100 things 40/100: Here, Kitty, Kitty
Title: Here, Kitty, Kitty
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,608
Prompts: Love Bingo Fill: “Kitty Love”
Hurt Comfort Bingo: “Sacrifice”
Dark Bingo Fill: “SPN Weres”
30 Days of Flashfic Day 19: “In the marketplace”
“Benjamina, keep up,” Lieutenant Nicol called over his shoulder as he turned a corner. The smell from all the different foods was overwhelming. She gagged and covered her mouth, jogging to catch up with the rest of the landing party from the Deirdre's Grace..
“Are all alien marketplaces so... odorous?” Benji asked as she fell into step beside Sergeant Jake Driscoll.
“Some are, some are worse. This is one of the nicer ones.” Jake grinned at her.
There was chanting coming from the center of a small group of people over by the city wall. Their team’s anthropologist dashed away before Lieutenant Nicol could grab him, presumably to observe the local customs in action. Benji sighed and followed the rest of the team. She wanted to go back to her nice quiet engine room, where the only smells were part lubricants and the occasional burning circuit. They had dragged her out for mandatory duty, she had not made her hours off-ship this quarter and they were forcing her to tour the galaxy, one backwater planet at a time.
Her jaw dropped as she saw what was going on. There was a guy in a robe, holding a knife. They had a cat tied down on the stone table or altar, whatever it was called. She knew instinctively that they were going to kill the poor cat. Benji was enraged. She loved animals, especially cats. She had always had one, until she had shipped out on the Deirdre's Grace. “Sarge, we can’t let them hurt that cat,” she muttered under breath as she tugged on Driscoll’s sleeve.
“We’re not allowed to interfere with the locals, you know that, Chief.” Driscoll shook his head. “Look, I love cats too, but we can’t get involved. Maybe it’s sick.”
“The god would not accept an unworthy sacrifice,” their guide said.
“Is there any way to stop this?” Benji asked the woman that had been acting as an interpreter and tour guide for them.
The woman shrugged. “It is just a luma, why do you care what happens to it? The soul is more important to the god. It will carry the message on the scroll to the god.”
“But can the killing be stopped?” Benji persisted. “My people do not abide the slaughter of helpless animals.”
The guide sighed. “If you offered to carry the message to the god, when your time of parting comes, they might allow the exchange.”
“Yes, I can do that, I’ll take a message to heaven with me. Tell them!” Benji said. The guide called out to the guy in the robes and they talked back and forth. The robed man came down off the altar and approached her. He spoke to the guide, ignoring Benji.
“He said you may take the message, but you must also take the luma. Its life becomes your responsibility as you take on its burden,” the woman interpreted.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll take the cat... the luma.” The animal, which had clearly been drugged, was cut free of the ropes and lifted from the altar.
One of the robed guys came over and made a sign on Benji’s forehead with oil. Then four guys in robes circled her and chanted before they walked away.
Lieutenant Nicol had turned around at the ruckus and was frowning, but he did not forbid her from taking the limp animal from the robed guy that carried it over to her. “That is one freaking big cat, Benji!” Jake hissed at her.
It was a damned big cat. It weighed as much as their old cocker spaniel and was a bit longer than the dog had been. It was a tawny gold color. Benji moved the cat so that he was over her shoulder. It seemed perfectly content to stay there, snoring in her ear, so she carried it around the marketplace with her. She traded a beaded necklace for a handful of sewn toys with feathers that she thought the cat might like to play with, when it was no longer stoned off its ass.
When they returned to the ship, the cat was examined by the medical staff, scanned, poked and had blood taken before it was cleared to be brought on board. She had to return to duty before takeoff, so she got a padded shipping crate from the cargo hold and brought it down to the engine room. She set the box in one of the quieter corners and put the cat in it.
“I’m going to have to think of a name for you, once you’re awake and I know your personality better. poor kitty. Mean men wanted to hurt you.” After stroking the soft fur for a few moments, she went about her work while the cat slept off the drugs. When her duty shift was over, she collected the box of sleeping cat and went to her quarters. The cat woke up on the trip through the winding corridors, poking his head up over the edge and looking around at the bulkheads.
She set the box down on the floor beside her bunk and stripped out of her coveralls as the cat crept out of the box and sniffed around. She shared a shower stall with Sergeant Stingle and she wanted to be done and out of the tiny lav before he got off duty and returned to quarters. She crouched down and let the cat smell her fingertips. She stroked his head. “Don’t be scared now. You explore, kitty. I’m going to shower. Sorry home is so small. There’s more to look at down in Engineering.”
She went into the shower and cleaned up quickly, before her allotment of hot water ran out. Clad in a towel she stepped back through the hatchway into her quarters and let out a scream. There was a man reclining on her bunk. A naked man. Clutching her towel, she demanded, “Who are you?”
“I am Jarwin of the Ralk Clan, who are you, beautiful one?” His voice was liquid sex, she felt her knees go weak at the accent that rolled off his tongue.
“Benji, and these are my quarters! How did you get in here?”
He smiled and sat up. “You brought me here. How did you get me away from the Sidle?”
Looking around the tiny cabin, she realized the cat was gone. And she had a man. His hair was the same color as the cat’s fur had been, long, shaggy and tawny gold. His eyes were a rich amber, just like the cat eyes. His face was all angles, very feline. “You’re the cat? The luma?”
“I sometimes take the form of a luma, when it benefits me to do so. The Sidle surprised me and I was captured and dosed with sleeping draughts before I could change back to true form.” He waved a hand down at his very muscular and quite nude body, his true form, presumably. It was quite a fine form.
“What am I going to do with you? I had enough trouble getting a little luma on board, they are not going to go for a man. No way. I’ll have to have you taken back to the planet, Jarwin.”
He stood up and stalked across the short distance between them. He touched his fingers to her chin, turning her head from side to side as he looked at her. He let the fingers drift down her throat, over her collarbone and down her arm. She shivered at the touch. “I would prefer not to go back, Beautiful Benji. My path must move on ever forward, never back. Why did the Sidle let you take me? They were going to sacrifice me to their god.”
“I offered to take their message in the cat’s... in your place. They smeared oil on my head, said a blessing over me and handed you over.”
“Ah, so you are now responsible for me,” he bowed his head. “You saved my life and now my life is yours, Beautiful Benji.”
“I didn’t know you were a person when I agreed to it. I thought you were a cat! I thought I was getting a pet, not a man.”
He leaned down and nuzzled his nose near her ear then whispered, “I can be a cat. To protect you from discipline. It is no hardship to me. I can be a man here, if you like my true form and what I can do with this form for you. Or if you prefer, I shall remain a cat, until the time comes for us to travel different paths.”
He was breathing on her neck and caressing her skin with his fingertips. Benji was falling under his spell. what harm would it do, to have her cat be a part-time man, if he was offering? “I suppose we could try it and see how it works out. Give it some time, see if we are compatible.”
He dropped his hands to her hips and pulled her close. “Yes. We should do that. Your scent is quite pleasing to me. I would like to loveplay with you, if you are amenable. I can bring you much pleasure with my tongue, my Beautiful Benji.”
It was the best pickup line she had heard in years. Throwing caution and common sense to the wind, she went up on tiptoe and kissed his lips. “I find you pleasing as well. Let’s move this to the bunk.”
And that is why there is a large golden cat living in Engineering on the Dierdre’s Grace.
The EndOriginally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/