Policeman and the cat

16 - Nelly's diet

Nelly was doing her best to capture and speed-eat as many astrals as she could while they took a detour heading towards the guild. It was a bummer that she would no longer be able to eat whenever she wished, but Ian did look troubled when he asked her and it looked like he would be doing his best to accommodate her, so that would have to do.

But why could humans eat anything and everything on the streets, but not her? Something smelled fishy. Fine, most humans couldn't see or touch astrals, so Brie was right about it probably looking like she ate air, but why was it wrong to eat air?

Human ladies wanted to be thin right? Then wouldn't eating air make a lot of sense? No calorie thingies they were worried about. Water and air ought to be the most commonsense food.

"Ian, wouldn't it look normal if I said I was on a diet?" Nelly asked as she caught a snarling and bit into it.

Ian paused. "Ah, no, not really," he said. "People on a diet still don't eat air, only a crazy person would."

Crazy person, huh. Crazy was not a good word. Crazy was something people would be cautious against and watch closely. Aether hadn't told her what a person with a crazy cat would look like, but a man with a crazy dog was a bad man. People had the impression that it was a man who had raised their dog that way to do bad things.

Meaning, if Ian has a crazy pet, people would think Ian raised her that way, but Ian had done no such thing-- he relied on her, treasured her, cleaned her, never forgot her on the sink edge. Aether told it was common to lose rings on sink edges, but Ian had not lost her.

Nelly nodded. "Tell me if I do something that looks crazy, I don't want to look crazy," she said, because she didn't want anyone to think badly of Ian due to her actions.

Ian reached out to ruffle her hair. "Will try to," he said with a soft smile.

Nelly too smiled, happy about the gesture and reached out her hands to hug him.

Ian kept stroking her head a bit longer, then tensed a bit, like snapping out of something. "We need to move, we'll be late otherwise."

Nelly nodded and loosened the hug, one of her hands trailing over his arm to catch on his hand.

***

Nelly had the cutest smile, Ian couldn't help but feel that way as he ruffled her hair and she hugged him so easily, so naturally and with such pure adoration that he kept stroking her hair being caught up in the moment-- She was so much like a cat in this sense, it was hard to resist from stroking them if they let you.

Or perhaps it was his fault she turned out like this, he did keep stroking his ring all day long now that he thought of it - it was his tick, he only noticed how bad it was when she went to live in the aquarium.

"What is your oldest memory?" He asked, wondering how old was she-- memory-wise.

"Hmmm--" she thought of it, as she picked up a rompel from the ground and Ian quickly averted his eyes. "Your heartbeat was really fast and you held on me through your shirt, you were hurting, I think you prayed to me, and then you stopped hurting and let me go."

Wow. That was vague-- when did something like that happen? He was younger than eleven if the ring was still on his neck-- "were you on a chain or a string?" Ian asked.

"String," Nelly replied.

Ah, he was younger than six then, four or five if he had to guess. Which made her-- something like nineteen? If judged by memories, but he doubted logic like that applied to astrals anyhow. But if she was a ring, then wasn't she way older? The first memory Ian had was from when he was four, not zero-- and that memory was him laying on the floor watching the dust sparkle in the sunlight and holding the ring in his palm, almost like asking it - can you see it? This is so pretty. No way, but--