Work Text:
You keep your quarters bright, radiant with every light producing apparatus you can create with the materials at hand. The variety allows you to vary the quality of light, depending on your needs. For now, bright harsh arc-bulbs blaze around you, perfect for illuminating the manuscript before you.
You are the only of your fellows who keeps a bright room. The others occasionally commission pieces, especially Wines, who needs to light its room for its revels, but on their own recognizance, everyone else prefers to stay in the dark. They say that it's comfortable, that it reminds them of home.
You don’t understand. There is beauty to be found in the dark between the Judgements, but you would always prefer to bask in the light. Your rooms are a refuge, a reminder of the best places in the High Wilderness.
You maybe a master of light and warmth, but your efforts are not perfect. You could never replicate the absolute warmth of solar attention. You don’t believe anyone could.
In your darkest moments, you suspect that this cool dark place chills you in a different manner than your fellows.
You croon to yourself as you write, a tune half-forgotten, half-intoxicating. Your voice timbers its way through impossible echoes. But you are not Wines. You refuse to lose yourself completely to intoxication. You are always somewhat aware of your surroundings.
A shadow! Flickers of open flame as something passes. There is someone in your quarters. Your sanctuary has been invaded. Rage rises in your breast.
You whirl, flare your wings, bare your teeth, eyes blaze into an inferno. You have divested all the trappings of humanity. It doesn’t matter. The intruder won’t live to tell tales. You sing, a bright piercing note in a language not meant for human throats. Something that will burn all that you need it to, and no more.
Every lantern in your quarters lights itself instantly.
But not the candles.
And not the cat, sitting at the center of seven candles, staring at you with hungry eyes.
Seven candles…
Your contemplative hum rattles the tools on the shelves. It should be painful to the cat, reaching registers far beyond the capacity of its ears. Of course, your bark of Correspondence should have immolated it.
The cat licks his chops, a string of drool slowly pooling on your desk. A mangey thing, thin of rib and matted of fur. He reeks of blood, human and otherwise, with mildewy undertones of stagnant water.
The scent of beeswax must come from the candles. It must.
“Heeere, batty, batty, batty,” he calls, “come say hello to your aberration.”
Your lip curls upward involuntarily at the diminutive. “I am not your keeper.” You have grown in your fury, robes long-shredded. Your head scrapes the ceiling of your quarters and you drop onto your wings. Furniture splinters under your bulk. Your hands grip the edge of the desk.
The cat chuckles, spitting flecks of pink foam. “Why not? You inherited everything else of my Master.”
He bats at your claws, at the place where your fur is at its lightest. Was at its lightest. His claws catch in the skin. It stings. It should be impossible. You can shape molten glass in your claws, your skin is something that could not be pierced by the toughest of human weapons. And yet, this animal is able to harm you.
You have lost all semblance of human form in your rage. You snarl.
"What are you?"
“If we follow the pejorative of the times, I am the Starveling Cat. I think of myself as Teos.”
"Teos?" you repeat and it's as though the word is dripping in irrigo. It itches on the inside of your mind. But more than that, the name feels wrong on its lips, wrong like a wound in the world.
You shudder involuntarily, claws scratching shallow grooves into your desk.
"Your words ring of deceit."
"I suppose I could be lying," the cat shrugs, "or you could be deceiving yourself."
Your lip curls. "There is much in this place that confuses and bewilders the humans, but very little that can deceive us."
The cat snickers. "Is that so?" It has a horrible laugh. Grating and echoing. Nothing like-
-and your thoughts cut off, refuse to venture beyond.
Your head jerks and the cat is briefly knocked off balance. He sees something in your eyes and
"Pathetic," he snarls, "How pathetic, all of you have become. In the eyes of one who has seen greater... I stood at the right hand of kings, once."
"Kings?" you laugh, "you know nothing of Kings."
He laughs again, hysterically, breathlessly, and doesn't stop until your ears are ringing with it.
You hurt. Somewhere deep in your chest.
"I stand as a monument to the Betrayed," he snarls, "you are not the first to find me disturbing in your sight. Nor will you be the first to destroy me. I always come back."
He smiled conspiratorially. “Veils ate me. I clawed my way from his gizzard and bathed myself in well water until my wounds healed.”
You frown. “I had wondered about that scar.”
It was a grotesque thing, a mass of keloided flesh that stood out vividly from Veils’ throat. It was not the most gruesome of Veils’ scars, but it was the one that Veils seemed least proud of. An act of violence that it didn’t revel in.
You swallow convulsively. It isn’t the same. You can’t carve candles, but it isn’t the same.
The damnable cat notices your weakness, seizes on it. His words burn, deep in your soul.
“Do you remember the lost one? The one you drowned?”
“Only that we had to forget it… him.”
"Him," the cat repeated, mockingly. "I was not aware that you lowered yourself to binary standards."
You speak without truly contemplating the words. The world spins and you reel.
"He had already lowered himself. Does it surprise you that he descended again?"
The cat leaps, settling itself on your snout. You are staring eye-to-eye.
There is something in his eyes...
“What was the manner of the promise?” asks the cat. There is nothing kind in its tone.
Your heart freezes in your chest. Dread begins to overcome you. Your jaw works. When your voice comes, it comes as a reedy whisper, harmonics wavering.
“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. ALL SHALL BE-”
Your hand has come up, without your permission and gripped your throat. Your voice dies.
What were you saying? It was important...
Something occurs to you, a thought rising from the depths of irrigo. A single precious scrap of memory.
“Why are you calling yourself Teos ? Your name is-”
You say something, a single word blotted out of your mind as soon as the word leaves your mouth. The cat snarls. Claws dig into your muzzle, begin to break skin. Your head jerks, and the cat goes flying. You shake beads of blood from your snout as the cat pulls itself from a pile of fallen tools.
(That impact should have killed it. And its claws should never be able to break your skin. What is wrong with this damnable cat?)
Your shoulders hunch, bringing you to eye level with the cat. You stare into knowing eyes, at a creature that should be dead and dust. The former cat stares back. There is intelligence in those eyes. Knowing, far beyond that of its brethren.
You remember . . .
There were times when you left the comforting light of the suns, flew into the darkness between, carrying fuels and flames for trade or delivery. You flew cautiously, because there were always those who spite the Order of Days. Most approached only close enough to see your bulk, see the sharp talons and sharper teeth, before fleeing back into the High Wilderness (any injury could be the one that cripples a predator). The High Wilderness is strange and harsh, but monsters such as Veils are abherition even there. The packs are more of a threat, those who have formed a semblance of a flock with those who are just as bloodthirsty as themselves are less cautious, less willing to back down from perceived strength.
(They believe that even if they are injured, the flock will help them up. Sometimes, they’re even right.)
For those, there are different fuels and hungry flames (you have no fear of burning). They died screaming.
Why were they so willing to attack towards the end? In your last memories of the High Wilderness, attacks had become a regular occurance, where they were once a rarity.
(A glowing shape, half your size, staying close, desperately swaddling itself in fabrics, forcing itself to suppress the power that glowed from within. Someone you wanted to protect, would have died to protect)
A stab to your heart.
(He died screaming too)
The cat begins to laugh, and the last strand of your patience snaps.
You snarl, bite down, and the cat dissolves in your mouth. Well water drips from between your teeth and it takes several enthusiastic bouts of coughing and spitting before the last of the candle wax is expelled from your throat.
Irrigo presses on your mind. The conversation you just had . . . The implications of what that dammanable cat told you . . .
You force yourself to keep a tight grip on your memories and your rationality. A headache begins to pound at your temples and you resist the urge to rub the scalp near your horns. You could let go, let the irrigo take the memories and leave you in blissful ignorance. Instead you tighten your grip and reach for violant ink and a sheaf of paper. You have an addition to make for your contingency files.
Under candle-light, you begin your missive.
In the event that the Drowned stirs . . .