Catseye and Yvette - Sunday afternoon

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

A close encounter of the furred kind. Or, Yvette meets Catseye. And it's not really that close of an encounter as Catseye remembers Yvette's warning about NoTouching.

A Very Interesting Bug was sitting on a leaf. Catseye had been watching it for close to an hour now, relaxed and happy to enjoy the silence of the woods. Until sudden noise from the woods startled her and the bug. The cat only stiffened, but the bug flew off into the sky, and Catseye lost it in the trees. Miffed, she rose from where she'd been crouched on the ground and padded silently towards the noise. It was the red girl from the journals. Catseye considered climbing a nearby tree and inflicting Flying Cat Death From Above, but as she dug her front paws into a trunk she remembered the girl's comment about NoTouching. Instead, Catseye emerged from the underbrush onto the trail and gave a "mrrrrrrt!" of greeting.

Yvette started and dropped her book, looking around with glowing blue eyes until she spotted the purple cat. "Oh!" she exclaimed, a smile appearing briefly - she loved cats. "Hello there, Kitty! Are you being lost?"

Kitty again. Catseye thinks the mansion has more SillyKittens now than it did before Catseye left. With an un-cat-like roll of her lavender eyes, Catseye shifted to human and crossed her arms over her chest. "Catseye is not lost. Catseye was in the woods playing WatchingABug but then the bug got scared of a noise and flew away so Catseye came to see who made the noise."

"Ah!" Yvette had been picking up her book and dropped it again at the sight of the tall, purple-haired girl. "Oh! I am sorry! You are the new student, yes?"

Well, no question of where the noise was coming from with the girl's inability to hold on to a book. "Catseye is not new," she explained, sitting down in the middle of the trail. "Catseye lived at the mansion before LoudRedGirl arrived but Catseye went away for a while to live with BigBrother and now she has come back."

Yvette blinked. LoudRedGirl? It was almost absurdly not-her and despite herself, she giggled a little. "I am sorry again, Miss Catseye. I was away and not paying the attention to things. My name is Yvette. I am very pleased to meet you," she said politely, aware of the dignity of Cats.

Catseye gave Yvette a nod of approval in response to the greeting. "Why did LoudRedGirl tell Catseye not to touch her on the journals? No Touching makes pouncing very difficult," she explained, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at the girl.

"I did not want to be hurting you." The response came even more reluctantly than usual, given she had hurt someone with her powers recently. "My power... it makes my skin very sharp." To demonstrate, she pulled a glove off and ran her longer fingers along the stump she had been sitting on to read. Splinters flew.

Eyes widening, Cateye picked up a wooden splinter and studied it intently. "SharpSkinGirl can do this to anything? Not just trees?"

Yvette nodded, glowing eyes dulling a little as she pulled her glove back on. "We are still to be finding out what my range is, but I can cut through the metal if I try hard enough."

"Catseye thinks this is VeryInteresting!" The purple-haired girl replied excitedly, noticing that Yvette seemed a little disappointed by her own powers. "SharpSkinGirl can SliceAndDice through meat? Like deer? Catseye could take SharpSkinGirl hunting!"

"I suppose..." Yvette sounded a little doubtful. She ate meat, and she'd helped take down the dinosaur for food, but with recent events, she was a little uneasy about spilling blood. "You... like to be hunting?"

Momentarily distracted by a Falling Leaf, Catseye took a few seconds to answer, turning back to Yvette only when the leaf had landed on the floor of the woods. "Catseye is a cat!" she answered with a good-natured laugh, "of course Catseye likes to be hunting! Usually Catseye only hunts mousies," she amended after a moment of thought, "but when Catseye is BigCat Catseye likes to hunt deer."

She actually thought she was a cat? How very strange... and yet refreshing, too. "BigCat?" she asked, tilting her head curiously. "You are not just the small cat?"

Preening a little by playing with her hair, Catseye beamed. "Catseye is also a BigCat. Catseye would show SharpSkinGirl but when Catseye shifts back, Catseye gets Very Hungry and Catseye would not like to try and chomp on SharpSkinGirl." She laughed to illustrate that she was joking. Unabashed, she asked a question that had been nagging in the back of her mind since Yvette had demonstrated her powers. "How do people pet SharpSkinGirl?"

"They don't." Yvette looked down, but honesty compelled her to look back up at the other girl and add: "Unless they have the powers that means they cannot be hurt, like Mr. Marko or Miss Monet."

"Petting is a Very Good Thing," Catseye pointed out sagely. "BigMan is good at petting. And SharpSkinGirl has hand coverings so she can pet Catseye! This is a Very Good Thing, too. Does SharpSkinGirl want to play Hide And Seek?"

The other girl honestly was unphasable, wasn't she? For a moment Yvette was almost disgruntled - where was the sympathy? - but then she realised just how much like a child she was acting. How much like an American, feeling sorry for herself. "Yes, I would very much like to play hide-and-seek with you," she replied, tucking her book into her backpack. "Would you like me to be It?"

"Yes! SharpSkinGirl can be It!" Catseye was nearly vibrating with excitement as she jumped to her feet. "Since SharpSkinGirl is grounded Catseye will stay in the woods and not go away from the mansion grounds. Catseye promises." She shifted back into cat form and launched herself in Yvette's direction, only barely skidding to a stop at Yvette's feet as she remembered about the NoTouching.

Yvette laughed and covered her eyes theatrically with her hands. "Very well. I will count, if you want to go hide?"

"Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreow!" Without wasting time Catseye launched herself up a tree and flew across the branches, leaping to a neighbouring tree and putting distance between herself and Yvette, thrilled to be playing with someone who wasn't mopey like some of her other recent choices for playmates.