I know, this chapter is significantly shorter than the first two. But, it is a necessary springboard for upcoming...events...
There it was again.
That scent.
So faint, like a single strand of thread that seemed to have no beginning but always led somewhere.
She followed it, practically pressing her snout to the ground. She kept her eyes closed in concentration. The scent was always difficult to hold onto, for it was always enveloped in a stronger aroma, one vaguely familiar but that didn't quite make her as curious as the smaller scent.
In fact, the smaller scent frustrated her. She'd been following it all over the city, losing and finding it in the most random places, only occasionally catching it without its foil of the stronger scent, which smelled of dampness and some kind of polish—a metal polish—though she wasn't sure how she knew that. Sometimes there would be other scents surrounding this one, scents of salty foods, perspiration and dirt, and something metallic and oily, like machinery. These three scents were also always laced with the smell of damp. Sometimes she occasionally caught the fainter scent within these other three definitive smells as well, but this only frustrated her more, made her feel as though there were more paths to follow, though all of these scents were often grouped together in the same places.
For the most part, she discovered them on rooftops and in the shadows of Chinatown, and most especially in alleyways around manhole covers. So far, however, she had dared not follow them into the underbelly of the city. She was already lost as it was, roaming around in circles day after day, picking up the scents and then losing them only to find them a few blocks over the next day.
These things, whatever they were, moved around a lot. Though, for the most part, they cropped up in general areas of vacancy, which suited her. She found it best to avoid the many humans that traversed the streets night and day of every day. If ever one of these fleshy ones on two legs managed to spot her they always made a shrieking noise she had quickly decided she did not like very much. Though there was something about these humans that intrigued her.
First, for instance, that she knew they were humans. She didn't know why she knew they were called that. It just seemed the correct term, as did multiple things she'd come across during her circular wanderings. The polish, for example, noodles, food carts, cars, billboards, sewers. She knew she was in the city, and she often felt, for some odd reason, that she should be a part of it, the urban essence, the business, the noodles and polish.
She often found herself racking her brain for knowledge beyond all of this. She couldn't remember why she was in the city, what she was supposed to be doing there, if anything. Why this scent was so important. Where she'd come from. How she'd gotten there in the first place. What she was even—though that mattered surprisingly very little. But she could never force the answers to these questions. If ever they came, it was haphazard and random and she'd sometimes forget just as quickly as she remembered.
Though, she was overcome by strange visions sometimes, visions of herself in a different form, of one of those fleshy humans on two legs with short hair and red streaks over her eyes. Sometimes, if the smell of polish was particularly strong, she could very clearly imagine herself using that polish, or at least one with a similar scent to it, sliding a cloth along the sharp, gleaming blade of a sword a ... juji-ken was what it was called. And she could see her reflection in the metal of the blade and, though it always looked familiar to her, she could never claim that reflection as her own.
She had other visions too, visions that most often came with those four strong scents that were always clustered together, as if she should know what they were.
Green and damp with shells, also on two legs with impressive speed and strength. They were not humans.
She had seen them a couple of times, crossed paths with them—run away from them even. But she couldn't ever remember why she did. Sometimes it seemed she couldn't hold herself accountable for what she was doing. Things just seemed to happen and her body always moved on its own, and then before she knew it she'd been alone again, trying to remember what had just occurred, why she'd felt the need to run, who or what exactly it was she was running from—or "slithering" from. That was probably a more accurate term.
Who … or what.
The green things.
There was one with blue, a cloth striping his face, as though marking him, making him distinguishable from the others.
It was a him, she knew. And he was the one that smelled of polish, the one that usually enveloped the fainter scent, the scent that reminded her of a past, her past—that she might actually have one. It was a scent of warmth and wisdom—if wisdom had a smell. It held an aroma of incense and tea, and also had that interwoven stamp of dampness to it.
She was desperate to find the source of this scent. Maybe who or whatever it belonged to could tell her where she was, why she was … if she had a name.
And it was here, now, around the ring of this manhole cover that she was circling, muffled by the blue one's scent of polish, a tiny thread of hope. She decided she would follow it this time. She was tired of roaming, tired of skipping across the same areas of the city and being too afraid to go down. She would go down today, and she would follow those scents, and she would finally figure out where she belonged.