Silent Companionship

Not many things were constant. Far from it. Most were short lived, actually. Some could last rather long, yes. And some could even remain unchanged for so long they might well have been eternal, as far as the point of view of a single individual was concerned. But those were, all things considered, few and far between.

For Kal'Tsit, work could arguably fit into that latter category.

The sun had already set, and the night had been going on for so long morning wasn't even that far off anymore, and still the feline was working. The office was rather dark, illuminated only by the single lamp placed on her desk. Towering piles of documents, reports and analysis filled the cold, steel surface of the table, casting their shadows across the room. The rumble of the landship's engines couldn't be heard from there, and even the soft sway of the gargantuan hull as it made its way across the wasteland was just barely perceptible. The only noise breaking the silence of the night was the scribble of a pen, her fingers swiftly moving from one page to the other as she made her way through the stacks of papers. Notes, corrections, adjustments, tips, even questions and orders. She eventually got done with an especially thick report, her pen briefly coming to a rest on the desk as she rubbed her shoulders a bit. Office work was nowhere near as taxing on the body as field work, but it nonetheless took its tool.

She stood up and carried the report, together with a fairly large stash of other documents, to a tall and remarkably plain drawer and stored them away, then walked to a small table just barely illuminated by the lamp. On there, a large thermos was resting alone. Columbian coffee was... not great, to be honest. Terribly bland even, so long as one had ever had a taste of siracusan coffee in their life, which Kal'Tsit definitively had. But still, coffee was coffee, and she needed it.

A different sound then briefly echoed inside the room. Flesh moving and ripping, skin tearing. She casually, almost absentmindedly loosened her jacket as her spine began to grow and produte from the middle of her back, a thing much too dark to be human bones and much too large to possibly fit inside her starting to emerge from her body as her tissues made way, something similar to blood but far too thick and viscous hanging in long strings from what looked like but wasn't at all a gruesome wound. A soft hiss reached her ears, which twitched in response.

Mon3tr could show itself much more quickly than that. But right there, right then, it had no need to be hasty, for Kal'Tsit herself had no need for it either. Her spine, or what should have been it at least, kept growing out from her, the impossibly thick, spiny vertebrae forming a large curve behind her back, between her sides and her neck, floating in the air for a length nearly matching her height, strings of something sticky and red falling down but never reaching the floor, mending themselves and her flesh back together instead as the creature manifested, if only partially.

It was a feeling she had since long gotten used to. There was pain, an almost unthinkable amount. And with it something unsettingly similar to pleasure, in equal measure. Both extremes which did not cancel each other out, but rather perfectly balanced themselves. Then warmth, and cold. An overstimulation of her nerves, and at the same time an absolute numbness. The longer Mon3tr remained in that state of partial release, the longer that sensation lasted. And it was... invigorating, in a way. Much more than the bland coffee going down her throat, at least.

She turned around and headed back to her chair, turning it sideway to leave her backrest at her side and out of the way. She sat back down and grabbed another stack of papers, unfazed by the seemingly gruesome state her back was in. Four protusions then began to grow from her impossibly twisted spine, limbs long and dark and dear, made not of flesh and thus lacking its warmth. The sound of something cracking briefly echoed in the room, the four arms each as long as Kal'Tsit was tall if not more twisting their sharp, deadly tips into a different form, malformed and ill-shaped but still functional imitations of hands.

In a certain sense, the feeling of Mon3tr's palms on her shoulders wasn't all that dissimilar from that of her own hands. At the same time, however, the two had very little in common. Its were far larger. Colder. Their surface was smooth and irregular. And yet all the turns and edges on them felt remarkably, illogically pleasant as it began to rub her stiff shoulders, her muscles relaxing under its touch. Mon3tr moved its third hand on her neck, applying a soft pressure at nearly regular intervals. Using only two fingers, admittedly, since its whole hand wouldn't fit on it with her spine -with itself- produting out like that.

The knots in her muscles began to slowly come undone, a faint warmth spreading through her back and, in turn, through Mon3tr itself as the creature moved two hands down, one rubbing her side while the other stroked her thigh and legs. She could've used a walk to stretch them out a bit, and it knew it too, but she still had work to do. So the creature helped in what way it could, its fingers digging softly into her flesh to let her unwind, if only a bit. A weak growl, a nod of her head, and Mon3tr rested an hand on her hair, scrubbing it as it scratched behind her ears.

Few had ever touched her like that. She could count them on her fingers. And of them all, only Mon3tr itself was left. Only herself. But she didn't linger on it, her focus swiftly going back to the documents in front of her as the memories drifted away, safe and secure in the back of her mind.

The palms of her companion slided down along the sides of her back, pushing down on her sore muscles before moving back up, and a very faint purr began to fill the room. A sound nobody on Rhodes Island had ever heard. She decided to put the papers down for a short while, allowing herself to melt into the loving yet distant touch of Mon3tr. As far as knowledge and techniques pertaining to a massage -and... several other things as well- went, the creature had none. But the two shared a connection that made such things unnecessary, the crystalline arms bending, pushing and stroking just the way she needed them to, just the way they needed them to.

But enough. She still had work to do. She always had work to do. Work, and other things too. Picking up pen and papers again, she adjusted her position before resuming to read and write.

Without ever fully detatching from her back, without ever even revealing its head, Mon3tr kept massaging Kal'Tsit, its low hisses melting together with her faint purrs to fill the office.

The night went on.


Not sure what this was.