Scribble

[wraithwitch.livejournal.com]

Elsewhere, in the Deep Umbra somewhere beyond Griffin's Realm...

The umbral road had made Khara thin and the dust had matted her fur. She hadn’t washed, hadn’t hunted, had barely slept for three weeks. Her deprivations had started as thanks to the spirits who had taught her gifts but had ended up as a new way of living Kit heartily disproved of.

She seemed set on pushing herself until she dropped. She’d already picked up a nasty habit of talking to things that weren’t there; half an hour back she’d had a conversation with Jamie, for the love of Gaia. She’d shifted up onto two legs and held out the sword like she expected someone or something to take it. After a while she’d stopped and took to walking the road again.

“Tell me something about Greyfur.”

Khara’s head whipped round and she glared at her twin. She was four footed in her natural form, a huge caramel and cream coloured sabretooth cat with a dark mane and powerful shoulders. Her claws dug deep into the earth and a corner of her lip raised in the silent beginnings of a snarl.

Kit leant back, hesitant.

Khara looked away from him as if he was nothing and focused once more on the grass ahead of her, on the arduous task of putting one paw in front of the other.

Kit waited a moment and then trotted to catch up. He suddenly realised that he was smaller than his sister and that while his fur still held faint markings of his kitten-spots, Khara’s pelt had bleached to unblemished shades of milk and butterscotch save for the patterns around her eyes which had sharpened to kohl black. When had she grown up so much? Dammit. Right now, being smaller than his sister was not a thought that made the young spirit happy. All right, so she’d scarcely eaten since they left Griffin’s Glen and she looked sick enough to retch, but that didn’t even the odds much. She was all strung out of whack. She’d been wrong ever since the Pride’s last battle. And Kit didn’t like the feel of it – feared where it might end even more than he feared for his own skin.

He wanted his sister back.

That was why he took a breath and asked, “Why did you like Greyfur?”

The matted fur along Khara’s back twitched and her tail lashed like a barely controlled snake. “Now is not the time t’be talkin’ about this,” she advised through locked fangs.

“Grey was a wolf, right? Was he a lot less dumb than the other wolves?” Kit was aware of an ominous rumble starting in his sister’s lungs and vibrating warningly from her throat. He carried on with blithe desperation. “Didn’t you have t’spend all that time teachin’ him his letters?”

“Drop it,” Khara commanded vehemently, not trusting herself to turn around and see her brother acting like such a goddamn brat – not now – not about this.

“Seems t’me that a wolf that don’t know his letters has gotta be pretty stu…”

Khara turned in an instant, flicked out her claws and smashed Kit across the muzzle. “Shut up!” she roared.

Kit rolled back onto his paws, his skull ringing, his muzzle bloodied and pained. Selene help him this was gonna hurt. He licked his nose and then, “Dumb. Fuckin’. Wolf,” he annunciated.

Khara stared at him, her shock almost eclipsing her rage.

“I get it. You tried t’teach him, he was only a wolf – couldn’t learn – ain’t his fault. He died - messed things up. Hell, I’d be pissed too...”

There was an instant of perfect stillness and then Khara was at her brother’s throat. She pinned him in a single strike, her jaws gripping hard, threatening to tear out his jugular, rage strengthening what hunger and fatigue had eroded.

Kit’s paw twitched unhappily and he lay still, his life’s blood close to her teeth. “If he ain’t dumb, why d’you hate him?” he choked.

In reply she growled and shook her head bare inches to the left and right, warning what she could do were she to pick him up in her jaws and shake him properly.

“You gotta hate him,” Kit persevered. “Otherwise you’d remember him right.”

Khara released her twin and then snapped her teeth in his face in a strike which, had it connected, would have lost him an eye. She was snarling at him now, the cat equivalent of a hopeless, wordless, rebel yell, commanding everything else to cease.

“Why d’you hate him?” Kit asked again, small and desperate.

“I don’t hate him!” Khara screamed, her paw scything down into the earth beside her kin.

“Then why don’t you remember him right?” Kit cried back. “Why d’you only see the end? Why can’t you remember how he was?”

Khara shivered, her pelt bristling, and her paws folded under her as the sick and dizzy feelings she’d been grimly holding at bay swamped her. She had tried to turn all her pain into hate, her sorrow into rage. For the sake of keeping company with her Jamak, for the sake of her own sanity. “I can’t,” she mewed. “I can’t.” Thinking of her packmate bloody and broken in her arms fed her rage and her precarious desire to stay with the living. Remembering how he had been in life and all that had been taken from them threatened to tip her into a chasm she wasn’t sure she could ever find her way out of. She shuddered, purring in her misery, a discordant laboured sound.

Shaky with worry and relief, Kit lay down at her side, warming and steadying her flank. “He was good at huntin’,” he told her quietly. “For a wolf I mean. He gave me mouse an’ rabbit an’ pigeon an’ partridge – I never had that las’ one before. Tasted funny,” he confided. “An’ he always had his manners when he ate. Saying thanks t’the prey an’ all...”

Kit paused, looking down at his sister and watching the irregular rise and fall of her too prominent ribs. “He didn’t know his letters but he learned real fast – knew plenty o’words he shouldn’t too, from all that lookin’ fluffy an’ sittin’ under park benches. He got t’grips o’that time stuff people go on about after Jude gave ‘im that ticky-tock thing. See, he was real smart for a wolf,” Kit said gently with admiration. “He weren’t all snappy either, had a grace an’ a beauty t’him that made ‘im good t’be around. Remember?” Kit lay his face against her fur.

“I remember,” Khara breathed, and at last allowed exhaustion to drag her under.

In the pre-dawn light as the sky tinged mauve with the faintest touch of the sun, King of Cats prowled through the tall grasses to where his children slept. He looked down at them fondly and then bowed his head and washed them both in turn, chasing away their hurts and cleaning their pelts. “Tsk, always walking the hardest road. I’m proud of you, Ilani,” he purred to Khara. And, “You’re wise and courageous, boy,” he told Kit with a smile. “Your road is not long now and your kin wait for you at the end. Arise and wake, for the bright day is here...”

At his words the first true rays of sunlight pierced the sky, suffusing it with a pale and glorious gold.

King of Cats smiled and disappeared, leaving the twins to the last of their journey.