Interlude Two: Bread and Fish

Keystone was a shit city. Filled with shit people, who spent their whole lives trying to threaten and steal as much shit from other shit people as they possibly could. The buildings were shit. The roads were shit - and covered in shit too, actually. The guards gave you shit. The shop owners gave you shit. The nobles, well they didn’t give you shit, but they definitely made their servants give you it. To put it succinctly, life in Keystone was, well, shit.

One particular little piece of shit was called Ribs. The other urchins said it was because she was skinny as a skeleton found in a pig pen, but she insisted it was because she could dance and twist and move just like a ribbon in the wind.

She lived a shitty life. Begging for coin from foreigners, or the odd Keystoner who looked like they still had some shred of empathy. Stealing where she could, running and fighting when she got caught. Not that she got caught often, or couldn’t run most of the time when she was.

There was only one thing in Rib’s life that wasn’t shit: her palace.

When Ribs was younger, her parents had both caught a plague off some foreign merchant and carked it, leaving her to fend for herself. She’d had a shit time at first. A shit time even for Keystone, and you know that’s saying something.

She was unused to life on the streets, and once the bank had taken her parents’ home and turfed her out, she’d floundered. Slunk about alleys, hoping not to be noticed, eating scraps and filth, and flinching at every noise. That was, until she met Boulder. But he wasn’t called that then. Back then he was too small and insignificant and shit to even have a name.

Boulder was a comically tiny boy. Ribs had almost knocked him down and ran off when they met one afternoon round the back of an awful smelling abattoir, but he had instead won her over by offering her a heel of bread and some bits of half-cooked beef - more fat than tissue.

She had scarfed it down. It was the best meal she’d eaten in months. And he gave her a shy smile, and she towered over him and said, “Well, I guess’s makes us a team ‘en.” And so she made her first friend.

It turned out to be a surprisingly prescient move. Boulder had taught her the ins and outs of living on the street. Which merchants were kindly, and which would have your fingers. Which guards were slower or faster than they looked. The wheres and whens of hiding and running. Everything she needed to know to grow up successful.

One afternoon, after they’d pulled off their greatest heist yet, and sat giggling behind a baker’s shop sharing a whole roast chicken, the ridiculous little lad had manifested Stone after digging a pebble from under his bony arse.

And so he naturally became Boulder.

The boy put his talents to good use. His very first skill was a control skill, as luck would have it. He declared that the spot in which he manifested would be their palace, and that very afternoon he began to build it.

~~~~~

Now fourteen and all alone, Ribs slunk down the alleyway, making certain she was not followed. She waited some more, leaning up against the baker’s shop, before going to a particular paving stone. She worked one finger under it, and clicked the simple catch. She lifted, her wiry arms straining slightly, until a hatch just big enough for a scrawny little girl or boy to slip through flipped open.

This was her palace. Hers and Boulder’s, she corrected herself, though he was dead. It was a single room, bigger even than her old bedroom at her parents’ house, she thought, though she couldn’t really remember it.

It wasn’t much, but it was dry, on account of Boulder having shaped all the stone around it into four watertight walls, and warm, on account of the baker’s ovens toiling away above her.

In one corner sat a rickety shelf they’d made from bits of wood they’d scavenged. On it sat a spare shirt, with only a few holes, waiting for when her current one packed in its employment and retired. She had a few candle ends, some flint and steel, one wooden bowl, and a good, sturdy fork and spoon too. A handful of copper clippings and one full silver coin sat on another of the shelves, the coin being hers by right of her finding it sat square in the middle of a horse apple and no one else around smart enough to take it.

Beside the rickety shelf sat two buckets, one for ablutions - shit, that is - that didn’t leak, and the other for washing, that did.

In the other corner was a nice plush rug, her most treasured possession, patterned with some huge, stripy, black-and-orange cat. She thought it was a make-believe animal, but Boulder insisted he’d seen one in a menagerie, and called it a zebra.

Anyways, Boulder had gifted it to her one day, having found it tossed out the back of a compound in the noble district. Ribs had listened to his tale with wide eyes; anyone like them caught anywhere near the noble district would be beat to death on the spot.

Well, maybe not on the spot - couldn’t have nobles seeing such unsavoury things could we?

Unsavoury, now tha’ is a fine word, Ribs thought. She’d learned it from the baker who lived above her palace.

Ribs and Boulder had slept every day on the fine rug, stuffed underneath with whatever straw they could scrounge. For years they’d lived like kings, using Boulder’s Ideal, until it was all snatched away.

Some merchant, some fat fucking shit, wearing enough gold to choke a horse and enough silk for its funeral shroud, had decided he didn’t like the way Boulder had looked at him. Ribs and Boulder weren’t even looking to cadge anything off him - just passing by. The merchant’s guards beat Boulder to death in the street all the same.

Now it was just Ribs, and their palace, and their rug. All by herself.

The only other thing she had was her hate. She nurtured it, fed it, cradled it to sleep every night. Every single day she would go and watch that merchant, to see where he went and plot her revenge. She knew where he lived. Where he went each day of the week. It seemed to Ribs that he didn’t even work, just spent all day visiting various other merchants and nobles and shaking hands and winking and smiling. But she didn’t know how buying and selling worked, she’d never done either. But she’d have her revenge, sooner or later.

It was impossible, of course. Ribs was just a tiny, weak little girl, and the merchant was rich and healthy, and surrounded by guards.

But a girl could dream.

~~~~~

Ribs chewed on some salt fish from a big waxed package she’d hustled from a merchant’s lackey not fifteen minutes ago. She’d had to run like the clappers to get away from his squawking, and then harder still to lose the guards. It was worth it though, this lot would feed her for a week, at least.

She was perched on the roof of a cobbler’s shop, in a district that was just nice enough that the poor people could still afford to shop here, but not so nice they’d rob it.

She was enjoying her fish when she heard a scuffling below her, and a horrible sound - a yowling, and so she wriggled over to the eaves on her belly to look.

A boy, maybe her age or a bit older, from the looks of him, was tormenting a cat. If the boy was scruffy, he didn’t look homeless, but you couldn’t say the same for the cat. It was filthy where the boy was merely dirty, its black fur alternately matted and spiky.

The boy drew back a kick and launched it at the cat, and the cat did as cats do, and leapt straight upwards, an impossible movement, seemingly, and as it dropped, it turned into a flurry upon the boy’s leg.

The boy shrieked with pain and indignation, and drew back for another kick, muttering about “fucking little shits” and “stupid fucking thing” and “fucking asshole fucking animal” as he went. Ribs supposed he would know, being all of those things himself.

He never got to launch another ill-advised punt though, as it was at that moment that a scrawny little girl dropped on him from a story up whilst he was standing on one leg.

Much like the cat, Ribs turned into a strange kind of flurry upon landing, hissing and kicking, scratching and swinging, all with pure, wild, reckless abandon.

The boy must have decided he didn’t much like this turn of events and he fled, crying and holding a long scratch on his face that was bleeding freely all over his hands.

Ribs sniffed as she watched him go. She’d never much liked people picking on things smaller than themselves, and was always taken by those smaller giving it back.

Story of her life, in more ways than one.

The package she’d stolen had toppled off the roof when she’d dropped, and spilled some fish about, so she set to carefully gathering it all up. The cat sat against the wall of the shop, shivering and staring at her.

“G’on, little ‘un,” said Ribs, offering it a piece of fish.

The cat, still shivering, gave her a look she knew well. Weighing risk and reward. Ribs was sure it had been painted on her very own mug often enough. And she knew what option tended to win, when there was food on the line and you were hungry as shit.

The cat started forward, stopping again, and starting, drawn by the smell of the proffered fish, and flinching every time it remembered the potential consequences. Soon enough, it had taken a bite, and in short order it had pulled the rest of the piece from her hand to finish it.

“‘Right y’are, then,” Ribs said to it, and realising the afternoon was nearly done, left for her palace.

She made it all the way back with nothing to write home about, not that she had writing implements, nor would she have much luck contracting the services of a courier. She stole nothing more and copped no beatings, that is to say. But she’d gotten her fish. A good day all in all.

She sat on her rug and carefully unwrapped the package, counting out all the fish she had. Enough for a week and a half even! She wriggled with delight.

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A scratching sound came from the door-hatch and she shot to her feet.

Ent no one followed me ‘ere, she thought. Made sure of it. Made it sure.

But the scratching came again.

“Prolly just some leaf or summat,” she muttered to herself, but she was already moving across the room to the hatch.

She’d never be able to sleep if she left it uninvestigated, and if she might lose her palace to some crafty turd who’d managed to follow a Ribbon in the wind, she’d rather try kill him before he told anyone.

She placed her foot on the stone slots Boulder had made for them to climb up and down. Reached up and clipped the catch, and opened the hatch just a peek.

A tiny pink nose stared back at her, wiggling as it sniffed through the tiny sliver of the opening.

“Ah! Ya little shitter!” she hissed in surprise. “Near’y cost me my pants by way of sudden shitting!”

She opened the hatch wider, and the black alley cat stared back at her, head bobbing about as it sought the smell of fish.

“Right, come in 'en,” she said, and the cat plunked down into the palace with all the ceremony of a drunk falling into a latrine.

By the time Ribs had secured the hatch again and made her way back down the ladder, the cat was curled up on her rug with another piece of fish.

“Oi!” she told it. “‘Needs to last us a week!”

“Myeh,” said the cat.

Who was she kidding? Her heart wasn’t in it. Perhaps she’d found another friend at last. Maybe it could even help her steal more fish.

~~~~~

Ribs woke in the morning with a jolt. The cat was laying on her chest, purring away contentedly, and of course she’d forgotten all about the little shitter while she slept.

She carefully picked it up and placed it down beside her, tsking at its fur. She grabbed the wash bucket and a rag, and began to wash the little fellow and gently tease out the knots with her clever little fingers.

She became so engrossed she didn’t even realise when she was done. It was a strange feeling, touching something soft, touching it with care; it had been so long that she had forgotten what it felt like.

The cat purred away under her fingers.

Now that it was clean, Ribs could see it was actually black and white. The patterns on it were almost stripy, like the orange-and-black zebra they sat on.

She ruminated on this for a minute, and decided she must be Zebra, then. She, because only a she would be cunning enough to follow her and find her hidden palace.

“Myeeh,” said Zebra.

Ribs glanced up for what felt like the first time in hours, and almost fell over.

“What ‘n th’ shit is that?” she gasped.

A ball of light hung in the corner of the room. White, with little black striations running around the outside of it.

“Goddess’ shit!” Ribs exclaimed, and immediately began jumping about in excitement. Zebra gave her a disgusted look and settled back down into a ball.

“Myeh,” said Zebra, unimpressed. Ribs paid her no mind.

“Come ‘ere ‘en,” she said imperiously to her wisp. “Show me wha’ I got.”

Status.

Ideal One (Classic): Cats.

Skill One (Classic): Herding Cats (Passive).

Caster has increased stealth, lightness, flexibility and agility. Caster can cause slight physical self-displacement when evading.

“Dunno what that means, d’you?” Ribs asked Zebra. Zebra opened one eye and slowly closed it again.

“You’re no good to me ‘en,” she told the cat. “Sounds fun to me though. Best I go try all this Idealist bi’ness out ‘en”

Ribs left the palace, but not before leaving another piece of fish out for Zebra. As she moved through the midmorning crowds she marvelled at how she felt. She was stronger and faster and more nimble and just …better all around. Little niggles and aches and accumulated pains from her lifestyle had all just drained away overnight. She could get used to this.

Now, it was time to steal some people’s shit.

~~~~~

Ribs reclined on her chair, and the sound of purring filled her ears. This was the life.

Her little palace had undergone a transformation over the past year. Rugs decorated the whole floor. She had several changes of clothes, some so fancy she’d be embarrassed to wear them. She had two buckets and no leaks. The rickety shelf had been replaced by a proper one, handmade by a proper carpenter and stolen right from his workshop. The shelves sparkled and gleamed and shimmered, laded with ill-gotten goods.

The best kind of gotten, Ribs thought, nodding to herself as she stroked Zebra.

The most startling change was all the cats. She didn’t really know where they’d all come from. She guessed they just liked her, or something. Over fifteen fluffy shitters sat in various spots around the palace, preening or sleeping or yawning, doing cat stuff, really.

She’d begun to think it cruel to leave Zebra inside every time she went out, and so she’d let him out to prowl when she left one morning. When she returned home that night, two cats had been waiting for her instead.

They were lucky, in that she didn’t mind stealing more fish for them. There was plenty of it around, after all, and stealing these days was so Goddess-damned easy.

No, she’d moved past the point of living day to day. Now she had goals to work on.

She pulled her wisp over again.

Status.

Ideal One (Complete): Cats.

Skill One (Consummate): Herding Cats (Passive).

Caster has increased stealth, lightness, flexibility and agility. Caster can cause slight physical self-displacement when evading. Caster can fade into shadows when still.

Skill Two (Consummate): Cat Amongst the Pigeons (Active).

Mana Cost: Moderate.

Cooldown: Moderate.

Range (Area of effect): Moderate.

Caster can create a distracting area of effect illusion based on their surroundings. Causes a minor fear effect on targets affected by the illusion.

Skill Three (Complete): Look What the Cat Dragged In (Active).

Mana Cost: Low.

Range: Moderate.

Cooldown: Low.

Damage: Low-moderate.

Damage over Time: Low.

Duration: Low.

Caster causes low-moderate damage in slight damage increments to the entirety of the target. Damage over time is bleed damage.

Skill Four (Complete): Can’t Change Your Stripes (Ritual (Familiar)).

Mana cost: Extreme.

Cooldown: Extreme.

Requirements: Forty life essence, five hunger essence, one light essence, one dark essence, one water essence, one wood essence.

When summoned: Familiar can make heavy or moderate damage physical attacks. Familiar’s physical attacks have a low damage bleed over time effect. Familiar has a roar that causes a moderate duration stun: moderate cooldown.

When subsumed: Caster has increased vision, hearing and smell. Caster can see in the dark.

Additional: Caster can communicate with cats.

Ribs grinned to herself. She was proud of how far she’d come. Two months ago she had manifested her fourth skill, and in doing so, had uplifted all her skills to Complete. Since then, she had been a whirlwind, pushing herself ever harder to steal the essences she needed to complete her familiar ritual. Along the way, she’d even uplifted two of her skills to Consummate.

Now, she only needed one more essence. One more life essence, to be exact. And she knew just how she was going to get it.

She kept patting Zebra, her second friend in this world, while thinking about her first, and admiring the ones that had come after. She absently looked over her tattoo, reaching from her shoulder to fingertips on her right arm. It was striped just like the zebra on the rug, which now had pride of place hanging from the wall above her feather-stuffed mattress.

“‘Like havin’ stuff. ‘Like cats too, I guess,” she said, to nobody in particular. Certainly none of her tenants paid her any mind.

Yeah, this was the life, alright.

“Rao,” said Nonce suddenly. He was a ginger cat, and Ribs had named him so on account of his one ear and tendency to stare at walls.

Nonce stood up and wandered away to another corner of the room. A tiny, green gem lay on the plush rug where he had been sitting.

“Shitting shit yes!” Ribs exclaimed, and leapt from her seat, much to the chagrin of Zebra.

She scooped up the life essence, formed from the combined contentment of over fifteen cats living the good life, and pressed it to her arm.

The tattoo glowed softly and the gem sunk into it, just like the others had. Then nothing happened.

“Huh,” said Ribs. “Bi’ of a let down, really.”

She played around with her wisp for a bit, and couldn’t figure out what to do.

Somethin’ abou’ this tattoo, you donkey, she chided herself.

So she held out her hand and concentrated. The room went silent. Deathly silent. And Ribs felt fur under her fingers.

She opened her eyes and found all her cats frozen. Utterly still. And one big, big shitting cat right under her hand.

It was just like the picture. Massive, orange-and-black striped, muscled and lithe, with massive, almost luminous green eyes. Its tail swung slowly as it took in the room. A zebra.

“Well ‘en,” she said to it. “What d’we ‘ave ‘ere?”

It turned to her and let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a purr. It vibrated in Rib’s, well, in her ribs. Somehow she understood it as a greeting.

She’d heard some Idealists talking once, about how familiars are sort of like Wisps. How The World takes a similar kind of mind as it puts in them, and uses it to drive familiars too. Only a Wisp's job is to help us understand The World, and in doing so, help The World understand us. That’s not a familiar’s job though, they said, and so there’s more left over to help drive them.

Or so Ribs understood, anyway. They were using a lot of big words like ‘consciousness’ and ‘philosophical’ and ‘fuck off and stop eavesdropping, you bony shit’.

Now she had her familiar in front of her, she believed every word they said.

It growled at her again, and her chest vibrated again, and she looked at the rug on the wall and said to it, “A’right then, you can’t be Zebra. That would be silly, and i'm ‘fraid it’s taken anyways.”

She pondered a minute, looking at the original Zebra, who looked back at her with disdain, and thought back to Boulder’s stories about the menagerie he’d seen. There was another striped animal there too, he’d said.

“You’ll be Tiger 'en,” she declared, and she chortled to herself. It tickled her to name this ferocious looking cat after a silly stripy horse.

“Rao,” “Myeh,” “Mrrr,” “Miaow,” the cats declared in a grand chorus, and she knew they were pleased.

“We’ve got some work to do, Tiger,” she said to the big orange cat. She retook her chair and it sat opposite her, watching her with its great, green eyes.

She began to tell it a story, of a little urchin girl and the boy who showed her how to survive. Of stealing and cats and secret palaces.

When she was finished, the tiger let out an enormous roar, so loud it shook the building. Ribs could hear the bakers panicking upstairs.

She smiled to herself. A certain fat fucking merchant was about to have a very bad day.