Chapter 39: The Heart of the Shawarma

The fading remnants of a headache greeted him as he became aware, and a thick fog shrouded his mind. He lay in a comfortable bed below a colorful pitched roof, like at a circus. Or festival. He remembered… something small but loud, and a throbbing pain. He could still feel it, pulsing like a painful memory. He was fighting and then…

“Mitty!”. It came back to him. She’d been in danger, and once again he’d been unable to do anything.

His stomach knotted as he swung out of bed unsteadily, panic fuelling his legs to bring him towards the tent’s flap. Had he lost her again? He didn’t know, but if he’d failed again… his stomach roiled at the thought. Just when he’d gotten vindication that she wouldn’t willingly abandon him, had she been snatched away regardless?

Just as he reached for the tent flap, it was pulled open from the outside.

“What’s up pooch? That old coot said you’d be out all day, but I figured I’d hear you barking soon enough. I brought you some meat. I think it’s called shawarma?”

A cool breeze drifted in and blew away the haze of anxiety permeating the tent. There she was in her black dress tinged in white. Her catty grin on full display below her ocean blue eyes. An undercurrent of relief and warmth lay behind them.

“Done staring? Oh! Okay, let’s get you back to bed, you dog-brained fool.”

He hardly noticed the strength leaving his legs as he nearly crumpled to the floor, the adrenaline that had momentarily buoyed him making a swift exit.

Somehow Mitty got him back to bed, and without spilling the bowl of fragrant meat heaped upon some sort of purple grain.

“The jungle folk don’t normally have meat, but they’ll still eat it if it’s brought in. Better than wasting it, you know?” she supplied, noticing his attention, pulling up a stool.

“I thought I’d lost you Mitts. I was worried…”

“And I mean, I guess that’s fair right? The cow’s not gonna unkill itself if they let it rot instead” she continued, looking away.

“Mitts… were you… worried about me too?”

“And your friend Violet stopped by. I’ll go let her know you’re awake” she bowled on, rising from the stool jerkily.

“Mitty” he interrupted, grabbing the hem of her dress.

She froze, then slowly turned to meet his gaze. A tear wended a trail down her cheek, tracing it down to her chin.

“Mitts? Are you okay?”

A hitched sniff escaped as her face distorted.

“Yeshhhh” she cried, collapsing to the bedside. He tried to catch her, but his strength wasn’t there yet, and he ended up falling on floor alongside her.

She hugged him, sniffing. “I wash sho worried you know.”

He was shocked, not expecting this from his friend. She was always the cool collected one. He hesitatingly hugged her back. She smelled nice. Like salted caramel.

“I was worried too” he eventually settled on. It was met with a renewed wave of sobbing into his shoulder. Stupid! He should’ve found something better to say.

She cried a bit longer, before pulling away, helping him back up onto his cot. A big wet spot had formed on his shirt, sticking cold to his skin, but he barely noticed it in his concern. Her eyes were red from crying, and her hair was plastered against her cheeks. And as he gazed into her red, blue, beautiful eyes, something stirred in his chest. A little voice, slipped out, unbidden.

“Be with me forever?”

This brought along a new wave of tears as she nodded, hugging him again.

Cats were truly the most emotional creatures.

***

He spent the rest of the morning resting in bed, still too weak to walk about. The food Mitty had brought was amazing, the slightly charred spices on the meat mixing with the juices and the rice to create a savory sauce had him scooping out the bowl with his finger. He’d tried licking it up, but had received a bite on his leg from Mitty for that, so he settled with the inferior way of getting the last delectable grain out of the bowl.

She was so prickly about manners, he thought, sucking the last of the sauce off his fingers.

Mitty was curled up at the foot of his cot, sound asleep in her cat form. Sometimes he wished he could be a dog again, but being a human was so much better most of the time. Especially the thumbs. He twirled the wooden spoon around his thumb, almost fumbling it, but managing to recover last second. He also didn’t like how his scars gouged into his muzzle deeply. At least in this form, they were shallower, only tracing a groove at most a half centimeter deep across his nose. He’d even been told by some it looked rather dashing. Hopefully Mitts agreed. No, he was fine being a human.

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He wondered why Mitty was so attached to her cat form. And why he considered it her cat form when it was her true body. Or was it? Were they human? He supposed it didn’t matter. They were themselves. And also together. Forever, he hoped. Being with Mitts always made his heart beat a little faster and lighter. It was pleasant. Even with her just sleeping at the foot of the bed. Did that mean they were sleeping together? He’d heard that was a big first step in relationships, but he supposed he’d need to go back to sleep for that.

Before he could resolve to close his eyes and will his thoughts to a still, the tent flap pulled back, allowing a draft of fresh air to pass through, revealing Violet carrying a big bowl of meat and rice.

“Dantes! I’m glad you’re doing okay. I heard you were hurt really badly. Are you feeling better now?” she said.

He nodded. “I’m better, but why are you here? I suppose the food is pretty good. Did the rest of the grove come too?”

She let out a clear laugh. “No, I flew over with the Knights. When you left, I went to tell the Circle about what happened with the Saphire. They take threats to the Guardian Birds very seriously.”

“Saphire?”

“Oh! I forgot to tell you”, she said, bouncing lightly on her feet, “I’m a knight now! I bonded to that baby hummingbird we saved. Well, you and Mitty really. I was pretty useless. But yeah, that’s Saphie. She stayed in the grove because the elders wouldn’t let me take her into danger here, but she says thank you! Oh Dantes, it’s a dream come true. One of the senior knights has me doing drills constantly, but once we’re back in the Circle, I’ll start training for real. Then I can become a real knight.”

That was the most he’d heard her say at once, so he figured she must be very happy. He felt happy for her. It was nice, he thought, to have friends. Then you could be happy about more things.

The tent flap opened again, this time to admit a familiar old man.

“Elder Bill” “Old Coot!” Violet and Dantes said at the same time. She looked at him aghast, but the old man just chuckled and waved a hand to indicate no harm done.

It was the old man who’d been with him on the wagon ride over, and who he’d met briefly again inside the temple. Seeing him a third time now made him wonder how much of a coincidence the first two meetings had been.

“Just poppin by to check yer healin okay. I see yer friend ain’t left yer side. Sorry for intrudin’. C’mon sprout, let’s not make a nuisance of ourselves, can’t ye see they’re havin’ a moment?”

“Mitty? Where?” she asked. “Sorry about Elder Bill, he’s a bit eccentric. But I really should be going anyway. If I’m late for evening training, Senior Knight Willow will have me drilling until sunup.”

Violet hurried along with the old coot quickly excusing himself as well, and it was just him and Mitty again. She stretched her legs outwards, then rolled over to continue her catnap.

A smell caught his nose, and he noticed another bowl of that meat and rice on his bedside table. Violet must have brought it for him, which was very nice of her. He quickly pitched it in before settling back into the mattress, letting the faint rays filtering into the tent from above slowly die out as the sun dipped below the horizon of pitched roofs. The cooling air felt perfect on his skin and the sounds of revelry slowly faded until it was just he and Mitty, together.

He let every bit of tension in his body go, each muscle untensing in turn, even the ones he hadn’t realised were clenched. Every ounce of anxiety drifted away. The thump of his heart slowed, and he listened. There, ever so faintly, a second beat joined his own. And to that softer beat, he closed his eyes, and drifted off into the deepest, most restful slumber of his life.

***

He awoke some time in the night for no particular reason. There was no sound that alerted him, or knot in his back, or hunger in his stomach. It was a nice feeling, just letting his body tell him it had had enough rest, it was fully charged, and it was time to wake. It was another nice feeling, he decided, to wake up next to Mitty. She lay curled on the cot where the crook of his neck had been, still sleeping deeply.

He scratched her lightly behind an ear, which earned him a soft rumbling, before throwing on a plain white shirt laid out beside his bed, made of the same petals the jungle folks wore; his old one had been shredded when he grew, though he noticed the new shirt was covered in cat hair already. Mitty must have done that in his sleep. He didn’t see any boots around, and deciding it didn’t much matter, left without.

As he walked along the packed earth of the temporary festival ground roads, he looked up at the stars. They dotted the sky like flecks of foam cresting far out waves, gentle in their cold solitude.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” a voice spoke.

He turned, spotting the agent… no, Hawk, sitting on a low bench, gazing up, and away from him.

He didn’t feel anything needed to be said, so he instead sat down next to him to join. Together they sat in silence for a few minutes, or maybe an hour, he didn’t know. It seemed the night could last as long as he wanted, this moment in time before dawn broke.

“You’re very much like her, you know” Hawk said after an eternity.

He glanced over, not moving his head. “How?”

“You know when words aren’t needed.”

Dantes didn’t think he was very good at that, but didn’t correct him.

“Hmm, well, never mind. I’m just too used to talking to myself nowadays. Mitty says you two won’t be staying long. Where are you going next?”

“Probably north somewhere. I hear they have good meat over there.”

Hawk nodded. “I was headed to New Vairon myself. Come with?”

Dantes nodded, before remembering they weren’t facing each other.

“Sure. Thought you would be going back to the Sultan though.”

“So did I, until yesterday. Agents are bound to the Sultan. Even death would not be an escape, or so it goes. But perhaps… that is not my fate after all. It feels odd to even voice it in my mind, let alone speak it aloud, but I will never return.” He took a deep breath, but did not continue.

“So, what are you doing?” Dantes asked after some time.

“I’m not sure. Looking for purpose. What is your purpose, Dantes?”

“Adventure and Family. Friends and Food. I know what it’s like to break your chains, Hawk. You’ll find something. Until then, why not just make finding a purpose your purpose?”

Hawk snorted. “Mitty said you were wise, in a dumb kind of way. I don’t think I disagree.”

He heard Hawk get up beside him.

“Meet me at the docks tomorrow at mid day and I will arrange passage north.”

Dantes said nothing further, but eventually laid down on the bench as his neck had started to get sore from looking up for so long. It was even better from this angle.

Eventually the chill in the air brought him back to his bed where he settled in just as the sun was warming the horizon.