#oopsy daisy
I MADE AN ATTEMPT AT PRODUCING FLUFF.
Title:Cat Burglar
Warnings:NO warnings for once. Softness.
Summary: Moiraine is having a rough time, so Lan steps up as a good Warder should to provide her some comfort, unorthodox though it may appear. Desperate times call for desperate measures…
Teaser: ‘The cat nestled in Moiraine’s lap was still as content to stay snuggled on her knee as it had when it had first jumped onto her several hours ago. It was a surprisingly large thing, given that she suspected it was stray, mostly orange, with some spots of black she was unsure were fur or dirt, it was difficult to determine. Its large size seemed necessary to contain its heart, given the intensity of its purring, which it had not stopped since it had trotted into the room as if it had owned it.’
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The cat nestled in Moiraine’s lap was still as content to stay snuggled on her knee as it had when it had first jumped onto her several hours ago. It was a surprisingly large thing, given that she suspected it was stray, mostly orange, with some spots of black she was unsure were fur or dirt, it was difficult to determine. Its large size seemed necessary to contain its heart, given the intensity of its purring, which it had not stopped since it had trotted into the room as if it had owned it.
Today had been a bad day. She’d barely slept, relentless nightmares, one after the other, no matter how often she woke, or what she tried to keep them at bay. When her breakfast had been delivered by her servant, she’d left it outside her door, too nauseous and unsettled to contemplate eating it. Though she had tried to get work done, she’d mostly found herself staring blankly at the stone wall opposite, thoughts swirling like the last dregs of dirty bathwater circling the drain.
Having the comforting, warm pressure of a living body nestled against hers was more of a relief than she ever thought it could be. One hand tickled the cat absently behind an ear, and it enthusiastically butted its head into the touch, as though it had been as desperate for this contact as she had.
It was such a simple thing, to make her feel so much better. Foolish, too, she thought to herself, that this should help her when all else had failed. Yet it had reminded her that the world was both bigger and smaller than the pain she was experiencing. Everything was going on, as she sat here in her suffering, and there were still small, innocent, helpless creatures who needed her to stop this world falling into darkness.
She looked up with a slight start as the door opened and Lan entered the room with a tray of food and tea. He seemed to think that if he did not bring her something to eat, and then sit to eat with her, that she would simply waste away. Perhaps he had a point, she allowed, as she reached for the tea he had brought her and sipped delicately at it while he laid out the plates on the small table beside her. She gave him a small, grateful smile. He deserved better than this, being reduced to a manservant for a broken former noble, fetching her tea and snacks like a butler. Yet he did it with the same adoration and dedication with which he guarded her in battle facing down a trolloc army. She loved him for that, and for so much more besides that she could never properly convey to him.
As they began to eat, she noted that his eyes were watering, and he sneezed a few times, though with a valiant effort at hiding it.
Smiling thinly, suspicion solidifying into near certainty, she took a sip of her tea then said mildly, “You should really speak to Nynaeve about those allergies of yours, Lan, she will probably be able to give you something for them.”
He grunted noncommittally, as was his usual response to any suggestion he see to his own needs instead of her own. But she saw him smile into his soup as he took another spoonful of it.
The two of them sat in quiet companionship, feeling connected in spite of their silent bond, the only sound in the room the continued purring of the ginger cat on Moiraine’s knee.
***
Cats liked Moiraine. Lan had learned that early in to their partnership. Whenever they stopped at an inn, or took shelter in a barn, any cats that lurked within the shadows would emerge and seek her out, as though she had bidden them with the Power to do so. He’d watched feral tom cats roll on their backs like sleepy hounds at their master’s feet, and terrified alleycats become like playful kittens before her. She confessed she had always had this gift, even before she knew that she could channel, it had simply intensified as she’d gotten older.
Around the same time he’d discovered that cats were drawn to Moiraine as bees were to flowers, he’d found something out about himself, too. He was deathly allergic to the things. Being around one for more than a few minutes had him sneezing as though he was ill with fever, and coughing fit to hack up a lung or two. His eyes would stream, his throat would itch, and his body would do just about anything to encourage him to get away from them with great haste.
Early on in their bond, Moiraine had found this intensely amusing. Their first night at the inn, she had charmed the chef’s fat black and white cat with a weave and had it sleep on his head. He’d barely been able to see out of his eyes when he woke up, and had wheezed so badly for breath he’d woken his Aes Sedai in the early hours of the morning. At that point, he had also found the situation far more amusing, as it transpired that an allergic response was something that transferred across the bond.
Moiraine had given him a look through wide, streaming eyes, that said quite plainly she was seriously considering stabbing him through the heart with his own sword just to rid herself of his affliction. In mild fear for his own life, he had delicately suggested that perhaps she could try a weave or two to spare them this problem.
Thus had begun a small project for her, as they had travelled. If there had been anything resembling a library, she had visited her Brown sisters and attempted to discover knowledge of something that could help them. In the end, frustrated and in apparently dire need of some affection from the flea-infested felines that kept seeking her out, in spite of how they made her sneeze, she had simply created her own. He still teased her about this, from time to time, that when they wrote the history and accomplishments of the great Moiraine Sedai, the first note in the recordings of weaves she had created would be one to deal with sniffles brought on by cat fur.
Still, it had served them well in many cases, and he’d heard that their Yellow Sisters had even managed to adapt and improve it to cleanse not only the air a person breathed, but the air in their lungs and body, allowing them to cleanse it of any toxins. Lan suspected that, though Moiraine would die before she willingly admitted it to another soul, the fact it allowed her to befriend cats in every town once more was still the best thing about it, as far as she was concerned.
Lan didn’t have Moiraine’s odd gift to attract the world’s most standoffish and aloof animals, but he did have a coin purse, and the ability to communicate with Fal Dara’s street kids, which proved almost as effective. The wide-eyed child had looked at him as though afraid he was trying to deceive her then, when his hard face and stern eyes had convinced her he was serious, as though he was simply mad. Mad or not, he had given her good coin, and a hot bun from a street vendor, and this was apparently enough for her to point him in the direction of the local street cats and give some opinions on the ones least likely to claw his face from his skull for looking at them.
What he did not have, unfortunately, was Moiraine’s weave to help deal with his allergies.
So it was that as he walked through Fal Dara’s streets, his eyes streamed, his chest convulsed with his coughing, and his mouth and throat tickled as though he was trying to eat a fistful of feathers. In spite of all of that, he carried his prize as proudly as he would have carried the head of a slain trolloc warchief. The large, confused ginger cat had apparently given up the notion that it could escape him now, and simply sat limp and deeply befuddled in his iron grip.
Lan carried it back to the royal chambers, where he and Moiraine had been given quarters. As they drew nearer he paused a moment, just out of earshot of her door, and gave the cat a stern look. As much as he could with red-rimmed, watering eyes.
“She’s having a hard time at the moment,” he informed the cat, as though it could understand and, even more unlikely, as though it actually cared. It blinked at him, which was enough encouragement to continue, “You’ll make her feel better,” he ordered it, trying to keep the instinctive ‘or else’ threat out of his tone, but not entirely succeeding.
Light, I need to sleep, he thought vaguely as he realised what he was doing, and hoped no-one had noticed him. Fortunately the corridor seemed empty. Moiraine had developed a new power, since the Eye, the ability to keep others away. No-one wanted to go near the unfortunate Aes Sedai who could no longer channel, and the halls were eerily silent and haunted. Like a graveyard.
Walking on silent feet to her door, slightly ajar, he placed the cat down carefully then gave it a slight shoo towards her. He needn’t have bothered. It shook itself free of the indignity of being carried by him, then became aware that it was within Moiraine’s aura. It chirped eagerly, tail going up with interest, then it trotted straight into her room, making an obvious beeline for her.
Lan paused outside, fighting down another sneezing fit so as not to alert Moiraine of his part in this. Listening, he heard her voice for the first time that day give a quiet, “Hello there,” as the cat meowed for her attention.
Smiling to himself, he heard the purring start, and the smile in Moiraine’s voice was obvious as she murmured, “What a beautiful young man.”
Satisfied, he slipped off towards the kitchens to fetch Moiraine something to eat, hopeful that she would take it now, and might even manage a few words for him.
