#silver cat from the corner you're an influencer now

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Cat report

Today i was walking in the neighbourhood, and saw such a silver cat!

It had amazing white undercoat, a real treat for me. I tried to take photos, but mostly was too busy petting the cat

Bonus: i also met a red tabby 😊

[grayintogreen]

WIP WEDNESDAY

slides out of exile for a WIP Wednesday!

Here's another preview of the YCDHN prologue featuring a Somnovem you have met but maybe clarifies a little bit if you're still trying to guess. XD

Also if it enhances your enjoyment of this snippet, just remember that Cassia canonically looks like Judy Greer with cat's eye glasses.

CASSIA LIVIO HEAD OF ARCANE BIOLOGY (ARCANE SCIENTIST)

Cal’s voice over the intercom sent a shudder of revulsion through Cassia’s spine. His twee little speeches about his love for the city always made her want to hurl and distracted her from her work. She threw down her scalpel, unable to concentrate on her dissection with his voice blaring across the ward, and turned her head towards the ceiling along with the rest of her lab assistants, who listened in with far less irritation- some even with devotion. Ugh.

The whispers started the moment Cal said that Avalir had fallen. Cassia bit her lip. Someone probably fucked up. That Coramar-Seelie woman was always messing around with things that were better left alone. Not exactly a huge upset. Tragic for them, but for Aeor that ought to be a holiday.

When he started talking about the retribution of the gods, however she suddenly screamed “SON OF A-“ and kicked over an empty lab table, sending it scattering onto the floor with a shriek of metal that provided a perfect censoring of her swear. The other arcane biologists made a hasty retreat lest she start throwing sharp things next. It wouldn’t be the first time she used them as target practice.

She heard one of them mutter, Can you believe she’s a philosopher? With that temperament? right before vanishing around the corner. Cassia would have been fast enough to chase her down and disintegrate her but she’d done that once this week already, and Seneca was already on her ass enough without having to explain that she found personal slights to be a murderous offense.

“I am a philosopher,” she growled, framing the head of her cadaver with her palms on either side of it, just barely avoiding touching the limp mess of silver hair that splayed out around it like a corona of moonlight. Bent over, she could stare at the corpse from upside down and see the fine lines of dissection scars and arcane runes carved in the dead flesh as she sought out answers to questions that had eluded her for years, now coming to nothing.

Her philosophies had been born of a frustration with the idea of Fate-Touched and the gods picking and choosing people who might influence the future. She refused to believe it was some god-granted boon but rather something strictly biological. She’d been laughed at when she presented her arguments at the podium. Only Seneca, used to being laughed at, came to her defense and that dragged them both down. She was a Somnovem not out of a belief in the power of manifestation since it desperately spat in the face of her own belief in biology and arcane sciences, but because no one else would have her.

So she was angry, disgusted, and generally unpleasant to her brothers and sisters. The only thing that united them in her world was that no one else liked them for being fucked up assholes and not some misguided, sheep-like belief in Seneca’s dream. They could pretend all they wanted- she was honest. She couldn’t do these experiments anywhere else but in Cognouza.

Capturing Fate-Touched to prevent them from exerting the god’s wills on Exandria? Sure that was fine, but vivisection? That was the line, apparently.

She hadn’t vivisected anyone in weeks, thank you very much. She was too busy examining the arcane properties of the organs right now. Fascinating stuff- especially in the Aasimar, which Cal absolutely loved.

She liked making that slender glowbug fuck cringe.

But if the gods were really retaliating then that meant that things were popping off. Aeor spat in the faces of the gods too often for it to not be an easy target and Cognouza… Well, everyone knew from the start where Cognouza would end up once Augusta’s fucking machine started working.

If it worked and they didn’t end up dead with the rest of the idiots in the Genesis Ward who thought they could actually kill the gods, though part of her sort of hoped they could. What would a god look like under a knife?

She breathed in, exhaled, and found the whole process wanting. Valerius always told her to try breathing exercises- keeps the dragon down, he told her. She told him not everyone was a scaled freak and watched his nostrils smoke. Making him mad was a thrill.

If Augusta’s machine did work… Fuck.

“What the fuck is a biologist going to do in the Astral Sea?” She shouted, her shrill voice echoing across the empty lab. The only person who could answer her was the cadaver she was leaning over and it couldn’t even tell her exactly which organ was the most potent. She needed time for that… Time she didn’t have.

“Lucky bastard,” she said, leaning over the corpse like she was about to press a kiss of benediction onto its preserved flesh. “You missed the apocalypse.”

She snapped her fingers and the arcane lights in the lab dimmed to nothing as she swept out into the hall.

Before she could be anything else- biologist, philosopher, or otherwise- she had to be a member of the Somnovem and that meant cooperating with the assholes and their dreams made flesh.

Well. Maybe if they managed to make their dreams literal flesh there was something she could do anyway.