Sam
Shujin
Know what you're doing yet?
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AN: Um. Hi. Hope this is good. Tell me if it isn't. Recommend re-reading the story.
Sam is a perfectly ordinary orange tabby cat of Here.
A proud tail. Four paws with pink moisturized toe beans. Well maintained claws and whiskers. Sleek white and striped orange fur, alert ears and a healthy five kilograms in weight. Lady cats loved him! Adventurous, curious with a taste for whiskey and salmon. He preferred his litter clean, mice and birds absent, toilet paper shredded and only knocked things off the counter when there was literally nothing else to do.
A good sort of bloke. A truly upstanding citizen of Here.
Here where, you ask?
Well, sometimes it's There, other times it's Nowhere and rarely it's When but every cat who does cat things and follows the cat ways knows that 'falling asleep' is a misnomer. Your world can be likened to an onion, with just as many layers to existence. Close your eyes.
Wake in another reality.
The transition most humans aren't aware of. Blessed ignorance. A vested interest in keeping it that way. Do not panic. Hypnos means well.
Most of the time.
For cats, it was a fact of life.
You may have heard the Here, There, Nowhere and When called the 'Dreamlands.' A paradise of imagination that fulfills your every whim. A place of surreal wonders. A land of dreams.
Another affectation.
Everything in it is as real as you are. It knows of you too.
It just doesn't play by the same rules.
Remember that.
Play along if you want to survive.
One day, some time ago somewhen (and that's as detailed as it's going to get)
(cat)
Sam dodged a falling toddler.
No shame.
There he had been. Minding his own fucking business snooping around one of the visiting ziggurat temples before every strand of fur stood on end. It wasn't like he knew the shrieking bundle was a kid before he jumped out of the way - you know what kind of things fall from the sky Here?
Imagine his surprise when instead of some twisted abomination taking an ill advised all expenses paid flight, a human baby hit the crumbling rock where he had been standing diaper first, bounced, and then flailing short arms, wide sea-green eyes and all, tumbled over the edge down the stone staircase.
Sam blinked.
Sat down.
Slowly blinked again. His tail flicked back and forth in agitated swishes.
He peered over the edge of the ziggurat and yup, that certainly looked like a human baby. Which was, uh, very strange. Unusual, even.
He should probably do something about that.
With a put upon sigh, Sam leaned over the edge of the ziggurat again. Kid didn't dash his head open on the rocks, so that was lucky, he supposed. The cat bounded down the crumbling structure as cats do, zigzagging from stair to stone wall and off the hanging tree, stair again, over the gap and -
Came to a yowling halt when a hundred, burning green eyes blinked open in the shadows pooling between the cracks in the stone, seeping from under the brush of the nearby jungle, crawling underneath the roots of trees, leaking from behind its small form to look at him.
Not a baby.
Not a fucking baby!
"Mu - mummy?" The thing sniffled as it raised itself up on scratched chubby palms.
It was barely larger than the cat himself with two arms and two legs, an ocean blue shirt that rode up its plump belly. And a diaper. Windswept downy black hair crowned its head and tears gathered in the corners of its two face-eyes that sparkled with stars amidst a shifting blue-green aurora borealis. The little brow scrunched, closing the eye that had briefly opened on its forehead.
"Mummy!" It cried out. The bottom lip trembled threateningly, but it didn't cry. "Mummy…I won' scare." The little chin jutted out stubbornly. "I won'. I pwomise."
'That's right, you tell 'em,' Sam said because playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Between the folks that didn't know they were Dreaming, the folks that did know they were Dreaming, the natives and the Others…
To put it this way.
You'd think someone would appreciate being told that they clearly weren't listening to anything the rock was saying, they had a shit personality and maybe they should stop humping it before they broke their dick.
But no.
Grew a second head and went apeshit.
The thing sniffled as those burning green eyes looked in every which way from the shadows around it. "Kitty," it mumbled with a lisp and spit bubble. "Sam."
Every strand of fur stood on end. 'How the fook you know that!?'
The thing grinned. The mouth stretched further than it should on a human looking face, filled to the brim with multiple rows of sharp teeth.
Fuck.
One of them cockwombles.
"S'ok if I have you Name," the thing murmured as the air crackled with potential, a heavy weight as the Dreamlands considered the creature and almost gently crushed the darkness trying to escape the seams of its pink flesh back into the shape of a small toddler.
Sam's ears flattened back against his head.
The Dreamlands was rarely gentle. What the fuck was this?
"Ihmm Ṕ̴̡̰̌ę̴̬̌̚ř̶͉̱͊̿ş̷̦͘ê̸̦u̵̯̚͝s̷̥̘̥̃͑̃." The thing blinked sleepily. "I won' betway. E̶͇͔̘͠v̶̨̒ͅę̵́ŕ̸̪̼̺."
'Uh,' the cat muttered. 'I ain't usin' your fookin' Name.'
The thing's head tilted. "Percy 'kay.'
'...what?'
"Percy is me!" The thing cheered.
'Kay?'
The cat did not even think of running. He was no coward.
And it wouldn't help anyway.
Space and distance in the Dreamlands was subjective. He could take five steps and remain where he was.
"I like kitties and you pwetty."
He'll fucking take it.
'Thanks.'
"Wewcome!"
The cat tilted his head a little curiously. 'Awfully polite for a muppet.'
Some people called them 'gods.'
If it made them feel better to put words like that on their fears, to convince themselves that they could appeal to greater beings, clawing for infinitesimal amounts of control over the utterly uncontrollable, deluding themselves into thinking they proudly earned what they begged for at the feet of merciless apathy…
Yeah, well, some people were fucking stupid. What can you do?
The mini-muppet shoved its thumb in its mouth.
It was both fucking pathetic and incredibly unsettling in its mimicry. Playing along was a survival tactic, but it was those that made you forget for a second - edged close to making you wonder that were the truly dangerous ones.
Fuck if he knows why one was pretending to be a baby though.
Guess all that infinite bitchery didn't come with a sense of dignity.
Sam lifted a paw and volunteered, 'You smell like shit.'
"Ew!" 'Perseus' agreed with a nod.
'...you gonna do something about it?'
"Sowwy," It muttered, looking a bit ashamed as it shuffled in its smelly used diaper. "Dunno how."
'Um.'
It shrugged its small shoulders helplessly.
'...think really hard about being clean?'
The thing blinked. It struggled to its feet, scrunched up its face and then its clothes vanished.
Sam sighed as it posed proudly buck naked.
Not like he was one to talk about letting it all hang.
'Close enough.'
It was like a demented, fucked up kitten. As mobile as a drunk coming off a weekend bender with the brain cells to match.
The cat's ear swiveled as it honed in on the sounds of the jungle around. Unlike the humid forests one could find There, this one was dripping with wriggling vines, gasping mushrooms and trees bleeding from their pores as their canopies bent towards them filled with hungry, gaping mouths masquerading as birds.
This was probably stupid.
If the small muppet wandered off and got itself eaten from the inside out by larvae, it would probably be doing everyone a favor.
But it looked pathetic and was polite so fuck it.
Sam's tail flicked.
'You.' Cat green eyes narrowed at one of the trees as he pointed with the tip of his tail.
For a long moment, there was no response.
The cat's tail stiffened, bristling. The tree sagged and then melted into something distinctly less hardwood and more caterpillar, if it had a head made of a dozen chattering skulls, bone spines dripping with paralytic venom and a body more of a suggestion of dark flesh then a reality.
'Fook off mate.'
Caught, the skull caterpillar slunk away through the slimy underbrush.
'Creepy fook,' Sam muttered under his breath.
"Tank 'ou." The thing lisped as it stared up at him with two shimmering eyes as his tail stood straight up in the air.
Since when did muppets thank folks?
Or apologizing for anything?
It stretched a pudgy hand up towards him with a hesitant, wobbling step. "Can I pet?"
'No.'
"Oh."
Thing and cat stared at each other in silence for a long moment. 'Where tha fook did ya come from?'
The thing sucked its thumb for a moment. "I feww."
'You fell,' the cat repeated flatly.
"Yeah!"
'From…the moon?' Both of them glanced up. The sky was a sparkling purple color, a shower of inverted stars trailing across the rippling canvas. A golden moon loomed large and full directly overhead, but it was the thing that flinched away from looking first.
"No," it mumbled. "I go sweep, then I feww."
It went to sleep?
Muppets don't need to sleep. They didn't need to breathe either, fuck, he wasn't sure they even bleed. What does it mean 'I went to sleep!?'
Never mind.
He decided he doesn't want to know. It was too early for this.
It would always be too early for bullshit.
'I give up. What the fook are ya?"
'Perseus' blinked up at the cat. "Demigo'."
Sam nodded agreeably, making the appropriate 'ah ha' noises before saying, 'What's that.'
"Haff go'."
The cat squinted. 'What's the other half?"
"Mortaw."
'Huh,' Sam said as he digested this new information. 'Mortal.' So maybe part human. No real guarantee of that being the other half, but he looked similar enough. Sam could not claim to truly be surprised. Humans got their rocks off on all sorts of weird shit and them muppets weren't any better.
It also explained the lack of cunty behavior.
'How old are you?'
The boy (?) held up two fingers of his free hand.
Fuck.
'If you came from There, you can't just trip and fall to get Here. There's guards, like whatshisface - H something. Hippie, Hypoc, Hip - '
"Hypnos!" The stars in the boy's eyes lit up as he cheered. "He nice! Want as friend."
A muppet was nice.
Positively friend-shaped.
'That.' Sam shrugged and firmly decided to not think too hard about anything the kid told him. 'You tellin' me you tripped past him?'
The boy stared blankly, chewing on his thumb. "Uh?"
Brain cells to match.
Right.
'Never mind.'
Sam hopped down from the pole. His ears were alert, tail hanging low as it circled the small half-muppet once, then twice before he tossed his head and batted at the boy with a paw.
'...tag. You're it.'
'Perseus' blinked wide eyes that lit up in a strange kind of joy.
"Okay!"
Maybe the kid didn't just fall asleep.
Maybe he's dead.
That wouldn't be a surprise either.
'Yeoooow!'
"Sowwy!"
'Watch the fooking tail!'
"I sai' sowwy!" The kid looked apologetic for a second before smirking as he leapt off the cliff. "You it!"
The cat rushed to the edge expecting to see nothing.
What he got was Perseus clumsily flipping him a two gun salute at the bottom.
'You lil' fucker!'
The Dreamlands had its own convoluted sense of time.
A toddler and a cat roamed.
The cat's tail healed into a visible slight crook. The boy grew a little taller, more steady on his feet. His speech matured as if it wasn't his age that had been the problem, but practice at hearing English.
It could have been months.
It could have been decades.
"Ack! It burns!"
'Why the fook would you put that in your mouth.'
"It look okay!"
'It had tendrils coming out of its fooking arse - no, I am not doing this.'
"Sam! Help! Water!"
'Maybe next time we don't eat the ugly thing.'
"...that is a child."
'No shit, Willie.'
"Whoooa." 'Perseus' stared up at the dreamer with wide eyes and his mouth in a little 'o' shape. He managed to conjure back some diapers and scrounged up a pair of short pants from memory. The diaper he had on, but the pants, the pants the kid apparently felt were of more use on his head than his bum.
"Sam." He whispered too loudly. "Sam! He's old!"
'Damn ancient, mate.'
The old man sighed, mutton chops wobbling. "Sam. Must you?"
'Wut?'
'I told you to use the litter before we left!' Sam hissed under his breath from underneath the quivering bush.
"I thought I could hold it…" Perseus peeked over the large rock he was hiding behind, knees pressed together as the multi-headed snake slithered closer. "Distract it?"
'So you could take a fooking piss?'
The boy made his eyes huge and sparkling. "You want me to leave a piss trail while running?"
Not particularly.
'Fuck me.'
It wasn't all sunshine and roses. The kid was still half-muppet. Among the innocent wonder, infectious joy and curiosity was a certain kind of cruelty that made the cat's ears stand forward, straight and alert. The boy never turned it on him though, only others and, well, Sam was a cat.
He knew enough to know humans weren't supposed to revel in the suffering of others. No pulling the wings off the butterfly.
But sometimes that shit was hilarious.
Being half-muppet also meant the kid was half bullshit that sometimes just made no sense at all.
The cat stared at the dark tower rising on the horizon incredulously. It wasn't just the structure. He'd seen dreamer homes before. It was the amethyst grass of the Dreamlands giving way to a beach of black razor sand, as if it was made out of grains of obsidian. It was the iron clouds gathering around the spire, complete with a skeletal dragon bat thing flying around it.
Like it wasn't a home, stolen and smuggled from the Dreamlands.
'So that's bullshit.'
Perseus' gaze stared off into the distance with the two eyes on his face and it was then, belatedly, that Sam wondered when he had last seen those eyes in his shadow. A while, he supposed and pondered where they had trotted off to.
"He's gone."
'Huh?'
"Someone I know?" The boy shook himself and the stars in his eyes lit back up. "Wanna see inside!?"
Sam woke up first from the cat nap.
Percy murmured sleepily as he turned on the rock, curled into himself. The first time the boy jumped off something, Sam expected him to poof like that one fellow who came looking for the muppet city over the mountains a while back.
Human thing.
They were yellow bellied lily livered cowards so scared of a tiny drop, their soul shrivels back into their body.
But that didn't happen. The boy had been Here so long, he could sleep in it without leaving and eventually, Sam stopped expecting him to. Even if he found a way, once the Dreamlands had you, you never really leave.
Not a visitor. A mortal soul in the Dreamlands.
Like the old Prussian Willie. Or Carl and Magdalene and other Dreamers.
Nothing to return to.
The tower on the black beach was as much a home as a ball and chain.
The cat's ears flicked back and forth as he searched the flat plateau they had been sunbathing on for what had woken him up. Their 'bed' was a tall twenty foot structure overlooking the Salt Plains of red stone baking in the blue sun. The glittering salt crystals stretched to the horizon interspersed with small oases of larger cloudy crystals, sparse fauna and clear, deadly water.
There was nothing.
And then there was.
Someone.
Every strand of fur stood up, his hackles rose, back arching and tail puffing under the disinterested black diamond gaze.
The muppet looked like a black haired, pale skinned human with freckles dusting the bridge of its nose and the top of its cheekbones. It could have been a woman off the street back There in black slacks, white blouse with a jean jacket on top of it. Even the microexpressions of momentary amusement, mild exasperation and something almost satisfied were accurate.
That was the scary part.
Remember, the ones that could pretend were dangerous.
Space casually broke.
The cat found himself standing in the same location ten feet away as the muppet scooped the boy up from the ground that was suddenly by its feet, having just rearranged the entire plateau to its whims in the blink of an eye as the Dreamlands quivered.
"Mummy," Perseus whispered sleepily as he flung his small arms around its neck. "I wasn't scared."
"Now, now." The visible softening of its expression was eerie as it pressed a kiss into the kid's hair and murmured, "You know better than to lie to me."
The kid shrunk back, eyes squeezing shut. "I'm sorry! I won't do it again, please don't change me it hurt -"
"I won't," it shushed him, wincing and the cat couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be from the child's sudden fear or something else. "That was - that will not happen again. I will not need to ever again." It frowned. "I will do better with you."
Muppets.
Not even once.
Percy cracked an eye open, pouting piteously. "Promise?"
"I promise."
"...love me?"
"You are perfect just the way you are," it said gently and Sam's fur rippled with unease. It sounded genuine to his sensitive ears. Creepy. "How could I not?"
The boy settled. "Can I have a cat?"
Sam stiffened.
"You already have a cat," it said, voice thick with amusement as those black diamond eyes slowly traveled back to the orange tabby tom. "And it did very well, didn't it?"
"He's the best cat ever!" Percy declared solemnly.
Sam appreciated the sentiment, but kid, bloody not right now!
"That settles it then. For the best cat ever," it said, matching the toddler's seriousness. "He may receive one favor from me."
Like fuck Sam was going to take it up on that.
"Go back to sleep, Perseus," the muppet intoned and the boy's eyelids obligingly began to droop. Percy tensed for a moment, grasping tightly as if remembering some nightmare, before drifting off to sleep. The muppet whispered fondly, "Time to go home."
As it turned away, Sam found the courage to speak.
'He didn't fall.'
He was pushed.
The muppet's face turned to look at the cat from over its shoulder. Holding the dozing boy in one arm, it silently raised its free hand to hold a finger in front of its lips.
It smiled.
Then they were both gone.
The next time Sam saw Perseus, crowing about being allowed back since his 'accident' and promising to figure out how to bring treats next time, the cat got his own tongue. He'd been tempted to say something a few times as the kid grew up a little. The worst one was when his Mum left him There and Percy started hoping, begging that he could find her Here.
On the moon.
Sam knew what - who was up there.
Every cat who does cat things and knows the cat ways of Ulthar was aware of the dreaded master behind the moon beasts, the Stalker in the Dark, their ancient enemy.
But this was Percy.
He was just a kitten. A bit too fucked in the head to not come with a discount, but still good when he wasn't what his mum wanted him to be.
Sam could help him, right? That was what Ulthar cats did. Help. And…he owed him that much. He could make sure the kid came back alive.
Because he couldn't bring himself to say a word.
Percy called in that favor on his behalf, crying over Sam's pulped eye, blood leaking from his ears, the other eye filled with burst blood vessels and even now a little blurry looking through it. A little ringing in one ear still. A little rattle in his chest where the bones didn't quite heal right. A cold ache in his joints and paws he didn't let on he had.
It was the most powerless he'd felt since he was a hungry kitten huddled in a cold, wet alleyway, hiding from older cats and loud cars belching black smoke and sirens sounding overhead. It had been a long, long night.
He had nothing to return to either.
Sam was just a cat.
Playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Hey, you came back! I was wondering where you went. You…still don't mind listening to me, right? It's been a long time no see!
That's where we stopped, remember?
With Time…
Hey, you remember that story about me falling into the Dreamlands when I was two, right?
It wasn't some kind of weird flex, if you were wondering.
Really more of an accident.
I always knew almost falling on top of an orange tabby cat was a bit of a lucky break. I just don't think I actually knew how much of one it was until I found myself in Selene's little corner of the Dreamlands.
Unwelcome.
The air felt heavy.
It was that thick, choking weight of something like we were being slowly smothered and just didn't realize it yet. The kind of feeling you expected from a dense fog after a bad storm, but the only mist was wafting up in ghostly wisps from the sea. The field of pale flowers we woke up in was a large, perfectly unnatural circle around us before the dismal gray shore that met the black water.
The bells from the far off city rang a final toll. The chime carried on over the dead air for a long time.
Silence fell.
Artemis' auburn and patchy gray fur bristled in the same shiver that ran up my spine.
I forced my words out, "Everyone okay?"
Khione glanced at me, grimacing and my breath caught.
Her eyes were ice flowers instead of snowflakes, crashing, shattering, warping, turning inside out and splitting into eleven dimensions before finally annihilating inside a crystal clear snow globe made out of folded space.
So maybe this was not the best time to get distracted, but God dayum!
"So that's what your eyes really look like!" I burst out in awe. This was what I was catching glimpses of whenever that melody showed up in her eyes!
"Wha - " The snow goddess looked down at herself and then swore in Mycenaean Greek. She turned away from me as her hand came up to the hole in her chest where the wooden heart thumped. "Of course it shows here. Idiot," she spat at herself. "Can't do anything right!"
I don't understand.
Why would anyone try to hide something so beautiful?
"It's fine!" I said quickly, trying to be reassuring. "Your eyes are pretty girl - I mean, pretty great!" Holy shit. "I mean, you don't have to hide them. I mean, you can if you don't like them? But I think they're…" I swallowed hard and tried not to dig myself in deeper. "...okay?"
"Okay?" Khione echoed dully.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle.
Someone kill me.
Put me out of my misery.
Please.
"Can we please forget I said anything?" I pleaded.
"Done," Khione said instantly. "But, thank you." She tried to smile at me, but there was something almost broken about it before she turned away again. "I will need - a few minutes before we set forth. Please."
"Yeah, sure," I said quickly. "Don't worry about it."
That's weird.
I really expected Luke to give me shit there.
When I looked, he was still staring up at the large moon dominating the sky above us like it was made out of solid gold.
"Who is changing you?" Artemis spoke up quietly. "It - it cannot be too late to…" The rabbit lost steam as Khione tilted her head down, shielding her face with her black hair. "To reverse…"
"I am here because Percy offered," the Boreide said softly and bitterly cold. "We are not friends, Artemis Apanchomenê."
The bunny flinched and then nodded miserably.
The Strangled.
That wasn't a Name I knew the history of, but at this point, I don't think I even want to know.
"And I am fine," Khione finished harshly, like a gust of storm winds before turning away from us again.
I bit my lip and decided to leave her be. "Luke?"
He didn't move.
I don't think he heard me?
"Hey," I said as I reached out to shake him a little. "Are you - "
Humans are not owls.
Luke's head wasn't meant to twist a full 180 degrees on his neck!
I stumbled backwards as he snarled at me. His teeth was bared in a bestial grin, his breath frosting in the air with wide, manic bloodshot eyes that shone in the moonlight. "Luke - !?"
Then he convulsed, like he was having a seizure. His head snapped back around with a wet crack as his entire body shook. Diana leaned in closer, blocking out the moon until looking up just got you an eyeful of her flayed chest cavity. Khione's cold hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me back as Artemis cried out,
"Luke! Fight it!"
The shaking got worse as if he was about to vibrate out of his own skin -
Then just like that, he went still.
None of us moved.
"...Luke?" I called out softly.
"I - " He groaned, shuddering. "I'm here." I could have sworn his teeth looked bigger in his mouth and it looked like he gained a dozen wrinkles on his forehead. "I'm here," he muttered. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I - can't you hear that?"
"Not a thing," I said.
He's hearing things. That's always a good sign!
Not.
"It sounds like - "
"Do not listen to her!" Artemis snapped at him as "You cannot listen to her, or you will go rabid, do you understand?"
Luke startled like a surprised deer. He swallowed thickly as he looked at us with tears in his eyes. The broken one was a kaleidoscope of cloudy blue irises. "Selene?"
Artemis hesitated.
"No more secrets," I reminded our rabbit grimly. "We're already here."
And there was no going back.
"Selene died," Khione murmured.
"What happened?" Luke asked shakily as he ran a hand down his face. He looked down at his sneakers. "Did someone forget to tell her that?"
Diana ponderously watched us. The human half of her face was frowning as the rabbit's mouth worked silently.
"'Temis." I growled.
"Not her," the bunny muttered.
Ipse. Diana said. Memet.
"Me," she admitted.
"You?" Luke said what we were all thinking.
"I tried to fix it," Artemis whispered instead. A sinking feeling was pulling at the bottom of my stomach. She said she left 'a fragment' of herself behind back in that airport. If my suspicion was right, it was a fragment that was talking to Luke, a descendant of Selene through the Moon. "I tried to fix everything."
"And failed," Khione said harshly. "Like you always do."
The rabbit didn't respond.
I didn't know what to say or do, standing there like a bump on a log. I don't know if you were also getting the feeling that some of the things Artemis was hiding wasn't because she was being a Greek jerk, but because something had gone so wrong somewhere that she made herself forget she was hiding it. That kind of thing was hard to bring out into the open.
I know that from experience.
Luke blew out an explosive breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We need a plan."
"Ice him if he goes weird?" I volunteered.
"With pleasure." Khione inclined her head as Luke winced, squeezing his knees together.
"I don't like this plan!" He squeaked. "I take it back. We don't need a plan! I'll be fine!"
"You looked like you wanted to bite my head off," I pointed out. I raised my eyebrows at him, incredulous. "A little cold is not going to kill you."
Luke winced again.
Jeez.
What a crybaby.
"But before we do anything else," I said with a finger up in the thick air. "I'm going to get what I think is my cat."
In the distance, the bells began to ring again.
Another shiver went up my spine.
I headed down the gray beach towards Dante's Gate and the small patch of grass beside it where an orange and white tabby cat was curled up in a ball.
There was a crook in his tail.
"Sam," I breathed, disbelieving as I bent down by my cat as he sat up. He looked exactly like he should have. Uneven whiskers. White booties. One eye was green while the other one, the replacement, burned orange. Even the dark orange swirls on his side looked right. "Are you really here?"
I reached out and poked my cat friend's cheek.
He bit me.
"Ow!"
'They say there's a blithering fucking idiot born every minute,' Sam said flatly as I cradled my hand against my stomach.
Uh oh.
'When you were born, we must have been good for the next hour.'
His ears went flat against his head, so I knew he was just getting started. "Sam, wait - "
'Your muppet bitch arse friend told everyone about this latest bout of fucking stupidity and I was not surprised your fucking suicidal random-shit-in-your-mouth arse is at it again being a dumbfuck fucking allergic to good ideas!'
I said Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
That's still true.
Just so you know, swearing my ears off for being stupid was always going to come first.
Behind me, I heard Khione choke on a small laugh.
Great.
A small, furry animal whose tail I pulled is ruining my impression on a girl for the second time.
I can't win.
"Hi Sam," I said dully, feeling one inch tall. I turned back to my adventuring party as they warily approached the dark yawning mouth of Dante's Gate. "Everyone, this is my pet cat, Sam." I gave a limp wave. "Sam, everyone."
"You have a supernatural cat," Luke said flatly. Which was sort of fair and sort of…so telling him about cats, all of them, was going to be awkward.
"Master Sam," Khione nodded her head politely. "Khione, of ice and snow."
Sam squinted. 'Oh, another muppet.'
Oh my fuck.
I forgot Sam's an asshole.
Khione stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"
I palmed my face, hissing under my breath, "Sam, don't! She's Greek!"
So maybe that sounded like an insult?
It was the truth. And an insult. Kind of. Greek gods were many things and one of those things was having no chill.
And I swear to God, if you make a dumb joke about Khione being an ice goddess, I will disown you.
My cat sniffed like he'd been waiting to insult somebody new for years. 'A muppet. Fucking dead from the neck up scrubbers with a worship kink.'
Khione gasped, pretty eyes going wide. "Rude!"
Luke just nodded sagely. "I like him!"
"Don't encourage him," I groaned. If you're wondering what exactly Sam said in the strange, unique dialect of far off lands known as British, there were eleven words to say what could be said in four: 'stupid whores demanding worship.'
I was almost impressed.
I don't think salvaging this train wreck was even possible.
Sam lashed his crooked tail back and forth. 'I am not wrong.'
That's fair.
There was a tense silence as the Boreide glared down at my pet asshole. I prepared to jump in between an angry goddess and a cat. This was probably going to hurt. Lots.
"You're not wrong, no," Khione admitted, backing down.
"Still rude," Artemis muttered.
Alright.
Now I really was impressed. And a bit jealous. The last time I insulted a goddess to her face with the truth, she turned into a mountain lion and tried to murder me. How come he gets away with it?
I stole a quick head rub and ear ruffle, snatching my hand back as he swiped at me with a disgruntled meow.
"Sam," I said quietly with a smile. "You're the best cat ever."
His crooked tail lashed back and forth again as he looked away, sniffing contemptuously.
'...don't you forget it.'
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
A PJO Fanfiction
Sam is a perfectly ordinary orange tabby cat of Here.
A proud tail. Four paws with pink moisturized toe beans. Well maintained claws and whiskers. Sleek white and striped orange fur, alert ears and a healthy five kilograms in weight. Lady cats loved him! Adventurous, curious with a taste for whiskey and salmon. He preferred his litter clean, mice and birds absent, toilet paper shredded and only knocked things off the counter when there was literally nothing else to do.
A good sort of bloke. A truly upstanding citizen of Here.
Here where, you ask?
Well, sometimes it's There, other times it's Nowhere and rarely it's When but every cat who does cat things and follows the cat ways knows that 'falling asleep' is a misnomer. Your world can be likened to an onion, with just as many layers to existence. Close your eyes.
Wake in another reality.
The transition most humans aren't aware of. Blessed ignorance. A vested interest in keeping it that way. Do not panic. Hypnos means well.
Most of the time.
For cats, it was a fact of life.
You may have heard the Here, There, Nowhere and When called the 'Dreamlands.' A paradise of imagination that fulfills your every whim. A place of surreal wonders. A land of dreams.
Another affectation.
Everything in it is as real as you are. It knows of you too.
It just doesn't play by the same rules.
Remember that.
Play along if you want to survive.
One day, some time ago somewhen (and that's as detailed as it's going to get)
(cat)
Sam dodged a falling toddler.
No shame.
There he had been. Minding his own fucking business snooping around one of the visiting ziggurat temples before every strand of fur stood on end. It wasn't like he knew the shrieking bundle was a kid before he jumped out of the way - you know what kind of things fall from the sky Here?
Imagine his surprise when instead of some twisted abomination taking an ill advised all expenses paid flight, a human baby hit the crumbling rock where he had been standing diaper first, bounced, and then flailing short arms, wide sea-green eyes and all, tumbled over the edge down the stone staircase.
Sam blinked.
Sat down.
Slowly blinked again. His tail flicked back and forth in agitated swishes.
He peered over the edge of the ziggurat and yup, that certainly looked like a human baby. Which was, uh, very strange. Unusual, even.
He should probably do something about that.
With a put upon sigh, Sam leaned over the edge of the ziggurat again. Kid didn't dash his head open on the rocks, so that was lucky, he supposed. The cat bounded down the crumbling structure as cats do, zigzagging from stair to stone wall and off the hanging tree, stair again, over the gap and -
Came to a yowling halt when a hundred, burning green eyes blinked open in the shadows pooling between the cracks in the stone, seeping from under the brush of the nearby jungle, crawling underneath the roots of trees, leaking from behind its small form to look at him.
Not a baby.
Not a fucking baby!
"Mu - mummy?" The thing sniffled as it raised itself up on scratched chubby palms.
It was barely larger than the cat himself with two arms and two legs, an ocean blue shirt that rode up its plump belly. And a diaper. Windswept downy black hair crowned its head and tears gathered in the corners of its two face-eyes that sparkled with stars amidst a shifting blue-green aurora borealis. The little brow scrunched, closing the eye that had briefly opened on its forehead.
"Mummy!" It cried out. The bottom lip trembled threateningly, but it didn't cry. "Mummy…I won' scare." The little chin jutted out stubbornly. "I won'. I pwomise."
'That's right, you tell 'em,' Sam said because playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Between the folks that didn't know they were Dreaming, the folks that did know they were Dreaming, the natives and the Others…
To put it this way.
You'd think someone would appreciate being told that they clearly weren't listening to anything the rock was saying, they had a shit personality and maybe they should stop humping it before they broke their dick.
But no.
Grew a second head and went apeshit.
The thing sniffled as those burning green eyes looked in every which way from the shadows around it. "Kitty," it mumbled with a lisp and spit bubble. "Sam."
Every strand of fur stood on end. 'How the fook you know that!?'
The thing grinned. The mouth stretched further than it should on a human looking face, filled to the brim with multiple rows of sharp teeth.
Fuck.
One of them cockwombles.
"S'ok if I have you Name," the thing murmured as the air crackled with potential, a heavy weight as the Dreamlands considered the creature and almost gently crushed the darkness trying to escape the seams of its pink flesh back into the shape of a small toddler.
Sam's ears flattened back against his head.
The Dreamlands was rarely gentle. What the fuck was this?
"Ihmm Ṕ̴̡̰̌ę̴̬̌̚ř̶͉̱͊̿ş̷̦͘ê̸̦u̵̯̚͝s̷̥̘̥̃͑̃." The thing blinked sleepily. "I won' betway. E̶͇͔̘͠v̶̨̒ͅę̵́ŕ̸̪̼̺."
'Uh,' the cat muttered. 'I ain't usin' your fookin' Name.'
The thing's head tilted. "Percy 'kay.'
'...what?'
"Percy is me!" The thing cheered.
'Kay?'
The cat did not even think of running. He was no coward.
And it wouldn't help anyway.
Space and distance in the Dreamlands was subjective. He could take five steps and remain where he was.
"I like kitties and you pwetty."
He'll fucking take it.
'Thanks.'
"Wewcome!"
The cat tilted his head a little curiously. 'Awfully polite for a muppet.'
Some people called them 'gods.'
If it made them feel better to put words like that on their fears, to convince themselves that they could appeal to greater beings, clawing for infinitesimal amounts of control over the utterly uncontrollable, deluding themselves into thinking they proudly earned what they begged for at the feet of merciless apathy…
Yeah, well, some people were fucking stupid. What can you do?
The mini-muppet shoved its thumb in its mouth.
It was both fucking pathetic and incredibly unsettling in its mimicry. Playing along was a survival tactic, but it was those that made you forget for a second - edged close to making you wonder that were the truly dangerous ones.
Fuck if he knows why one was pretending to be a baby though.
Guess all that infinite bitchery didn't come with a sense of dignity.
Sam lifted a paw and volunteered, 'You smell like shit.'
"Ew!" 'Perseus' agreed with a nod.
'...you gonna do something about it?'
"Sowwy," It muttered, looking a bit ashamed as it shuffled in its smelly used diaper. "Dunno how."
'Um.'
It shrugged its small shoulders helplessly.
'...think really hard about being clean?'
The thing blinked. It struggled to its feet, scrunched up its face and then its clothes vanished.
Sam sighed as it posed proudly buck naked.
Not like he was one to talk about letting it all hang.
'Close enough.'
It was like a demented, fucked up kitten. As mobile as a drunk coming off a weekend bender with the brain cells to match.
The cat's ear swiveled as it honed in on the sounds of the jungle around. Unlike the humid forests one could find There, this one was dripping with wriggling vines, gasping mushrooms and trees bleeding from their pores as their canopies bent towards them filled with hungry, gaping mouths masquerading as birds.
This was probably stupid.
If the small muppet wandered off and got itself eaten from the inside out by larvae, it would probably be doing everyone a favor.
But it looked pathetic and was polite so fuck it.
Sam's tail flicked.
'You.' Cat green eyes narrowed at one of the trees as he pointed with the tip of his tail.
For a long moment, there was no response.
The cat's tail stiffened, bristling. The tree sagged and then melted into something distinctly less hardwood and more caterpillar, if it had a head made of a dozen chattering skulls, bone spines dripping with paralytic venom and a body more of a suggestion of dark flesh then a reality.
'Fook off mate.'
Caught, the skull caterpillar slunk away through the slimy underbrush.
'Creepy fook,' Sam muttered under his breath.
"Tank 'ou." The thing lisped as it stared up at him with two shimmering eyes as his tail stood straight up in the air.
Since when did muppets thank folks?
Or apologizing for anything?
It stretched a pudgy hand up towards him with a hesitant, wobbling step. "Can I pet?"
'No.'
"Oh."
Thing and cat stared at each other in silence for a long moment. 'Where tha fook did ya come from?'
The thing sucked its thumb for a moment. "I feww."
'You fell,' the cat repeated flatly.
"Yeah!"
'From…the moon?' Both of them glanced up. The sky was a sparkling purple color, a shower of inverted stars trailing across the rippling canvas. A golden moon loomed large and full directly overhead, but it was the thing that flinched away from looking first.
"No," it mumbled. "I go sweep, then I feww."
It went to sleep?
Muppets don't need to sleep. They didn't need to breathe either, fuck, he wasn't sure they even bleed. What does it mean 'I went to sleep!?'
Never mind.
He decided he doesn't want to know. It was too early for this.
It would always be too early for bullshit.
'I give up. What the fook are ya?"
'Perseus' blinked up at the cat. "Demigo'."
Sam nodded agreeably, making the appropriate 'ah ha' noises before saying, 'What's that.'
"Haff go'."
The cat squinted. 'What's the other half?"
"Mortaw."
'Huh,' Sam said as he digested this new information. 'Mortal.' So maybe part human. No real guarantee of that being the other half, but he looked similar enough. Sam could not claim to truly be surprised. Humans got their rocks off on all sorts of weird shit and them muppets weren't any better.
It also explained the lack of cunty behavior.
'How old are you?'
The boy (?) held up two fingers of his free hand.
Fuck.
'If you came from There, you can't just trip and fall to get Here. There's guards, like whatshisface - H something. Hippie, Hypoc, Hip - '
"Hypnos!" The stars in the boy's eyes lit up as he cheered. "He nice! Want as friend."
A muppet was nice.
Positively friend-shaped.
'That.' Sam shrugged and firmly decided to not think too hard about anything the kid told him. 'You tellin' me you tripped past him?'
The boy stared blankly, chewing on his thumb. "Uh?"
Brain cells to match.
Right.
'Never mind.'
Sam hopped down from the pole. His ears were alert, tail hanging low as it circled the small half-muppet once, then twice before he tossed his head and batted at the boy with a paw.
'...tag. You're it.'
'Perseus' blinked wide eyes that lit up in a strange kind of joy.
"Okay!"
Maybe the kid didn't just fall asleep.
Maybe he's dead.
That wouldn't be a surprise either.
'Yeoooow!'
"Sowwy!"
'Watch the fooking tail!'
"I sai' sowwy!" The kid looked apologetic for a second before smirking as he leapt off the cliff. "You it!"
The cat rushed to the edge expecting to see nothing.
What he got was Perseus clumsily flipping him a two gun salute at the bottom.
'You lil' fucker!'
The Dreamlands had its own convoluted sense of time.
A toddler and a cat roamed.
The cat's tail healed into a visible slight crook. The boy grew a little taller, more steady on his feet. His speech matured as if it wasn't his age that had been the problem, but practice at hearing English.
It could have been months.
It could have been decades.
"Ack! It burns!"
'Why the fook would you put that in your mouth.'
"It look okay!"
'It had tendrils coming out of its fooking arse - no, I am not doing this.'
"Sam! Help! Water!"
'Maybe next time we don't eat the ugly thing.'
"...that is a child."
'No shit, Willie.'
"Whoooa." 'Perseus' stared up at the dreamer with wide eyes and his mouth in a little 'o' shape. He managed to conjure back some diapers and scrounged up a pair of short pants from memory. The diaper he had on, but the pants, the pants the kid apparently felt were of more use on his head than his bum.
"Sam." He whispered too loudly. "Sam! He's old!"
'Damn ancient, mate.'
The old man sighed, mutton chops wobbling. "Sam. Must you?"
'Wut?'
'I told you to use the litter before we left!' Sam hissed under his breath from underneath the quivering bush.
"I thought I could hold it…" Perseus peeked over the large rock he was hiding behind, knees pressed together as the multi-headed snake slithered closer. "Distract it?"
'So you could take a fooking piss?'
The boy made his eyes huge and sparkling. "You want me to leave a piss trail while running?"
Not particularly.
'Fuck me.'
It wasn't all sunshine and roses. The kid was still half-muppet. Among the innocent wonder, infectious joy and curiosity was a certain kind of cruelty that made the cat's ears stand forward, straight and alert. The boy never turned it on him though, only others and, well, Sam was a cat.
He knew enough to know humans weren't supposed to revel in the suffering of others. No pulling the wings off the butterfly.
But sometimes that shit was hilarious.
Being half-muppet also meant the kid was half bullshit that sometimes just made no sense at all.
The cat stared at the dark tower rising on the horizon incredulously. It wasn't just the structure. He'd seen dreamer homes before. It was the amethyst grass of the Dreamlands giving way to a beach of black razor sand, as if it was made out of grains of obsidian. It was the iron clouds gathering around the spire, complete with a skeletal dragon bat thing flying around it.
Like it wasn't a home, stolen and smuggled from the Dreamlands.
'So that's bullshit.'
Perseus' gaze stared off into the distance with the two eyes on his face and it was then, belatedly, that Sam wondered when he had last seen those eyes in his shadow. A while, he supposed and pondered where they had trotted off to.
"He's gone."
'Huh?'
"Someone I know?" The boy shook himself and the stars in his eyes lit back up. "Wanna see inside!?"
Sam woke up first from the cat nap.
Percy murmured sleepily as he turned on the rock, curled into himself. The first time the boy jumped off something, Sam expected him to poof like that one fellow who came looking for the muppet city over the mountains a while back.
Human thing.
They were yellow bellied lily livered cowards so scared of a tiny drop, their soul shrivels back into their body.
But that didn't happen. The boy had been Here so long, he could sleep in it without leaving and eventually, Sam stopped expecting him to. Even if he found a way, once the Dreamlands had you, you never really leave.
Not a visitor. A mortal soul in the Dreamlands.
Like the old Prussian Willie. Or Carl and Magdalene and other Dreamers.
Nothing to return to.
The tower on the black beach was as much a home as a ball and chain.
The cat's ears flicked back and forth as he searched the flat plateau they had been sunbathing on for what had woken him up. Their 'bed' was a tall twenty foot structure overlooking the Salt Plains of red stone baking in the blue sun. The glittering salt crystals stretched to the horizon interspersed with small oases of larger cloudy crystals, sparse fauna and clear, deadly water.
There was nothing.
And then there was.
Someone.
Every strand of fur stood up, his hackles rose, back arching and tail puffing under the disinterested black diamond gaze.
The muppet looked like a black haired, pale skinned human with freckles dusting the bridge of its nose and the top of its cheekbones. It could have been a woman off the street back There in black slacks, white blouse with a jean jacket on top of it. Even the microexpressions of momentary amusement, mild exasperation and something almost satisfied were accurate.
That was the scary part.
Remember, the ones that could pretend were dangerous.
Space casually broke.
The cat found himself standing in the same location ten feet away as the muppet scooped the boy up from the ground that was suddenly by its feet, having just rearranged the entire plateau to its whims in the blink of an eye as the Dreamlands quivered.
"Mummy," Perseus whispered sleepily as he flung his small arms around its neck. "I wasn't scared."
"Now, now." The visible softening of its expression was eerie as it pressed a kiss into the kid's hair and murmured, "You know better than to lie to me."
The kid shrunk back, eyes squeezing shut. "I'm sorry! I won't do it again, please don't change me it hurt -"
"I won't," it shushed him, wincing and the cat couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be from the child's sudden fear or something else. "That was - that will not happen again. I will not need to ever again." It frowned. "I will do better with you."
Muppets.
Not even once.
Percy cracked an eye open, pouting piteously. "Promise?"
"I promise."
"...love me?"
"You are perfect just the way you are," it said gently and Sam's fur rippled with unease. It sounded genuine to his sensitive ears. Creepy. "How could I not?"
The boy settled. "Can I have a cat?"
Sam stiffened.
"You already have a cat," it said, voice thick with amusement as those black diamond eyes slowly traveled back to the orange tabby tom. "And it did very well, didn't it?"
"He's the best cat ever!" Percy declared solemnly.
Sam appreciated the sentiment, but kid, bloody not right now!
"That settles it then. For the best cat ever," it said, matching the toddler's seriousness. "He may receive one favor from me."
Like fuck Sam was going to take it up on that.
"Go back to sleep, Perseus," the muppet intoned and the boy's eyelids obligingly began to droop. Percy tensed for a moment, grasping tightly as if remembering some nightmare, before drifting off to sleep. The muppet whispered fondly, "Time to go home."
As it turned away, Sam found the courage to speak.
'He didn't fall.'
He was pushed.
The muppet's face turned to look at the cat from over its shoulder. Holding the dozing boy in one arm, it silently raised its free hand to hold a finger in front of its lips.
It smiled.
Then they were both gone.
The next time Sam saw Perseus, crowing about being allowed back since his 'accident' and promising to figure out how to bring treats next time, the cat got his own tongue. He'd been tempted to say something a few times as the kid grew up a little. The worst one was when his Mum left him There and Percy started hoping, begging that he could find her Here.
On the moon.
Sam knew what - who was up there.
Every cat who does cat things and knows the cat ways of Ulthar was aware of the dreaded master behind the moon beasts, the Stalker in the Dark, their ancient enemy.
But this was Percy.
He was just a kitten. A bit too fucked in the head to not come with a discount, but still good when he wasn't what his mum wanted him to be.
Sam could help him, right? That was what Ulthar cats did. Help. And…he owed him that much. He could make sure the kid came back alive.
Because he couldn't bring himself to say a word.
Percy called in that favor on his behalf, crying over Sam's pulped eye, blood leaking from his ears, the other eye filled with burst blood vessels and even now a little blurry looking through it. A little ringing in one ear still. A little rattle in his chest where the bones didn't quite heal right. A cold ache in his joints and paws he didn't let on he had.
It was the most powerless he'd felt since he was a hungry kitten huddled in a cold, wet alleyway, hiding from older cats and loud cars belching black smoke and sirens sounding overhead. It had been a long, long night.
He had nothing to return to either.
Sam was just a cat.
Playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Hey, you came back! I was wondering where you went. You…still don't mind listening to me, right? It's been a long time no see!
That's where we stopped, remember?
With Time…
Hey, you remember that story about me falling into the Dreamlands when I was two, right?
It wasn't some kind of weird flex, if you were wondering.
Really more of an accident.
I always knew almost falling on top of an orange tabby cat was a bit of a lucky break. I just don't think I actually knew how much of one it was until I found myself in Selene's little corner of the Dreamlands.
Unwelcome.
The air felt heavy.
It was that thick, choking weight of something like we were being slowly smothered and just didn't realize it yet. The kind of feeling you expected from a dense fog after a bad storm, but the only mist was wafting up in ghostly wisps from the sea. The field of pale flowers we woke up in was a large, perfectly unnatural circle around us before the dismal gray shore that met the black water.
The bells from the far off city rang a final toll. The chime carried on over the dead air for a long time.
Silence fell.
Artemis' auburn and patchy gray fur bristled in the same shiver that ran up my spine.
I forced my words out, "Everyone okay?"
Khione glanced at me, grimacing and my breath caught.
Her eyes were ice flowers instead of snowflakes, crashing, shattering, warping, turning inside out and splitting into eleven dimensions before finally annihilating inside a crystal clear snow globe made out of folded space.
So maybe this was not the best time to get distracted, but God dayum!
"So that's what your eyes really look like!" I burst out in awe. This was what I was catching glimpses of whenever that melody showed up in her eyes!
"Wha - " The snow goddess looked down at herself and then swore in Mycenaean Greek. She turned away from me as her hand came up to the hole in her chest where the wooden heart thumped. "Of course it shows here. Idiot," she spat at herself. "Can't do anything right!"
I don't understand.
Why would anyone try to hide something so beautiful?
"It's fine!" I said quickly, trying to be reassuring. "Your eyes are pretty girl - I mean, pretty great!" Holy shit. "I mean, you don't have to hide them. I mean, you can if you don't like them? But I think they're…" I swallowed hard and tried not to dig myself in deeper. "...okay?"
"Okay?" Khione echoed dully.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle.
Someone kill me.
Put me out of my misery.
Please.
"Can we please forget I said anything?" I pleaded.
"Done," Khione said instantly. "But, thank you." She tried to smile at me, but there was something almost broken about it before she turned away again. "I will need - a few minutes before we set forth. Please."
"Yeah, sure," I said quickly. "Don't worry about it."
That's weird.
I really expected Luke to give me shit there.
When I looked, he was still staring up at the large moon dominating the sky above us like it was made out of solid gold.
"Who is changing you?" Artemis spoke up quietly. "It - it cannot be too late to…" The rabbit lost steam as Khione tilted her head down, shielding her face with her black hair. "To reverse…"
"I am here because Percy offered," the Boreide said softly and bitterly cold. "We are not friends, Artemis Apanchomenê."
The bunny flinched and then nodded miserably.
The Strangled.
That wasn't a Name I knew the history of, but at this point, I don't think I even want to know.
"And I am fine," Khione finished harshly, like a gust of storm winds before turning away from us again.
I bit my lip and decided to leave her be. "Luke?"
He didn't move.
I don't think he heard me?
"Hey," I said as I reached out to shake him a little. "Are you - "
Humans are not owls.
Luke's head wasn't meant to twist a full 180 degrees on his neck!
I stumbled backwards as he snarled at me. His teeth was bared in a bestial grin, his breath frosting in the air with wide, manic bloodshot eyes that shone in the moonlight. "Luke - !?"
Then he convulsed, like he was having a seizure. His head snapped back around with a wet crack as his entire body shook. Diana leaned in closer, blocking out the moon until looking up just got you an eyeful of her flayed chest cavity. Khione's cold hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me back as Artemis cried out,
"Luke! Fight it!"
The shaking got worse as if he was about to vibrate out of his own skin -
Then just like that, he went still.
None of us moved.
"...Luke?" I called out softly.
"I - " He groaned, shuddering. "I'm here." I could have sworn his teeth looked bigger in his mouth and it looked like he gained a dozen wrinkles on his forehead. "I'm here," he muttered. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I - can't you hear that?"
"Not a thing," I said.
He's hearing things. That's always a good sign!
Not.
"It sounds like - "
"Do not listen to her!" Artemis snapped at him as "You cannot listen to her, or you will go rabid, do you understand?"
Luke startled like a surprised deer. He swallowed thickly as he looked at us with tears in his eyes. The broken one was a kaleidoscope of cloudy blue irises. "Selene?"
Artemis hesitated.
"No more secrets," I reminded our rabbit grimly. "We're already here."
And there was no going back.
"Selene died," Khione murmured.
"What happened?" Luke asked shakily as he ran a hand down his face. He looked down at his sneakers. "Did someone forget to tell her that?"
Diana ponderously watched us. The human half of her face was frowning as the rabbit's mouth worked silently.
"'Temis." I growled.
"Not her," the bunny muttered.
Ipse. Diana said. Memet.
"Me," she admitted.
"You?" Luke said what we were all thinking.
"I tried to fix it," Artemis whispered instead. A sinking feeling was pulling at the bottom of my stomach. She said she left 'a fragment' of herself behind back in that airport. If my suspicion was right, it was a fragment that was talking to Luke, a descendant of Selene through the Moon. "I tried to fix everything."
"And failed," Khione said harshly. "Like you always do."
The rabbit didn't respond.
I didn't know what to say or do, standing there like a bump on a log. I don't know if you were also getting the feeling that some of the things Artemis was hiding wasn't because she was being a Greek jerk, but because something had gone so wrong somewhere that she made herself forget she was hiding it. That kind of thing was hard to bring out into the open.
I know that from experience.
Luke blew out an explosive breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We need a plan."
"Ice him if he goes weird?" I volunteered.
"With pleasure." Khione inclined her head as Luke winced, squeezing his knees together.
"I don't like this plan!" He squeaked. "I take it back. We don't need a plan! I'll be fine!"
"You looked like you wanted to bite my head off," I pointed out. I raised my eyebrows at him, incredulous. "A little cold is not going to kill you."
Luke winced again.
Jeez.
What a crybaby.
"But before we do anything else," I said with a finger up in the thick air. "I'm going to get what I think is my cat."
In the distance, the bells began to ring again.
Another shiver went up my spine.
I headed down the gray beach towards Dante's Gate and the small patch of grass beside it where an orange and white tabby cat was curled up in a ball.
There was a crook in his tail.
"Sam," I breathed, disbelieving as I bent down by my cat as he sat up. He looked exactly like he should have. Uneven whiskers. White booties. One eye was green while the other one, the replacement, burned orange. Even the dark orange swirls on his side looked right. "Are you really here?"
I reached out and poked my cat friend's cheek.
He bit me.
"Ow!"
'They say there's a blithering fucking idiot born every minute,' Sam said flatly as I cradled my hand against my stomach.
Uh oh.
'When you were born, we must have been good for the next hour.'
His ears went flat against his head, so I knew he was just getting started. "Sam, wait - "
'Your muppet bitch arse friend told everyone about this latest bout of fucking stupidity and I was not surprised your fucking suicidal random-shit-in-your-mouth arse is at it again being a dumbfuck fucking allergic to good ideas!'
I said Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
That's still true.
Just so you know, swearing my ears off for being stupid was always going to come first.
Behind me, I heard Khione choke on a small laugh.
Great.
A small, furry animal whose tail I pulled is ruining my impression on a girl for the second time.
I can't win.
"Hi Sam," I said dully, feeling one inch tall. I turned back to my adventuring party as they warily approached the dark yawning mouth of Dante's Gate. "Everyone, this is my pet cat, Sam." I gave a limp wave. "Sam, everyone."
"You have a supernatural cat," Luke said flatly. Which was sort of fair and sort of…so telling him about cats, all of them, was going to be awkward.
"Master Sam," Khione nodded her head politely. "Khione, of ice and snow."
Sam squinted. 'Oh, another muppet.'
Oh my fuck.
I forgot Sam's an asshole.
Khione stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"
I palmed my face, hissing under my breath, "Sam, don't! She's Greek!"
So maybe that sounded like an insult?
It was the truth. And an insult. Kind of. Greek gods were many things and one of those things was having no chill.
And I swear to God, if you make a dumb joke about Khione being an ice goddess, I will disown you.
My cat sniffed like he'd been waiting to insult somebody new for years. 'A muppet. Fucking dead from the neck up scrubbers with a worship kink.'
Khione gasped, pretty eyes going wide. "Rude!"
Luke just nodded sagely. "I like him!"
"Don't encourage him," I groaned. If you're wondering what exactly Sam said in the strange, unique dialect of far off lands known as British, there were eleven words to say what could be said in four: 'stupid whores demanding worship.'
I was almost impressed.
I don't think salvaging this train wreck was even possible.
Sam lashed his crooked tail back and forth. 'I am not wrong.'
That's fair.
There was a tense silence as the Boreide glared down at my pet asshole. I prepared to jump in between an angry goddess and a cat. This was probably going to hurt. Lots.
"You're not wrong, no," Khione admitted, backing down.
"Still rude," Artemis muttered.
Alright.
Now I really was impressed. And a bit jealous. The last time I insulted a goddess to her face with the truth, she turned into a mountain lion and tried to murder me. How come he gets away with it?
I stole a quick head rub and ear ruffle, snatching my hand back as he swiped at me with a disgruntled meow.
"Sam," I said quietly with a smile. "You're the best cat ever."
His crooked tail lashed back and forth again as he looked away, sniffing contemptuously.
'...don't you forget it.'
