Light footsteps pad across her living room, approaching the front door. Her hands reach for the deadbolt and the knob respectfully, unnecessarily cautious as she turns the deadbolt to unlock it. Her mother is all the way on the other side of the house - there is no way that she could hear unless the door was slammed shut behind her. But Maka has never been the type to sneak out, even as a teenager, so she feels the extra caution is necessary so as not to disrupt her jet-lagged mother's slumber.
Carefully she shuts the door behind her and leans against it with a sigh. Beyond her place on the porch, rain continues to fall. It is a rare sight in Nevada, but nonetheless there it is, pitter-pattering and flooding the path to the driveway. A lone car drives by, spraying up more water that had pooled in the streets.
How she wishes the soothing sounds would lull her to sleep. But unfortunately for her, sleep evades Maka for the third night in a row. Sure, she had managed to doze off here and there, however never a proper rest. There's been too much to do, so many activities to plan and participate in. It's not every day Kamiko Albarn is back in Death City after all! She had to make this visit special. But laying in the dark had become too much, so she rubs her arms in the rainy chill and listens quietly for a moment.
Ting!
Green eyes snap open at the sound, and Maka takes note of a strange rustling in the bushes outside the safety of the porch. The chime of a tiny bell manages to ring out again over the sound of the leaves and rain. Curiosity gets the better of her, and Maka ducks out into the rain to investigate.
She begins to regret the decision as the rain pelts her back, soaking her sleep shirt. But when a tiny mew calls out from within the bush, she can't help but continue to search for the source of the sound. She gets on her hands and knees, ignoring the cold seeping through her pajama pants, and listens carefully. The bell chimes quietly again, and bright gold eyes flash at her from the darkness of the bush. Finally she is able to make out the figure of a small black cat curled up in a tight ball, doing its best to stay out of the rain. Something inside her urges her to reach out to the animal despite her fear of spooking it.
The cat uncurls itself and stretches out to rub its head along the palm of her hand. It crawls closer to her, arching its back into her touch. As it makes its way out from under the bush, Maka realizes that the chiming has been coming from a tiny orange bell attached to the cat's collar, decorated to look like a tiny pumpkin.
"Where did you come from, little kitty?" she wonders aloud.
The cat leaps past her to the porch and starts licking itself clean once protected from the rain. Maka picks herself up from the ground and watches the cat carefully as she too returns to the shelter of the porch. She swears she sees the cat nod its head in the direction of the door, and she rubs her eyes.
"What am I supposed to do with you now? You can't possibly be a stray, not with that collar." She grabs hold of her hair and twists it, trying to squeeze as much water out as possible. "Doubt your owner is looking in all this rain. I guess we could try to find them in the morning?"
The cat walks over to her and rubs up against her legs, beginning to purr, and Maka lets out a sigh.
"Aright alright, one night only, c'mon," she says as she opens the front door.
The cat gladly leaps into the house and wanders aimlessly around the living room, Maka following behind slowly. It sniffs at the couch and the coffee table, then proceeds to jump onto the low table and lick at the coffee ring her mother had left there.
"Guess you're probably hungry, huh? Maybe thirsty?" Would her mother mind if she served up some of the fish reserved for her to a cat? Maka walks past the cat toward the kitchen and it follows her eagerly to the pantry. Her hand hovers over a few different cans before finding one labeled "tuna". She opens it and sets it on the floor for the small cat who happily digs in.
As it continues to eat, Maka finds a bowl in a cupboard near the sink and fills it with water. Once done, she turns back to the cat to find it has moved from the open can of tuna back to the living room, eyeing her open bedroom door at the end of the hallway. Its eyes flick up to hers for a moment before it makes a break for it.
"No, no, don't go hiding!" Maka hisses before chasing after the cat as quietly as she can manage. But she knows it's a foolish race, especially once the cat sneaks under her bed and the chase is officially over, she has lost. Getting down on her hands and knees, she looks under the bed to find the cat licking its chops, tail flicking a bit but otherwise seemingly content to remain in its hiding place. She reaches a hand out slowly again.
"You sure you don't want a comfy pillow to lay on?" she calls quietly.
The cat licks its paws once more and settles into its spot under the center of her bed.
"I guess you'll come out eventually," Maka murmurs as she gets up off of the floor. She sighs and flops back on the bed to stare up at the ceiling. The combination of streetlights and rain dripping down her window pane leaves interesting streaks in the popcorn texture above her.
Her mother had never agreed to a cat in their house growing up. Or any pet for that matter. She'd always felt that Maka, no matter how responsible, would (understandably) need a bit of help with a pet. But between her mother's work and her father, well, being her father, Maka had never had the opportunity to own her own pet. Thinking back on it, had her mother ever expressed a fondness for animals?
The cat purrs from its spot under the bed, and Maka sighs. Maybe getting the cat home sooner than later would be better. The fewer things to interrupt mother-daughter time the better. She throws an arm across her eyes and takes deep breaths. Counting sheep is supposed to be the go-to for falling asleep, but the lambs somehow morph into black cats scurrying across her living room, and she groans in frustration.
Another sleepless night.
…
Birds chirping and sun shining lets Maka know it's a reasonable time to be up and about again. She sighs but gets out of bed nonetheless and drops to the floor in search of her temporary house guest. The cat is nowhere to be seen under the bed, and she frowns.
Getting back up to her feet, Maka hears the familiar ting and looks toward the sound to find the cat sitting perfectly in the middle of her bed. Odd. She doesn't remember seeing or hearing the cat on the bed when she got up. Come to think of it, the chirping outside sounds much louder than it ought to. She looks to her window to see that the sliding pane has been opened when it was absolutely shut the night before.
Maka turns toward the bedroom door to find it still open from their chase. At least something was correct, but it didn't make her feel any more at ease. Her mother would have startled her if she'd come in to open her window, it wasn't like she was asleep. A very stealthy break-in perhaps?
The cat meows from its place on the bed, and Maka shushes it, walking towards the bedroom door. She has to make sure they're all safe. No burglars are sneaking up on her this time, no sir. Carefully, she creeps out into the hallway and stops at the guest room door. She opens it so very quietly only to find her mother fast asleep in bed. Maka peeks around the door before padding over to the closet to check for any hidden intruders. Nothing.
She leaves the room, closing the door behind her, and hears once again the familiar ting of the cat's bell before shushing it again. The cat runs from her room out into the living room, and Maka braces herself for the cry of the burglar.
Only to be met with silence.
Confused, Maka walks out to the living room to find everything in order. Except now the cat has perched itself in the center of her couch, this time with a red flower petal sticking out of its mouth. She looks around the living room and kitchen to see if there are any flowers that the cat could have taken the petal from, but she can't find a single trace of a bouquet, stem, anything.
"Where did you get that, little one?" she can't help but ask as she approaches the cat.
It chirps at her and bounds off the couch to run past her. Maka turns and spots the cat running out the front door that she absolutely without a doubt closed the night before.
"What is going on?" she whispers to herself. She walks out the front door and looks around from her front porch for the cat. Nothing. Vanished into thin air. "I really need to get some sleep…" she muses and turns to walk back inside.
Ting!
She turns her head, and there sits the cat in the middle of the sidewalk in front of her house, tail flicking and mouth still carrying the flower petal. As Maka takes a step towards it, the cat immediately takes off down the sidewalk, and curiosity gets the better of her. Maka closes the door and sprints down the sidewalk after the cat. She knows there's no way she'll be able to keep up with such a fast animal but -
The cat stops, turns, and sits for a moment, as if waiting for Maka to catch up to it.
Confusion sets in and slows Maka down on the sidewalk, but she doesn't stop. "What are you…?" she asks aloud before the cat takes off again.
And so they continue their game of chase for a few blocks before Maka recognizes that they have entered the beginnings of the business area of Death City, and suddenly she's worried for the safety of the strange cat.
It crosses the street, not stopping for any cars driving by, and Maka nearly steps out into traffic to try to stop it. But the cat easily walks through unscathed while she watches from the opposite side of the street. It trots up to a building and slinks through a doggy-door installed in the building's front door.
Once traffic stops long enough for her to cross, Maka runs after the cat and stops in front of the door. Looking up, she looks over a sign that reads "Brimstone in Bloom: Arrangements for Every Engagement". She looks back down at the doggy door, takes a deep breath, then opens the door to the shop.
The cool air of the shop hits her before the wonderful aroma of flowers. It's fairly quiet in the shop, really just one older lady carefully taking a whiff of various arrangements sitting on wooden shelving. She walks by coolers full of a variety of different bundles of flowers until she finds the checkout counter.
There, flicking its tail and showing off the petal in its mouth, sits the cat.
"There you are!" Maka exclaims, reaching for the cat. It doesn't run this time and even allows her to pick it up in her arms.
Suddenly, a tuft of white hair appears behind the counter, startling her. The head turns to reveal a very tired-looking man. "Oh, Blair, there you are," he says, setting down a metal pail filled with baby's breath on the counter. He looks Maka up and down for a moment. "So you uh, brought over a friend."
"Is this your cat?" Maka asks.
"Can you really own an animal?" he asks with a crooked smile. She frowns at this response. Sighing, the man holds his hands out to take the cat from her. "Yes, she's mine. I know, I know, 'doggy door for a cat? Isn't that unsafe for her?' She just escapes no matter what, I figured I'd make her life easier even if she doesn't make it easier on me." He takes Blair and places her on the shelving behind him, the flower petal falling out of her mouth and onto the counter between them.
Maka's eyebrows furrow together. "She's… kind of odd."
"What makes you say that?" the man asks, turning back toward her.
She crosses her arms over her chest and tries to make sense of the morning's craziness. "Well, I mean -" She pauses and frowns. "It's just that -" Another pause. She just can't seem to find the words to make anything that happened this morning make sense.
"She's kind of a special cat," he says with a shrug, scratching under the cat's chin after it nudges his hand.
"I suppose so. Well, as long as she's safe," Maka says with a sigh.
The man picks up the petal between his fingers and gives it a perplexed once over. He looks back to her and reaches out with his free hand. "Name's Soul, owner of Brimstone in Bloom."
She watches him pocket the petal and looks back to his outstretched hand. Taking it, she replies, "I'm Maka, finder of cats."
"And looker of shit," he says with an eyebrow raised. "Blair asked when you last slept, dude."
Maka blinks in confusion for a moment before ripping her hand out of Soul's grasp. "Looker of- H-How dare you! That's so rude, who do you think you are?!"
Before Soul can even respond, Maka turns on her heel and briskly walks out the door, pushing by a man entering the shop at the same time. Sleep or no sleep, she will not put up with rude assholes like this man. See, this is why she is single. Men are rude, inconsiderate, ungrateful pigs. Her mother had spent the day before trying to point out attractive men as they explored downtown Death City, and Maka had played along to humor her, but she knows meeting men never goes any better than this flower shop meeting. Who does he think he is, telling her that Blair asked -
She's halfway home before she stops in her tracks and turns back toward Brimstone in Bloom.
"He said she asked when I last slept…" she whispers to herself in the middle of the empty sidewalk.