Mius’ reply was less than helpful, to say the least. It made sense, of course, that the company Mius would keep would be more than human, but it wasn’t exactly specific. At least it let him cross off about seven billion human beings from the list anyway. But it did leave him with the unenviable task of actually finding these deities and questioning them. A list in the several hundreds. So who could he cross of that list?
Yahweh seemed rather unlikely, and not in Mius’ field if interests, probably. In fact, may as cross out all those paternal, or maternal, overlord deities like Yahweh or Amaterasu. Just not his thing, probably. Could he stand the company of Vulcan, or Mars? Likely not. Mars is violent enough to give Mius a spot of entertainment, but probably not sufficiently clever. Same for Vulcan. Kaisar was narrowing in on something here.
It had to be a god that was clever, violent perhaps, a bit masochistic, a bit sadistic. A match for Mius, really. That terrified him, a little bit, but it did narrow the domain of his search significantly. Anansi? Not cruel enough. Hermes? Tricky, but not devilish enough. Wisakedjak? He’s really reaching there, and all to avoid the most likely answer, that he really, really wished he could strike off that list.
Instead, he was forced to circle it. the most reasonable answer. It really ought have been more obvious.
Loki.
Kaisar set his notepad down back in his dufflebag, and traded it for a pack of cigarettes. He drew one out, as he got up to his feet and lit up in the alley, shaking his head, “And just how the hell am I supposed to manage that?” he asks no one in particular.
//Not sure if you meant either or both dreams and nightmares or regarding both characters but I am nothing if not ready to talk about dream states so HERE WE GOOOOO
[Dreams]
They’re on the roof again. It’s dark. Everything’s dark.
And it’s nice. It’s nice and there are bright, but dim little circles floating in the distance. City lights? Stars? What’s the difference here?
She’s talking.
“...and then there was this bird, right? I saw him just, like, flyin’ over the bar table like “peep peep hey hello hi there!” and, get this! He just! Landed!” She stops here a moment to wiggle her hands around the swirly edged balls on either side of her head “Right here! Like ‘you are the chosen one. I have claimed you.’ And...”
They drift into the colors and pictures of her story until another moment elucidates itself.
“But hey, it’s getting late, huh. Maybe we could pick this up later?”
They could. She’s right. It is late for her probably.
But this time, they aren’t so ready to wave her off. They climb to their feet.
“Oh, I suppose we could, but why?” they asked half-jokingly.
“Of course, we could both lay down and go to sleep and wander into the coming morrow, but—” Without much regard to their environment, they step over to the roof’s edge, peering down at the blurry sea of lights below. “We could do something fun instead.”
And it’s with these final words that they simply lean forward and fall.
They fall, and she’s right there in an instant, wings fully extended and laughing as she hoists them up by the arms.
“Ahhh! We could, couldn’t we?”
Maybe it’s magic, or perhaps it’s just their mood, but seconds later they don’t even need her to keep them up anymore. She releases their grip and they relish in the ability to fly again.
The two of them are just beginning to soar over the tallest skyrises Gotham City has to offer when—
~~
Are they...home?
It had rained recently, anyway. Or had it?
There are bubbles everywhere. Bubbles and puddles and...
“...they were never made to map something on this scale...we may as well draw on water!”
They turn and spin in circles, searching everywhere for the source of the noise when one of the bubbles contains not empty colors, but a face. A rabbit’s face!
Their eyes grow cartoonishly big in the reflection of the bubble as they examine it.
“How did you get in there?” they ask the rabbit-bubble-man.
And then it clicks who it is. Mius.
The name echoes in the ambient noise before he answers the question with his signature hare-mouthed grin.
“Why, that’s a very good question! Can you tell me?” he returns. It’s not mocking, though. He means it.
Their lips crease. “Hmm...”
POP!
Off it goes. He disappears. However, a few seconds later...
“Hello, expert bubble blaster!”
Dandelion eyes greet them upon jumping backward.
“You got me!”
The next few minutes of dream time and few hours of real time are spent chasing a funny looking bunny living inside bubbles until one of them pops in their face.
[Nightmares]
Yellow.
Yellow everywhere.
Their eyes attempt to adjust to what are probably the barlights. Close to them are a couple voices, one vague and one immediately recognizable as Sakura.
“I—I didn’t know he was just a human, I swear! If I knew, if I knew he was so—SHHHshshshshhh!”
The source of the other voice is blurred still. Faded into obscurity.
“What..? Sakura, I—”
“You could have died there! Why didn’t you tell me?!”
The look of worry on her face has them more panicked than she is.
“Tell you what exactly..?”
Their words are hazy, weak, and as they try to get up, there’s something missing. Some things. There are literally no means to do so.
“We—we can’t stay here! We have to get you somewhere! Oh my god, I would have never let you come if I knew you were so weak! That you were just a human!”
They open their mouth to ask her, to get some kind of explanation, but everything is numb. Within seconds, the faded figure has picked up their now legless body and the last sight they get to see before disappearing into the darkness is her face. Full of sorrow and disappointment and regret.
~~
“Rye Katcher.”
Their head almost jumps off its neck with how quickly it darts up from bed. It’s darkness.
Their room is empty, just as they had found it. The window is closed, the modest green curtains have been shut so no light pours in from the outside and—
Giant glowing golden eyes blink from the corner, and then two snow white ears emerge above them.
“Oh? Hello, Rye!” a dainty, chipper voice answers as he emerges from the corner of the room. “Oh, do forgive me. I only wish to make myself comfortable.”
He goes to open the drapes, letting the night sky into their room. It just illuminates his body like a shimmering ghost.
Everything is wrong.
“How—how did you—”
“This is dreadfully early a bedtime for you, Rye Katcher.” His muses playfully. “Are things just that boring today?”
They open their mouth to answer, but before any words can come out he’s already plopped down in bed next to them.
“Oh, no, I understand. It really is, isn’t it?” he chuckles. It’s quiet, but his laughter carries something dissonant with it. “I get bored around this time too...”
They need to get out, they need to get away, but something is holding them. A force unnamed is all but literally smothering them under its weight.
He turns to them with a tilted head, quizzical eyes looking past them. “Do you get lonely this time of night? I thought you might...that’s why I chose to keep you company...”
He trails off. Mius’ ears droop down the sides of his face and he looks close to tears, but just as quickly his head perks up and he leans closer until all they can see are his eyes that have only seemed to grown bigger.
“That’s why I thought to help you have fun, Rye!”
Their bed disappears from underneath them. Everything disappears. Nothing is there anymore but they’re falling and he’s standing. Standing right in front of them and cackling, as if he had pulled the prank of a century.
It doesn’t last long, though. The floor hitting their face is enough to bring them out of it.
The following letter was stuffed hidden away behind a loose brick, secure in the knowledge that it’s intended recipient would be sure to find it, one way or another.
So Mius, I ever tell you about that time I had to suplex a bear? I’m almost 100 percent that I haven’t, and in either case unless you’ve got it written down somewhere, I retelling it can’t hurt.
So, again, this happened back down Louisiana way, and incidentally features more or less many of the same people, and actually occurred only about a week after I met them, so it was back when Eva, my contact in the town, was dating Adney in a semi-serious way. Always struck me as weird that pairing. She was incredibly naive, but fairly intelligent and well learned. Adney on the other hand, as you may recall, is a few hammers short of a box of fries or something like that.
Well, they liked to party, of course, what with the whole punk rock band going on for Adney. Didn’t pay too much attention to all that, didn’t hang around them that much to know what went on, but I do know it got them mixed up with a few peculiar characters. I don’t think I ever got his name, so I’ll just refer to him as John. Shifty John maybe, cause the guy was shady as fuck. And that’s coming from me, man. That means something. I don’t think he really considered them friends as much as useful idiots. I’d hesitate to call them useful.
Sweet Naive Eva, though, bless her heart, got it up in her head that the Zoo was the greatest injustice in town. She managed to convince Adney, who was probably to be frank stoned out of his mind at the time, that they really ought to like, do something about it. Free all the critters in the Zoo from their prisons! Shifty as fuckin John, seemed to find this hilarious and egged them on and joined in on the expedition. It was like every ten year old city kid’s first adventure, to sneak into a zoo in the middle of the night and set all the animals free.
Here’s the thing though; they actually managed to fuckin pull it off. I know! Right?! See, I had no idea any of this was going on until just about then, which is when I got sucked into the whole insane affair. For me, it all started when a huge ass pink Flamingo took the biggest, dankest bird-shit right square on the windshield of my car. I had to pull over due to my vision being blocked. When I got out of the car I heard the screaming, noticed the flashing red and blue lights, and the sound of police sirens everywhere, and suddenly paying attention, I realized that it wasn’t just one stray Flamingo, but every critter in the Zoo spreading out across the city.
So yeah, obviously things were amiss, and I started running to the zoo. Would have gotten there straight away if there wasn’t a giant angry Baboon wailing on a car with a couple people screaming in it. I had to run off, climb a tree, snap off a big heavy branch, and set it on fire, so that I could have something to scare the animals away. Of course the tree I picked just had to be occupied by a disgruntled toucan that tried to peck and claw fingers off. And of course all that commotion of me dangling from a branch while trying to wrestle my hand out of a toucans beak was just the kind of commotion to distract an angry baboon, and soon this thing was under my legs shrieking at me and trying to grab my ankles.
Eventually, I hooked my legs on the tree, and was able to free a hand up to swat at the bird enough that it got the picture to give it up and fly away, and emboldened, I climbed up further to really snap that branch off, and proceeded to assert my dominance at the Baboon below with the help of a lighter, and my own usual brand of reckless abandoned that, as you may recall, once lead me to tackle and bite a lion.
Finally, I was able to start running towards the Zoo, and of course, by then, I was pissed the fuck off.
When I arrived, bypassing assorted Zebra and rampaging big cats with the aid of my torch, I came upon the rather absurd sight of the aforementioned trio in black sweat pants and turtle necks, with ski masks on. I didn’t recognize them, but two of them just happened to just be siting there blithely while a huge ass fucking Grizzly bear came running up to them. It was getting up on two legs with it’s fore limbs and claws spread, and growling something fierce, and, I swear, Adney said something like ‘E wans ta ‘ug us!’ and they both giggled. I think Eva was stoned too.
There was only one thing I could do to save them in that limited amount of time, with the bear rearing up on them like that. I sprinted as hard as I could, threw my arms around the bear’s waist, and screaming something fierce myself, hauled and pulled, and using my own body a pivot, swung it over top of me backwards, such that it landed on it’s head, as I flopped backwards. I guess it got the picture because it stumbled away, dazed and disoriented after that.
And for a while I just laid there on the grass, shaking with adrenaline and anger. Then I sat up, and started shouting. “Excuse me. Just what in the fffffffFFFFUCK is going on here?!” I queried. I got up and started marching up on one of them. They were more scared of me than the bear oddly enough. I grabbed em, started wrestling off the ski mask. “Are you people all, seriously, motherfucking reta-” I started, but, then I actually got the mask off to see Adney’s bewildered stoned ass face and raspberry-slurpee blue hair. I quickly realized who tweedle-dum was. “... Well, alright, but, you!” I said, pointed to Eva. “You should know better!”
That’s when Shady ass John slipped out of the woodwork and was all like, “You didn’t see shit, you can’t prove anything!”, you know, super defensive and such, but Eva pulled her mask off herself, and immediately started apologizing. Said that they just wanted to help let the animals out of the cages so they could run around and play! I just needed to give John a look after that one to shut him down. But she said it so earnestly, so genuinely... It was like... How do you even be mad at that?
So I gave up and took the lot of them out for Chinese. Because, what else could I do? Eva’s ridiculous naivety was put on display yet more over there, and I just deadpan jokingly asked if she was an alien. She freaked out and asked how I knew.
So there, you have the story of how I saved the lives of a naive alien and a stoned punk rock guitarist by suplexing a bear.
In exchange, leave me a hint on how to find that friend of yours I ought talk to. I’m sure I could do it regardless, but you’ll save me an assload of time.
Rye’s eyes flick up and away, as if suddenly distracted.
“I have a lot of thoughts on many people. Why would you single her out?”
“Well, I get the impression that she is very important in many contexts. She doesn’t carry the air about her, though. That I have gotten from other people.”
“In any case, she serves to be less stressful company than others.”
~~
“Mius.”
They dwell on the name for several seconds.
“If I gave you any thought about him, it would be incorrect. Even the corrected impressions are incorrect, and yet one thing I can tell you is that he is impressive.”
The “tenant” job serves its uses around this time. Rye’s blood is flowing before their stroll and it wraps up here to remind them of how beautiful the quiet of night-blanketed outside world is like.
As of late, it’s been serving another purpose. In the between-times of jumping from place to place organizing dining messes, they can watch and listen unnoticed. Just a working stiff in a crowd. Mostly, this centers around Mius, the bar’s resident hare-brained enigma.
Or at least they thought he was hare-brained until he proved otherwise.
His life is governed by routine. Every day, the same thing over and over again. He comes, he sits down in his designated corner, and he writes, and when he isn’t writing, he’s staring off and around him aimlessly. He has a cup that he oftentimes forgets exists, but it typically comes of no consequence.
He seems to have some kind of sense, though, lately. Almost every time they’ve passed him the past few days, he’s been preoccupied. As if some divine force smited upon him a sense of purpose. They’ve been able to count on both hands the amount of times they’ve seen his face.
And then he breaks it.
The next time they glance their head up from behind the counter, a pair of snow-white ears serve as moving beacons from one side of the room to the other.
He’s leaving.
It’s barely enough time to arrange everything for someone else to pick up and notify Coraline (a co-worker, someone oddly home reminiscent for some reason) of their ended shift before they start after him.
By this time, he’s out, turned the corner, but not too far. Illuminated by lampposts and city lights, he’s impossible to miss. They dart on the flats of their feet to the opposite street, further away and more importantly, darker.
Koishe would come home to find things... suspiciously not quite right. There's just something to the air in the nice high-rise apartment. Certain things are out of place: a rug ruffled, a chair toppled over, a book knocked from a table to the floor. Not enough to be outright chaos, but certainly a certain amount of disarray.
Then a cat walks by. A normal enough occurance one might think... except this cat stands a meter tall at the shoulders, the size of a panther or perhaps a small lion. It is in all other respects identical as one of Koishe's usual feline friends. Two more, equally enlarged, are stretched out in a sunbeam. And so on. Every cat in the house has been magnified to a rather significant size. Hosecats become mountain lions. They are perfectly happy and healthy, if perhaps a little bewildered and clumsy when, say, a favorite chair is suddenly too small, or rubbing against a table seems to have unexpected effects for some reason.
And in the air, beneath all the dander is a faint but distinct hint of fox-fur and fae magic. Surely this is a complete coincidence, and the two events have nothing to do with each other.
[LET'S SEE IF THERE'S ANY SURVIVORS BY THE END OF THIS] Kichuna: "...tell me what happened? Hello?"
Unconscious sentence starters
He recognizes the voice -- though in his state he fails to identify it. His head is pounding and a searing pain in his chest and down the side of his face prevents his breath from coming easily, and he manages to open his eyes just wide enough to glimpse sharp teeth and gleaming feline eyes before too much light and too little strength forces them closed again.
Kichuna, if he had to venture a guess.
They had rarely exchanged more than a word or two in passing over the last several years, but he knows her face. And her voice, now that he has glimpsed her.
He hasn’t decided whether or not her presence is comforting.
A response gathers itself on his tongue, but a moment or two passes before he can find enough breath to give it form. And when he does he barely manages more than a whisper.
