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It’s a slow day on the server. A quiet, peaceful day, where the sun is just bright enough and the wind is just calm enough. These are the days that Wels likes the most. If he listens close enough while he’s organizing his chests, he can hear the mundane noises from outside–cows mooing, birds chirping, water occasionally sloshing against the path around his base. It’s calming to take the day slow and enjoy the little things. So that’s what he does: arranges his storage while listening to the world around him.
Another bird chirps outside while Wels finds a place to put some cooked cod. He takes his organization seriously. It’s a habit he’s kept from his childhood. That’s why, focused on arranging his chests and listening calmly to the noises outside, what comes next really surprises him more than it should.
Meow.
He spins around with a speed that makes his armor creak.
There is a cat. A light brown cat, in fact. Which is somehow in Wels’ storage room, about two feet away from him. Its eyes are beady and yellow where they stare back at him curiously, and the light fur of its paws contrasts the deep red of the carpet it stands on.
Wels blinks at the cat. It blinks back.
“So,” he starts, to no one at all besides this light brown cat. “Okay. Where did you come from?”
The cat, of course, does not respond.
Wels scratches the back of his neck below his helmet. “Um.”
He stares at the cat. Animals like these bring him back to his childhood. Which, really, is ironic, because his life was the opposite of animalistic. He pictures the scene in his head: spotless white floors, towering white ceilings, and sleek white walls crawling up to connect them. Every edge plated with ornate trims and every surface shiny enough that your eyes hurt if you looked for too long. Not so much as a family photo sitting on a mantel could be afforded to disturb the show of perfection. Wels’ brother always wanted a cat, but it never would have happened.
Meow, the cat says, and Wels blinks at it.
And it’s not that Wels doesn’t like animals. When he first left home and started living on servers, it took him a while to get used to… well, everything. It was a change he never expected to make, and a change he was never expected to make, either. So he wasn’t prepared for forging tools, or caving, or building his own houses from scratch.
Especially not for dealing with animals. The first time he tried to breed pigs was a disaster. All he could focus on was the mud inside of that pen and how the pigs sloshed around inside it, slimy and wet and dirty–and, distracted as he was, he left the gate to the pen open. Four pigs ran out squealing. He remembers having to sit with his head in his hands for a while after that one.
But he wanted independence bad enough to work for it. So he learned to forge an axe, and mine for ores, and build his own bases, and breed pigs, and it’s been years now, so, really, he’s used to all of it. He’s used to animals.
Meow, the cat says again from below him. Wels cringes.
Well. Maybe he still has some getting-used-to to do.
He looks at the cat more closely. He can see now that it has dark brown spots dotting its underbelly. And it does look kind of thin.
It meows at him again. Not that Wels is a cat expert or anything, but, um, he thinks it might be hungry? Do cats meow when they’re hungry? How can he tell a hungry meow apart from, like, a different kind of meow, or something?
“Okay,” he says out loud to the cat, which moves to stand closer to him. He backs up a little in turn. “Okay. Well, what do you eat?”
Meow, the cat supplies helpfully.
Wels clicks his tongue. “Okay,” he repeats, and he is getting nowhere.
Him and the cat stare at each other. The cat moves toward him again, and when it gets close enough he can see its face reflected in his leg armor. He keeps his armor pristine, always polished enough to be reflective–perfectionism, another habit from his childhood he hasn’t yet shook. He takes a step back again.
At this point, he’s a step behind the chest he was just organizing. He expects the cat to follow him, but it stops, pawing at the chest. Wels frowns.
But then– oh . He peers into the chest. The cooked cod sits in a heap to the side.
Okay. He looks back and forth from the cod to the cat, who supplies a helpful meow.
“Cool,” Wels drawls out loud. “So you want the fish.”
The cat scratches at the chest in response. Wels cringes when its long claws leave a mark. “Okay–stop that. I’ll give you some.”
Wels reaches into the chest–carefully over the cat–and takes out a cooked cod. He tosses it on the floor.
The cat pounces on the fish. Its fur swooshes as it moves, fluffing out then coming to rest again as the cat starts to eat. As Wels watches, he realizes that it’s the exact kind of cat his brother always wanted. He remembers being shown cut-out magazine photos of cats with hair that fluffed out on all sides just like this one has. His brother would smile, spreading the few photos out on the table between their beds and pointing at them eagerly.
After watching the cat eat for a second, Wels realizes that the fish does, in fact, still have all of the bones in it. And he would rather not watch this cat choke to death.
“Um,” he says. The cat does not look up. He tries again. “Um, ‘xcuse me, buddy.”
When the cat fails to react again, engrossed in the cooked cod, Wels sighs. He bends down to the cat’s level. Being this close to the cat, he can hear the licking noise it makes as it eats. He can also smell the cat now. His nose turns up.
In one fell swoop, he moves forward, takes the fish out from underneath the cat, and stands. The cat meows loudly.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Wels says to the cat. The fish is wet and has bite marks. Wels tries to touch it as little as possible.
He walks over to a bench on the side of the room, sets the fish down, and searches a nearby bin for a small knife. When he finds it, he starts cutting the meat off the bones. A meowing sound trailing behind him tells Wels that the cat has followed.
He looks back. The cat is standing at his side. Meow, it says, upon making eye contact with Wels.
Wels looks at the cat, at its fur. His brother always loved animals and nature. Not that he had much experience with it–of course not. The most he had probably ever done was help their parents’ groundskeepers water the garden out front. But he had nature magazines and an imagination.
Wels was an imaginative kid too. His imagination and his brother’s were different, though. While his brother looked at magazine pictures and fantasized about the natural world, Wels spent his time reading books. His favorites were classic medieval hero stories. They were all clichés, but not to him: Wels was enthralled by the princes and dragons and towering castles every time. No matter how many times he read stories of knights rescuing princesses, he was hooked.
He remembers being a young boy, sitting on the cold floor of an empty house, pretending that the tall white walls were made of castle brick and that his expensive, prim-and-proper clothes were instead knight’s armor. He would imagine himself as a heroic knight, slaying dragons, scaling the side of a tower on a dangerous rescue mission…
The cat meows. Wels looks down, sees its face in the reflection of his leg armor.
He cuts the last piece of meat away from bone. He pushes the bones to the side, then gathers the meat of the fish and sets it on the floor. The cat moves toward the food. Its fur brushes against Wels’ leg; he cringes, but he doesn’t move away.
The cat eats the fish. After a minute of watching, Wels, against all better judgement, sits on the floor next to it. His armor creaks as he crouches.
The brown cat looks up from its meal to watch him sit. They lock eyes. Meow, it says, then starts eating again.
Wels watches for a few more minutes. The cat eventually seems to get full, leaving a few scraps of fish untouched. When this happens, it decides to sit down, looking at Wels curiously. Wels looks back.
“I mean,” he says to the cat. He reaches his hand out, hesitates, then reaches all the way to the cat and pats it on the head. The cat leans into his hand. Wels, awkwardly, pats it more. “I mean, you are kind of cute.”
Wels switches to hesitantly rubbing the cat on its head. The cat purrs. Wels blinks at it. Is that a good thing?
He looks into its eyes. “I mean,” he says again. The cat looks at him like it’s listening. “You can stay. If you want.”
The cat does not respond. Wels gives it a little smile.
It needs a bath, Wels thinks. And probably more food later. He doesn’t really know how to take care of a house pet. He should probably ask Pearl. She has cats.
It meows again. Wels nods like he understands. “Cool. Thanks.”
And Wels stays on the floor with the cat until he remembers that he has to keep sorting chests. So he gets up and continues working, and the cat lies on the floor and watches him. It smells kind of bad, really, and its fur is a little dirty. But, well. Wels owes this to himself, he decides. To his childhood, and to his brother. So he smiles at the small brown cat and sets aside more fish in a chest for later.