[Flashback] - Fire is hot

[Kitty]

Spring 509 AV

“Hey.” He heard the call but he didn’t turn. His mind was intent on the mouse in front of him. His mother had insisted that he stay in his human form for awhile to get accustomed to it. It made life so much more difficult. Sure opening a door was easier, and hands could be useful, but he lacked the coordination. His sleek jaguar body could move through shadows like it was nothing. He had large claws for grasping and his legs were far more useful for pouncing and chasing. Yet he had reluctantly obeyed. She had kept him alive while he was too weak to do it himself and he knew that this must be tied into survival somehow.

Capturing such a small creature would have been easy for him if he weren’t in his human form. He was five months old after all. He would be on his own before long, and if he hadn’t the skill to capture a mouse he would not last very long. He tried to wait for the creature to inch closer to his still form. He did his very best not to lash out at it while it was out of reach, but he couldn’t help himself. Patience was not something a young cub had a lot of. His hand darted forward clasping at the mouse. The movement sent it scurrying away and he knew it was a lost cause. By the time he got up on his feet the mouse would be gone.

“Tsk. I told you to be patient.”

He looked up startled to see his mother standing behind him. Supposedly his hearing didn’t get any worse as a human but he didn’t believe it. There is no way he would have let her sneak up on him if it were not for this form. He scowled. “It’s this body! Why I must be in this form?”

She shook her head. “It is, why must I be in this form. You switched the words again.”

That only made him scowl more. His understanding of the language was good, but it was far from perfect. “Whatever!” He saw the glare on her face and he bowed his head. “Sorry.”

A thin smile touched her lips. “Yes you are. Now up. I have something to teach you, and you are in that form because you need to be to do many things I wish for you to learn. Come along.”

She turned and walked away at a brisk pace. His eyes followed her for a moment before he made a face. “Stupid pink body.” He pushed himself onto his feet then trudged along after her

[Kitty]

Honestly Kitty didn’t seem any different from any other six year old child. But he had only been babied for his first few weeks of life. From that point on, he got a little help from his mother, but for the most part he had to look after himself. This led to a strange spattering of lessons that most people would never even consider teaching to a six year old. This was one of those lessons.

His mother eyed him, “One of the most important things for your survival, aside from eating and sleeping in a safe place, will be staying warm.”

He looked at her and he immediately felt like this was a stupid lesson. His fur kept him plenty warm. There hadn’t been a single day where he had felt cold really. This had to be one of those lessons that was useless if he wasn’t in human form. He hated these lessons.

He had been thinking and wasn’t paying attention. This would be bad; she always smacked him on the nose if he had ignored her while she was teaching him something. He looked up and saw her staring at him. She had that knowing look on her face. She knew exactly what he had been thinking, which meant she was going to lecture him on that too. He really needed to learn to control emotions. He had no clue how. He hoped that this would work, he hadn’t learned about sorry until recently, but it couldn’t hurt to try. “Sorry I’ll pay attention.” He was astonished, the annoyed look on her face softened and she continued on as if he had never been ignoring her. Sorry was freaking awesome.

She continued, “Now as I was saying, staying warm is very important. What I wish to show you is how to make fire. Now fire has more uses then just staying warm. It can be used in a number of ways, so that will be the first part of the lesson.”

He nodded, doing his best to try and care. It wasn’t easy. He felt a slight rumbling in his stomach. That mouse had escaped. It still irked him to think about it. He had failed to catch a mouse. Some great hunter he was. “Oops.” He quickly brought his mind back to what his mother was saying. He had missed a little bit of it, but he got the gist of it. She was going to talk for a long time before actually teaching him to do anything. This would take awhile.

“Now one of the many uses of fire is to cook your food. I am sure you already know this, even though you don’t actually need to cook your food. Your body is built to eat raw meat, so it isn’t very important, but there will come a time when you are with a human. They can eat uncooked meat, but they shouldn’t. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to cook meat, you will have the ability to do so. Fire grants that to you.”

He hated listening to her lectures; she never got to the point. “Blah blah blah, cook meat over a fire, which I don’t need to do. Got it.”

She didn’t break stride. “Next is the fact that fire can be used for light. I feel like this is obvious, but I want you to remember it. You have great eyes at night, even a small amount of light grants you the ability to see, but deep in a cave at night, even you will have difficulty. So remember that. Also, fire can blind others in the dark. This isn’t so much a use of fire, as it is something to remember and use to your advantage. I hope you never have to fight people, but I know how curious you are. If you see people sitting at a fire in the dark, as long as you are quiet, you can get closer than you would otherwise be able to. The bright light will make it difficult to see in the dark, and with your coloring, you should be practically invisible to them as long as you stay out of the light.”

Had his ears been able to perk up, they would have. That last bit was information he could use. It was practical and that was good. More importantly, he knew more about spying on people, and that always pleased him. He didn’t want to sneak around in order to attack people, but it sure would be useful in watching them. As much as he didn’t understand his mother sometimes, he did want to understand, at least kind of. He was curious, he just hated lectures.

“I am going to be invisible. Awesome!” The words came out with the enthusiasm of a child. He hadn’t meant to talk, in his jaguar form it would have been a thought. He had difficulty with that sometimes. “Sorry I didn’t mean to talk.”

She smiled and nodded. “It’s alright. You do need to work on keeping thoughts to yourself while in that form though. Anyway, don’t overdo it. You won’t actually be invisible, just more difficult to see. You still need to be cautious.”

He looked down. “I know.” When he looked back up she continued right where she left off.