Chapter four! :3 This is the last chapter I had pre-completed, but I have five just about done. So progress will be a little slower from now on, ne?
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"Lu? Luvarium, are you awake?"
I slowly, painfully, opened my left eye, barely able to from all the swelling around it, and stared up at the group of worried young queens bent over me. Their names came hazily back to my foggy mind; Electra, Jemima, Etcetera, Victoria...and that older one must have been Jellylorum. I felt a wet rag on my face as I moaned, and, as if a signal I was alive, all four queen-kits perked up.
"Oh, thank the Everlasting Cat you're alive!" Jemima almost hugged me, but looked at my bruised and battered torso and seemed to think better of it, which I have to say I greatly appreciated.
As sleep left me, the first thing I felt was pain.
Holy shit, did my head hurt...and my body...and my insides. I hurt all over; I felt like I'd had a collision with a human train. "Can I go back to sleep now? It hurt less," I whimpered, closing my eye again. I felt gentle hands remove the scrap on my head and wet it again before placing it on my forehead again.
"But you can't yet, Luva, everybody wants to talk to you! You're a hero!" crowed Etcetera, a little too loud for my liking. Everything seemed like it had been magnified a hundred times.
"Keep your voice down, will ya? I have a bad enough headache already," I grumbled, but I opened my eyes again. "And I hardly did anything. Mistoffelees is the real hero. He saved my life."
"Yeah, but you saved his," Victoria pointed out, but she was smiling.
"Well, I guess we're even then." I tried to laugh, but it turned into a painful cough, so I swiftly stopped before my intestines came out my mouth. "You know where he is?"
"Here." The withdrawn black and white tom slipped in between two of the queens and smiled timidly down at me. I noticed the bandages around his torso and his arms, but I could only guess I looked worse. I'd barely survived that attack, after all; Misto was probably used to that kind of stuff. "You were incredibly brave."
"You're one to talk," I choked out, and hated how raspy and weak my voice sounded. But I was in too much pain to care too much. "You're the real hero; I don't know why everybody's making such a fuss over me. I'm not a hero, I'm just a smartass. I wouldn't have done any of that stuff if he hadn't called me a whore." I managed a crooked grin back at him, and all the cats close enough to hear my quiet voice laughed slightly.
Misto. When I felt better, I would have to get to know him.
"Allright now, that's enough." Jellylorum's wise face loomed over me. "She needs her rest. She'll never get any better if you banter to her so much."
"But I'm fine, really..."
"No buts." She looked down at me sternly. "You get some sleep. The rest of you hurry along for now."
"Yes, ma'am," they chorused, then filtered away, leaving me alone to slip back into Dreamland, where I didn't hurt quite as much. Which was nice.
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"Is she allright, Jellylorum?"
"She's fine, Pouncival. Don't talk so loud or you'll wake her up." Jellylorum's voice sounded scolding again. "Why don't you go play with Tumblebrutus?"
"Well, I can't help it, I'm worried about her. She looks a wreck." The young tom's voice was low and anxious, as if I was going to die right in front of him.
"'M not dead," I mumbled, opening my eyes and weakly attempting to prop myself up with my arms. "Seriously, Pouncival. Go play. I'll be fine." I smiled feebly at him, but he didn't look convinced. Of course, by that point the fussy old queen was at my side demanding I lie down and get some more rest.
"I dunno, I'm all slept out," I told her playfully. "Come on, can't I at least try to get up?"
"Well..." She examined me briefly, and I noticed that the sharp pain of what might have been a few days or a few hours ago was now more of a dull ache. "Allright. I suppose. Pouncival, come over here and help me get Luvarium out of bed." She pulled the raggedy bed sheet off me, and for once I noticed I was actually lying on a collapsed coffee table, stacked with blankets and old clothes to suffice as a mattress. Good enough, I thought to myself, before, with a frailty I was unaccustomed to, I shifted on the bed and put my paws on the floor below. Pouncival took one arm and Jellylorum the other, and shakily, I managed to stand, though it hurt to put so much weight on my legs; I think I had really hurt my ankle, maybe even broken it, according to the lumpy cast I noted. Due to this, as soon as I was fully upright I briefly lost my balance and ended up slinging my arm around Pouncival's neck to keep from falling, jerking my shoulder. He grabbed me under my arms to help support me as Jellylorum gasped, a late reaction to my "near-death experience."
I didn't really notice the awkward position I was in now, but he seemed to, and I felt him grow hot under me. "You okay?" My voice was still a little slurred. "Y'feel like ya have a fever, Pouncival." I smiled weakly at him as Jellylorum pulled me up straight again, then handed me a pair of crutches made out of Y-shaped sticks, bound with...some kind of fabric or something to properly support it and to cushion my armpits when I slung my arms over them.
"Hey, Jellylorum, can Luva come play with us? Pleeease? We'll be really careful!" He looked at her with pleading brown eyes.
"No," the nursemaid said strictly. "She may watch, but Luvarium isn't in fit condition to play with you." I staggered a bit on my crutches for unintentional emphasis of her point.
"Pounce," I said at last, using the nickname I'd heard other cats give him, "Really. Don't let me stifle your fun." I smiled as kindly as I could manage. "You won't like dragging me around all day."
"Are you sure? You won't feel left out or anything?"
"I hardly have any friends yet," I reasoned. "Besides, I'll be fine. I'll probably get tired just watching you guys."
The brown and white tabby cat still didn't look convinced, but he nodded slowly. "'Kay."
My smile changed to a grin. "Awesome. Now..." My voice became low and faux-menacing. "Take me to your leader..." Pouncival and I laughed together until I started coughing and hacking like there was no tomorrow, in which Jellylorum got fussy again and we of course had to stop being so funny.
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But anyway, a half an hour later I was seated comfortably on a pile of used car parts, watching the kittens play tag, some of my queen-kit friends squealing when they were tagged, and most kicking major furry butt when they were It. The toms, of course, showed no mercy, especially to each other, so it wasn't long before half of them were all bruised up and dusty from being thrown in the dirt so much. I was chuckling as I watched Pouncival jump his brother Tumblebrutus before I heard a voice behind me.
"Um...hello."
I turned around and smiled; Mistoffelees, still wearing a thin cloth over his chest (I could only guess it had been a shorter amount of time since our little Macavity escapade than I'd first thought, which meant I recovered quickly considering I felt like I was run over by a car the other day) to disguise his wound. "Hi," I greeted, and lightly patted an open spot on the hood of the car next to me. "So, what's up?"
"Well..." Misto shrugged, taking a seat beside me. "It's just, we sort of saved each other's lives, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to get to know you a little better." A shy smile touched his face, which made me suspicious that someone had bullied him into talking to me, so I asked him if this was so.
"Uh..." He blushed, the cheeks of his white face turning pink, stark against the black fur around it.
"Who?"
"Tugger."
"What a pedophile."
"Not really..." He shrugged lightly. "But anyway..."
"About me? There's not a lot to know." I turned my face away briefly, recalling I barely knew anything about myself to begin with.
"Whatever do you mean?" I shifted my gaze back to him. "You seem like a very deep queen."
"Deep?"
"More than meets the eye," he explained.
"Oh. Well, in that case, I guess you're deep too, Magical Mr. Mistoffelees." I winked at him. "A real iceberg."
"Thank you." He smiled.
I grinned back. "Yer welcome, I guess. So, anyway..." I looked him briefly up and down. "You don't look a whole lot older than these guys." I glanced at the young toms tackling each other and pursuing the queen-kits as Plato tagged Victoria from behind. "So why don't you play with them?"
"I guess my mind grew faster than the rest of me." He laughed dryly. "I'm a lot smaller than them, but you're right about me not being too much older...I don't know. They're not interested in the same kind of stuff I am."
"Like...?"
"Magic." He said it so casually I almost laughed.
"You mean like when you were shooting lightning out of your paws the other day? Does that count?"
He flushed. "Yeah."
"Well, damn, boy, you've got some magic skills."
"Thanks."
There was a brief silence between us.
"Wanna know a secret?" I said at last.
"What?" He looked surprised. "Okay."
"I didn't really forget some of my memories." I looked down at my feet and swung them slightly; I was smaller even than Misto, so I was certainly high enough off the ground to swing my feet. As he was about to say, "Really?" I looked up at him with a more serious expression in my sea-green eyes. "I forgot all of them."
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Can we all say, CLIFFHANGER?! :3 You'll have to wait until next time! Reviews are loved, darlings