He waved a paw behind him, pointing to the wall lined with drawings of the fused beasts, and his voice cracked with excitement.
"Do you know what these are?" The meerkat chirped, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. "These! These are the beasts! The ones merged… two in one, three in one, four in one!"
Linda tilted her head, her ears twitching as she followed his gestures.
The meerkat jabbed at the first drawing.
"This one," he said, "is called a duopaw. It is two beasts joined as one. You see? Two creatures fused into a single form!"
He hopped over to the next set.
"This," he said, "is a triopaw. Three animals merged. Three! And the fourth one, the last drawing, is a quadpaw is four animals in one. Four!"
He paused dramatically, his tail flicking, eyes sparkling. Then he jabbed a paw at another part of the wall where the little rabbit was. He was more emphatic this time. "But… none of these beasts can compare to that little rabbit."
He pointed directly at the drawing of Linda, etched with care on the clay wall.
Linda's heart thudded as she realized he was talking about her.
Slowly, she pointed first at the drawing, then at herself, asking 'is this really me?' in silent sign language.
The meerkat cocked his head, confused. "You… don't talk? I've been trying to have a proper conversation with you all this time, and you don't even speak! What's so special about your voice?"
Linda's stomach sank. Oh how she really wanted to explain and talk to him, but she couldn't. Not a single sound would leave her throat.
Her gaze flicked over to Daku, feeling embarrassed for the first time in a while.
But Daku didn't look surprised nor shocked. His golden eyes were calm like he already knew Linda couldn't take.
Slowly, Daku shifted his immense bulk body. Even as a rabbit, he towered over her, nearly six times her size. He crouched low, his massive frame folding over itself, yet his head dipped until his eyes were level with hers.
Linda lifted a trembling paw, pointing first at herself, then at the drawing. She held her breath, waiting.
Daku's eyes softened—not much, just the faintest tilt, but it was there.
He nodded once, decisively, like a judge confirming a truth long known.
"Bemu is only saying that you… look like that rabbit," he murmured in his low, smooth voice, and Linda's heart thudded.
Linda hesitated, then pointed to her butt because she couldn't see it herself. She didn't know how else to show it.
Daku looked down at her, and then he nodded. He understood. Yes. He understood that she was pointing to the mark, the same mark the rabbit in the drawing had on its butt.
He was confirming that she also had that mark.
She stared at the other drawings. Those merged beasts—the duopaws, triopaws, quadpaws—they couldn't compare to her. None of them were like her. And then there was the human form, the long-haired figure in another drawing.
She wasn't sure if she should conclude too much about the people around her in that drawing, but she understood the rabbit-eating-animals drawing.
That was how she would grow, how she would change features, how she would progress. She didn't have to physically eat the animals. Maybe she could tame them.
Of course, who wasn't familiar with beast taming?
In the human world, she had read about beast taming stories in web novels, about how to train monsters. She had watched movies like How to Train Your Dragon.
She could tame each animal, that was her progression.
It might be different from other beasts in the beast world, but it was her way of growth as instructed by these drawings.
Her life in this beast world had already been scripted. The walls weren't just drawings. They were scripts.
Then the meerkat interrupted. "Do you know what that drawing means? It means you and Daku." He clicked his fingers, a small smile on his face.
Linda acted that she didn't understand what he was trying to say.
She glanced at Daku. He had turned his face to the side.
Whether he was shy or not, Linda couldn't tell—his face was expressionless as always.
"Don't tell me you do not understand. Daku is your mate, and you are Daku's mate. You guys are fated. Meant to be."
Linda's heart fluttered unexpectedly, bubbly and warm. She didn't know why, but it felt good—so good to know this world also gave her a 'betrothed'.
Her eyes returned to the wall.
The drawing of her and Daku stared back at her, bound by a thin, fate string—like the mate bonds in werewolf stories she had read. But the next drawing showed them unbound. The string was gone. The third drawing showed them facing opposite sides.
This means, If the bond were broken, Daku would face east and she would face west. They would never align again.
Then her gaze shifted to the other drawing, more unsettling than that. She was sitting, surrounded by men while sitting and she was sitting on a very big snake coiled beneath her. She couldn't help her mind wandering back to Gaffer, that Imoogi.
But she quickly pushed the thought away.
She had left him behind, forgotten him, and now remembering how he had once ordered them to make a stew out of her, she shook her head fiercely.
Linda then pointed at the drawings of the merged animals—the duopaws, triopaws, and quadpaws. They couldn't have drawn them just for decoration. She pointed deliberately.
The meerkat nodded. "Since you can't talk and only point I will learn to understand what you men," he said.
"These are all beast women."
Linda nodded slowly, showing she was paying attention to him.
The meerkat continued, "In the beast world, we lack true women. These," he gestured to the drawings, "are not original women. When a beast man encounters a beast woman, he may have an affair. Sometimes, out of that union, an actual, full beast woman is born—but that is extremely rare. Since the wiping of true beast women, it has hardly ever happened."
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle. "All these abnormalities you see—they are called false beast women, sometimes even called beast men, because the upper body may be female but the lower body male. In such cases, the reproductive organs follow the body. They cannot be considered original females. And this is the case with almost all of them."