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It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.
There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.
Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.
Something shuffles downstairs.
And continues to shuffle.
"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.
"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.
The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.
"Oh my god." A third voice.
"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."
"Fuck."
Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.
Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.
She huffs in irritation. "You're not going to want to train melee again until you've spent some time training magic, and I want to train you in melee again!
. . .
Frankly, I'd rather spend our time together doing that, than doing the Four Things In This Life That You Do Not Have To Do and getting our souls blackout drunk on wine-insight."
"No, it's not!
Whatever, I just mean it's boring and bad for us to stand around inspecting our own souls when if we're living our lives effectively, they'll just change before we can come to any useful conclusions."
But you just gave a nothing response to a minimally prying question about your childhood and then said it was making you too uncomfortable to continue without being physically comforted!
Whatever. She has enough experience with crazy people who contradict themselves to know that you never get out of their contradictions by pointing them out.
"I don't think I can learn anything more useful about you just by asking questions.
It's obvious that you're" a spy "congenitally rootless." And have an undeveloped ability to understand the attachments of others.
Ougghhhh. The sound of a pretty lady judging her sends her psyche reeling. She clings tighter to Tazich, unsure what to say in response.
"Well, I'm uuh, sorry to have wasted your time and been inconsiderate of your feelings. I hope I can do better in the future." She turns her head away in shame. Her spindly arms strain from how tightly she's squeezing Tazich's soft middle.
She is glad she stopped tossing the sword! Katie is strong for her size when she's distressed!
She pets Katie's head, happy to be her refuge from Teg's bullshit.
Honestly, this was the kind of manner she would have been expecting from Katie the whole time. But now that she's getting it, for some reason, it makes her nervous. She doesn't understand why. A bizarre clockwork contraption darkened her threshold and burst into flames at being breathed on before she could even figure out what it was supposed to do.
She tries not to show it.
"Thanks for the mouse." She nods and goes back in her room.
"You're welcome!" She waits a moment for Teg to shut the door. "Can we cuddle a bit longer? I feel like Teg hates me now and I want to die about it."
Katie really said "you're welcome" for the mouse which SHE retrieved from outside the cat flap.
Whatever. She bites her tongue and nods beneficently into Katie's neck tendon.
"Hey, are you ears sensitive? I can't believe I've never wondered about that until now."
Purr. Katie's hand is nice and warm.
She puts her hands on her little hips, agonizing that Katie can't get fat faster, trying to avoid putting too much point pressure on bone.
"Fantasizing about how I'm gonna fill out?" She leans in and gently, investigatively nibbles Tazich's ear.