#she just goes meeeeew

[that-sokovian-bastard]

My cats love churu. They each get one right before bed and they know it. If it gets too late, Bonnie will come over and start yelling at me that she wants her churu. This last week, I’ve noticed her start yelling at me right after I close my computer when it’s close to bedtime. Caught it on camera tonight…

Afterward I went to send the video to my friends and she proceeded to yell at me because I wasn’t moving fast enough

[ajoblotofjunk]

idk if you are doing prompts still, but maybe - kids? They can be like, magical baby creatures or just plain kids. Thanks!

@elizadunc also asked for babies so I’m combining those two into this one. :)

It’s six months from the Unicorn Incident before they have another one. They’re out together in the field between the two Incidents, but those are planned events. Brienne has decided, in the strange taxonomy her brain uses for Jaime and everything he brings to her life, that Incidents are only those occasions when she sees him when she didn’t expect to. 

Jaime is in the middle of a Hunt when she receives a critical lead for a topic she’s been trying to study for years, so she leaves him a voicemail for when he gets out and then she’s off to the Fable Zone in the forest near the Grey Cliffs, a fairly small one all told but the perfect place to find shadowcats.

And more importantly: shadowkittens.

She’s not sure that’s the name Fable Academics are going to stick with, but if she’s the first to actually see some, she’s pushing for it. Her lead tells her that there have been mewling noises heard in the area, though no one seems to know where they’re coming from and everyone is fairly certain looking for a shadowcat mom with kittens is asking for death but Brienne knows shadowcats aren’t interested in humans and unless the mother has been hurt in the past, she’ll likely be protective but not aggressive. Brienne just wants to see, not touch or steal, just be the first person to get a look at a baby shadowcat.

Shadowcub?

Waving off the naming problem for later, Brienne hikes deep into the Karhold Forest Fable Zone and listens. She listens for three nights until finally she hears it: a tiny, pitiful mew.

She goes still and closes her eyes.

Mew.

There, to her right. Brienne moves quietly in that direction, freezes in place for five minutes, shivering gently, before she hears it again.

Meeeeew.

The little thing sounds insistent now, and close. The area she’s in is a rocky outcropping at the edge of the forest, a hill about four times her height, and she scrambles up halfway and listens.

MEW.

Much closer now, almost like she’s on top of the creature making that noise. There’s no sound from a larger animal, but Brienne’s hairs are standing on end as she waits for the low growl of the mother. When she peers around the edge of the outcropping, she gasps softly. There is a shadowkitten, clearly only a few weeks old but the size of an adult housecat, It’s bedraggled and skinny and very much alone.

“Oh,” Brienne sighs softly and the shadowkitten jumps about a foot in the air and scrambles for safety, hissing. That’s when she sees a glint of gold in the moonlight and hears Jaime say, “Wench?”

“What are you doing here?” she whisper-shouts across the hill to him. She can see him crouched in the shadows now, equidistant from the kitten.

“Hunting shadowcats. What are you doing here?”

“Gathering data about shadowkittens.”

“Shadow-what?”

Brienne rolls her eyes. “Baby shadowcats.” A terrible thought rolls through her. “You’re not gonna-”

“No!” he nearly shouts and the shadowkitten mews and hisses again, swiping a tiny paw in his direction. “Frankly I’m insulted,” he says more quietly and she shushes him.

“Complain about it later,” she whispers.

“I will.”

“Where’s its mother?” she asks, surprised the baby is still alone.

“Dead,” Jaime says sadly.

Brienne doesn’t want to know, but she has to. “You?”

“No. I was here looking for the male cat that did it. What kind of a monster do you think I am, wench? I feel like we need to talk about this.”

“Can we please talk about it once we figure out what to do with the shadowkitten? Is the male still around?”

“No.” Jaime’s eyes are green and dangerous as a shadowcat’s in the dark, and she has about ten different fantasies staring at him across from her, most of them extremely inappropriate for their current situation. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get near our noisy friend here without losing a finger.”

“Did you try to feed it anything?”

“Fresh out of shadowcat milk, sorry.”

She makes an annoyed noise and sees the flash of Jaime’s amused smile. “Good thing for you I pack well,” she whispers, slowly pulling her backpack off and rifling around while the shadowkitten hisses and growls at them in a manner that is leagues more adorable than threatening. Finally she finds some jerky and she wets it and pulls and works it in her hands until it’s mush. It looks horrific but it smells enticing.

The little shadowkitten agrees because it stops hissing and starts sniffing. Brienne puts some on the end of a stick and holds it out near the kitten. With a low growl the shadowkitten sniffs the end of the stick and then licks it. 

It takes an hour of crouching down and getting her hands filthy with mushy jerky to convince the shadowkitten she’s not going to attack it, and it comes near enough that she can grab it if she wants to. Jaime is sitting by then, his knees pulled up, watching her.

“You’re good at that,” he says quietly and the shadowkitten startles a little but continues to devour the latest round of jerky paste, rumbling a little in its throat. She glances at Jaime and he’s gone all soft in the dark. “You’re good at taking care of things,” he explains. 

Brienne blushes a little. “Someone has to.”

He moves up onto his knees and the shadowkitten shoots him a look but apparently Jaime counts as Trusted now because it doesn’t stop inhaling food. “Let me help,” he says and she nods. Jaime takes fifteen minutes scooching closer until finally he scoops the shadowkitten up in his jacket, holding the sharp little claws pressed close to its body. The poor thing hisses furiously for a few seconds and then seems to decide being nestled in Jaime’s arms in Jaime’s jacket is a good way to go and Brienne wholeheartedly agrees.

“You’re just a little baby, aren’t you? Such a ferocious little bean,” Jaime sweet talks to the shadowkitten and Brienne is having a whole new batch of fantasies now including one of him holding a human baby with Jaime’s golden hair and her blue eyes and she has to sit back on her butt with the force of it. It has been six months and she should absolutely not be dreaming about babies with him, even if he would be lethally adorable with one, even one that looks partly like her. That is the worst possible reason to have a baby with someone.

Jaime rubs his nose over the little shadowkitten’s head, and it mewls plaintively and starts purring against his chest, and Jaime’s hands are gentle around the little creature when he stands up and says, “we should keep it.”

“Jaime, no, we cannot have a pet shadowcat. Where would it live?”

“My apartment.”

She gives him a disbelieving look and he sighs dramatically. “I’m not leaving it alone in the Fable Zone to die. Who’s the monster now?”

Brienne stands and peers at the bundle in his arms. The shadowkitten has snuggled into his chest and is fast asleep. It’s so cute she almost wants to throw up, if it could get past the huge lump in her throat. “There are interim solutions between those two extremes.”

“Well I’m heading back to camp, you have the walk to convince me of them.”

She does, barely, which is how they end up the Official Foster Parents of Artos the Strong, aka Mr. Squiggums, the first Shadowkitten ever reared at Sam & Gilly’s Home for Wayward Fable Creatures. When they leave Artos behind, giving him a last wave - “we’ll visit in a week, Mr. Squiggums!” Jaime shouts as she shoves him out the door - Jaime puts his arm around her and pulls her close and she thinks about him holding a golden haired baby the whole drive home.