Chapter 413 - 412: Small Mercies
Location:Seven Peaks — Multiple
Date/Time:TC1854.12.15
Luneth got down from the tree.
Not gracefully. Gracefully was a concept the silver-blue Aeralith had encountered, evaluated, and rejected in favor of a more personally authentic approach to vertical transit. The approach involved a branch, a miscalculation, a 3-meter free fall, and 7T9.
The snake was crossing the garden path beneath the ornamental cherry — the same tree Luneth had been stuck in four times previously and climbed for the fifth time that morning because Luneth’s relationship with consequences was theoretical rather than practical. 7T9 was en route to the command center with Raven, who had paused to examine a frost pattern on the garden wall that Aren had left during his morning training (a lattice of interlocking hexagons that Silas later described as "a formation diagram I didn’t design and can’t improve, produced by a seven-year-old’s residual cultivation while walking to breakfast").
The kitten fell. Onto 7T9. Directly. The silver-blue body — now the size of a large housecat, crystalline feathers catching the morning light in prismatic scatter — landed on the star-metal snake with the full confidence of a creature that had learned, through four previous falls, that something always broke the descent and that the something was usually unimpressed.
7T9 was unimpressed.
"Complaint number 437," he said from beneath approximately 3 kilograms of Aeralith. "Involuntary service as a feline landing apparatus. This is the third instance this month. I am detecting a pattern."
Luneth purred. The vibration transmitted through 7T9’s chassis at a frequency that his processors registered as "structurally benign and personally offensive."
"The kitten is purring on my sensory array. My olfactory inputs are registering crystalline dander. I am filing a formal objection to the concept of dander."
Raven reached down and extracted Luneth from 7T9’s person. The kitten went limp in her hands — the Aeralith’s trust response, the total surrender of muscular control that meant I am safe and I know it. Luneth hung from Raven’s grip like a furry crescent moon, purring at a volume disproportionate to her size.
"She’s getting bigger," Raven said.