CHAPTER 3: Complications
Ryuzaki's mannerisms were almost like those of a tame dog, with the way he was crouching obediently where Misa had indicated, but she kept her eye on him, careful, apprehensive. He did seem childish in an almost innocent way, but there was an enormous tension in the air, a feeling that he could snap at any moment and begin tearing her to pieces.
"Actually," she said, "I didn't know that everything on this trail belongs to you, so that rule can't apply to me."
He cocked his head to the side, chewed on a finger and said, "That's not possible. There are closer trails that are much easier to find than mine, and you couldn't have missed my pack's scent marks."
"Humans can't smell those, silly! I was following a map, and there's nothing on the map about anyone owning this trail."
He replied, "Then it's true, what they say about humans," and she was sure she caught a flash of fascination in his eyes for a moment, before they once again became unreadable.
Ryuzaki slunk forward, still in his crouch, and with two fingers, as if he were afraid, grasped the edge of the picnic basket and drew it towards himself, peering inside and plucking out items one by one to stack on the grass beside him, sniffing each wrapped package carefully before setting it down and saying either "food" or "not food."
Misa said, "Hey! I've got a cheese sandwich over here!"
"You can eat that," he said, "but everything else belongs to me."
Ryuzaki held up one particularly nicely-wrapped present and said, "I am surprised that a cat has enough intelligence to make all these folds exactly so, and to tie the ribbons in these ornate knots. This requires considerable skill."
I guess he smells Light all over everything in that basket, and not me, except for one or two touches.
Misa replied, "Light is a very intelligent cat. He knows exactly where I am; he drew the map for me. If I were to disappear, I'm sure he'd send hunters after every wolf in this area."
"That doesn't make sense."
"I swear it's true."
"I mean that everyone in this area knows about Light's quest to make a map. He's been asking many questions. An intelligent feline should have sent you a few miles to the west, on a much safer trail. Is Light a cat of highly variable intelligence? Is he a victim of misinformation? Or is something more complex occurring?"
This wolf sounds almost like Light. He thinks the same way. What could this mean?
The wolf began unwrapping some of the food packages. He opened the medicines too and sniffed each bottle, only to re-cork them and set them aside. A thoughtful look came across his features and he simply crouched in place, studying the objects and sometimes re-arranging them slightly.
He's not eating! Does he really want to eat me instead?
Misa said, "Out of the goodness of my heart, I'll let you eat some of the special treats I was bringing to Grandma."
"The contents of both medicine bottles are certainly poisoned, and I'm suspicious of the other items on principle."
"What? Poisoned? Is your nose defective?"
"Feigning innocence will not help you. Was this a trap to kill me? Answer honestly."
Misa answered, "I suppose Light could have planned it that way, but I don't know why!"
"You allowed a cat to pack a gift basket for your grandmother without any supervision at all?"
"Yes. I trust Light perfectly. He always has the best plans."
As if talking to himself, Ryuzaki muttered, "He either has poor information about a wolf's sense of smell, or the poison was meant for a different purpose than killing me. It could be for bandits, but, if he left you ignorant of his plan, then, in order to avoid accidentally killing your grandmother, he would need to be completely certain that bandits would strike. Along this route, the only likelihood of that happening would be if Light arranged for the ambush."
He turned his head and looked directly at Misa with a particularly piercing stare and said, "Or, you could be lying to me. Perhaps you knew about the poison all along."
"No! I didn't know, okay!"
The look in the wolf's eyes was deeply unsettling.
Maybe... maybe the shopkeeper who sold Light the medicine is trying to kill me, or something like that. I certainly have many obsessed fans.
The wolf demanded, "Are you in a difficult financial situation? Is there an inheritance involved?"
"Well, sort of, but Light wouldn't do that! He's a good kitty! I believe the poison was for bandits and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise!"
"In any case," Ryuzaki said, "I will be taking the non-food items. All of them belong to me now."
"That's a bad thing! That's stealing, and thieves get punished eventually."
"Is it stealing?"
"Of course it is, dummy!"
"By my rules," the wolf droned, "I rightfully own these. You yourself belong to me, and so all your possessions must belong to me as well."
Misa retorted, "By the laws created by the king and upheld by the courts, animals can't own people, I own these things, and I can choose to give some of them to you if you're good and I want to. Let's sit here and have a nice conversation, and then I'll probably give half the things to you as a parting gift, because I like you."
"What is justice really? Is it only what the strongest individual wants for the others? Or is there a moral code independent of who is strongest?"
"There's a moral code. Right and wrong can't be changed by violent evildoers who want to get their way."
"Then, consider this, Misa. Humans have created rules saying that most things belong to them, including animals. We animals have our own sets of laws that say most things belong to us. Especially here, in the wilderness, don't you think it is acceptable for animal laws to supercede human ones?"
Misa crossed her arms. "No. Laws have to be fair to be valid. You could look up human laws any time you wanted to, in our town's courthouse. Then you could consider the consequences before breaking them. I had no chance to find out that anyone who goes on this trail belongs to you, and maybe you're even making that up. How am I to know?"
"I am testing your intelligence," he said.
What? Did I pass his test by arguing with him? Or is more required?
Misa reached out and touched his shoulder. He jumped back from her hand, landing neatly on all fours in the grass, his ears perked up and twitching.
She said, "And everyone I touch belongs to me."
"You're lying."
"Am I? Each of us could be lying. What I did to you is exactly what you did to me. It's fair."
He blinked at her, and then demanded, "Give me the map."
She was reluctant to show him the map in case he might steal it, and then she'd be lost if she couldn't remember it perfectly. Wild animals were notorious thieves of anything that caught their fancy. But, the wolf needed to be humored and distracted, plus the map would prove some of what she'd been saying. She drew it out of her cloak's pocket, looking it over one more time before handing it to him. He snatched it in a finger-and-thumb grip and dangled it in front of his face.
After a long pause, Ryuzaki muttered, "I am beginning to think that you are not worth my time. I cannot eat your food and, if I interfere with you too much, I may end up being hunted. It is only the mystery that continues to hold my interest, though I believe I have already figured out seventy-five percent of it. It could be dangerous here, and yet-"
He froze, sniffing the air deeply, and then cocked his head to the side.
Misa opened her mouth to speak, but he fixed an intense stare at her and silently mouthed, "No."
It truly did seem as if he were listening to something, but Misa heard nothing.
"Interesting," he said, "I am told that you are female."
Told? By who?
"Ryuzaki, couldn't you tell by looking when we first met? You thought I was male all this time?"
"Animals go by scent more than appearance. I could tell your scent was different, but I initially thought it was because you are the first human I've ever met. When the wind shifted just now and I got a strong breeze that had traveled between your legs, Nature told me that you are female."
"Nature?"
"Nature is a voice that only talks to animals. It is invariably correct. Many tame animals never hear it, or can barely understand Nature when they do hear it. Wild animals hear it frequently. Don't you know much about animals? You seem quite ignorant."
He crawled forward to where she was sitting, grabbed the edge of her skirt and flipped it up with one hand, the other hand holding her hip in a vice-like grip.
"Hey!" she shouted.
"Most extraordinary!" he replied, staring right between her legs.
A/N (Author's Note):
Sorry about any misunderstandings created by the previous chapter's author's note! I will not be creating artwork for this fanfic. I was quoting the meme request and then I was describing what was at the link that was used by that anonymous requester.
If you want to see the artwork that was created by the other person before I even started writing this story, you can follow the link from the meme request (I can't put the link here because fanfiction dot net erases links). That other person is, as far as I know, completely unaware of me or of my work on this similar theme.