capeandcowllogs | you and your pussycat nose

Entry tags:

you and your pussycat nose

who: Anders, Andromeda Tonks, and a box full of kittens
what: KITTEN EMERGENCY.
when: some indeterminate yet logical time
warnings: Offscreen mention of something sad having happened to the kittens' mom
summary: What do you mean, this is not a clinic for animals? animals are people too

Anders is livid.

One of the horrible horseless carriages has run over a beautiful calico cat. There's absolutely nothing he can do to save her. And nearby, Anders finds two tiny kittens -- perhaps light catches their lambent eyes as they peep between the slats of the upended crate their mother nested in; perhaps Anders has hearing especially attuned to the plaintive mewling of baby cats. He finds them, and he realizes they're too young to feed on ordinary food.

The logical step, clearly, is to take the kittens to a clinic! Like the one he used to run in Darktown. Anders hasn't got any potion-brewing apparatus here. Fortunately, his communicator gives him the location of a clinic quite near to the MAC. Without a second thought, he packs the two kittens into a cardboard box, cleaner than the crate where they've been living, and marches off to this clinic, there to demand crucial emergency care.

"They can't possibly stomach cow's milk, this young," he informs the woman who runs the clinic, one Andromeda Tonks by name. Never mind that adult cats shouldn't have cow's milk. In Thedas, no one's gotten that memo yet.

((dibs on 1 baby kitty have been called: going to Martin Septim. One kitty is still open for eventual claiming))

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...Andromeda isn't sure if she needs to change the clinic's listings in the communicator system or something, but there is a man with a box of kittens in her lobby. This is still not the strangest thing that she's had come to the clinic, though she's not about to disclose that to anyone out loud.

"I'm not sure we've got anything to help them here," she informs the man with a raised eyebrow, trying her best to at least maintain a level of professionalism. As far as she knows, none of the staff have a life-threatening kitten allergy or anything, but this is just a little bizarre.

The set of Anders' jaw hardens. "If it's coin you're worried about, I'll scrounge it up from some place. I'm a healer myself, and I plan to do whatever I can for these little ones, but I can't bloody nurse them, and I haven't got the equipment to formulate anything they could digest."

In Thedas, you can't just go down to the Formari herbalist and buy a tin of kitten replacement milk. The concept itself has no associated, fixed phrase in Anders' mind ~~lmgtfy.com would be useless to this man~~.

She raises her eyebrow at him. "Oh, trust me -- if we had cans of kitten formula around here, I'd give them to you in an instant. We're not in the habit of charging imPorts or their -- pets." She glances to the side for a moment, though, thoughtful.

"I'm sure this place has to have an animal clinic somewhere, though. The City is big enough for that." She pauses to look at Anders once more. "I could spare some time to try and help you track one down, if you'd like." That's pretty much the only thing she knows how to do on her communicator other than make posts.

"Cans of kitten formula?" Anders is curious, verging on incredulous. "That sounds a bit suspect. What I really need for them is lyrium. Did wonders for Ser Pounce-a-lot."

"...do I want to know what lyrium is?" Because it sounds like some sort of illicit drug, and that's something that even without any sort of feline-medical expertise, she's relatively sure you shouldn't give to kittens.

"It's a mineral salt. When processed and refined -- are you all right in there?" he interrupts himself to ask the kittens, and peels back the flap of the cardboard box to assure himself that the sound he thought he heard just now was not the feeble mew of a dying baby cat. (He may have imagined the sound.) "Right, still breathing -- as I was saying. Processed and refined, and compounded into a potion, it replenishes a mage's mana."

Thus far, he might as well be reading off his old lecture notes from some elementary Circle tutorial. From here on out, however, it's all Anders -- not that his tone suggests the slightest bit of difference between basic Thedosian lore and flights of personal fancy; he speaks with the utmost assurance:

"Cats have a greater affinity for the Fade than most humans do. Mages and cats have a lot in common, that way. Lyrium increases a mage's power, rather like a boost to stamina. A creature so Fade-sensitive as a cat must surely derive a similar benefit from the proper dosage of lyrium. Of course, you can't just pour straight lyrium potion into an ailing kitten. Other herbs and things ought to go in the mix, strengthening things that would be good for anyone regardless of Fade sensitivity. Elfroot, obviously, and -- what?"

Anders seems to have derived the impression that Andromeda may not be entirely on board with his lyrium-for-kittens regimen.

It's pretty obvious the longer that Anders goes on about the obvious benefits to kittens from lyrium that she doesn't approve of the idea in the least, and once he actually stops ... well. She clears her throat.

"Well, maybe that's true for the creatures in your world, but the cats here -- as far as I understand it -- don't require that kind of magical treatment. I'm sure we can find a local pet store that will have the proper formula that's lyrium-free."

She actually pinches the bridge of her nose for a second before looking back to Anders.

"You're a mage, then?"

Ask Anders whether he's a mage? Why not ask: is the sky blue? does a bereskarn shit in the woods? do Templars wear skirts? are Dalish women crazy?

(The answer to all these questions is a resounding yes.)

"I am a mage," he states flatly, as though he expects the assertion to be met with violence or strenuous objection at the very least. "More to the point, I am a healer. If I can keep half Darktown alive and well for the better part of a decade, I think I ought to be capable of treating kittens. I wouldn't give them a thing that would hurt them -- I wouldn't hurt them for the world."

Unless they were in the wrong Chantry at the wrong time, presumably.

"When you say pet store, you mean a shop that has pets, yes?" By analogy with other sorts of shop, he deduces this. An armor shop sells armor, a weapon shop sells weapons, a pet store sells pets. "Pets and pet accessories?"

Anders, you may not equip a cat with accessories.

"Then you should've come here to offer your help sooner to the people who might need it! I'm sure we could find you some room in the clinic if you'd like to come by and assist." Andromeda will slowly flood this place with mages and wizards even if Topher is now back to dispute it.

"And yes, I do mean that. Cat food, litter, that sort of thing -- I assume some loud and brightly-coloured toys for them to play with."

Anders looks thoughtful. "Work in someone else's clinic?" That would be a restful change of pace, compared to the Darktown clinic where Anders was sole healer and -- well, not proprietor. Squatter, really. "I'd like that. If you don't mind mages, or being associated with a mage."

She can't help the slight laugh. She shakes her head and, after a moment, draws out her wand from the inside of her coat.

"I think I'm already rather inextricably associated with mages, wizards, and witches alike. You won't have any problems from the staff about your magical background." The patients, though -- well, that was always something of a toss-up.

Anders sets down his box o' kittens (very carefully, so as not to disturb the precious angels!) in order to close the distance between himself and this peculiar little twig Andromeda is displaying. "Some sort of -- of miniaturized staff, is it?"

His own staff is freaking huge and quite visibly poking above his shoulder where it's strapped to his back.

"...if you want to call it that. We don't use staffs much in out world. Wands are just as good and more portable." Unless you're all about the pomp and presentation, in which case you should probably get a Lucius Malfoy-style sort of instrument. She offers the wand out to him, though, for examination.

"I wouldn't recommend trying that one out, though. One wizard one wand, for the most part."

Gingerly, Anders pokes at it with a forefinger. "One wizard, one wand? I don't suppose looting avails you much, in your world."

She frowns.

"I don't know many people who aren't arrested for looting, honestly." She just laughs as he pokes at the wand.

"It won't bite you, it's just not likely to work too well for you."

"In the city where I lived before this, the easiest way to trade up is to loot the staff off the last mage you went up against. Coterie mages can usually afford the best." Anders sees no moral problem here. Assured that Andromeda's wand shouldn't short out, he takes it -- carefully -- for a closer look, and turns it over in his hands. Skepticism quickly gives way to admiration. "Lovely work, for something so small. I wonder why we haven't started making them this small at home. It'd be much simpler to hide apostasy without a huge staff to carry."

"Hide -- you mean, from the non-wizarding people?" She raises an eyebrow at him and then continues, as if she feels she needs to explain a little further, "We actually just keep our societies as separate as possible. The muggles back home don't know much about the wizarding world, and the majority of people like it that way." Fewer people dead on both sides.

She'd been glad there weren't more muggle casualties when it came to the last war, honestly. She's just not going to touch his assertions about it being all right to raid bodies for equipment.

He hands back the wand, mindful of the warning against trying to cast anything with it. Had the kittenbox not been so nearby, Anders might have tried, even so.

Andromeda's description of mage secrecy seems clear enough in context that he doesn't feel a need to ask her to gloss the unfamiliar terms: wizarding would be ... well, is there a gerund for being a mage? mageing? Not associated with the stigma of the untrained and highly dangerous Thedosian hedge wizards, is the point. Muggles would be non-wizarding, that is, people who aren't mages. What doesn't make sense is this concept of keeping the societies separate. "Yes, well. We're kept apart from the ordinary folk, too, but not by choice. Those of us who manage to escape the Circles of Magi are apostates, transgressors against the holy order, and we've got to keep hidden as much as we can. If we're caught, we'll be dragged right back to the Circle, if we're lucky. For some it would be Aeonar -- that's a prison for maleficarum, worse than a Circle proper," he does feel the need to gloss that -- "or Tranquility, or even death on the spot when we're found, all at the discretion of whatever Templar hunts us down."

Bitter? At the minimum. Anders' voice is edging from bitter toward angry, just talking about it. A sleepy kitten yowl interrupts his tirade, fortunately, and he transitions straight from ranting mode to kitty-dad mode. "Did someone wake up? Does someone need snuggles?" He unstraps his staff and offers it to Andromeda, as much to free his movement for kneeling by the kittenbox as to give Andromeda a chance for staff-to-wand comparison.

It's a bit startling to see him get so passionate about the apparent plight of the mages in his world only to see him get very motherly over the kittens, but she supposes that just because a person can be bitter about one thing doesn't make them bitter all around. Maybe they'd get that way eventually, if things kept going wrong for them, but they didn't always start out that way.

"You talk about these circles," which she's taken to be sort of like schools, "as if they're not for your benefit. Do they treat you poorly, there? Our schools have always simply been places to learn."

She takes the staff easily in her hands, though, half-pleased by the weight of it. "I can see why you'd like something like this for bigger spells. It feels very -- real, very powerful." But wands are definitely more convenient, and easier to conceal.

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you and your pussycat nose

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