sixthiterationlogs | the fog comes on little cat feet

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the fog comes on little cat feet

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."

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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."

"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.

"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.

"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."

"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.

"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."

"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.

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."

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.

"Yeah, it's like they want us to get through it even if it's tough," Raleigh agrees. "I've live through tough before, so I'm not worried about that, but I wonder how many people here have been through tough times."

He hasn't spoken to everyone but he doesn't know if everyone has some knowledge of growing their own food or fishing or anything. Some people might be from the city - what would they know about that stuff?

She knows that she has, but she doesn't like to talk about what life had been like, both before and then during the war. She wishes she could say that after had been any better, but she had put herself straight back into the cauldron of strain and doubt thanks to the SSR's shifting attitudes towards women.

"At least you've got a cat, now," she points out helpfully. "It's a terrible adorable one, too," she adds, like that goes against the cat instead of for it.

"She is terribly adorable. It's like I've been burdened with it," Raleigh says, watching as Yuki delicately licks one paw and sprawls out again to show her belly before the fire. She purrs, loudly, and he has to laugh. She's a damned cute cat.

"I haven't had a pet in a long time. It's kind of nice to have something that cares about me, you know? I mean, she does her own thing for the most part, sure, but she comes home at night and I have someone who depends on me. I've kind of missed that."

Peggy laughs warmly at the notion of such a terribly adorable creature being a burden. "Don't think me cold," she says, leaning in a little, "but I actually think it might be a burden on me. While she looks quite adorable, it's a touch more of a responsibility than I could really bear. I think I might accidentally set her feral by missing one too many meals, if she were in my care."

She's glad, though, that Raleigh isn't her. "Did you have someone at home who filled that role?" she asks curiously. "Someone who depended on you and who came home to you?"

"No, I didn't," Raleigh says. It's something he hasn't really talked to anyone about here but somehow, with Peggy, it comes out a little easier than with some of the others. He hasn't spoken about Yancy in a while but here in the cozy warmth of the inn, the conversation is a lighter one than usual.

"I used to be close to my brother, a long time ago, but he fell in battle several years ago. I've been a loner since then. Haven't had much to call my own before coming to this place."

She feels something clench that feels suspiciously like her heart, because she knows all too well what that feels like. "I lost my brother to war, as well," she says, her voice hoarse. It seems like such a long time ago, but it hasn't actually been that long. "It's not something you ever really get over, is it?" She imagines that of all people, Raleigh would understand best, seeing as it's not something that everyone can easily understand.

"How did you lose him? If it's not too forward to ask."

"Combat, together," Raleigh says. "Got ripped away from me before I even had a second to think."

It's something that still hurts him, still twists like a knife in his side each and every time he thinks about it. He shakes his head a little to clear it and gives her a little smile, sort of watery.

"Been five years now."

Peggy understands all too well what it's like to have people ripped away, thinking of how Jarvis had accused her of everyone near her dying. The truth is that she can't even deny it and that it is true. Still, at least with her brother, she hadn't been there. She'd only received the news back home.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," she says emphatically, understanding that pain. "It never goes away, does it? That awful feeling in your stomach when you think of them."

"Sometimes it gets bearable, you know? You go a day or two, you don't think about them...then it hits you in the gut. That's how it is with me and Yancy even though it's been five years."

Ten years, fifteen years - Raleigh doesn't think it's going to change. He thinks losing Yancy is always going to feel like losing a part of him, like losing an arm or a leg. He doesn't think it's ever going to truly heal.

"I lost my brother eight years ago, I understand." She doesn't want to talk about Steve, because apparently Steve hadn't been dead. And yet, two years without him had been brutally painful in a way that made the ache inside her twist her up and close off to all possibilities until Daniel had chipped his way through and Angie had levered in and so had Jarvis. All that time she had spent trying to protect her heart and people had still found a way in.

"Will you tell me about him?" Peggy suggests. "If it's not too painful."

"Yancy had always been my best friend," Raleigh says, giving her a little bit of a smile as he remembered him. It's been a while since he's talked about him but he never forgets, not even one detail. Yancy's every thought and memory and experience is burned on him through the Drift and Raleigh's never going to forget that as long as he lives.

"Older brother, confidant, competition. He was the one who always drove me to be my best. I fought best when he was on my right."

It sounds so, so terribly familiar, to the point that Peggy has to swallow down her pain. "You're lucky to have had the chance to fight with him." How many times has Peggy wondered whether she might have saved Michael if only she had listened to him and seen her potential earlier, rather than conform to what society expected of her.

"And no one's been able to fill that gap? Not all of it, I know that's impossible, but some of it?" she prods.

"Different, I think. We were close," Raleigh says. It's hard to explain what it means to share the Drift with someone and he doesn't know if he will ever be able to explain it to someone who hasn't been in the Drift.

"We fought together so often, side by side...we were in perfect sync. I've never found anyone else that can fill that place. It feels like a part of me died too."

"Does it still feel like that here?" She's been wondering, a little, if maybe this place isn't supposed to somehow be a mend on people's feelings and emotions. After all, it seems that everyone has some trauma, doesn't it? It had even been a point at one of those meetings.

"Even after all this time?"

"Sometimes," Raleigh admits. "Sometimes it's not so hard. I'll go days or weeks and not think about Yancy, you know? And then I'll see something or hear something that reminds me of him and all of a sudden it's like it happened yesterday."

Raleigh doesn't think it will ever go away entirely, no, but it has gotten easier to put one step in front of the other five years later and he thinks, with time, it will get easier still.

"Grief is awful like that," Peggy says, absently tugging at the stitch at her trousers as she tries to figure out how to say this next part without being overtly hopeful. "I thought I had lost someone, too, but he's here. He arrived out of the fountain the same as the rest of us did."

"Perhaps your brother might arrive," she says, trying to be matter-of-fact rather than endlessly hopeful.

the fog comes on little cat feet

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