Don't take strange catgirls into your room at night

“There… was a point.” The dalk man beside her rolled over, a bit groggy from the night’s debaucherous activities. “...wuh?”
Nota jabbed him in the shoulder with her thumb. “A point. When I had family. You asked why I didn’t wanna do the ‘daddy’ thing earlier, I’m telling you.” She jabbed him again. “Listen to a lady’s feelings, fucker.”
He sat up, rubbing his arm, trying to blink the sand out of his eyes. “Uh… it’s kinda late tho.”
“Did you or did you not just enjoy the best hour of your life?”
“Uh. I mean.”
She glared at him, expectantly.
“...probably?”
Nota huffed, and began twirling her cheek tuft. “I don’t have biological parents. I mean, I never met ‘em, if I’ve got ‘em. But when I was a kid, I got taken in by this highborn family, a minor lineage of one of the Six Houses. Mom was the second cousin, first removed to the current heir or some shit. Close enough to still live large, far enough that she didn’t have any real power.”
The man’s eyes opened a bit. “Yo, you’re highborn? The hell brought you down to this shitsack, ha ha.”
She glared at him again.
“U-uhm, respectably speaking.”
“...everything up top was good for a little bit. I don’t remember most of it though, ‘cuz I got disowned when I was… what was that, eight? Nine? I don’t know when my birthday is, so I’ve always just had to guess. But I got kicked out young. It wasn’t for long, but I did have parents. And now, every time I think about them…” She scrunched up her snout, looked to the side, and spat. “I think about how much they sucked shit for putting a little girl out on the street. Fucking ‘mommy and daddy’. Hope they rot in hell.”
“Oh.” The silence hung in the air for a moment.
“So like, you are gonna clean up where you spit, ri—”
“S’not like I did anything wrong. I wasn’t a hellion or anything like that. One day I did a… a thing, and then they were afraid of me. So I got kicked out.”
Her expression softened a little bit. “But I did get to meet Ya’net. I think that makes up for it, a bit.”
“Ya’net?”
“My big sis. Found me not long after I got kicked out, took me under her wing. She was a runaway who thought the Houses were shitty and trash, and she’d— ha— she’d make some of the rich doofuses fall for her and then just humiliate them and jank all their shit. Saw it go wrong once, and she just straight up stabbed ‘em. That lady was the best.”
The dalk man tilted his head to the side, letting his oversized ears flop. “...was?”
Nota drooped her shoulders a bit. “...was, yeah.” She rolled out of bed and began fixing herself, taking care to not stand on the place she’d spat earlier. “Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn’t sleep with random feline women the same night you meet them. Granted, it was fun, if not a bit disappointing.”
“Uh, yeah, ok, wait—”
“Constructive criticism is the first step to improvement, buddy. Oh yeah, what’s your name again?”
He stood up, a bit incredulous. “Arek.”
“Arek…?” She waved her hand in a rotation, gesturing to continue.
“...Kalwin. Whaddya mean disappointi—”
Nota pulled her shoes up and draped a cloak over herself, pulling the hood over her head. “Well Arek Kalwin, been a pleasure. Here’s hoping you don’t have to learn a sorry lesson about stranger danger later today.”
“Hold up, a lesson about what?”
She headed for the door, stopping to grab her conspicuously-wrapped walking pole. She turned back towards Arek, and with an informal, two-fingered salute— “Ciao, little guy.” —she trotted out the door.



* * *



“Hold up a sec.”
The town gatekeeper was plated in cheap mail, likely a hand-me down from whoever worked the post last. He was an aalk man, and it was clear that his helmet was not agreeing with his horns.
“Who’s headin’ out? Not too many people skip town in the dead of night.”
Nota looked up at the man and sighed. “Plenty ‘a people do that, namely everyone who doesn’t wanna die of heatstroke and can't afford to ride the ‘van with the Houses’ luxuries.”
“Plenty a people also do that and then get mugged in the dead of night on the open road.”
Nota waved the comment aside. “Woe be me, stabbed to death in the desert by the muggers, yes, the muggers on the road in the freezing dead of night, because so many people take the time to travel when the next pitcher is—” She paused for a moment, thinking. “...shit, a good few dozen miles, honestly. Glad I filled the can.”
The gatekeep snorted, annoyed. “Yeah, yeah, it’ll be real sad when someone’s gotta scrape you off the ground halfway ‘tween towns. Travel fee?
Nota pulled out a small sack of coins and put them in the man’s hand. He grinned.
“And of course, last name and next ‘a kin, in case you wind up missin’.”
“Surname’s Kalwin, my brother’s name is Arek. Be seein’ ya.” She began to stride out.
“Huh. You don’t look like a Kalwin.”
She grinned as she walked past the threshold, whispering to herself. “Well, that’s ‘cuz it’s a fake name.”