There is a clamor. It drifts about Twitchtip's head, entering and exiting as it likes. It pulls and presses at the matter of her brain, pushing against the walls of her skull so that they vibrate akin to how one's head may feel when one is at sea.
The pressure is not large — or, it is, but it is not one; it is many. Like sharpened claws, thin as spinner's silk, with not the goal to wound but to get one's attention. Prod, prod, prod — make that a thousand prods in the thousandth of a second, and it would not begin to describe what Twitchtip feels in this den of humans.
Amongst these smells, she can hardly breathe. Even as she buries her muzzle beneath the moss, it feels teeming with miniscule mites, slinking about the interior of her nose and nibbling at her flesh. Above all, she wishes for the world to turn momentarily static, if only for a moment she might catch her breath and regain her bearings.
Ripred chooses this moment to poke her with his tail.
One would think she would not notice. One would think that, in this mass of prodding, she would not be able to discern this one.
Twitchtip's nose flies from the moss, and she bites at Ripred's tail to no avail.
The clamor gains, the pressure intensifies.
She buries her nose once more.
She notices. She notices everything.
What every human in this arena has eaten, and every drop of sweat on their bodies. Their fear at seeing two gnawers hangs in the air like a rotten stench.
But it is more. So much more. As Ripred led her through those tunnels beneath the city, she had been able to smell it — smell everything.
The waste in the house of the common people, and the clothes they had worn down to the silk (more, really, had she tried.) The rocks of the streets, and the soil of the farmlands. The people.
And sometimes, in a futile effort to slow the barrage of information, she had limited herself to only one house, or one person, even.
But it had been worse. Because she could smell it.
She could smell who they were.
What their profession was, and who they worked for; if they hated their boss, or if the wage was low. Who they cared for, and who they feared.
The clamor is relentless.
And perhaps the worst thing is that sometimes, it features a smell that she envies — of warmth, of community, of us, crowing, look, look, it is I who you will never have, and I will continue to remind you of that.
There is a clamor. It drifts about Twitchtip's head, entering and exiting as it likes. It pulls and presses at the matter of her brain, pushing against the walls of her skull so that they vibrate akin to how one's head may feel when one is at sea.