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Lysithea squinted at the front door of her new home. A generational home, not newly built but newly owned by her. A gift from Tomas to the Ordelia family in his will, read after his passing.
It was locked.
“What do you mean?” her father’s voice crackled over the phone into her ear. Impatient, maybe a little anxious, Lysithea tapped her foot to the ground by the porch door. “No one has lived in that house in years.” The only people who had ever wandered in and out of the house were the contractors hired for upkeep of the interior. “There is no record of the locks or keys changing.”
“Well, I’m trying!” Lysithea pushed her key into the door’s lock again. It stuck halfway, and even if she brute force shoved it in, she knew it wouldn’t move one way or the other. “If I try any harder, I’ll break the key.”
From the other end of the line, a long-suffering sigh. “Please do not do that, Lysithea. I will be on my way over momentarily. I’m sure you have other ways of getting inside.”
A muscle in Lysithea’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, for me to get in. Not for all my boxes of clothes and books.” Before she had to sit through another sigh from her father, Lysithea hung up her phone and shoved it into her breast pocket. It was archaic, a flip phone that wouldn’t accidentally dial anyone or answer any stray robot calls that could be sent her way. Tucked in as it was, she wouldn’t lose it when she ducked around the back of the building and shrank.
Pikas were not normally white, but Lysithea was a special case. Her tiny frame became snowy white, ears rounding and face elongating. She was small in stature as a human but even in this form she felt incredibly vulnerable. Luckily, one of the renovation projects had been a little hole in the backyard that she could burrow into, and with the tiniest of annoyed sigh-squeaks, she began to tunnel.
Thankfully whatever occurred to the changed locks hadn’t filled in or disturbed this entrance. She popped out in a small pantry off the main room, and once in a relatively uncluttered space of the floor, rubbed her paws across her face and whiskers. The shift to her larger human form took a bit more work than shrinking. Her entire body felt sore, her legs jelly, lungs gasping for air as she sank to her knees after reversion. Fumbling for her phone out of her very dirty, grassy, muddy outfit, she flipped it open to pop a quick message to her father. Tunnel unblocked at least.
This door wasn’t locked. No surprise, if the tunnel was left untouched, who would think of changing the locks on a door that was never used? Before pulling it open, Lysithea sighed and wiggled her knees. “First thing’s first,” she muttered, “open the front door, get a suitcase in here. I need to shower.”
She sent one more message to her father that the door was open, before heading down the familiar hallway to the bathroom. The electricity and water were in perfect working order and before long, Lysithea was in the clouds of steam, scalding water rinsing her clean. Her unpacked shampoo and soap filled the small bathroom and the hallway through the open door with fruity, dessert-y smells. While lathering her hair up, Lysithea mentally ticked off what else she had to do.
Once her father arrived, she would be able to get her other items into the house. Luckily it was already furnished with all utilities, so Lysithea wouldn’t worry about buying anything new. She’d change the sheets on her bed that were likely musty from lack of use, and once her clothes and books were unpacked, she’d curl up for some reading.
Lysithea leaned back under the spray, fingers working at the soapy suds and threading through the knots of her hair. She could feel the temperature beginning to shift toward cooler; clearly she had overstayed her welcome for the water heater.
Turning, she reached out for her soap. Her gaze caught on a silhouette on the other side of the shower curtain. Grabbing the bar of soap and rolling it between her hands, she called out over the din of the water, “Did you figure out what happened with the door locks?”
The first mistake, rookie really, was assuming that silhouette was her father.
The second mistake was pulling the curtain to the side when she didn’t receive a response.
The water splashed out of the tub, her body and hair glistening in the soft glow of bathroom lights as she stared at the stranger in the bathroom. Unbothered, the dark-skinned fellow pulled sharp canines back into his mouth, the dental stick held loose in one hand. Green eyes wafted up and down her smudged figure, cat-slit pupils dilating as the soap fell from slack fingers.
“What d’you mean what happened-“
With a shriek, Lysithea shrank.
Covered in soap suds, soaked from the pounding water, and having shifted while in the tub, she was easy prey for the feline man who stalked over and turned off the water. The respite was brief, for even as Lysithea tried and failed to scale the wet sides, he expertly scooped her up into one hand and lifted her up to his eye level.
“Honestly, I should be asking you what you’re doing here,” he said, a grin on his face as he tilted his head. “But let me take a wild guess – you’re an Ordelia, and you’re finally moving in.”
Lysithea’s response was logical: she bit the man’s hand. Hard.
He let out a yelp, swinging his hand and sending her poor little form flying. Lysithea still hadn’t mastered the art of shifting while airborne – never had a reason to bother practicing – so she had to wait until she soddenly hit the floor first. With the shock of the first strike still on her side, Lysithea remained a pika and immediately bolted out into the hall.
The steam, she was sure, would provide good enough cover for her to escape to her room, shift, close the door, and call the police. It wasn’t until she was in the doorway, naked, to the room that she realized – her phone was still out in the living room.
Where was her father when she needed him?
He arrived only an hour later. That hour Lysithea spent in her not-yet unpacked room, up against the door, tense. Clothed. In case that intruder tried to push his way into the room, he’d have something close to dead weight to contend with. In the end it was her father who had to contend with it, and she scrambled from the door quickly upon hearing his voice.
“Is that man still here?” Lysithea squinted as she looked out in the hallway, and glanced up at the confused expression on her father’s face.
“Man?”
“Tall?” Lysithea planted her hands on her hips. “Dark?” Handsome?
“Lysithea, there is no one else here aside you and me. And the cat.”
The cat? Lysithea blinked, perplexed. “Where is the cat?” she asked finally, trying to go along with whatever joke her father was playing. There was absolutely no cat in the house, just a man who had seen her naked, and snatched her up with catlike refl-
Said cat was in the living room, a fluffy loaf. He was larger than a house cat, but not by much. Instinctively, Lysithea’s shoulders flew up to her ears, fine hairs on the back of her neck prickling. That was no normal house cat, by any means. Despite the innocuous way it looked up from its nap, one paw on Lysithea’s phone and tongue hanging out in a small blep, she knew.
That was a predator.
Lysithea kept herself from instinctively shrinking down and running away. Instead, she bolted forward and grabbed the cat – manul, she knew without knowing why she knew it – by its fluffy scruff. Through the unlocked door that she opened, she threw the creature out into the lawn. Just before it turned and bounded back in, Lysithea slammed the door closed and locked it.
“Lysithea-“
“Call the locksmith. Now.”
Her father sighed. “The locksmith is not even open at this time of evening.”
“There’s no emergency number? Like for after hours? When people lock their keys in their car?”
“No.”
This was a new voice, but familiar for all the wrong reasons. Lysithea spun around with eyes wide as the manul-shifter jumped through the open window. “Sorry bout that, you know, scaring you. Didn’t know I was supposed to have a roommate.”
There was a beat of silence as Lysithea, her father, and the squatter all stared at each other. Then he stretched, groaning as he did so, his back cracking with the movement. “Anyway, I’m Claude. You must be Lysithea. Hello, Mr. Ordelia. How bout we lay down some ground rules?”
Spluttering, Lysithea stamped her foot, hands fisting at her sides. She could feel the twitch in her mouth as she ground her teeth, her whiskers would have been twitching in irritation. “Ground rules?” she echoed. “This is my – our – house, not yours! You’re the uninvited here!”
“Actually,” her father said quietly, and the word practically shattered what was left of her composure. “I did invite Claude here some years ago, after the remodel. However, I did not know he stayed.”
“Oh, sorry, thought I had told you.” The lazy smile on Claude’s face said otherwise. He folded his hands behind his head, rocking back on the heels of his feet. “I kept all the bills I was paying for, taxes too. So technically, since I was the only one here for the last five years, per Fódlan law-“
Shrinking down and holding her head in her hands, Lysithea groaned.
From that night onward, ground rules or otherwise, Lysithea’s internet searches were full of keywords such as “squatter’s rights” or “adverse possession” and “stand your ground laws” with the occasional “what do wild cats eat” and the stray “locksmiths open at midnight.” Claude didn’t mind sharing his space with her, despite Lysithea seething for every moment of it. She barred her bedroom door every night, and sometimes even shifted to sleep in the little tunnel leading into the house from outside that Claude seemingly didn’t know about.
She frequented that tunnel as her new bed after one morning she woke up to a dead bird plopped outside of her bedroom door. The poor thing was covered in bloody puncture marks and soggy feathers, half plucked and missing a leg and half a wing. The scream she let out before slamming the door would have awoken the dead.
“I take it you didn’t like it?” Claude asked, a genuinely perplexed look on his face when she emerged into the kitchen, the dead bird bundled in an entire roll of paper towels. “What do you like?”
“I’d like to be alone! For you to leave!”
He sipped his coffee – Lysithea’s mouth scrunched up, because she could tell it was burnt – and shrugged. “No can do, Lysithea. I got nowhere else to go, or my brother will find me.”
Stepping on the switch to open the trash, Lysithea glanced up at him. “Your brother?”
“Half-brother, but yeah.” Claude nudged the fridge open for Lysithea to grab her milk for cereal. “I’ve been laying low because let’s just say… I have an inheritance that he wants.”
Hefting the milk up onto the counter, Lysithea sighed. “Why didn’t you just say that? Instead of chasing me to hell and back in the house and changing the locks? Why didn’t you tell my father?”
“What would he have done about it?” Claude raised a brow. “What will you do about it?”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
“Look, just – don’t leave any more gifts for me like that in the morning, okay? Or ever, actually.” She glared up at him. “You can stay, and I can stay, and we’ll be fine until your brother is dealt with.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be saying that?” Claude grinned around the rim of his mug. He didn’t even flinch as Lysithea slammed her bowl down on the counter aggressively in his direction.
Despite what she said, there was no shortage of her attempts to get Claude out of the house. His problem with his brother was not her problem, and if he had an inheritance to spend, shouldn’t he get his own house? Apartment? Hotel? She set up some traps that smelled delightfully of the foods predators like him ate, even used herself as bait one time to lock him in the pantry at risk of her tunnel being exposed.
As Claude yowled, howled, and scratched at the door, someone arrived on the doorstep and rang the bell. Lysithea, in the midst of looking up animal control, jumped in her seat. Rubbing her hand on her face, she stomped to the door, grumbling about food delivery and how it stunk up the trash. Opening the door and reaching out to grab whatever was in the delivery driver’s hand, she came in contact with someone tall, dark, and scowling. The porch light shimmered along his body, and in one hand he held a six pack of expensive alcohol.
Lysithea blinked, retracting her hand. She saw the resemblance immediately, before the man even opened his pale lips to speak. “Where is my brother?” A manicured brow raised. “And who are you?”
She slammed the door shut in his face.
Rather, she tried to.
She hadn’t been paying attention to the sudden silence from behind her, in the pantry. The door did not shut, was caught in a dark hand as Claude leaned over, a surprisingly comfortable warmth behind her. “Shahid,” he greeted, that half-smile on his face as he lounged. “This is my girlfriend, Lysithea. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
For a tense moment, Lysithea could not open her mouth to correct him.
Shahid snorted, lifting the six-pack of alcohol. “You’re hosting tonight, remember?”
The tension shattered. “Oh. Yeah. Well. Come on in, then.” Gently, Claude pulled Lysithea back, allowing Shahid, the brother, the half-brother, that Claude was hiding from, inside. She blinked, blinked again, long and hard, before peeling her lips back and letting out an animalistic shriek normally comprised of small pika lungs.
“CLAUDE!”
“Relax,” Claude said, patting her head. “You’re with me. He won’t hurt you. Or try to eat you. Probably.”
Grabbing his shirt in her hand, bunched up, Lysithea pulled Claude’s smirking self down to her level. “He might not hurt me… but I will hurt you.”
Raising his brows, Claude continued smiling as Shahid grumbled and excused himself to the kitchen. “Looking forward to that one, babe.”