Navy: 12
Moon: 41
Lentil: 23
Iliad (Ily): >1
The blood dripped down his back and soaked into his shirt, but all he could think was great, another piece of clothing ruined.
He sighed as he dragged himself to his room, flopping down on his bed and carefully removing his blood soaked shirt, ripping open the drawers of the endtable and expertly applying bandage after bandage to his scar-riddled back until it was utterly impossible for any blood to leak through the gauze. Sighing, he reaplied his shirt, not exactly excited at the prospect of leaving his room and continuing to pretend that everything was all right. His father had become a master at hiding these things, healing the wounds for a while before reopening them when he was sure Navy was safe from the inquisitive eyes of the employees.
Exiting his room, he called out, “Lentil!” and the man, who was a part of the building’s elite force of basically FBI agents, immediately appeared before him, asking a silent question with his eyes. “I want to go outside.”
“Sure.”
Lentil led him through the office, holding the doors open for him as they made their way outside. The July sunshine played gloriously along Navy’s pale skin, and the only way to see anything around him was by squinting or shielding his eyes from the brilliant ball of fire raging thousands of miles away.
Lentil watched him as he walked around the property, hardly doing anything but kicking grass and watching the cars speed by, judging the fancy people that had to come see Moon’s products in person before cementing any purchases. He could see Dawn Inc. too; a huge building, identical to Dusk Co. in practically every way, excluding the slight shift in location. He had always wondered why, exactly, they didn’t just combine into one huge company. Of course he knew that Sun and Moon hated each other, and yet he was always skeptical when it came to the fact that they couldn’t overcome their petty differences in order to spread more worldwide peace. Made him wonder what, exactly, had possessed them to become world leaders in the first place, since obviously both of them had held one hell of a grudge for multiple centuries.
Navy sat down heavily and stared up at the sky, watching the transparent puffs of condensed water vapor drift lazily across his sight of vision. What it would feel like to be so free he wondered, no conscious to weigh him down, no greater purpose tugging him through life, no hoards of people just waiting for him to let them down. Just floating through life, letting go of whatever you needed to and letting it fall to earth with the rain that was expelled from the bottom every few days.
Sighing and rolling onto his stomach (partly because the continuous pricks of grass were upsetting his marred back), Navy stared out at the street, re-reading the names of the businesses across the way for perhaps the thousandth time. He always wondered what it would be like if he were actually allowed to walk over there, allowed to try some ice cream or pizza. Sure he could get whatever food he wanted delivered to the business, but it would have been a different experience entirely to have the opportunity to sit in a public space, just listening to the buzz of people living their daily lives.
Suddenly, a blur of motion caught his eye. A gray speck disappearing and reappearing in the alleyways between the buildings, scampering between different piles of garbage in an attempt to scrounge up a meal. Navy got up and sprinted to the edge of the property, beating against the hands that immediately caught him around the waist as Lentil prevented him from leaving company property.
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“What are you doing…?” the guard asked, easily hefting the boy up and placing him back within Dusk Co.’s boundaries.
“There’s a cat…” Navy said, narrowing his eyes. “And I don’t have any friends. Lentil, I’m lonely. I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this. But I suppose you’re right, I can’t leave company property.” He hadn’t cried in a while. But if he could, he would have at that moment. Instead he just clutched his little arms around his little torso, looked down, and mumbled, “I’m sorry,” before turning around and slowly walking back inside. Lentil hesitantly followed him, a sorrowful, piteous look on his face.
The next day, Navy didn’t get out of bed. Any movement sent wracking pain throughout his body, the thin scabs decorating his back snapping at even the slightest shift in position. So he just lay among his sheets, curled up and sobbing quietly, tracing patterns in his blankets to help pass the time as he told stories to an audience of stuffed animals. His voice came out garbled and faint, detailing stories he made up on the spot filled with heartbreak and plot-twists, compilations he had composed from mashing together multiple different storylines he had remembered from the various books on his shelf, adding in his own personal flourishes once in a while.
“The prince leaned over the knight’s trembling body, trying in vain to staunch the bloodflow as he pled to whatever God was listening ‘No, he was just trying to save me, you can’t-’”
“Navy…?”
Navy blushed, mortified that Lentil might’ve, perhaps, heard the story he was spinning. He immediately stopped speaking, shutting his mouth so hard that he was sure the guard heard his teeth clacking together even from the other side of the room.
Lentil’s footsteps padded across the room, the creak and shift of the bed a clear sign that the man had sat down on the edge of the mattress. “I…” Lentil sighed, going silent for a while as he, Navy presumed, tried to find the right words to address the bedridden child. “You said yesterday that you were lonely, and I just…I just thought…”
A meow cut him off, and Navy, in spite of his injuries, bolted upright to see the ball of fluff Lentil was letting crawl towards him across the bed.
Navy gasped, scooping up the orange kitten and cradling it in his arms as it meowed quizzically up at him, looking at the guard sitting at the edge of his bed in an entirely different way now. He was rubbing the back of his neck skeptically, blushing intensely while looking anywhere but at them, almost as though he wasn’t used to doing nice things for other people. “I got you a cat, God I’m stupid. What if you’re allergic!? Shit, Moon’s going to kill me…”
Navy leaped across the bed in one swift movement, wrapping his arms around Lentil’s chest, the kitten meowing annoyedly as it was crushed beneath Navy’s torso. Lentil let out a little gasp as Navy squeezed him, eventually wrapping his arms around the boy in turn as Navy murmered, “Thank you so much, Lentil.”
And so, instead of telling his stories to inanimate stuffed animals, Navy was able to instead craft tales with his new kitten, which he had named Iliad, after the classic epic shelved right in the middle of his bookshelf. He spent the next two days locked in his room with his cat, the occasional staff member delivering and taking away uneaten meals, placing a cat’s necessities throughout the room; a litter box in one corner, and a food dish close to the bed, which they too filled every day. When Navy’s back was finally feeling better, he grabbed Iliad and carried him out of the room, calling out “Lentil!” as soon as he exited the doorway, expecting the man to start following him as soon as he stepped into the living room.
Instead, an unfamiliar hand was placed on his shoulder, and a deep, unsettling voice rumbled throughout the room, “Lentil has unfortunately been moved to a different wing of the company. Moon thought this best for both you and him, and I am his replacement. My name is Frio, and if you ever need anything, just call for me.”
A sinking feeling fell through Navy. He had caused Lentil to move. He didn’t even know if Frio was telling the truth, if Lentil really had moved to a different wing…or was just released altogether. He should have expected nothing different. After all, anything he had ever wanted had only been taken from him.
Looking down at the ball of fur in his arms, Navy gritted his teeth. Sure, everything else had been taken away from him. But this would not. No one would ever take this cat away from him.