1. The Beginning


    So this is where I''ll consider that my story starts. The only problem I have is, where does it go? I remember how it began, how it all started; for me at least. Is that the best starting point to it all? That, that is a much different question. Amazing what goes through your mind when your life could easily end in the next few moments. I was currently in a greenhouse/warehouse just outside the suburbs taking cover behind bags of potting soil. I mentally berated myself for losing focus, now, under fire, bullets, and magic ripping around me, perhaps, it is not the best time to reminisce. Still, as I check my Glock and feel the remaining spare mag on my belt, my mind wanders back to a fateful evening about 5 years previous...


    I had been what could generously be called a late bloomer. I was a small skinny kid still at 15, voice still high pitched and all the rest. I thought that I was a man. I actually was getting quite worried, everyone I knew from school had already hit a growth spurt at least a year previous. I, however, remained tiny but that turned out to be for the best. It was nearing my 16th birthday when I was coming home from a late movie that my change happened.


    As everyone clearly knows, magic does not exist. Monsters do not exist. This was soon to be proven untrue to me at least. I had missed the last bus home and to my dismay, that meant I had to walk the rest of the way. Not a big deal really just a few kilometers and it was a nice summer night. Where it got strange was when I was walking past a convenience store and saw a few things rummaging through the dumpster in the parking lot. Nothing too odd I thought, homelessness being what it is. I had barely given them a second glance when I saw a tail! Huh? I looked again more closely and I was certain of it. The one most visible to me had a tail. They seemed to notice me then and one let out a few barking yips. The trio looked over and then disappeared down the alley running in a sort of low crouching manner.


    I continued on my way, wondering just what I had seen. I must have been mistaken, who knows maybe one of the local homeless had picked up a cosplay tail from somewhere. I hadn''t been able to make out much they had been in the shadows of a burnt out streetlight although they seemed suspiciously short and ran off in a decidedly odd manner. I was still thinking about what I had seen when I got home and got a nice earful from my parents as I was now a good couple of hours late past my curfew. I put it out of my mind as I went to bed now thinking of the week-long grounding I had to deal with.


    I spent the next week mostly lazing around and doing a double or triple dose of chores as I went through my mandated week-long sentence. I did spend a fair amount of time reading to keep my mind occupied but my thoughts kept drifting back to what I had seen. Even though it was both late and dark that night I was certain that I had seen a legit tail. Also that they seemed to be no more than maybe 1.1 m tall, combined with the yipping, well I had no idea what I had seen. Obviously, I couldn''t talk to anyone about this, the idea of explaining to someone that I had seen some little ''people'' with tails struck me as a good way to getting a well-meaning psych eval.


    So as my week of grounding ended I made plans to stay at a friend''s that night or at least that''s what I told my folks. I fully intended to go and see what I could see again at that dumpster. As evening rolled around I bid my parents adieu and went over to the convenience store again. I had packed my backpack with the essentials for my stakeout. A couple of bottles of water, a few sandwiches, a flashlight, and an extra sweater made up my kit. I planned to find a good vantage point for the dumpster and then wait. Maybe not an exciting plan but considering I was looking for something that I knew couldn''t exist it seemed like a decent plan to me.


    I arrived at the store just before they closed at 11 and started looking for a good place to use as my observation point. As I wandered around the area I realized that your average suburban city street may be lacking in sweet places to spy on something unobserved. Just after the clerk of the store locked up and left maybe 15 minutes later I noticed that in the back of the store they had a chain linked fenced in area and that the fence went up to just a few feet below the roof. I scrambled up the fence, well more slowly inched up the fence to the top. I got myself to the top and found it just possible to reach the lip of the roof. I managed to pull myself up and over and rolled myself onto the graveled blacktop of the roof. My plan so far was going great aside from me already being out of breath. I guessed that my physical prowess at the time being a teen that hadn''t climbed anything for years and avoided physical activities for books and video games was not playing in my favor.


    Catching my breath, I moved over to the opposite edge so I could get a clear look at the dumpster. Then I waited and waited. Good times, I moved a bit back from the edge and opened up my bag. Sandwich time! While I was no kitchen master, I could still whip up some pretty good food when needed. Latchkey kid for the win! Finishing up I heard some noises coming from below. I crept forward as quietly as I could and peeked over at the dumpster. My breath caught in my throat, this time and from this angle, I could clearly see three things rooting around in the dumpster and they all had tails. My mind spun, I had come out here due to a niggling feeling but I had completely expected to find nothing. Deep down inside I had thought that this whole thing would simply be a little adventure, a little quest like the characters in stories would go on except that nothing would happen.


    Instead... I was looking at 3 short-tailed beings in large hoods going through the dumpster pulling out food scraps, eating some and tossing some in a sack of some sort. My breath which I had been holding rushed out and I leaned forward on the edge dislodging a few small pebbles. As soon as they hit the ground the 3 froze looking around, one looked up at me and yipped. The 3 took off down the alley that they had disappeared down the last time and I sunk down flat to the roof. The ''face'' that had looked up at me was not a person it had looked like a coyote.


    A bullet pinging of a metal support pillar an arm''s length from my head snapped me out of my reverie. How much seeing those Coyfolk that night changed everything for me still resonated... Ping! Right, focus on the now and not dying, save the day, save the pups then go for a beer and think on how it came to this. I was crouched low behind some pallets of soil and moved to my left. I had never been so glad for smuggling gardeners as when my cover was walls and walls of stacked dirt. I hit the end of the row and peaked around the corner, I could see two of the smugglers still looking at my previous location. The two both had their guns pointed to where I had been, popping off shots every few seconds. Hmm, two to keep me pinned down, so where was the third one then. She was the one I was most worried about, she as far as I could tell was running this little show. She was the one with the connections, she was the one who was selling the pups off after kidnapping them, and worst of all she was the one that had been tossing balls of magic fire at me. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    The Beginning So this is where I''ll consider that my story starts. The only problem I have is, where does it go? I remember how it began, how it all started; for me at least. Is that the best starting point to it all? That, that is a much different question. Amazing what goes through your mind when your life could easily end in the next few moments. I was currently in a greenhouse/warehouse just outside the suburbs taking cover behind bags of potting soil. I mentally berated myself for losing focus, now, under fire, bullets, and magic ripping around me, perhaps, it is not the best time to reminisce. Still, as I check my Glock and feel the remaining spare mag on my belt, my mind wanders back to a fateful evening about 5 years previous... I had been what could generously be called a late bloomer. I was a small skinny kid still at 15, voice still high pitched and all the rest. I thought that I was a man. I actually was getting quite worried, everyone I knew from school had already hit a growth spurt at least a year previous. I, however, remained tiny but that turned out to be for the best. It was nearing my 16th birthday when I was coming home from a late movie that my change happened. As everyone clearly knows, magic does not exist. Monsters do not exist. This was soon to be proven untrue to me at least. I had missed the last bus home and to my dismay, that meant I had to walk the rest of the way. Not a big deal really just a few kilometers and it was a nice summer night. Where it got strange was when I was walking past a convenience store and saw a few things rummaging through the dumpster in the parking lot. Nothing too odd I thought, homelessness being what it is. I had barely given them a second glance when I saw a tail! Huh? I looked again more closely and I was certain of it. The one most visible to me had a tail. They seemed to notice me then and one let out a few barking yips. The trio looked over and then disappeared down the alley running in a sort of low crouching manner. I continued on my way, wondering just what I had seen. I must have been mistaken, who knows maybe one of the local homeless had picked up a cosplay tail from somewhere. I hadn''t been able to make out much they had been in the shadows of a burnt out streetlight although they seemed suspiciously short and ran off in a decidedly odd manner. I was still thinking about what I had seen when I got home and got a nice earful from my parents as I was now a good couple of hours late past my curfew. I put it out of my mind as I went to bed now thinking of the week-long grounding I had to deal with. I spent the next week mostly lazing around and doing a double or triple dose of chores as I went through my mandated week-long sentence. I did spend a fair amount of time reading to keep my mind occupied but my thoughts kept drifting back to what I had seen. Even though it was both late and dark that night I was certain that I had seen a legit tail. Also that they seemed to be no more than maybe 1.1 m tall, combined with the yipping, well I had no idea what I had seen. Obviously, I couldn''t talk to anyone about this, the idea of explaining to someone that I had seen some little ''people'' with tails struck me as a good way to getting a well-meaning psych eval. So as my week of grounding ended I made plans to stay at a friend''s that night or at least that''s what I told my folks. I fully intended to go and see what I could see again at that dumpster. As evening rolled around I bid my parents adieu and went over to the convenience store again. I had packed my backpack with the essentials for my stakeout. A couple of bottles of water, a few sandwiches, a flashlight, and an extra sweater made up my kit. I planned to find a good vantage point for the dumpster and then wait. Maybe not an exciting plan but considering I was looking for something that I knew couldn''t exist it seemed like a decent plan to me. I arrived at the store just before they closed at 11 and started looking for a good place to use as my observation point. As I wandered around the area I realized that your average suburban city street may be lacking in sweet places to spy on something unobserved. Just after the clerk of the store locked up and left maybe 15 minutes later I noticed that in the back of the store they had a chain linked fenced in area and that the fence went up to just a few feet below the roof. I scrambled up the fence, well more slowly inched up the fence to the top. I got myself to the top and found it just possible to reach the lip of the roof. I managed to pull myself up and over and rolled myself onto the graveled blacktop of the roof. My plan so far was going great aside from me already being out of breath. I guessed that my physical prowess at the time being a teen that hadn''t climbed anything for years and avoided physical activities for books and video games was not playing in my favor. Catching my breath, I moved over to the opposite edge so I could get a clear look at the dumpster. Then I waited and waited. Good times, I moved a bit back from the edge and opened up my bag. Sandwich time! While I was no kitchen master, I could still whip up some pretty good food when needed. Latchkey kid for the win! Finishing up I heard some noises coming from below. I crept forward as quietly as I could and peeked over at the dumpster. My breath caught in my throat, this time and from this angle, I could clearly see three things rooting around in the dumpster and they all had tails. My mind spun, I had come out here due to a niggling feeling but I had completely expected to find nothing. Deep down inside I had thought that this whole thing would simply be a little adventure, a little quest like the characters in stories would go on except that nothing would happen. Instead... I was looking at 3 short-tailed beings in large hoods going through the dumpster pulling out food scraps, eating some and tossing some in a sack of some sort. My breath which I had been holding rushed out and I leaned forward on the edge dislodging a few small pebbles. As soon as they hit the ground the 3 froze looking around, one looked up at me and yipped. The 3 took off down the alley that they had disappeared down the last time and I sunk down flat to the roof. The ''face'' that had looked up at me was not a person it had looked like a coyote. A bullet pinging of a metal support pillar an arm''s length from my head snapped me out of my reverie. How much seeing those Coyfolk that night changed everything for me still resonated... Ping! Right, focus on the now and not dying, save the day, save the pups then go for a beer and think on how it came to this. I was crouched low behind some pallets of soil and moved to my left. I had never been so glad for smuggling gardeners as when my cover was walls and walls of stacked dirt. I hit the end of the row and peaked around the corner, I could see two of the smugglers still looking at my previous location. The two both had their guns pointed to where I had been, popping off shots every few seconds. Hmm, two to keep me pinned down, so where was the third one then. She was the one I was most worried about, she as far as I could tell was running this little show. She was the one with the connections, she was the one who was selling the pups off after kidnapping them, and worst of all she was the one that had been tossing balls of magic fire at me.