For the third time that day, Habithi caught sight of something bright out of the corner of his eye, and he turned, growling, to find nothing there. Again. He'd been doing it for a couple days now, as he prowled the Fate and waited for the next theurge. It was irritating, and a little embarrassing, like he was jumping at shadows. He couldn't help it, though: a small part of him was expecting it to be his terrible father or, almost as bad, his mother. The rest of him simply wanted to catch whatever it was lurking in the corridors behind him and, if possible, rend it to pieces.

Terebinth had ignored him for a while, each time he twitched and growled. Then she moved on to smirking at him each time he twitched and growled, as if she thought his jumpiness was amusing. Now, she'd been giving him that knowing look that he expected he would start to hate soon enough. Already it was annoying him.

"What?" he growled at her, shaking himself back into his pre-jump state of non-alarm. "You're the all-knowing one, you tell me who's following me."

"Shadows two, now have you," Terebinth uttered mysteriously, which told him nothing except that he wasn't imagining things.

"Well, then, who is it?" he asked slowly and with outward patience that was a thin cover for his annoyance.

"Don't ask me," Terebinth drawled lightly.

"Well, who else am I supposed to ask?" he grumbled.

Terebinth just opened all four eyes wide at him and looked wise. Stupid hydra; big help she was, when she usually spoke in riddles and half the time didn't answer his questions, at all, usually with that annoying knowing look or some kind of suggestion that made no sense.

All right, then. Ask somebody who wasn't Terebinth. Who could he possibly ask? A Custodian? Bah, they wouldn't know, they wee generally fairly useless. Security? He doubted they'd be much help, and besides, he didn't really want to go around admitting to the people in charge that he wasn't as omnipotent and omniscient as his fearsome father. Keeping them in the dark about his and his siblings' true nature was probably a big part of why he wasn't molested for even being on this cursed ship.

So who else could he--

Arg! There it was again! Habithi snapped, startled, in the direction of the little flash of-- was it green?-- that he caught out of the corner of his eye.

Oh. He supposed he could ask whatever was following them, since Terebinth had said there was someone-- or something-- there. Still, he felt a bit like a fool as he snarled, "Show yourself!"

There was a moment of silence, in which he felt even more like a fool and was tempted to snap at Terebinth for her muted snickering. He finally stalked down the hall towards where he thought he saw the flash of green-- yes, it was definitely green. As he was passing a protrudance in the rough wall about where he thought the thing had been, he stopped short, staring.

"Mrrrrrew?"

There was a tiny green animal-- a... a cat-- crouched there, staring up at him with equally green eyes. And it wasn't just green, it was balefire green. To prove the point, it suddenly flared up with actual balefire, mutating the wall behind it into a glassy gold substance of some sort. Then it subsided, meowed again, stood up with a trademark feline stretch, and sauntered over to rub itself on his feet, purring.

"Ugh!" Disgusted, Habithi took a few steps back. "This is what's been following us?"

"Looks like it," Terebinth agreed, blinking serenely at him. "Kind of cute, don't you think?"

"No," Habithi grumbled. The cat was rubbing itself on his claws again. "Shoo!"

That had no effect, as the creature merely switched to his other foot.

"Go away!" he said louder, swatting in the cat's general direction with his short foreclaws.

The cat blinked up at him with that kind of enigmatic look that Terebinth often favored him with, then closed its eyes partway with a supremely contented purr.

Frustrated, Habithi went to snap the thing up in his jaws-- it wouldn't hurt him, balefire or not, not a demigod of corruption-- and bite it in two. That would be the end of distracting shadows and annoying purrs, and he could get back to his plans and preparations and waiting for the next biotheurge.

His jaws went right through the thing, snapping together with a force that actually hurt. Shaking his head vigorously, he slashed at the little cat with his tail-blade, only to to have that pass right through it, as well, as if the little cat were just smoke. Frowning-- it obviously had mass, since it had been rubbing all over him-- he prodded at it experimentally with one foreclaw. That connected, but when he tried to make a swipe with said foreclaw, nothing happened. To add insult to injury, the little beast actually batted playfully at his fingers.

Maybe it was just aggressive actions that it was immune to. Well, that was strange-- annoying, too. Especially when the creature leapt up onto his stubby heel-spike, and from there scrambled its way onto his shoulder. Not even a vicious attempt corruption, or the balefire that licked at it, seemed to affect it. Growling irritably, Habithi shook it off, and it even landed on its feet after the six-foot fall, probably just to spite him.

"Awww... is the kitten a friendly kitten?" Terebinth cooed, dropping down to her belly and extending a hand towards the cat. The creature deigned to sniff at her fingers, then sat down and started licking its paw, just out of the hydra's reach. Laughing lightly, Terebinth said, "Perhaps not."

"So are we stuck with it?" Habithi asked grumpily, glowering down at the thing. A cute cat, balefire-born or not, was not something he needed nor wanted hanging around him.

"Until her task has been deemed complete, a little feline shall 'attack' your feet," Terebinth agreed cheerfully. "She does seem to like them quite a bit," she added teasingly as, when he started walking, the cat-thing following them and, as if making a point of proving Terebinth right, pounced one foot. He kicked it away, but it just scampered back for more. 

Wait, "her"? "It's a she?"

"A feline more like me, than it is like a he," she confirmed.

"Well, we already knew that," Habithi countered snidely, comparing feline knowing expression with hydra knowing expressions. "Great, stuck with two annoying females."

Terebinth just laughed again.

Chapter Nine

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