We're eating in silence right now. I'm slowly gnawing on my steak, while Perry quietly sips up his dish of what's called "soup", as he tensely told me when I hesitantly asked him just after we sat down at the table together.

After a few more minutes of excruciating silence, I ask, "Are you mad at me?"

More silence follows this, so I awkwardly unsheath one of my claws and use it to begin cutting my steak into bite-sized pieces. This creates a slightly annoying noise, punctuated by the occasional piercing screech when I accidentally hit the plate with the claw.

"I'm not mad at you," Perry replies finally. "I'm more mad at Pete for the way he reacted afterwards."

"You have a right to be mad at me, though," I say, subdued somewhat.

"No, I don't; eight years of instincts isn't going to go away in one day. I need to remember that."

I hope he's not just saying that to make me feel better. Maybe he really IS mad at me; I DID attack his friend for no reason, after all. But when I think back to that moment, I can clearly remember seeing his paw move. I don't know, maybe he was going to reach out to shake my hand. That's probably what he was going to do. But as he began moving, my brain had interpreted that as he was going to take some of my food. Rationality had abandoned me and my survival instinct had taken over. It looks like I'll have to tone that survival instinct down quite a bit while I'm here. After all, I won't need to fight for food or shelter anymore, and those are pretty much the only two things I got into fights over back on the streets.

Food, shelter, warmth, safety. Those were the four fundamentals out there. Of course, there was never any of the lattermost. And the other three were rare. But here, it seems I won't have to worry about them anymore. And while I'm very happy about that, I'm still fighting my instincts even at this moment. My instincts right now are urging me to sneak some of this food back to my room and hide it for later. But I don't HAVE to do that; Perry said OWCA agents are fed like this three times a day. That'll be more than enough for me.

"So...who…" I hesitate. "Who was that agent I attacked?"

"Peter the Panda," replies Perry, looking up at me for the first time since we sat down. "He's been a friend of mine for a while. We did our basic training together." He grimaces. "Speaking of Peter, I'm really sorry about what he said."

"What HE said?" I repeat, tipping my head on one side.

"About you having a filthy smell. You don't, by the way," Perry adds quickly. "Pete just… He has a bit of prejudice against street animals. And former street animals," he again adds quickly, seeing my eyes narrow slightly. "A lot of agents here do, unfortunately. They've never experienced the hardship of the streets before, but if they had, they would never treat street-animals-turned-agents the way they do. Thankfully, none of your roommates are among those agents. Mostly because Paris and Melinda were raised with me by a very compassionate cat whose own brother spent a long time on the streets, Wanda was a street animal herself, and Jackie's mother is a zoo animal, which are also discriminated against here."

I have two questions about what he just said, but I ask a different one first: "What about Harper?"

"That's...slightly more difficult. The organisation in which she grew up discriminated against everyone who wasn't a part of them, street animal or OWCA agent alike. When she came here, we taught her the rights and wrongs, including the fact that nobody, zoo animal or street animal, should be discriminated against. They're just as valuable-if not MORE so-than the OWCA-born animals."

I nod slowly. "Why are zoo animals and street animals discriminated against?"

Perry sighs disappointedly. "Because a lot of OWCA-born agents see them as inferior. They consider street animals to be dirty and vulgar, and zoo animals to be dumb and untalented."

I feel my skin heat up with indignation. "That's completely unfair!"

"I quite agree," Perry responds. "I oppose such prejudice completely, because, apart from the obvious reason that nobody deserves such prejudice, it's absolutely not true. Any zoo-born agent can be twice as intelligent as an OWCA-born agent, and any street-born agent can be twice as skilled as an OWCA-born agent."

I nod approvingly. "It all depends on their training, right?"

"Right."

After a brief pause, I ask my final question: "Are you and Melinda siblings?"

Perry glances up at me again in surprise. "What?"

I shrug awkwardly. "You said you and your twin sister were raised alongside her, so I just…"

"Oh, right." Perry shakes his head. "No. My mother and Melinda's mother were really close friends, so when my mother died, her mother raised Paris and me."

I shiver unconsciously. "Your mother died?"

Perry nods slowly. "Yeah. It was when we were really young, so I don't remember her."

I hesitate for a moment, before saying, "Me too. My dad told me that my mother died giving birth to me, so I never got to know her either."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Perry grimaces sympathetically. "What… What happened to your dad, if I may ask?"

I shiver again, this time recalling the memory of finding my dad's body. "Starvation. I was about three years old at the time and I'd gone out to get some food for him. It was also winter, so that didn't help. When I came back to our shelter with some food, he… he was… just...gone." I clear my throat as my voice threatens to break. "I'm sort of thankful I didn't see it happen myself, but at the same time, if I had, I might have had the chance to say goodbye."

"I'm sorry, Anya…"

"So am I," I murmur. "He wasn't just my father; he was my teacher. He taught me how to hunt, how to speak, how to fight. He taught me stuff about everything, like what some human things were. That's how I know most food names, furniture names, and a lot of animal species names as well."

Perry cocks his head. "Was he born on the streets too?"

"Um… I'm not sure. I never got the chance to ask; I wasn't curious enough about him when he died. Why?"

"Well...it seems like that's a lot of knowledge for a street animal," Perry replies hesitantly. "I'm not saying street animals can't be knowledgeable; it's just that normally, street animals don't know furniture names and stuff like that. Do you know who taught him how to fight?"

I shake my head. "No. Again, I didn't get the chance to ask. But…" I pause thoughtfully. "I do remember thinking that his vocabulary was really advanced. Normally, street animals don't have much of a vocabulary because they often don't have the right circumstances to learn the words, if that makes sense. I learnt to speak properly by almost age two. So I did wonder for a while where he got such an extensive vocabulary."

"Yeah, I noticed that your own lexicon is quite advanced."

"Lexicon?"

"Vocabulary."

"Oh." I hesitate. "My dad taught me everything he knew, so I guess it makes sense for his vocabu- for his lexicon to be passed to me."

Perry grins. "There you go; you just learned a new word."

I chuckle back. "I suppose I did."

A short silence follows this, then Perry clears his throat. "Are you all done?"

I look down at my empty plate and nod wordlessly, so Perry collects our trays and goes to put them away, while I look outside at the darkness, then up at the small round thing inside the room: the clock. My dad taught me a little about telling the time, but I've never been able to see a clock before, so I haven't been able to put it into practise.

"What's the time?" I ask Perry when he comes back.

He glances at the clock. "Ten to eight."

He doesn't ask, to my relief, but I still have to tell him. "I...can't tell the time."

Perry smiles at me. "Don't worry, we can work on that as well. Maybe you can ask your roommates to help you."

So, when I get back to my room, I do. And from then until I go to bed, I work on punching, kicking, telling the time, reading, and writing. Melinda, Paris, and Harper are all being very kind to me. They assure me Jackie would be helping too if she was here, but apparently, she's spending time with her mother in the zoo. And Wanda...has been shut in her room since before dinner. I'm not sure why.

At bedtime, Melinda shows me how to get into the bed. I snuggle under the covers as she tucks me in-slightly embarrassingly for me. They're very cozy and warm.

So cozy that I fall asleep before Melinda even gets into her own bed.