fact: all told, all of the collective Parallel Variations fics (including the entire Near Miss series and all of the follow-up material in the other timelines as well) together clock in at a total of 189,765 words!
And of those words, 167,786 of them were written in 2020!
From an old version of Fera Sapiens: the design progression of Thunder, a mentor/parental figure for Jaguar and Cyclone from the abandoned zoo!
While searching distant lands to follow an omen about the clan’s gods, she comes across the house where the protagonists were born. Thunder takes their resemblance to the jaguar god as a good sign and invites them to join her clan, hoping to fulfill the prophecy.
Design-wise, the shift from calico to ginger fur was to keep consistent with the warm, fire-like theme of the clan as a whole!