Chapter Text
Mama Sissel was a very efficient Mama. She got everyone to find a space on the floor for themselves, since the bed was claimed, had pulled sleeping bags out of suitcases, and had even dug up some mats for extra cushioning from Tesa’s storage closet.
Kaboter had shown her the room in the back, where Tesa’s loom and all her old supplies were still put away. Mama Sissel was setting people up on the floor in there, too, and Sissel heard one of Other Sissel’s brothers say he wouldn’t mind taking that room if they could make a little more floor space. It sounded like it was tough to clean any of Tesa’s crafts up while Other Sissel’s unpacked boxes were still all over the place.
Sissel saw the one called Kitty, with the pointy ponytail, unpacking dishes into the kitchen cabinets, and then stopping with surprise when she saw all of Tesa’s plates and bowls already—still—on the shelves. Kaboter had done the dishes while Other Sissel was moving boxes.
Other Sissel didn’t have many dishes herself, so that made it easier to fit everything in the cabinets, it looked like. Other Sissel tried to get up, but sagged back down at the slightest pull from her father, who said,
“Let us help. You don’t have to do all this alone.”
Kaboter was running back and forth and explaining where the bathroom was, and finding some half-finished blankets in Tesa’s craft room that people could use for their sleeping spots. Mama Sissel had assigned Rema, with the fluffy raised-tail hair, to sit at the kitchen table and make a list of things they needed to get from the store so everyone would be comfortable.
“We’re going to leave you with so many pillows,” Rema laughed to Other Sissel, who didn’t laugh back.
Kaboter, at least, remembered to ask people for their names, which helped Sissel keep track of who was who. Other Sissel’s dad was called Ed, and her Mama was Mercy. Kaboter made an awkward attempt at using their last names (which they apparently had) but Mercy said “No, I remember how it goes here, without family names like that. ‘Mercy’ is fine, especially for a family friend.”
“Oh, good,” Kaboter said. “I don’t believe in calling anyone ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Mr.’, anyway.”
Sissel agreed. Mercy and Ed were much easier, even if Other Sissel called them something else. It wasn’t like he called Alma ‘Mommy’ just because Kamila did.
Sissel approved of Other Sissel’s decision to just lie there with her dad, too. Ed fell asleep on her, with his arm still around her shoulders, and napping with someone always made Sissel feel better.
Mercy went out with one of the brothers, and it seemed to get a lot less crowded in Tesa’s—Other Sissel’s, Sissel corrected himself—house after that. Maybe because several of them had gone to sleep like Ed. I wonder how far it was to travel from their country…it seems like it took them a while, and maybe they couldn’t sleep on the way because they were busy traveling? That sounded right.
Other Sissel should sleep, too, though, and she wasn’t. She was just sitting on the bed where Ed was still holding her. Elling had said he would “rest his eyes” on his dad’s other side, and was now fast asleep too.
Kaboter came and sat on the edge of the bed right next to Other Sissel. Other Sissel wiped her face.
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Kaboter said. Sissel kind of wished she would, though, so he could understand. How was he supposed to help if they couldn’t understand each other? He’d thought he knew Other Sissel well enough that this would be easy.
Well, he’d ask Yomiel for advice tonight, and Yomiel would know what to say.
Mercy and the brother came back with food, jubilantly; the brother said, when he went to wake everyone up, “You’ll never guess what place is still in business around here!”
“You know this place?” Kaboter said, poking through the bags of takeout now occupying the entire kitchen table and part of the counters. “I thought you hadn’t lived here in years.”
“The chain must have survived this long without us,” Mercy joked. “You probably don’t remember”—that was to Other Sissel, because Mercy had come over to wake up Ed and was right in front of them—“but we used to order this restaurant’s food all the time, as a treat for good grades or birthdays.”
Other Sissel shrugged, glancing at the colorful logo on the takeout bags. Most of her attention was on Ed, who was waking up cranky and uncomfortable, but Mercy soothed him with what looked like long practice.
Rema found a tray in the cabinets, so Ed didn’t have to get up and could eat in bed (“Sorry, Littlest,” Mercy said when she realized there would be crumbs in the blankets), and everyone else fought in a friendly way to see who got to sit at the two chairs at the table and who had to sit on the floor.
Nobody ended up sitting at the kitchen table, except Mercy so she could stay with Ed, because Other Sissel went to sit in the living room where Sissel had first met Tesa, and everyone wanted to sit with her. Even Kaboter wouldn’t stay too far away; they helped bring in a bunch of food so nobody had to keep getting up to refill their plate, but they stayed at the side of the room, to let Other Sissel get surrounded by her siblings.
It was like when Alma had hosted the housewarming party and everyone wanted to pet Sissel. Elling claimed a spot by Other Sissel right away, and Rema scruffed her hair like giving Sissel scritches between his ears (Sissel was NOT jealous), and the older brother who’d gone out to get the food sat on her other side to link an arm around hers and lean against her.
The sister called Kitty, in complete betrayal, tried to shoo Sissel out of the room! But Other Sissel said “It’s fine, he can stay, he doesn’t try to steal food.”
This is why I like you, Sissel told her. Other Sissel didn’t hear him.
“He can have some food if he wants,” Rema said as Sissel trotted over quickly to Other Sissel. “He looks way too skinny. What do you feed him?” Kaboter made eye contact with Other Sissel.
“…Tesa had some…” Other Sissel abandoned that sentence. “He comes and goes, anyway.”
“Aw, Sissel, no. Don’t let him be an outdoor cat.” Rema tugged a bit out of her food and held it out to him. Sissel politely came up to sniff it thoroughly. It did smell good; he wished he could have eaten it. He turned away and burrowed into Other Sissel’s lap, under the plate balanced on her knee.
“Huh,” Rema said.
“Maybe he’d like our national food better,” Elling said through a mouthful. (“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Kitty said). He swallowed. “We should see if there’s a place around here that does it right. Sissel needs some professional opinions to judge whether anywhere in this city knows how to cook it or not.”
“Does the cat count as a citizen of our country just because he belongs to Sissel?” Rema asked in amusement. “Should he be feeling national pride and only beg for food if it’s something we ate as kids?”
“We ate this food as kids, too,” a sister with a long braid pointed out.
“What’s his name?” asked another brother with fluffy hair (no one had said his name around Sissel yet).
Other Sissel flushed a little. “He’s…he’s Yomiel’s cat, so…” She seemed embarrassed for some reason. The brother looked curious now. “…Yomiel named him Sissel.”
Elling snorted (there were several other laughs), but then said, “That’s cute. Okay, Sissel and cat Sissel?”
I’m Sissel, Sissel sulked. He couldn’t claim to have had the name first, but they could at least call Other Sissel ‘human Sissel’ or something like that.
“Big Sissel and Little Sissel,” Rema suggested.
“Sissel and Itsy-Bitsyssel,” said the brother next to her.
“Sissel and herekittykittykitty,” said another, then, “Unless that would be too distracting to you?” to Kitty, who rolled her eyes.
They settled into a happy buzz of conversation. Other Sissel’s brother kept refilling her plate for her, and Sissel was pleased that she ate so much. Good food was good for her, and lots of people who liked her and would keep her cozy. There ought to be a way I can get some siblings like these for Yomiel, or maybe Lynne to replace hers…and Jowd, too, he could use some. Alma already had a sister. Should Sissel try to get her to visit?
…When he went home, he’d ask.
When everyone was asleep for the night, sprawled in various parts of the floor (Elling had one arm outstretched to rest on Other Sissel’s shoulder), Sissel got up and went around to give them all a thorough sniffing.
Other Sissel smelled different than everyone else, and her parents smelled a little different than the rest of her littermates, which made sense. Other Sissel had lived away from them for a long time, and her parents were older than the rest of them. Ed smelled mostly like the cream Mercy had helped him rub into his burn scars before they went to bed.
Kitty had some kind of perfume or scent that wasn’t like Alma’s, but Sissel couldn’t make much else out about the others. They mostly smelled like food. Well, the house still smelled like food. But how was Sissel supposed to tell them apart if he couldn’t smell the difference?
Sissel went to Yomiel for advice.
Yomiel had waited up for him—he knew what day it was, too—and he drank in Sissel’s best attempt to copy Missile and describe every single detail of everything that had happened. “You’ll learn to tell them apart,” he said when Sissel was done, still smiling with shared happiness as they lounged together in the ghost world. “I bet it’s easier now that they’re all grown up than when they were kids. Little kids all look the same.”
Do you have any tips for telling them apart? Sissel would only admit to Yomiel that maybe his vision wasn’t the best, not to the degree that humans relied on seeing things clearly all the time.
“Well, uh.”
Yomiel knew all of Other Sissel’s siblings and the right order for them, but he didn’t know what they looked like, so between him and Sissel they could mostly work it out when Sissel tried to remember who had said what (“If you mean one of her brothers, that sounds like Onfim or Perso, but I don’t know which of them is which.”) It was fun to work together like that, and Sissel could remember loudly enough for Yomiel to kind of see what all the siblings had looked like.
“And what do you think of them?” Yomiel asked. “They only ever wrote me a couple postcards, and her parents sent me a letter when we got engaged; you’ve met them.”
Postcards count as meeting them, Sissel said loyally. He wished he could take Yomiel to get hugged and petted all day like Other Sissel had. I like them. She has a good mama, and they’re all very interested in her being okay.
“They seem like nice people?”
I think so. And Other Sissel said not to pet me, so they don’t.
“Good. That’s good.”
Don’t worry. Sissel snuggled closer to Yomiel’s spirit. I’ll be careful. I’m just there to help, like they are.
“How is she?” Yomiel asked anxiously.
She seemed kind of overwhelmed…I was going to ask you about it. Sissel told him about the way she’d stayed with Ed while he slept. I think because it’s been such a long time since she saw them all. You cried, when you saw Other Sissel again for the first time.
“…Yeah. It’s been about that long for her, since her family moved, as it was for me.” Yomiel brooded a little. “Did she cry a lot?”
A little, but she had a hard time stopping. It hadn’t been noisy, gasping crying, like Jowd did when he was really, truly upset. Mercy and Ed did, too, a little, and maybe some of her siblings.
“That’s probably normal, then. Right?”
Normal, as in not what Jowd would have done, like when he cried himself to sleep those first nights home? Sissel didn’t have any other reference point for what was ‘unusually sad’. Yomiel used the same word, ‘depression’, to talk about Other Sissel that Alma and Cabanela had very carefully brought up to Jowd. I think they treated her like how Lynne takes care of Kamila, he said. Except her parents, they’re her parents. Does that make sense?
“I think so.” Yomiel shrugged. “Kitty’s the oldest and she’s…I think fourteen years older? So she would’ve been Lynne’s age when Sissel was born,” he said, to make sure Sissel understood the number, because Yomiel always remembered when he needed help. “It makes sense that you’d be reminded of the sisters you know, and not normal siblings.”
What are normal siblings like, then?
“I don’t know, they’re kids together, instead of the bigger one taking care of the little one automatically.”
Sissel thought about it. …Lynne’s still a kitten, though. Right? Everyone kept saying how little she was, even though she was big enough to be trusted to look after Kamila.
“Yeah, but humans are kittens for a lot longer than cats are,” Yomiel said, relaxing a little for some reason. Sissel reflected that that was very true; Kamila was staying a baby forever. “Kitty was a big kitten when Sissel was brand-new.”
Okay, I get it now.
“Are you sure? No more questions just to make sure you’ve wormed out absolutely every bit of information from me?” Yomiel managed to poke Sissel in the spiritual belly. Sissel wiggled in play protest. “You’re not going to make me list every single fact I’ve ever learned about Sissel’s family?”
Purrrr. You’d tell me if I needed to know, Sissel said. I do like knowing things…
“Hint, hint, please tell me things, Yomiel?”
If the shoe fits!
“Who taught you that?”
Sissel stayed with Yomiel until he fell asleep and long into the night, secure in the knowledge that Other Sissel was safe. Kaboter had still stayed to spend the night with her, crammed in among her family. For a little while Sissel could let himself be held, and listen to Yomiel breathe and dream and snore, and imagine what it would be like when he finally had his body with him on a night like tonight.