Rumpleteazer and Mungojerrie still don't remember a lot about their life beforehand.
They remember thieving of course, after all that's a thing remembered in bone, sinew and muscle. They remember the thrill of the chase. They remember a warm night in august. Cobble beneath their feet. A rowdy bar song. So many small snippets memory make up their time before. Before they were two cats instead of one. You see in the before times they had been born a-
- Tom
Queen-
Neither?Both? at this point they couldn't remember.
They had been calico anyway, that much was certain even if nothing else about their original appearance was... And they had been deeply, deeply, unhappy. They had felt wrong in their skin. Cringing internally at every mention of their perceived gender and euphoric every time someone slipped and called them by the "wrong" gender. Their soul had soared in instances like that.
So they had set about to change themselves.
They had tried all the conventional ways first. Asking politely to be called by a different name, eating things said to change a cat's smell, walking differently, but it still didn't feel... like enough. It felt like no mater what they did they were told that they-
-were too big, too bulky, not graceful. Too demanding.
had too many curves, were too small, didn't smell right-
And it hurt. It hurt so much.
So they had begun to look for Magic… every Jellicle has a little bit of magic but what they really needed for a change that large was a Magic Cat. Now Magic Cats are so very few and far between that in the end there had only really been one option of who to go to-
Macavity.-
-Mistoffolees.
They had asked for a spell. They had wanted their gender changed and for nobody to even remember their old name-Mungoteazer? Rumplejerrie? What had it been before?
-and so's I asked Misto if he could do it. He was still coming into his power in those days. Barely out of kithood himself but I trusted him. And he tried so hard! bless his heart he really did… but I guess I asked too much of him. It felt like dying. We almost were dead for a while, it split us into two souls but destroyed our physical body
With Macavity there's always a price. But I knew what I was getting into when I asked. He wanted my skills, and I was willing to trade them if it meant feeling like myself proper for the first time… in the end I guess he got's a two fer one deal. When everything cleared there was both of us and we was both so knackerd at first that we weren't sure what to make of it all-
-Misto had to stuff us into puppets for a while.
I remember that! We looked right ridiculous. –
-Poor thing was so apologetic too! Worked very hard to fix it up and get us proper bodies back. Day in and day out pouring over them old texts… did a heart good to see somebody care so much about us. Especially as we was still figuring out the whole being us but not… thing.
Weren't so with Mac o'course. I don't think he got the spell right either, but we were still corporeal so's we had to keep running and on our feet. Which luckily, we still had there. We had to be useful, or we wouldn't survive. He barely gave us a day to recoup and figure out our brain business before sending us back out again. I'm surprised we even survived our first mission back!-
In both instances the subsequent days had been tricky. Figuring out what to call yourself after being split in two was a hassle made even worse by the necessity for cats to have three names.
-If you look at it in a certain light, we're the only cat ever to have Six names instead of three!
The ineffable name was 'specially tricky. After all we was the same but also not. It took a bit of thinking there. We still ponder it on occasion.-
Technically they were an anomaly. But they had resolved. they had a tenuous relationship with time and space and all that... Still, it wasn't so bad now of days, the spell had simply taken some time to actually catch up with reality. Nobody remembered who Rumpleteazer and Mungojerrie had been before they had both been fully formed.
Ask anybody in the colony and they wouldn't recall the puppet days and while there was the vague idea that the two had at one time been part of Macavity's gang before settling down nobody pressed too deeply there for fear of bringing up traumatic were only two cats who sometimes showed inklings of remembering before and that was Misto and, well, Mac but they were free agents now and no longer under his control and so didn't have to care about what he thought.
Most cats' eyes tended to glaze over if they tried to explain it. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer occasionally got like that too when they tried too hard to think about it.
We only have half a brain each after all! Can't be too deep of thinkers. –
-Speak for yourself!
~Cant!-
The important thing was that they were happy.
Rumpleteazer was who she had always wanted to be.
Mungojerrie was who he had always wanted to be.
And Together, They were who they had always wanted to be.