Another bit of world speculation: I mentioned the effect alchemy would have on the fatality rate of childhood diseases and how they would combat plagues.
Our modern idea of American Indian culture is distorted, and in many respects flat-out wrong, because we weren't studying their original cultures and environment by the time we got to them.
We were studying the survivors of what amounted to an apocalypse.
Due to only very limited contact with other cultures (their genes and their diseases), and the fact so many were still hunter-gatherers (cities pre-sanitation force evolution for disease resistance, which is why the Central American population survived the best), the instant the Americas got that contact back on a large scale (as opposed to the Vikings, Polynesians), the inhabitants were doomed.
Mana Khemia-verse Europe has alchemists actually studying medicine and plagues, and what happened to the Americas was noted. However, since they don't know from immune systems, they looked at the number of corpses and thought it was happening because the Americas were even more of a Death World than Africa, (people who went there dropped like flies before modern medicine, and certain sailors seriously asked for it, but worms popping out through the skin? Ick.) which is the opposite of the truth: that the Native Americans died because America was too safe for too long.
For most of what we now call European history, there wasn't even a concept of race as a source of identity, the closest thing to it was 'Christendom.' Making a distinction between white and non white (not to mention all the gradations) would seem just as random and arbitrary to a person of this era as discriminating based on shoe size. Not to mention that when they did meet an African, they were generally highly educated, so if there had been a racial stereotype it would have been that they were smarter than white people. Put in that context, it's obvious why no one would have a problem with beastmen, let alone Anna (whose real name is Shi no Hana in this ficverse). Whether God as a perfect being had a functional tail (humans just have a tailbone) or not would probably get Gannon Banned in the same way as the question of Adam's belly button.
Aion.
"You're the one who imagined him in maid outfits."
"It was an example!"
"An example of your fantasies," the Mana of Light agreed, moving its tail in a way that was halfway between a happy wag and a predatory lash. "What others do you have, hmm? The collar, of course. Perhaps a leash?"
"I don't need one," Roxis forced out through gritted teeth. "Which is what I meant when I asked the entirely rhetorical question of 'What am I going to do with you?' Which was, in any event, addressed to him, not to you." Eavesdropper. Why couldn't it have manifested a few minutes ago, when a distraction that irritated him would have been useful? He'd come far too close to yielding to baby talk too many times.
"I've known humans for ages, all over the world. You want to win, but you want to do it on your own merits, because otherwise it's a loss. Vayne's reactions were so adorable."
"Mew?" 'What do you mean?' Vayne-kitten wondered.
"Such great desires, and he didn't let you do anything for you." Tsk. "Your strength of will, your passion: you enflamed him," she said to Roxis now.
Speaking of it like that: what a, "P-Pervert," he accused, trying not to look guilty, shamed, or interested at the thoughts of Vayne in a maid outfit, or collar and leash. Looking at the kitties was the lesser of two evils, he decided.
"He'd love to do whatever you wanted. It's so frustrating for him when you won't let him give you your desires, but that's what he admires about you. How driven you are, how hard... you're willing to work for your goals."
Frustrated, desires, driven, hard, willing.
"He wants you to be happy with him, he wants to satisfy your desires, but you'd rather handle it yourself." Handle yourself.
"Nngh."
She leaned forward, moving in for the kill. "He'd love to do something for you, anything you wanted. Anything at all. If only you let him. I wish you'd let him."
Vayne's pact to Sulpher had been restored. Sulpher was still pacted to Eital. Roxis was too busy trying not to die of shame to form any conscious wishes other than that this not be happening.
What wishes did he have that could be fulfilled by someone else?
For instance, if Vayne had become his mana solely because Roxis wished for a mana, then he wouldn't have felt that he earned it. It would have felt like charity. Well, he had been able to heal the Huffin Tree because of Vayne's charity, but Dour had told him that he had already been impressed by his efforts to heal the tree, pointless or not.
Roxis wanted to be victorious, always, but it didn't mean anything if it was just handed to you. You could tower over others by becoming great or by merely pushing them down into the ground so you looked better by comparison: a wish wouldn't have made him any worthier, so it would have just been the second, despicable method.
Alchemy was an art form, an alchemist's syntheses were unique, the style almost a fingerprint even in the more basic recipes. There was Jess' deliberate, willful decision to ignore ratios and ether levels to invite the kind of lucky accident that lead to breakthroughs, Anna's careful, exact precision that allowed her to perform difficult syntheses even without understanding the principles, Flay's "man's cooking" and many more.
For Vayne to grant him skill at alchemy could only grant him Vayne's skill, Vayne's style, not his own.
Come to think of it, that would explain much about Vayne's style of alchemy. He never invented recipes, even now. He could mimic, try the easy alternate ingredients, but he always did exactly what was required to attain the desired result. No experiments that risked not attaining that result, none of the 'good enough' that was the mark of an experienced alchemist that knew when it wasn't necessary to go by the book, and definitely none of the 'a little less of this, and a dash of that would go well with it,' that marked a master who understood the principles and knew that recipes really weren't much more than guidelines.
Given how many things depended on the phase of the moon, the season, the humidity, and so on, recipes really ended up being for students, a sort of 'average' synthesis that could be counted on to work reliably enough and yet vary enough that it would force them to experiment with what was necessary to create the desired effects. A true master could make boiling hot ice cream.
In alchemy, the mana provided the power and the alchemist the direction, the creativity.
The drive.
Vayne was a mana.
And not just any mana, but the mana of that drive itself.
The force that drove humans to create, to improve their own lives, to get up out of bed in the mornings.
'I want...'
'My dream is to…'
'I wish that…'
'If only…'
But Vayne was desire, not achievement. People could have utterly irrational desires that they knew they didn't really didn't want. How many times had Roxis wished for harm to befall Vayne? Or for Tony to just drop dead?
He hadn't wanted Vayne to be hurt, but to be able to claim victory over him. He hadn't wanted Tony to die, just to stop being so damned annoying so Roxis could get his work done.
But those had been the wishes he had stated aloud, or in the privacy of his own mind, and those were what Vayne would have granted.
If Vayne wasn't at his best, a victory would be meaningless. If Tony had died, Renee would have been distraught and forced Roxis to attend his funeral and so on. He wouldn't have been able to complete any assignments for the foreseeable future, certainly
The wish itself often went against the underlying purpose of the wish. That was why humans repressed or refused to act on those irrational desires.
But Vayne was desire, both rational and irrational.
And Eital's wish had removed his ability to say no to his desires.
At least Vayne wasn't overwriting Roxis' alchemy skills and replacing them with his own: Roxis didn't want to be an eternal student. At least he, and Vanitas now, were able to recognize when the immediate wish went against the true wish, or the easy way didn't really grant the wish itself.
They didn't mind that he had such strong wishes to be a great alchemist. They were those wishes. Their power dwelled within him, as it did every human, and they liked how strong it was in him. Had liked it all along. Vayne had even said he admired Roxis' hard work.
At least they weren't changing him, because after all, they weren't his wishes if he weren't himself anymore. He wished he was more creative when it came to recipes, but it was for he himself to be creative that he wished.
So many wishes and desires seemed so simple but were in the end so complicated. No wonder Vanitas had been so confused.
But there was one set of desires that was extremely simple. The primal desires for food, beautiful things, and…
Vanity wasn't the deadly sin most closely related to desire. Not even one of the top three. Top four, if you considered wrath to be the desire for someone to suffer and die. Of course, Narcissism was a form of vanity and that was desire for one's self.
There were desires that people suppressed for good reasons, and desires that people suppressed merely because they considered them shameful. Eital's wish had made Vanitas release Roxis' inhibitions.
Specifically, those related to baby talk.
"Aww, aren't you two just the cutest little bitty kitties," Roxis cooed, scratching under their tiny silver chins with two fingers. "You'd fit right in my pockets, you adorable widdle…"
"Well, that's… close to what I was aiming for." Embarrassing blackmail material was always welcome, but while this was sweet it wasn't the kind of eye candy the Mana of Light had expected.
Sulpher sniggered. Or rather, he would have sniggered if that weren't beneath his dignity as a cat. He instead yawned and stretched, but the sniggering was clearly implied nonetheless.
Vanitas enjoyed it shamelessly and Sulpher was pleased one of them had learned at least something of proper behavior from him. Vayne, however, had picked up enough of human culture to know that he really should be embarrassed, or upset at being teleported out of Sulpher's paws, but he'd also been raised by Sulpher. He supposed that since he currently looked like a cat he should probably act like one, Roxis wasn't angry at him for once and there were pettings. What would Sulpher do?
Well, no, Vayne probably shouldn't order Roxis to spend at least an hour a day petting him.
Roxis had six hard, rectangular deck cases on the bottom half of his coat, three on each side. One for his fighting deck, one for the deck his father had given him, one for vials of various healing potions, one for the seeds and other offensive combat items he used, one for his notes and the last was for various small keepsakes or things he found while gathering and wanted to make a point of investigating later. He switched all but two to the inside while actually fighting so they were less likely to get sliced up. His combat deck's pocket would be empty anyway and if the enemy wanted to let all the mandragora seeds and so on out, more power to them.
He wished he could figure out how on earth Jess got her bags to have more space on the inside than the outside, that would be incredibly useful. Oh, yes, right. He wouldn't wish for Vayne, or Vanitas, to tell him how she did it, but rather to apply the same effect to his pockets. Yes, that would work.
His first 'official' wish had been for Vanitas to make sure that the Mana of Light never, ever mentioned his baby talk (or any other blackmail material) to anyone. Ever. Or that they'd spent the night in a kittypile, with his kitten too.
He loved cats. They were such elegant creatures, with such enviable grace, poise, and self-confidence. They were everything he aspired to be (except alchemists, obviously).
So why then did they reduce him to acting like the stereotypical old woman with too many cats? The kind of pre-alchemy herbalist who had become the archetypical witch because of the power their knowledge afforded them and how they had often let it go to their heads, indulging in small, petty vengeances that they'd thought would be considered acts of god instead of traced back to them?
Well, if he thought of it that way it was quite appropriate, actually. He wasn't a proper alchemist, he was one who trafficked with dark powers as well. One who intended to live in a manor in the woods and own, or at least feed, lots of cats.
Of course, he wouldn't be living alone. Family, family retainers, the people who actually farmed the land, and whoever he ended up marrying to continue the family line. Probably a younger daughter from one of the surrounding noble families, to mend those fences. Relations had become a bit… difficult, recently.
The Rosenkrantz family had been granted those lands for their alchemical services. Since so long had gone by without them producing any alchemists? With the Crusades over, there were far too many landless younger sons of proper noble bloodlines, and what the Emperor had granted the Emperor could take away if someone who had done something for the crown recently asked him to.
There were the lands across the sea, but the way they had become vacant so quickly was warning enough.
It was hard enough for the people of Christendom to survive without the help of alchemists in the jungles of Afrika, and trading ships to India and Cathay were often as laden with cure jars for the sailors as limes or whiskey (it was hard to get sailors to make water safe by boiling it, but they'd go out of their way to add alcohol to it). Luckily, those diseases rarely followed them back.
The people of the Americas had only possessed a handful of alchemists. There were fewer people there and hence fewer of the mana who enjoyed people and were willing to pact went there, so the traveling alchemists who had gone to the new world in search of new ingredients didn't have the benefit of local assistance in finding recipes that were effective against those diseases and could be made with the materials available. The native doctors had their own pharmacopeias, of course, so it was easy to find ingredients with curative properties, but herbalism and alchemy were two entirely different things. The fact they had so much in common just made the differences bigger problems.
Potions required testing in order to discover their properties, and apparently there was a plant there that had marvelous curative properties, especially for fever, but only at low ether levels. At high ether levels, the cure jars had worked but that almost hadn't mattered when those who used them caught fire. Luckily, any alchemist with any sense knew to keep lots of nectars on hand when testing new syntheses.
Sometimes, Roxis was glad Jess and Flay weren't proper alchemists, willing to read everything they could get their hands on in search of knowledge. He wasn't sharing his exploding trap with Flay and he was never going to grow that plant if there was any chance Jess might find out about it.
Many governments were considering pressuring the Pope to tell Espana to withdraw from the new world. No one wanted those diseases, some clearly closely related to known ones but far deadlier, to spread.
His father's arranged marriage had been a thinly-disguised attempt to get control of the family lands, and he had advised Roxis to try to return already married, because it would be better to have a true partner. Roxis hadn't found anyone tolerable, however. Well, perhaps Anna, provided they had separate workshops and she didn't attempt to tell him how to clean his, but she had family duties to attend to.
He couldn't argue with that, after all.
Roxis sighed, dragging his wandering thoughts back to the coat he had been staring at. He knew he shouldn't carry Vayne and Vanitas around in pockets. It would be hard enough to act normal after this without being constantly exposed to adorable little silver twin kittens. Oh, and Vayne needed to be able to keep up the masquerade. Roxis had wanted to know the truth, not to deprive Vayne of the happiness he had found here. Vayne was feeling awful enough after finding out about Theofratus without losing all his friends.
A warm weight leaned against his back. "I can just disappear, you know." That was how most mana did it, after all.
Well, he probably wouldn't lose those lunatics over it, but there was someone else they needed to watch out for.
"And if you want children, all you have to do is wish."
"I thought I told you not to read my desires? Well, no, that would be pointless." Vanitas was his desires, and now they were pacted he was even less able to ignore them. "And apparently making children is the most enjoyable part of the process." Painless childbirth: one more reason alchemists were in such high demand. More importantly, "You can't keep appearing like this, not when you might be seen."
"You don't want me to be seen."
"Nor do I want to seem like a moonstruck fool." Talking to someone who wasn't there. "Either come up with some sort of alternate form – besides a tiny kitten! – for when you want to talk to me, or only do so in my mind. Unless it's safe."
"But the kitten form is what you wish for. Well that and this."
"Looking like Vayne would if he had been born a beastman is no better." If Vanitas just looked like Vayne, then people might not realize he wasn't if they caught a glimpse. "Think of something."
"I can think of many things."
Right, that wasn't the problem. "Pick something." Which was incredibly difficult for the mana, Roxis knew. How did you select from among infinite possibilities when none was any more or less appealing than any other? Come to think of it, Roxis didn't want a stupid-looking mana, so he clearly needed to pick for him because Vanitas had no taste. Taste was discrimination between good and bad, after all, which required preferring what was good. "What should we claim you're the mana of? Hmm." Sulpher, salt, "Mercury? I shall have to check the library." To see if anyone had encountered a Mercury Mana and might be able to tell the difference.
"You could just wish to know."
"We've had this discussion."
"Yes," Vanitas agreed shamelessly.
"…" Roxis gave him a look. "Well, someone takes after Sulpher." As opposed to Vayne. "If I grow reliant on you, then what will happen when the time comes that you need to rely on me? Research is a necessary skill for alchemists. I'm perfectly capable of handling this myself, and I need to keep in practice." And get better at it, in fact. "I know you need to grant wishes, and I already let you grant several this morning. So please forgive me for not being one of those lazy, spineless people who wants someone else to give them everything on a silver platter."
"But you are," Vanitas purred fondly, still draped over Roxis.
"What." Oh, you did not just say that.
"All humans wish to have something for nothing. To have the fruits of their labors without the labor. Work is hard and unpleasant: wishing to avoid it is simple and understandable." Natural and inevitable. "You don't have weaker desires or fewer desires than others. You have even stronger desires. Ones strong enough to overrule the desire to just wish in addition to it. Sulpher says you're an obsessed workaholic, like Theofratus. His desire was strong enough to call us into being."
Vanitas liked the obsessed in the same way the Mana of Dreams liked those prone to paranoid delusions, Roxis realized, and wondered if he should feel flattered or peeved. He settled on irritated, both by default and because it seemed as though Vanitas was trying to irritate him.
But was he? Roxis had thought Vayne had been trying to constantly insult him and undermine him, so he should know by now that the normal signs of true intent didn't apply to these two.
Vanitas wouldn't feel any desire to do anything unless someone wanted him to, so who would want Vanitas to irritate Roxis? Besides the Mana of Light. And Sulpher, probably. Roxis didn't want to be tempted to use Vanitas' power, so Vanitas rubbing him the wrong way would make that easier and grant Roxis' wish as well.
All wishes aside, Roxis was fairly certain Vanitas was fond of him, both for his ambition and how Roxis treated him. Both the 'him' that was his power within Roxis and the mana himself. Oh, Vayne too.
Al Revis was a school, full of young people with hopes and dreams for the future. There were also glyphs meant to strengthen mana power. Would Vanitas become less powerful on the mainland? Or rather, his total power would remain the same, it would just be his ability to summon and apply it. The location of the fire mana didn't affect the strength of the fires of the world.
Still, Roxis' ambitions seemed something like catnip to Vanitas, or it might just be the cat ears and tail that were making him think that. Roxis thought Vanitas liked the feeling and therefore should logically enjoy Roxis' presence and thus like Roxis, but Anna had told him of a philosophical question from her homeland: If a tree fell in the woods, and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound? Did Vanitas' fondness for his new pact-holder exist when Vanitas was incapable of feeling it, not buried among the collective desires of all beings, human and not?
Isolated from them, or at least somewhat insulated, Vayne might someday be able to learn how to identify his own desires, or so Roxis hoped. He thought that was Sulpher's plan too.
He knew he shouldn't pity Vanitas or Vayne. It was horrible to imagine a human who had nothing they loved, who felt no passion or purpose in life, but they were a mana. They had an intrinsic purpose, lacked the human need to find meaning in their lives.
Or Vanitas did.
What was Vayne supposed to do with himself now? Well, he had the purpose of learning how to be a human and feel what they felt in order to fulfill his, their, duties as a mana, but part of that was distancing himself from his mana nature so that he could have his own desires.
Did he feel lost, adrift? Probably not, Roxis knew. He'd been ignorant of his true nature and separated from Vanitas before: it shouldn't be any different now except that now he knew what he was and that he had a purpose.
The real trouble would be the consequences of what Theofratus had done. And what Isolde would do once she knew Vayne knew.
Roxis knew Vayne wouldn't be able to hide the shame he (wrongly) felt. She'd know if she even tried to meet his eyes.
He might need to actually threaten to release all those mana. Hopefully she wouldn't call his bluff. Hopefully it would only be a bluff. It would be a drastic action, but pacting with Vayne had been a drastic action. Working with shadow magic was a little like Vanitas' power, really. It removed inhibitions and made you do what you would in order to achieve your goal if there were no consequences. Even though there were, oh there were. That was the entire point.
He tapped his pen on the sheet of paper, thinking. "Vanitas. Perhaps I should put it this way: the ends don't justify the means. The means determine the end. Cause and effect, in a sense."
"All you have to do is wish."
"A wish isn't the cause, it's the desired effect. If I used your power, it would be the cause." How to put this? "The means to the end. And using your power would have certain consequences, just like using my own would."
"You don't wish to go to the depths of the Resource Center."
"Exactly. So if I go, it would build character." For one thing. "Finding the information, if it is there, would help improve my research skills, and who knows what other interesting and useful information I might find in the process? Not to mention ingredients."
"I can grant you ingredients."
"Yes. With another wish. And you can't find me useful, unknown information because you can only grant me what I wish for and I don't know what to wish for. If I knew what I wanted, it wouldn't be an unknown or new concept. So, by going to find the information myself, I would be granting four of my own wishes in the process. If I used your power, it would take me two wishes to fulfill the only two desires that you can grant."
Vanitas tilted his head, and Roxis wondered if he was finally getting it through to him. "…You're right."
"A wish is a goal, an effect of the actions taken to obtain it. For instance, if someone wished to win a tournament. You could grant them that by a wish, which would be cheating, or they could learn how to do it on their own, which would… Can you think of consequences?" That was actually an honest question.
It took him a moment, even though Roxis made a point of wanting him to be able to think of some. "The desire to feel that they are the best, the desire to be challenged… They wouldn't be able to have those desires fulfilled if their wish was granted that way. Humans make so many wishes at once. So granting them one at a time wouldn't be very efficient, would it?"
"I'm not saying that you shouldn't grant wishes. You just need to keep in mind that for every wish someone voices or feels strongly there are twenty others that contribute to it or might even cancel it out. Your power is mana power: there's absolutely nothing wrong with using it. However, there is a saying that when all you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. You make granting simple wishes so easy that I'm a bit worried that I'll begin to see everything as a simple wish."
Vanitas curled up to him. "You understand our power so well. Even better than we do-"
Roxis interrupted that, irritated that Vanitas was indeed that ignorant about mana. "Don't be silly. Of course you understand your element better than I do. It's just that that's part of the problem. It's so simple for you that it's hard to grasp that other people find it complicated and how. I'm not saying anything you don't know, it's just that you haven't been able to put it into words." Honestly. "Dour?"
"Es?" His mana appeared almost hurriedly, and Roxis realized belatedly that this was the first time he had summoned him since pacting with Vayne.
"…I'm terribly sorry. I should have asked before pacting with another mana." Now he felt like a horrible person.
Dour shook his head, eyes downcast. "'Ts o…ay."
"No, it's not, and I only summoned you now because I wanted to ask if you would do me a favor." Shamefaced, Roxis looked to the side as well. "I'm sorry. I'll find some way to make this up to you."
"What id oo?" Dour stopped before saying the word want, looking nervously at Vanitas.
Roxis pointed at Vanitas. "He doesn't really know the first thing about what mana are. Someone needs to teach him, and the Mana of Light is not a good role model." God forbid. Sulpher'd corrupted him enough already without her getting her paws any deeper into him than they already were.
Dour paused. "…E?"
"The Mana of Gold is an old friend of Eital." Roxis ticked their options off on his fingers. "The Mana of Wind is flighty and tends to let things slip. Siren would write a song about all of this if she knew. Pamela's mana spends all of her time in that teddy bear," they needed more sanity around here, not less, "and doesn't speak to the rest of us. Anna's mana doesn't either, and how am I supposed to judge if they would be a good teacher or not if they've never explained anything in my hearing? You know a great deal of ancient alchemic lore," like the Water of Youth, "you're polite," a little too polite, in fact, "good at assisting with syntheses and so on. Who else would I possibly choose?" He wasn't going to trust anyone else with Vayne, not when he was so easily molded.
Dour gripped his acorn tightly, looking up at Roxis and Vanitas. "Um…"
"You can say no if you like. We both know that Vayne is rather slow and extremely irritating. I suppose I could just give him a reading list. It would keep him busy." Roxis wasn't a very touchy-feely person, but there was just something about shy little children. And kittens. So he put his hand on Dour's shoulder, squeezed it once. "But I'd feel much more confident that I wouldn't wake up one morning to find he'd done something stupid like give someone the Midas touch if you took him under your wing. Or acorn."
There was a nod and an, "Es," Dour replied, a small smile growing as he started to believe that Roxis really wasn't going to replace him.
"Thank you." Another squeeze and he removed his hand, pleased to see Dour come out from behind the acorn. Which reminded him. "Now, you really don't have a mana form? Many mana have a natural form and only take on a humanoid one if they spend a great deal of time with people. For instance, Dour's true form is that acorn. But I suppose that as a created mana it's possible that you might only have the form he designed you with."
"I do, but Sulpher said not to show it to anyone after what happened."
Roxis decided he didn't want to ask about what happened. Well, he would have to find out what sort of blunders they'd made early on eventually, in order to make sure they didn't happen in future, but he could really only take so much stupid per week. "Well, I want you to show it to me."
Vanitas glowed, and Roxis found himself in some sort of infinite plain. Would Vanitas not fit in Roxis' room?
Not comfortably.
The red eyes would have been frightening, but the lumpy black mass seemed more like… he didn't know what, but it wasn't very threatening. What really ruined the effect, however, were the legs. They were such ill-fitting things compared to Vanitas' body that they somehow ended up just looking incredibly ridiculous.
"A child's scribble!" That was what the curves and bumps of the black body were making him think of! "No, you definitely can't take this form. They'll either run screaming or, more likely, start laughing." Roxis couldn't abide being laughed at, and if his mana was laughable that reflected poorly on him.
Vanitas changed to kitten form right away, seeming relieved somehow. Well, Sulpher hadn't wanted him to take that form, so his wish had conflicted with Roxis'. Roxis knew already that things like that were hard on Vanitas, and Vanitas had copied much of Sulpher's catly body language, including washing himself to recover dignity and composure after something happened that would have been embarrassing for lesser beings.
Roxis scooped him up and put him in a pocket. Aww, the kitty really did fit… "Ahem. Dour, when can you begin Vanitas' lessons?"
A little half-shrug: anytime.
Roxis took the kitten out of the pocket, told himself he wasn't disappointed he wouldn't be able to carry a kitten around all day, and put it on top of Dour's acorn. "Well, no time like the present."
Vanitas licked fur that had been disarranged by the pocketing. "As you wish."
They vanished, Roxis looked at the clock, and two frantic minutes later he was hurrying towards the washing rooms. Class in half an hour, his hair was a mess, and he still smelled like sun-warmed fur! At least he'd done all of his assignments in advance…