::Open RP: Kitten-Smitten::

[i_am_an_hero]

While A, as a general rule, is content to stay in his room, Schrodinger is a growing kitten, and always eager to explore and play. A's room is small, and even a tiny kitten seems to need space, so A has taken her to the Great Hall, where there is space for her to frolic

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[jezzthespoon]

The first thing Jezz noticed was the levitating feather. The second was the kitten, and the third was the human with the wand overseeing them both. The small raven on his shoulder noticed all this as well, and promptly abandoned her perch. "Ragari-" Jezz called after her, somewhat exasperated, but as she shot toward A's head she seemed to have left his voice some distance behind, still trying to tie its figurative shoes.

Well, so her reasoning might have gone, if Jezz wasn't going to let her appropriate his hair...

[i_am_an_hero]

Shrieking, A ducks, pulling Schrodinger underneath himself protectively (ignoring a squeak of protest). He has very little personal knowledge of birds, and none of birds flying straight at him.

[jezzthespoon]

Ragari passed over him with a margin of less than an inch, and just barely avoiding colliding with the wall. Jezz called her name again, and this time his voice caught her turning round. He'd taken to keeping a polished coin in his glove of storing for such occasions, and he snapped his fingers to call it up, holding it up between two fingers. She duly returned, though she almost touched down in A's hair again before Jezz repeated himself - "Ragari!" - in a rather louder tone than he'd intended. He put the coin back in when she reached him, turning his gloved hand palm-down so she could land on it.

"I thought we had been over this," he told her. Ragari gave him a look that indicated that was news to her.

Jezz returned his attention to the human. He was aware that raven attacks were not the epitome of courtesy in most lands, and his own initial reaction hadn't been all that calm on his first encounter with Ragari, but the shriek had him lifting an eyebrow. "Apologies."

[i_am_an_hero]

"Keep it away from Schrodinger," he whispered, although the little kitten squirmed, curious, wanting to see, to find out what was happening. Jezz's appearance was not much stranger to him than many of the other people he'd met here and he didn't bat an eyelash. "She's only small."

[jezzthespoon]

The green viper round his arm started to take an interest. "Keheneshnef," he muttered in their private language, "don't you start."

"She doesn't hunt cats," he answered once Keheneshnef subsided, "even small ones. Only the corpses. You needn't fret."

[i_am_an_hero]

"Corpses?" That fills him with alarm. "I haven't seen... are there corpses here?"

[jezzthespoon]

"Not unless someone's brought them in. For the kitchens, or some such thing." But then Jezz had never been to the kitchens, and he started to wonder if they were perhaps cutting pieces off live cows in there.

[i_am_an_hero]

"The kitchens?" A is alarmed; to him, 'corpse' only means 'human'. "What... they don't make the food out of..."

[jezzthespoon]

Jezz misunderstood his alarm somewhat. "Oh, not out of cats." He almost added "Unless maybe if someone asks for them," but he realized that would be going too far.

[i_am_an_hero]

He hadn't even thought about that. A resolves not to eat any cuts of meat he can't identify. "No one is allowed to eat Schrodinger."

[jezzthespoon]

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Jezz, honestly enough. In a way he was representing House Jaelre to the surface world, he had a corresponding image to maintain, and eating some on-edge human's pet was not on the list of acceptable behaviors even if he were at all inclined to do so, which he wasn't. "Neither," he added, suddenly and dubiously inspired, "would Ragari, I'm sure."

Ragari was not an owl, but the expression most likely to be read into the look she gave Jezz now could be best described as oh really.

[i_am_an_hero]

"I have to protect her," he says shakily, and it's scary, because he's never had to protect anything, never been able to, but even if he wasn't already utterly in love with the little kitten he'd be determined to shelter her, because L had said so. "I will protect her. From everything."

[jezzthespoon]

"... I'm sure you will."

At another time he might have walked away from the conversation by this point, but now a detached fascination kept him. He'd known plenty of odd folk among the Jaelre and the Auzkovyn, drow who'd had various things twisted round inside their heads during their time in the Underdark. They'd had their places, their purposes, because perhaps the true rarity was one who came up into the Night Above utterly intact.

But this particular variety was an oddity among oddities. It might be that ones like this one were more common among humans, given that Jezz still didn't know many of the deeper things about surfacers, but if they cropped up among drow their life expectancy was not great.

"There aren't many places better than this one if it's protection you're after." Drugged comestibles aside.

[i_am_an_hero]

"Do you think so?"

A had a mixed opinion about the protective value of Hogwarts. On the one hand, there was L, who had given him Schrodinger, gotten him a wand, and said so many hard-to-believe things. On the other hand, B was here, horrible disgusting filthy B, and B still wanted to hurt him, to make him... A flinched, and shuddered. That was what the wand was for, why he would be learning hexes.

"I'm going to learn. How to protect her better."

Until then, he still had the knife.

[jezzthespoon]

"Being unable to die does improve the prospects somewhat." Even if it did have some undesired side effects. "At the very least, it lowers the stakes for failure." At least this was the case according to how Jezz totted up the stakes. Resurrection spells weren't that easy to come by even in magic-rich Toril, and he rated survival well worth an occasional unfocused gaze or an unsettling interest in dead priestesses.

"I'm not saying you will fail, understand. But a place without death, in neutrality-" Because if this were something like a temple of Lolth it would be a curse. "There's an inherent safety to that."

[i_am_an_hero]

"From some things, that would be a safety. From some things... it would make it, much, much worse." How bad, for example, would it be, if B got hold of him, hid him somewhere, and hurt him again and again and this time even dying wouldn't be an escape? A shivered. "So it's an inherent danger as well."