This cat girl … she was very, very strange. She had very little sense of personal space at all, leaning forwards just to honk the tip of my nose and now yank my hair. It was not sore, but by my father it was irritating and very unexpected.

Gently I tugged on my hair to try to pull it from her hold. As I did a dimness began to appear in my vision, but like before I shook my head, forbidding the symptoms from lack of sustenance from overwhelming me. It was beginning to wear on me, and though I had three thousand years and the half divinity to train my body in overcoming such things. I had made myself stronger but still … four days. I knew I needed to find a source soon, and I no longer wanted to be that evil in the middle of the night.

“Please don't …” I whispered as I fought against the darkness in my sight. “Don't touch the hair. Why are you so strange?”

“Me?” She let the hair fall down and out from between her splayed fingers. “You is strange. You not do well. Sick because not eat? Not eat because…? Because others tell you it wrong or something else? No. You is the strangest one.”

I raised my brows and bit back a laugh. Definitely she did not understand the fact that I did not want to rely on others. Not anymore. I wanted to be Vixen, the demi-goddess and glorious, able to defend herself and not end up in anyone's cell, or bed, unless I decided that. The trip to my dreadful half-brother’s prison (not the one who was apparently the clone of our deity father) had made me even more determined in that.

“Tradespeak is not your first language, clearly,” I replied. “Maybe that is why you don't understand that I do not want to hurt people anymore. I don't want to be that …” I sighed and rubbed my temples as the beginnings of a headache came.

“Is true… “ She sounded quiet, contemplative. “Eteri not understand. Eteri not that good. Would kill if needed. If person was bad or if needed to eat. Or if they threaten Nevin. No upset with hurting others. So never understand. Not just ahh...not just because bad with Tradespeak but because...what is word...bee leaf is not same. Maybe that make Eteri bad. Not care. Eteri is Eteri.”

“My goodness you need language lessons,” I breathed in, rolling my eyes a little. “Clearly you are getting practice by working here but it's not helping. How long have you been in this city?”

“Stare says same thing…” She mumbled. Her ears flattened against the back of her head. “Eteri knows not...not smart. Sick of people saying that. Am trying. Am slowly learning.” She didn’t answer the question and instead flopped onto the counter and sighed.

I did not care what she did. My concentration was on the name she had just stopped. That one particular name that I had only heard spoken by my half-sister Ventrua, on that fateful day when I had also learnt the truth of the kenku people I had originally been tasked with guarding, and when I had learnt that there was a full clone son of our father walking around … that day. Stare. Once known as Avis, but supposedly the kenku of kenkus who was the prime of what her people could be. And under the power of that full born brother.

“Wait, you know Stare?!” I stared at her and suddenly adrenaline was filling my extremely weak body. “Stare, the kenku, who works for … what is his name? Elssmith?”

Eteri seemed to be pouting. “Mmm? Angry god man? He is like….Angsty man and tall and doesn’t like Et-ah..my hugs?” She rolled her chin so her head tilted up to meet my eyes. “Yes. Stare is my friend.”

I breathed in fast, looking at this creature here. It seemed everywhere I was going people had heard of, met or indeed were friends with the darling kenku that should have been mine from the beginning.

“That angsty man …” I said quietly, certain now that it was them. “He … what is he like? Does he have …” I gestured to my hair. “Hair like mine? White? Pale skin?”

The catgirl shrugged her shoulders and clambered further onto the counter, rolling onto her stomach and using her arms as a makeshift pillow. “Sounds the same. Man has white hair big angry blue eyes.” She mused. “Why? He very angry man. Not good to be around. No need to know about him.”

I began to open my mouth to explain, my eyes wide and suddenly feeling expressive - when a great wave of weariness wooshed up to my head. Eyes widening, I let out a gasp, as all the adrenaline I had felt faded. It fell as quickly as it had come, and my body suddenly reminded me why I had come here in the first place.

“Oh,” I murmured slowly. “Oh I …” and I raised a hand to my crown as lightheadedness began to come over me. Gulping in air I took a moment for my own, and looked warily at the cat girl Eteri. “I am sorry, I need to -”

And I turned in order to leave, but I did not make it a single step. Instead the wave of nausea came, shortly followed by weightlessness. Lastly, there was black, and that was all I knew as I lost consciousness.

On Stare's friend's floor.