Family

“Realm of Scavenge” is a glorified term for a wasteland of a satellite that houses only a scab of land decently habitable, a hundred and a dozen kilometers away from its national shore. That’s where most envoys sent to inspect the place will be greeted, anyway, every quarter year, since Port Quanima hasn’t been the most convenient reach for a few centuries. From the birdview, the village shines like a burning spot blotting a vast expanse of skin, of forest and jungle, that covers half the traversable surface of Land of Beast. It was in its confinement that the anguished village raised Acid into a cat that breathed, walked, stumbled, and cried.

A cat that has also killed. 

When enough blood has spilled, the friction becomes irresistible. Like a second helping one can’t help but be coaxed into, even after knowing it would come to nothing good. Maybe at best, it’ll induce a bloated stomach, complicating digestion. At worst, enough to make him vomit. 

Heaving over the bushes backdoor is where it finds him. Acid clenches where his left claws brace against a porous wall, almost feeling it vibrate with children's laughter and the pleasant hum in groups of dining guests on the other side. On his side, facing dark rice fields that stretch into beyond, stars, pink and green, span over him.

Acid's delirious. Earlier, he lost his mind and sprung full force at the neck of this towering ink cat hosting a table of two. By the time he was done thrashing, not a ripple of emotional charge resounded. The restaurant, eerily busy with its happy, rustling guests, paid no mind to Acid’s crime. Three spacecats, eviscerated. Corpses at his paws. They looked more like stew, when he blinked again, much less meat and fluids than there should’ve been. Hallucination? Couldn’t be. His paws were still warm where their elbow dipped in blood.

Acid doesn't ponder on his cruelty.

He tries to retch. Bloody moon nights get on his nerves. It’s this phenomenon that happens on their satellite every three months and there has to be this ridiculous myth of a Family’s Day that comes dated with it. Inexplicably, Acid gets clear, vivid dreams every deep enough a nap he takes on this occasion. Seems to be common for any other cat, just that his dreams had to be downright nightmarish.

He remembered when it first started. He was just a kit, then, without any consoling figure lying near to notice his jolts nor to soothe him with stories or warmth when he came to. Such was the life of a streetbred brat. Enough times this had happened that he had built a custom of staying up everytime, and this was an unlikely hitch in the over twenty year long streak. 

Acid hasn't seen Brick anywhere yet. The bastard, where are they? They owe him for this. Acid turns to enter the restaurant bathroom section, to rinse out reddened clothes he knows would not be nice to Brick's touch. 

++

Hours passed. Maybe more. Maybe less, who knows. Acid is stuck in this dimension, rendered aimless. He has crossed countless snaking paths under the fake moon, descended three rocky stairs, and casually left a crunchy green trail as his arm mindlessly plucked and plunged into the garden’s leafy walls as he trailed them. If Brick was here, they’d throw a fit over how precious nature is and how you shouldn’t destroy them just for the sake of it, Acid, plants have feelings too. Some bullshit like that. Maybe he should raze this plane to the ground, burn something, make a pretty scene for when Brick arrives since they’re all fake the same. Ah, but they won’t come.

He can’t manifest supernatural powers in here, either. So-called dreams.

He doesn't boast about it, but every year Acid trains in the art of raising souls with the sole- or most important- purpose of one day feeding the Family’s Day founder spirits to life, to mess them beyond comprehension and disturb their eternal rest. This was a practice he had known way before mister bookworm Brick entered his life and dumped upon him scrolls and earfuls of their study contents. Yet to mock himself, he had succumbed to this torture chamber before he ever succeeded in finding the souls to begin with. Acid cannot take no for an answer.

Family’s Day.

Acid thinks of Brick, of gold freckled cheeks and voluminous soft fur.

Acid thinks of white fur pressed against his side. Starry, freckled, black on white.

The bush next to him opens up in a snap.

“PRIEST GUO!” He screams into the fluttering leaves, “GUO BASTARD! I never forgot that night! YOU sick dog! I will rip into your skin like your mangy snout did my companion from me! How dare you call him family? He was MINE! I NEVER HAD ANYONE!"

++

“You’ll break into Madame Heng’s,” Brick leans forward, rapt. Their eyes bore into his soul, glassy stare pooling attention on his face, completely heedless of the coffee cup tipped over where its content coats the table at their elbow. Acid shifts on his chair, impressed by their withdrawal from everything else.

“Before sundown?” They press, “Just hours before their business opens. A-ma is sure to come around, tidying and setting up the space before any other employees are present. I’m sure of it. A-ma always kept to her routine strictly.”

He already knows that. Acid doesn’t need to be told twice about his commitments. More than just some mindplay addict he’s a feline of his word, too. If a year together has revealed anything to his idiot partner, it’s his loyalty that he doesn’t fake giving. As for Acid’s attention to crucial detail, well. Somecat who wielded none of such wouldn’t have survived long on the streets, would they? It’s funny, to him. Brick, the closing shift to his master plans, the manager out of the two of them, letting logic wash them under in a bout of homesickness for some relative they hadn’t seen in a decade. Acid almost felt like snickering.

He raises a paw to put a dam on Brick’s stream. “I already know that.”

++

Acid was 17 again, back to that scruffy self he'd always hated, standing too small and dumbfounded in the middle of a lumpy dirt street. The ground was glazed in a grey that reflected sky blue under the shadows of dark wooden houses and thinning tall trees, the sort of willow or wutong. By the looks of their browned leaves, winter was approaching.

The seething cold did not do so much as dampen his snarl. His face contorted heavily, uglily at the sight of an extended paw in front of him. He recognized it, the gesture. 

A hollowness tugged at his spine. Don't do it! Acid watched tendrils of white smoke gather at the wrist of the hovering paw. They were glittering, too, like cotton candy clouds, stirring around snow white sleeves. The hand shook in place as the feline shuffled their weight under a mountain of cloaks, the other arm with a lantern pole wedged at its elbow darting out to fasten a tie in such hurried silence as if fearing to displace the air. Layered and comfy, still waiting for Acid's response.

Don't! You know what happened last time. Acid's eyes narrowed. Of course he remembered- a face, a fuel to live. The same undisturbed smile, just absent in snowy white cheeks and a smudge of ink dark blot on the forehead, down the center. Framed by silk-like black hair that the strong western winds rattled, this close eyed feline before him loomed, regal in their own right and untouched by the environment. Wasn't it typical of the folk that this land bred? Always having to descend, to see little Acid.

"Little friend, what is your name?" The feline asked. Masculine voice. Acid held his ground.

"Names are nothing but temporary wear us rats strip like you cultivators do your suits and armor," he spat and hoped it sounded less panicked than it felt when he was swayed by the sheer power radiating from this feline. Acid eyed the alley retreat around 5 meters away over the feline's arm. If he could get a distraction, then-

"Don't worry." The feline spoke, wispy with melancholy, and it jumped him. "I may cultivate, but I will not harm you. Such recklessness mars the cultivator title. We do not needlessly draw swords."

++

Acid had suddenly grown a few years. He was no longer the scrawny mostly-kitten scouring the streets, his height now sprung above Dew's and his hair more unruly than ever, copious amounts of it. He smiled better, too. They were happy, just the two of them, walking shoulder to shoulder as the older Dew hunted for open market delicacies with Acid on the lookout. Cats usually turned at the sight of a neon bastard in black tailing a white furred gentleman like a hound to its bait, but for some reason the street was without another soul today. Acid might enjoy this. Right now, though, they were halted at an unappetizing vegetable stall by Dew's unenviable interest in procuring stewing ingredients. 

Acid turned a carrot to inspect it, and felt as if the stock just shrunk in size and quality. He flicked a fuzzy body of a worm from one of the bigger masses on the orange pile and tutted, annoyed. "What's this, a bunch of pig scraps? There's not even a whole carrot in here." He dug the pile to demonstrate. The content was indeed rotten leaf mixed with crushed carrot bodies none of which were any longer than his palm length and mutated to the point of resembling potatoes. Offended, a hint of yellow seeped in his smile. "If you think we're buying, miss, you better have more where these came from, if they can be any worse." 

Acid stopped smiling, however.

Dew was no longer by his side, which he knew because it would be an attention pulling disaster to be able to draw Dew's beckoning paws and awkward smile from trying to soften his haggling as per their top priorities in life- fussing over Acid before anything else. But the older cat was ahead. Next to their flank, an ink black spacecat. In matching black and white robes.

Coins clinked on the counter where Acid dropped them from shock and the stall owner swept them in stride.

++

Acid doesn’t remember the last time he’d felt familial contact. The ones typical between bloodkin, firm handshakes, warm ruffles on the head, hugs and all that— all textbook to him. For a lowly born, that was never even luxury, but Acid isn’t going down that road. He knows where sentimentality got him. 

On a grey flight of stairs to a stadium, whipped cold by the western winds and crouching amidst ashen residue and trash. Dumped there. Afraid, lost.

He pushes from coarse-furred hold in a jerk and fixes the offending arms to their sides before letting go just as quickly. The air feels several degrees warmer, unhelped by the marmalade afternoon light straining the thin blinds that drape over square holes that the archaic excuse for storehouse windows. The cramped stillness of the repository only serves to prompt cordiality Acid can’t afford, even in front of whom he just rescued. Or chased, through a long winding underground tunnel. 

It was through thistle walls and interlaced branches, too, wet and slippery on their paws. One white robed arm long crusted with dried clay now staining with fresher mud pulled Acid forward with a convicted purpose. He didn’t turn to see the sirens, nor did he look down to mind the vines tearing apart his paw pads. Acid kept his sight ahead, never moving away from the older spacecat.

“I, er,” His maw parts, then closes. “It was nothing. Don’t concern yourself with it, aunty.” Acid had to blink a couple of times. He was letting a lot getting to his head today.

“Gloria,” The molly’s eyes crinkle. They’re hazel, a shade darker than her offspring’s, framed by hair locks that curl tighter than those hugging Brick’s skull. They turn to fixate on the shadow next to him. “You did not tell this gentleman? I owe him my life.” At that, Acid coughs, unexpecting. He whacks at his right.

That finally wrecked a noise out of Brick's windpipe. “A— A-ma."

“My son Brick,” She coos. Gathered into armfuls of her hold, his companion looks smaller, head held low to the crook of his a-ma’s neck and whole posture bent into her cuddle. His height, all of a meter and eighty three, doesn’t quite reach him, here. Acid’s gaze slides past them to the mirror on the wall across. He’s never gotten accustomed to such a sight. He’s no long lost family, no loved one, and won’t need any, that much has become like a promise as a bitterly vacant life rolls on for too long. His bystander status stares limply back from the glass. Acid sneers at it. Mucky feelings, makes one’s limbs useless and puts one’s guard down. That’s deadly in this realm. By the second minute, he decides he’s had enough of a staring contest with the woodenwares at the back.

“It’s sweet seeing you folk reunite, but this place isn’t going to be any safer like this. Let’s move.”

Acid will have to deal with Brick’s audacity later, it seems. He won’t even mention their generosity for pulling himself awake earlier.

++

“Sister, don’t mind him.” They have to address the server between a paw gently pushing Acid's face and the other held up in surrender, because her pupils have slitted and her whiskers were twitching. Brick smiles their best. “He gets nervous with compliments. Thank you for the food, we’ll come back next time!”

They hurry out of the scene with stacks of candied fruit skewers in hand and piping hot packages dangling in a bag off an elbow, for Acid. When they’ve reached an intersection, Brick turns to watch the green haired feline. 

The evening breeze soothes Brick’s temper in a way they hope is as similar as it can get for Acid. Up this close, walking side by side, Brick can count the stars that collect on his bangs, twinkling in a lower frequency than distant ones that dapple the sky. They match his temper, as they’ve come to figure.

Brick's partner was a deeply unsettled tom. Many moons back, they had wondered of the void behind Acid's eyes when he smiled to greet, and the silence that hung permanently like a premonition to a storm every other time facing him. Acid had always been charged and Brick would conclude themself no expert in his neutralizing. They have come to accept it as nature's predicament, is what they'd like to think, when Acid now comes home to have them weigh his paws in check for splinters and then to rest them over Brick's waistline as their breaths mingle. Circumstances.

Brick feels something blossom and simmer in their stomach watching black and pale sparkles pulse to a lazy rhythm on green hair. Acid’s breathing is slow.

Brick braces themself. They’ve wanted to bring something up with the haughty feline for a while.

“Acid?” They venture.

“Hhn mn.” Acid echoes, with a mouthful of tangyuan.

Brick turns the next words over and over on their tongue. They sneak a glance up from where it landed on Acid's legs earlier and it's a mistake because Acid's stare is making their practiced script sizzle into heat. Out with it, his starless eyes say. 

"It's just—" Brick waves, already edging exasperation knowing where this is heading. "We've been together for a while." They finish lamely, nose scrunching up. "No. I mean, it's been over a year, and I don't get what we are. So many things happened and now that a-ma is considering relocating further south down to where her old house was-"

"She's moving?" Acid cuts in. Brick nods. "It's been a week after all. She can't stay with us! She wants… she asked me if I could come with her, you know."

This plunges their atmostphere into dead silence. Brick feels Acid tense without even touching him and teethes on their bottom lip as the other tom slowly open-mouth grinds his candy. Here is what Brick does at times hate: Acid treating them like his property. He views everything in this world from the vantage of his hold over them. In case he thinks Brick's mother sensibly wanting her son to stay with her is no less than somecat desecrating his knife collection, Brick pads in. "She asked if we could come, actually."

Brick promptly looks away to bring a paw up to pat their scruff, yup, that's burning in the breeze because Acid's turned full-headed on them, eyes blazing. They wish he wouldn't be like this. It was not out of the blue or any gratitude that Brick went all this length to treat them both to street food at the wary hour of the night— or well, only part of it, but still. They pout in defense. "Acid! It's not so bad, you know."

"Bad?" Acid speaks, low. He's done with the sweets. "What do you know about bad, Brick?"

"Well," that was uncalled for. Brick wants to fold their arms but feels awkward doing that with their shoulder a hair width apart from Acid's, so they just clench their fists inside their sleeves and lower their gaze behind their bangs, hurt. "It's bad enough that you never see me as family."

The air leaves their lungs before they knew it. Their back abruptly meets a wooden banister right next to them under the restaurant wing they were passing under as Brick gets pushed and coughs into the gap between them and Acid, clinging onto whatever was behind them while they regained their senses. Their shoulder doesn't ache as much as the whirlwind in their head. The only stray thoughts populating their mind aside both of Acid's arms caging them in are that it's good riddance he decided to make a scene at the dead of night and that the packages inside Acid's bag are leaking.

Acid growls into their face, which Brick has no idea if to laugh or swat at. The least they want is to get into a fight with an irritated Acid right after they just wined and dined, which they're not in the mood for, which they had also considered before they decided to probe but apparently hasn't warmed up to. Brick refuses to cry their hate. They didn't know who they took Acid for, even after all this time. They stare back with bulging eyes, shiny and bloodshot.

"What?" Brick soldiers on, despite the waver in their tone. "I don't get to say anything, do I. You wouldn't understand either way." 

Now that gets a reaction out of Acid, which is to say, a twitch of his left eye. Brick diverts their gaze but Acid snaps their jaw back in line with a vice-like grip and Brick whines. "Your food is spilling, asshole." They stomp on Acid's paw. Can this idiot say something? Brick hopes he doesn't.

They actually stay like that for a long minute. Brick closes their eyes, tired, doesn't want to think about the waste of food dressing in their plastic bag anymore. They almost feel a touch graze their right cheek but turn away from it if it was even there. A jerky breath. When they open their eyes, they find nothing new.