Author's Note:
Hello! It's Crow's Night, one-half of the literary team of Equinox43. Here's a story I've been sitting on for a while, about the cat that terrorizes the Red Keep. I posted it a few months ago, but there was a massive formatting glitch and I took it down; here it is again, with a few revisions. Enjoy!
The meat cellar was below the kitchens, where the stone walls kept out the summer heat. Sometimes, before feats, ships from the North would bring in blocks of ice to keep it fresh until it was eaten by the King's guests.
The cat liked feasts; he could walk the floors of the Great Hall and eat anything the people had thrown there. He wasn't the only scavenger, of course. Dogs would fight for the choicest bones and even try to snag the cat's food. He scared them away. Dogs were cowards.
He crept up on a side of beef that was hanging from the ceiling, ready to be salted. There was nobody down here at this late hour, but it paid to be cautious. The kitchen staff were under orders to kill him after he had stolen an entire chicken from Lord Tywin Lannister's fingertips.
Lonely torches burned at either end of the long cellar, their dim and moody light flickering, the orange glow turning the meat from red to black. He stretched his front paws up and began clawing off bits of beef.
This was far easier than hunting, and besides cows tasted better than mice. The other cats in the Red Keep could have their vermin; this one was not afraid to take what he wanted.
When he had had his fill, the cat crept out of the cellar. He slipped between the bars in the door and made his way up to the top floors, and from there out into the gardens. Moonlight shone on black fur and a yellow eye gleamed as he darted between the hedges and flowerbeds.
An owl hooted and he froze momentarily, his remaining ear swiveling towards the sound. Disgruntled, he shook himself silently and continued. The balconies cast shadows over the garden, and the barred shadows concealed him.
The cat didn't like to go to the upper levels of the Red Keep; they made him remember his dreams. In his dreams he lived in a sunlit room upstairs, the one that was now occupied by the blond man-whelp, with a small girl. She would stroke him, and dangle scraps of cloth for him to catch. He would bump her with his head and she would scratch his ears. He would purr and doze in her lap, and her hair would fall about her face as she bent down to kiss his head. And she would call him by that word, the one she said as she petted him, as she showed him proudly to her father, as she was taken away forever.
She thought he was a dragon, a beast to protect her. But he was just a kitten, with stumbling feet and floppy ears, and he didn't know what to do when red-cloaked guards slammed open the door and took the girl away. A dragon would have roared at them, spat fire on them, protected what was his. The kitten, however, ran and hid from the hobnailed boots and shouting voices. The cat had just hissed at the men from under the bed as the soldiers rampaged through the room. She had screamed his name as they dragged her away. Balerion.
The cat moved swiftly away. Across the gardens, through two doors, and out a window was his nest, buried deep in the densest bush on the grounds. It had taken a long time to create a comfortable space, weeks of snapping branches with his teeth and placing them on the floor, but now he had a place that none could take from him.
And Balerion lay down and let himself dream.