GT - Chapter Ten (Patreon)

On the other hand, it is when things seem the darkest, that we discover what we are truly made of. Hopefully, only in a metaphorical sense.

-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey

Maria held her breath for as long as she could. The wet bag surrounding her tugged  and pulled, and she knew the strong current was whisking her down and away. The pressure on her lungs increased, and finally, she opened her mouth, gasping in. Cold water filled her lungs, and she tried to cough it out, but there was no air to draw in instead. She felt her consciousness fading - and the sack was yanked, hard.

She felt suddenly heavy as the water saturating the fabric and her fur pulled at her, and she felt her tail reenter the water, even as she desperately tried to breathe through wet burlap. Light stabbed at her eyes as the loose knot unfurled, and a hand reached in, hauling her out by the scruff of her neck. She flopped to the ground, limp, barely clinging to awareness.

“-on! Breathe!” A thin, oddly accented voice shouted, and something hit Maria’s ribcage, hard enough to hurt. She choked, and what felt like an ocean flooded from her nose and mouth, and the barest hint of air - blessed air! - reached her lungs. Still, she gasped, but bit by bit, more water cleared from her lungs, though she felt as if she could never be clear of all of it.

At last, she blinked, for the first time in an eternity filled with shuddering gasps and pounding heartbeats. Dimly, her eyes focused on a face hovering over her. Who was the strange girl there, with wet black hair already beginning to stand up in damp spikes, and the blackest skin Maria had ever seen, even in the traders from the west?

“Maria?” Tears streamed down the stranger’s cheeks, mingling with water still trickling from her hair. “Please, oh please, don’t be dead! It’s all my fault! Please don’t be dead!” Wracking sobs shook her skinny frame, which, Maria noted distantly, was completely naked.

One hand lifted to scrub tears from the girl’s face, and it was the shock of seeing that it was completely white that finally made things come together in Maria’s foggy brain. “Ti- a?”

Joy lit the Felis’s face, and she leaned down, her dark nose touching Maria’s in a particularly feline manner. Thin arms scooped Maria from the wet earth, and Maria hacked up some more water as her position shifted.

“Oh!” Tears started from Tia’s yellow eyes again. Maria was close enough to see her slit pupils widen. “What should I- Grimalkin!” This last was a wailing cry, and Maria’s head rolled to the side, water dribbling from her mouth.

“O- ver,” she managed.

“What?” Yellow eyes focused on Maria again.

“Turn… o- ver.”

Quickly, Tia did as she was asked, rotating Maria so gravity could help pull the remaining fluid from her lungs. Maria gasped and shuddered, choking all over again and moisture drained from her body, until finally, finally, she could breathe smoothly in and out, though her throat and chest felt like they were on fire.

When she truly became aware again, she found herself on the ground, but this time a warm body was wrapped around her own protectively. Though Tia shivered, even in the warm sunlight, she held Maria with a fierce determination, staring at her all the while.

Maria blinked. “Are you… human?”

Tia’s face stiffened. Sitting up, she pushed Maria down, off her lap. Her white hand rose to cover her mouth. “No,” she said, “I’m Felis.” The ‘s’ lisped faintly, and Maria frowned. Slowly, she struggled to her belly, bringing her paws in tight as the wind tugged at her still-wet fur.

“You look,” she paused to cough weakly, “human. But not?”

If possible, Tia’s face flushed even darker. “I can’t do it right,” the girl muttered, and tears welled in her eyes again. “I changed… once. A long time ago. But,” she dropped her hand slowly from her face, and Maria saw that her upper lip was bowed and split gently in the middle, “I’m… wrong.”

Maria crept closer, pressing her head against Tia’s warm flank. She heard a faint, rusty purr, and realized it was coming from her. “You’re… perfect,” she managed. “You saved my life.”

Tia shook her head. Her deep black hair had fluffed as it dried, revealing two perfect, pointed cat ears, high on her head. “You wouldn’t have been there in the first place, if it weren’t for me. I told you, I can’t control my magic.”

Maria licked the other girl’s leg in silent encouragement, then stilled, taking in the heat of Tia’s body. The Felis’s skin was dry now, and she was heating up quickly in the bright sun, making her body a perfect spot to snuggle down as Maria recovered.

Words spilled from Tia now, tumbling over each other almost as quickly as the roaring river by which they sat. “I was little. Only five or so. I was alone, and I needed a toy that was out of reach, so I just… shifted.” Absently, her hand began to stroke Maria’s back, and Maria purred louder. “I was so excited, until I looked in my mother’s mirror, and saw myself.”

Tears dripped into Maria’s drying fur, but the warmth was pleasant, and she just kept purring. Tia’s hand touched her ears, the corner of her eye, and the cleft in her upper lip. “I’d seen Mother and Father in their human shapes, and even some human travelers, a time or two. I knew I didn’t look like them.” Her shoulders curved in, and she bit her lip with slightly-too-sharp teeth.

“Everyone was… Well, they had high expectations for me. But here I was, not even able to shift fully. I changed back, and haven’t tried again. Not once.” She sniffled, but her nose dripped anyway. “I never needed to, even though my brother’s started trying to trick me into it. They all gave up, and I thought they’d leave me alone, finally, until the Grimalkin came up with this, this,” she waved her hand, “stupid quest! Then I bit you, and my broken magic turned you into a Felis. And then that horrible boy just…”

Her ears flattened against her head. “He threw us away! Like we were garbage! And I knew you would die. No, we would die! So I changed, and- ” Tia waved from the river, to the discarded burlap sack half in, half out of the water, to her own bare legs.

“Please,” Tia mumbled, lisping softly as she fought another bout of tears. “Please don’t tell. I’d rather they think I just don’t want to shift than that they realize I’m this thing.”

Maria looked up into the other girl’s teary yellow gaze, and patted her leg softly with a paw. “You’re beau- ti- ful,” she managed, coughing as her abused throat protested her speaking.

Tia’s yellow eyes widened, gleaming in the shadow of her downturned face, and showing the slit pupils that so clearly marked her as ‘other’. “I’m hideous,” she said, flatly. “I even,” she swallowed hard and reached a trembling hand behind her. When she brought it back, it held a twitching black tail with a white tuft at the end. “I even still have a tail. I’m a total failure of a Felis!”

It took a long time for Tia to calm down enough to stop crying, and they both fell asleep for a while afterwards. When Maria blinked open her eyes, she suddenly found that it was much later in the day, and the sky was darkening above them. Curled up beside her was Tia, back in her cat form, her little paws twitching as she dreamed. She mewed pitifully, and Maria patted her furry face, at first gently, and then harder.

When Tia’s yellow eyes blinked open, she muttered, “Wha-” groggily, and then sat up so quickly she would have bashed her head into Maria’s chin if Maria hadn’t managed to dodge in time. Her head swam as she lurched to the side, coughing weakly.

“Maria?” Tia’s mew squeaked at the end, and Maria would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so horrible.

“I don’t feel… good,” Maria said, paw rubbing at her eyes.

Tia shook her head. “No, look, you’re going to be fine! You just need to get something to eat, and we’ll start heading back upstream. Tobias and Tosep will be looking for us, and-”

Maria felt hot. Far too hot, in fact, given that the air should be growing cooler as night approached. She shivered uncontrollably, in spite of the heat of her skin. “I think I’m getting sick,” she murmured, blinking against the heaviness of her eyelids. She coughed again, and her legs gave out beneath her so she flopped into the dirt.

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” Tia whimpered, pushing at Maria with her nose.

“Get… help,” Maria managed.

Tia shook her head, licking desperately at Maria’s ears. The rough scratchiness tugging at the soft fuzz only made Maria shiver harder, and Tia stopped. “I can’t leave you here, Maria,” Tia cried. She pressed close to Maria’s shaking body, and the two of them lay in a silence broken only by waves breaking behind them and Maria’s crackling breaths.

Tia shifted, and then warm hands scooped Maria up. “I won’t let you die,” Tia swore fiercely. “There has to be something-” She broke off, and Maria looked up to see that the girl’s gaze was locked on something in the distance. When Maria followed her sightline, she could just see smoke lazily drifting into the air beyond the treeline. Tia looked back down at her, their eyes meeting. Tia’s looked clearer than Maria had seen them all day.

“Fire means people. People who might have medicine. Now how do I-” She looked around, lips pinching in determination. Gently, she settled Maria back onto the ground, and strode away. Maria heard rustling, faint, frustrated muttering, and after a few minutes, Tia’s gentle hands picked her up again. Something scratched her sensitive nose, and she jerked away involuntarily.

“Sorry,” Tia murmured. “This stuff is itchy.” Her skin shivered beneath the rough surface, and Maria realized the girl had used the burlap sack to make a sort of dress. She had torn a strip from it to use as a wrap around her head, as well, and with her ears covered, she looked strange, but not inhuman, unless you saw her eyes.

“What will you do?” Maria managed, coughing again as she spoke.

“Stop talking,” Tia chastised, beginning to walk. “Obviously, I’m going to go talk to whoever that is. They’ll help you. They have to help you.”

Maria’s eyes widened. Tia didn’t know humans well, and she was clearly a much-beloved child in her family. Maria had to admit to herself that she wasn’t much better, but she’d read enough books to know that not all humans were helpful, and more of them were like Thomas than Maria wanted to admit. Some were even worse.

“You… can’t!” Maria didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if a half-naked girl wandered into the camp of someone unkind.

“I can, and I will,” Tia returned, picking up her pace into a jog, though her breath was already coming short. She wasn’t used to running in her human shape, and her movements were uncoordinated and inefficient.

Maria weakly tried to wriggle from the girl’s hands, but Tia just tightened her grip, holding Maria almost painfully close. Maria felt her claws trying to emerge, to swipe at the offending hands, but she forced it back. I am more than cat instincts! She made herself relax, and Tia entered the trees, bare feet crunching on twigs and fallen leaves.

Maria’s mind raced, even as she felt the heat in her body grow stronger. She tried to cough again, but found that she was too weak to do more than clear her throat painfully. Each breath she took felt shallower than the last, and she knew she was fading fast. Tia was right that they needed help, but Maria couldn’t allow the girl to get herself killed or kidnapped while trying to get that help.

She made her body go limp, which was easier than it should have been, and Tia’s grip loosened again. Tia picked up her pace, and the sounds she made crashing through the forest grew louder. Maria winced. Even if she could stop Tia, the sound would give them away.

Sure enough, a shout came from somewhere in the distance. Another shout responded, closer, and Maria knew with a sinking feeling that she was already too late. Whatever was going to happen, there was nothing she could do to stop it.

A figure broke through the brush ahead of them. He was tall, and he held a thick branch aloft, like a club. His messy brown hair had twigs in it, and he had a ferocious expression on his heavy-featured face, until his eyes widened as he took in Tia’s ragged appearance. “What the- ?”

Tia stumbled to a halt, panting. She held Maria out in shaking arms. “Please,” she lisped, “my cat. We fell in the river, and she’s sick. Please…” Her legs gave out and they both fell into the dry, brown leaves that littered the forest floor. The world went dark.