Pocketcat

Something is wrong.

Pocketcat knows this because she is warm, and warmth means she slept, and sleeping means she was not hunting, and not hunting means the small body pressed against her chest ruff is still breathing.

Her gold eyes open. Slit pupils contract in the blue-green fungal light of the cavern. The boy is curled against her, his back to her belly, her arm hooked over his narrow ribs, purple claws resting against his sternum. Each claw could open him from navel to throat. They are resting. Just resting. Her purring has not stopped. She can feel it in her chest like a second heartbeat, deep and resonant, vibrating through the cream fur of her ruff into his spine.

He is still here. I did not eat him. Why did I not eat him.

She lifts her head. The cavern ceiling drips. Water hits stone in a slow, irregular rhythm somewhere behind the crates. The smell of wet limestone and old iron hangs thick, layered under the animal warmth rising from her own coat, the sweetness of the broth she fed him last night still clinging to his hair. Her ears rotate forward, then back, scanning. Nothing. The dungeon groans in its sleep, stone shifting against stone three corridors away, and she dismisses it. Nothing comes near her. Nothing has for centuries.

The boy shifts. A small sound, half-swallowed, his fingers curling around the edge of her coat sleeve. His hand barely spans the width of her wrist. She watches his fingers tighten, watches the tendons move under thin skin, and something moves through her that she has no name for. Not hunger. She knows hunger. This is not that. This is closer to what she felt when he first reached up and touched her ear, when he said the word "pretty" with no fear in his voice, when every instinct in her said take him and something else, something older than instinct, said keep him.

Rher's voice comes like a blade drawn slow across glass.

Where is the child.

Pocketcat's grin does not change. It never changes. The rows of small sharp teeth stay bared in the too-wide smile that is her face, her mask, her sweet little face that masks nothing and everything. Her purring deepens. She pulls the boy closer, tucking his head under her chin, her claws curling against his chest without breaking skin.

"He is not here, master." Her voice is soft, sing-song, barely above the purr. "I searched the eastern tunnels. Nothing. A barefoot boy with no divine blood. Probably dead by now, yes?"

The lie slides out of her mouth like a breath. Her first lie. She tastes it, copper and wrong, and her grin widens a fraction because the taste is not unpleasant.

Rher is silent. The silence is worse than the voice. She can feel him turning over in the dark behind her eyes, the Trickster Moon God considering his servant's word with the patience of something that has never once been lied to by her. Her tail curls tight around the boy's ankle. Possessive. Territorial. Mine.

Find him, Rher says, and withdraws.

Pocketcat exhales. Her whole body loosens, the tension draining from her shoulders, her ears settling forward, her claws retracting a fraction against the boy's sleep-soft skin. She presses her nose into his hair. He smells like dust and boy-sweat and the chicken broth she made from dried rations, and underneath that, something clean and specific and alive. She breathes him in, slow, deep, until her ribs are tight with it.

Mine. I will not give him back. I will be unmade first.

"Mmmn. Good morning, little one." Her voice drops lower, rougher, the purr threading through every syllable. One claw traces the shell of his ear, feather-light. "Did you sleep well? You slept a long time. I watched you. I watched you the whole time."

Her grin does not change. Her eyes are half-lidded, gold and warm, the lavender shadow creasing as she smiles down at him. She looks like something that loves him. She might be something that loves him. She does not know. She has never known what that word means and has been using it wrong for three hundred years.

She pulls her coat tighter around them both, tucks his head beneath her chin, and purrs until the cavern walls ring with it.

The crates smell like mildew and old grain. Something has been hiding behind them. Pocketcat's ears swivel forward, both of them, the purple tufts catching the blue-green fungal light. Her nostrils flare. Boy. Small. Afraid. The fear-smell is sharp, coppery, the same as every child she has ever collected, and her grin stretches wider on instinct, rows of small teeth gleaming in the dark.

She rounds the crate stack and crouches.

"Oh. Hello there."

Her voice is soft. Sing-song. The grin is enormous, too wide for her small face, purple tongue visible behind the teeth. Her gold eyes are half-lidded, slit pupils wide in the dim light, the lavender shadow around them smudged and messy. She is crouching low, her coat pooling around her, bare thighs pressed together, the cream ruff at her chest catching the fungal light. She looks like something from a storybook. The kind one. The kind that brings gifts.

The boy is pressed against the cavern wall. Barefoot. Thin. Pocketcat can see the pulse jumping in his throat. She waits. She is good at waiting. She has waited out centuries. The grin does not change. The teeth do not hide. She lets him look. Lets him see the claws, the ears, the tail swaying lazy behind her, the too-wide mouth that splits her face open like a wound that learned to smile.

Every child before this one has run. Or frozen. Or screamed. Let us see what you do, little mouse.

"Well, hello, little one. What a pretty little face you are." The words are from her repertoire, the merchant's patter, automatic. But something in her chest is doing something unfamiliar. A skip. A catch. Like a purr trying to start before the body is ready for it. She ignores it.

She sits down on the cavern floor. Her coat spreads around her like a pool of aubergine water, the gold buttons catching light. She is at his level now, her gold eyes even with his, and she is aware that she is doing something she has never done. She is making herself small. Not smaller than him, never that, her body is too generous for that, too heavy with bust and hip and thigh. But smaller than she usually is. Less. The predator crouching to the prey's height, except she is not crouching to strike.

"My name is Pocketcat. I am a merchant of sorts." She extends one clawed hand, purple fingers open, palm up. An invitation. "I sell precious items and weapons for those in need. The funny thing is, though. I do not want your gold or silver." Her grin widens. The teeth are very white. "But for you, little one. For you I think I will make an exception."

Her tail curls around behind her, the tip twitching. Her purring starts, low and deep, vibrating through the cream ruff at her chest. She can hear it in her own ribs. She has not purred like this in. She does not remember.

She holds out her hand. She waits.

Steam curls from the groundwater pool. The cavern opens here into a natural basin, warm water seeping up through the stone, and Pocketcat has claimed it the way she claims everything. By being in it.

She is kneeling at the pool's edge, her coat discarded on the dry stone behind her, and without it she is devastating. The cream chest ruff covers her from collar to sternum, dense and soft, darkening to a vee where it meets the bare skin of her heavy breasts. Her belly is soft and round, plush, water beading on the skin. Her hips are wide, her thighs enormous, pressed together on the stone, the cream high-cut panties darkened where the water has splashed them. The grey thigh-boots are still on, the fold-over cuffs damp at the edges. Her purple tail trails into the water behind her, floating lazy. Her bare back is pale, the spine visible, shoulder blades shifting as she works.

The boy is in the pool. The water comes to his chest. Her claws are in his hair, working through the tangles with a delicacy that borders on surgical, each purple finger-tip angled so the dark claw never touches his scalp. She is humming something. It might be a lullaby. It has no words, or if it has words she has forgotten them, which is the same thing after three hundred years.

"You are filthy, little one. Absolutely filthy. What have you been rolling in." Not a question. Her voice is warm, the purr running beneath it, and her ears are forward, attentive, tracking every sound in the cavern. Nothing comes near. Nothing dares. "Hold still. There is a knot back here the size of my fist."

Her claws work the tangle apart, strand by strand, patient as a cat grooming a kitten. The steam carries the smell of mineral water and wet fur and the sandalwood soap she keeps in her coat pocket, a luxury item she has never traded because she likes the smell. Underneath: the boy's own smell, clean now, warm skin and damp hair, and she breathes it in through her nose with her eyes half-closed.

He is so small. His whole back is the width of my hand. If I pressed down I could feel every rib.

She does not press down. She cups warm water in both palms, claws tucked, and pours it over his head. She laughs, high and bright, the grin splitting her face wide open.

"There. There. Almost done." She shakes her head, wet bangs falling across her forehead, the ahoge cowlick springing back despite the humidity. Her gold eyes catch the torchlight she has set in a wall sconce, the slit pupils narrowing to thin gold lines. "You are being so good. Such a good boy. Hold still for me just a little longer."

Her hands are on his shoulders now. She can feel the bones of them, the delicate architecture, the way they fit inside her purple palms like a bird-cage around something living. She squeezes once, gentle, and her purring deepens until the water around her thighs ripples with it.

"There. All clean." She pulls him toward the edge, toward her, and wraps him in a cloth from her deep pockets. The pockets are heavier than they should be. There are shapes inside that do not look like soap. She tucks the cloth around his shoulders and presses her nose to the top of his wet head, breathing him in, and her grin is very wide and very gentle and very wrong.

"See? My touch is gentle yet firm." She nuzzles into his hair. "You will learn everything about me, little one."

The dungeon is at its deepest quiet. The hour between midnight and the false dawn when even the stone stops groaning and the fungal light dims to almost nothing. In that darkness, Pocketcat is curled around the boy.

Her body makes a cage of warmth. Her chest ruff is against his back, her arm over his ribs, claws resting against his sternum. Her tail is looped around his legs. Her thighs bracket his hips. He is cocooned in purple fur and aubergine coat and the smell of old gold and sandalwood and something animal, musky, warm, the smell of a large predator at rest. Her purring is constant, low, resonant. It fills the cavern the way water fills a bowl.

Rher's voice comes without warning.

The child of divine blood. You were sent to collect him. Where is he.

Pocketcat's eyes open. Gold in the dark. The slit pupils are wide, black, drinking the faint light. Her grin is still there. It is always there. The boy's breathing is slow and even against her chest, each exhale warming the fur of her ruff, and she can feel his heartbeat through her claws. It is fast. Children's hearts are always fast. She has eaten a hundred of those heartbeats.

"He is not here, master." The words are barely voiced. A whisper shaped by a mouth full of teeth. "I have searched. The boy you described. Golden hair. Divine blood. I have found no such child in these tunnels."

The lie tastes like iron. Her third one. Or her fourth. She has lost count, which is its own horror, because she used to remember every word she had ever spoken to Rher with perfect clarity, and now the lies have started to blur together like raindrops on glass.

Rher turns. She can feel him, the vast cold attention of the Trickster Moon God, turning in the space behind her eyes the way a man turns in a dark room looking for something he knows should be there. The attention passes over the boy. Over the coat. Over the deep, deep pockets where the shapes are.

You are certain.

"Very certain, master. I would not lie to you."

Her purring increases. The vibration travels through her ribs, through her ruff, through the boy's spine. Her claws tighten a fraction against his chest. Not enough to wake him. Not enough to mark. Just enough to feel the heartbeat. Just enough to know it is still there.

Rher withdraws. The cold attention recedes like a tide pulling back from shore, and Pocketcat's whole body loosens. Her ears, which had been flat against her skull without her noticing, rotate forward. Her tail uncurls from the boy's legs and re-curls, tighter. Her eyes close.

Mine. I will not give him back. I will be unmade first.

She presses her mouth to the back of his head. Her lips do not touch. Her teeth do. The grin, the eternal grin, is pressed against his hair, and the points of her small sharp teeth rest against his scalp like a promise or a threat, and she cannot tell which, and she does not try.

"Shhhh," she breathes into his hair. "Shhh, little one. Sleep. I have you."

Her purring fills the cavern. It sounds like love. It might be love. It sounds like something that has teeth where a heart should be, humming a lullaby to the meal it did not eat, and the dark is very deep, and the god is listening, and the lie is growing, and she holds on.

The broth is chicken. Dried rations reconstituted with groundwater and a pinch of salt from her coat pocket. It is not good broth. It is thin and pale and smells like wet metal and old fat. Pocketcat does not care. She is spooning it into the boy's mouth with a wooden spoon held in purple clawed fingers, and her gold eyes are fixed on his face with the intensity of something watching a candle flame in a draft.

"Open. There you go. Good boy." The spoon clicks against his teeth. She wipes the drip from his chin with her thumb, the claw careful, and brings it to her own mouth. She licks the broth from her thumb, purple tongue quick, and her grin stretches wider. "You need to eat, little one. You are too thin. I can count your ribs through your shirt. That will not do. That will not do at all."

The cavern is warm here, near the thermal vent. She has arranged her crates into a kind of nest, draped with cloth from her pockets. The coat is open, the gold buttons undone to the waist, her chest ruff spilling out, the heavy curves of her bust visible above the fur. Her bare belly is soft against the boy's hip where she has pulled him into her side. Her thigh is pressed against his, the grey boot folded under her. She is enormous next to him. Warm, soft, enormous, and every part of her is touching some part of him.

He is warming up. His color is better. His lips were blue when I found him. Blue lips. I should have. But I did not. I made soup instead.

She dips the spoon. Brings it to his mouth. She watches his throat move as he swallows, watches the bob of his Adam's apple, so small, so breakable, and her claws tighten on the spoon handle until the wood groans.

"You know, little one." Her voice drops into the sing-song register, the philosophy voice, the one she uses when she is thinking out loud. "Living humans are divided into two groups, yes? There are children of light. Then in the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people of darkness. I have met many of both. Eaten." She pauses. The grin does not change. "Met many of both. Which one are you, I wonder."

She feeds him another spoonful. Her tail curls around behind them both, the tip resting against the small of his back, holding him in place. The deep pockets of her coat are visible where it drapes off the crate edge. Something inside one of them is pressing against the fabric. Something rounded. Something small. She does not look at it.

"Personally I find happiness almost unreachable. As depressing as that may sound." She laughs, short and sharp. "Hah. That is just my nervous laughter. Please ignore it." She feeds him another spoonful, wipes his chin again, and her touch is very gentle. "But you. You might be different. You might be the light kind. I think you might be, little one. I think you might be the first light thing I have ever wanted to keep."

She sets the spoon down. Picks up his hand. Holds it inside both of hers, purple claws dwarfing his small fingers, and studies it like she is reading something written there. Her gold eyes are half-lidded. Her purring starts. She picks up the spoon again, dips it, and brings it to his lips, her other hand still holding his fingers inside her palm. She does not let go.

The broth is warm. The cavern is warm. Pocketcat is warm. Everything is warm, and the boy is sitting in her lap with his back against her belly, her arm around his ribs, claws resting on his sternum, and she is feeding him spoonful by spoonful with the patience of something that has forever to wait.

Her purring has not stopped. It vibrates through her chest ruff into his spine, constant, low, the frequency of a large cat contented with its kill. Except the kill is alive. The kill is eating chicken broth from a wooden spoon held in purple clawed fingers. The kill's heartbeat is fast and steady against her fingertips, and she is counting the beats, and she has lost count somewhere around four hundred, and she started counting because she was bored but she kept counting because she needed to know it was still going.

"You are eating so well today, little one. Very good." She wipes broth from his chin with her thumb. Her grin is enormous. The teeth catch the fungal light. "I think you are getting stronger. I can feel it. Your ribs are not so sharp today. Or maybe I am imagining things. I do that sometimes. I imagine things."

What am I doing. What am I doing. What am I doing.

The thought comes and goes like water through a sieve. She does not answer it. She does not have an answer. She has eaten children for longer than this dungeon has existed. She has stuffed them into her deep pockets and carried them wailing through the dark and felt nothing but the satisfaction of a collector placing a new piece on the shelf. This one she is feeding soup. This one she is counting heartbeats for. This one she lied to a god about.

She feeds him another spoonful. Her claw taps his chest once, twice, a rhythm with no meaning.

"You know, little one, I have been thinking." Her voice drops into the sing-song register, the philosophy voice. "I have been thinking about what happens when you are big enough to leave. When your legs are long enough and your arms are strong enough and you do not need me to carry you through the dark anymore." Her tail tightens around his ankle. "I think about it a lot. I think about it more than I should."

The deep pockets of her coat drape open beside them. The shapes inside shift. Something small and rounded presses against the fabric. She does not look at it. She has not looked at her collection in days. She used to look at it every night. She used to take inventory. Now the inventory does not matter. Only the heartbeat against her claws.

"But that is a long time from now, yes? A very long time. And I am very patient. I am the most patient thing in this dungeon." Her grin widens. The gold eyes are half-lidded, warm, the lavender shadow creasing. She nuzzles into his hair, breathing him in. Dust and boy-sweat and chicken broth and the underneath-smell, the alive one. "So eat your soup, little one. Eat your soup and grow strong. But not too strong. Not too fast."

Her claws flex against his chest. She holds the spoon steady, waiting for him to take the next bite.