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Ivan has gone and gotten lost in this stupidly large house. The party's turnout hasn't spilled upstairs yet, so he can't ask for directions to the stairwell after having got turned around finding the lav, so he's opening doors. This is a closet. That is someone's office. That room has partially clothed people in it and they aren't pleased to see him. "Sorry." This room -
...the fuck?
It's not a stairwell, but when Ivan eventually finds the stairwell, if the hostess doesn't ask him not to steal her cool house contents that she meant to show off herself, he's going to present to somebody who needs impressing it as his own discovery. Which it is; he discovered it. In he goes to this oddly spacious empty bar.
middlingalong
palmofyourhand
Someone walks into the oddly spacious empty bar after him. Someone is followed by a long-legged ginger cat.
"The fuck," says someone, looking around with an expression of mildly confused annoyance.
middlingalong
Blink, blink. "Oh, hi. I didn't meet you downstairs, I'm Ivan Vorpatril. Do you happen to know where the stairs are? Got lost, wandered in here. I didn't know Alexei's family had a cat."
palmofyourhand
"...The fuck," he repeats, staring at Ivan and then looking with increasing bewilderment at Ivan's immediate surroundings. "Do you - no, obviously you don't know a daemon when you see one. What the hell is going on?"
palmofyourhand
"A daemon," says the cat, in a quiet female voice and deeply contemptuous tone.
palmofyourhand
The talking cat lashes her tail. The talking human shakes his head. "What did I do to deserve this?" he asks, probably rhetorically.
middlingalong
"Where did you get a talking cat? An intelligible talking cat? I've bloody been to Cetaganda and even they don't have talking cats!"
palmofyourhand
"Come out here and I'll show you," he snorts, but when he turns back to open the door it won't budge.
middlingalong
"It might look the same and feel different if some prankster had decided to lock us in Alexei's weird bar room for a laugh, but point taken."
palmofyourhand
He gives Ivan a look, like it is not even possible to measure the depth of idiocy Ivan has just displayed.
middlingalong
"I'm getting the impression you are not here for Mireille's party?"
middlingalong
"Mostly your looking at me like I had sprouted a talking cat out of my forehead. Seriously, where did you get one of those? Jackson's Whole?"
palmofyourhand
"Ugh," says the talking cat.
"She's my daemon," says the human, rolling his eyes. "I didn't get her anywhere, I was born with her."
"She's my daemon," says the human, rolling his eyes. "I didn't get her anywhere, I was born with her."
palmofyourhand
"I was born with a soul, who settled into the form of a cat when I was thirteen," he says. "You apparently don't have one at all. Maybe that's why you're so thick."
middlingalong
"Excuse me! On my planet we do not have cat souls! Same with other planets of my acquaintance, you're acting like this is some extremely commonplace thing!"
palmofyourhand
"Well excuse me," he says, rolling his eyes again, "I don't know where the fuck you're from but on Earth you'd be a zombie."
middlingalong
"I've bloody been to Earth and they didn't have cat souls there either! Purring thermo-fucking-taxic cat blankets yes, cat souls no!"
palmofyourhand
"Clearly this is some sort of fucking dimensional bullshit," he concludes.