No Place Like It

[Victor Lark]

68 Fall, 511; eight bells

The rain was a relentless curtain that pushed the whole world down around him, hard and gray. Barely half a bell long, the thunderless storm seemed to be the utter emptying of the dark morning sky. At the peak of it, he could not even run; the shining ceramic mountains promised to steal his feet from under him and return him less than alive, if he did. But the only haste in Victor’s swift-beating heart was his longing for the warm, dry embrace of his bed and the man in it. He was long since convinced that he had lost that despairing Kelvic; at least, there was no sense in looking for her pursuit, when he could barely see three feet in any direction.

Of course, as soon as a semblance of sunlight began to pore between the thick threads of precipitation, Victor caught sight of a suspicious gap between two tall townhouses. New ardency propelled him towards it and, sure enough, a steep black roof poked out from between them like the beckoning finger of a waiting lover. Victor descended the adjacent building with less than perfect grace, slipping against the thin awning of an overlooking window and colliding with the tavern’s roof with a series of loud, stumbling knocks. He found his ridge quickly and toppled over it, clutching the ledge as his tired feet carefully tread the slick gable to the window sill. He wedged his shoe beneath the unlocked pane, kicked it up, and slid indoors.

A silver puddle of rain followed after him, dripped from his sopping clothes even after he closed the window. He bowed and shook his hair of its water weight as he kicked his shoes into a corner. Blind with fatigue, he crossed the short distance to his bed, stripping a short trail of splashing cotton in his wake. Cold damp pruned his fingers and framed his bones, but the blankets seemed to immediately remedy those aches and more as he stole between them, feeling blearily around for another body to warm him—one that might not be so keen to welcome the outside’s chill.

[Palla]

All things considered, Palla hadn’t honestly expected herself to be able to keep up with Victor. The rain split the sky apart and fell down like a less than sheer curtain. It beat on the shingles, the streets, the plants, and her fur. Her fur began to mat from the dampness penetrating the topmost layer of fur. Little shivers occasionally wrought her body as she struggled to pinpoint Victor’s figure. Her thick-furred paws slipped against the slick, wet panels, and she tumbled across the roof. Extending her claws, she gripped the rivets between the shingles and caught herself in barely enough time to see him drop down onto the roof of the tavern. Little muscles coiled as she struggled to right herself and sprint in the direction he had dropped. Carefully, she latched onto the ridge that signaled the end of the roof and peered over its edge. The window below slammed shut. She twittered as she turned her gaze to the sky above, cursing it for its plentiful downpour. Her heart ached. Her stomach went sour as the warm sensation that the thought of Seven often brought her throbbed in the back corner of her mind. She was close, and she knew it. But Victor was inside. His cruel words still stung her, eliciting a sense of fear. Again, she peered down over the edge. She had aimed to drop down near the window, but slipped, missed entirely, and her little limbs slammed awkwardly against the window on her way down. She couldn’t decide if it was by fate or dumb luck, but she managed to extend those sharp little claws and snatch the thick window sill. The rain pelted her soaked face, plastering down so that she looked similar to a near-drowned cat. It was with this desperate look that she pulled herself up onto the sill and pressed her face to the window. Inside, she could just make out Victor’s form as he crossed the room to his bedding. The sour feeling inched its way up into her chest. Now, how was she going to get Seven’s attention without stirring Victor? Again came a vision of Victor, this time, him shoving her off the window sill and onto the street below. It would be long, hard fall – a painful one, if she survived. And so it was with a painful dilemma that she sat peering in through the window, her face mashed against it, sniffing at the glass. She waited for the courage to scratch at the window and draw the sleeping figures from their beds.

[Seven Xu]

The slick wood-on-wood thump of a window opening and closing didn’t wake him, nor the heavy footsteps, or the characteristic creak of an old bed frame beneath a feather mattress. A shock of damp cold rudely hauled him from his reverie in a hand’s innocent search for companionship. Seven woke with a start and his shoulder knocked against a clammy chest nearly as bitter as the fingertips that found him. Despite being wrapped within a veritable linen cocoon of his body heat, a chill meandered down the halfblood’s spine and coaxed his hair to stand on end.

“Gods. You’re cold,” Seven complained. The heavy drops of rain scrabbling against their slanted roof answered for the frigid wet thing that shared his bed. He gave a sigh and settled on his back, head lolling sideways to stare through the dimness at a familiar set of thickly-lashed eyes. Threads of irritation in his voice melted away with a demure, “I dreamt I could fly.”

Dust motes danced on streams of light that had begun to pore in through the dingy glass window with the coming of dawn, but even that was grey; the storm had washed the colour from the world. Seven inhaled sweat and ale and rain water and offered his companion a collection of body-warm linen and a bodily embrace. With a white-capped head planted firmly on a heaving chest, Seven’s eyes were free to wander; he gasped and jerked away when morning’s rays were obscured by a furred face that leered at them through wet glass. It was a stark splash of rust on a monochrome field, and it was unmistakable.

“Palla?” He blinked, and again. “Palla. That’s Palla!”

Seven was soon upright, crawling on hand and knee down the mattress and towards the window wearing naught but an apprehensive smile. The room was not so large that Seven was able to stumble wearily from the end of the bed, take three measured strides, and heave the window open to usher the Kelvic out of the squalling alley. “Welcome back to the Sun and Stars.” Seven’s gaze drooped and his shoulders rose in a self-depreciating shrug. “You’ll forgive me for not dressing to the occasion.”

He turned, approached the bed, and let one knee sink into the soft feathered mattress; realizing that he may have looked foolish speaking to a stray animal, Seven offered Victor a crooked grin beneath drowsy-lidded reds. His hands were already at work covering his indignity with the corner of one dusky blanket, but the damage had been done, and pink was flourishing on the apples of his cheeks. “I know this cat-thing. She’s a skinchanger.”

[Victor Lark]

White arms like rays of sunlight surrounded Victor with a night’s worth of collected warmth, pulling him into the long awaited stupor of sleep. His aching face fell into comfortable nothing as he stewed his chilled fingers in a smolder of white hair, felt his heart’s percussion begin to take pace with Seven’s. He thought to answer the dreamer’s remark, to offer some description of the rooftop flights that brought him home most every night, but his heavy lips could not find the words. Those few uninterrupted moments could have been hours, but his memory turned them into an instant when warmth and silence suddenly escaped him, replaced by the last name he wanted to hear.

Victor rolled into the hot shadow that Seven had occupied, pulling the covers around him with a loud groan. He did not bother to open his eyes; he knew what she looked like and he knew what she was, and the pillow was too soft to forsake. But her words tickled the back of his mind, mingled with Seven’s excitement and boiled cold in his throat. Once he felt the weight of his return pull at the corner of the mattress, Victor rose groggily and flopped to Seven’s side. He turned a slender white knee into his new pillow and wrapped an arm around his waist, pinning him to the bed.

Victor had untangled himself from the sheets in the process, leeching Palla’s lack of shame from his brief memory of her. “She’s a Kelvic,” he corrected, unable to pull impatience out of his fatigue. “And apparently she’s in love with you. You’ll never get rid of her, now.”

[Palla]

The voice came muffled through the pane of glass separating her from Seven and Victor. She smiled inwardly when she realized he had recognized her, and she teetered back and forth anxiously as he darted to the window. She leapt through the window, and in a burst of swirling light, was standing on two legs. Her hair was plastered to and around her face in the most unsightly of manners, her body coated from the rain. A puddle began to form beneath her. Chest heaving, she shivered, unused to the freezing cold as opposed to having a thick mass of fur to keep her warm. His nudity did not offend her. She didn’t even take notice. If anything, there was a shocked, prickly feeling in the back of her mind as to why he didn’t have clothes on. We’re all two-leggeds supposed to wear things? She chalked it up as odd.

Widening her stance – awkwardly, being only on two legs instead of four – she shook her whole body loose of the dampness that clung to her body. Her red hair, darkened by the moisture, flew about violently until it rest back along her back with stray, wild strands sticking up and about. She smiled at him, a massive, bright expression. She didn’t even care that Victor was there. All that mattered at that point and time was Seven.

I know this cat-thing. She’s a skinchanger.

At this she giggled and placed her hands on her hips. ”Is that what you think I look like?” It was then that Victor’s comment reached her ears. She simply cocked her head to the side and blinked at him, her brow slightly furrowed. He had changed, in some manner. From being gentle and interesting, petting her hands and fingers, to something cruel and aloof. She didn’t understand, and now, she couldn’t make herself care to.

She looked to Seven. ”I’ve missed you. I couldn’t find you, but I promise I have tried.”

[Seven Xu]

Fingers meandered through a crop of rain-slick ebon, tracing a matted hairline and the curve of an upturned ear. With his free hand, Seven propped himself against the feathered mattress and reclined to offer a bashful smile beneath a flourish of hot crimson. “I prefer skinchanger, Kelvic sounds stupid; and she isn’t in love,” he argued his unenthusiastic bedmate, his sleep-ragged voice little more than a smiling whisper, “I told her to find this place again. It was a challenge.”

Seven’s toes prickled with warmth, despite being exposed against the cool hardwood of a lemon-oiled floor. “That almost sounds like an apology, Palla,” he staved off a yawn, “not only did you try; you succeeded. I guess you can learn more than just tea.”

His absent hand wandered from Victor’s mane to trace the curve of his still-clammy shoulder, while he fixed his gaze on the bedraggled young woman that emerged from his favorite cat-thing. Seven felt as if his gut had been stuffed with warm cotton; it was the same rush of joy that brought a grin to his lips when his human inevitably found a way home after too many nights apart. “I’m so happy for you.”

A murmur rose from his waning smile. “I promised to teach you more.” Seven’s face dipped to regard the soft brunet mound in his lap and was met with an empty leer. “I promised.” He doubled over and a brief exchange of black-on-white masked a reassuring peck on the forehead. “You’re barely awake; I can take Palla down stairs.”

[Victor Lark]

As soon as he had spoken, Victor’s vision escaped into comfortable darkness. Eager apologies and friendly emendations became distant whispers, replaced wholly by the tickling noise of Seven’s touch. Cold air pulled goose-bumps out of his back, but warm blankets of sleep covered them again; he wriggled over the morning’s second makeshift pillow, inadvertently releasing his tangled embrace in favor of turning his unseeing face up at the dusty ceiling. But even in half-sleep, Victor knew impatience. Moments passed and they failed to retreat to bed, which meant Palla was still a distraction. The starry black satin of his Seven’s voice grew louder as he looked down at his sleeping bird.

Groggy silver rings peered up at him through the narrow valley between dark lashes, but then the meaning of Seven’s words roiled in Victor’s mind and his eyes flared belatedly in a tired attempt at disproval. He reached up and took the hand that lingered on his shoulder, blinking away Nysel’s warm fingers. He thought to be angry, but he realized he should not. Somehow, Seven seemed so happy. Victor needed to know why.

A conceding smile pulled him up to sitting, showed his begrudging back to them both. He pressed the sleep out of his eyes with the balls of his hands, then said to the wall in front of him, “Don’t mind me; she can stay up here if you want.” A breath of air that was supposed to be a laugh twisted his torso toward Seven. “Unless you think she could learn any more in the bar.”

He had been deliberately avoiding the so-called skinchanger, but there his eyes dipped to her over a sweet smile. “Maybe we could teach her ale.”

[Palla]

Palla fidgeted excitedly with the praise. Seven was right; She had tried, but she had succeeded! She had learned! Well, she had followed Victor back. Was that something akin to cheating? No, no, surely not. She had deduced that she should follow Victor because he seemed to know Seven. He had been protective of Seven, much like she felt she needed to be. A sense of pride washed over her as Seven agreed to uphold his promise. She had earned this treat, and it felt much more satisfying than treating herself.

Victor sat up, though she didn’t really take notice. Instead she continued to stand awkwardly before the two as if on trial.

Maybe we could teach her ale.

”Ooh! Yes! I’m ready!” Her little hands balled up in front of her stomach as she pondered the meaning of ale. ”I’m ready to learn anything – well, maybe not anything, I have to start somewhere small, I’m sure, but I’m ready.” She wriggled her nose, smiling at Seven, that unmistakable warm feeling creeping and curling its way around and through her body.

Red leaked into her face from an unseen origin. It was something about the way Seven looked at her. She felt as if she could do no wrong in his eyes. An invisible string pulled her towards him, and she put her little nose to his forehead. She sniffed across his hairline and down the side of his cheek, somewhat tentatively. Though unable to put a finger on exactly what his unique fingerprint reminded her of, she placed it away in its own file in the back of her mind. She would be able to draw it out whenever she wanted or needed to. It had no particular hint of sweet, nothing sour. There was nothing distasteful in his scentprint (as she called it), but it did have one word hanging on the end of her tongue – warm. It was the only way she could think to describe it. Warm, like the feeling in her toes, stomach, and head. How fitting!

Palla’s insides curled excitedly. She churned impatiently, curious and eager to please. She wanted to show them that she could learn things and retain them like they could. Seven seemed proud of her, but Victor on the other hand, she couldn’t figure out. There that sweet smile was again. After fussing at her and calling her names, she didn’t understand where this sweetness was coming from again. She was sure she hadn’t done anything wrong. She could tell that Victor and Seven were more than just what she had guessed to be acquaintances. They were close in some manner or other. She didn’t like to let people touch her. She didn’t let them get incredibly close. But Victor and Seven slept here, it seemed, in the same bed! Seven had pressed his face in a seemingly endearing manner to Victor’s. What did it mean? It was this questioning feeling in her stomach that made her uneasy. Did Victor like her or not? Either way, she had to find a way to make him like her. She had to influence him for the sake of Seven. Why, though? She hadn’t ever felt the need to please anyone! Why now? Why them?

It would have to go unanswered for the time being. It all would have to go unanswered for now.

[Seven Xu]

Victor’s warmth receded in fragments across Seven’s lap, and he dove into the white sheets with two sets of thirsty fingers to drink the last of their embrace. His shoulders sagged; he thought to close the rift that had drawn away sheets and prickled his skin when an auburn shadow loomed over him. A nose bumped his forehead, a breath of air tickled his hairline, and he froze. Palla would soon learn her halfblood’s trepidations; until then, he gaped at her, crimson swimming in seas of shocked white. Seven thought to recoil, but the impudence he grasped for did not come—instead, a tide of pink swallowed his cheeks and he managed a halting, “Ale, no. We’re teaching her clothes.”

Seven’s hands briefly met Palla’s shoulders and he ducked her as he stood, kicking away sheets that wrapped his calves in favor of discarded trousers—that he promptly and without explanation slipped into—before padding across the cool floor to an old clunky dresser that boasted enough space for two wardrobes. Heaving open the top drawer, the halfblood drew a brown shirt from its musty confines and tossed it in Palla’s direction, before producing another in his collection, one worn, white, and stained with dabs of blue paint on one cuff.

“I told you a bit about clothes,” he murmured, sliding one arm after the other into his well-lived cotton shirt before fussing with a row of brass buttons. “People wear them in the company of others, unless they’re, uh—” A glance at Victor, a search of a flat mouth and heavy-lidded pools of callous grey coaxed Seven’s brows together and left his jaw slack. Silence fell over the room, replaced by the rolling of distant thunder; rain slapped a window left ajar. “Sleeping,” he licked his lips as concluded, smoothing his abashed mien with a clammy hand.

More was lifted from the wardrobe before Seven returned to Victor’s side, comfortably bedizened with cotton and linen and an apprehensive smile. “I’ll make this up to you,” he murmured, barely audible beneath the raucous storm pounding its tiny fists against the Sun and Stars’ rooftop. It was the best apology he could muster without provoking questions from his cat-thing Palla; he could only hope his human was lucid enough to seize the promise those hushed words held.

Victor’s clothing was surrendered to him from a pair of porcelain hands. “A bell, and then we’ll sleep the day away.”

[Victor Lark]

One of the many shades of Seven crept into the corners of Victor’s vision; he turned to examine it and immediately recognized the man’s apprehension in proximity. That color was not meant for her. It was Victor’s to inspire, to laugh at, to dissuade. He knew too well the warmth of half-blood beneath that milk white face, knew it better than anyone else. His distraction wiped the smile from his own, but he did not dare grant her the honesty of a frown. The hard iron of his eyes scrutinized her enthusiasm, her curiosity. Why was she so fond of his fool, so suddenly?

Seven’s words pulled him away from her, settled him into a low laugh and an acquiescent grin. He was coherent enough to understand the promise, but not enough to appreciate the discretion. He took the wad of cloth and found the waist of his trousers. As he stood and stepped into them carefully and shamelessly, he mumbled, “She’s an animal. She knows what sex is.”

The shirt might have been warm from its brief turn within Seven’s grasp; Victor imagined it was so as he slid the soft cotton over his arms and shuffled mindlessly towards their student. The old charm resumed on his expression with what energy he had left, a lighted oddity on a drooping body. He took her by the hand and discreetly pulled her a few steps away from the bed and the man on it, void of cotton and warmth and tickling tinglings. The sides of his shirt swayed open like soft, lilting shutters, left unbuttoned for the sake of future lessons. Combined with the fatigue on his shoulders, the scars on his chest made him seem more hardened than he was, but the warmth of his touch rebuked all thoughts of the sort.

Victor retrieved another pair of pants from the dresser, one of Seven’s, and stepped to Palla again in the same sweeping motion. He would oblige them both for a bell, and then Seven would make her leave and she would inevitably be lost to them again—hopefully, for good. In the meantime, he could try to learn something. He met her gaze, soaked it up for a long moment. He was looking for something, some reason, but in that instant found nothing. Jaw stiff, he pulled her fingers gently to his shoulder, and left them there as he bowed to open the waist for her. “Just lift your leg and step into the holes,” he instructed. “One after the other. Use me to balance, if you like.”