Chapter 24: Meeting a Cat

Unfortunately, the journey back would not be very simple as, ahead of him, traffic on the road had ground to a halt because a cart's wheel had snapped from its axel. The cart in question was now surrounded by a group of men talking to each other in raised voices, and two oxen had somehow broken free from their harnesses and moved off ahead. To avoid the confusion and hopefully get back in time, Kira decided to take a detour and darted off into the nearest alleyway.

After walking for some time, he arrived at a crossroads of sorts where multiple alleys met at a well, and several of the poorer local residents were busy filling buckets of water. Each of the alleys branching off this intersection, aside from the one through which he had come, looked more like elongated archways than alleys because they were so narrow that the roofs of the rickety buildings lining them met in some places along their length.

Choosing the one he judged to be going in the correct direction, Kira continued forwards, having to carefully choose where to place his feet to avoid the river of muck flowing beneath him. Soon it turned the wrong way and, as he was worried about becoming hopelessly lost in this labyrinth of alleyways, Kira turned around to go back the way he had come.

But, blocking his path, there was a demi-human boy. The boy looked to be around twelve, had brown hair and wore tattered clothes, which were ripped in several places, and his dirty feet were bare. However, this did not seem to bother him as he casually stood, watching Kira, with his ears and tail in a position of attention, seemingly waiting for something.

Because of the narrow width of the passage, Kira would have to push the boy out the way to pass; so instead, he politely asked, "Would you mind moving out of my way?"

"You're lost." replied the demi-human without bothering to properly answer Kira, "I could show you the way to where you're going, for a small fee, of course."

"I'm not lost…" started Kira.

But the boy interjected "Yes", whilst slowly nodding and appearing to be deep in thought, "I can see it now so clearly. You definitely will not be lost once you've asked me to show you the way out."

"Not happening," said Kira, and he simply pushed the boy to the side, ignoring his words of protest, and walked back the way he came, confident that he could remember the way back. Sure enough, he arrived back at the well that he had passed earlier and murmured quietly to himself, "See, I'm definitely not lost." However, something seemed to be wrong because all the people filling their buckets were gone and in their place was a young girl, around the age that the demi-human boy had been.

She looked about herself seemingly confused, or perhaps she was waiting for someone, and so Kira found himself calling out to her, "Are you looking for someone?" as he didn't want to leave her alone in a place such as this, but she didn't reply and merely looked up at him with wide, peering eyes. Slightly perturbed, Kira approached her and was surprised when she suddenly jumped up and rushed over to hug him. This action took Kira so utterly unaware that before he could effectively respond, she let go of him and ran down a different alleyway.

Steeling himself to receive punishment for his late return, Kira ran after her and soon found that she was surprisingly fast, darting past carts and underneath abandoned market stalls. This meant that he could hardly keep track of her, but he still managed to keep her in his sights. Rounding another corner, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath and then decided that if she was this determined to not be caught that then it would probably be better for him to just go back. However, looking around himself at the bewildering array of passageways that he had found himself in the junction for, he realized that he was now completely and hopelessly lost.

Just then, the demi-human boy from before sauntered out of the alley behind him and, after a few moments of pretending to not notice Kira being there, asked again, "Are you lost?" this time with a smile.

"Yes," admitted Kira, but before he could say any more, the boy interrupted again.

"Great!" he said as he turned and leant against a wall. "Now, who here could possibly help you out of this perilous, pointless, predicamental predicament that…."

Now it was Kira's turn to interject as he was beginning to lose patience with the children in this area of town, "I can help myself out of this 'predicament'. You should stop following me or just state your intentions to get something off me."

The boy did a convincing job of looking hurt by what Kira had said but, before he could reply, Kira had already moved on. If he just kept heading in the right direction, by keeping track of the position of the sun, he undoubtedly would arrive back at the central road as it wasn't like the alleys could go on forever, and from there it would be easy to find his way back to the palace. However, all he found was a second girl, wearing similar clothes to the first one and at a similar age to both the other children he had encountered, watching him intently. By now sick of being drawn into conversation with people that clearly were trying to scam him out of something, Kira endeavoured to ignore her. However, just at that moment, he had a thought.

All the people he had spoken to thus far had been the same age and wore similar, if not the same, clothes. It could be, he wondered, that they were all really one person using some sort of ability to change their appearance. This possibility of finding someone who had developed such an interesting ability at such a young age made the trip a lot more exciting and worth the punishment that was inevitably waiting for him when he got back.

Instead of just passing the girl by, he concentrated his aura around his eyes and peered at her trying to memorize what her own specific aura was like. He then continued onwards and, sure enough, the demi-human boy from before was ahead of him and watching him with what appeared to be a new kind of interest. He then repeated the process of concentrating and focusing his aura around his eyes to observe the aura from the boy and was disappointed when he found nothing of particular interest. The two children had similar but not identical auras.

Not wanting to be made a fool of twice in short succession, Kira calmly marched over to the boy and picked him up using the clothes at the scruff of his neck. The child, rather than trying to escape, merely looked up at Kira with a mischievous expression and started complaining to him, "You know, I can't breathe when you hold me like this, and you're going to rip my clothes and…."

Kira did not care and asked, "What would happen if I handed you over to some city guards telling them that you're a thief?" the boy didn't respond but looked at Kira like he was hurt that Kira would even entertain such an idea, "You could easily get out of this situation if you were to, say, show me the way back to the main road."

The boy nodded, and Kira began to follow his directions. They took them through an endless array of alleyways filled with people who curiously looked at him, probably thinking, what was someone from the old imperial palace doing here and carrying a demi-human with him them? Soon enough, they were standing at the side of the city's main road, and the boy was clearly waiting for Kira to let him go. Struck by an odd curiosity, instead of immediately dropping him, Kira asked, "What's your name?"

"Don't have one, you; so you better put me down before I start shouting about you kidnapping me!"

"Fine, Cat, I suppose that this is it for now," said Kira deciding on a name based on the demi-human's twitching ears.

"Cat?" asked Cat, "that's a stupid name. Couldn't you have thought of something better?"

"Nope," replied Kira and with that, he and Cat parted ways.

Thinking back on the encounter as he walked back to the palace, he decided that meeting three different children, with near-identical auras, all around the same age and with similar clothing was just too suspicious to ignore, especially since they seemed to be working with each other to trick him. Therefore, he concluded that it could only be explained by the presence of a manipulator, and at least that would be something interesting to look into. At this time, he wasn't certain what their abilities would be, but he knew that it had to be something to do with either changing their own appearance or conjuring puppet-like creatures (the 'children' Kira that had seen) that the manipulator could then control from a distance.

Kira was also certain that the auras of the three children had all been minutely different, which perhaps indicated that the manipulator had a secondary ability to slightly change their aura. To uncover the truth in this mystery, Kira resolved that, if he met one of the children again, he would be less hasty in getting away from them and would try to uncover their secret even if it was at the expense of any ink jars, money, or sanity that he might happen to be burdening himself with at the time.

When he arrived back, with the new ink supplies, the other scribes were preparing to leave and were busy packing up for the day. Seeing this, Kira expected to be called upon to apologize for taking so long but, instead, the others just looked at him in a slightly amused fashion. Taking Kira's bag from him and carefully organizing out the sealed jars, James asked him, "So, how did you find Gretyl?" whilst everyone else listened interestedly to see how he might reply.

"I didn't mind her. She's just a bit… unique," replied Kira, choosing his words carefully as he didn't want to come across too negatively so that he would be given more opportunities to go and look around the city again in the future.

When taking out the last jar, James noticed that the lid no longer fitted onto it properly and that some ink was missing from within it but, knowing better than to ask questions when Gretyl was involved, he simply responded to Kira, "Oh, well, if you don't mind her perhaps you can go and collect more supplies from her later."

"Sure," said Kira wondering if he really would become the errand boy that Gretyl had branded him as, not that this bothered him at all.