The Big Meow

Urruah strolled along in tandem with him, looking over the artifacts on the other side. “I never get tired of how old all these things feel,” Hwaith said to Rhiow as the two of them brought up the rear, watching watched Arhu work his way down the line of cases. “It’s not as if ehhif have been here that much longer than People have – they haven’t, of course.” He looked around him, waving his tail gently. “Maybe it’s just that slight sense of alienness… that there’s this other species sharing the planet with us, and their lives are so complex in so many ways that we’ll never really have time to understand. You might go out on the High Road and meet other species that are physically so different, so strange. But ehhif just seem stranger far because they’re right here alongside us, and we just don’t know them…”

Then he trailed off. “I’m sorry,” Hwaith said. “That must sound awfully facile. Or shallow. You’re in close company with ehhif, you said. The situation probably looks a lot different to you…”

“Oh, no,” Rhiow said. She might feel distracted right now by her concern and unease, but Hwaith’s thought was one that had occurred to her more than once. “In fact, if you ever get really close to one,” she said, “it feels more true, not less. At least that’s been my experience.”

“I wonder what it would be like, sometimes,” Hwaith said. “To be someone’s ‘pet’, to let them build that relationship around you. It must be strange to try to balance something as vital as a Person’s independence against the emotional needs of someone from another species…”

Rhiow laughed just a little sadly, thinking of Hhuha. — For the first time in, dear Iau, it’s days now. I’ve been far too busy this last little while… “It’s nowhere near so clinical,” she said. “What does seem strange at first is to find yourself becoming friends with someone you can’t even talk to. Though if things go well, after a while it starts to seem like the most natural thing in the world…”

“Rhiow!” Arhu said. “Look down here!”

“What?” She trotted down to him, and Hwaith followed. “Is it one of the carvings with the gaps?”

“No,” Arhu said. Just briefly, his voice sounded as if he’d found something funny. Rhiow came up behind him, and alongside Urruah she peered into the case. On its bottommost shelf was a tall fired-clay tablet with some of its paint intact though it was more than five hundred years old. It featured an image in the Mayan style of something that could have been mistaken for a crocodile standing on its hind legs. But the “crocodile’s” muzzle was unusually heavy and blunt and short, and its hind legs were much heavier than any croc’s, and its front legs far too short and delicate. In addition, no crocodile ever had teeth like the ones drawn in this creature’s jaws: and crocs didn’t normally come patched in yellow and red. They didn’t normally have wings, either, or wear collars ornamented with little cats’ heads.

“That must have given the archaeologists and translators a fun time,” Urruah said, as amused as Arhu. “Let’s see who they think he is —” He peered at the label mounted on the floor of the enclosure. “’Atypical Feathered Serpent motif, Teotihaucan region circa 1500, with ocelocoatl features. Possibly represents the K’iche Maya deity Q’uq’umatz, Creator, Patron of Civilization and Devourer of Darkness.’”

“More like Auto’matz the Devourer of Pastrami,” Arhu muttered, smiling.

“A colleague of ours back uptime,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, who was possibly understandably looking a little bewildered. “A surprisingly senior colleague for someone so new at the job, too. He’s Arhu’s big brother.”

Hwaith gave Rhiow a look that suggested he thought he was having his tail pulled. Rhiow had to chuckle. “It’s a long story…”

“Looks like the locals knew Ith way back when,” Urruah said to Arhu. “Or rather, they know what he’s become since you and Ith started rewriting thte Great Serpent’s story…”

Arhu moved on to the next case. “Here,” he said. “Here’s one that we have a copy of.” He paused in front of a fired clay tablet that had been broken into a number of pieces and carefully mended. Some of the gaps in the rubbing were not merely places where the characters were missing, but where they’d been actively obliterated by some ehhif with a sharp object. In other spots two or three of them were missing because the tablet itself had been broken there, and the material between either pulverized or otherwise lost.