And the audience in question?

"Well, we could just ask to have an audience with him," Joan suggests. "Couldn't hurt, could it?"

Right now that question isn't going through either the native Alicia's or Fred's minds. They're more concerned about what they've woken up to, really. A change which has jumped first from them to other's cursed into humanoid animal form by the magical curse/disease known as lycanthropy (technically it's neo-lycanthropy, considering that traditional lycanthropy does let the victim return to their human form, but we don't need to be pedantic).

See, they had gone to bed as human beings cursed into the shape of humanoid animals and woken up . . . something new to this world. Something known on Terra Prime as the Manimal race.

Some might have said that the gods (those of a polytheistic bent) felt a new species was called for on this world. In actuality, while the origin's of this change was supernatural, it wasn't sanctioned by the gods (entities who's actual existence, questions surrounding their existence isn't for this setting). Oh, the deed is done and the Higher Up (s) won't undo it, but more than a Few feels the disapproval...

In a way, what happened to the new Manimals is more disorienting than what had happened to the Fred and other Manimals of Terra Prime. See, back on Terra Prime the transformation that the native Minestus had instigated through Fred to the Pack had been a gradual process (completed in one month, approximately). It had crept up, allowing time for adjusting mentally to it all. Now, instead of a month it all hit in one night! Matrixes that had been warped and artificially locked into "unnatural shape" shift and freezes in a permanent shape of a true species (vice something from a curse). After some rather unusal and disturbing dreams (brought about in part by the sudden gift of empathy and the beginning of the "community heart", for want of a better term), they wake up with a great deal of disorientation . . .

Memories of foxes scampering through the night forest dance in their memories, but when each looks in the other's eyes some kind of special name (the "spirit name" as it were) of the other (the mate's). . . .

They suddenly find it comes as a rather hard (albeit deliciously delightful) shock to their system, leaving huge gaps in their memories. Gaps like everything BEFORE this special day . . .

In a way it is kind of interesting that they only know that they are "Leaping Stream" and "Swift Foot" . . .

1. Yes, it is interesting to them (but they're not too disoriented to blurt it out to the rest of the world) but lets explain how it's interesting in more ways than the way they find it . . .

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