the fog comes on little cat feet

[rangerbecket]

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: The Corydon #36, The Inn
WHEN: 7 September
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open

---

Raleigh had actually gotten the cat a week or so earlier but it had taken him a little while to settle on the name if only because the torrents of rain had distracted him from such trivial things as cat naming and driven him to spend most of his time catching rainwater and trying to keep from drowning. Once it had lightened up, though, he'd been able to do a little more venturing out and the snow-white cat had been called Yuki on more than one occasion and it'd just stuck.

Yuki, luckily, fends for herself. She comes back filthy at the end of the day and she usually brings him presents he doesn't want but she damn sure earns her keep. Right now, she's whining at him as he's making his way along the banks of the swollen river, checking his fishing lines and whining for a bit of the catch.

"You're supposed to feed yourself. Careful, you. Don't know how well you swim." He doesn't know what breed she is but Yuki seems to know what she's about because she carefully bats at the water and backs up when the current's too swift for her liking. Once he gets the fish up and out of the river, he heads up to the inn to clean it with Yuki following, ever hopeful that her master is going to give her something for her troubles.

Raleigh settles to work close to the fire, trying to dry out, and Yuki takes advantage of the warmth to clean herself and let her fur dry out. She sprawls on her back and lets out a long, anguished sigh.

"You're not getting this. You hunt for your food, you know that."

Comments

[womanofvalue]

Peggy's not entirely sure that she's ever seen the purpose of an animal as a leisure companion. Those that are useful, yes, she understands, and this is why she gives Raleigh an approving smile when he laments the cat's unwillingness to hunt. She approaches, still fiddling with the fishing net she's been weaving, and gives Raleigh a sympathetic look. She could use the break and she'd had to come to the inn in order to look and barter for more materials.

"Is she not hunting?" she asks. "Or he? I'm fairly sure it's quite rude to lift your cat up to check."

[rangerbecket]

"She does hunt," Raleigh says, giving Peggy a smile when he sees her. He likes Peggy, actually, and he's always got a smile for her when he sees her in the village. "She just likes to beg for food after she's apparently earned her keep. She's been leaving rats on my porch all week."

Raleigh could do without the proof but he's glad that she's earning her keep. Otherwise, he'd have one white elephant of a gift from whoever's keeping them here.

[womanofvalue]

"Oh, now, isn't that just the lot of most animals who know they can lure their owners in with their looks?" she remarks wryly, approaching in order to give the cat a scratch behind the ears as she settles in near Raleigh with a warm smile. "Are the rats tasty? Or are they more trophies?" she wonders.

[rangerbecket]

"She picks most of them clean," Raleigh says, laughing a little. "So I know she's eating them. I think all the rain has driven them to try and seek shelter inside so the hunting's been pretty easy for her. I ought to let her stay in the inn for a few days so she can keep Kate's kitchen clean for her."

Then again, he's certain Kate can keep the kitchen vermin free just with a look. She may be tiny but she is fierce.

"It's been a while since I've had a pet. Forgot what it's like."

[womanofvalue]

"I've never had one," Peggy admits, and even now she doesn't consider herself the owner of any pets. After all, the pigeons are useful mechanisms of communications and she doesn't dote on them. They're strictly practical. "I suppose I'm missing out on some pet-owner connection?" she estimates. "I've heard that an animal companion can be somewhat soothing, though I'm not sure I believe that."

After all, Bernard Stark has proven to be merely stressful, in all his flamingo glory.

[rangerbecket]

"Seems to be, though she's more functional than anything else," Raleigh says. The way Yuki is sprawled out in front of the fire right now kind of gives the lie to functional but she has a purpose. She's kept his house free of rats and mice and he's grateful for that, even if he hasn't been storing food in there.

"She earns her keep. Have you gotten anything? She came in a box with my name on it. It was pretty weird, I've gotta say. It was like it came out of nowhere one day...just this box with my name printed on it."

[womanofvalue]

"I've received a few things," she agrees, though none of them so self-aware as the cat in front of them. "Pigeons, but they're purely for function. I'd like to train them into their supposed task of being messenger birds," she shares. "And there was a small box of seeds, and one of hair items."

"Everything functional, save for the hair," she says. "So I'm thinking someone wants me to survive and wants my hair to look decent doing it," is her wry remark.

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh laughs a little and gives her a warm smile. "Peggy, don't take this the wrong way but I'm pretty sure your hair is going to look beautiful no matter what you're doing to it. This place isn't going to affect that."

It's not really flirting, just the truth to a beautiful woman, and he hopes she takes it that way. "Birds are going to be useful. The cat is supposed to be useful. Seeds? Definitely. I'm just trying to figure out the pattern, if there is one."

[womanofvalue]

It's not crude or demeaning in the way that some men's comments are, which means she takes it kindly with an appreciative smile (and even a tuck of one lock behind her ear). "Seeds will give us food, eventually. The birds and cat can do something. It's a bit like they do want us to survive," she says. "They want us to suffer, because I didn't get a raincoat and wellies, but they want us to survive."

Though, she wonders if she even will have food left from the seeds based on how much rain they've been receiving.

[thenewways]

The animal that's following the man (yes, Nerys has seen him around, and no, she is completely blanking on his name) around the inn common room--well, Nerys hasn't ever seen one before in person. It looks a bit like a miniature albino hara cat, though its movements, because of its size, seem smaller and more mincing when scaled down.

It's afternoon, a little chilly outside, and Nerys is tinkering with the powdery rocks she's found. She's trying to figure out which will work best on a slate as she's pretty sure none of them are explicitly chalk. It needs to show up, but erase, so she's got one experimental slate to hand, not wanting to ruin any others. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that the animal is prowling around Nerys' legs, apparently having gotten bored of waiting for the man to finish tying lures.

"Hello," she says gently to the not-hara-cat, which looks up at her and almost silently makes a 'mowww' noise. "I don't have anything to eat right now, sorry."

[rangerbecket]

It takes Raleigh a second to catch up with Yuki and once he does, he sees that she's begging the woman for food or something. "Again, we've been over this one. You hunt, you eat. Otherwise, nothing for you."

She's a familiar face. Raleigh thinks she came in with the first group, the group he'd come in with a couple months ago and he gives her a quick smile in greeting.

"Sorry. She's still learning the rules of her continued living arrangements."

[thenewways]

Nerys nods, because the animal seems relatively calm and pleasant, if needy in a very quiet way. Or so she thinks, until it--she--plunks herself down on Nerys' foot, looks up, and lets out a plaintive noise that indicates she's not been fed in weeks. It's pretty obvious that that's utter crap, though, even to an untrained eye.

"She looks like she's been working today," she says, looking up at the man and offering him a smile of her own. "I'd say she needs a bath more than dinner, so don't worry, I'm not buying it." Though the animal is pleasant. "What is she?"

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh wonders how to take the question for a moment. A cat's a pretty obvious animal, or so he thinks, but maybe she means the breed. He's not sure what the breed is himself, honestly, but it seems to be a big and hearty one.

"Not really sure of the breed of cat," he says, shrugging a little. "Something big, though, because I've never seen a cat quite as big as her and she's not full grown yet as far as I can tell. Seems like she's kind of built for the weather up here. She's big and has a lot of fur to keep her warm which works out for this climate."

[thenewways]

"Oh, a cat," Nerys says, picking it up from the rest of what he's saying. She won't know breeds anyway, and she isn't fussy on that front. Her gaze drifts down to the animal still looking hopefully up at her, though how an expression can be both hopeful and aloof, she's not sure. "So this is big for them, then? Sorry..."

She looks a little sheepish, glancing back up at the man. "I've just never seen one in real life before, just holoprograms, and stories from colleagues." The one about Sisko's aunt's mouser falling into the washbasin has stuck with her for years.

[rangerbecket]

"Yeah, this is big for a cat," Raleigh says, giving Yuki a little grin. He picks up a little of what she says about holoprograms and he wonders what those are. Future, maybe? He'd thought he was from the furthest. Hmm. Maybe it's time to ask some questions.

"What year are you from? I'm from 2025. I thought I was the furthest along of our little group."

[thenewways]

The question's friendly, and the guy himself seems simply curious, so Nerys doesn't hesitate when she says, "In Earth time? It's the 24th century. Not quite sure of the exact year, we don't use the format much in my part of the quadrant." She purses her lips and does some quick math. "Uh, 23...71? Maybe 2372? It was Stardate 48467 point something or other when I left."

That number's stuck in her memory, because since then the measurement of time has abruptly halted for her, at least in the ways she's always known it. She'd gone from seeing the stardate on the top of logs and reports or on chronos, or being able to tell the time instinctively on Bajor--to confusion. The days here were shorter, for a start.

"I think there are a couple of people from somewhere between your time and mine, but I have no idea when that is."

[rangerbecket]

She's from at least two hundred years in the future from him and the idea of it is astounding; Raleigh's closer in time to someone like Kate, he thinks, than he is to Kira. It's crazy how the world can change so much over the years and in some ways, it seems, it hasn't changed at all. They've all ended up here and they all seem to be getting by, in one way or another.

"Wow," he says, letting out a slow breath. "You're the furthest, then. This place must seem like a history book to you, even more than it does for me."

hoping this is all right!

[fishermansweater]

Although they're now living in one of the houses on the outskirts of the village, Finnick and Annie still aren't really a part of the community yet. There's been a lot for them to do now that the rain has lessened a little, much of it rebuilding their supplies of food. So Finnick's been out in the rain for hours today, fishing where he can in the swollen river and gathering supplies to allow him to rebuild some of the fish traps he'd made that had been washed away by the rising river.

He's about to start on his way back to the village when Finnick hears a voice and Raleigh Becket comes into view, followed by a little cat that must be who he's talking to.

"I think cats always want to be fed when there's fish around."

[rangerbecket]

"Pretty sure that's how it goes," Raleigh agrees. He'd met Finnick once, a couple weeks ago, and had only seen him in passing a few times since then when fishing. The guy is handy with fish, that's for damn sure, and Raleigh hasn't gotten in his way; he can spot capable from a mile away and Finnick is more than capable.

"She begs but I think it's just because she knows I'll eventually give in every once in a while. Just enough to keep the hope alive. You've been doing okay? River's been high lately," he says, conversational but casual all the same. He doesn't want to spook the guy off.

[fishermansweater]

"Always someone who will," he agrees and, for a moment, there's a normalcy in the scene that there hasn't been about anything else here. Just a cat and a man arguing over the catch.

There'd always been cats hanging around the docks back in District Four, a lifetime ago when Finnick had been a fisherman's son learning to be a fisherman like his parents and their parents before them. And there'd always been someone willing to share a morsel of fish, just like there'd always been cats to beg it from them.

The incongruous scene isn't enough to lure Finnick into complacency, but Raleigh had been friendly enough when they'd met. And ... nobody outside an alliance or a district partnership in the arena bothers with how anyone else is doing, except to count the dead and, by extension, their own chances. So after a moment's pause, Finnick shrugs with a half-smile.

"Had a few tough days, but we're okay."

[rangerbecket]

"I know how that is. At least the rain seems to have slowed down," Raleigh says, looking up at the sky. It seems that this place is going to get rain and lots of it so he doesn't want to go speaking more of it into existence if he doesn't have to.

"I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to stop. Makes it hard to navigate this river with it so high, you know? But I figure you know your way around it. You seem capable."

[fishermansweater]

Finnick has his theories about the rain. He's seen how the Gamemakers use the physical environment of the arena to manipulate the tributes, right down to the weather. The rain forced him and Annie to come out of the woods, when they'd been the only ones living there. Why, he doesn't yet know, but he's not about to believe it's as simple as the circumstances of weather, whatever the others said in the town meeting.

Finnick scoffs. "I should be."

It takes a couple of moments for him to remember that people here don't know him, or his history. Or they say that they don't. He still hasn't decided if he thinks that's part of an elaborate deception or these people really are from different worlds, but ... Raleigh either doesn't know or will pretend not to know his background.

His voice is less harsh when he explains.

"My parents were fishermen. I was meant to be a fisherman too."

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh laughs softly. "Then it would have been a shame if you weren't," he agrees, thinking if he'd followed in his parents' footsteps, he probably wouldn't even be here. He's never been the kind of person to follow a set path; he's always marched to the beat of his own drum and he's always tried to go headfirst into danger. Reckless as the storm - both of the Beckets. He's a little less now that Yancy's gone but the itch is still in his blood.

"But you say you were meant to be. What did you end up becoming if you're not a fisherman?"

It's an interesting choice of words, if nothing else, and Raleigh wonders what the other man might mean by it.

[fishermansweater]

It's one of the things he got famous for: that he could fish, that he could weave himself a net and use it to kill, that he could wield a trident like it was made for him. And try though he does, green eyes sharply intent on the other man's face, Finnick can't see anything but an apparently good-natured man interested in talking about fishing. The whole -- his whole -- world knows Finnick's story in sometimes intimate detail, but Raleigh apparently doesn't.

But it's not as if he can outright say what he did that changed his course, going to the Academy to learn win the Games. That's still a secret, and District Four has had enough troubles already thanks to the Capitol's crackdown. He's not going to offer them up for that.

"I won the Hunger Games," he says, instead. "Victors don't have to work."

[rangerbecket]

"Hunger Games? I don't think I've ever heard of it. Some kind of charity event or something?"

It's not something from his world, anyway, but Raleigh's been in the village long enough to realize that even two people from earth might not be from the same time or the same version of the planet. Hunger Games means nothing to him but it clearly means something to Finnick.

"We don't have them in my version of the world."