The Big Meow

“Powers forbid I should deny him any of the joys of managing Grand Central,” Rhiow said, as they walked down the air together, glancing around at the plaza, where the upset ehhif were slowly regaining their composure. “If he’s going to covet something of mine, let it be an informed covet.”

At ground level they glanced around, then made their way toward the archway that led back to the parking lot. “Sounding a little possessive today…” Urruah said.

Rhiow hissed under her breath as they made their way under the arch, past a group of ehhif in broad hats, tuning up stringed instruments. “Aaah. ‘Ruah, it’s just that he’s so obvious about it sometimes… and so willful about ignoring the facts: as if Ffairh and I were in some kind of cosmic plot with the Powers that Be to deny him his Iau-given rights. As if any of us would have time for such a thing, let alone inclination–”

They strolled over to where Arhu was sitting by the glowing lines of a completed transit circle, all neatly done inside a single parking space well off to one side of the parking lot. Siffha’h was sitting in the middle of the circle and glowing slightly around the edges herself, an indicator that she had the wizardry powered up and ready to go, with herself as power source. As Rhiow and Urruah paced up to the circle, Siffha’h said, “Did you see the way he was staring at you?”

Rhiow glanced over at her. “’He?’” she said. “You little eavesdropper, haven’t I told you before this to stay out of my head?” She took a not-very-serious swipe at Siffha’h’s head. “Powerful you may be, but be responsible about it: leave your teammates their privacy. And ‘he’ who? Jath? As if I care.”

“Jath!” Siffha’h let out a hiss of derision. “That dried-up old hairball? I meant Hwaith.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice it,” Arhu said, as Rhiow stepped into the circle and sat down on the small sub-circle marked out for her. “He just sat there twitching and staring, like he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

Rhiow jerked her tail in dismissal, then wrapped it around her feet where she sat. “Oh please! I’ve spent half the day, already, feeling as if everyone’s staring at me. I’m starting to think I put my ears on backwards when I got up. And as for Hwaith, he was watching me because I was the one who’d be making the decision. Yes, he was twitchy, but why wouldn’t he be? Nobody dares stay out of their proper time for very long: things get damaged.”

“And usually,” Urruah said, walking around the circle and checking the structure of the spell, “the first damage is to you. That’d be enough by itself to put his fur up. But also–” He looked at Arhu. “Think about it. Who likes going years out of his way to admit something’s going on that he can’t handle, and then having to ask for help?” Hearing the gender-specific pronouns, Rhiow glanced down at the bark as if wondering where her clawmarks should have been, and very much avoided putting her whiskers forward in amusement. “I get the sense he doesn’t like time travel much, either.”

“None too fond of it myself,” Siffha’h muttered.

“Well, you’d best get that way,” Rhiow said, “since the Whisperer seems to feel it’s what we need to be doing right now.” She sighed, then, for as she looked down at the spell-symbols surrounding her personalized part of the transit circle, she realized she was going to need to brush up on the conditional tenses and plug-in syntaxes that the Speech used to deal with travel back and forth through time. Arhu had all the pertinent symbology laid out here, probably having saved it from their last paratemporal work, but it didn’t do to rely too completely on someone else’s transcription of your personality data. They might transpose a character, somewhere along the line, and inadvertently change your nature. Not the best way to start a job…

“Is it all right?” Arhu said.

He didn’t exactly sound uncertain– that wasn’t in his style– but Rhiow knew he was being careful, which was a development worth reinforcing. She put her whiskers forward. “Mine seems to be in order,” she said, “and nicely done. ’Ruah?”

Urruah was standing in the middle of his circle, carefully checking the strung-out Speech-characters that defined his subsidiary branch of the spell. “Looks fine,” he said. “You’re getting the hang of this, youngster. A lot less clutter in the design than there used to be.”

Arhu looked smug, sitting down in his own section. “Told you so,” he muttered to Siffha’h.

“Yeah, well, the way I wanted to do it was better. If you’d taken that last set of conditionals and combined them with–”

“Can we please just pop?” Urruah said. “You two can go back to shredding each other’s egos after we get where we’re going.”

Rhiow flicked an ear at him in amusement and reached over the border of her own circle to put a paw down on the nearest control structure. The words of the wizardry flared up around them into fierce contrast with the cracked and oil-stained blacktop underfoot. “Ready?” she said.