milliways_bar | (no subject)

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At a table, Silas is just about done with the painted board he's been trying to complete for a while now. He's just finishing painting in the black areas, roses colored a multitude of rainbow shades. He's stopped seeing it as a painting and it's turned into just splashes of colors in front of his eyes.

He has black paint staining his fingers and the outer shell of one ear where he brushed away a tiny itch, but otherwise he looks surprisingly okay.

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There may be a soft, curious sound from the rafters above Silas' head. Something like a "mrrt?" sound as a cat peers at something (a painted board, perhaps) in curiosity.

He tilts his head up, looking at the cat just as curiously as it's looking at him.

"Hello up there," he says, still holding the brush loaded with black paint. He finds it to be a handsome little cat, if nothing else, but this being Milliways he does somewhat expect something else. "You can come down if you like."

The cat blinks at him, slowly, before padding away towards the wall at the end of the rafter. From rafter to fireplace mantle, to nearby table, to floor, the cat drops with feline grace. Once on the floor, it slinks with apparent nonchalance over to Silas' ankle.

He watches the cat's descent, envying the grace of movement only for a moment before he feels the soft fur against his ankle. He almost reaches down to pet it, but doesn't want to mar the clean white fur, and so he merely smiles, and clears a space for it on the table.

"You're a pretty little thing."

The cat leans up Silas' ankles, purring, twining about them. After a moment, it leaps up, using the boy's lap as a springboard to get up onto the table.

Silas pushes the board and supplies to one side for a moment, resting his chin on his arms to be at nose-level with the cat; his gray shirt is stained with black and with shades of blue, but he doesn't seem to mind.

"Do I know you?"

The very white cat leans in until its pink nose lightly touches Silas' own nose.

"Perhaps," it murmurs, lightly, voice somewhere between a miaow and a purr.

He laughs gently, and touches the cat's nose with his again, reaching up and rubbing behind its ears, all the way down the spine and tail.

"Perhaps indeed."

There is an eruption of purring from the cat as its back arches to follow Silas' hand.

Those bright green eyes are half-closed and unfocused in pleasure, the cat's voice muddled by the purring. "Mmwrrwhat are you painting?"

"Roses," he says, finding it only a little odd to be talking to a cat--though once he recognizes the eyes from what he can see of them, his smile brightens by a few degrees. "I didn't know you could be a cat."

He finds the animal shape charming, if a little disconcerting. Can the cat do with it's meows the same thing the man can do with his violin?

"Sometimes, a day calls for being a cat," he mwrrs, leaning his head against Silas' hand and purring loudly. Completely without shame, our not'cat.

"Today was one of those days."

"Sometimes I wish I could do the same," he says, picking the cat up and leaning back in his chair so Yrael is pillowed against his chest, held in his arms. "But I cannot change forms."

The not'cat lounges against the boy's chest, purring up a storm.

"There is a method I know by which you could change forms, for a while."

Silas just obliges the cat, scritching gently with fingers tunneling into the soft white fur. It's possibly the most he's smiled in the last week. "Do you? What is it?"

"It is called a Charter Skin. I weave it; you put it on. It would give you six to eight hours as a cat before it unraveled."

He leans back and studies the cat for a moment. "And it wouldn't hurt me to wear it. I will be a human again when it wears off?"

The cat leans back as well to look back at him, propped up on a paw pushing against Silas' chest. "It would not hurt, and you would be human when it wears off, yes."

Silas brushes his thumb under Yrael's jaw as he considers. "Perhaps I will use it, then. It would be nice to explore from another point of view."

"It often is," purrs the cat, smirking. "People give you scritches, and free food... there is the forest to explore, as well."

"I haven't been out there yet," he says. "How long does it take you to make one of these skins?"

"A few hours," he replies, shrugging. "So it will be ready by the next time I see you."

"I cannot guarantee when that will be, unless you'd like me to help you make it?" he asks, more than willing to do just that. "Assuming it is something I can help with."

The not'cat laughs, bumping its forehead against Silas' chin.

"Thank you, but it is a one-person project, to tell the truth. I will make it and keep it safe until the next time I see you. Unworn, it will last until then."

He laughs as his chin is bumped, burying his nose in Yrael's soft fur; still remembering that starry sky where the Bright Shiner took him. "Alright then."

He purrs, warm. Warmer than a normal cat should be.

"How have you been, Silas, since we last met?"

"Moderate, I suppose," he murmurs. "Things could always be worse."

"Well, yes. That is the definition of worse. There is always a worse, no matter how bad it gets," says the cat, but his ears are twitching back.

"Which leaves 'moderate' as one of those words that has to have boundaries. It needs to have a lower spot and a higher spot to define it. So, you have been... moderate in relation to what?"

"I have been..." he sighs, searching for how to finish that thought. "Moderate in that in the last week I haven't been hit, but I still have stitches and a dislocated wrist. And I likely will for the foreseeable future."

The cat sniffs curiously at the stitches near Silas' mouth, ears still partially flattened.

"Hit? You should not be hit."

"That does not change the fact that I am," he says, reaching up to pet the cat's head lightly. "Should I be getting this from a cat?"

He bumps his head insistently against Silas' hand, mwrrring under his breath.

"Who is it that hits you?"

Point the cat in the right direction and stand aside.

"It isn't important." He doesn't want to make Yrael angry and then set him loose, because that is almost never a wise decision for any situation.

"Trust me a little, ouais?" he asks. "I will not let myself be hurt more than I can handle."

"One shouldn't let oneself be hurt in the first place. Life it not meant to be a test of endurance. It is meant to be enjoyed."

"I enjoy life here," he says, sidestepping the argument. "And I will find a way to enjoy it in my own world as well."

It won't be easy, but Silas knows that already. Nothing in life for him is easy.

"If you should need help with that..." The cat briefly hisses, grumpily pushing its head into the boy's hand to receive scritches.

And if the not'cat accidentally nips at his finger, well, at least he doesn't nip hard.

He doesn't outwardly react to the little nip, but still keeps petting. "If I do, I will ask," he says gently. "Please don't think me foolish for staying there. I will take whatever I must to keep my mother from being hurt."

Quatre stops to watch, curious, a respectful distance away-- he doesn't want to interrupt. He's wearing a three-piece business suit (without the jacket), but his hands are turned around a mug of coffee. (Decaf, in deference to the time. He feels his general practicioner should be proud of him.)

Periodically, he has to look up, to focus on something farther away than the painted board and blink extraordinarily pale purple eyes.

It's in one of these moments that Silas glances past Quatre, and smiles just barely enough to register on his face; he's still got a tiny line of stitches below the corner of his mouth, and a rigid brace on one wrist, but he looks alright otherwise. He's always going to be bone-pale from head to toe, colorless in skin and hair, like a spot in a coloring plate left blank.

Quatre smiles back. No concern registers on his face, though he does feel a brief pang of it.

"Are you an artist?" he asks.

"No," he answers, looking between the paintbrush in his hand and the board, only missing a few spots yet. "The bar gave me this as something to do while I dried off a few days back." He's very meticulous, which is good for the kind of painting he's doing, but he lacks the spatial mastery to create something realistic.

Quatre's smile warms at Silas's accent.

"You are better at them than I was, the few times I tried," he replies, in French (the accent is a bit different than any Silas might know, but that's because it's from space).

"I'm Quatre." (He pronounces it different from four).

It only takes a moment for him to pick up the accent and slip back into French as he converses with Quatre, smile growing just a little. "I'm Silas. I find the finished thing pretty...but it lacks emotion. I don't know whether this is my fault, or the picture."

"Perhaps you are just too close to it," Quatre says, setting a hand to the back of the chair opposite Silas's and raising his eyebrows to silently ask permission. "I don't paint, but I play music -- and compose, a bit, more when I was younger. It's hard to judge yourself. Or --too easy."

"Perhaps," he says, acquiescing easily and having no problem with Quatre sitting next to him. "My eyes are not very sharp anyway...I may simply be seeing it wrong." Though he does own glasses to magnify what he's looking at--particularly if he's reading--they rarely come in handy if he has to move his head much, because it only makes him dizzy.

"If you think it lacks emotion," Quatre says, "I'll trust you. But maybe you should look for something with less guidelines in the making, if you want your feeling to show."

He's always admired the structured poet-- words have never been his art (or... not in that way).

Silas just barely breaks a smile at that, and shakes his head. "I am not an artist. I...do not know what I am yet," he says lightly.

Right now he's just here, in the bar, enjoying the time away from his world and the heaviness that seems to weigh on him when he's there.

Silas's quiet in heart and expression does not worry Quatre; it can't given his friends, and he is not comfortable with asking after that which he is not told.

Still, his voice drops into serious sincerity, "I wouldn't advise knowing what you are to do too soon. It doesn't work for most people, unless they know their hearts and can make their own choice."

"Most people tend to advise the exact opposite," he says.

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