You just made yourself a co-author! Everything you just posted can be considered part of my intended story. I can quite easily work around your Benjamin Bunny sequence: assume that he was doing his thing four or five miles away from my folks.
On grounds of seniority, I reserve the right to kill off your added characters if they try to interfere with mine. But it really is unlikely to come up.
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Six miles west of Rustywall Manor, around the same time as Ratsneak destroyed his mirror, two mated pairs of Talking Tigers-- a pair of brothers descended from the redeemed criminal Hookpaw, mated with two sisters descended from a less-renowned Limtal Tiger named Longmuzzle --approached a breezy canvas-roofed refreshment stand. A female Talking Wallaby with a pouched infant (whose gender would be undiscernible till emergence) was in charge, with her fully- weaned son helping to run things.
"Get your meadowcream here!" shouted the marsupial boy. "Fresh from the meadow!"
Bannertail, one of the tigresses, approached the stand in a carefully non-threatening manner, closely accompanied by her husband Widesnout. "Begging your pardon, my good Wallaby," Bannertail asked, "but what IS meadowcream? How do you make it or get it?"
Without embarrassment, Mistress Dafreetu answered, "It's a mixture of honey, pine sap, milkweed juice, and pulverized dandelion petals."
Roughchest, the other male Tiger, moved closer after hanging back at first. "Excuse me. Meadowcream sounds like a wholesome simple-sugar source, no problem there. But what, um, what about, you know, protein? Like, to make skin and muscles?"
Leaning back on her tail, Dafreetu rolled her eyes. "Skin and muscles are a given; they just need fuel. Did you stay in your mother's pouch when other young beasts were learning to read and write at the Rustywall Abbey?"
Jumpaside, Roughchest's mate, came as near as a quadruped could come to doing an elbow-nudge on him. Then, to the mother wallaby: "I think it's a matter of body mass."
Widesnout picked up the discussion. "We probably have no currency that passes in Rustywall country. Maybe we can barter something for a supply of your meadowcream."
This was where a new character arrived on the scene: a very large snake, plump in proportion to his length. He addressed the merchant-class wallaby: "Good mother beast, I am known as Cicero the Seasick Sea Monster. That's a metaphor; I scarcely ever barf. By the will of Aslan-- yes, I know Who He is-- I am about to shed my skin, and here are four clawed felines who can help me molt by degrees. Then, since you've got fingers which can hold a needle, the equivalent of waterskins can be fashioned out of my discarded epidermis. These will hold the meadowcream, once you work out a work-barter transaction; meanwhile, I figure on caterpillaring east to Rustywall Manor."
Dafreetu did a doubletake. "What, like an inchworm bunching up and pushing forward and bunching up and pushing forward?"
"That's the general idea. I've heard about a Lord High Rodent in charge there. I plan to feel out his attitude about receiving visitors from the Bobby Clambake Islands."
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This is where Coppefox's co-author Evening Star will pick up the narrative, watching Cicero's arrival through the eyes of the petulant Lord Ratsneak.
FURTHER NOTE FOR EVENING STAR'S BENEFIT: When Cicero has to defend himself, he won't constrict any assailant. Instead, he'll grab enemies to body-slam them left and right, as Hulk did to Loki in the first Avengers movie. Cartoon damage, konechno; Ratsneak or whoever will get right up again. This, however, doesn't mean that violence involving only characters under your full- time control shouldn't be gory.
