Diane Duane - The Book of Night with Moon

It would have been nice to do this the easy way, Rhiow thought reluctantly, but… She bumped Hhu’s head with her own, purring harder.

“Rrrrgh,” said Hhuha, and rolled over, and squinted her eyes tighter shut, and after a moment looked at Rhiow out of them with some disbelief.

She sat up groggily in the bed and looked at the door. “Now how the heck did you get in here? I know he shut that last night.”

“Yes, I know, 7 opened it, never mind,” Rhiow said, “come on, will you? I have to get an early start. Business, unfortunately.” She rubbed against Hhuha’s side and purred some more.

“Wow, you’re noisy this morning, aren’t you? What on earth do you want? Not breakfast already, you pig! You had two whole slices of pizza just a few hours ago.”

Don’t remind me, Rhiow thought, for her stomach was growling so hard, she was amazed Hhuha couldn’t hear it. “Look, it would really help if you would just get up and give me my morning feed so I can get on with things—”

“Mike? Mike, get up. I think maybe your kitty wants her breakfast.”

“Nnnggghhhh,” said Iaehh, and didn’t move.

“Oh, will you come on already?” Rhiow said, desperately hoping Hhuha didn’t notice that her purr was becoming a little forced. “And as for pigs, who ate half a salami last night? And never gave me any? Even when I asked. Now please get up before it gets so late that I have to leave!”

“Gosh, you really must be hungry. I guess cats digest faster than people or something,” Hhuha said, her voice going soft, and she reached out to scratch Rhiow’s eyebrows. The tone of voice was one Rhiow had heard before: she got a sense that her ehhif liked being “talked to,” even when they couldn’t hear half of what was being said, and, even if they could, would have no idea what the words meant anyway. This tendency made them either great idiots or very fond of her indeed, and either conjecture only made Rhiow twitchier under the present circumstances. She stomped her forefeet alternately on the coverlet, as much from impatience as from pleasure at having her head scratched.

“Come on, then,” said Hhuha. She got out of bed, threw a house-pelt around her, and headed toward the kitchen. Rhiow went after her, not in a hurry: this was no time to trip Hhuha halfway there and have to deal with an ehhif temper tantrum that might take half an hour to resolve. By the time Rhiow got to the kitchen, Hhuha was cranking a can open.

“Mmm,” Hhuha said, “nice tuna. You’ll like this.”

“I hate the tuna,” Rhiow said, sitting down and curling her tail around her forefeet. “It’s not made from any part of the fish that you’d ever eat. You should read more of the label than just the part about the dolphins.”

“Yum, yum,” Hhuha said, putting the plate down on the floor. “Here you go, puss. Lovely tuna.”

Rhiow looked at the gelid stuff with resignation. Oh, well, she thought, it’s food, and I need something before I go out. And anyway—manners… She reared up and gave Hhuha a good rub around the shins before starting to eat.

“You’re a good kitty,” Hhuha said, and turned, yawning, to take something out of the refrigerator.

Rhiow purred with amusement and satisfaction as she ate. The compliment was true enough, but also true was that, while she had been rearing up to rub against Hhuha’s leg, she had seen where the container of salmon pate had been pushed back behind some drinking containers on the counter beside the ffrihh.

“God, I’m glad it’s Sunday,” Hhuha said, and shut the refrigerator again, heading for the bedroom. “I couldn’t bear the thought of work after last night.”

Rhiow sighed as she finished one last bite and turned away from the dish, reluctant: eating too much now would make her want a nap, and she had no time for that. “Must be nice to have weekends off,” Rhiow muttered, sitting down to wash. “I wish I did.”

The rest of her personal hygiene took only a few minutes more: her ehhif had put a hiouh-box. out on their small terrace for her, where it was under cover from rain. While using it, Rhiow went off into unfocused mode briefly and could hear them talking as Hhuha opened the window-coverings and the window.

“Mmngnggh…” Iaehh’s voice. “Did she eat?”

“Uh huh.” A pause. “She’s out now… I don’t know… I’m still not sure it’s a great idea to have her box out there.”

“Oh, come on, Sue. Better there than in the bathroom. You’re the one who was always muttering about walking in the kitty Utter in the morning. Anyway, she’s not going to fall or anything.”

“I don’t mean that It’s encouraging her to get down on that lower roof that worries me.”

“Why? It’s not like she can get to anywhere else from there. She can roam around and get some fresh air… and she’s been doing it for months now without any trouble. She would have gone missing a long time back if she could have.”

“Well, I still worry.”

“Susannnnn … She’s not stupid. It’s not like she’s going to try to go twenty stories straight down.”

Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a slight smile as she finished tidying the box, then got out and shook her feet fastidiously. Bits of litter scattered in various directions, skittering off the terrace. They can make water run uphill and fly off to the Moon when they like, she thought, resigned, but they can’t make hiouh-litter that won’t stick to your paws. A serious misplacement of priorities…

Rhiow went to the edge of the railed terrace, looked down. Her ehhif’s apartment was near the corner of the building. Its wall fell sheer to the next terrace, thirty feet down, but she had no interest in that. Off to the left was an easy jump, about three feet, to the concrete parapet of a lower roof of a building diagonally behind theirs, but Rhiow wasn’t going that way either. Her intended path lay sideways, along the brick wall itself. Some fanciful builder had built into it a pattern of slightly protruding bricks, a stairstep pattern repeating above and below. The part of it Rhiow used led rightward down the wall to the building’s other near corner, about fifty feet away; and six feet below that, in the direction of the street, was the raised parapet of yet another roof, the top of the next building along.

Rhiow slipped through the railings, stepped carefully up onto the first brick, and made her way downward along the wall, foot before foot, no hurry. This segment of her road, the first used each day setting out and the last to manage before getting home, was also the trickiest: no more than two inches’ width of brick to put her feet on as she went, nothing to catch her should she fall. Once she almost had, and afterward had spent nearly half an hour washing and regaining her composure, horrified at what might have happened, or worse, who might have seen her. Wasted time, she thought now, amused at her younger self. But we all learn…

At the corner of the building Rhiow paused, looked around. Soft city-noise drifted up to her the hoot of horns over on Third, someone’s car alarm wailing disconsolately to itself four or five blocks north, the rattle of trays being unloaded at the bakery eastward and around the corner. All around her, the sheer walls of other apartment and office buildings turned blind walls and windows to the sight of a small black cat perched on a two-inch-wide brick, ninety feet above the sidewalk of Seventieth Street. No one saw her. But that was life in iAh’hah, after all: no one looked up or paid attention to any but their own affairs.