The tigress finally realizes the effects of the tasty white treats she has been greedily indulging in since she landed on the island and discusses it with a couple of the other dogs on the beach.

This is a short chapter due to my retroactively editing the story to split it into chapters that wouldn't overwhelm the typical internet reader. I'm shooting for 2500-3000 words, but sometimes it turns out to be less or considerably more. I hope you all continue to enjoy the story, it's going to go to very BIG places ;)

Chapter Controls
<<<Previous === Next>>>

*******************************************************************************************
*******************************************************************************************
*******************************************************************************************

When she got to the meadow, she found that it was indeed almost vacated, but not entirely. She saw first the strange striped dog with the missing tail carving strange diagrams into the trunk of a tree which was already liberally covered with overlapping lines and angles that was utterly incomprehensible for those of a rational - or sane - disposition; still it was a little frightening in a hard to define manner, like the spook stories her so-called cousins would tell her when the cubs had been mixed at the lab for “proper socialization.” ‘She’s just crazy.’ She told herself, ‘They tampered too much with her brain and finally broke it, that’s all, there’s nothing more behind it.’ Still the explanation sat uneasily with her and she angled towards the only other occupants of the meadow, which were happily two of the three members of her “Science Team.”

The German Shepherd was gone, which was a shame since she had meant to ask him about the first sight of the horse on the beach, but the Border Collie was obviously enthused to see her, and the blood hound’s sagging face seemed a little less droopy. But what held the tigress’s attention, however, was not their expressions but their appearances; or rather how their appearances had changed. It was most noticeable on the skinny collie, or, at least, previously skinny collie. It was obvious that she had put on a great deal of weight. Where before she had had a narrow waist that seemed hardly sufficient for her intestines, now she had a real belly, though not nearly, the tigress had to admit, as large as the one she was now sporting. Where once her ribs had shown clearly, there was only a smooth covering, it was even visible in her face. The bloodhound’s changes were less clear due to his loose skin, but his neck hung even more and in fatty clumps rather than folds.

“What’s happened to you two?” she blurted without thinking, though in her heart she knew. The tigress was still clinging to the hope that her rapid gain was somehow only related to her gorge of cow the previous night.

“What do y-” started the collie, but then her right ear stood up as she realized what the tigress was talking about. Then she laughed. To the tigress it sounded like it had a nervous edge to it though. “Oh this.” She said patting her newfound belly with her forepaw. “I forgot, you weren’t here when we talked about it.”

“Talked about what?” asked the striped feline urgently. It felt disconcerting that she should be left out of the loop when it was her who had been exploring these last two days.

This time it was the bloodhound - what was his name again? Brody? Bronson? - who spoke, “About how the mushrooms are making everyone fatter.”

The tigresses spirits sank, she had been hoping for some logical explanation to explain away her mysterious gains, her mysterious hunger… her mysterious dreams and why she felt so… good when she thought of herself as a truly massive feline. They sank even lower when she recalled having ate over four dozen of the things hardly a half hour ago. She resisted, “How do you know?”

Both the collie and the tiger waited for a response from the bloodhound, but the black and white colored canine quickly filled in the silence, “Well… after you and the hunting party left, Me, Bruce and Einny decided to make a tally of how much of these things people were eating. We didn’t know if they were toxic, like I said I thought there might be some sort of psychoactive component of the crisps, or whatnot. And besides we needed some sort of census anyways. You know we didn’t even know how many of us are on the island, turns out there’s 18 of us domestic dogs and 16 wolves, counting the eight that of course, and three coy-”

“Can we skip to the part where you found out about the Manna please?” interrupted the tigress.

“Oh very well. Even if you do insist on giving a simple mushroom such a dramatic name. Our initial tests gave us the idea that the caps represented a very dense food source. We had no idea until the next morning, but it became obvious that everyone who had eaten any amount of them had a substantial amount of weight over the course of the day and night. I immediately had my suspicions, but none of us wanted to jump to conclusions. It was Einny, though who noticed about the water.” She shook her head nostalgically, “That boy can be very clever sometimes.”

The tigress asked, “What about the water.” But she felt that she already knew, given her strange overwhelming thirst and the fact that her output that day had a serious discrepancy to the amount she took in.

“Well, like I said, Einny noticed how everyone was getting up to drink much more often than the previous days. And While Bruce and I were discussing the fact that the mass of the mushrooms could not possible equal the increase in weight we’d seen in many people, Einny put forward the idea that the extra mass was coming from the extra intake of water. I of course had my reservations. Water you know is a polar substance and doesn’t like to mix with non-polar solutions…”

“I don’t think our guest wants a chemistry lesson, Betsy” said the bloodhound in his slow, deliberate manner. The tigress said a silent prayer of relief for the reserved canine.

“Oh… well, whatever might be the underlying chemical causes, one thing is certain. People who eat the mushrooms get thirsty, then they drink and they don’t… well, put out as much as they take in.”
“So it’s just water retention?” said the tigress hopefully. Though she was unaware, she had begun lightly pawing at the concave dome of her belly.

Now the collie looked uneasy and she didn’t meet the tigress’s hope filled eyes, “The jury’s still out on that, but from what we can tell… I don’t think so. I think… somehow, it’s real permanent fat.” The tigress sighed deeply. “These things, Manna if you want to call it, are an incredibly dense foodstuff. Think of it like dehydrated food, you get a lot more out of it than it looks before you add water… only if our initial calculations prove true, we still don’t have enough data to properly correct for error, one cap might equal the amount of energy contained in almost a pound of animal fat.”

That horrified the tigress initially and again all those white caps flashed through her mind, in an incredibly long chain. But she remembered something else as well, “I’ve eaten a lot of those things and I certainly haven’t gained a pound for everyone I’ve eaten.”

The collie smoothly responded as if she were expecting the tigress to say just that, “Yes that threw off our numbers at first as well. In fact, we had come up to a number half that much before we did the census the second day and recorded how much weight people were gaining.”

“It was thirty percent more per cap than the previous day.” Bruce the bloodhound intoned.

She couldn’t stop herself from asking the obvious question, “What does that mean?”

The collie replied, “The working theory we have now is that our body’s are still getting used to the foreign lipids. It didn’t know what exactly to do with them the first day so it passed out about half, but with successive exposure, our bodies are going to get better and better at processing it, which means more weight gain.”

The tigress had had enough, “There has to be something we can do.”

The bloodhound spoke, “Well, the obvious thing to do is not eat them.” The tigress found it a little frightening that the thought hadn’t come to her immediately.

The collie must have mistaken the look on her face for fear of starvation, “Or we can keep working the numbers and figure out how much is healthy to eat. The more time that passes, the better data we will have. In the meantime, fasting seems the best alternative, although most are having some difficulty with the proposal as most everyone has experienced a sharp increase in appetite as well.”

“It’s probably hormonally induced by eating the mushrooms as well.” Said Bruce

There was silence for a moment as the tigress digested the things she had been told. The she said, “Don’t you find that just the little bit odd?”

“Find what odd?” asked the slightly chubby collie brightly.

“That there is a mushroom that not only makes you fat but also makes you hungrier so you’d eat more mushrooms?”

“I… I honestly haven’t thought about it like that. What do you mean exactly?”

The tigress snorted in hollow amusement that this collie could be so smart and also so blind at the same time; if the bloodhound knew what she was getting at, he didn’t let on. “What I mean is, what if the purpose of the Manna is to make us fat?”

The collie guffawed in her squeaky voice, “That’s preposterous! Mushrooms don’t have a purpose, they just are.”

The bloodhound, however, spoke on her heels. He prodded the tigress, “To what end?”

The collie looked sidelong at her compatriot. The tigress shrugged, “I honestly don’t know. But I do know that at least some of the caps are not grown where they are, they look like they were placed
where they were. And also,” she said with a savage glimmer in her smoldering orange eyes, “I have never once seen the mushrooms on the island where they haven’t been surrounding us where we sleep. It’s like an invitation to eat them. They arrive when the hunger pangs are the worst.”

The bloodhound nodded silently, but the collie refuted. “Oh, you can’t be serious… They’re mushrooms.” She said as if that explained everything.

The tigress growled softly and the fear that had lived within the collie that first day they met revitalized as the collie became aware again that she was a 40 lb dog speaking to a - now - 615 lb tiger. “Like I said, I don’t know. I just think it’s strange that such a bizarre series of events would happen with no purpose.”

“There doesn’t always have to be a purpose.” Countered the bloodhound now evidently playing devil’s advocate.

The tigress huffed a breath and left them. Though she wasn’t completely sure when she had said so, she now knew that the worst of the hunger pangs had indeed passed. She felt calmer and more rational than she had when she had started speaking with the two science freaks, less like an… addict. She shuddered at the thought and resolved then and there not to eat anymore of the devious white crisps, not while there was fresh food available. The cow was, in fact, her destination, but not to eat; goodness knew she had had enough already. She went because she knew that that was where both the Beta and the Lab were bound to be and she needed to discuss what they were going to do about the other inhabitants of the island. As she walked, however, a small part in the back of her mind wondered if her resolve would be as strong tomorrow morning. (It was a shame that there were, in fact, no scales on the island. If that had been the case, the tigress might have noticed the 30 extra pound discrepancy between their numbers and the weight she had actually gained)