The Cat Who Knew How to Cry

10. HIS HIGHNESS AND HER HOLINESS (part 2)

She wasn't against chatting, but sometimes Anar threw himself at her memory so ravenously that the sianae felt like a mother cat descended upon by a crowd of starving overgrown kittens. (The poor thing's emaciated body arched like a bridge, feet barely touching the ground, looking at the world oh-so-plaintively, jumping constantly at yet another nose poking in her long-suffering abdomen with particular force.) Anar wanted to know absolutely everything, and constantly jumped from one topic to another like a crazy cat. Aniallu worked up a whopping migraine trying to keep up, and one that neither drugs nor magic could cure.

The only thing that made Alu's life somewhat easier and allowed her a bit of respite were the multitude of traps. Most of them were still intact from the ancient times, when pilgrimages into the Catacombs (at that time not forbidden, of course) was a way to test one's knowledge of ceremonies and rituals, which every respectable Rualite had to pass every sixteen years. Strict defensive spells did not react to travelers who sung the correct hymns, while springing cruelly on anyone who had the misfortune of mixing up the words of a prayer. Traps of this kind were of little trouble to the pair because Aniallu had procured in advance a copy of the memory of a priest who had once gotten all the way to the Tombs. But there were other kinds of traps – much more recent and sharp-toothed. "Most certainly my mother's doing," Anar grumbled, deactivating yet another deadly trick... Grumbled, and then continued his interrogation with relish.

Of course, the process wasn't easy on Anar by any means; sometimes, when firing a question at Alu, the answer would plunge him into a stupor for hours afterwards, as he struggled to fathom what he'd heard. It was one shock after another, the biggest of which was the notion that the Great Mother of All Cats did not actually create the Infinite. Far from it. It existed long before she came here from beyond the Rib of Realms – barriers that had sundered the Infinite into two infinitely enormous sections.

"And what's on the other side?" Anar inquired with trepidation.

"No one knows," Aniallu responded. "The Great Migration robbed Alasais and her entourage (we call them 'Nae,' 'the Arrivals,') of their memory."

"Completely?"

"Well, a bit survived, but alas, you can't imagine what the whole cake looks like from just this little crumb. Our Alasais was truly luckier than the other Nae. She at least remembered what happened in the first hours after the Migration." Aniallu scratched her nose, recalling, and then recited: "'We were scattered along the slope of the Silver Cliffs, not far from the Lake of Woe. We looked around in confusion for a few minutes, watching our shells and everything we'd brought with us from the beyond the Rib get destroyed. While I still had legs, I stood up and kicked one of them with all my might... I don't remember whom. Probably someone I didn't get along with very well in that former life... And then...'" Alu opened her eyes wide. "And then the Infinite suddenly decided to break his Memory open before the Nae – like some sort of fantastical menu from which each could choose a meal to their liking. The Nae were granted the opportunity to meld with a certain element (if you can call dreams, death or emotions 'elements') and gain power over it – infinitely beyond that of any god."

Anar was tugging at the corner of his mouth, concealing a smile. It was nice to think his people's patron was still an enormously influential being.

Some of the Nae weren't actually offered a choice," Alu went on. "Lajnaen, for example, could become nothing but Light (in some sense she was Light itself even before the Migration). Others had quite a variety to choose from. And they all – Nelleyn, Aellenica, Mercurion, Veindor, Tialianna and Alasais – had to quickly make their choice, based on their goals and... talents."

"And out of that whole smorgasbord, Alasais chose emotions and feelings," Anar chuckled.

"Yes. Why, what would you have chosen?"