onthewillowsthere | open post -- a little white kitten

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.

Current Mood: excited

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

onthewillowsthere

"Beelzebub?" with interest.

From:

scrap_collector

Xie Lian looks blank.

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Let me guess," Janet says, affable by her standards, "that went totally over your head."

From:

onthewillowsthere

"Do you think Beelzebub would come here?" Galahad meows at Janet. "We already have Crowley, so demons can come. Would that make things much worse? Or do you think he'd be Claudius' friend too?"

From:

scrap_collector

"Who is Beelzebub?"

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Beelzebub is Satan's best friend, right?" Galahad will probably know more than she does, down to the Bible verse, but Janet's read Paradise Lost. "His second-in-command."

From:

onthewillowsthere

"He is the Prince of Demons. Satan is a title, and Beelzebub can be a Satan!" Galahad meows helpfully, pleased to know about a subject. "He is an old God of the Philistines, Ba'al-zebub."

From:

scrap_collector

Most of these words are incomprehensible to Xie Lian; feeling the need to contribute somewhat, he offers, "I have a friend who is Lord of Ghost City."

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Thanks," Janet says, sincerely, to Galahad. She knew he'd have some obscure Biblical trivia. Then she glances up at Xie Lian with a cocked eyebrow. "No shit? Does he get to order all the ghosts around?"

From:

onthewillowsthere

"What's he like??"

From:

scrap_collector

"Yes," says Xie Lian, to Janet, truthfully. "He is mostly content to let them live their afterlives, but they do not question his rule, and they are all eager to impress him."

He pauses before he answers Galahad, thoughtfully scratching under his chin. "He is very powerful, and very clever. He recognizes no authority but that which he has made himself. I would trust him with my life." He nearly adds something about how handsome San Lang is, or his commanding presence, or the way he can be one moment towering and terrifying and the next as soft and open as the flowers of his name—but the frankness with which people ask questions in this place, and the conversation they've just thankfully left behind, make him close his mouth around those details. He does not wish to be pressed.

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Huh," Janet says, sincerely thoughtful. "Doesn't sound too bad, but is he a ghost, too? I mean, is he dead?" She loves when her subjects are eager to impress her, but she doesn't love the idea of being dead.

From:

onthewillowsthere

Galahad is curious too! He looks up at Xie Lian with his big blue eyes.

From:

scrap_collector

"Oh, yes," says Xie Lian. "He is quite dead. I don't think the denizens of Ghost City would consent to rule by anyone living." He smiles. "Also, I find many of the living don't enjoy even visiting Ghost City, nevermind ruling it. I don't quite know why--personally I find it a very interesting place."

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Huh." Janet cocks her head. "Is the food bad?"

From:

onthewillowsthere

"Are you dead?"

From:

scrap_collector

"No, I'm alive," says Xie Lian, and to Janet, "I suppose it depends on your taste for human flesh. There are other options if you ask politely, though."

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"Human flesh, huh?" Janet wrinkles her nose. "How was that? Or did you go for the vegan option?"

From:

onthewillowsthere

"That's sinful," Galahad says, very interested. He's never before been remotely curious about eating human flesh, but his cat brain finds it much less disturbing, enough that his human brain can stir and think I like sinning.

From:

scrap_collector

"Is it?" Xie Lian asks, interested and thus perhaps accidentally disregarding Janet's question. "Defiling of bodies, of course, but if the defilement is already done--or, in a case of the consensual giving of one's flesh, is that still regarded as sinful?"

From:

sorrowandsorrow

Janet considers herself a recreational sinner, but Galahad's the expert on what is and isn't actually sinful per that asshole upstairs. She gives him an expectant look.

From:

onthewillowsthere

This is an interesting question! "I think it's still sinful, because when it happens in the Bible, it's always part of a curse," he meows thoughtfully. "When God's people are under siege and are starving, they eat each other, but that was prophesied to happen as punishment for their wickedness. And in Genesis God says that we may not eat anything that has lifeblood in it, and He says that anyone who spills lifeblood shall be put to death. The prophets and historians never write about what happens if someone gives you their flesh."

From:

scrap_collector

"On my world, in times of extreme starvation, the son may give his flesh to the father, and it is considered desperate but filial--the highest form of gratitude to one's parents," says Xie Lian. "That's not the situation in Ghost City, of course. But there I think it is lost among many other sins." He smiles a little, nostalgic. "There is a house where one gambles with things dear to one--a year of one's life, a limb, a child--for what one most desires."

From:

sorrowandsorrow

"That's fucked up," Janet observes mildly. "I guess it does make consensual cannibalism look like small potatoes." She shrugs. "I bet years of life are easier to give away than you'd think. They're invisible, right? People can't wrap their heads around what they're giving up."