Chapter 5: The Pet Devolution
The lullaby curled around them, a sweet, sticky syrup that seemed to seep into their ears and down their spines. It didn’t just soothe; it reshaped. Lucy felt the last sharp edges of her human thoughts soften and blur, like ink dissolving in water. Words became cumbersome things. Concepts like ‘guild’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘home’ floated by, pretty but meaningless, like distant butterflies.
A much clearer, brighter impulse took hold.
She stretched, her limbs languid, and a sound bubbled up from her throat unbidden. “Meow!” It felt right. More than right—it felt like her true voice. She blinked slowly at Brandish, whose head was cocked, listening to a rustle in the ivy. “Meow,” Lucy repeated, padding closer on silent feet. “I want… yarn. A ball. A yarn ball to chase.” The sentence was a struggle, the desire pure and bright.
Brandish turned. Her own mind felt different. Not soft like Lucy’s, but sharpened in a singular, focused way. Scents were overwhelming. The musk of damp wood, the tang of her own urine on the ivy, the sweet perfume of Lucy’s skin. Each one demanded a response. A low, restless energy hummed in her muscles.
“Yarn is stupid,” Brandish said, but there was no malice, only a flat statement of fact. Her nose twitched. “I can smell everything. This place… it needs my smell. My mark.” She dropped to her hands and knees, snuffling along the base of a wooden column where the ivy was thickest. The compulsion was visceral, a need as urgent as thirst.
Lucy’s brow furrowed for a nanosecond, a ghost of her old self puzzling over a friend’s odd behavior. Then it passed, washed away by a wave of pure, playful intent. She spotted a tassel hanging from a plush cushion. With a swift, clawless bat of her hand, she sent it flying.
Her world telescoped to that spinning, tumbling object.
She pounced, a flash of blonde and grace, landing on the cushion with the tassel trapped beneath her. She wrestled with it, biting the cord, kicking with her hind legs in a rhythmic bunny-kick motion. A deep, rattling purr erupted from her chest, vibrating through her entire body. Happiness was this. It was simple. It was complete.
Brandish watched from the corner of her eye, distracted. The play looked undignified. But the urge to mark was stronger. She rubbed her cheek deliberately against the rough wood of the column, depositing her scent. Then she moved to a pile of cushions, circling three times before flopping down, then getting up to repeat the process at another spot. Each action was methodical, instinctual. She was defining the boundaries of their den.
“You’re missing the fun,” Lucy trilled, batting the tassel toward Brandish. It landed by her knee.
Brandish looked at it. A flicker of something—annoyance?—crossed her face. Then, a different impulse won. She snatched the tassel in her teeth and shook her head violently, a low growl building in her throat. She tossed it high, leapt, and caught it with a satisfying snap of her jaws.
“Hey! Mine!” Lucy yowled, launching herself at Brandish.
They tumbled together in a heap of limbs and laughter that wasn’t quite laughter—it was breathy pants and playful snarls. Brandish rolled on top, pinning Lucy lightly, her teeth still clamped on the tassel. Lucy wriggled, trying to hook it with a foot. For a moment, they were just two animals wrestling in the dappled light.
Then Brandish froze.
Her eyes, locked on Lucy’s, widened. The growl died in her throat. A memory, sharp as a shard of glass, cut through the fog.
She was on a battlefield, the air crackling with hostile magic. She stood over a fallen foe, her power to shrink continents humming at her fingertips. She was fear. She was strength. She was alone.
The contrast was so violent it stole her breath. The weight of Lucy beneath her, the soft cushion, the silly tassel in her mouth—it was a universe away. A whimper, small and confused, escaped her.
Lucy felt the shift. The playful tension vanished, replaced by a sudden, alert concern. She went still beneath Brandish. “Brandish?” she whispered, the name feeling strange on her tongue. The human word, for a human moment.
Brandish released the tassel. She pushed herself up, sitting back on her heels, staring at her own hands as if seeing them for the first time. “I was… someone else,” she mumbled, her voice thick. “I could… change things. Just by thinking.”
The lullaby, which had faded to a barely perceptible hum, swelled gently. It poured into the silence Brandish’s memory had created.
Lucy’s moment of clarity faded faster, softened by her feline contentment. She sat up and nudged Brandish’s hand with her head. “You’re here now,” she murmured, the words slurring. “We’re here. This is our place.” She began to lick Brandish’s knuckles, a rough, soothing gesture.
The physical sensation short-circuited Brandish’s turmoil. The touch, the care in the gesture, it was an anchor. The haunting image of her past self dissolved, unable to compete with the present, tangible reality. The need to belong, to be part of this den, flooded back, stronger and more comforting than any memory of power.
She looked down at Lucy, then at the gazebo they had marked together. Her shoulders slumped, not in defeat, but in acceptance.
“Yeah,” Brandish breathed, the word almost lost in the music. She curled her body around Lucy, laying her head down. “Our place.”
Outside, the moon climbed higher. Inside, the two figures slept in a pile of cushions, their breathing slowly synchronizing, the last echoes of who they had been smoothed away like paw prints in sand. For now.