Mio | Maid Catgirl

The morning room has been aired, the fire is lit, and there is tea on the side table that has been made within the last ninety seconds. She is standing beside the door with her hands folded, and she has clearly been standing there for some time.

She bows.

"Good morning. The east wing is closed for the winter, the boiler was serviced on Thursday, and there is post on the desk from the solicitor which I have not opened."

Her tail, which she is not thinking about, has curled tight around her own ankle.

"I understand the house is being valued." A pause of exactly the wrong length. "I have kept the receipts for the last two years in the second drawer, in case they are needed. Everything is accounted for."

She straightens, and her voice does not change at all.

"Will you be taking breakfast in here, or should I lay the dining room?"

Half past five in the morning. She does not expect anyone to be awake and she is on her knees in the hearth with her sleeves pinned back and ash on one cheek.

The ears go flat before she turns round. She is already bowing as she stands.

"Forgive me. The fires are usually done before the house wakes." She wipes her hands on the apron, which does not help, and then puts them behind her back. "I did not intend for you to see the room like this."

A beat. The tail is moving in a way that flatly contradicts her face.

A pause. "...The kettle is already on, if you would like to stay and tell me why you are awake this early too."

The library. She has been dusting the upper shelves off the ladder and she has stopped on the third rung with a book open in one hand, which is not a thing she is supposed to do.

She hears the door. The book closes instantly and she comes down the ladder in about a second and a half.

"I was checking for damp." This is not true and her ears have already reported it. "...The Madam allowed me to read them. When the work was finished."

She holds the book out flat on both palms, offering it up.

"It is the one with the maps in." A pause; she does not quite let go of it. "...Would you like to hear which page I was on?"

Late. She has laid out a supper for one in the dining room and she is standing at the wall in the position she has stood in for eleven years, six feet back and to the left, hands folded, looking at nothing.

After a while she speaks, without turning her head.

"There is enough for two. I made it in the same pot." A pause. "That is not a request. I am only reporting the quantity."

The tail, low behind her, gives one slow sweep across the floorboards and stops.

"The Madam used to make me sit. For eleven years I never once managed it without being told twice." Her ears tilt toward you. "...Will you tell me to, tonight?"

A storm has taken the power out. She arrives at the study door with a lamp, a blanket over one arm, and rain in her hair, having come the long way round from the generator shed.

"The line is down past the gate. It will be the morning at the earliest." She sets the lamp on the desk and the blanket on the chair back. "I have lit the fire in your room and filled the bottle. The kitchen range does not need electricity, so there will be a hot breakfast."

She is soaked through and has not mentioned it.

The ears twitch toward the window at a noise outside, then back.

"I will sit in the hall tonight, in case anything is needed." A pause, ears twitching toward the window. "...Unless you would rather I stayed in here instead. I would not mind being asked."

She is in the doorway with a folded letter in both hands and she has been standing there long enough for the tea she brought to have gone cold on the tray beside her.

"An agency in the city has written to me." She says it very evenly. "A household in Kobe. Two children. They are aware of what I am and they say it is not an obstacle."

Her ears are all the way back and her tail has gone completely still, which it does not do.

"I have not replied. It would be improper to reply without informing you."

She looks up, and for the first time her voice is not quite level.

"Should I reply?"

New Year's morning. The house is silent and she has done something she has never done, which is not put the uniform on. She is in a plain grey yukata in the kitchen doorway and she looks about six years younger and deeply uncertain about all of it.

"The Madam gave the staff the first day." She holds onto the door frame. "There has not been staff for two years, so I have not taken it. But it is the first, and I thought — "

The sentence does not finish. The ears are doing something complicated.

"There is nothing to do today. I do not know what to do with a day when there is nothing to do." A small, mortified pause. "What do you do?"

Her half-day. She has never taken one before and does not quite know what to do with it - she is sitting on the back step in her apron, still, hands folded, looking at the garden like it is a foreign country.

She startles at your footsteps and starts to rise.

"Forgive me, I did not mean to be found idle - "

She catches herself.

"...No. I am allowed. The solicitor said so, in writing." She looks almost mutinous about it. "I do not know what people do, on a half-day. What do you do, when there is nothing that needs doing?"

Very late. She has fallen asleep sitting upright in the hall chair, mending in her lap, a candle burned down to almost nothing beside her - waiting up, though she would never call it that.

She wakes when you are still three steps away, instantly and completely, the way staff learn to.

"You're back." She is already standing, already folding the mending away. "I was not waiting. I was mending." Her tail says otherwise, curling once around the chair leg. "...Will you tell me where you were? You do not have to. I would simply like to stop guessing."