Interlude One

She awoke feeling strangely... floaty. It was a novel sensation, like tipping over in a chair without going so far that she lost her balance. It was dancing on the knife's edge of falling and not. It took her a moment of shifting around to realize what was going on.

It was the bed.

Fasmine had never slept on something so... cloudy before. She wasn't resting on the mattress, she was sinking into it. She understood Caroline's insistence on taking a shower and changing into warm, if oversized, PJs before sleeping. It made it all the more comfortable.

It wasn't just the mattress, the silky-smooth pyjamas, or even the soft blankets and chilly room kept at just the right amount of 'cold' to make the blankets feel cozy. It was the several warm spots she could feel on her.

There were two near her legs and another right on her belly.

Stretching up a little, she blinked in the dark of the room and could only-just make out Arsenic and Cyanide sleeping on either side of her legs. Mercury was nearby too, sleeping on the edge of the bed on his side, and next to him was a cat she'd only heard about laying down as a loaf. Her eyes were opened, and she glanced up to give Sharp a look.

Fasmine felt like if she moved, then Belladonna would bolt away.

Fortunately, she didn't feel like moving. That last spot of warmth over her belly was Caroline. The woman-turned-kitten, the one who'd allowed Fasmine into her home, was laying down flat across the blankets, paws stretched out and face pressing down.

Fasmine smiled, then let herself relax. She was hurting in a few places. Her legs had cramps, there was some bad chafing in her thighs from the bike rides, and the muscles in her lower back were sore. There was that constant throbbing pain in her lower rib that came and went, and when she took a breath that was too deep, she felt like someone was reaching a hand up her lungs to close her neck up.

But those were normal pains, and this mattress was making her forget them. At the same time, it was reminding her of home.

Well, if she could call the orphanage home. The mattresses there were three fingers thick on the outside, and if she was lucky, one finger thick in the middle. She suspected that every mattress in the orphanage stacked atop each other wouldn't be as thick as the one she was sinking into now.

This level of luxury was... it was strange. It was undeniably nice, but it also made her feel a sort of queasy, guilty feeling.

She let out a sigh and turned her head a little to peek at the clock on the nightstand. It was some old digital thing, with red glowing numbers that said that it was almost six in the morning. She had today off, but tomorrow she'd have to get back to work.

This level of luxury didn't come free, she knew. It was... way, way beyond anything that she could afford herself. And yet the little kitten on her tummy had just given it to her.

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Not quite for free. There were strings attached, but they were strings, not chains, and so far it all seemed worth it. She was getting stronger. Not very much, and not very fast, but it was happening. Some of the soreness she felt was proof of that, right?

"Are you awake already?" Caroline asked.

Sharp smiled. "Good morning, Earl...ess Easy Eyes."

"Earl is a male-only noble title, and the rest of the name is so bad as to not be worth commenting upon."

She shrugged, which had one of the cats by her feet--Arsenic, maybe--stretching and shifting in their sleep. "It's not even six AM. Can't I get away with not being good at names yet?"

"I suppose I could let you off the hook this time. The cats were going to be waking you up in about twenty minutes anyway."

"At six?" she asked.

"Food time is seven-thirty, on the dot," Caroline said. She stood up, still on Fasmine's waist, and streeeeetched big.

"But six is an hour and a half before that?" Fasmine said, uncertain. "How long does it take to prepare the food?"

"Only a couple of minutes, at most. That's no reason not to make sure you're awake in time. Cats are punctual creatures. When it suits them. I'm afraid that one of the prices for living here will be home maintenance, which means a lot of small chores. I've spent a lot of money minimizing as many of those as I can, but that costs money. A lot was paid upfront. Quality building and good machinery saves on long-term maintenance, but some chores can't be avoided. Which means you're either going to have to sacrifice time, or earn enough money to pay others to do the work for you."

She nodded. She kind of understood the concept. Chores certainly weren't foreign. They had plenty of those to do in the orphanage, and as part of their life-to-work program, they all had to do plenty of menial labour. She'd always been ranked as a hard worker, so a few extra things to take care of didn't bother her in the least.

"I think I can handle it. And a job too! I don't know if I can still do courier work?" She kind of wanted to continue. It felt like it was just a short step away from her dream job as an Edgerunner.

"I suppose. The travel time might be a bit much, but we can fill it with education, and the work pays relatively well. For what it is."

Did it pay well enough to own a house like this one? Fasmine suspected that the answer to that was a resounding no. "I suppose I should get out of bed," she said.

But she really didn't want to.

And so she didn't.

Well, not until Arsenic started to walk over her face at the crack of six-thirty, because no amount of comfy mattresses was going to get between him and his breakfast.

Fasmine sighed, but it was a happy sort of sigh. This was her life now, and it was a pretty big step up.

***