Chapter Text
Sissel didn’t understand any of the complicated stuff that had to happen first, but Other Sissel moved into Tesa’s house a month after the funeral.
It was quieter than the apartment with the aunt and niece with the noisy mom, but not much quieter, because Kaboter came with her. “I’ll help unpack,” they said, and continued hanging around even when Other Sissel didn’t start unpacking anything.
Other Sissel had brought all her belongings with her in brown cardboard boxes, though not much furniture except her bed, because Tesa’s house still had all her furniture in it. A bunch of boxes that had Yomiel’s old smell and clothes inside got piled in a corner of her bedroom, blocking the sliding door that led out to the yard, where flowering bushes were getting overgrown and prickly. Sissel liked to sleep there.
Not that he could sleep anymore. But curled up in Yomiel’s clothes with his eyes closed, listening hard in case Other Sissel needed him, it felt like he was getting closer to figuring it out again.
The first day, even though they didn’t unpack anything, Kaboter ordered takeout food “so you don’t have to exhaust yourself cooking”. They gave Sissel a slice, on his own plate, to sniff while the living people who needed to eat sat on the floor and stayed up too late talking. Sissel tried licking it, but that didn’t do anything for him, and then Kaboter made exaggerated faces at him and pretended to be grossed out (but they really did throw away the part Sissel had licked instead of eating it themselves).
“Obviously,” Yomiel said, when Sissel told him everything that night. “I wouldn’t eat food a living cat had put their tongue on, either.”
This is about germs again, isn’t it, Sissel said suspiciously. Yomiel did say germs were real, but… I’m dead, how could I have germs living on me?
“Do I look like a biologist to you?”
I still think it’s unfair. I don’t have cooties.
Yomiel snort-laughed. “Who taught you about cooties?”
Other Sissel and Kaboter slept too late the next morning. Other Sissel had put her mattress down and tried to go to sleep right away last night, but Kaboter kicked up a fuss and made her get her toolbox and put the bed together properly, like how Jowd had put Kamila’s bed up when they moved to the house.
She left her tools out afterwards, a screwdriver and wrench and whatever those other things were. They didn’t have cores, so Sissel couldn’t learn their names like he usually did when he possessed cores. Sissel tried to help put them away, but Kaboter picked him up to make him leave the toolbox alone and said, “No, Sissel’s got her own system for her tools. I don’t mess with it.”
But they didn’t stop Sissel from nudging all the tools in a pile next to their carrying case, so that Other Sissel knew where they were when she wanted them.
So anyway, Sissel had to jump up onto the bed after the sun rose in order to paw at Other Sissel and meow at her when she slept too late. Kaboter, on a mat on the floor, was much easier to jump on. Hey, get up! Didn’t either of them know what time it was? Not even Kamila got to sleep this late. Other Sissel had work, and Kaboter…well, Sissel didn’t know what Kaboter did, besides know people and do helpful stuff like protest.
When Other Sissel did finally get up and get dressed, Sissel followed close at her heels, relieved and happy to have an excuse to investigate the house. The shower was noisier than the one at home, with some kind of metallic clanging when the water came on, and the bathroom smelled different, but he couldn’t figure out what the difference was. Other Sissel didn’t even have any soap unpacked that he could sniff to see if that was it.
The noise of her putting her metal tools away in their box got Kaboter up, though they didn’t seem awake at all, and just muzzily followed Other Sissel and went “Nooooo” when she tried to leave without eating breakfast.
“I’m gonna be late,” Other Sissel said. “I have work.”
“MOW,” Sissel put in, or tried to. His mouth was full from trying to drag his backpack up to the door. Surely Other Sissel wasn’t going to leave without him?
Other Sissel took a small piece of food that was in plastic for portability, when Kaboter found one for her, and left the backpack by the door with Sissel in it. Sissel would have yowled pitifully by the door, if he weren’t a ghost. He left his body comfortably in the backpack and followed her to work.
Other Sissel didn’t talk much to the people who had hired her, but she was good at looking at them like she was—humans loved to stare at each other dead in the eyes to show that they were paying attention. (Jowd was the best at that.) She was better at looking at the problem with their toilet, whatever it was, and knowing exactly what was wrong. Sissel helped dislodge a big clog that was inconveniently far down a pipe, feeling satisfied with his work. It wasn’t dead people, but that was just a plus.
Jowd hadn’t tried to call him for any help.
Kaboter was gone when they got home, but came back quickly, to Sissel’s relief. Kaboter was the kind to wander in and out, or maybe sleep somewhere else, but they would always turn up again. Sissel could relate.
They brought a music player, and a pile of things to play on it. “Dance with me,” Kaboter crowed over the sound like the radio starting up something fun and fast, and they pulled Other Sissel around by her hands, and she made a little bit of an effort, for a few minutes. Sissel jumped out of his backpack and ran in circles around them.
When she sat down to stop dancing, Other Sissel said, “You cleaned?”
Sissel looked around. Huh, that’s right! This place does look different than before…but how?
“You need room for your stuff,” Kaboter said. “I didn’t put away the silverware or anything, your family’s huge and you’ll need all the extra forks you can get. And you do have to sleep on a real sheet, not a bare mattress. Everyone knows that.”
Aha! Sissel figured it out. Kaboter had put away some of Tesa’s belongings, and the bed looked neater.
Oh, Tesa’s belongings…
“I didn’t throw anything out,” Kaboter said softly. “I put it in the closet, and the room in the back you said not to mess with, with the loom and stuff.”
“Okay,” Other Sissel said, rubbing her face.
“It’s your place. Why don’t you put some of your stuff up? You’ve got some nice frames to go on these walls. With stuff in the frames to look at, even.” Kaboter gestured at all of the boxes, which still weren’t unpacked. One was gaping open where Other Sissel had dragged out a blanket to sleep under last night.
“I’m tired.”
“Mow,” said Sissel, because she couldn’t hear him otherwise. He pointedly used some boxes as a scratching post to encourage her to unpack.
“Okay,” Kaboter said.
The days were pretty predictable at Other Sissel’s house. She went out to work jobs, Sissel in tow as a ghost, and she came home and didn’t unpack. One time she started cooking, and Sissel recognized the sauce and the everything from when Tesa had first asked her to come eat with her. But Other Sissel stopped halfway through, and just ate a bunch of the ingredients without cooking any of them, in pieces awkwardly piled in half-toasted pieces of floppy round bread.
Kaboter gave good advice, and they were trustworthy. If Sissel led them over to Other Sissel, they would understand, and stand guard so he could visit Yomiel on time.
“How is she?” was always the first question Yomiel asked. Sissel tried not to hesitate when he answered.
Kaboter played music a lot after they brought their music player, and would let Sissel pick what to put on if they didn’t have a preference, even though Sissel was always just guessing. He liked some of the music better than others, but Kaboter had so many options he couldn’t remember which music was on which little thing, even when there were cores for him to possess.
Other Sissel still didn’t unpack. Kaboter emptied a few others to help, mostly stuff for her bedroom or the bathroom, and Other Sissel had pulled out things like plates and towels instead of cleaning the used ones that were already in the sink—or on the floor. Before Sissel was even really used to the new house, a week had passed, and Other Sissel was suddenly touching the boxes again to get ready for her family’s arrival.
Not unpacking anything, obviously. Why would that change… ‘Getting ready’ involved taking the boxes and putting them in corners so that the hallways weren’t crowded. Apparently Other Sissel’s father used a wheelchair, and needed space to move around.
“You want any help?” Kaboter asked, as Other Sissel moved two boxes stacked on top of each other at once.
“No,” Other Sissel said. “I can do it. It’s good practice for when Yomiel comes home.”
Huh, what’s that mean? Making things wheelchair-friendly? Yomiel uses crutches now…maybe she means carrying him, Sissel thought, trotting after her in case anything fell that he could help carry. Yomiel doesn’t like anyone else moving him around, but maybe it would be different if it was Other Sissel offering.
She and Kaboter sat on the stoop together that afternoon, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for everyone to arrive. Other Sissel’s mama had telegrammed and said when their flight was getting in, and how long they expected to take getting their luggage back and finding a rental car big enough for everyone.
Sissel had gone to sit on the curb. His eyesight wasn’t very good for things that were far away, and he wanted to let Other Sissel know as soon as he saw a big car coming.
Other Sissel was picking her nails.
“You’re excited, though, right?” Kaboter asked, recognizing the symptoms of nervousness.
“I haven’t seen them since I was fourteen.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“It’s not anybody’s fault.” Pick, pick, pick. “I’m not fourteen anymore.”
“Neither are they.” Kaboter leaned their head on Other Sissel’s shoulder. “And it’s not like you don’t know them.”
Other Sissel pressed her hands together between her knees, flattening her fingers to keep them from moving. “My older siblings don’t…I…half of them had moved out and were living in their own homes by the time I asked to stay in this country.”
“Didn’t you go to your sister’s wedding after she moved out? Also, which sister was that, ‘cause that was before you knew me so I’m not up to date.”
“That was Kitty’s wedding,” Other Sissel said. Sissel pricked his ears up; he hadn’t known humans could be named that. “It was…nice to see her, I guess. Kitty’s lived in their country’s capital since I was four, she went to college there and never came back.”
“Kitty’s the oldest, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so who’s next,” Kaboter said. “Take me down the list. It’s gonna be really embarrassing for me if I can’t remember everybody’s name when they get here, they’re gonna think I ignore you when you talk about them.”
“Onfim’s the next oldest.” Other Sissel was still squeezing her hands between her knees, her whole body broadcasting anxiety like the radio broadcast noise.
“What does he do?”
“Um, he’s married, he and Kitty both have kids…he does something in an office for work, I can’t remember what. He mostly talks about his kids when he writes.”
“Okay, and the next oldest is…you,” Kaboter guessed, transparently trying to make Other Sissel laugh.
“Rema,” Other Sissel said. “She’s a manager of some kind in a shop. Then Perso, then Sheeta, then Elling, and then me.”
A car drove past—Sissel could definitely see the headlights shining in the late sunset of the day—but it kept driving past, instead of turning onto Other Sissel’s street.
“And Elling’s your favorite,” Kaboter said.
“I don’t have favorites,” Other Sissel mumbled. Maybe she should be wearing her coveralls, Sissel thought. She seemed a lot more confident, wearing them to work, than she was now, at home, in only some soft pants and a long-sleeved shirt. She had come outside without even putting shoes on, and there were smudges of dirt on her bare feet.
“Everyone has favorites. I have a favorite mom—depending on who lectured me most recently about something they were right about and I was wrong,” Kaboter joked. They were still resting their head on Other Sissel’s shoulder.
“Ha.” Other Sissel tried to participate in Kaboter being funny. She just said the word ‘ha’, though, instead of laughing. Sissel decided that he could watch well enough from Other Sissel’s lap and went to shove himself into her arms.
Kaboter scratched between his ears; Sissel saw them reach to do it, and purred. “What are you going to tell them about this guy?”
Other Sissel shrugged.
“I guess we hope none of your siblings own cats, then.”
Sissel agreed. But Other Sissel would stop him from being hauled off to a vet if someone noticed something off about him and tried to fix it, right?
Other Sissel said, “Rema works at a pet store.”
Uh oh. That’s not ideal… Also, what was a pet store? You couldn’t sell cats in a shop like food, or clothes.
“Crap. We’ll think of something.” Kaboter shifted their hand when Sissel pawed at them, to make it easier to rub his cheek into Kaboter’s palm. Kaboter didn’t have nice pointy nails like Alma, sadly. “When did your mom say they’d get in?”
Other Sissel didn’t answer. She had gone suddenly tight and wide-eyed, eyes glued on the end of the street.
“Oh, hey, hey! That’s the car?” Kaboter jumped to their feet, waving their arms over their head. “HI!”
The side door of the big van was already sliding open before it came to a halt on the street in front of them, and a person Sissel didn’t know was half falling out, crying Sissel’s name.
Other Sissel lurched to her feet with her own inarticulate cry, letting Sissel tumble to the sidewalk. (He didn’t hold it against her; he could catch himself.) Sissel dodged being stepped on as the boy who had stumbled out of the van made it to Other Sissel and clutched her in the tightest hug Sissel had seen in a long time.
Other Sissel’s brother looked a lot like her, heavyset and not remarkably tall, with hair like a fluffy tail escaping from his braid. All of the people piling out of the car were built the same, like matching kittens in a litter, and an older woman with fluffy gray hair was helping out a balding man in a wheelchair who had the same smooth points of hair curling around his chin as Other Sissel.
There was something about the man’s face that Sissel wanted to look at, but Other Sissel’s father vanished behind the rush of people all trying to get to Other Sissel at once. Most of them were sniffling, and too big for more than two of them to get close to Other Sissel at once, even they were all trying to put hands on her shoulders and her back and her head. The first boy had not let her go to let anyone else in. Other Sissel was crying again, no doubt making a damp spot on her brother’s shirt.
Sissel dodged around ankles and managed to climb Other Sissel’s leg and get into her pocket while one of the new people he couldn’t see managed to peel apart the crowd of older Other Sissels to push her father through, saying, “Let me through, out of the way, you rascals.”
Sissel had heard that voice before!
“Mama,” Other Sissel sobbed, and her parents threw their arms around her.
“My gods, you’re so tall,” said her father, his face pressed into her side. He didn’t seem to be able to get up from his chair, and one of his arms was shaking. “When did you get so tall?”
“I di-idn’t mean to.” Other Sissel was trapped with her face squished into her Mama’s shoulder, trembling as her Mama gently swayed her back and forth.
“You’ve done an incredible job,” her Mama said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We missed you so much.”
“Let’s get inside before we all start sobbing on the lawn,” said one of the siblings, who had fluffy hair instead of pointy. It was swept up over her head, like a friendly raised tail, somewhere between Lynne’s ponytail and Yomiel’s hair. She patted an anxious-looking sibling, who had a ponytail with little curly points going all over the place trying to escape the hair tie, on the shoulder. “Kitty, you help get everyone’s luggage out of the car. I’ll help get Dad situated.”
Other Sissel had made (all by herself!) a wooden ramp to level out the difference between the sidewalk and her front door, in preparation for a wheelchair. The front door was wide enough for her Dad to be pushed inside by her Mama, but only single-file, which meant they had to stop hugging Other Sissel.
Dad Sissel didn’t want to let go of Other Sissel’s hand, and the brother who’d been first out of the van wouldn’t leave her alone either. Kaboter lingered outside while Sissel was carried in in Other Sissel’s pocket.
Sissel could see Dad Sissel better from this angle, and now Sissel understood why he used a wheelchair. The side of his face was all burned up, or had been a long time ago, and now bore a scar that kept his balding head from growing much hair on that side, his ear blurry and vague against the rest of his skin. The scarring was on his hand, too, on the same side, and Sissel guessed the damage went all the way down his leg as well, to keep him from walking.
This was certainly the ‘injury’ Other Sissel had told Tesa about, that had ended Dad Sissel’s job as a diplomat and made money so tight. That’s tough… Sissel was tempted to curl up in Dad Sissel’s lap and purr over the hurt side of his body.
“This is nice and roomy,” Dad Sissel commented as he was pushed through the entryway. “Plenty of space for a wheelchair to turn around. I wonder if it was built that way on purpose?”
Sissel perked up. Oh, good! That means Yomiel will have room when he comes to live here! Maybe he could go back to a wheelchair instead of the crutches that hurt his shoulder, once there weren’t any guards trying to push him places?
The first room inside the front door was the kitchen, and it was twice as big as usual. Tesa’s house had sliding doors on most of the rooms, and the ones separating Other Sissel’s bedroom from the kitchen were pulled wide open to accommodate the number of people Other Sissel had known were coming.
Sissel wondered where Other Sissel planned on putting everyone. Her bed was made nicely, but the bed could only fit maybe two people. I hope her family packed sleeping bags…
“You should lie down,” Mama Sissel suggested, seeing the bed. “We’re all exhausted after the rigamarole of such a long flight.”
“If Littlest doesn’t mind me borrowing the bed,” Dad Sissel said, squeezing Other Sissel’s hand. He did look very tired; Sissel hadn’t noticed at first because of the way the burn marks pulled at his skin.
“You’ll be sleeping there anyway,” Other Sissel said (still sniffling and trying to make herself stop). “You and Mama, I mean.”
“What?” said her Mama. “Where are you planning to sleep?”
“On the floor.”
Mama Sissel pursed her lips, and was interrupted from whatever she was about to say by more siblings barging in through the front door right behind them, hauling luggage. Sissel tried to lean out of Other Sissel’s pocket for a sneaky sniff of her brother. Surely he could still pick up on new people’s individual smells.
“Rema, where do we put these,” said one of the brothers from under the pile of backpacks in his arms. The one with the raised-fluffy-tail hair turned to Other Sissel and said,
“Sissel, where can we put our stuff?”
Other Sissel gestured vaguely to the open doors of her bedroom. “And Kay helped clean out the back, and there’s a living room down the hall…wherever there’s space for someone to sleep, I guess.”
“I’ll take a look and see where we can fit everyone,” Mama Sissel said with the steely edge of a military commander. Sissel liked her a lot better than Commander Sith, though. “You can help your father get settled. Where did your friend go?”
“Mama, Kay doesn’t speak this language.”
“That was Kay? I thought so! Littlest, I lived in this country for over a decade—I speak Kay’s language.”
Languages, huh? I didn’t notice anything different… Other Sissel’s family made words with different shapes to their sounds, so maybe that was what Mama Sissel meant. Then again, I’m hearing their thoughts directly, without having to worry about knowing a human ‘language’. Thoughts must be a completely different beast than the words humans used to convey them, like Sissel’s fishing-rod toys compared to hunting a real bird.
Kay came in, then, and was immediately pounced on by Mama Sissel exclaiming “Kay! I wasn’t sure that it was you. It’s so nice to see you again,” and then it was Kay’s turn to get a kajillion hugs (as Lynne would have said) from everyone, before Mama Sissel dragged them away to show her around the house.
Other Sissel’s brother took over pushing her Dad into the bedroom (Dad Sissel said “Thank you, Elling,” which helped Sissel figure out which brother this was). He had some trouble navigating around the kitchen table, and Elling started shifting his angle of approach, but Other Sissel got there first and shoved the whole table out of the way, into a corner.
“You’ve gotten very strong,” Dad Sissel said, in a way that was inviting her to talk about it. Other Sissel just moved the chairs out of the way, too. It was going to be hard for more than two people to sit down to eat, Sissel thought, but after all she had only inherited two chairs from Tesa.
Dad Sissel put the brakes on his chair, and Elling showed Other Sissel how to lift their dad out of his wheelchair and onto the bed, so he could lie down. Sissel wondered why he couldn’t get himself up. Maybe he was too old to balance on one leg for a little bit like Yomiel had done to get from chair to bed, or to the toilet. When Sissel was alive and getting older, his body had gotten a lot creakier, and complained with little bursts of soreness when he tried to move the way he used to.
With Elling and Other Sissel on either side of him, Dad Sissel only lifted one arm to hold onto Other Sissel for stability, the one with the unscarred hand. When he was on the mattress securely and Elling could let go, Elling moved his legs up for him with a careful, secure grasp at the knee and the ankle of the leg on his burned side. Other Sissel watched like she couldn’t turn away.
Elling said, once their Dad was comfortable in the bed and propped up on several pillows, “Uh, Sissel, your pocket is wiggling.”
Whoops. Sissel had meant to stay out of sight and out of the way until everyone was asleep, but oh, well. Sissel crawled out of Other Sissel’s pocket and tried to clamber onto her shoulder, but she flinched away from his claws and pulled him off. “Miw!” Sissel protested as she set him on the floor. It’s really inconvenient that she can’t hear me…I don’t even have my bells.
“You have a cat!” Dad Sissel said, audibly smiling.
“Boy, he’s scrappy,” Elling said.
“He’s Yomiel’s cat,” Other Sissel said.
“I’m sorry Yomiel couldn’t be here to greet us, too.” Dad Sissel adjusted his glasses; the pillows seemed to be holding him up, and the soft cushiness of the one behind his head had skewed how his glasses sat over his ear. “I reached out to some old friends of mine from my diplomatic days. I’m sure we can arrange to see him without having to cram all of us together into one of those little phone booths with a glass window in the way.”
Other Sissel’s breath hitched. “Really?”
“Would I leave, after coming all the way here, without once meeting my son-in-law properly?” Dad Sissel put his good arm out, and Other Sissel sank slowly onto the bed next to him. “Come here, kidlet, let me hold you. You’re not too grown-up for that, I hope.” He brought her down to cuddle into his side—the side without burns, Sissel noticed. I wonder if that’s on purpose, because she’s not used to him being hurt, or because his other arm hurts… Other Sissel had told Tesa that her dad only got injured after she stayed behind in this country.
“Here,” Elling said, offering Other Sissel his handkerchief, because big wobbly tears had started sliding down her cheeks again.
“I’m fine,” Other Sissel said. Sissel avoided climbing up her, so she wouldn’t push him off again, and used the side table to jump up on the pillows and snuggle, too. He avoided her Dad’s arm, though, just in case the older man could tell Sissel was too cold.
“We’re all fine,” Dad Sissel said, rubbing Other Sissel’s arm. Other Sissel reached out as if to hold him back, and then flinched away before her hand could touch his burned side. “It’s all right, Littlest, a touch won’t hurt me.”
“Dad’s pretty hardy,” Elling said, looking antsy like he wanted to contribute more to the conversation, or maybe just wanted to hold Other Sissel himself. He was leaning towards her, perched on the end of the bed with one leg up—Sissel was pretty sure his attention was on Other Sissel, anyway, and not on his weary Dad.
“I don’t know how to…” Other Sissel trailed off, and mumbled, “Never mind.”
“How to what?” Dad Sissel asked.
“Doing the right thing to help,” Other Sissel mumbled. “With your chair.”
“Littlest, I only just got here.”
There was more to it than that, Sissel could tell. Maybe Other Sissel was thinking of Yomiel, too, and the chair he’d used for such a long time. But Sissel couldn’t talk to her like he talked to Jowd when Jowd clammed up like that; he didn’t have a voice to try to convince her to say what was in her head right now out loud.
It’s okay, Sissel said, curling up against Other Sissel’s back. I’m here.