[Live Forever, Definitely Maybe, Oasis]
I sat at my desk, using my laptop. The keyboard was tiny, but now I found full scale ones hard to use. The time was about two in the morning, and I felt a little spaced out. Bed time perhaps?
Just a few more lines....
I collapsed backwards on my chair, head hitting my bed. Okay, Bedtime now, not later.
Typical routine; read a page of my Bible, pajamas, hygiene stuff....
Lights off. Crawl into bed, straighten it out a bit.
//Strange, why is it so easy to fall aslee....//
Gently slip into somnia, caressed by the singer's covenant that we'll live forever....
* * *
A harsh buzzing noise woke me, and my eyes shot open. The alarm had gone off. Today, the time to get up was 7:50 AM. Just like every other day except for weekends.
Gentle sheets of linen tightened their inscrutable chains, as I muzzily struggled to get up and turn off the alarm. It was set to static. Radio stations were ignorable. As always, I pondered getting a timer for the stereo, to wake up to a more pleasant song. My foggy mind wandered, retrieving a candidate. The Black Album, perhaps? Enter Sandman appealed to my incapacitated brain. So I set it playing.
Going through my morning routine, I got dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, putting on a clean shirt. It was my newer stockcar tee, with names and numbers on the sleeves like badges of rank, with a list of sponsors on my back, a reminder of my father's half of the family.
Unscrewing a container, I gripped onto my large, lavender coloured mug like the caffeine junkie that I was. Irish Breakfast, this morning. Checking my pockets, I unlocked the deadbolt and wandered down to the kitchen, passing a couple of girls on the way. They looked happy, awake. Morning people.
Putting the mug down, picking up the tea kettle and refilling it in a smooth line of motion. Once the hot water was safely under preparation, I checked the fridge for leftovers, microwaving a couple of crumbed sausages for breakfast. I filled the tea mug with hot water, letting the tea bag steep. Shambling over to the table, I perched myself on the front edge of the padded seat, gaining little comfort from the padding that was already compressed by the closeness of the stapled hessian.
After the meat of the meal was consumed, I added milk to my tea. Feeling decidedly more awake, I made my way back to my sanctum, mumbling an incoherent "Morning" to a fellow hosteller. I shut the door, and winced as the deadbolt locked itself. The mechanism was getting old, and easy to unlatch. I did not, however, get enough visitors to warrant latching the lock open.
I ejected Metallica, placing instead my custom compilation disc in the player and set it to random. I collapsed into my seat, letting the rhythmic "Groovejet" lull me into a pleasant half-somnolence. The email for the night was retrieved from the three servers I used, leaning back on the chair and letting my feet steady myself against the bottom of the top of the desk. A thump nicely made itself known through them periodically.
Halfway through the first message, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a white mist. Owning a somewhat expensive Kenwood amplifier, a pair of high quality speakers, and having a group of overly humorous friends, I turned my head to see what was wrong now.
It stunned me beyond reason, beyond balance. I threw myself forwards to compensate, knocking myself against the desk with a ping that I felt, rather than heard.I coughed spasmodically, gulping down some tea to settle my offended innards.
A woman appeared, sculpted of mist, from my speaker cones. The mist solidified, and she looked..... It was a cliche, I freely admit it even to myself, but she looked like a goddess. She had long coppery hair that did not shine so much as promise that it was above such showy things. Her face was thin, and somehow not gaunt but neither chubby. High cheekbones accentuated golden eyes that caught the light as she moved her head. The rest of her....
It was one of the most covering items of apparel I had seen, resembling a robe that I had seen a Bishop wear in a game of human chess, but at the same time enhancing her natural beauty. To me, this gave an overall effect that had me trying to fade into the woodwork, assuming she was here to see the person in Room 7, or 33, and had somehow wandered into my cluttered mess by accident.
I started to speak, cleared my throat laboriously, and started again. "Th-th-. Andy's just over the ferns outside, if you're looking for him."
In the moment between the first and second look, where one muses briefly over the input obtained on the subject, several things leapt out at me. The first was her pupils; they were not round or ovoid, but slits, points at top and bottom and larger between.
Second was a tail that twitched once during her appearance, then stayed still. This prompted me, in my second look, to examine her complexion more closely. It was immediately apparent that her face was covered with a fine, short fur that was golden, with a slight darkening where her eyebrows would have been given a human face. As if this was a prompt, my mind started it's remaining cylinders, and engaged high gear. It was now obvious that cloth hung loose on her legs where it should have been held cylindrical against flesh. Her muzzle, as I lacked a better term, protruded slightly and her lower jaw was similar to that of a domestic housecat's, with a tuft of fur under the chin. With hands tucked behind her back, I was unable to examine them. There was a significant chance, to my mind, that she had a relatively weak grip. Her humanoid melded figure was evident, even through the robe. She had two mammaries, not as many as a full feline's. I would never, of course, be gross enough to query her bluntly on this, but it did cross my mind on what species and genus her forebears were.
My response, as a domesticated servant of democracy, was to hold up my left arm in a position intended to hold the creature at arm's length while my right arm moved blindly across my desk. The letter opener clattered noisily on the top of the tea container, where it had been used to pry the container open. It was somewhat sharp, but the tip was blunt and I doubted it would do me any good. I held it by the centre, hiding most of it.
Scenes sleeted through my mind, as I glanced at some books on the shelf above the desk. My associative mind brought up images from science fiction novels of First Contact, fictional genocides, the Tattooine bar. As I looked again at the female, the foremost scene was from a series of stories on the internet. That, and a scene from an anime. I decided to be... kind, but keeping my senses open for danger.
She tried to speak to me. Her voice was smoothly staccato, although it may have been the language. I was unable to understand her, so I started with a routine that was wellknown.
I pointed at my chest with my empty hand. "Mercva." I decided to use the name I used most often on the communications networks, as I didn't really want to explain the pronunciation of my last name to yet another person.
She brought a hand forwards, pointing it at me. I noticed she was careful not to extend the claws that I could see lurking. A side cross sectional view of a cat's paw came to me of it's own will. Tendons, movement, shock absorbing....
"Mercva."
I nodded, pointing at myself again. "Mercva."
Her eyes widened in comprehension. "Ah!" It was more a sound than the 'Ah!' that most english speakers would use.
She tapped herself on the chest. "S'karyet."
I nodded slowly, trying out the name in my mind. A hiss, a click tailed with a continuation, then an exhalation finishing with the mouth closing. "Scarlet."
She moved her hand from side to side in a clearly negative gesture. What I could see of her tail twitched. "S'karyet."
I tried again, having listened more carefully. "S'karyet." There were some deliciously exotic twists in the name.
S'karyet looked pleased at this progress. Her whiskers had risen from a slight droop. She tried talking to me at length, but I was unable to comprehend her. It sounded like something resembling Japanese.
The stereo made a slight click as it reached the end of the CD, starting the cassette that was in the tape player. The frequency response for the tape deck was considerably more skewed than the CD player, and the bass rumble accompanying "Me Without You" made itself known. The lyrics had me smiling cynically. 'Like a crime without a victum/like a sleuth without a clue... that's me without you.'
My face must have conveyed that not-understanding, as she frowned, then put her paw into her robes, rummaging around for something. Perhaps she had encountered humans before, and had an English Catperson dictionary? No, she pulled out a simple jade pendant. It was small and carefully polished, resembling the greenstone works of the Maori in New Zealand. She obviously intended for me to wear it.
I looked at it. The necklace part of it was a length of string going through a hole in the jade. To be sure she didn't simply intend for me to look at it, I looked up at her, pointing first to the pendant and then to myself. She indicated that yes, I should put it on. I used a reef knot, that undoubtedly turned itself into a granny knot as I could not see it behind my neck. As the string was physically turned into a loop, her language was apparent to me. It was like a radio tuner traversing the static, and then a full strength signal appearing out of the blue.
"Wh... what the?"
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