15 6. Who Goes There? (pt. 3)

I watched her for a little while longer, but I was starting to get bored and a little irritated. Weren't we going to do, y'know, grooming and stuff? Honestly, I could kinda go for that; it wasn't like I needed anybody to care for me, but something in my head felt like if she wasn't going to do it, I should just go find someone else, and I did feel-

Nicole's whiskers twitched, and she sniffed the air before turning to me. I was still getting used to reading her strange new face - so clearly non-human, and yet somehow relatable - but she looked concerned. "This's gonnya sound a little weirrrd," she said, "but, uh, are your earrrs itchy?"

That did sound a little weird, but it was getting harder to listen to the little voice in the back of my mind that said so, and another part of me saw it as the lead-in to exactly what I was just wanting. And in point of fact, my ears did feel funny; not in a bad way, just a little pressure at the base and tips, and a light prickling across the skin... I nodded.

"I figurrred," she said, patting her thigh. I didn't need any further prompting, laying my head down in her lap despite the little voice's insistence that this should be weird and confusing on a couple of levels, and she reached down to scratch absent-mindedly at the base of my ears while she continued to browse on her phone.

The sensation was fascinating; she unsheathed her claws and worked with tiny, gentle motions in her fingertips, the pads anchoring them against my own skin. It felt a bit like those pin-screen toys you put your hand or face against, but it was weird to think that the "pins" were sharp objects designed for catching and maiming prey and it was only her careful control that kept me from getting pricked by them; had I been less fuzzy in the brain, I might've been more unnerved by that.

As it was, I found it surprisingly relaxing, and before long I was nuzzling my head into her hand, trying to help her hit the right spots at just the right angles. I wasn't sure why this felt so good to me, but right now I just couldn't bring myself to care. I felt that pleasant energy again, thrumming in my chest; but no sooner had I gotten really comfortable than she was getting up from the couch. "Mya, what...?" I murmured, mildly annoyed.

"Gotta get the grrrill on, nyakniaow," she said, taking something out of the fridge. She set it on the counter, and I saw that it was a couple of whole, entire dead fish, eyes and everything. I'd always been weirded out by this,° but for some reason I found myself watching in rapt fascination. Even cold and uncooked, I could smell them...

° (Let's be real: why do you want your food to be watching you while you prepare it?)

I heard Nicole chuckle and snapped to attention, realizing that I'd been spacing out...again. What is with me today...? I wondered, as I tried to get myself together and act normal; I wasn't very successful, because my attention kept wandering back to the fish, sitting there on the plate mouths agape, silently judging me.

"Mrr, I'm gonnya be a bit making the sauce," she mused, looking over the recipe on her phone. "Don't s'pose I can get you to tend to the coals, Kit?"

"They're starrring at me..." I muttered. The cats'd picked up the scent and were beginning to crowd around our feet now.

"You're staring at them," she laughed; but I noticed she was watching almost as intently, even drooling a little. "Instinct's a helluva drug, isn't it?" She glanced down at one of the cats, who was sizing up the counter for a potential leap; her ears flicked back and her tail puffed out slightly. "Don't you darrre, Gilligan."

I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but after a moment I finally tore myself away from the fish and went out to the little micro-patio. My thoughts kept returning to them as I fumbled my way through lighting her grill; how long were they gonna take to cook? What if we just-

I stopped, blinked, and shook my head, surprised at myself; I didn't even like normal sushi...

After a couple false starts and a little bit of tending, I managed to get the charcoal going pretty evenly. I watched, mesmerized, as waves of heat danced through the air above it; as, without any visible flame, it slowly turned from coal-black to ash-white to glowing red. So pretty...but even in my somewhat foggy state I knew not to touch, no matter how absorbing it was to look at.

Eventually, my attention wandered again. It was a beautiful pre-spring day; not too cool out, the sky clear and sunny, the air full of intriguing scents wafting in on the breeze. It was all so intense...even the sounds seemed clearer than I remembered. The neighborhood was quieter now than it'd been before the pandemic, but I could hear the muffled voices of a couple arguing in one of the townhouses downhill from our row, a shriek of laughter from children playing on the balcony in the apartment building across the street...

I was seized again by the urge to get up, go out, and find people; to be with someone, snuggle in, get them to scratch behind my still-prickling ears until we'd been close together for long enough that they wanted a turn themselves...I could do that, couldn't I? I was still full of that wonderful energy, and it seemed wrong to feel this good and not share it with everyone. I glanced at the rickety wooden fence that ringed the tiny backyard. Could I make the jump? Probably not, but it wouldn't be that hard to clamber over and-

My thoughts were interrupted when Nicole bustled out onto the patio with the platter of fish corpses. She gave me a look of mild concern, then glanced down at the grill and brightened, her ears perking straight up. "Oh, that's perrrfect," she said. "I'll take it from herrre, thanks."

I watched, curious, as she flicked out a claw° and deftly sliced little gashes at strategic points along the flanks.°° She had a little bowl with a blend of butter and herbs in it, and spent a moment trying to figure out how to dab it onto the fleshy pads of her fingertips without getting butter in her fur or fur in the butter; finally, she gave up and went back to the kitchen for a knife.

° (For the record, this does not actually go SNIKT, but I never kept up with comic books enough to find out whether that ended up getting retconned in the wake of the pandemic, or some editor constructed an elaborate in-universe explanation for it.)

°° (Do fish have flanks? I guess that's the right term, but it feels weird referring to them as such.)

I kept watching, bouncing on the balls of my feet, as she dabbed the mixture into the cuts and set the fish on the grill, atop a sheet of aluminum foil; it was strangely absorbing just watching her work, though I didn't really know why. She noticed and gave another trilling feline chuckle. "Mrr, something you need?"

"Mya?" I said, blinking in surprise. Was I spacing out° again? "Uh, just superrrvising, I guess..."

° (Is it still "spacing out" if you're actually focusing on something?)

I frowned, and got that weird feeling again like there should've been more of a reaction from my ears. What had I been thinking about before this? Oh, right, finding hum-finding people to be with, to be close to, to get attention from... It was normal to want that; I belonged with them, didn't I...? It was hard to stay focused on it when Nicole kept distracting me, but now she was busy. I could go over the fence, or even just scamper back through her apartment, and-

That was when it hit me. I'd felt overwhelmed by the scents around me earlier, but this was absolutely incomparable. Even under normal circumstances, the smell of cooking meat can set your mouth watering; whatever spell I was under that made everything come on so much stronger transformed it into something damn near akin to a religious experience. The scent of FISH browning filled my nostrils; the lightly acrid tinge it acquired as they crisped around the edges enthralled me; then she turned them and poured the cream sauce over the cooked side, and I was practically transported when it heated and began to caramelize.

I could think of almost nothing else, and I was just barely conscious enough to notice that she was nearly as caught up in the experience as I was. I stared, transfixed, as she tended them for the next few minutes. Some part of me felt an urge to snatch one right off the grill and dash off with it, despite the fact that I'd be getting some in any case; I managed to maintain control, barely, because that part of me was also completely absorbed in noticing how the scent changed as it cooked. How was it possible for something to smell this good!?

We watched in reverence as the metamorphosis progressed, and we beheld the tilapia in its true form. Nicole removed it from the grill and briefly considered taking it back into the apartment, but the cats were arrayed on the other side of the patio door, watching intently. Instead, she slipped back inside for utensils, carefully dodging and blocking them from escape, leaving me alone with the fish. Even cooked, some of the scales still glimmered, the sauce glistened, the whole thing smelled heavenly...

Some part of me knew it'd be bad manners to start without Nicole, but the haze in my brain made it hard to connect that with what I was actually doing; and so, as one possessed, I reached out my hand and cautiously pawed at one of the fish, testing whether it was hot enough to burn me. My fingers hovered above it, delicately prodded at the surface, felt the skin give just a little under their touch. Unknown instincts suddenly seized hold of me, and reverence gave way to Bacchanalian frenzy. I snatched it from the platter and tore into it like a damn Mænad, picking off bits and shoveling them into my mouth with total abandon, savoring the soft, flaky meat, the crispy skin, the rich, creamy sauce...

While I was lost in reverie, Nicole returned to the patio, gave a churr of surprise on seeing me, and then laughed outright; but that didn't properly register in my brain until a few minutes later, after I'd picked the thing as clean as I could manage, bolted the last little bits of meat and skin, and spent a long moment sitting there in a euphoric daze. Then, with a cold-water shock of realization, I found I was sprawled out on a folding chair, head lolling, shirt flecked with food matter and face smeared with gravy. "Mya!" I yelped, lurching up to a sitting position and trying to straighten myself out. My ears were prickling with more than just the itchiness from earlier; I'd gone and made a spectacle of myself.

To her credit, Nicole said nothing, but I could tell she was trying to suppress further laughter as she dug into her own fish. Cheeks burning, I licked the back of my hand and dabbed at my face; after a moment, when I was sure she wasn't watching, I allowed myself to lick the last bit of cream sauce off it. When she'd finished, she turned to me. "Here, gimme the bones," she said. "I'm gonnya make brrroth for a risotto later."

I handed her what I had left in hand and started gathering the bits I'd let fall by the wayside in my frenzy. It was embarrassing to look back on; I hadn't quite stripped it to the standard cartoon fish skeleton,° but it was hard not to picture some sort of reverse piranha attack. I would've wondered what came over me, but the fact was that the lingering aromas of cooked fish and caramelized sauce were still tantalizing me even now. Why that sent me into Tasmanian Devil mode, I didn't know; but it was hard to focus on these things when I still felt so nice...

° (ISO 3100-4, Method of preparation of a skeleton of fish for use in sequential art.)

We went back inside, and the cats crowded around us, loudly inquiring as to when the hell they could expect their share. I stumbled over to the couch; my sense of balance was a bit wonky, like there was something wrong with my inner ear. Nicole took a moment to stash the collected bones in the fridge, where the other members of her clowder couldn't get at them, and then joined me, letting me lie down with my head in her lap again. To my surprise, cat number four, a calico whose name I hadn't caught, leapt up onto the couch and curled up against my stomach; the others watched me warily from a distance.

The pleasant haze was beginning to crowd out rational thought again, but I felt a lot less urge to go do things now that I was caught in the middle of what might be reasonably described as a cuddle sandwich. The calico was nudging up into my stomach in that languid-yet-forceful way that cats do when they're too comfortable to get up but want more attention, my fingers were scritching idly at the base of his ears; Nicole was scritching idly at the base of my ears, I was nudging up into her-

-Um. I was nudging up into her stomach, almost on instinct, but the thing of it was that the divide between that and the bottom of her chest had shifted, and I found I was nuzzling the back of my head into her bottom pair of breasts, which sat near the base of her ribcage. Part of me felt like this should be weird and socially awkward, but if Nicole was bothered by it, she gave no indication; and it was swiftly drowned out by the part of me that felt so nice right now, and the part that was marveling in an abstract kinda way about how amazing a soft and fuzzy woman was, as a general concept. Why didn't they make 'em like this before? I wondered; was that weird? I couldn't tell.

Nicole was hunched forward on the couch; her tail jutted out the back of her skirt and curled around between the cushions, draping over my side and dangling into my field of view most intriguingly. Heheh, I thought, and batted lazily at it. She twitched it away, chuckling as my hand followed. "I kniaow what you're going thrrrough, mya kniaow," she said; her tone was warm, almost maternal. "There's a lotta nyew feelings to cope with, you don't kniaow what to expect, and you're too fuzzy in the head to rrrealize what's going on, but it feels so nice..."

I nodded, wondering how she knew that. The calico stretched, pressing against me, and my hand returned to petting him as if on auto-pilot. "'S, 's like 'm...Iunnyo," I murmured drowsily, "like wakin' up on a bus...like when nyew can't 'memberrr how y'got there or where y'r goin'..." There was that pleasant thrumming in my chest again, but this time it turned into a chorus, the same kind of sound, kind of feeling, at two different pitches, on either side of me...

Nicole laughed softly. "Isn't it? Wonderrring if you're supposed to be there, or if it's a mix-up or some kinda prrrank..." She smiled gently, and rubbed my head; I nudged into her hand. "Or a trrrain, maybe; it's not like mya can just turn arrround or get off. One way or anyotherrr, you're gonnya end up at the station before you can decide wherrre to go nyext."

I batted at her tail again. There was an odd sense of finality to her words that made me curious, but I was already fading; her scratching felt so good, the apartment was warm and cozy, the calico was snuggled up against me, and it'd been so long since I felt the comfort of simple human contact,° however odd. It all felt so nice right now; the fog filled my brain completely and I drifted off into sleep hardly even noticing that I was doing it. One way or another...I could worry about that in the morning...

° (Well, okay, not human in the strict sense.)