The SSSS was winding down for the evening — or rather, winding down for everyone except the corner table, where things were escalating.

  "I'm just saying, for the record—" Talon began.

  "No," Tabby said flatly.

  "—that I won that game fair and—"

  "We agreed," Tabby said, louder now, looking around the table for backup. "We agreed we would never talk about this again."

  "You agreed," Talon said, jabbing a claw at her. "I never agreed to anything. I was robbed, and the truth deserves—"

  "Three years, Talon!" Tabby slammed a hoof on the table, rattling the sundae glasses. "Three years and you're still—"

  "Because no one will admit—"

  "Here we go, yeah," Couthy muttered into his milkshake.

  "The tile was already played," Talon hissed, smoke curling from one nostril. "I had the points. Clove miscounted."

  Clove glanced up from his sketchbook. "I didn't miscount."

  "You miscounted."

  "I have never miscounted anything in my life," Clove said, and went back to his book.

  Touchdown, who had been following the argument like a spectator at a tennis match, shook his head slowly. "Bro, I still think the rules say—"

  "Don't." Tabby pointed a hoof at him. "Don't you dare take a side."

  "I'm not taking a side! I'm just saying the rulebook—"

  "The rulebook is dead to us!" Tabby declared. "It died three years ago and we buried it and we are not digging it up!"

  "Maybe if someone had kept the rulebook instead of throwing it out the window—" Talon started.

  "I didn't throw it out the window! I threw it behind the couch and you burned it!"

  "It was already ruined!"

  Strawberry, serene amid the carnage, took a delicate bite of her sundae. She'd heard this argument before. It came up once a month or so. The details changed with each retelling. Talon's winning margin grew larger. Clove's alleged miscount became more egregious. Tabby's role shifted from impartial judge to co-conspirator depending on who was telling it. The only constant was that nobody would ever back down, and the game itself — some elaborate strategy affair with hand-painted tiles that Clove had imported from a catalogue — would never be played again.

  "Can we talk about literally anything else?" Tabby groaned.

  "I want an apology," Talon said, crossing his arms.

  The bell over the door chimed.

  Thomas had been to the Satin Slipper Sweet Shoppe a handful of times since moving to Misty Hollow. It was the only ice cream shop in town, and some evenings — not most, but some — he'd stop in after work, order a sundae, sit near the window, catch up on a veterinary journal. It was a quiet end to a long day.

  He'd seen the corner table occupied on a few of those visits, heard the noise from a safe distance, registered it as "Tabby's thing" and left it at that. Tonight, however, he was later than usual — a complicated case had kept him at the clinic after Tabby had already left — and the usual window seat felt oddly exposed with the corner table in full swing barely ten feet away.

  "Thomas!" Strawberry spotted him before he could commit to a strategic retreat. She waved, bright and beckoning, as if she'd been expecting him.

  Thomas hesitated. He could pretend he hadn't heard. He could take his sundae to go. He could—

  "Get over here," Tabby called. "We need a neutral party."

  This was, Thomas reflected, almost certainly a trap. He walked over anyway.

  The corner table was a study in chaos. Sundae glasses in various states of demolition, a napkin covered in what appeared to be a crudely drawn game board, and six creatures crammed into a booth designed for four. Tabby and Strawberry on one side, Talon perched on the table edge looking murderous, Couthy wedged into the far corner, and two stallions Thomas recognized vaguely from around town — the big sporty one, and the rumpled one with the perpetually half-open eyes.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "Pull up a chair," said the sporty one — Touchdown, Thomas was fairly sure.

  Thomas pulled up a chair.

  "You're the vet, right?" Talon said, eyeing him. It was not a warm reception.

  "That's me."

  "Huh." Talon's tone suggested he'd expected more.

  "Thomas, you know everyone, right?" Strawberry gestured around the table. "Talon, Couthy, Touchdown, Clove."

  Thomas nodded a general greeting. Couthy gave him a curious look — assessing, but not unfriendly. Talon went back to glaring at Clove. Touchdown grinned.

  "Hey, man! You follow hoofball at all?"

  "Not really," Thomas admitted.

  "What about—"

  "He doesn't follow anything," Tabby said, with the authority of someone who'd already catalogued his deficiencies. "He reads veterinary journals for fun."

  "That's... not entirely accurate," Thomas said, though it was mostly accurate.

  Clove looked up from his spoon. "How's the clinic treating you? Getting anything interesting, or is it all house cats and ear infections?"

  Thomas considered this. "More interesting than I expected. I've been reading up on local cryptid species — water panthers, hodags, things that never came up in my New Pony coursework. The literature is practically nonexistent."

  Clove's eyebrows went up a fraction, which appeared to be his version of intense excitement. "Huh. There are references to water panthers in pre-Atlantean cave murals near Hayton. Ceremonial context, but the anatomical detail is surprisingly precise. The old artists knew the internal structure."

  Thomas blinked. Of all the conversations he'd expected to have at this table, this was not one of them. "You're telling me cave paintings might be more useful than the veterinary reference library?"

  "For cryptid species? Probably, yeah. Modern taxonomy never bothered classifying most of them. But ancient populations lived alongside these creatures for centuries. They observed things that got lost when—"

  "When mainstream science decided they weren't real," Thomas finished, leaning forward slightly. "I've been running into that wall constantly since I moved here."

  "Welcome to the western coast," Clove said, with the faintest trace of a smile. "I could dig up some of those survey sketches for you, if you want."

  "I'd actually appreciate that," Thomas said, and meant it.

  "The internal structure's not that mysterious," Tabby said, not looking up from her sundae. "Water panthers have a dual circulatory system — one for blood, one for whatever that cold stuff is. Tiny showed me during a necropsy."

  Thomas stared at her. "You've done a water panther necropsy?"

  "I spent three years in the Dark Forest. You see things." She took a bite of her sundae. "The trick with parasites is they nest in the cold system, not the warm one, so standard antiparasitics don't reach them."

  "That's — actually incredibly useful," Thomas said.

  "The cave murals show the dual system too," Clove said, leaning forward. "Two separate vascular networks, different colors. I always assumed it was artistic convention."

  "It's not convention, Clovey, it's observation. They were drawing what they saw."

  Clove winced. "I've asked you not to call me that."

  "And yet."

  Thomas glanced between them — Tabby scraping the bottom of her sundae glass with the confidence of someone who'd just settled the matter, Clove rubbing his temple but already mentally revisiting his cave mural research. This was not the conversation Thomas had expected to have tonight.

  Strawberry, smiling into her sundae, said nothing.

  "So what's the fight about?" Thomas asked, nodding toward the napkin diagram.

  The table erupted.

  "It was three years ago—" Tabby started.

  "I had the points—" from Talon.

  "He miscounted—" also from Talon, with a claw pointed at Clove.

  Thomas looked at Strawberry, who gave him a serene, sympathetic smile that said: Yes, it's always like this. Yes, you get used to it. No, it never resolves.

  "I see," Thomas said.

  "You don't," said Couthy, not unkindly.

  The argument ran for another twenty minutes before burning itself out through sheer exhaustion. Tabby bought a second sundae. Talon sulked. Clove returned to examining things on the table with archaeological intensity. Touchdown tried twice more to interest Thomas in hoofball standings and twice more received a polite but total lack of engagement.

  At some point, Thomas realized he'd been there for over an hour.

  "I should probably head out," he said, pushing back his chair.

  "Already?" Strawberry looked genuinely disappointed.

  "Early surgery tomorrow." This was true, and also a convenient exit. “Incidentaly, that goes for you, too, Tabby.”

  Tabby didn't look up from her sundae. "See you at the clinic."

  Thomas nodded and headed for the door. He was almost there when Touchdown called after him, casual as anything: "Same time tomorrow?"

  Thomas paused, one hoof on the door. "We'll see."

  The night air was cooler than he'd expected. He walked home the long way, past the darkened shopfronts and the quiet town square, and thought about nothing in particular — water panther anatomy, Clove's surprising depth, the way Tabby's voice sounded different when she wasn't at work--louder, freer.

  He didn't come back the next night. Or the night after that.

  But Thursday, he was there.