RP:I can't know; I wasn't there
Part of the Laugh Now, Cry Later Arc
Summary: Out on the Cenril beach during one of his night time strolls, Hudson contemplates the strange sickness spreading among Cenril’s impoverished feline denizens. He encounters Mylessa, a flautist busker and a feline herself. He tries to ask her how bad it is, but instead of words she feels most comfortable answering in song. He leaves, moved, remembering another self he’d once left behind.
Beach, off the Cenril Boardwalk
Hudson is here, in his sweats, presiding over the empty beach, about a mermaid. The mermaid, for her part, isn’t here. Mermaids: not exactly punctual creatures known for keeping calendars, maybe. Perhaps it had been a ridiculous idea to think one could simply arrange a meeting with a woman who was half fish, who lived in the sea and sucked the marrow out of sailors’ bones. But Hudson had his own reasons to think it had been reasonable at the time. Anyway, he’s still here. The day’s paper in his hand, hoping she’ll show. It’s not looking likely.
Mylessa clumsily stuffs her flute into her satchel, slightly tipsy from the several bottles of ale just consumed. Breathing in the salty air, she notices the presence of another, looking concerned.
Hudson hearing a shuffle of footsteps on the sand, turns to steadily regard Mylessa. The feline woman was the only other person out here on the beach in the winter evening air. He wants to wait out here, in case the mermaid shows, a little longer, so he makes conversation with the woman: “You have an appointment with a flaky mermaid?” The thought stirs a lazy smile in him for the feline even though it can’t possibly be true.
Mylessa hums a little tune and stretches. She exercises her mind with rhyming words, ...”cat, bat, hat...sat...deadly gnat...” Mylessa grins. Turning towards the friendly voice, she responds, “a scaly pal? Well sir, I wish! For I have no friend, man, bear, or fish!”
Hudson snorts faintly, his mouth twitching in the ghost of a smirk, at the feline woman when she responds in a rhyme. “A scaly pal,” he repeats, grimacing at the words. The pendulum of his gaze swings out over the sea. She’s still not there. Better give up soon. His gaze shifts to the newspaper in his hands, the headline SICKNESS SPREADS AMONG FELINE SETTLEMENTS plainly visible. He tilts it toward Mylessa. “Let me ask you something,” he says to the strange woman, clearly referencing the headline. “How bad is it?”
Mylessa feels her smile fade slowly. Her mind twists back to images she’s had long buried away. The sharp smell of smouldering bones and fur fill her nostrils, the mewling screams of her neighbors, of her family, unable to find respite. Mylessa realizes her breathing has shortened into small, heavy gasps, and straightens her posture with much effort. She vainly hopes that her startling, uncontrolled response to the newspaper headline was unnoticed, and with a fast grin she replies in a peppy voice, “You’re asking me? I guess that’s fair. But I can’t know; I wasn’t there!”
Hudson adjusts the baseball cap on his head and considers the feline woman, who at first seems to recoil at the question he’d asked. Maybe it didn’t sit well with her to be asked by a humanoid about what was happening in the feline settlements. That wouldn’t deter him from asking what he wanted to ask but it was noted all the same. Whatever shadow passes over her is quick, for she responds in another rhyme. He squints at her slightly. Strange woman. He doesn’t know a lot of felines, but he briefly wonders if this is a Thing among their people. “Do you always answer questions like they’re riddles?” he asks her.
Mylessa feels slight embarrassment at showing her emotions to the human. Gently chastising herself mentally (and partially blaming the drinks consumed), she keeps her smile bright and unwavering. Staying emotionally unavailable was a skill long honed, and keeping struggles among only those in the know was a continuing generational trait that Mylessa followed diligently. Feeling a touch more of the alcohol, she pulls her flute out of her bag, and with a little jig upon her padded feet, she mewls, “Humans and riddles! Right and wrong! You live to question, I live...for song!”
Hudson can only conclude, at this point, that Mylessa is very clearly a busker. And that presently her audience consists of him. Perhaps this is part of her professional character, or perhaps she is a very strange person. He folds the newspaper and, tucking it into his pocket with his hands, patiently waits for her to play her tune so that he can tip her and get on with it. The mermaid, he’d have to see about another time. Or never. It wouldn’t surprise him either way.
Mylessa plays a song of longing, of missed meetings, of betrayal. Her notes slide effortlessly into one another, staying mostly in minor key. Drawing from the energy of her audience, she pours from her cup of loss as well. And maybe it’s the beverages, or the salty air, or the emptiness of the ocean, but the sounds coming from the small flute beckon heavily of loss. Here, Mylessa can show emotion that would never have an appropriate place in words.
Hudson had approached this private performance with the usual sense of irritation one feels when approached by panhandlers or buskers who insert themselves into crowded spaces and command tips and attention from people who simply have Other Things To Do. But to his great surprise Mylessa’s song, set to the beat of the ocean herself, scrapes the bottom of something inside of him too, burrows into the lightless places of his soul, memories that he’d thought hermetically sealed forever. When she is done playing, his face is dry but his eyes do feel wetter. He’d like to leave and be alone. He nods and leans forward to hand her a few coins. “You’re talented, that was beautiful. Thanks,” he says only, before moving up the beach, back toward the hotel where he’s been staying since his return to Cenril.
Mylessa accepts the offering gratefully. She can see that she has stirred something in the human, for which she feels pride. As she watches him walk away, until his hat is a small prick of color bobbing in the distance, she mews a few well words his way. The human, who Mylessa has already nicknamed in her mind as “Hatman,” remains in her thoughts for a few more minutes as the sea air brushes against her fur. For a fleeting moment she thinks she sees the hint of a fin in the waves, but it glistens quickly in the sun and vanishes…