They’ve settled down in that stupid tavern. Full of stupid people. And the templar continues with them, though lately he seems more distracted. My girls, my offspring… don’t mix too much with those people… There are templars who may bring you with them to the Circle, there are other mages who can use you to their own purposes. Marilyn, my dear. Stop trying to charm that half elf. Sex is good but distracts too much. Why don’t your powers wake up yet? What did I do wrong?
(Excerpt from Edanhor Blank’s journal, as found in Highever on 9:25, 14th day of Haring)
STRAY CATS
The sun is already down and people is passing from having dinner to getting drunk at the Merry Mabari Inn. It’s a good chance to sneak out with my small treasure and see if I can see her tonight.
The innkeeper has been generous today and has given me a bowl with milk, where I’ve soaked my last piece of dry bread. He thinks the milk is for me, poor man. As if I were a baby. He doesn’t seem to remember I used my last copper to pay an ale to share with Eve.
I put the bowl in the ground and wait. She doesn’t make me wait a lot. She already knows the sound of my steps. “Hi, Stripes!!! How was your day today? Did you catch a lot of mice?” I say while caressing the stray cat’s head. She’s not your usual pretty kitty. She’s a stray cat, like me. The common grey-stripped street cat.
That's why I call her Stripes, I'm that original with names. She's a survivor. She lacks an eye and half of her ear, and her tail is broken in a funny way.
She also walks weird, I guess she had a hip fracture when she was a kitten, but that doesn’t affect to her agility. I wouldn’t have heard her arrive if she had not saluted me with a faint “meow”.
She’s also small for a cat her age, she got pregnant when she was still too young, and that affected to her growing. Poor thing. None of the kitten survived. And hearing her calling them the following days was heartbreaking.
But it was good for her, after that something got broken inside her, because she has never got pregnant again. That’s the only thing cute in her, her size. I look at her face.
She reminds me a bit of the handsome half elf. He also has a scarred eye… though I think in him it is terribly s.e.x.y. The nice knight who called me “lady” also lacks an eye… I see a trend here. Maybe I should learn how to make eye patches...
I’m lost in my thoughts when I head the door of the inn opening. Somebody gets out. Stripes jumps and hides away. She knows people too well to risk being seen by anyone apart from me. I’m not as fast as her, so I just stay quiet in the shadows. Too bad.
Art by Pham Ngoc Trinh
He has seen me. It’s the tall, weird one. The mage which scares me, the one whose name sounds like he has caught a bad cold. I hope he will ignore me, but I’m wrong.
He comes directly towards me. “I thought I heard a cat’s meow… Have you seen a cat around?” “No, mage. Look for your dinner elsewhere” He looks at me as if I were crazy. “My dinner? I don’t want him for dinner!!! Actually… It was me who was bringing something for him to dinner”….
He takes something from his purse. It is a fresh, sparkling small fish. Lucky one. I wouldn’t be able to get that even for myself, and he spares one for a cat. I look at my humble bowl of milk and old bread and he follows my gaze.
“Maybe he won’t come if he’s not hungry anymore”. His voice sounds a bit more tender. He even smiles. I feel relieved. He sits down on the steps, moving the fish around so any cat around can smell it. He looks tall even sitting down.
I see Stripes coming as if she had nothing to fear. She has decided that, if the mage didn’t hurt me, he won’t hurt her either. Clever girl.
“It’s not a he. It’s a she”. She has smelled the fish, of course. “And here she comes…the whore.”. Stripes smells the fish from the mage’s hands, tries to steal it and since he’s holding it tightly, she finally gives up and accepts to climb to his lap.
Then he releases the fish and profits to caress her head. The mage looks at me. He almost seems a normal person now, with the cat on his lap.
“Why do you call her like that?” “Look at her. Selling herself for a piece of food. She’ll pretend she love you for a while and then go away until you can pay for her love again. Isn’t it what whores do?” He shows a sad smile.
“Don’t we all do?” “Speak for yourself, Shem. I don’t sell my body”.
I turn back, decided to come back to the inn… but I don’t know why, I stay. He seems embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean that!!!” he babbles. “I’m… I’m sorry… It is that...Damn it, I don’t even know why I said it. I guess I was trying to be funny” “I mean”, he continues,
“Don’t you have the feeling that sometimes you only can get other people’s… friendship if you give them something in exchange?” I shrug. “I guess I am lucky. I am not exactly alone”. “Wrong comparison, then”.
Stripes feels tired of the mage’s attention, hits his hand with her paw and jumps from his lap. She rubs to my leg and I feel somehow proud of it.
“She seems to like you, even if it was me who gave her the fish” “I suppose she has her reasons. I saved her life when she was a kitten” “Did you?” “It was four years ago. The kids in the alienage were throwing stones to something in the river.
I looked down and saw this poor ball of fur trying not to get drown, while she was dodging the stones. I didn’t even think, I jumped to the water and I took her out. The kids were so shocked they stopped their attack… for a while… But when they realized I had spoiled them the fun, I had to run fast.
They still had stones to throw.” “When I brought her home, my sister asked me why had I bothered. The cat was so tiny, so soaked and so hurt we all thought she wouldn’t survive. She had lost an eye, see? And her hip injury is from that time too… But somebody had to care for her. She was no more the pretty kitty little girls wanted to have. I felt related to her. Ser August said nothing, but most nights he brought a bottle of milk he surely stole from his own dinner.
Eventually, Stripes got strong, and she left. But we still meet sometimes, specially when I have milk to offer her.” “Why didn’t you keep her?” “She would have eaten my sister’s rat”, I lie, even if Eve got her pet way after I had saved Stripes..
Actually they wouldn't have let me keep her in the orphanage, it was difficult enough to hide her when I brought her as a kitten. But I'm not telling him that. We don't even sleep at the orphanage anymore. No if we can avoid it, anyway. “And nobody can own a cat. Cats own themselves. They’re clever beasts, they don’t get attached to anybody” “And to be attached to someone is bad”, he says, but I feel the question in his tone.
“It gives other people a way to hurt you”. He looks at me and says nothing. He has beautiful eyes, for a man. A pity he's so clearly gay. “But you have a sister. And I guess you love her”. “Yes. We both are stray cats. We only have each other… ”. Why am I telling this to a complete stranger? I can’t even pronounce his name.
For what I know he can even be a blood mage like the one who killed my parents. But he likes Stripes. Somebody who likes cats, stray filthy cats like poor Stripes, can’t be bad, can they? “As long as you avoid bad companies...”, he tries to joke again.
“That’s exactly what Ser August says too”. It was kidding, but the name of our protector makes his eye twitch in a weird way again. He scares me when he does that. I think it’s time to go. I turn back. I can hear the half elf in the tavern, his lisp is unmistakable.
Maybe this time he’ll notice me. I look at myself and make sure my armor let see exactly the parts of my body I want him to see. The mage looks with some interest. I hope he doesn’t go after the half elf too. “I better go inside. The night is getting cold”.
He tries to scratch Stripes’ head, but she backs. He seems a bit lost for the cat's reaction. So I feel I have to add a bit more. “I always try to bring her some dinner when the sun goes down… Just for your information”. It will be nice to know there’s someone who cares for her in case I go away, I think to myself.
Hakan belongs to Francesco Lombardi
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