After a shower, Nyrun returns to her room finding Kika aggressively fluffing her pillows. The dirty cup and saucer on her nightstand have been replaced with a full glass of water and a small bowl of pear slices. Her bed is made, the covers turned down. Noticing her arrival, Kika steps back, looks at her, and nods to her work. Nyrun wordlessly gets in, and Kika sits, facing her. Normally she could just wait until someone falls asleep and wander into their subconscious looking for any information she wanted but Nyrun doesn’t have the right sort of dreams. Or maybe it’s that she doesn’t dream? She cannot remember the details, just that Kika cannot meddle with her or the boss’s dreams, and not for lack of effort. She does like sleep though, but will put it off a while longer to fill her in on the day’s events.

Kika nods in agreement when she explains the plan to meet with the Queen. Much safer than summoning Autumn directly. She sighs when she gets to the elder mouse part of the bargain. “I know, I know, it’s tough, but maybe an elder mouse would know something about Tuor.” Kika motions her to get on with it. She tells her of the guests and the foundlings, and the Lurken siblings.

“And tomorrow I have to go see the Pack about a tracker, and then to Moira’s to see about my wards.”

Kika’s gaze moves up to the ceiling. She’s not pushing any thoughts to Nyrun’s mind, not that she’s a big sharer, but usually, she’d have dissipated by now if she wasn't feeling chatty.

“Are you angry?”

Kika’s enormous black compound eyes narrow, and she motions to the now-empty bowl. Nyrun frowns. “Well you did all this nice stuff before I told you about the promise I made, and that the parlor’d been full of nightbeasts, and that I’d be likely bringing in a kit and a pup….” she enumerates until Kika raises a hand. 

“What’s the last thing you’ve eaten, before this?” Kika’s question rasps into Nyrun’s mind. The strangeness of her “voice” despite not using her throat was still unsettling after all of their time together, although she supposed she might’ve gotten used to it once and was readjusting again. She considered the question for a moment.

“I wiped some of the bribery fondant on a hunk of bread–it was way too sweet but did the job.”

Kika’s multi-segmented arm twitched as she reached out to cup Nyrun’s face. The pink bristles of her hand were less soft than they looked, but not as unpleasant to her as others might find them. The discordant tones returned to her mind, admonishing, “You need meat, child.”

“Well, but I really was hoping to sleep. Besides I heard that eating before bed will give you nightmares.”

Another deep fuchsin hand unfolds towards her, latching on to squeeze her other cheek. “I couldn’t give you a nightmare if I tried, you scapegrace.”

Nyrun smiled widely, her toothy grin making the house spirit scowl. 

“You are all fangs. Come, let’s get you a bird. You know what happens when you try to be like the Obvious.”

But Nyrun didn’t really know. She knew it wasn’t good but every time she thought too deeply about it, everything just got so hazy. She knew she was part of the Obscure, but it wasn’t like anyone seemed to recognize what sort. She’d never seen anyone like Kika around either–Kika was old magic. She’d crossed to the seas with Tuor, bound to her hearthstone, and had been part of many of the boss’s prior homes. Some days Nyrun thought she might’ve been with them on that voyage, but maybe she just had a good imagination.

Yet Kika’s presence didn’t seem to confuse any of the Obscure who frequented the shop in the same way they regarded Nyrun with wariness. Wild, as within the confines of the Tuor’s building, Kika was the more dangerous of the two; invoking fear was her raison d'etre. (That, and housekeeping, much to the boss and Nyrun’s appreciation.) 

Sure, Nyrun had developed some unusual skills–she could see in multiple spectra both Obvious and Obscure. She could talk to nearly anyone, but that was really just combining a form of vision, seeing intention, with a rapid ability to learn that made it more instant translation than “knowing every language” like the rumors tell it. If only she had kept a journal, she wouldn’t be so lost or hiding just how lost she was. Kika knew she was having memory lapses, but she hadn’t let on exactly how much was unknown to her. It was too mortifying to ask what she is. 

She remembered Tuor had said she was “new.” It’s why she called her Nyr. She figured that meant she wasn’t the last of her ilk. There wasn’t any other like Tuor either–being the only of your kind was rare but not unheard of. There was something to her sort of Unknown that everyone else found threatening, and she could see their unease without using any of her enhanced sights but not a single one of her visions was privy to the darkness others saw in her. What felt true was that Tuor had taken her in and given her a name and a home, and Tuor would not shelter a menace. Would she? 

As if Nyrun’s mind had suddenly let her in beyond the foyer revealing these thoughts, Kika spun around to the lagging figure and a scraping gasp grated inside her, signaling her disapproval. Sheepishly she caught up and followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at the table as directed by an impatient flick of more wrists than one arm is expected to have.  

Kika pulls a bundle wrapped in butcher paper out of the fridge and opens it on the counter. “I had the shop bring those Cornish game hens you like for snacking. Or would you rather something bigger?” 

The very question caused her jaw to crack open with a push from her extending teeth. She caught the numbing spiciness of her venom and realized she was drooling. “Now that you mention it I could probably eat.” She gulped loud enough to make Kika’s antennae twitch, one pointing directly at her with the smugness of being correct as usual.

The whole parcel appears in front of her followed by a roll of paper towels. “Slowly or you’ll make yourself sick,” her words a gentle crash about her mind. The house spirit begins cleaning up the room around her still muttering directly into her head about her as if it wasn’t intentional. “You’d think she’s trying to be like me. Gonna live off tears and shivers is she?” But she kept her back turned giving Nyrun some privacy as the small plucked birds disappeared whole, liquified by the time they hit her stomach. 

Folding the paper slowly and going over the creases repeatedly she considers tears and shivers and reckons that’s what she’d get if Moira ever knew that their meals together never would be enough.

🖼️ Image reference: an edited version of a lithograph of Howell pear by Alfred A. Hoffy, from Hoffy's North American Pomologist, 1860.