Recap: Caraid is sold to the rebels, but Khia is desperate to find and rescue him. With Cariad are their cousins Ruari and Brine, and the brother of some repulsively cheerful little tom with a weird tail named Gideon. Thwarting Ru, her caregiver, Khia escapes and sets out to save her brother, though she has absolutely no idea what she's doing, naturally.
Temperature is dropping, temperature is dropping
Not sure if I could see this ever stopping
Shaking hands with the dark parts of my thoughts, no
You are all that I've got, no
-Doubt, Twenty One Pilots
Khia's never fled in her life, so unsurprisingly, she's a bit rusty. Gideon and Etch seem to be relying on her for directions. Oh yes, of course, she knows her way around this damn city. No two streets, of course, are identical. She was born, of course, with a map in her brain. She wants to snap all of this at them, but Etch's eyes are so wide and trusting, so hungry for adventure, and Gideon, well... She could drag him off into an alley so Etch, the ever empathetic soul, wouldn't get offended on his behalf.
She's lost without Cariad. He was always her anchor. Perhaps, if he wasn't her brother, she would've practiced this whole escaping thing before, failed half-attempt aside. She'd nearly give anything to have Ru with them, but she knows where he stands. It's right above her, and fine silver lines of a cage dissect his face. The cage meant for her. It was obvious, from his grandiose batrayal, that he never trusted her. He was waiting for an excuse to lock her away. Habits are hard to break.
"So..." Gideon drawls, as they round a street corner. Surprsingly, they're on another boring, bland grey street. "Your girls come here often?" He must think he's so great, with his kinky little tail and that personality of sunshine. His voice, lowered in a mockery of maturity, grates on her nerves and makes her flatten her ears. She's already plotting how to get rid of him. Violence may be required.
Etch giggles. No, Khia thinks reproachfully. Don't fed his ego.
"Yeah," Khia snaps. "All the time." She looks over her shoulder- Gideon is grinning at her, and his whiskers are twitching in... what? Glee? She can't tell; she's never been that happy.
Her cousin laughs again. Khia sees Gideon glance at her and smile. Etch is just that kind of cat; so bright and pretty, so small she looks as though she needs protecting. And she does. One day, toms will fall all over that. Khia's not jealous at all. She's a sneak. She's a thief; she takes moments from cats that don't even know they're being stolen from. Admittedly, they're just the Bayard's lackeys, and they deserve it. No tom will fawn over her, not even if she grows into her gangley little legs and her fur stops looking so scruffy.
Serious now, Etch asks, "Khia, are you sure you know where we're going?"
Khia snorts at this. What finally clued them on? Was it the circle they've been going in for ten minutes? "No," she says, softening her voice, just for Etch. "I never said I knew where we were going."
"Actually," Gideon chimes in, with his useful, valued opinion, "when we left, you told us, 'follow me' and ran onto the street."
"'Follow me' doesn't translate into 'I know where I'm going.'"
"Well," Etch replies, "it kind of implies you have an idea, don't you think?" Her cousin has obviously has no affection or familial obligations to her at all. This knowledge is great, really.
When she left the house, she had been sure. Swimming out of Ru's desperate clutches had given her some kind of confidence. It was, however, temporary. There was a mess of scents on the street, but she didn't know how to follow them, and one false turn has gotten them lost. The city is a maze. The house is a haven. Would she have ever left, if not for her brother? Her strength seems to stem from her brother, even now in absentia.
She starts to doubt herself. This world is too big for her, she knows, and she's not even seen half of it. Seen no more than a fragment, a crumb. This tiny taste has left a bitter afterthought upon her tongue, hot acid and dust and just a hint of home.
"Well, okay, we're lost," Khia says in retort, after a few moment's silence. "Is that what you want to hear?"
It starts to rain as she says this. She's never seen rain before; the coldness on her fur is an alien shock. If Ru were here, he'd laugh at her, and probably let her walk underneath his belly to sheild her from the worst of it. Sheild her. That's all he's ever done for her. Was it so wrong to ask for more?
Gideon clears his throat. Water trickles around their paws; they're standing in the gutter, because their street-smarts, or lack of, haven't told them not to. It at least seems safer than the road, where the occasional glittering metal beast snarls past, or the footpath, where tall two-legged things stride along every so often. "Perhaps we should find somewhere to wait this out?" he suggests. Etch nods enthusiastically, and Khia, who seems to need a guiding hand, agrees.
It's hard to define anything in these streets as 'shelter'. There are the buildings, many with jagged dark eyes and fading facades. They don't know how to get into those. And all of them, quietly, to themselves, think perhaps their escape was a little premature. A little ill-planned. A bit heroic, and very stupid. But they won't admit to it, although at this point there's nothing more than can happen to force their morale any lower into the mud. They peer into dark alleys, but there are already cats there, and none are friendly (Khia's nose just barely escapes unscathed from one uncounter).
The rain streaks from the black sky, tiny missiles that for the most part seem very well-aimed- if they were aimed at the three kits roaming industrial streets with their severe dejection painted on their faces. They settle for a building, eventually, when they find one with a door just ajar with its red paint flaking like rust. The building is condemned. The roof is about to fall in, but this information is not ready to Khia or her companions.
Etch laughs and makes a joke about Gideon's weight as he squeezes through the gap. Khia's not listening; she's looking at his tail again with a kind of morbid fascination. With his fur slicked to the bone, the kink is far more prominent. It points off to something in the distance, waving jauntily at a disturbing angle. She wonders how it happened; maybe, most likely, he was born deformed, with both his odd tail and his horribly sunny personality. She squeezes into the building after them. Ah, that familiar gloom. It's a second skin to her now, no matter what she does to escape it.
They all curl up in a corner, heads on shoulders and paws on tails. They shiver together; Khia knows what's worng with this scene. Cariad's not here, to warm her, to tease Gideon for her, to be her backbone. She feels alone, although Gideon begins snoring on her back, and Etch kicks her feather-light paws as she dreams. His absence is a deep wound, so she sits awake, prickling with anxiety and apprehesion. She hadn't felt this way when Cariad was first taken away, nor when Rhydderch locked her up. But the acute wrongness of it only seems to hit her now, when all she wants is to go to sleep.
Etch squeaks in her sleep, and Khia mumbles at her to shut up. She doesn't. She squeaks again, and the sound is strange, oddly faint.
"Be quiet," Khia hisses.
"I was being quiet," Etch says breathily, cracking open one eye to glare at her cousin.
"Oh yeah?" Khia retorts. Gideon stops snoring on her spine. "You were making noises-" that squeak again, "just like that."
Etch is silent for a moment; and so, blessedly, is Gideon. "That wasn't me," her cousin murmurs. Khia feels a kind of nostalgia, as though they are back in the basement, whispering ghost stories to each other, giggling, fearful, as the paranoia sets in.
"I think the rain has stopped," Gideon says under his breath, as though they are hiding. "Maybe we should le-"
He tumbles off her in a hurry, and Khia strains to see what he sees. At first she can't make out anything in the dark, but her eyes adjust with a practiced rapidity. Something just smaller than she is sits feet away. It is a sleek thing, and she ate the shoulder of one once, when it was thrown stone-cold dead into their pen. Tethys called it a rat, and proceeded to tell them a tale which gave Khia nightmares for the three days.
This rat is very much alive, and it stares at them with small dark eyes, twitching whiskers that are barely discernible in the darkness. It stinks; how did they miss such a musk before?
"There's just one of them," Khia says. "We can take it." If Cariad were here, if Ru were here, if even Gideon's bloody brother Thaddeus was here... They're more alone than ever, and drowning in their ineptitude. As soon as the words leave her mouth, movement ripples in the shadows, the faintest hint of company.
"I don't want to," says Etch, sounding small and hollow. Tiny Etch, smart in her cowardice.
"We should probably just leave it alone," Gideon agrees nervously. He is inching towards the door, and the rat tracks his progress with a blank face. Khia sees it has teeth. They're very impressive. Still, Khia knows they haven't seen what she does; that fetid tide that lingers before them, cloaked in darkness, motions masked in the black.
"Oh, no," Gideon mutters. "He has a friend. Hello, Mrs Rat." Mrs Rat sits up, nose twitching in distaste. It is, perhaps, not a Mrs after all.
Lowly, Khia whispers," Yeah, let's just get out of here." She glances at both of them, unbidden signal in her eyes. They bolt towards the door; Khia is the quickest and outpaces the other two, although the dread tide is even faster than her. Their bodies are beneath her paws as she slips through the exit, spilling into the street with a gasp. Gideon's right behind her, and his tail flops in her face.
Etch squeals behind them. Khia turns; Etch tries to claw her way through the door, rat hanging tenaciously from her hindleg. Khia lunges for her and buries her teeth in the scruff of her neck. Gideon pounces on the rat, unbalanced as his tail drags him to one side. He bits into its spine; something he's done before, but always on things already dead. The rat relinquishes its grip on Etch's bloodied leg and shrieks. Unprepared for this, Gideon rears back and hits it in the face. Broken, the rat squirms away and crawls back through the door, into the chorus of dissent its brethren is making.
Etch collapses onto the pavement shaking. Her leg is bleeding. Khia's guilt grows in the pit of her stomach. Her plan, her escape, her fault.
"This was a bad idea," Etch moans. Though they're still too close to the rats, and should probably move soon, Khia curls around her and licks the back of her neck. What can she do, when something bleeds, but kiss it better? She hears one of those curious beasts growl as it slows, but she pays it no attention. Neither does Gideon; he looks so morose, as though he was responsible for this catastrophe. What does he have to be sorry for? Khia resents his apparent guilt. Sir Sunshine had nothing to do with this, nothing to cause him guilt, and he knows it.
Something stands over her, and Khia recoils. Etch is still sobbing. Small Etch, whose legs are the shortest, and who now knows it. It is one of those upright things, repulsively hairless, just like Tillman. It reaches down and scoops the two she-kits into its paws, cooing something at them. And then it puts them both in a cage, condescendingly bopping Khia on her head before locking its door.
"Gideon?" Etch calls, panicking. They're nothing if not a trio, those three daring musketeers. Gideon doesn't reply; Khia pictures him on the street, small and huddled, confused and dangerously alone as the beast that swallowed them speeds away. Looking so sad, it makes her heart hurt. He will die without them, and they could be about to die themselves.
"We'll be okay," Khia says, and this may be the first time she says something she's not sure is true.
early chapter, yay. cariad chapter is underway. poor etch. poor gideon, poor khia. what we have learned from this: DON'T let khia lead the way.
