Member
Lord Zee
LokiLeo789
Enzayne
Squad 404
Thayr
Vec
WrongEndoftheRainbow
ActRaiserTheReturned
DezuelFann’s Strays
She was squatting, staring at the pot filled with cloudy water, watching the bits and scraps of food and dirt float around and onto the dishes dipped in the pot.
What is Mon doing?
A hand gripped her shoulder.
“Mon. How many times, lass?” A gruff voice came from behind her. “How many times I gonna find ya look at nothin’?”
Mon’s tail stiffened and puffed up. “Naw naw, no attitude. I get the sprayah. Ya no like the sprayah.”
Mon turned slightly to look her boss in the face, her brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. The massive (both in height, width, and depth) Rhinokin scoffed at her as her tail slid over his bare belly, every single hair prickling him as it went along. He was, of course, not wearing a top and had everything on show. Mon could never understand why he did that - There was nothing to see!
Actually, maybe there is too much to see.
Mon stifled a chuckle as she looked at the rhino from head to toe. He suddenly looked like he was going to pop a vein.
“Hire cat, wives say, cat never come alone they say - Bah!” He spat a thick, green glob of phlegm onto one of Mon’s freshly washed dishes, walked off back into the kitchen, and left Mon alone in the dirty alleyway behind the restaurant. She stared at the now-contaminated plate and sighed.
Later, after the restaurant had closed and Mon had been paid for her day’s labour, she walked out of the back alley that doubled as the restaurant’s staff break room and started heading home.
It might have been past midnight, but the Refugee Town of Fann never slept, not really.
Her pace was brisk and her gaze was avoidant. She clutched her bag of soggy bread tighter to her chest whenever she walked past anyone. It was an unspoken rule in Fann - You saw nothing, you heard nothing, and you knew no one. Those who did, did not do so for long.
She’d learned her lesson long ago.
Eventually, she reached a large rickety building made of wood with a thatch roof, went down the alley to the right side of it and knocked on the first door she found.
There was some rustling from the other side.
A minute passed, so Mon knocked again.
This time, the door opened suddenly. Mon didn’t even have a chance to gasp or jump, it was that sudden.
“The little kitten comes to me yet again.” Said the Syllianth woman, her metallic torso vibrated in rhythm with her gaze.
After a moment of hesitation, Mon offered her bag of soggy bread to the Syllianth woman. The plant woman had to bend over to grab the bag, which she opened. A nod of appreciation.
“Good, good. Soggy bread, just what the shaman ordered - Your brother will be thankful, little Mon. Now run along! Bring some more of this...” She gestured with no hidden disgust to the bag of bread. “... Next week. Bye bye!”
The door slammed in her face, the force of the wind strong enough that it blew back Mon’s frizzy greasy hair and forced her to close her eyes.
“Bye bye…” She muttered after a moment, jumped off the wooden step at the porch of the side door and skittered over to the next door down.If the lights were on… She wasn’t the kind of person to be proud of her lineage, not with the way things had gone down - But she always felt a bit lucky to be able to sneak around completely undetected.
She pressed her face against the rusty keyhole and grinned when she saw the dim rays of candlelight coming from the room she knew to be the kitchen, to the side of the entrance hallway. This was the house of Reema, a kind old lady who Mon had recently gotten to know. She’d visited her every night for a week straight until Reema had to leave town on some sort of business journey. But the fact that candlelight was on meant that she was back, and if she was back, she could stay the night, on an insect-free bed.
So she knocked, and the moment the door opened, she jumped right into the arms of the gentle, round beaver-kin old lady.
“Reema’s back!” Mon cheered, her voice muffled by Reema’s thick clothing as the girl rubbed her face all over them.
“Ooh…” Reema cooed, wrapped an arm around Mon the Cat and used her free hand to pick food scraps and debris out of the girl’s hair. “How I’ve missed you, Monmon. I’m so glad to see your smile!”
Mon pulled away for a second and beamed a smile up at the old lady, fresh tears having washed away some of the grime from her face.
“You know Monmon, I had this idea-”
“-Butter cookies!” Mon did a little jump, eyes going as wide as saucers.
Reema chuckled, but wagged her finger and tapped Monki’s forehead. “Ah-ah, bath time first. You look like a stray cat.”
“But, Mon is one.” Mon tilted her head, ears suddenly flat against her head.
“Not tonight, dear.”
II
“-And then there was this customer, right? He threw up all over his table, just as Mon was about to finish work. Mon had to stay behind to clean the table and the floor…”
“So that’s how you ended up smelling like puke?” Reema sat on a stool next to the large tub. Candlelight illuminated the room just enough for Mon to realise how much dirt and grime had been coating her body before her bath. What had started as a pristine tub of warm water now looked like some kind of slime-spawning primordial soup.
Mon went to shake her head, but the movement stopped as soon as Reema’s wooden comb was caught in a big knot. “Ow!” She winced and hissed a bit, but despite her tail prickling up out of instinct, she did her best to remain calm.
Minutes passed. Throughout those minutes, Reema worked on detangling and washing Mon’s mistreated hair while she licked and rubbed herself clean. There was small talk and chuckles and the subtle, distant kind of affection that Reema was prone to giving.
When she had first lowered herself into the tub, there had been ten full buckets of clean water surrounding the tub. Now, Reema was pouring the last bucket onto Mon’s head. As the streams of water turned into a thin waterfall in front of Mon’s eyes and the sound of flowing water started to remind her of past dreams, Reema spoke.
“How old are you, Monmon?”
It took Mon a second to register the question, and even when she did she had to bring her hands up in front of her face.
Mon thinks… One by one, nine fingers went up, then Mon felt discomfort at the number and shook her head. Reema had preemptively brought up a hand to block the droplets of water from reaching her face. No no, Mon is pretty sure that wasn’t herfirst boil. She thinks she was… Five boils old? Back then? Mon scrunched up her face. After a few moments, she gave up counting with her hands and let them drop back down.
“Five plus Five. Thirteen.”
“I see. Good girl.” Reema smiled gently at Mon as she patted Mon’s now clean, detangled, shiny hair dry with the cloth towel in her hands. “But why five plus five?”
“Five is when Mon’s Bone-Bone ancestors got hunted. She was given her baby brother, Pon, and told to run. It’s been another five Boils since then.”
“And by Boils you mean summers, right? Why is that?” Reema finished pat-drying Mon’s hair and moved on to her body, making sure to be gentle enough not to pull on any of the thick, sensitive fur on the girl’s forearms, hands, and legs.
“‘Cuz the water boils for half the year! Bone-Bones go underground when the Cursed Sun comes out. Mon is five-plus-five boils old, she is sure… It doesn’t matter. She knows her baby brother Pon is Five. He is more important.”
“And where is Pon? I would like to meet him, you know.” Reema asked, a little bit of concern in her voice. Mon was smart enough to notice.
“He is staying with the Shaman next door! Pon was sick and had a fever when Mon arrived in Fann, four boils ago. The Shaman offered to take care of him back then, and then sent him to school.” Mon was proud of her little brother - He was learning letters and numbers, something she’d never gotten the chance to learn. She’d even received letters, writing on paper! From her brother. Of course, she had no way of reading the contents, but just knowing her brother had written them was amazing.
“So, you haven’t seen Pon in four years?” Reema finished drying Mon off and motioned for the girl to get out of the drained tub, then began dressing her in a brand new nightgown. It was white, like the colour of some of her stripes.
“No, Mon hasn’t seen him. But! She’s gotten letters from him! He knows how to write, it’s great isn’t it?” Mon had stars in her eyes as she spoke of her little brother.
With Mon all dressed and clean, Reema then got on a knee and on Mon’s eye level, placing both hands on the girl’s thin shoulders.
“Mon, the people next door - Are they a tall brown human man with a gold-lined eyepatch, and a Syllianth woman with a silver torso?”
“Yeah, Mon gives them her salary and half her food to pay for Pon’s school fees.”
Reema frowned, and a strange expression flashed across her face. Mon didn’t like it. The cat-kin girl brought a hand up to her throat and took in a deep breath.
“Mon. The people next door, they…” Reema closed her eyes. After a moment, she shook her head and forced a smile. “They’re very kind, aren’t they? I can’t wait to meet your brother someday.”
Mon felt the tension drain out of her body with those words. She smiled back and nodded vigorously. “Yeah, Mon wants him to meet you too!”
“Alright then dear,” Reema grunted as she got back up onto her feet. “Bedtime?”
“What about the butter cookies?” Mon’s ears flattened against her head once more.
“Tomorrow, dear. If you eat one now, it’ll give you nightmares.”
And so they went on to bed. Mon and Reema slept in the same bed, with the large lady’s arm draped over the girl’s body. She felt safe, and warm, and dry. She had good dreams that night.
The next morning, after they had lunch and Mon Bone-Bone had eaten a butter cookie, Reema asked her if she wanted to live with her as her daughter, and she said yes.
