Chapter Text
And that's how I carried my fifth litter in the great summer of rains, Brunhilde concluded in her scratchy, raspy voice. Her feline tones, channeled through his charmed bracelet to Common, were rough as a gravel mill when she sighed and kneaded Essek's lap again, feather duster of a tail flicking to and fro in his face. A few crumbs of litter were stuck in the ends. Essek carefully removed the pieces with a flick of prestidigitation and ran the comb down her back again as Hilde purred.
"That sounds very difficult," Essek told her consolingly. "And you were all alone then?" They were several minutes into this grooming session— it always went better when he could communicate what he was trying to help her with and she could complain while he did it.
Hilde harrumphed and snorted in her wheezy way as she pressed into the comb's path down her back and flank. Many seasons had come and gone. People came and went, too. Kittens grew, had kits of their own, left the colony, left the city. She sighed, and took on a thoughtful tone as she reminisced, claws prickling through Essek’s trousers to poke his thighs. Caught by hawks, carried off by foxes. The city was quieter, in those days. The fields had plenty of mice and voles, so I traveled with a grain merchant's family to this town. She blinked at him slowly, old blind eyes squinting shut in happiness. A twinkle of mischief glinted out from the milky white of her pupils. They fed me from their own plates.
Essek fought a laugh and patted her rear, combing through the tufted gray fluff on the back of her legs. "If that is your way of hinting that I owe you cheese, I would remind you that your belly hurt the last time I gave you any."
A reasonable risk for decadence, she replied. She rolled to show Essek her belly, though Essek knew that she would not enjoy having it rubbed. Essek paused there, then gently moved the comb to pick through her long and full-fluffed tail, which was always on the verge of matting no matter what he did. The bracelet's charm would wear off soon. He only had a few minutes longer with her that day.
He looked down at her lovingly, sighing as she picked up into another retelling of one of her life tales, now on to the drawn-out epic of her sordid past as a tavern cat, sleeping in the pantry and singing for her supper. He listened with sincere interest, all the way until her voice trailed off into a grumble, and then a rumbling, broken rasp of a purr, incomprehensible to him once again as the charm wore off.
He smiled down at her content form in his lap. They'd pick it back up tomorrow.