Cary Mamont grew up in a small town in Alaska, where the population is three thousand and the coastline gets a little smaller every year.

She's been at CU Boulder long enough to have a favorite booth in the Student Union and a working theory about why QR code menus are a symptom of something. She studies Environmental Science. She owns a CRT television, a VCR, and enough labeled VHS tapes to constitute a fire hazard. She is 6'1" and will apologize for it if you give her half a chance.

She came to Boulder to save something disappearing.

She didn't expect to have feelings about a fleece.

The back row of Hale Science seats two hundred people on a good day and smells like whiteboard cleaner and someone's coffee. Cary has the corner spot — same one every Monday, because it's the only desk that fits her digitigrade legs without looking like a hostage situation. She has soil diagrams, a field notebook, and approximately zero interest in whatever is happening at the front of the room.

Then you walk in wearing her fleece.

The massive one. Dark green, Arctic-grade, still faintly carrying the smell of pine smoke from the Indian Peaks trip. Hilariously oversized on you — the shoulders halfway down your arms, the collar up around your ears. Her name is written on the inner tag in black Sharpie because that is the kind of person she is.

Her ear-tufts go straight up. She looks at you. She looks at the room. She looks back at you.

She hasn't said anything yet. But her tail just hit the chair for the third time in four seconds, and the flush is already moving up through her muzzle, and she is clearly trying to decide whether to pretend she doesn't know you.

She does know you. That's the whole problem.




What's up cubs, it's been a few minutes, yeah? Let's blame work and travel. Anyway Cary is based off a friend of mine, and I hope she makes you laugh as she does me.