Chương 23: Nothing to Be Afraid Of

The girl woke up screaming. Quiet, cut short almost as soon as it started, a sharp, choked sound rather than anything sustained. But it was enough to wake her instantly, eyes open and every muscle locked before she'd finished processing why. The girl had gone rigid against her side, staring at the size of the thing she'd apparently just found herself pressed up against. Whatever warmth had built up between them overnight evaporated the instant she started scrambling backward across the cave floor.

She didn't get far. The cave wasn't big enough for far, and she hit the back wall within three frantic steps and went completely still there, chest heaving. Her eyes cut once toward the cave mouth, the gray daylight and open ground beyond it, and whatever calculation ran behind them didn't take long to finish. Nothing stood between her and outside except a stretch of stone floor and something easily capable of closing that distance faster than she could.

She stayed exactly where she was, eyes fixed on Amber like something that had crawled out of a story meant to keep children from wandering off alone. She didn't say anything at first. Whatever was happening behind her eyes stayed there a long moment, frozen, before it finally cracked something loose.

"A... tiger?" It came out broken, half a word more than a whole one, nothing composed about it at all. Amber didn't move. Chasing hadn't been on the agenda for anything this morning, and this small, frozen thing wasn't important enough to change that. So she stayed where she was, watching the girl breathe and say nothing at all. The girl's eyes stayed fixed on her the whole time, wonder slowly losing ground to something more careful.

She was looking now instead of just staring, the way anyone looked once the first shock wore off, and Amber could watch the exact moment something in that look shifted.

"Aren't you going to eat me?" It came out steadier than the first thing she'd said, though her whole body still stayed pressed flat to the wall behind her. She didn't wait for an answer that wasn't coming.

"I probably don't even taste good." A short, nervous laugh escaped her, gone as fast as it came, like even she wasn't sure why she'd said it. Amber gave the whole question one slow, unimpressed blink and left it at that. The girl didn't move either, but something in her kept working past the fear regardless, the particular kind of curiosity that showed up right alongside real danger instead of after it, the urge to understand a thing even while still afraid of what it might do.

"Can you understand me? I heard tigers are smart. Like those winged lizards." Her gaze caught on the whiskers first. Then the shape of her ears, the particular set of her face, details that seemed to be doing something to the certainty in her expression.

"You've got a cat's face," she said slowly, more to herself than to Amber.

"I saw a cat once. Whoever owned it had to be very rich." A pause, her eyes still on Amber's face.

"People say hurting one's bad luck. Really bad." She looked Amber over again, slower this time, something working itself out behind her eyes. She frowned slightly.

"You're not striped, though. I've seen paintings. They're always striped." She tilted her head, studying the plain, uninterrupted color of Amber's fur like it was actively arguing with her.

"Maybe you just don't have them yet. Are you a young one? Still growing?" This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Amber went back to cleaning one paw, unbothered. The silence sat there too long. Something in the girl's face crumpled around the edges, the fragile calm from a moment ago giving way all at once, and her breath caught with a wet gulp in her throat.

"You're not even going to answer that, are you." It wasn't really a question anymore. Her eyes filled fast, blinking hard against it.

"I see. Fine. Tigers don't talk to their prey, is that it." A thin, wavering breath.

"I did say I'm not tasty, though. I meant that." Amber stopped grooming and got up instead, crossing the short distance between them before she'd fully decided to. The girl went rigid the instant she got close, breath catching hard, every muscle locking up at once. Amber ignored it, licking one rough stripe along the side of her face, the same unthinking gesture she'd have used on anything small and upset that happened to be nearby.

The girl didn't move for a long moment afterward, still stiff, eyes wide and fixed somewhere past Amber's shoulder. Then, slowly, some of that stiffness let go. The crying didn't stop right away, but it slowed, quieting into something smaller and less frantic. That seemed to be the thing that finally broke something loose in the girl's expression, more confusion now than pure fear. Her breathing slowed by degrees.

Her eyes kept moving over the sheer scale of the thing sitting close enough to touch and not touching her at all, claws long enough to have ended this in half a second if it had wanted to.

"You didn't..." The girl's voice came out cracked and small, trailing off before finishing whatever thought she'd started. Amber held still and let her finish the thought at her own pace. She still hadn't fully relaxed, body braced enough to bolt at the first sudden shift, but she looked past Amber once more, toward the rain still coming down steady outside, then back at the space Amber's body took up between her and any way out.

"So you're not going to eat me?" Amber just held her gaze, patient, with no way to answer either way. The girl let out a breath she'd clearly been holding a long time, shoulders dropping with it, and slid down the wall until she was sitting instead of pressed flat against it, knees drawn up, eyes still wary but no longer frantic.

"I don't have anywhere to go," she said, mostly to herself, mostly like an accusation aimed at nobody in particular.

"I ran away from home." Amber flicked her tail once. It wasn't agreement, exactly. It also wasn't nothing. They stayed like that a while, both still. Eventually it was the girl who broke it, pushing herself up the wall to standing on legs that didn't look entirely steady yet. She squared her shoulders, chin lifted, one hand smoothing down the front of a dress that was well past saving, some old, practiced posture asserting itself despite the mud and the shaking legs underneath it.

"Flavienne Seraphine Sanguerre," she said, looking right at Amber this time.

"Heh. Bit much, isn't it. Not like you can do anything with that. So you can just call me Flavi, for short." She waited a moment after that, like some part of her still expected an actual reply to land. The silence stretched on, unbroken.

"... Right. You're not going to answer, are you." A short, awkward laugh escaped her, dying fast. She glanced toward the cave mouth, the rain finally starting to thin outside, gray light strengthening by degrees.

"I'm not going back," she said, quieter now, like she was testing whether saying it out loud made it more true.

"I want to go on an adventure. Somewhere nobody knows my name." It turned out not to matter. Flavienne kept talking regardless. Rain, first. Then her feet, and how long they'd hurt. Then something about a bird and a window and a nest built somewhere new every year, the words blurring together into one long, shapeless hum somewhere around the edges of Amber's attention, more sound than sense.

Amber stopped bothering with any of it, turning her attention instead to a very thorough cleaning of one front paw, ears angled deliberately away from the sound of it, the same practiced indifference she'd once used on Ren whenever the ledgers got long. She found herself hoping, with real sincerity, that the rain outside would pick back up. Loud enough to drown out everything else. Loud enough that she wouldn't have to work at not listening anymore.

"Are you even listening to me?" Arms crossed now, one eyebrow raised, the exact posture of someone bracing for an argument they already knew they'd lose. Amber licked the same spot on her paw a second time, with real dedication, and did not look up. Or, failing that, the rain could just stop entirely, freeing her to get up and walk away from all of it instead. Either one would work.

"Right," Flavienne said, not quite managing to sound offended about it.

"Oh well. Talking to a huge cat that won't even answer back. This is where I've landed." She sighed, long and put-upon, and then, without missing a beat, went right back to whatever topic she'd been on. She stopped mid-sentence a moment later, hands suddenly gripping either side of Amber's face before Amber had any real chance to object to it.

"Wait." Something had shifted fast behind her eyes, real urgency in it now.

"Are you too young to understand the language? Is that it?" Amber went wide-eyed and completely still, ears flat, caught somewhere between offense and genuine confusion about what exactly was happening to her face right now.