Faren had always wanted a pet but his brother Krem would never let him have one. Now he felt he understood why.
“Please! Calm down!” I’m not going to hurt you, I promise!” Faren desperately pleaded with the small, but vicious, cat. The bath had turned the cat’s dull grayish brown fur into a brilliant white, but he didn’t seem to appreciate this miraculous transformation as he bit and scratched at Faren’s arms as punishment for daring to touch him. He refused to be calm, even as Faren swaddled him in a fluffy towel. Faren hugged the cat securely to his chest as he attempted to pull his paws out of the swaddle and clip his claws.
“What are you doing?” Shocked by the sudden sound of a voice, Faren dropped the cat. It shook itself out of the swaddle and took off into a corner. Faren looked up at his brother Krem, who was staring down at him with an eyebrow raised.
It was clear at a glance that though these two called each other brothers they were not blood related. Faren’s features were all around much softer and rounder compared to Krem’s sharp and gaunt looks. Where Faren’s skin was splattered with constellations of freckles, Krem had what seemed like a permanent sunburn on his cheeks...
“Calmisa arrested some weird guy and tasked me with taking care of his cat.”
Krem’s eyebrows raised further and he pushed his straight, sandy-brown hair back from his sweat-soaked face, “at least it’s not something you picked up from the streets.” Krem was wearing only an old, stained pair of uniform pants, even his prosthetic left arm was missing at that moment. He frowned and reached down, grabbing Faren’s wrist and pulling his arm up to inspect the scratches, deep and shallow, on his arm. “Why are you just letting these bleed. You should disinfect and bandage them, you don’t know what kinda diseases that thing has.” Krem began to drag Faren out of the common seating area to one of the bathrooms.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Wait, Krem, I gotta catch the cat.” Faren said, stumbling after him.
“It’s not going to escape.” Krem huffed, rolling his eyes and tugging Faren through a bathroom door. Just as he started getting out the antiseptic, the base’s intercom rang out.
Faren poked his head out of the bathroom doorway to see what would come up on the large screen in the common room. “... Oh it’s Crown Prince Carmir.”
*
Freakshow was finally released from the strange frozen state Calmisa put him in. He reclined back on the bed, legs bent and wrists resting on his knees. With his body relaxed but his eyes sharp and glaring, Freakshow asked, “so what do you want me to do?”
Calmisa took a few steps forward and cocked her head to the side, “I already told you... I want you to join my royal Knight squad.”
“You want me to be your bodyguard?” Freakshow sneered, “what’s a delicate little princess like you doing running around a battlefield anyways?”
Calmisa looked up at the ceiling, “bodyguard... hmm...” she pursed her lips, seeming to chew on the word for a moment, “of course you would be expected to guard my life but your job as one of my Knight’s would be more akin to a rebel, a revolutionary! Much more than a mere body-”
“Princess!” A voice rang out. The medbay door slid open and a flash of brown and white slid past the open door, with the sound of metal scraping against tiles. A hand gripped the doorframe to stop the slide and Faren popped his head into the room, “Prince Carmir is here to see you!”
