Chương 11: Won't Leave Her Alone

Something kept flickering at the edge of her sight, and it wouldn't stop. Her eyes darted toward it before she'd decided to look. The snow hadn't let up either. Cold still hung thin in the air even this far from the door, and now this on top of it. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Nearing limit. Action recommended. Something about it felt like the patch of sun that crossed the floor some afternoons, flat and pale. Sun patches held still, though. This didn't. She shook her head hard, same as clearing water from an ear.

It came back before she'd finished shaking, and every time it did, whatever rest she'd managed came apart with it. A paw came up on its own, swiping at the spot where it had just been. Nothing there to catch. Nothing there to swat away either, which somehow made it worse. She dropped off the beam and hit the floor already moving, some part of her convinced that if she went fast enough, the flicker would have to work harder to catch her. Bram never saw her coming.

The flour sack went sideways, and so did he, catching himself on the counter with a word that would have cost him a coin in Ren's jar on any ordinary day. She was already gone, up the shelf, along the beam, down the post on the far side, faster than her own legs had any business carrying her.

"What in the world." Bram straightened, one arm gone white with flour, watching her clear the room in one line.

"Cat's gone mad." She hadn't. She just couldn't stop, and all that unspent nerve had to land somewhere. Something small and dark moved along the baseboard near the pantry, quick and low, and every part of her locked onto it before she'd decided to care. It didn't get far. One paw came down, then the other, and she had it pinned before it finished deciding which way to run. She didn't want it dead. She wanted it moving.

She let it go, watched it scramble two lengths, caught it again, let it go again, the game better than the catch ever was. On the third release it found the gap behind the flour barrels and didn't come back out, and she let it keep that too, already bored, already looking for the next thing. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Action recommended. Same words. Same pale flicker at the corner of her eye, there and gone before she could face it head on. She shook it off and went on.

Thorn nearly lost his footing dodging her next, catching himself on the doorframe with a bark of laughter. He was elbow deep in showing the newest batch how a pack strap ought to sit across the shoulders, three of them crowded close enough to actually be listening for once.

"Yeah," he said, grinning, not breaking off the lesson.

"She does that." Ren appeared in the doorway, arms crossed.

"Did someone feed her something wrong again?"

"Wasn't me this time," Bram called from the kitchen, sweeping the last of the flour into a pile with more force than it needed.

"Didn't say it was you." Ren looked at Thorn instead.

"Planning to actually catch her, or is watching part of the lesson today?" One of the newbies took that as instruction. He came off the bench in a crouch, hands out low and wide, the way someone who had never once caught a cat believed cats were caught. She went straight between his ankles without slowing. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Thorn laughed hard enough to lose the thread of his own lesson, one hand out to steady the boy he'd nearly knocked into.

"Never chase a cat," he said, delighted.

"You stand still and look like you've got food. She'll come to you."

"Don't listen to him." Flint hadn't looked up once.

"He's never caught her either." Thorn had a strip of dried meat out of his pocket before the sentence finished, holding it low and hopeful in her general direction, same as he always did. She was already three doors down. The boy straightened, hands still open on nothing, and one of the other two laughed at him until he got an elbow for it. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Action recommended. It caught her mid stride this time, right in front of her face, and she clipped the leg of a bench hard enough to yelp.

She was up again before anyone could decide whether that had been on purpose. She'd stopped caring where she landed by then. A dice cup went over on the low table. Someone's boot caught the edge of her tail. She was already gone, clear across the room before whoever it was finished flinching. She ended up under Ren's desk without quite meaning to, nose down, chasing whatever restlessness was still left in her, and that was how she found it instead.

A small paper twist sat wedged behind the desk leg, sweet in a way that meant nothing to a nose built for meat. She nosed it open out of pure curiosity. Small, hard, pale. It did less for her than the driest scrap of chicken ever had.

"Not yours," Ren said, plucking it away before Amber had finished deciding whether a second try was worth it. She was still laughing when she set her back down. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Action pending. The flicker held longer this time, long enough that she got a proper look at it at last. It wasn't just passing through anymore. It sat there instead, a flat pale square hanging in the air where nothing should hang, refusing to settle the way it always had and refusing to clear the way it always had either.

She skidded sideways trying to shake it, claws scraping stone instead of finding anything solid to hold. Ren looked up properly this time, pen stalled halfway through a line.

"You alright?" She tried squeezing her eyes shut. That should have worked. Eyes shut meant dark, and dark meant nothing to look at, except the pale square was still there behind her own eyelids, patient as anything, no dimmer for having a lid in front of it. She pressed her face into the nearest thing she could find, a folded blanket left over the arm of a chair, and held it there until her breath came back warm off the wool. Still there when she lifted her head. Still exactly the same.

She backed under the chair after that, into the narrow dark where the legs made a cage of shadow and nothing had ever bothered her before. It followed her under. Sat in front of her nose in the dark like it had been waiting for her to get there. She sat where she'd stopped, breathing hard, and the light came again before she'd caught her breath back. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Action required.

The pale square sat right in front of her now, stubborn, refusing to clear no matter how hard she blinked at it, blotting out a piece of the hall like something had been smudged onto her own eyes from the inside. The floor tilted a little, or she did. She wasn't sure which anymore. Her paws felt further away than they should have, like she was watching them from somewhere just behind her own skull. Ren glanced over from her ledgers, frowning now instead of amused.

"Amber?" The sound arrived a beat late, the way a voice does across water. She knew that shape of noise. She knew it meant something wanted her attention. Working out which direction it had come from took longer than it should have, and by the time she'd turned her head, whoever it was had already said something else she missed entirely. Her back end dipped, hind legs sliding out from under her before she scrabbled them back into place. [SYSTEM] Mana capacity: 25/30 Action required. Response needed.

It didn't go this time. She turned her head away from it entirely, and it turned with her, sitting dead center in whatever direction she looked. Nothing she did moved it even slightly. Her body slid sideways off a wobble she hadn't decided to have. The sweeping stopped. Flint was already moving, closer than he'd been a moment ago, though she hadn't caught him crossing. A chair scraped back hard enough to fall. She tried to get away from the hands and got about half a length before her legs quit on her entirely.

She went down on her side on the floorboards, ribs working fast and shallow, everything below her shoulders feeling like it belonged to some other animal. Chair legs. Boot soles. The underside of the low table she'd knocked the dice cup off of, all of it sideways now. Hands closed around her before she'd finished landing. Flint, from the size of them, one palm under her chest and the other bracing her hindquarters, careful in a way the rest of him never suggested.

"Miss Ren." His voice, right over her.

"Is the cat alright?. She's not right?" She was too tired to squirm. Too tired to shake her head at it. Too tired to close her eyes against it, which had never worked anyway. It stayed. Pale and patient, sitting right where it had sat. She looked at it. There was nothing else left to look at. Go away. Not a word. She had no words. Just the whole of her, wrung out and shaking in somebody's hands, wanting one single thing more than she had ever wanted a warm spot or a full bowl or anything else in her life. Go away.

The square flickered. [SYSTEM] Response received.