The place sat two streets back from Solmere's central market, small and warm and cluttered in the particular unhurried way of establishments that had settled comfortably into themselves over many years, and Talon had proposed it with such total, unassuming casualness that Mira had agreed before she'd properly considered whether she wanted to.
TLN: They've got about a dozen. Maybe more. The owner keeps finding strays and simply refuses to stop.
MRA: You've been here before.
TLN: Twice. Alone, both times. I liked it enough to want to bring someone.
He did not elaborate on why she had been the someone, and Mira, grateful for the omission, did not ask. They found a table near the window, and within perhaps ninety seconds a large orange tabby had installed itself firmly across Talon's lap with the particular imperious confidence of an animal that had never once been told no.
TLN: This one's Marmalade. Apparently.
MRA: You know its name?
TLN: The owner introduced us. At length. He introduces everyone, whether you ask or not.
Mira watched him scratch behind the tabby's ears with careful, absent attention, and felt something in her own shoulders loosen slightly, the particular quiet ease of a setting that asked absolutely nothing of her. A smaller grey cat approached her own chair, considered her at length from the floor, and then leapt into her lap without invitation.
MRA: Oh.
TLN: That's a compliment, for what it's worth. They don't do that with everyone.
MRA: I wasn't expecting it.
TLN: Nobody ever is. That's rather the point of cats.
The tea arrived eventually, and the conversation drifted with it, unhurried and entirely without agenda, and it was somewhere in the middle of it, watching the grey cat settle more firmly into her lap, that Mira found herself explaining something she had never once explained to anyone at the academy.
MRA: People assume, sometimes. When they see me.
TLN: Assume what?
MRA: That there's a connection. Between what I am and them.
She nodded slightly toward the grey cat, and Talon, following the gesture, frowned with genuine confusion.
TLN: Between you and the cats?
MRA: Between monsterkind and ordinary animals. It's a common assumption, especially among people who've never actually known any of us. They see the features and they assume we're simply animals who learned to walk upright, or animals with human intelligence layered on top, something along those lines.
TLN: That's not right, though.
MRA: No. It isn't remotely right, and it's genuinely tiring to correct.
She stroked the grey cat's back absently, choosing her words with the particular careful precision she brought to subjects that mattered to her.
MRA: Monsterkind are their own species entirely. We descended from animals, yes, in the same broad sense that humans descended from something considerably earlier and considerably less impressive than yourselves. But that descent happened a very long time ago, and what emerged from it was not animals who became clever. It was something separate, with its own history, its own cultures, its own languages that predate half the human provinces by centuries.
TLN: And the appearance?
MRA: We kept the shapes we started with, mostly. Fur, feathers, scales, depending on the lineage. Bipedal, like you, because that turned out to be useful for the same reasons it was useful for humans. But this cat and I share about as much ancestry as you and it do, which is to say a great deal if you go back far enough and absolutely nothing that matters at any reasonable scale.
Talon absorbed this with the particular focused attention he brought to most things she said, and Mira, watching him actually listen rather than simply wait for his turn to speak, found something in her chest ease further.
TLN: And hybrids?
MRA: Exactly what the word suggests. Mixed parentage. A monsterkind parent and a human one.
TLN: Is that common?
MRA: Considerably more common now than it was three centuries ago. Less common than either species pretends it is. Common enough that most people have met one, uncommon enough that most people still stare.
She said the last part evenly, without any particular bitterness, simply an observation of fact, and Talon, hearing it, did not offer the reflexive sympathy that so many people reached for whenever she mentioned it.
TLN: Which parent?
MRA: My mother. Eskandar coastal lineage, closer to the avian side. My father's ordinary human stock from further inland.
TLN: Does that make things complicated? At home, I mean.
MRA: It makes things complicated everywhere. Home included, though less than most places.
She considered how much further to go, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she wanted to continue.
MRA: The thing people never understand is that hybrids don't fit neatly into either side. My mother's family looked at me and saw someone too human to properly belong. My father's family looked at me and saw something they had to be careful about explaining to visitors. Neither of them meant it unkindly. That's rather the part that stings. Nobody in my entire family has ever once been cruel to me about it, and it has still shaped absolutely everything about how I move through the world.
TLN: Because it's not cruelty that does the damage.
MRA: No. It's the careful. It's watching people be careful around you your entire life and understanding exactly what that carefulness means.
The grey cat, entirely uninterested in any of this, rearranged itself across her lap with a small dissatisfied noise, and Mira, adjusting to accommodate it, felt the whole weight of the subject settle back into something manageable.
TLN: Thank you for explaining it.
MRA: You didn't ask.
TLN: I know. I've been deliberately not asking for a while now, actually.
MRA: Why?
TLN: Because you'd tell me when you wanted to. And you did. That seemed considerably better than pressing for it earlier and getting something you'd rather not have given.
Mira looked at him for a long moment, and found, once again, the particular disorienting sensation of being handled correctly by someone who seemed to require no instruction on how to do it.
MRA: You're strange, Talon.
TLN: I've been told.
MRA: It's not an insult.
TLN: I didn't take it as one.
They stayed for another hour, mostly in easy silence, the cats cycling through their laps with total indifference to whatever the humans occupying the chairs happened to be discussing, and when they finally left, walking back toward the academy through the cooling afternoon, neither of them commented on the fact that nothing in particular had happened. Nothing had needed to.
MRA: I won the strategy tournament. At the festival.
TLN: I heard. I meant to say something earlier.
MRA: I sacrificed a rook. On the twenty-fourth move.
TLN: Is that impressive?
MRA: Extremely.
TLN: Then tell me about it properly. I'd like to hear it.
And she did, the whole way back to the academy gates, explaining the sacrifice and the king hunt and the entire extraordinary geometry of it in considerably more detail than most people would have tolerated, and Talon, walking beside her, listened to every word.