Chapter 11; The Stranger
The light of the full moon filtered gently in through the bedroom window, casting a soft blue light all around. Not that anyone was awake to see. Humbert was sleeping on his bed, absently tickling Haru's stomach as he dreamt of one day defying his mother to her face.
He rolled over, no longer facing the now adult cat. The shift and cessation of tickling woke Haru, and her elegant head came up sharply, her large brown eyes looking at the red-head who had welcomed her into his life, saving hers in the process.
Haru had spent almost every day since then trying to think of how to best thank the human. Sitting with him when his mother came was a small gesture. Haru enjoyed glaring at the older woman. It was a cat thing: she could get away with treating the matriarch like a servant, because she herself was treated like a queen every day.
All those women through the year… Haru sometimes wondered if the best way to thank Humbert would be to give him a final reason to never have to go out with them ever again. It probably would be a good thank you, but how to go about it?
Oh, she knew humans could be turned into cats: that was easy. That was very, very easy. Haru knew this, and dismissed it as an answer to Humbert's troubles. No human had ever been glad to turn into a cat, except perhaps the ones who were starving on the street already – it was easier to find food if you were a cat, and you didn't have to find so much.
Haru lowered her head onto her paws and stared at the orange hair, tussled by sleep, and the shoulders and back of the man. It would be a shame to waste such a man as a cat. Oh, he would probably still be handsome as a cat, but orange was a common colouring on felines, and this man… wasn't common.
She got up and moved closer to him. Cats do not often show affection, for all their purring and rubbing up against their humans, they generally keep themselves to themselves, so what Haru did next was uncharacteristic of her kind: she gave Humbert a lick on the cheek. A cat's kiss.
Humbert rolled back on the bed, towards the cat that was now tickling him.
"Love you too, Haru," he mumbled, still mostly asleep, though his hand managed to find her brown side and rub it a couple of times, his green eyes blinking open blearily to look at her before he drifted once again to the deeper regions of slumber.
Only rather than going back to sleep, he was suddenly awake. There was a young woman on his bed.
She was stretched out on her stomach and had brown hair that cascaded around her shoulders. Her skin was the colour of milk, with maybe a little tea in, and flawless, all over. This was easy to see, because she wasn't wearing so much as one stitch of clothing. She blinked big brown eyes, framed with long eyelashes, and turned her head to see what he was staring at. Her face turned red.
Humbert rubbed at his eyes, wanting to be certain – was he awake, or dreaming? When he took his hands away again, there was only the cat on his bed, looking at him with her head on an angle, as if asking him what just happened.
"Did you see a young woman lying on my bed just then?" he asked, nervously, taking comfort from the velvety warm feel of Haru's fur.
Haru just looked up at him, tilting her head to the other side.
"Probably just a dream," he muttered, rearranging himself beneath the covers again. "Good night Haru."