop making footprints around yourself with your bare feet in the fresh snow.
“Angun! Good deal!” She gives you a thumbs-up and jingles a small purse full of coins. You smile and look back through the window at the Werewolf. She doesn’t look too particularly scared or zombified or anything, so it seems your wife has managed to make it another year without an incident.
“That’s good honey!” you bend down to kiss her sweetly on the nose.
“Awaa!” She yelps and yanks you back inside her coat, blushing heavily and thumping her fluffy black tail on the floor. You smile and give her big jiggly rear a firm squeeze with both hands as you retake your coat-man form; as long as your sappy affection remains private Aput will be just as forward as you are if not more so, but if you’re out in public she gets all shy and self-conscious. It’s quite adorable and hard not to take advantage of, even though you know you’ll be ‘paying’ for it dearly later on.

Next up is the market. All you really need here is salt, and plenty of it; though Aput enjoys looking at all the colorful and wondrous things that civilized people buy. A quick check of your surroundings tells you that your daughters are off out of sight together, Miki seems to be introducing her little sisters to a young Yeti friend of hers. You emerge from the coat again to enter the market, being a giant coat-man just isn’t conducive to such enclosed areas. You take the fur money and your family’s salt sack, and leave Aput to curiously peruse the fruits, vegetables and prepackaged foods to get the what you need.  You had once tried to get your wife to try foods other than meat, but as interesting as they looked to her she was sorely disappointed to find that she didn’t like any of them. Thankfully she and the little ones have taken well to actually cooking and seasoning their meat now, even if it is just with salt and sometimes an herb or two one of them might find in the forest.

It doesn’t take long for you to buy your yearly allotment of salt from the tall, serene Glacies in the back of the store. Thankfully salt is cheap so you still have plenty of money left, you walk around a bit rather aimlessly with the huge leather sack full of salt slung over your bare shoulder. Aput will still be trotting happily up and down the aisles for awhile, so you buy yourself an apple and lean on the counter at the front of the store until she comes back into view. Your wife’s tastes aside, you still enjoy a nice piece of fruit every once in awhile.

Your wife soon returns to you, eyes aglow with excitement at her yearly dose of food watching.
“Angun! Love you!” She unexpectedly nuzzles against you so you put your arm around her delicate shoulders and hold her close. She sighs a happy, contented sigh.
“Love you too, Aput.” You smile warmly at her and the two of you leave the market together.

All of a sudden, a piercing shriek reaches your ears. You and Aput freeze; you instinctively dive inside her coat, hastily tossing your bag of salt down at the foot of your fur pile and then whirling around to take off after your daughters.

It takes you only a few seconds to reach the edge of the frozen lake. The shriek had come from Miki, she and Yuka are frantically hopping up and down and running around in circles inches from the icy edge, pointing out over the sleek, glassy surface.
“Awawawawawa! Yura! Come back! Awawawawawawa!” From the little white puffball slipping and sliding around in the middle of the large frozen body of water, it seems Yura has gotten herself stuck out there. Since you don’t seem to have feet as coat-man you can easily traverse the ice out to your little daughter; your heart is racing and your head is full of unsavory thoughts. You can tell your wife is just as frightened as she awawawawa’s in panic below you.

Once you reach the little one though, your fear abates for the most part. It seems Yura is having all sorts of fun sliding herself around, and now that you think about it she is far too light to break the ice and fall into the dangerous depths below, especially this late in the season.
“Mama! Papa! Fun!” Yura skitters around enthusiastically and pushes herself across the ice towards you.
“Yura…” Your deep coat-man voice booms out acroos the ice as you reassuringly wrap Aput’s soft, shaking body in one of your giant hands to help calm her down. “Let’s go back to your sisters, hmmm?”
“Awawawa… okay Papa.” The tiny Wendigo looks a little sad that her fun is getting cut short, but she agrees. You scoop her up in your free hand and easily glide back across the ice to her sisters.

Miki and Yuka are ecstatic to be reunited with their wayward sister. Yuka tackles her twin in a forceful hug and Miki anxiously circles the two of them, keenly eyeing Yura to see if she’s all right.
“She was just fine girls.” You reassure them. “You were right to warn us Miki, but no harm done, see? Yura you should be more careful on the ice, okay? Your sisters were worried, and it could be dangerous.” Thin ice is one of the few things you and Aput have warned your daughters about as being bad for little girls to be careless around.
“Awawawawa! Miki! Yuka! Sorry…” the little one apologizes.
“Yura safe. Is okay!” Miki smiles and pats her little sister on the head between her stubby little baby horns. Yuka still hasn’t released Yura from her hug, she rubs her twin’s cheek with her own elated to have her back where she belongs.

By now, the sun has started to set, it has been quite a long day already. You make a quick stop off back at the tannery to pick up your finished furs, and then turn to your family.
“How about some meat for dinner girls?” Four sets of fuzzy white Wendigo ears perk up at the sound of their favorite word.
“Meat! Meat meat! Awawawawawa meat! Your three little daughters dance in excited circles around in front of you and Aput does her best to conceal a bit of drool escaping her mouth. She uses both hands though, which just makes it all the more obvious.
“This way!” You call as you head off back into town towards your destination, Miki, Yura and Yuka hot on your tail.

“Here it is girls! Mino Meats!” You stop outside of an open air restaurant on the west side of town.
“Meat, meat, meat!” You know your Wendigos will only get more and more excited until they get their dinner so you waste no time in heading to the cooking house to order. You poke your head out of your coat, doing your best to make yourself heard over the squeaky chanting at your feet.
“Five stretchy meats please.” Aput squeezes you around the waist happily as you pay the towering, genki-looking Minotaur at the counter.
“Gotcha boss, have a seat anywhere an’ we’ll have that out to ya in a bit!” The Minotaur smiles down at your exuberant daughters “Y’hear that dears? Now, y’all behave for yer parents, ‘k?”
“Meat!” is the only reply, in triplicate, but your daughters do seem to calm down a little.

You shed coat-man the rest of the way and turn to go find a picnic table. About half of the roughly hewn log tables are full, mostly with couples enjoying a nice meal and a nice sunset. You choose a table off to the side, Near a lone icy Tsunara-onna sipping a milkshake and a white-haired Anubis in fancy tribal-looking clothes eating with her boyfriend.

You sit down next to Aput with your arm around her, allowing your three daughters to take the seats across from you.
“So. Yura, Yuka, what did you think of your first day in town?” As cute as you and your wife find it, you don’t want the incessant chorus of “Meat! Awawawawa! Meat!” and flurry of fluffy little coats to annoy the others around you so you try a distraction.
“Good, Papa!” says Yuka, settling down. “Town fun!”
“Ice fun too!” Yura chimes in, earning her a soft bop on the head from Miki and a pouty squeezy hug from Yuka. The three of them go on to retell their adventures from the day; Miki had introduced her sisters to her friends in the Snuggle Scouts, the had taken a ride on Ms. Whitehorn’s back, watched a Selkie catch a really big fish from a hole in the lake, and met a dog (“licky small wolf!”)

It doesn’t take long for your food to arrive; the five of you tear into your giant pieces of meat on the bone with the feral vigor of a true pack of wild animals, gnashing your teeth and gulping down the delicious stuff. Aput hums a soft song to herself as she chews and surveys her precious little ones and beloved husband eating their fill. As tiring as this trip is for all of you every year, she treasures each and every experience as if she’s getting to know her family all over again.

The daughters finish first, quickly getting drowsy. Yura and Yuka keep nodding off against each other and Miki is smiling serenely with her eyes all glazed over.
“Let me put them to bed, okay Aput?” Wordlessly, your Wendigo wife finishes her last bite of met and nuzzles against you with her cheek before standing up and allowing you to enter her coat. One by one, you carry your daughters into your house. First Yuka, who kisses you delicately on the nose as you help her out of her little coat and set her down on your pile of furs. Then Yura, who is already fast asleep. She instinctively interlocks her fluffy little deer legs with her sister’s and they hug each other tightly after she goes in the bed too. Finally you take Miki in.
“Night-night, Papa!” She hugs you lovingly around the neck before clambering onto the fur pile on her own and curling up, long fluffy tail coiled protectively around her little sisters.

You and Aput stand there for a while, watching your three beautiful babies sleep peacefully together after a long, exciting day. Eventually, your wife turns to you.
“Angun… carry me home?” Her crystal blue eyes shine up at you imploringly.
“Of course, my love.” Her tail rustles happily as you easily scoop her off her feet like a princess and hold her soft, squishy body as close as possible. You calmly return to the opening in the darkness, assume your coat-man form, and rush off through the night back to familiar territory.