Prysmcat

  We left Coppersands the next morning, after a light lunch for me and dinner and breakfast, all of mine snted towards felid biology. Which was to say, heavy on the fish and the eggs and the dairy products, moderate on the bread and a few leafy vegetables, minimal on other vegetables, and cking fruit entirely.

  Outside the city, and far enough from anyone else, we stopped.

  “This feels like cheating,” I said, calling up my interface. It came up crisp and clear this time, no fuzzing at all, which matched the way I felt. Mostly. I still felt a bit on-edge emotionally, but physically and mentally I was back to normal. Whatever that actually meant these days.

  “It is not cheating,” Serru said. “We could perhaps work gradually on establishing what your tolerance level is in your felid form for various kinds of sensory experiences, but that would take considerable time and would be exhausting. Our priority is to get you to the remaining Quincunx sites as quickly as we reasonably can in hopes of getting you home, so the sensible thing to do is simply avoid any situation that could cause an extended dey to recover. Going back into Coppersands in felid form would serve no purpose at all.”

  “I know you chose that form for a reason,” Aryennos added, “but now you have information you didn’t then.”

  I turned the lower left knob to the yellow centaur, and braced myself through the brief vertigo.

  We circled farther around the city and went back in from a different direction, closer to the harbour, in hopes of not attracting any questions from anyone who recognized Serru and Aryennos and might wonder why they were now travelling with a centaur instead of a felid. Not that anyone was likely to particurly care.

  The same essential concerns remained: I still didn’t really understand the local culture and felt like an outsider, and now I had the issue of needing to be careful that my considerable bulk didn’t cause any problems. We walked into the same tangle of sights, scents, sounds, on all sides, and I braced myself, but I felt none of that growing tension, let alone the rapid escation towards fight-or-flight. That seemed to confirm the hypothesis that it came with my felid form. I was aware of Serru and Aryennos both keeping an eye on me—Serru was better at doing it with some subtlety than Aryennos was—but it just felt like my friends being protective and ready to step in if needed.

  “I’m all right,” I told them. “There won’t be any crises this time. At least, not that one.”

  Serru nodded. “Good. That will make it easier. Simply a matter of using your felid form only when you are in quieter pces with less stimution.”

  “You have some really useful abilities that way,” Aryennos said, “and, um, you’re really cute in that form, but that looked exhausting. At least there’s an easy way to avoid it.”

  “True,” I conceded. Most people didn’t get that option. Although ‘easy’ might have been a small exaggeration, I reflected, pausing so a cart drawn by a pair of floppy-eared donkeys could get past me into a side-street.

  Serru took us first to a pce with a sign that bore a symbol that made me think of a sort of starburst or explosion enclosed in a circle, a calm mellow green-blue on a background of pale wood.

  The sign stood outside a hedge high enough that the top was at my eye level; I could see one tree on the other side, between us and the building’s front wall. The gate was solid wood with a small sign that said, “Welcome!” in simple script in the same green-blue as the main sign. Serru pushed it open and waved us in.

  We stepped into a pocket-sized garden.

  The sounds of the city were far more hushed than I’d have expected the hedge to accomplish; around the base of the hedge was a narrow row of what I recognized as rosemint, spreading its gentle scent across the area. The single tree was mid-sized and had long weeping branches, the trunk leaning to one side, which probably made the interior a one-person green cave. Across the walkway from it was a wooden bench, all graceful curves, and the back had been carved into shapes that just invited the fingers to explore them.

  “This is beautiful,” I said. “I wish I’d found this pce yesterday, not that orchard. Not that I’m not gd the orchard was there, but...”

  “That’s exactly what this is designed for,” Aryennos pointed out. “There’s almost certainly some sound-muting magic helping, and it’s all meant to be safe space.”

  “Exactly,” Serru said. “And it has another use for us. It might be best for you to be in your felid form in this shop. I think you’ll be better able to judge what might be the most effective that way. No one will see, and you can do the same on the way out. I know it’s two more changes, but...”

  “I’ll recharge,” I said, “and I don’t expect to need major healing magic. All right, if you say so.”

  Even in my felid form, possibly even more so, the little garden was a tiny haven of quiet aesthetic serenity.

  The stone walkway took us to the shop door, and we stepped inside.

  The whole store was filled with everything from weighted bnkets hanging on bar racks to an endless array of colourful toys in a vast range of sizes to suit any hand, things that looked remarkably simir to fiberoptic mps to wraparound sungsses with lenses in a whole spectrum of colours, ragdoll-like toys that resembled any number of animals and long horseshoe-shaped neck pillows. The gss tubes and sealed bowls with bright gssy things inside probably did something when active, maybe bubbling or something. And I knew I hadn’t seen nearly everything. There was so much that I wanted to look at, so many things to investigate!

  Serru approached the usual counter—this one had only two sides, the first I’d seen that, but possibly it allowed for more freedom of movement. The shopkeeper was a bck-and-white female felid. The fact that I somehow knew she was a woman without any visible indications distracted me from being distracted by checking out, well, all the things. At least briefly, before a shiny prismatic ball caught my attention. Then the jingling of the ring-bracelet she wore distracted me again, and I noticed that it was chainmail with little metal bobbles attached to it that made a soft chiming sound whenever she moved her right hand, and the colours were a mix of blue and green and yellow that rippled with motion.

  “Hi,” Serru said. “We’d like to buy a few things. Our friend’s first visit to Coppersands has been... difficult. We’d like to make sure we’re all prepared just in case that comes up again, or better still, try to prevent it.”

  “Not accustomed to rge settlements and it was too much?” the felid woman said sympathetically. “Of course. Mini-tents are always an excellent pce to start.”

  “Definitely, and we’ll take half a dozen of those. I’d rather have too many than run out and need one. We’re much less concerned about what it will cost than we are in making sure he’ll be safer.”

  The shopkeeper nodded briskly. “Everyone is different, but there are some things that are often useful. A weighted bnket, for example.”

  Serru kept insisting that I try things to see how they felt and whether I thought they would work for me. I took everything the shopkeeper said seriously, since she clearly knew what she was talking about. She had practical advice for how to recognize and head off that kind of overload before it became an outright meltdown, and showed every sign of being more interested in making sure I’d be safe than she was in making the rgest sale possible. I was still guessing a lot of the time, since I wouldn’t know for sure if anything worked until I needed it, but we did end up piling things on the counter that we were reasonably confident would be helpful.

  The shopkeeper excused herself once to sell someone else several mini-tents and a pair of jingly earrings; Serru saw me looking at the tter, smiled, and once that customer left, she asked to see what styles there were. I had no idea whether my ears were pierced in my centaur or felid forms, or where on a felid ear would be best for that, but they were pretty and shiny and colourful and they made soft pleasant sounds and I wanted them in the worst way. I managed, with considerable difficulty, to force myself to narrow it down to three pairs in particur; Aryennos, at that point, stepped in and insisted that he’d pay for all three personally, and the matching tinkly chainmail neckce pendant that went with one and the bracelet that matched another.

  We left with six of the miniature tents, a weighted bnket, a soft weighted plushy cat, and another neckce that reminded me of the worry stones that used to be moderately popur at home, a comfortably-shaped wafer of polished brown-and-gold striped tiger-eye with an indent that invited rubbing. I’d pounced instantly on something that was functionally the same as the begleri toy I often carried hooked on my missing basic belt kit: a short cord with equal weights, rainbow metal of course, on either end, which could be flipped and twisted and, with practice, used for tricks. A coworker had introduced me to the concept and I’d found it a useful way to keep my hands busy ever since. Aside from Serru and Aryennos each taking one mini-tent, all of it went in my bag, which showed no signs of running out of space.

  I was fairly sure that it cost a lot. I tried not to worry about it, since it would, with any luck, keep us from having another major interruption like yesterday’s. Besides, Serru could probably give it to her sister once I was gone. It was, however, further motivation to do the best I could at creating high-quality potions she could sell.

  Outside, in the little garden, I switched to my centaur form, and we stepped back out onto the street. Interestingly, my new worry stone neckce didn’t change along with everything else, although it sat much higher on my chest now.

  “Odd question,” I said. “I can’t usually tell if a felid is male or female but I knew for sure she was female. How and why?”

  “Felids can tell each other by scent,” Aryennos said. “Presumably you picked up her scent without noticing. The rest of us usually can’t. There just aren’t that many physical differences, most of the time. So they use ring-bracelets to give the rest of us some idea, because sometimes it’s useful to know or they just want it clear, and not just because romance or sex might be a possibility. Men wear them on the left and women wear them on the right. Mostly if a felid isn’t wearing one at all, they don’t think it’s relevant and probably they aren’t interested in romance or sex at the moment, but wearing one doesn’t mean that they are interested. Uh... felid sexuality and retionships are really complicated, to most other people.”

  “I’m not pnning to get into one, so with any luck I’ll be okay. So if I swapped mine to the other hand, everyone except felids would just assume that I’m a felid woman?”

  “Felids would respect it too. If you’re giving an unambiguous signal like that, they’ll pretend they aren’t smelling something different. Not that felids usually treat each other differently based on that.”

  “Okay, that’s mindblowing, but cool, and good to know, thanks.”

  “One stop done,” Serru said, though she did wait for a pause. “I’m not certain it was the most urgent, since it appears only your felid form might need these and there’s no reason for you to change while in the city, but at least now we’re prepared in case anything happens. She doesn’t carry Recovery potions, but I know who does.”

  “The same pce you went yesterday?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I went to the closest shop that would have one, yesterday. Today you get to meet Terenei.”

  Wasn’t that the friend who had found my monitor for me? I was sure she’d mentioned the name several times.

  “Lead on. You’re in charge.”