Cat.

[wrecking_yard]

Occasionally there's a pang of worry - everyone else is scattered and who knows what they're getting into.

Well, not so much Grog and Scanlan, they're predictable and not likely to get in trouble.

The twins can handle themselves and there shouldn't be anything in this city that'd be a threat to them.

It's mostly Tiberius wandering off unsupervised that might be trouble, given how bad he is at dealing with people and forgetting to mind other customs, but it is not my problem for the evening; Keyleth and I have a project, as frivolous as it is, and I'd be a bad Dragonborn Chaperone alone anyway because of the risk of Orthax getting annoyed with him. Besides, I'd be a fool to not appreciate any break in the chaos with nothing on fire and good ale I probably should be more careful of.

There's quiet; Keyleth's using a piece of scrap to practice calligraphy - she's a quick enough study that she's clearly overthinking and worrying about it too much. She reaches the end of a line and stares at it, sopping her own ale.

"Say, Percy..."

I make an acknowledging noise.

"You're from some noble family, right?" She's being very tentative about it - nobody here likes talking about their past, and out of everyone here I make the least even passing references.

She's too terrified of mis-stepping to pry very far and would be easy to redirect. I nod.

"Sorry if this is a bit much, I don't mean to pry or anything, it's just - uh." She takes a gulp of the ale. "You were like - supposed to be responsible for something, right?"

Whatever anxiety she's circling, I definitely don't need to worry about her questions. "... Sort of. There was an expectation that I'd help look out for the people and all, but I was the third of seven, so I wasn't very likely to inherit..."

Until I was abruptly the eldest surviving, and then the only surviving.

"Oh. Wow. I can't even imagine - I mean, I know my parents wanted more kids, just..."

She trails off herself, and for a long, heavy minute or two, we're both just sitting still and staring into our respective drinks.

Keyleth draining part of her mug barely registers, but her setting down heavily and speaking almost startles me. "SO. Uh. THE PEPPERBOX! It uses gunpowder right? How do you keep it from like, just blowing up?"

It's a messy, desperate, and drunk attempt at changing the subject, and at this point I'm all too happy to have the distraction. "The barrel gives it a direction - it's like a geyser spout, all the force goes toward the opening."

She's nodding. "Then what about when it jams?"

Which is more often than I like. "The parts that jam get stuck, but there isn't much in them to ignite - which is also why I do so much cleaning and upkeep on it." It's a nightly ritual in camp; cleaning it, checking it over, adjusting anything that needs it.

She's running out of questions, and neither of us are far enough from the subject of our families.

"When you shapeshift - what's that like?"

She blinks a couple times. "It's... different?" Still confused. "What do you mean? I'm still me, I'm just ... also a tiger or whatever. it's nice really, things are a lot less scary that way."

Fits with how she acts in other forms; she never has any problem following conversation and visibly forgets we can't understand her, but she also definitely shows some of the animal behavior. "How do things ... I don't know, look I suppose? Everything I've ever seen you turn into has sharper senses than a human or half-elf."

"Oh! Uh. Well, you have no idea how different everything smells. There's so much you wouldn't even notice unless it's like, so strong it's overpowering to most animals. Except eagles. They don't have a great sense of smell. Sometimes it's like I almost wouldn't need to look to know what was going on or what's around me, because I can tell so much from all the scent around me - I can tell what someone last ate sometimes or what they've been doing. I can pick you off from way off, nobody else smells that much like blackpowder and metal and chemical things and whatever monster you dissected in the last week."

"That's... interesting." I don't actually know for sure how much anyone else would notice.

"I hadn't even really known what blackpowder smelled like before you showed up, it took me a while to figure out what it was!"

"It's not widely used - to the point that it's hard to find sometimes if I don't have time to make my own." It's one of the things I've spent time doing when we have lulls, just to make sure I have enough for when we're traveling.

"Oh, there's a lot you don't hear normally, too! Sometimes there's some really low or high pitched things I wouldn't hear either until I'm in an animal form, like, bats are REALLY REALLY noisy. REALLY noisy. I keep forgetting to ask one why..."

"I'll try to remind you, if there's time when there's some around."

"Really? Thanks!" She takes another sip off her ale, starting to be more at ease at least. "Anyway, pretty much everything sees stuff we don't. I mean, yeah, there's erschale and all, but it's so much more VIVID to a lot of animals!"

I blink at the elven word; I've never really figured out what it means. "Erschale?"

She blinks at me. "Yeah. You know. LIke -" She wrinkles her nose; it takes her a minute to come up blank on any equivalent word in common. "Like - man, it's really faint with the lights like this, but like - " She's motioning at part of my coat. "Where the dye's less worn? The blotchy bits."

I look down at my black coat. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

Another few blinks. "You know, the color some things are? Like some flowers and birds and when there's not much light out and there's just a faint hint of it everywhere?"

"....It's a color?"

She nods slowly, like she's not sure how to take me not knowing that. "You can see it right?"

I shake my head. "I thought it was some kind of poetic descriptor for starlight and dim light."

"Holy fuck." She's staring at me having an existential moment. "Is that like, a human thing or a you thing?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a human thing."

"Oh wow. Is that why I can't remember the word for it? Like, there isn't one, it's not just me being drunk?"

I nod.

"Wow."

I think she's completely lost whatever train of thought she had.

"You said it's more vivid in other forms?"

"OH RIGHT! Yeah, I can see it even when the sun's out sometimes on stuff where it's NOT really bright! And a bunch of other colors too that elven doesn't even have words for! Draconic might, do you think Tiberius would know? He can see like a dragon right?"

I shrug. "I hadn't known about any of this before tonight, but if he can see them he probably would?"

"I might get words for things!" She scrunches in with her hands pulled in front of her, voice full of glee. "Man, there's so much that you just don't see and wouldn't even know was there, it's amazing. People have stripes and all kind of markings they don't even know about! And other stuff that's less fun."

"...Stripes?" I blink.

"Yeah! Like - like -" She grabs my hand - I'm not wearing gloves when we're resting somewhere safe - and her pen and starts tracing ink on it in patterns, focusing hard. "Like that! But not ink. Uhm. It'll dry right?"

I manage to get a spare rag out of a pocket and wipe it off. "So the reason some illusions don't work as well on animals and certain creatures is that the person casting it couldn't account for things the target would be aware of?"

She nods vigorously, and I'm staring at my coat again, and the faint inkstains on the back of my hand, stumped.

"Man how would I even describe it ...."

She's thinking hard.

"I KNOW! I can show you!"

That is all the warning I get before she's casting, and I only get partway through "Keyleth, what are you-" before it's abruptly not words and the sentence isn't even properly a thing I can focus on. I can focus on getting bearings on being much smaller than I'm used to, that even though the room is clean the inn smells awful, and there's a scratching sound under the dresser.

(Note: It's not that I don't remember this bit, it's that translating it into language is DIFFICULT, because unlike her shapeshift, polymorph means having a *cat brain* for the duration. The scratching was a mouse, the mouse was quickly an ex-mouse, Keyleth got claw-swatted trying to take it away from me and I took it to the top of a bookshelf to eat. She could reach okay because it's a Dwarven inn built for dwarves, but I was very determined to keep my food. could hear other things in the walls and ventilation and was trying to figure out a way to get to that when she pulled out some dried meat and got my attention. Apparently Cat Brain cancelled out other things so I was starving. The dried meat was enough of a bribe to end up being a lap cat getting attention and Keyleth saying something about "please don't try to run off again I forgot how to turn you back".)

One moment I was curled up purring, the next I was abruptly human, Keyleth was flailing, and I hit my head on the table and table leg as I was suddenly much too big for where I'd been sitting, the chair knocked over.

It was a very awkward minute of scrambling to get disentangled as we were both trying to get away, ending with Keyleth on the floor on the other side of the chair while I was getting to my feet and fixing my glasses.

She laughs sheepishly and nervously. "You saw it at least right?"

"Yes. It was fascinating although I'm afraid it's a little harder to appreciate under that particular spell."

She's using the table to get to her feet, standing wobbly. "Right. ...Sorry about the mouse."

I shrug, sitting back down. "I've eaten worse." I only get a glimpse of her confused look of concern as I drain most of the mug.

"You're a really pretty cat? Kinda long and a little worrying and you're bony and need to eat more but-"

I end up shooting her a bemused look over the mug. "How was it worrying?"

"Oh. Well, you know, you're usually all the way back out of reach of things and you-" She pauses, scrunching her face. "You know what. Forget I said anything. It's nothing."