Hi! :) Can I ask what you're working on these days? Do you ever write original stuff?
Hey there, friend! I do write original stuff, sadly it’s all non-fiction at this point. On the fiction front, I’m casually (read: v. slowly) plodding away at a mwtw!Lexa origin story — I feel like there’s only a very select group of readers who’d be interested in it (seeing as Clexa is more than a decade away) but it got caught in my brain. Probably because I’m a glutton for angst :-)
If you are interested, here’s a rough excerpt : the storyline starts right after 5-year-old mwtw!Lexa’s mother dies and she starts boarding, but this scene is a few months later. It’s from 10yo Anya’s POV, because as always, I need someone else to describe the awe and wonder that is Lexa haha.
More Women than Warriors Prequel—sneak peak below.
“Do you have any pets at home, Anya?”
It’s a Sunday, gloriously free of the usual Caireen weekend activities, and to no one’s surprise, Lexa’s happily curled up with her books. Winter’s pale light is streaming in through the window, sunbeams setting the pages of her book translucent with every turn. She’s leaning her cheek against the warm glass, leaving a smudge she’ll no doubt wipe clean the moment she hops down, and the tongue that’s been poking out of the corner of her mouth as she reads only retracts with her question.
Caught staring, you startle but manage to turn it into a cough. You raise an eyebrow at the random question and then turn the page in your own book, lying between your crossed legs.
“Yep.” You look down again but she’s still watching you and you heave out a sigh. “A cat, a dog, and a snake.”
The five-year-old doesn’t take her eyes off you as you pretend to be engrossed in your history textbook, and finally you clear your throat at her.
“Why?” you prompt.
You sneak a peak of the book she’s reading while she bites her lip. Animal Husbandry.
Right.
Of course.
(You look up the definition of husbandry later and promptly confiscate the book before she can get to the extremely visual chapter on breeding.)
“I’ve never had a pet,” she eventually says. “But if I did, I think I’d like a cat. They look so soft. Are they?”
Scrunching your face, you try to figure out if she’s serious. “You’ve never petted a cat?”
Lexa shakes her head, somehow eager and wistful all at the same time.
“I guess they have soft fur,” you tell her with a shrug. “It can be a pain, though—my cat Tashi needs brushing almost every day or we all get hair in our noses.” You can feel your lips beginning to curl up at the memory of your beautiful, giant cat and then carefully peel a photo of her off the wall.
Lexa exhales a breathy little sigh when you toss it over to her; she doesn’t censor the slow smile that creeps up her face and into the sparkle of her eyes as she studies the picture and you’re pummeled with the irrational need to sneak out of House and pound on the doors of the local animal shelter until they let you adopt her a furry bed-hog of her own.
(You consider several scenarios before giving up on the idea. At least three.)
But next afternoon finds you skipping tea—fairy cakes, to add insult to injury— and instead tiptoeing through the wild shrubbery behind the boarding houses, clicking your tongue like an idiot and trying to keep your shoes out of the brambles and pockets of mud.
You eventually find the dark-coated wanderer lounging in a patch of sun. He swats half-heartedly at you when you disturb his nap and likes it even less when you pick him up and carefully—so, so carefully—deposit him in your empty backpack.
Pauna is not impressed when you zip him in and rush inside, even though you’re holding the bundle in your arms so as not to jostle him around, and it’s honestly a shock his yowls don’t alert the entire Caireen staff to the cat-napping. Somehow you make it to your bedroom, though, setting the indignant prisoner free and apologising with the turkey sandwich scraps you’d saved at lunch in anticipation of your feline heist.
(You still can’t believe you’re doing this.)
Luckily, the school cat is fairly chill, accepting your bribe and resuming his nap on the window seat as if he were never interrupted. You fill a clean cup with water from the sink in case he gets thirsty, and then sneak back out of House before you can be late to Debate granplei.
Lexa has her weekly meeting with Heda after supper and you dash back to Caireen, relieved to find the cat in his same spot.
Even better, he hasn’t peed all over your duvet in retribution.
He sniffs disdainfully at the chicken you’ve brought him—you don’t blame him, the school does overcook everything until it’s dryer than a desert—but it’s disappeared by the time you’ve changed into your home clothes.
Right before Lexa’s due to return, you hoist the animal away from the windowsill and plop him on the little girl’s (perfectly-made) bed. He grumbles at the loss of the radiator heat, but can’t be bothered to move, either. You settle in at the desk, pull out your French prep, and pretend you’re not waiting.
When Lexa finally pushes open the door after her customary knock and pause, she stops dead in her tracks.
Her little mouth actually drops open.
“Anya,” she whispers and you fix a blasé expression on your face.
“Hey, Lexa. Heda brought you back alright?”
“There’s a cat…” she breathes, so quietly you can hardly hear, eyes so wide you can see an entire halo of white around the blue.
You let your eyes meander over to the dozing feline and then sigh, as if in exasperation. “Oh, yeah—bloody school cat. He sauntered in earlier like he owned the place and wouldn’t leave. Go tell Mrs. Daisy if you want your bed back, she’ll shoo him away.”
Lexa shakes her head, as if in a daze, and takes a slow, single step forward. Her eyes are locked on the cat and doesn’t even flinch at the sudden slamming of the door behind her.
“We have a school cat?” she asks in wonder and you honestly can’t figure out how her grandparents don’t want her because this—the eager light in her eyes as she clasps her hands behind her back, yearning fingers clinging to the stronghold of her school pinafore bow—this is the very definition of everything good and just in the world.
“He’s probably not an official school cat,” you concede, your own fingers squirming to hug the little girl but knowing it’d activate all her usual defenses. And, oh god, it’s so lovely and rare when she’s open like this. “But I think he’s been around for awhile. You can pet him,” you laugh when Lexa just continues to gawp at the interloper on her bed.
At your words, Lexa’s head snaps over to you and her eyes narrow suspiciously.
You throw your hands up. “What? You think I went out, scooped up the school cat, and, I don’t know, snuck him into House in a backpack, just so you could meet him? Seriously, Lexa…”
(The cat hair in the bottom of your rucksack would betray you instantly, you realise, and remind yourself to clean it out as soon as she’s distracted.)
“Pauna’s always wandering into the Houses,” you go on when she doesn’t seem convinced. “He slept in my last room a couple of times at the beginning of the year.” That part is true, at least. Matron and the Housemistresses of the main Houses don’t allow it, per se, but it’s not like anyone alerts them to the cat’s presence. So, really, you were just…accelerating the timeline.
Lexa takes another step, the one more. “His name is Pauna?”
“Mmm. I think it’s Trigedasleng, but I don’t know what it means. Flea-ridden beast, probably,” you try grumbling. It’s difficult.
“I’ll ask Heda,” Lexa murmurs, distracted as she reaches the bed. She crouches down until her face is level with the cat, hand still securely tucked behind her back, and watches.
“Oh my god, Lexa, just pat the mangy thing. He won’t bite you.”
Lexa whips her head over to you. “But he’s sleeping,” she insists, concerned, but there’s the slightest upward note to her words that turns it into a question, a hope.
Rolling your eyes, you cap your fountain pen and stand, walking over to the object of Lexa’s reverence and bending down to stroke him with far less sacrosanctity than the girl seems to think cats demand. He opens a single golden eye to glare at you but then closes it and allows the adulation with a throaty purr.
“See?”
Lexa swallows and then reaches out her hand, letting the cat sniff her fingers before running them down his sleek black coat.
“Oh!” she exclaims in a whisper, “He is soft. Softer than I imagined.” Lexa’s so delighted by the discovery you can’t stand it.
“I do know that the Trigedasleng for ‘cat’ is sofstepa,” you offer. Hastily adding, “I still don’t like that stupid language, I only bothered remembering that word because I like it.”
(That’s a lie—you’ve found yourself learning loads of Trigedasleng lately, even using them in conversations with your friends. Doesn’t mean you have to accept it.)
“Sofstepa,” Lexa repeats, letting the word roll along her tongue with delight. “Cats have fatty padding in their paws to muffle their sound, you know. Lions and tigers have it, too.”
And seriously. This is what you have to contend with on a daily basis.
You roll your eyes.
The little girl climbs onto the bed like she’s either performing a ballet or diffusing a bomb, careful and fluid so she doesn’t bounce the mattress. She crosses her legs, hunches over, and stares at the sleeping cat with awe.
With a snort, you leave her to it and start on your prepwork, squashing the impulse to tease her about studying the animal like he’s a science project or one of her beloved textbooks.
The next time you look over, the animal’s eyes are fully-open and he’s staring at Lexa in the exact same way.
–
Pauna spends the next three weeks avoiding the Caireen staff during the day and curled up on Lexa’s legs at night. Three weeks in which you suspect Mrs. Daisy turns a blind eye whenever she pops her head into your room because Lexa’s face is burrowed into warm fur; three weeks that an orphan girl’s nightmares disappear; three weeks until the cleaner finally says something and the cat moves on to his next watering hole.
But much to every boarder’s cheer, the school sofstepa frequents Caireen more than any other House in the coming years.
Most frequently of all to Lexa’s happy little arms.
