open post -- a little white kitten

[onthewillowsthere]

After way, way too much research and overthinking, the kind of research and overthinking that had Janet feeling uncomfortably like Quentin and Alice's ill-gotten love child, she's been ready for a while. So, yes, maybe she wanted the dramatic gesture of giving this to Galahad as a wedding gift. Can you blame her? Nothing says “I hope you're really happy in all your marital bliss with that guy who always seems like he's trying to sell me a protection plan” like the promise of turning someone into a cat.

Whatever. It's also kind of anticlimactic at this point. Janet has a bowl of white paste and a whole lot of gumption, but as far as supplies go, that's it. She eyes Galahad. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Galahad says, in his usual too-serious way. He's excited, but that only means his affect is flatter and blanker than usual. He told Mothwing that he would come to her for a lesson this afternoon, but not what shape he'd be in.

“Okay. You're going to have cat-brain, and herding cats is famously impossible, so where do you want to do this?” Maybe Janet should have made the mansion generate a cat carrier. But it seems rude to show up to a meeting with a human person with one of those, and not her preferred brand of rude.

“In the garden. I want to go to Mothwing afterwards.”

“Sure thing.” She lets Galahad lead the way. She has a bowl of weird white gunk to manage.

Once they’re in the garden, surrounded by the riotous summer flowers, Galahad stops. “Will my clothes transform with me?”

“Nope.” Janet raises her eyebrows at him. “You'll be naked when I turn you back. I won't let your tiny cat body suffocate or anything, if you're worried about that.”

“When you have transformed me, will you please put my watch around my neck?”

That is… so cute. He's so cute. Every time Janet has mentally compared Galahad to an adorable talking woodland creature feels completely justified. “Yep,” she says, instead of oh my God, you're adorable. “Any other last requests before you can't talk anymore?”

“No. Thank you.”

Okay, sure. Janet scoops some of the chalky shit onto her fingers and invades Galahad's personal space. She swipes it onto his forehead, under his shock of marshmallow-fluff hair, then onto his bare shoulders. She steps back, looks him over like he's a used Chevy Malibu and she's about to try and talk him up to a family of four, then says a single harsh syllable out loud.

It's not a pretty transformation. Galahad kind of… crunches forward, folding up like a piece of paper crumpling in someone's hands. Cats are a lot smaller than humans. Fur is sprouting, his collarbones are melting away, a tail is crackling out from the other end of him. It's really, really not cute. But it does work, and Janet feels like the world's coolest magician when there's a little white cat with blue eyes staring at her from under his sundress.

It feels like falling down a cliffside – a whirling, disorienting feeling, but not the freefall in air of being thrown from a horse. When the world around Galahad comes to a halt, he looks up, and up, and up, to see Janet’s distant, blurry face.

He takes a careful step forward on his paws, getting used to his new center of gravity. His whiskers feel as though they’re constantly brushing against things, picking up every vibration in the air, and the world’s colors have changed into shades of yellow and blue. His ears twitch and swivel towards sounds.

He takes a practice run, and finds his stiff, awkward body has become graceful, fluid, as he bounds in a circle around the garden. He can’t tell how, but he knows his tail is important, as much a part of his balance as his four paws.

Finally he comes back and sits on his hindquarters in front of Janet. He knows he’s not supposed to be able to talk, but he tries anyway, and meows, “Thank you.”

“Holy shit!” Janet stares down at him. That doesn't make any sense. She remembers being a goose. All she could do was honk. She honked for days on end. It was actually really fucking tedious. “Whoa. I'm good.” She told him she would, so she kneels in the grass and swipes his watch from the pile of his clothes. “Here, kitty.”

Galahad pads over to her on his soft, silent paws and puts out his head for the watch-collar.

Feeling a sudden sense of portentous responsibility, Janet buckles it around his neck. She's careful not to make it too tight or too loose. He's so, so cute. “Okay.” She gives him a little scritch under the chin, like Regina likes. “Do whatever you want, but I'm gonna keep an eye on you.”

“I understand. Thank you, Queen Janet,” he meows again. Then a butterfly passes in the corner of his eye, and he springs after it, unable to stop himself.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

"You're a better magician," he squeaks.

[aflashbastard]

"Could also be that this place amplifies some of the magi-- Actually, better magician, yeah," Crowley says, changing tack as he remembers the Look that Janet gave him earlier. He takes a sip of his wine.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Because she's not a moron, Janet says, "You're on thin fucking ice, pal." She sips the wine, though. "The ice gets thicker every time you do the sommelier thing, for the record."

[aflashbastard]

"The new climate change indicator, The Ice Underneath Crowley," he says, dryly.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Now we're talking." Janet smirks at him. She can't really pet Galahad with a handful of wine, but at least he can still tuck his adorable little face away. "You know how they fixed the hole in the ozone? We can turn the whole thing around if you give me enough wine."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What's ozone?" Galahad meows, in spite of himself.

[aflashbastard]

"It's a layer in the atmosphere. If it didn't exist, humans would probably get burnt to a crisp-- Er. I mean. Get a terrible sunburn. Tons of skin cancer, probably." Why does everything come back to someone burning to a crisp?

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Skin cancer is, uh..." How do you explain skin cancer to a kid from Camelot? "The sun is good for you, right? But it's also bad for you. It can make your cells turn against you. Shit, do you know what cells are?"<sup>1

1</sup>I, the typist, know that he definitely knows. But Janet doesn't, because she doesn't talk to Claudius.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I know about cells. Claudius is studying them."

[aflashbastard]

"Yeah, so. Skin cancer is when good cells go bad¹." Crowley sips his wine. How did they get on the topic of skin cancer again?

¹A little Cobra Starship reference.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yep," Janet says wisely. "And that's why Crowley has to give me wine whenever I want him to."

[onthewillowsthere]

"So that he doesn't get skin cancer?" Galahad meows, confused.

[aflashbastard]

"Exactly," Crowley says, topping off Janet's glass of wine with a wave of his hand.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet's warming up to him by the second. "Yeah. And so the glaciers don't melt." She squints in the vague direction of the horizon. "Not that I think we have any glaciers here."

[onthewillowsthere]

"The mansion spirits will do a glacier next!"

[aflashbastard]

"A Titanic reenactment? Don't know if that'll go over well with the crowd."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Do you just say things without explaining yourself? You don't care if your jokes land with anyone else because you think you're funny, so it's fine? Tell Galahad what the Titanic was or I'll hex you." Janet doesn't know any spells that fall under the category of hex, but didn't that sound kind of badass?

[onthewillowsthere]

"What's the Titanic?" Galahad actually untucks his head to look at Crowley.

[aflashbastard]

Crowley was going to tell Galahad what the Titanic was anyway, so Janet's threats just glide over him and are forgotten with a shrug. It's almost soothing in a way, much better than people being too nice to him. 

"It's a movie," he says, "about a necklace. Well, the necklace was on a ship, brought there by Kate Winslett's character -- let's call her Rose¹. A big ocean liner. Well, big for its time. I think current cruise ships dwarf it, but at the time, it was one of a kind. ...you know, we're responsible for cruises. Oh, let's put hundreds of people in a confined space and let them eat and drink as much as they want and then give them seasickness-- Anyway, we weren't responsible for the Titanic tragedy. That was all down to human engineering. And the iceberg."

¹wdym "let's call her", Crowley?

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh my God, you are useless." Janet takes a hefty sip of wine about it. "The Titanic was a giant boat that got everyone all excited about how big it was. Then it hit an iceberg and sank. Tons of people died. That's not happening here, because our ocean is basically fake."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't want anyone here to die! How is the ocean fake?"

[aflashbastard]

"That's basically what I said," Crowley mutters¹. "Also, even if the ocean is fake, you never know. Our hosts might wake up one day and decide that what we actually need is an iceberg situation and suddenly, Sagramore and Laertes end up clinging to a door in the ocean²-- Best not to give them any ideas."

¹It is not.
²But they would just. Y'know. Both get on it.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"It's not totally fake, but I bet it doesn't go anywhere. If you got on a sailboat and tried to leave on a quest, I seriously doubt you'd get far." She narrows her eyes at Crowley around another sip of wine, drinking with some efficiency in case he decides she's being too much of a bitch and takes it back. "You really think they're paying that close attention? Sadistic freaks."

[onthewillowsthere]

What Janet is saying¹ makes sense. Galahad does think that sailing onto the ocean wouldn't lead them to anywhere new. He settles more comfortably into her arm, starting to relax, and pricks his ears to listen to them talk.

¹Janet specifically.

[aflashbastard]

"Maybe," Crowley shrugs. "They seem to know exactly what'll bug us or make us happy. It's very angelic and/or demonic of them. So... yeah, sadistic freaks."