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"Look! Look! Over there! A squirrel!" a child screams.

Nina is reliving her childhood trauma once again. She rushes about not knowing where to hide, desperately wishing to get out of a huge hotel full of scary humans.

She manages to slip between the porter’s legs to jump out into the street through the half-opened door.

On the snowy, stormy street, she doesn’t feel better: she no longer understands where she is: it looks as if the whole city is falling on her, perilously perching over her redhead.

Sharp screech of brakes.

Someone grabs her with both hands and presses her to the chest, almost pulling her out from under the wheels of a taxi that has just braked hard.

Nina wants to bite her rescuer (just in case) and run away, but the smell is too familiar to resist. She just freezes, obeying the hands that carry her somewhere far from the bad hotel, from bad people, from the bad taxi.

Submission. This is probably what is written in the family of all shifters, silly shifters. Nina is so confused (for the first time in sixteen years); she doesn’t know whose hands are allowed to touch her, although, blindly follow her instincts she trusts the savior. Only when the sounds around them subsided, the squirrel is able to calm down and understand that it is Billy who’s pressing her to her breasts.

Where are they now? Is she back at the hotel? No, it's too quiet in here. Somewhere in the distance, a clock is ticking just like in Grandmother's house.

Billy is silent. The young witch is trembling too, clutching her squirrel tightly.

"I thought you were at the party with your friends," says Nina.

"I was there, but you didn’t answer your calls; I called the hotel room and the reception manager, but she told me that you did not come back. I was looking for you everywhere in Central Park; I was running around all the trees in the area: people thought that I was crazy jumping around the bushes and trunks."

"How did you find me," Nina buries her face in Billy's silk blouse. It nicely smells like apricots. Nina gave her this perfume a month ago, and Billy always uses it (especially before making love). Nina is sure her girlfriend might have frozen out wearing only one thin blouse under her winter coat.

"Did you forget that I'm a witch?" grumbles Billy. "I can't understand how you got here, and why you ended up near the place where my parents stayed?"

"I’m so sorry! The search spell drains all energy! You must be so tired…"

"Don't change the subject. Why are you here?"

"I made a terrible mistake Billy! You're right, I'm just the dumbest rodent in the whole world."

"What's wrong? You're scaring me!" Billy squeezes Nina even tighter; her worried face is like the reflection of her mother.

"When that Thorn flirted with you..."

"Nina!"

"Do you think I didn't recognise her? This is the same girl whom you have licked at school. She openly flirted with you at the table, and you never told her that I’m your girlfriend, and we are engaged!"

Billy's cheeks flush with anger. The blonde squeezes the squirrel so hard that Nina treacherously squeaks like a rubber dog toy, "Did you ever stop to think, dear squirrel, about taking the initiative, at least once, to tell Thorn about our engagement yourself? I was waiting all damn evening that you would be jealous of me, but you didn't care! The waiter kept on making eyes trying to flirt, but you didn't care, then Rita came in, but all you could do was clam up! Why are you never jealous of me? You don't care about me!"

"I love you," Nina is crying while she is slowly transforming into her human form. "I'm so sorry! I should have been stronger for you, I should have shown Thorn that you are my woman, that you belong to me. You will hate me for what I did!" Nina curls up in Billy's lap.

"You physically can’t do anything wrong!" She is rocking Nina in her arms.

"When I saw Thorn was hitting on you, I wanted to make it official! I wanted to be more than just a girlfriend, not just the witch's secret bride... I went to your parents."

"You did what?"

"Please forgive me! Don't stop loving me."

Billy hugged her, pressing Nina's face to her breasts, "Dad must be pissed..."

"Not really. It was mostly your mother who kept on talking… she thinks you have eagle tattoos on your boobies and things like that in other intimate places…"

Billy suddenly bursts into laugher, "I bet she's sure I'm a drug dealer or I hide guns at home. If it were her will, she'd accuse me of crucifying Jesus or killing Kennedy."

"Aren’t you mad at me?" Nina asks her witch in surprise, unable to raise her eyes: she hides her face between her breasts like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

Billy pats Nina on the head, "I didn't know that the official ceremony is so important to you. We've been together for so long, I have considered you not just my girlfriend, but my wife for all these years."

"I should have told you this earlier. We need to talk to each other more…"

"Yeahh… During all these eight years you and I, we don’t talk at all: we have only frenetic, animal sex and nothing else," Billy chuckles.

Nina finally raises her head, "I'll go back to your parents and apologise to them for the trouble. I'll make it up. I swear to you."

"There's nothing to fix. You told them great news, if they were good people and took it well, you wouldn't have run out of the hotel as if the looney tunes hunter was chasing you. You almost got hit by a car because of them!" Billy hugs her girlfriend, resting her chin on the redhead.

"They are good people. I'm so sorry that I ruined your relationship with them more."

"You didn't ruin anything, Nina; I know them too well, that’s why I never tell them about my personal life, butttt we will invite them to the wedding."

"Really?"

"You bet!" Billy's face is stretching into a vicious grin as if she's Grinch who has just stolen Christmas. "They will definitely come, and they will be terribly uncomfortable among our fairy gay friends. I'm already looking forward to the big cringe show – their coming will already be a big gift for me. Hehehehe. We will have the most amazing wedding!"

"Billy?" Nina asks timidly.

"Ummm?" purrs Billy who’s already imagining her parents’ long faces when she will deep kiss Nina after ‘you may kiss your bride’.

"You saw my transformation."

Billy nods.

"Something has changed, and I don't understand what's happening to me. It seems I don't know where I end, and where my animal begins."

"That's how I've always seen you, Nina."

"But you need my human form."

"You are who you are, Nina. I don't see your human separately from the squirrel, just as I don't see the squirrel without your female body. I love all of you, and I don't want to lose any of your forms. You don't have to become a human for me on purpose. If you want, always stay a squirrel, just don't leave me ever again."

Nina furiously kisses her mouth, wildly biting her upper lip. Billy groans but doesn't pull away.

"In a squirrel form it would be hard to put on a wedding dress," mutters Nina, unhooking Billy's bra with trembling fingers.

"We'll put you a white napkin as a bridal veil," Billy giggles and moans as the readhead bites her nipple.

"Where are we?" Nina notices someone's green T-shirt on the pillow. When she calmed down, she starts looking around, but there are too many strangers’ smells to focus on anything special.

Billy moans because of the neck kisses, "I have no idea. I just sneaked into the nearest empty apartment to take care of you, and I did it. Show your gratitude and don't get distracted!"

"Yes, yes…"