Four-Toe had never seen a humanoid of this species before, but he had seen plenty of opossums, so he knew what he was looking at. Fat, waddling, and wearing only a grimy apron-like smock, it trundled down the sidewalk until it saw him.

A human might have been amused. Two country animals, an opossum and a raccoon, both made humanoid. Four-Toe was under five feet tall and the opossum well over six. A were-opossum, maybe, he thought.

It smiled when it saw him and produced a gold coin from somewhere, gesturing at a nearby alley. A second gesture, toward its – his? – groin, showed what he wanted.

Well, a gold Wheel was a lot of money, and Four-Toe was not picky about how he made his living. He followed the opossum into the alley. He was just a poor praka, not worth mugging, so it should be safe enough.

Yet it wasn't. The possum had taken off the apron and Four-Toe was trying to understand its strange maleness, which he could only have described as upside-down, when movement caught his eye. He looked up just as the opossum lunged downward.

He dodged, but too late. The possum's proportionately huge head unfolded into an equally huge pink maw, and it slammed down to engulf his entire upper body before he could even move. Then it straightened, and Four-Toe could only twitch in horror as it bolted him down. He knew opossums. A friend had had a pet opossum. They didn't eat their meals whole. Yet here he hung, nose-down in a stinking gullet, as gravity helped it swallow him.

It tore away his belt and pouch, but his sandals were still on when its fangs scraped over his feet and bushed-out tail. And then, with a last gulp, Four-Toe was gone.

The opossum pressed a hand against its belly as its latest meal settled. Sometimes they scratched...but no, the praka must not have had a full breath of air in its lungs, for it barely twitched before quieting. Whatever hopes and plans the praka had were now reduced to providing him with his evening meal.

He tied the apron back on, rifled through the praka's pouch (just a few coppers), then looked down. He was much fatter than he had been five minutes before, but his rolls of furry flab muffled the shape of his meal. No one would suspect a hundred pounds of praka lay in his stomach.

Picking fur out of his teeth and humming a jaunty tune, he set off. It was time to find an inn to sleep off his meal.

*****

Or perhaps a better title for this pic would be "formerly hungry possum." *Urp* I changed his genitals a bit to make it more obvious they are "upside down". Marsupials, go figure.

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