In the first hour or so of his long, nonconsensual stint of nudity, Beckett would later describe himself as being possessed by a profound sense of delusion. Somehow he had managed to convince himself that he had not been robbed, that something supernatural was afoot and that every stitch of clothing he possessed was gone forever. No, he told himself. Clearly he had just done something silly. Clearly, clearly, when he was walking around the house he must not have realized that his rucksack had opened, somehow. That had to be it. The rucksack opened and disgorged all of his clothes somewhere. Without anything else being dropped. And without him noticing the sudden drop in weight. And then the straps fell back into place while he was walking around. As for the clothing he had taken off? The ones he left on the floor while he lay in a bath that absolutely hadn't been filled with stagnant water, a couple of hours ago?
Those weren't important. He didn't even like those clothes. He was going to devote all of his mental energy to finding his other clothes. The ones he dropped.
That being said, retracing his steps was a long and fraught process. It took forever for him to gather up the courage to step out into the hall. The place felt well and truly abandoned, now. The floorboards creaked, warped with age and exactly as dire in construction as he had thought when he first set out for the manor. Outside, through the large glass windows, the world between the walls and the fences was a mess of shrubs and great choking masses of ivy. He only got the one look outside, however, as he realized that none of those vines were obliging enough to cover the windows. He would duck underneath every one as best he could, from then on out, a difficult task with the floors so uneven and his hands firmly dedicated to covering his crotch.
Sidling back to the sitting room, he tried several times to turn the doorknob with the side of his arm. When that failed, he very reluctantly used one of his hands for the same purpose, putting it back where it belonged as soon as the door was free of the latch. Slowly, carefully, he pushed it open with his cheek, angling his snout inside to try and expose as little of him as possible to Dierdre, the bobcat who was still here and who hadn't stolen all of his clothes. He might have been surprised to find that Dierdre wasn't there. Not just her, but the loom she had been working on was also gone. The sitting room was now completely bare, devoid of any kind of furniture. The fireplace was dark, empty but for a thin layer of soot and a thick layer of dust.
None of that was important, however. What was important was that his clothes had not fallen out in this room. He could just ignore everything else going on, in here.
The hallway to the foyer was an interior one, so he got through it faster and with less extraneous ducking. Here everything was much the same as it was everywhere else. The room was dingy and abandoned. Every step conjured up more clouds of dust. The stairs to the second floor were rickety, and missing a large section of one of the bannisters. The candleabras were completely bare, their candles having been taken from them long ago. The vase was still here, as were the irises. They were still as fresh as the day they were picked.
That was strange. But not nearly as strange as the fact that his clothes weren't here, either!
Beckett laughed. He laughed the laugh of someone who wasn't terrified beyond rational thought. Of course! How could he be so stupid? Clearly, he had to have dropped his clothes somewhere else. Clearly, clearly... clearly! He had looked around some of the other rooms around the house before he took his bath and nap, and he just... wasn't remembering them! Yes! That had to be it! So, obviously, the only rational thing to do would be to tear through every room in this accursed manor until he found the one where his bag managed to dump his clothes (and only his clothes) without him being aware of it.
By the time his little "episode" had passed, and the gravity of his situation had finally set in, he had done a tour of almost the entire building. He walked through abandoned and empty guest rooms, a master bedroom with the skeleton of a fourposter and no matress, a dining hall with a venerable table that still had some of its old luster. He encountered more than a few rooms that were locked, and the keys were still in his bag in the bathroom along with all the rest of his valuables (except for his clothes). Eventually he stumbled into the last room he could easily access. Up on the second floor was a massive library. Moonlight poured in from the vaulted windows which stretched nearly from floor to ceiling, casting everything in a pale white glow. The opposite wall, and much of the walls perpendicular to it, were taken up entirely with massive book shelves, also stretching to the ceiling. These were loaded with rows upon rows of books, in such great number it seemed impossible to fit even a single book more.
It was incredible. An absolute treasure trove, somehow spared the vagaries of time or the predations of whoever picked the estate clean. For someone as academically inclined as Beckett, it was better than any inheritance he could ever hope to ask for. But that wasn't important. What was important was that his clothes weren't in this room, either!
He slumped against one of the bookcases, thoroughly exhausted and unable to delude himself forward, any longer. This was real. This whole thing was real. Beckett was trapped in an ancient manor, all by himself, completely naked. He fell to a seated position on the floor, curled up in a ball with his hands still firmly between his legs and his long tail curled in front of him. There, he finally got around to the concept of approaching this situation rationally. He could think his way out of this. He had to think his way out of this. There had to be something around here he could use to cover up, a way to get help from the people in town. After a little sit-down, he would search again, this time with those goals in mind. If only he could do something about all the windows. At least the ones in this library had drapes he could close...
He stared at the window coverings, not unlike a starving man looks at a warm pot of stew. Drapes! Of course! He staggered to his feet and rushed to the windows. If he could get one of these drapes down, he could fashion it into some kind of toga. There was plenty of fabric in just one of them. He just needed to get them down. This was worth the use of his hands, even if it left him exposed for a minute.
Still exhausted, but encouraged, he got to work tugging on one of the drapes with an energy almost akin to violence. At first, he thought he might have to tear the whole thing down, bar and all, but after some experimental pulling back and forth he discovered he could slip the rings at the end off of the bar, one at a time. He walked the covering to the left, tugging and yanking until the whole thing came loose and collapsed in a pool in front of him. Greedily he scooped it up, throwing one end over his shoulder as he began to wrap it around himself. He didn't know the first thing about making a toga; what covered his body was a messy loop of dusty fabric, running pell-mell across his body in semi-random patterns. He was swaddled in the stuff, so thick it made movement actually somewhat difficult. Even then, there was still too much material; he looked with chagrin at the long tail of fabric that still trailed behind him.
He shook that thought off. He was going to have to tear off some of the excess or something, later on. For now, there were more important things to do. He had to go back, find his pack, get the keys and start searching through the whole house. He nodded to himself, double-checked that he was sufficiently covered, and proceeded to waddle back towards the stairs.
He only got a short way before encountering resistance. The cloth between his legs pulled sharply, back towards the window. Curious, he looked back. He followed the drape tail as it went up, up, all the way up to the window. It was back on the bar, stretched out to an impossible length in the process.
Beckett had time to make about half a sound of confusion before he was violently whisked off of his feet.
The drapes retracted, carrying the dormouse up with them. Beckett found himself unwinding as he flew upwards, spinning and tumbling in a chaotic jumble of limbs and tail and helplessly squeaking snout. When the thrashing finally stopped, he found himself suspended, many feet above the floor. His limbs were bound in fabric, legs spread wide. A knot had caught the base of his tail, pulling it up and pinning it to his back. He could feel the cool glass of the window as his rounded asscheeks pressed against it. And, to his growing horror, he realized that the way he was splayed out was causing his cock and balls, completely exposed, to dangle down towards the ground like lewd mistletoe.
What made matters worse was that he suddenly was not alone in the room, anymore. Looking down, he saw a pair of sparkling green cat's eyes staring up at him.
"Good evening, Your Lordship," Dierdre purred. "I hope the library is to your liking?"
Panic lanced through Beckett. Sheer, animal panic. "S-stop!" he shouted. "Don't look! Please, I..." He squirmed against his restraints, trying in vain to pull himself free. The entire time, he could feel the bobcat's eyes on him, even as he clamped his own shut to try and avoid her gaze. Not that she would be making eye contact. No doubt she was looking directly at his exposed, naked... "No, no, no, no, no..." He could feel it. The subtle twitch. The tingle between his legs.
Dierdre watched with restrained delight as her captor started to get hard, overhead. "Ah, good. I see the family curse is still going strong."
"What is all this?" Beckett could not even begin to sound dignified as he questioned her. He did not think it was possible for anyone to be dignified with their cock dangling above them like a sword dangling from a horse-hair. "Where are my clothes? Are you doing magic? Where are my clothes?!"
"Hung up on that point, aren't we?" Dierdre spoke extremely casually, for someone standing right underneath a naked dormouse. "I'm curious as to what you might mean by 'your' clothes. Do you mean those rags you wandered in with? Were those yours?"
"What?" Beckett opened his eyes and stared down at the bobcat, bewildered. "Yes! Of course they were mine!"
"Did you make them?"
"I owned them! I bought them with my own coin. Some of the things you stole from my bag were things I've owned for years!"
"But you did not make them." Dierdre's expression was significantly more serious.
It was enough to get Beckett to sober, just a little bit. "Well... no. I suppose I didn't make them with a needle and threa-"
"Then they aren't yours!" For the first time, something approaching anger flashed across the girl's face. She composed herself, after a moment, but in the place of anger there was still a simmering air of judgment and disgust. "They are not yours. Your ancestor failed to learn this lesson, mortal, and now it seems I must teach it again."
The dread sank in again. "'Mortal?' What do you mean, mortal? Are you... one of the Fair Folk?" She did not answer, instead turning to leave. "W-wait! Please! Don't leave me up here!" He struggled against his bonds, keenly aware of the feeling of the window against his hindquarters. "Please! If somebody looks here, they can see..."
"Hmm?" Dierdre stopped at the door, resting a hand on the frame. When she looked back to Beckett, she once again sported a soft, casual smile. "Oh, there's nothing to fear, Your Lordship. There's a funny thing about windows, you see. It's actually quite difficult to see inside of them, most of the time. So long as it's brighter outside than it is inside, then no one will have cause to see you splayed out and presenting, even if they were inclined to look."
Beckett suspected that she was not saying that to put him at ease. Throwing around words like "splayed out" and "presenting" definitely weren't helping. His ears flattened, even as his nethers twitched at the thought.
"Which reminds me..." Dierdre's smile deepened. A single fang glinted in the moonlight. "I meant to give you a homecoming gift. These old rooms look so depressing in the dark, don't you agree? Let's fix that." She clapped her hands together twice. Instantly, fires sprung from a few dozen spots, little candle flames hovering in the air above the chandelier, the candleabras, and from a collection of candle-holders scattered throughout the room. In seconds, the library was absolutely awash with light, as bright as a day in midsummer. Dierdre looked over her work, then up at an absolutely terrified dormouse, with the satisfaction of a job well done. Then, she turned and disappeared down the hall.
"W-w-w-wait! Dierdre!" Beckett thrashed against his bonds, trying in vain to find anywhere he could pull his limbs free. "Dierdre? Dierdre!"