The ride to her new home was fortunately uneventful. Riley was too sleepy to speak up, but just barely not enough to actually drift off again, leaving her in a half conscious daze. Rick kept cursing the snow intermittently, having had to turn off the radio to avoid blaring static.

At least the snowfall cleared up after a while, improving the visibility on the road from the absolute nothing it had been before.

Riley was startled into full attention upon feeling a bump on the road, which turned out to be just a speed bump. As she focused her eyes on the snow covered road in front of her, she heard Rick chuckle, before speaking up-

"A natural with car rides, aincha?"

"W-*yawn*-what do you mean?"

"How I wish my biological kids would also doze off like that when we have to take a longer ride somewhere, can sure get loud in here..."

"Given the age of your kids I can certainly imagine."

"Aye. Andrew at least is busy trying to stop Lily and Timmy from going at each other's throats because one did something the other didn't like."

"Sounds... engaging if nothing else."

"He'll tell you allll about it." He sighed as they turned onto a smaller road, the barren woods opening up to reveal an equally barren field, only a few bushes visible through the snow.

"How long till we're at your place?"

"Just a minute or so, it's just down the road."

Riley tried to keep the conversation going, the weather not exactly providing many talking points.

"How's this place look in the summer?"

"Field's quite overgrown, but has its moments once everything starts blooming. Bit further up there's a small lake we often go ice skating on, must be frozen solid by now. How's going there in few days sound?"

"Fine and all, but I don't know how to ice skate, or even have skates."

"We have an old pair of Andrew's that should fit you well, and besides, half the fun of skating is learning it for the first time."

"Including all the crashes onto ice?"

"I mean... yeah. Can't learn if you're so afraid of failure you don't even try. And if you're really afraid of a mishap or two, we have enough pads to make hockey goalkeepers jealous."

Riley paused a bit upon hearing his words, mulling over them as a sizable household emerged itself from behind the trees, Rick pulling up onto the thankfully only slightly snowed driveway.

"That's a big house." She flatly admitted, whistling as she took in the sight. You could fit like three families in this...

"Indeed. We had to put in quite a bit work to get it presentable after buying it, it sold for peanuts for a reason. But that's long done, and we have a place where all the extended family can meet up for special occasions."

She lifted her brow at this, certainly hoping that she wasn't gonna find herself in such a special occasion.

"Don't worry, this year it's just us for Christmas. Next year, who knows, but not yet. One family must be overwhelming plenty to meet, let alone..." He faded off as he drove into the garage, the door closing behind them.

"Let alone what?" Riley asked as she got out, taking a look around the cluttered garage, gas canisters and various junk lining the walls.

She took a deep sniff, a faint unfamiliar scent tingling her nose as she looked around for its source. It wasn't unpleasant or anything, it just... was.

"Gimme a sec, counting..." He muttered out, grabbing the bags out of the back seats and passing some to Riley.

"Counting wh-"

"Eight! Let alone eight families. Sorry, blanked out there since I couldn't for the life of me recall the number and had to count them up. Let's just say that if you thought we were busy, Ella's folks were something else entirely, five sisters and then some more cousins on top, most of them with families of their own."

Riley couldn't help but chuckle in disbelief at his words, her mind blanking at trying to imagine so many people together, let alone anthros.

"Must get cramped in here."

"Not as much as you'd think~" He smirked as he opened the door into the house proper, Riley following him.

He was right. You'd need at least twice as many.

The massive open room they stepped into made Riley's eyes go wide as she tried to take it all in. It seemed like most of the ground floor was one open room, the individual areas separated only by loosely scattered columns. The far end seemed to be a kitchen, which then flowed seamlessly into the dining area with a heavy set wooden table, and then into the living area with couches and the fireplace. The entire thing held up by only a handful of square columns, which aside from keeping the building up also had the secondary purpose of getting completely covered with framed family photos, the sincerity of it all making her crack a slight smile.

"How ya like it at the first glance?" Rick asked with a smile as he sat down on one of the couches, groaning a bit as he stretched.

"Haven't ever seen anything like it before, but it sure already feels much cozier than what I'm used to."

"I'm glad, Riley." He gave her an earnest smile as she walked back towards him, before getting up.

"Before I'm gonna give you a tour, let's drop the bags off in your room first, so that you can sort them out however you want." He picked his share of the bags back up, pointing towards the dining area and the stairs that went up from it. Even the stairs had carpets in this place.

Upstairs was mostly one long corridor between all the different rooms, purpose of some more clear than others. There were three with kids' names on them, one with a "Mom & Dad" label, one more with "Work - Do not enter", and a few left unlabeled.

"Now you've got me curious- what's in the 'Work' room?" Riley asked as they walked past it, the mystery begging to be exp-

"Oh, it's just Ella's office. She works from home, but she still needs to have a private place to be able to focus in silence."

Well that's underwhelming.

"What does she do? And what about you for that matter?"

"She's a senior programmer at a security company. It's about two hours by car from here, but after we got engaged and moved in they let her work remotely. Still has to show up at the office once a month or so, but other than that she stays at home."

"And you?"

"Work at a pharmacy. I know, not exactly breathtaking but it helps pay the bills." He answered as they walked up to one of the unlabeled doors, Rick pressing on the handle and walking in.

The bedroom was larger than her entire previous one, and would only have one eighth of the residents. The bed alone was massive, wider than Riley even if she'd stretched her arms as far to the sides as she could. Of course, there were carpets, and more drawers than she thought any single person would ever need.

"This is one massive room, Jesus."

"Ha, we call it the large bedroom for a reason. I mean, if you're fine with not having an attached bathroom you could move into the smaller one from the get go, keep it mind it's still quite barren."

"I'll definitely take a look at the small one, this bed looks like it could swallow me whole."

"Lemme tell you, it feels the part as well, that mattress might as well be filled with cotton candy with how unpleasantly soft it is. Alright, come and take a look at the other one." He walked out, not bothering to pick the bags up again just yet, opening the door right next to the ones belonging to the kids.

He wasn't kidding about it being bare, it was literally empty. It looked like it belonged to another house, white unpainted walls and bare laminate greeting her as she looked around the empty room.

"Oh right, we moved the furniture out for painting before Ella got sick, my bad. Guess it's only the large one for now, but we can deal with painting and grabbing some decorations early next week, sorry for that."

"It's fine, don't worry, I'm not gonna die because of my bed being too large. But since you've mentioned it... what color were you planning to paint it?"

"Mint green, but since you're here now you'll get to choose of course. Any preferences?" He closed the door and helped move the rest of the bags into the large bedroom, before closing it as well.

"Something darker I think. Purple maybe?" Riley shrugged as Rick took her towards the end of the hallway, opening into some sort of game room. There was a couch facing a flat screen TV, a couple game controllers laying on the coffee table in front of it.

"This here's the bickering room, where everyone says it's their turn to play now and what the clock says doesn't matter. At least used to be, Ella finally got Andrew a desktop and Lily has her tablet, which leaves Timmy to enjoy the collection. Of course not alone, game controllers are a bit tricky when you're four and can't figure out how to press more than one button at the same time, so I tend to play with him in my free time."

The sight was certainly intimidating. All Riley knew about videogames came from the occasional ads she overheard, unable to identify anything in the room.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Is something wrong Riley?" Rick looked a bit concerned, noticing the change in her expression."

"No, it's just... I feel a bit lost here. I've no clue about most of the things you've just mentioned."

"I know what you mean Riley, although I haven't felt it as strongly as you must be right now. I wish I had something more profound to say than just "it gets better", but I suppose the one upside is that getting to introduce a sibling to videogames is about the coolest thing for a kid I can imagine, so they'll certainly be motivated to ease you in as well as they can."

Riley cracked a small smile at his earnesty, her imagination going wild as she tried to visualize what getting eased in like that would even look like.

"Ready to start the rest of the tour?" He asked as he walked out of the room, shooting Riley a reassuring smile.

She shook off the train of thought before it could threaten to start gnawing at her mood any more, following Rick out as he went through the corridor.

"Most of those are obvious enough, especially since we've been to the most unmarked ones, the two I haven't mentioned is the storage room here-" He tapped his knuckle against the door- "Where your furniture is in right now, and the one right next to stairs is the bathroom. Anything else... guess it's worth saying out loud, if something weird is happening at night then absolutely feel free to bang on our door."

"I have a suspicion there's a story behind you saying that."

"As basic as stories get. Andrew threw up at night one time when he was little, but was afraid to wake us up, so he laid down and slept in the corridor, to Ella's surprise when she got up in the morning."

"Awwh, sounds rough."

"Yeah, we had a bit of a talk about it being okay to wake us up for stuff like this, and then he got to skip school the next few days because of the initial issue."

"Anything serious?" Riley asked as they both made their way downstairs, stepping back into the open room.

"Just some food poisoning, thankfully. Alright, so hopefully the ground floor is self explanatory for the most part. As far as these doors on the left go- bathroom, washing room, drying room, and the one furthest back, behind the fireplace leads to the basement, mostly just more storage. Oh, and the garage of course. Anything I missed?"

"You tell me."

"Ha. But no, don't think so, think I got them all. Wanna go and make the large bedroom a bit more yours as I fix us something to eat? I'm famished."

"Good idea, I'm getting hungry myself. What's on the menu?"

"We had some homemade Chinese yesterday, there's... huh, pretty much just enough left over for both of us."

"Chinese?"

"Stir fried veggies, crispy chicken and some good rice. How's that?"

"Sounds great. Guess it's about time to find out how actual food tastes like."

"What'd they feed you with back there?" He asked offhandedly as he pulled out the plastic container with the leftovers from the fridge.

"Oh there was variety alright, ranging from somewhat decent to downright inedible. Soups, creams, "chili", meats..." Riley had to take a deep breath, brief wave of nausea rolling over her as she recalled the latter.

"Don't worry, here we actually cook them."

She chuckled briefly before turning towards the stairs, the carpets throwing her off by muting her footsteps as she walked upstairs, managing to recall which door led to her large bedroom.

It felt even bigger the second time around.

She went around the room checking out all the furniture for any forgotten goodies inside, not finding much aside from a set of towels on the upper shelf of the main wardrobe. Cursory look out the windows confirmed her suspicions that they were, in fact, facing the front of the house, snowfall having returned with vengeance in the meantime.

She looked back towards the dimly lit room, approaching the bed and kicking off her shoes, thinking that after all, best way to see if this bed really is as bad as it looks is to just hop right onto-

*squeak*

She must have sunk almost three inches into the absurd mattress, feeling almost trapped inside of a Riley-shaped hole. After gathering her bearings and shifting around, it thankfully got a little bit more manageable, old foam spreading her weight properly once more. Even then, it definitely beat the paper thin mattress back in her bunk, Riley having to shake herself out of falling asleep on the spot.

After climbing out out of her foam prison, she started going through the bags of clothes, placing the underwear in one drawer and the rest of her clothes in another, dumping her orphanage stuff into the bottommost one, spotting the bundle Luca gave her on top of the clothes pile just before she closed the drawer, picking it up and starting to unwrap it.

Inside, there were at least a dozen or so bundled cards, crudely cut out from old printer paper. There were drawings on each, drawn with off brand wax crayons and some disposable pencils. Some had what Riley figured was herself with her dark jacket and absence of a smile, next to a few other smaller girls, all holding hands. She couldn't help but smile at them, with their misspelled names scribbled above each girl, no sense of scale, and being apparently set on a flower field with a smiling sun above their heads.

"Don't lose your spirit girls." She whispered quietly to herself, going through the cards, most fairly similar except for the last one which perked Riley's interest. It was a pencil drawing of her in the middle of her training session, taken apparently from above. On the other side there was a similar drawing, but of around dozen or so girls and boys seemingly trying to follow her steps, none of them looking older than twelve or so. Judging by the shape of the room it was one of the play rooms, the perspective from its window onto the courtyard roughly fitting the one in which the first drawing was made.

On the back there was a small written note-

'''

I originally started this a year or so back, after some of the younger girls remarked to me how they wanted to be so badass and unafraid as you are, but were too intimidated to ever speak to you directly, and for the most part, so was I. But I got an idea that we could watch you as you trained and learn that way, and it took off. Soon girls started training on their own, and using your moves to get out of trouble, knives and claws helping them out of course.

Now, knowing you're gonna leave tomorrow, I wish I could have told you sooner how much you meant for us, all of us.

Thank you so much Riley.

Luca

'''

Riley had to wipe her tears into the sleeve of her jacket as she set the card aside, holding her hand over her mouth as the reveal sank in. She never would have expected anything like that. Maybe one or two girls to try to clumsily imitate her, but something so organized and so effective? Because of her?

After taking a few moments to let her eyes dry, she grabbed the cards and set them up on one of the cupboards, smiling a bit at the display as she took it all in.

Judging by the ambient sizzling sounds the lunch would be ready any moment now, Riley heading to the attached bathroom to make herself a bit more presentable. She took off her jacket, leaving only a plain white tee underneath as she looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Pale skin, hazel eyes and dirty blonde hair, a tangled mess that fortunately only reached her ears, cut diligently with safety scissors at random intervals.

She splashed her face with cold water to try and appear as if nothing happened, before grabbing her new brush and trying to untangle her hair into something coherent, succeeding only partially. Still, better than how it looked most of the time while hidden under the hood of her jacket.

Afterwards she took a moment to change into one of her new shirts, the brand new fabric feeling pleasant on her skin as she heard Rick call out from below-

"Riley, lunch's ready!" Judging by how clear he came through, there must have been a hole in the floor or something. Cursory inspection found the offender, a round hole after what must have once been a knot in the wood in one of the floor planks. If she laid down next to it she could even see through it, getting a glimpse of the dining table undern-

"Riley?"

"Uh, sorry, on my way!" She got up embarrassed, deciding to skip putting on shoes due to all the carpets in the house, quickly running downstairs to see Rick laying two plates down on that same table she was just spying on, looking at her curiously.

"Got caught up in something?" He asked as he sat down, leaving a chair worth of free space between himself and Riley.

"There's a hole in the floor." She answered as she joined him, picking up a nice looking fork.

"Was wondering how long would it take you to find it. We're the only ones that know about it, funnily enough. And yes, don't worry about listening in on anything, nobody is gonna talk about their secrets at the dinner table or something."

"Really, nobody else has found something so obvious?"

She stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork, tasting it along with the rice, chewing softly as the taste made her close her eyes in appreciation, savoring the dish.

Holy fuck did this taste good.

"It's not like anybody uses the room, and it's at an awkward angle where it blends in from below." His explanation was confirmed with a quick glance upwards as she kept shoveling the food into her mouth, it was hard to make out the small opening despite Riley knowing exactly where it was.

Not even two minutes later she was done with the meal, the veggies providing the spice she was deprived of at the orphanage, where salt and pepper were seen as making the food too hot for the oh so poor kids.

"How was the food?" Rick asked amused as Riley had to constantly stop herself from leaning in to literally lick the plate clean.

"How much would it surprise you to hear that this is the best thing I remember eating?"

"Honestly? Not that much considering what you've told me about the food at that place." He admitted, chuckling.

"Still, I'm happy you enjoyed it, Ella will be ella-ted to hear your compliment."

Riley groaned at his pun as she got up with her plate, walking back towards the kitchen before placing it in the sink.

"We have a dishwasher, to the left of the sink there's a handle sticking out, just pull it towards you." He called out behind her, tone suggesting that this was something he had to repeat over and over again.

She looked around, trying to spot the handle he mentioned, pulling random drawers open until one finally worked, her eyes going wide as she opened it all the way, hidden behind a wooden facade, making it fit in with the rest of the kitchen. She slid in the plate next to the other ones, placing the fork in the utensil basket and staring at it confused.

"What do I do now?"

"Just close it, when it's filled up I'll show you how to turn it on."

She carefully closed the contraption, taking a step back in case it turned itself on and was hostile.

"Never seen one before?" Rick asked as he walked up with his plate, putting the dishes in confidently.

"Heard ads I suppose, but never actually saw it in person until now. Neither the orphanage kitchen nor the kitchen at the place I worked for a bit had one."

"You worked in a kitchen?"

"That's putting it too strongly. I washed dishes and mopped floors for a few months, paid pennies under the table. Still, money is money, and it's not like I had anything better to do."

Rick nodded, reminding himself of similar gigs he had while he was still planning for the future with his friends, a tinge of sadness crossing his expression before he shook it off. No point in feeding his regrets.

"So, now we just wait for Ella and the kids to get back, shouldn't be more than an hour or two. Have something to spend time on?"

She reminded herself of the anatomy book she snatched from the library, probably nestled between her clothes in the bottommost drawer, and that she still hadn't finished it.

"Yeah, don't worry, I'll be fine."

"Oh I know you will, but I want you to feel more than just fine. If you need anything I'll be taking a nap on the couch." He waved to her as he walked deeper into the room, Riley taking a moment to stretch before heading back to her room, digging the book out from the drawer.

She laid down on her bed and dug in, giving it a closer read.

***

Reading about skunks' natural defenses was... certainly fascinating if nothing else, Riley arriving at a conclusion that she'd still rather have a knife, more convenient.

She put the book on the bedside table and stretched her arms, not used to reading in bed, before getting up. Noting lack of any clock in the room she intended to go down and ask Rick for the time, faint rumble coming from outside interrupting her mid step.

She walked to the window, seeing a car pull onto the driveway before stopping, a few blobs of black and white and other colors getting out, grabbing bag after bag from the trunk, the largest one fumbling with the door before opening it, Riley quietly making her way back to the hole in the floor to listen in.

"Rick!?" A female voice called out, a bit annoyed judging by the tone.

She heard his voice slurring something in surprise before he ran over to help them with the bags, setting them on the dinner table one after another, mumbling out an apology for not opening the door for them. A few more voices joined in, too quiet to make out exactly what they were saying.

As they started unpacking they all got quieter and quieter, tension growing in the air. Rick must have noticed as well, as he eventually asked "What?" out of the blue, tone just a bit jovial.

"You know what full well honey, we were all so excited on our way back home even I had a hard time shutting up." That must have been Ella.

"I have absolutely no idea what are you all talking ab-"

"Riley, Riley, Riley!" A high pitched boy voice interrupted him, by the sheer energy it must have been Timmy.

"Aaaah, thaaaaaat." Rick responded, barely holding back a smile, judging by the inflection.

Even Riley was excited at this point, giggling quietly to herself.

"Well, she's home!" He continued, getting an excited gasp from the younger kids. "But sadly, she got quite sick recently, so it might take her a while to feel better. And even when she does, I want to ask you all to give her some space while she settles in, alright?" His question answered by a choir of three "Yes"-s.

"B-but, where is she?" Timmy asked, some of the conversation clearly having gone over his head.

"Probably taking a nap in the large bedroom, so try to keep qui- Timmy, wait!" He called out, muffled steps already racing upstairs.

Upstairs, towards her.