Chanter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chanter1944) wrote2018-08-05 09:16 pm
chanter1944) wrote2018-08-05 09:16 pm
Entry tags:
Polychrome Heroics poem: Fuego, Agua, Nieve
I venture into Terramagne again! Heads up, ysabetwordsmith. This poem is set in T-Wisconsin, specifically T-Madison, and features a hero of a different sort indeed. If anyone needs translations of the Spanish throughout, please let me know.
Trigger warnings: Please take note, this poem features nongraphic but still vivid references to a house fire. It also features several levels of racist and otherwise bigoted nasties attempting malicious mischief and worse, including in cemeteries. Said nasties absolutely get theirs, and no damage is done to anyone's resting place, but this could still be sensitive territory. There is also one instance of a person not responsible for their actions being stopped in the act of pyromania, and one averted car wreck. There is absolutely no on-screen harm to animals here. None.
It's a little ironic, he feels,
a little bitter
and a lot fitting.
His name, translated to easily-spoken human sounds,
is Khallo.
He has yet to transliterate it to scripted letters;
every time he considers it,
the probable double L
of the feline trill gives him painful pause,
English's best single L approximation or no,
and he redirects.
His name, in the language he learned from his mother,
isn't far from the suspicion that's all he recalls
of the fond assignation his humans once gave him.
Or far, for that matter and by association,
from the fleeting impressions he retains
of the two-legged people he loves:
Brown faces, joyful music, a chattering television, linoleum floors.
A queen crooning ballads at the kitchen sink,
a smiling tom dancing through the front door.
A male humankitten moving with surprising, unpredictable steps,
a half-grown female singing in the shower.
Candles, Candlemass, copper wire.
Wires. Sparks.
Late night. Dark hallway.
Todo esta uscuro, pero en el cielo.
His name is not far, as he knows it now,
from the conflagration that was his home.
And, callow, for the record, he is not.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
A veces, inglés es un gran dolor en su...
never mind.
The original, capitalized human word for him
is blurred, like much of those early months,
in the haze that was his slow-developing awareness before the fire.
He's not sure, now,
whether that blur is due to kittenhood,
the capacity of his mind in the time before the blaze,
or the concept the humans call a trauma blank.
If it's the last, he reasons, it's faulty,
because he retains enough even now,
if only just,
to still seek his people
in street corner crowds and city block windows.
The fire itself is flat enough in his memory,
lacking in specifics beyond the sensation of billowing heat,
walls of orange and red
and colors human languages will likely never name,
and he thanks the cat goddess that the details are no clearer.
Fuego. Agua. Nieve.
Fire. Snowbank. Water. Charcoal.
Donde esta su familia?
Where is his family?
Time distorted, for him,
in the moments--or were they days--immediately after the loss.
He knows, now,
that the gradual clarity he gained
in that period marked by slushed sidewalks
and the lingering scent of burning wood
was at least partially the increase in his intelligence
that human people call souping up.
He refuses to rule out growing up as a factor, however,
and healing the same.
Time did become measured again, after all,
and measurable.
The increase in cognition happened slowly.
From one rat-chase to the next,
one scuffle under a creaking porch staircase
to the following dash across an alley,
meanings beyond the gestures and vocalizations
of his natal language and the barest understanding
of the rapid liquidity of his second -
or is it better termed his human first? he's not sure -
began to crystallize like so much snow glaze.
"No puedo encontrar mi familia" rang true,
y "No recuerdo mi nombre,
me llamo Khallo
pero no recuerdo mi nombre segundo,"
but soon, so did "Soy un gato,
estas personas son humanos y soy un gato,"
and "Where are you going?"
and "Ua tsaug,"
and "The time is eleven fifty-three PM,"
and "Ni hao,"
and "Sa bai di,"
and "some have greatness thrust upon them,"
and "the conversion of fuel into energy,"
y "Ahora, y siempre! Ahora, y siempre!"
and "Get the hell outta my way, wouldja?"
Quickly, after that, scribbles on towering posts
became signs bearing understandable words,
digits and symbols and depthless pictorial descriptions,
black and white headlines unscrambled and made sense,
and blue-tinted screens unclouded into information.
And suddenly--Intellect, the human people call it in English
when a furry being has a mind like his
and he's aware, now, of the rarity of his mind.
Superintellect.
Inteligente, he thinks, and says, and somehow his feline mouth
forms the exact note of it
on the very first try.
Thank la madre de todos gatos he's alone for that.
It's around then that he starts keeping a tally.
His skills and gifts collect like icicles,
never-melting on a roof's edge,
possessions unburnt.
Multiple abilities, he hears human people say in English
on the subject of beings like himself -
the tom called Wind Sled on Madeline Island, for one,
and suddenly distance
is a thing that Khallo can measure in abstract words -
but he prefers other phrasing.
No hay fuego allí. Nunca hay fuego allí.
He grows large and fierce,
kind, long-haired and fluffy even in high summer,
maned, feathered and fancy, black from nose to tail,
shy and skittish, committed and loyal.
He interacts with few directly,
speaks to fewer in the languages he knows,
keeps his name close to himself,
guards his trust, guards his memories,
guards his city and its own
and searches for his people in throngs.
He will find them.
The gently-fizzing footprints he tracks
across a patch of favored concrete one morning
come as no particular surprise.
Each paw's placement, he learns by happy accident,
can be marked in charcoal dust
with a moment's concentration if he wishes.
He experiments.
His wards dance with subtle energies
as friendly as autumn dusk,
are human foot-scuffed and broom-swept with ease
but seem untouchable by breezes.
A brown squirrel runs right over one once,
and does not flinch.
A sprinting, gabbling humankitten barely old enough to speak
bounces, unharmed, off the barrier another creates,
lands on its--their--tail with a squawk
and is thus caught by the adults who've been
frantically chasing them down the street for half a block.
The idea accrues like a snowdrift.
Esta es posible. Posiblemente sí.
Por esta ciudad. Por mi familia.
And not long after--
A young human female on the south end of Park Street
wakes up to find kitty cat prints
practically stamped into the rust
on the hood of her increasingly squeal-prone car
and, smiling, leaves them there.
Two hours later she's telling the cameras, "I swear ta God,
my brakes done gave out!
Two more inches and I woulda hit that tree.
No idea how I stopped.
Felt like I hit something, like a wall, or a pillow.
Or a wall made outa pillows, I dunno.
It's like... somebody knew.
Like they knew my brakes was bad
because I ain't got the money for that and rent and food, and
like--like someone wanted me to live, or something."
Later, lurking in a doorway on the square,
Khallo sees a bar room television
play a news report containing that clip
and sighs gratitude through his whiskers at the sky.
It worked. Gracias a la madre de los gatos, it worked.
Pawprints ring an entire Jenifer Street house's wraparound porch
and, that night, the matches in the hand
of the ill, not-responsible young woman
he's seen squinting in plain speculation,
the one who glories, singly, in setting objects alight
will not catch.
She screams as the wardlines scatter cooled ash into the cuffs of her jeans.
The police are gentle when they retrieve her.
Khallo, hidden, wary,
sees that for himself and is relieved.
The crowd of sniggering, sneaker-clad blond boys, however,
so very luckily overheard before the fact,
all but trip over the lines of objection he's laid
in front of the battered, beloved corner store on Allied Drive.
Three of them goggle, bewildered.
The boldest sprawls, spilling his can of gasoline into a snowbank,
and the hardest curses
in what Khallo recognizes as late-learned German
as his lighter flies out of his grip and lands,
black-dusted and cold, in the gutter.
A siren wails in crescendo, tires skid to a stop,
and Khallo is not sorry
when the brashest and the harshest
of those five pale human kittens try to fight.
And lose.
Khallo's claws extend in silence,
and he growls.
No necesitan fuego aquí. Nunca necesitan fuego aquí.
He hears snippets of speculation and conversation,
reads one discarded newspaper's worried and worrying story
and, resulting,
crosses the city to trace paths, unnoticed in the grass,
around the headstones of the cemeteries
at Forest Glade and Temple Shalom,
at the city's single mazjid and Maple Hill,
at Saint Bartholomew, Peace Lutheran,
Santo Ignacio, Trinity Baptist and James Riley.
And he's watching, fortuitously,
when the humans with faces obscured by fabric
fall awkwardly over themselves between the rows
of upright, Hebrew and Yiddish-lettered markers,
tripped well shy of their targets,
and bicker in slowly rising voices
as their assumed clumsiness multiplies
with every attempt to move nearer their goal.
He's watching when a lone white-hooded tom's aim goes perfectly awry;
that creature kicks himself spectacularly in the opposite leg,
leaving the flag-adorned gravesite
with its faded but loving reproduction of a red-tailed plane
utterly untouched in place,
and howls like a kit
from the redirected force of his metal-shod toes.
He's watching, too,
when the contents of the bare-faced, aging human queen's bucket of paint
fail to reach the tombstones inscribed with crosses and surnames -
Andrade, Larredo, Miranda, Ituarte, Barrientos, de Tlalpan, Ojeda, Jerémie, Vega-Palacio -
but splash backward and into her face instead,
sheeting her sweatshirt and pants in red.
She snarls, half-wailing in fury,
and Khallo purrs a near-silent, ferocious happiness
as she flees, blinking and spluttering English curses,
straight into a clever human bystander's tattletale flash.
Idiota. Terible!
He is watching.
He is watching out for his people.
And he is watching for his people.
He will find them.
Necesita encontrarlos.
No one new has yet dedicated a word of their own to him,
at least in his hearing,
unless sharp-eyed niños squeaking "kitty kitty kitty!"
count for that purpose. Khallo says they do,
but only to himself.
On the second paw,
the intoxicated giggler who crowed, "Heeeeeey there, fancy pantsy!
C'mon an' have a drink! You got a fluffy butt!"
when he spotted Khallo beneath a streetlight
absolutely does not count even a little.
He believes that, by now, at least one tom
from the mosque does recognize him
for who and what he is.
That human does have a remembered second name;
Rahim, the male's friends and his imam call him, but
Abd-al Latif, say the local news reports
when speaking of Rahim's small but vital heroics.
Khallo admires that particular man very much.
There are two others, students,
possibly littermates and barely past kittenhood,
whom he also suspects of--the human phrase in English is clocking him,
though they make precious little outright sign of it
to anyone but each other.
Khallo credits or blames his own ears for that
for perking at the sound of the Spanish the kits were speaking,
albeit Spanish laced with careful phrases
in a language he doesn't recognize by name.
The teal-haired one, the one called Logan,
the one who is not a human female despite appearance,
now smiles at him every time they glimpse him
in a State Street building's shade.
The one who is a female, the one named Jordan,
oh so casually nudges a piece of chicken
over the edge of her salad container
first once, as she passes him on Library Mall,
and then again the next day.
Khallo thinks he might speak to those human kits, someday.
Much of the rest of the city barely sees him.
Nearly all of that is by his own design,
and the rest is human standard.
He is as distant, to most of them,
as dark matter is to Earth.
But he is abroad in the world,
and he is seeking triumph
over evils both great and small,
and he is seeking justice,
and he is seeking the humans he treasures.
Necesita encontrarlos.
Necesita oir su nombre segundo
desde su familia humana.
And he needs to learn theirs.
Khallo
Description: He is a longhaired, very fluffy neutered male black cat, possibly Norwegian forest cat or Maine coon in ancestry, but that's never been confirmed. He's approximately four years old. He is able to make the sounds necessary for humanoid speech with ease, though his mouth remains in a feline configuration. In addition to fluent communication with fellow cats, he speaks and understands Spanish, English, conversational Hmong, a few words of Mandarin, and some basic Lao. He's also literate in Spanish and English. His feline name is pronounced closest to the English word 'callow', which will never describe him.
Origin: Khallo survived a house fire as a kitten. His home suffered an unpredictable, truly bad luck electrical short and burned to the ground, and he was separated from his human family in the aftermath. His super abilities grew in gradually but noticeably as he recovered. He's now a friendly if shy stray on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin.
Khallo's humans are Hispanic and Latinx, and Spanish was the first human language he learned. It's still his admitted favorite, and his human default. He has an ongoing bias toward the city's Latinx and Spanish-speaking residents as a result, and he knows it. He is determined to find, or at least find information about, his human family. He currently has no idea if they survived the fire (they did), and the extremely scant few applicable details he retains from kittenhood memories of them don't help his search very much. He has, for example, neither surname nor street name to work from. This doesn't stop him trying.
Uniform: None. He goes nude, except for a very generous coat of fluffy, fancy fur.
Qualities: Good (+2) resourceful, good (+2) fierce, good (+2) stealthy, good (+2) cat skills, good (+2) loyal, good (+2) observant, good (+2) sense of justice, good (+2) one beautiful kitty
Poor (-2) skittish
Powers: Good (+2) superintellect, good (+2) human speech, good (+2) charcoal wards
Khallo's superintellect puts him on a level with a well-educated human. His facility for nonfeline speech is a mystery to him, but he's unlikely ever to object to the ability.
If he concentrates, Khallo can create a type of intent-based energy shield or ward on or around an object of his choosing. This manifests through his footsteps, and results in charcoal pawprints being left anywhere he walks while actively warding. They can be intentionally swept or brushed away, though natural forces i.e. wind will not disturb them. He frequently uses his wards as a fire-retardant shield or forcefield barrier, often while assisting or protecting local minorities.
Motivation: Todo por mi familia.
Logan Reyna Duarte
Description: Just slightly taller than average, and slim but not at all unhealthy. Logan is openly both sexually female and genderqueer. They prefer to use they/them pronouns, but will answer to she/her. They are currently a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and have just turned twenty. The hair on their head started changing from dark brown at puberty; all their usually-visible body hair has been entirely teal for several years. Any hair commonly concealed beneath a swimsuit has not changed, though they aren't in the habit of revealing this fact to the public. Their eyes remain dark brown. Their heritage is Latinx, specifically settler and indigenous Bolivian.
Qualities: good (+2) student, good (+2) approachable, good (+2) deductive reasoning, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) thoughtful, good (+2) multilingual (English and Spanish, and a few words of Imara)
Poor (-2) patchy family acceptance
Powers: average (0) teal hair, average (0) extended ultraviolet vision
Jordan Gonzalez Reyna
She has middling brown skin, dark brown hair and eyes. She's fairly average in height, and is reasonably physically fit; no one's likely to call her fat. Jordan is currently twenty, not quite twenty-one, and a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She's good friends with her cousin Logan, who's of similar age. Her heritage is Latinx, mostly settler and indigenous Bolivian.
Qualities: good (+2) student, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) approachable, good (+2) colored pencil artist, good (+2) multilingual (English, Spanish, and a few words of Imara)
Poor (-2) target of discrimination
Powers: supernary
Jordan is actively working to improve her sense of direction and situational awareness, among other things. She isn't entirely sure in which direction she wants to go with the improvements to her skills, though she's considering training up to assist domestic abuse survivors.
Abd-al Latif (Rahim Abdullah)
He has short, straight black hair, dark skin and black eyes, and a short length of neatly-kept beard. He is tall and as muscular as his profession requires, though not overly bulky. He's currently twenty-six years old. He's a certified and well-respected construction worker locally, and an active member of both the African American and Muslim communities in the city.
Qualities: Good (+2) construction worker, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) honest, good (+2) watch out for the other guy, good (+2) civic skills, good (+2) Muslim, good (+2) emotional first aid, good (+2) Green Heart, good (+2) African American culture
Poor (-2) DWB
Powers: Average (0) empathy
*Jordan and Logan were inspired by two (presumably female) college-age people I met when getting horribly, embarrassingly turned around on State Street! They were absolutely lovely, and thus got written up as characters of the same sort. I have no idea of their names, origins or circumstances, but I very much appreciated their assist. Whoever you two were, thank you again for sorting out my silly self.
*Wind Sled is a white cape regional soup living on Lake Superior's south shore. He takes his cape name from the vehicles used as travel between islands and the mainland once the lake's iced over. He has good (+2) ice powers and average (0) snow powers.
*This poem was inspired, first and foremost, by a magnificently fluffy former stray of a shy sweetheart over at Love And Hisses. I've altered his name, because that'd get me smacked for copyright infringement of an already-fictional universe (the actual kitty's name is Khal Drogo!). It'd also be crossing a line I'm unwilling to cross. On a related subject, the circumstances of this poem's cat losing his first home are in no way meant to reflect back to the And3rson folks. I got the permission of the delightful Robyn of L&H writerly fame before posting any of this to DW. Thank you, Robyn!
*If you want to see what the floofily fabulous inspiration for this poem looks like, go over here and scroll down. The caption connected to the last picture in this entry is where a few verses came from. The charcoal wards thing actually sprang from that same kitty getting up the chimney of the (not in use!) fireplace, then climbing back down and leaving little black footprints all over the house. :) All the permanent resident cats featured on that blog, including the marvelous flooftastic house panther in question, have dedicated tags of their own, though prepare to lose time both reading and squeeing if you click!
*The second inspiration for this poem came from an entry to a livejournal comm that I can no longer find, and if the poster is reading this, please speak up? Someone had, and eventually had to say goodbye to, a black and white rescue cat whose first couple years were unknown to her. She was certain that, due to Oreo's (?) reactions over the years, his first family had spoken Spanish. She speculated that there'd been a woman in his first house who'd crooned ballads like a Spanish-language star on Telemundo, and a teenager who'd sung in the shower like Lady Gaga. ... I wish I could find that post.
*For reference, all the streets mentioned in this poem are real and local to Madison, Wisconsin, but the houses of worship have had their names altered. See above and crossing lines.
*During World War II, a red-tailed plane distinguished the all-African American Tuskegee Airmen from other flyers. The military was still very much a segregated organization at the time.
ysabetwordsmith. This poem is set in T-Wisconsin, specifically T-Madison, and features a hero of a different sort indeed. If anyone needs translations of the Spanish throughout, please let me know. Trigger warnings: Please take note, this poem features nongraphic but still vivid references to a house fire. It also features several levels of racist and otherwise bigoted nasties attempting malicious mischief and worse, including in cemeteries. Said nasties absolutely get theirs, and no damage is done to anyone's resting place, but this could still be sensitive territory. There is also one instance of a person not responsible for their actions being stopped in the act of pyromania, and one averted car wreck. There is absolutely no on-screen harm to animals here. None.
It's a little ironic, he feels,
a little bitter
and a lot fitting.
His name, translated to easily-spoken human sounds,
is Khallo.
He has yet to transliterate it to scripted letters;
every time he considers it,
the probable double L
of the feline trill gives him painful pause,
English's best single L approximation or no,
and he redirects.
His name, in the language he learned from his mother,
isn't far from the suspicion that's all he recalls
of the fond assignation his humans once gave him.
Or far, for that matter and by association,
from the fleeting impressions he retains
of the two-legged people he loves:
Brown faces, joyful music, a chattering television, linoleum floors.
A queen crooning ballads at the kitchen sink,
a smiling tom dancing through the front door.
A male humankitten moving with surprising, unpredictable steps,
a half-grown female singing in the shower.
Candles, Candlemass, copper wire.
Wires. Sparks.
Late night. Dark hallway.
Todo esta uscuro, pero en el cielo.
His name is not far, as he knows it now,
from the conflagration that was his home.
And, callow, for the record, he is not.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
A veces, inglés es un gran dolor en su...
never mind.
The original, capitalized human word for him
is blurred, like much of those early months,
in the haze that was his slow-developing awareness before the fire.
He's not sure, now,
whether that blur is due to kittenhood,
the capacity of his mind in the time before the blaze,
or the concept the humans call a trauma blank.
If it's the last, he reasons, it's faulty,
because he retains enough even now,
if only just,
to still seek his people
in street corner crowds and city block windows.
The fire itself is flat enough in his memory,
lacking in specifics beyond the sensation of billowing heat,
walls of orange and red
and colors human languages will likely never name,
and he thanks the cat goddess that the details are no clearer.
Fuego. Agua. Nieve.
Fire. Snowbank. Water. Charcoal.
Donde esta su familia?
Where is his family?
Time distorted, for him,
in the moments--or were they days--immediately after the loss.
He knows, now,
that the gradual clarity he gained
in that period marked by slushed sidewalks
and the lingering scent of burning wood
was at least partially the increase in his intelligence
that human people call souping up.
He refuses to rule out growing up as a factor, however,
and healing the same.
Time did become measured again, after all,
and measurable.
The increase in cognition happened slowly.
From one rat-chase to the next,
one scuffle under a creaking porch staircase
to the following dash across an alley,
meanings beyond the gestures and vocalizations
of his natal language and the barest understanding
of the rapid liquidity of his second -
or is it better termed his human first? he's not sure -
began to crystallize like so much snow glaze.
"No puedo encontrar mi familia" rang true,
y "No recuerdo mi nombre,
me llamo Khallo
pero no recuerdo mi nombre segundo,"
but soon, so did "Soy un gato,
estas personas son humanos y soy un gato,"
and "Where are you going?"
and "Ua tsaug,"
and "The time is eleven fifty-three PM,"
and "Ni hao,"
and "Sa bai di,"
and "some have greatness thrust upon them,"
and "the conversion of fuel into energy,"
y "Ahora, y siempre! Ahora, y siempre!"
and "Get the hell outta my way, wouldja?"
Quickly, after that, scribbles on towering posts
became signs bearing understandable words,
digits and symbols and depthless pictorial descriptions,
black and white headlines unscrambled and made sense,
and blue-tinted screens unclouded into information.
And suddenly--Intellect, the human people call it in English
when a furry being has a mind like his
and he's aware, now, of the rarity of his mind.
Superintellect.
Inteligente, he thinks, and says, and somehow his feline mouth
forms the exact note of it
on the very first try.
Thank la madre de todos gatos he's alone for that.
It's around then that he starts keeping a tally.
His skills and gifts collect like icicles,
never-melting on a roof's edge,
possessions unburnt.
Multiple abilities, he hears human people say in English
on the subject of beings like himself -
the tom called Wind Sled on Madeline Island, for one,
and suddenly distance
is a thing that Khallo can measure in abstract words -
but he prefers other phrasing.
No hay fuego allí. Nunca hay fuego allí.
He grows large and fierce,
kind, long-haired and fluffy even in high summer,
maned, feathered and fancy, black from nose to tail,
shy and skittish, committed and loyal.
He interacts with few directly,
speaks to fewer in the languages he knows,
keeps his name close to himself,
guards his trust, guards his memories,
guards his city and its own
and searches for his people in throngs.
He will find them.
The gently-fizzing footprints he tracks
across a patch of favored concrete one morning
come as no particular surprise.
Each paw's placement, he learns by happy accident,
can be marked in charcoal dust
with a moment's concentration if he wishes.
He experiments.
His wards dance with subtle energies
as friendly as autumn dusk,
are human foot-scuffed and broom-swept with ease
but seem untouchable by breezes.
A brown squirrel runs right over one once,
and does not flinch.
A sprinting, gabbling humankitten barely old enough to speak
bounces, unharmed, off the barrier another creates,
lands on its--their--tail with a squawk
and is thus caught by the adults who've been
frantically chasing them down the street for half a block.
The idea accrues like a snowdrift.
Esta es posible. Posiblemente sí.
Por esta ciudad. Por mi familia.
And not long after--
A young human female on the south end of Park Street
wakes up to find kitty cat prints
practically stamped into the rust
on the hood of her increasingly squeal-prone car
and, smiling, leaves them there.
Two hours later she's telling the cameras, "I swear ta God,
my brakes done gave out!
Two more inches and I woulda hit that tree.
No idea how I stopped.
Felt like I hit something, like a wall, or a pillow.
Or a wall made outa pillows, I dunno.
It's like... somebody knew.
Like they knew my brakes was bad
because I ain't got the money for that and rent and food, and
like--like someone wanted me to live, or something."
Later, lurking in a doorway on the square,
Khallo sees a bar room television
play a news report containing that clip
and sighs gratitude through his whiskers at the sky.
It worked. Gracias a la madre de los gatos, it worked.
Pawprints ring an entire Jenifer Street house's wraparound porch
and, that night, the matches in the hand
of the ill, not-responsible young woman
he's seen squinting in plain speculation,
the one who glories, singly, in setting objects alight
will not catch.
She screams as the wardlines scatter cooled ash into the cuffs of her jeans.
The police are gentle when they retrieve her.
Khallo, hidden, wary,
sees that for himself and is relieved.
The crowd of sniggering, sneaker-clad blond boys, however,
so very luckily overheard before the fact,
all but trip over the lines of objection he's laid
in front of the battered, beloved corner store on Allied Drive.
Three of them goggle, bewildered.
The boldest sprawls, spilling his can of gasoline into a snowbank,
and the hardest curses
in what Khallo recognizes as late-learned German
as his lighter flies out of his grip and lands,
black-dusted and cold, in the gutter.
A siren wails in crescendo, tires skid to a stop,
and Khallo is not sorry
when the brashest and the harshest
of those five pale human kittens try to fight.
And lose.
Khallo's claws extend in silence,
and he growls.
No necesitan fuego aquí. Nunca necesitan fuego aquí.
He hears snippets of speculation and conversation,
reads one discarded newspaper's worried and worrying story
and, resulting,
crosses the city to trace paths, unnoticed in the grass,
around the headstones of the cemeteries
at Forest Glade and Temple Shalom,
at the city's single mazjid and Maple Hill,
at Saint Bartholomew, Peace Lutheran,
Santo Ignacio, Trinity Baptist and James Riley.
And he's watching, fortuitously,
when the humans with faces obscured by fabric
fall awkwardly over themselves between the rows
of upright, Hebrew and Yiddish-lettered markers,
tripped well shy of their targets,
and bicker in slowly rising voices
as their assumed clumsiness multiplies
with every attempt to move nearer their goal.
He's watching when a lone white-hooded tom's aim goes perfectly awry;
that creature kicks himself spectacularly in the opposite leg,
leaving the flag-adorned gravesite
with its faded but loving reproduction of a red-tailed plane
utterly untouched in place,
and howls like a kit
from the redirected force of his metal-shod toes.
He's watching, too,
when the contents of the bare-faced, aging human queen's bucket of paint
fail to reach the tombstones inscribed with crosses and surnames -
Andrade, Larredo, Miranda, Ituarte, Barrientos, de Tlalpan, Ojeda, Jerémie, Vega-Palacio -
but splash backward and into her face instead,
sheeting her sweatshirt and pants in red.
She snarls, half-wailing in fury,
and Khallo purrs a near-silent, ferocious happiness
as she flees, blinking and spluttering English curses,
straight into a clever human bystander's tattletale flash.
Idiota. Terible!
He is watching.
He is watching out for his people.
And he is watching for his people.
He will find them.
Necesita encontrarlos.
No one new has yet dedicated a word of their own to him,
at least in his hearing,
unless sharp-eyed niños squeaking "kitty kitty kitty!"
count for that purpose. Khallo says they do,
but only to himself.
On the second paw,
the intoxicated giggler who crowed, "Heeeeeey there, fancy pantsy!
C'mon an' have a drink! You got a fluffy butt!"
when he spotted Khallo beneath a streetlight
absolutely does not count even a little.
He believes that, by now, at least one tom
from the mosque does recognize him
for who and what he is.
That human does have a remembered second name;
Rahim, the male's friends and his imam call him, but
Abd-al Latif, say the local news reports
when speaking of Rahim's small but vital heroics.
Khallo admires that particular man very much.
There are two others, students,
possibly littermates and barely past kittenhood,
whom he also suspects of--the human phrase in English is clocking him,
though they make precious little outright sign of it
to anyone but each other.
Khallo credits or blames his own ears for that
for perking at the sound of the Spanish the kits were speaking,
albeit Spanish laced with careful phrases
in a language he doesn't recognize by name.
The teal-haired one, the one called Logan,
the one who is not a human female despite appearance,
now smiles at him every time they glimpse him
in a State Street building's shade.
The one who is a female, the one named Jordan,
oh so casually nudges a piece of chicken
over the edge of her salad container
first once, as she passes him on Library Mall,
and then again the next day.
Khallo thinks he might speak to those human kits, someday.
Much of the rest of the city barely sees him.
Nearly all of that is by his own design,
and the rest is human standard.
He is as distant, to most of them,
as dark matter is to Earth.
But he is abroad in the world,
and he is seeking triumph
over evils both great and small,
and he is seeking justice,
and he is seeking the humans he treasures.
Necesita encontrarlos.
Necesita oir su nombre segundo
desde su familia humana.
And he needs to learn theirs.
Khallo
Description: He is a longhaired, very fluffy neutered male black cat, possibly Norwegian forest cat or Maine coon in ancestry, but that's never been confirmed. He's approximately four years old. He is able to make the sounds necessary for humanoid speech with ease, though his mouth remains in a feline configuration. In addition to fluent communication with fellow cats, he speaks and understands Spanish, English, conversational Hmong, a few words of Mandarin, and some basic Lao. He's also literate in Spanish and English. His feline name is pronounced closest to the English word 'callow', which will never describe him.
Origin: Khallo survived a house fire as a kitten. His home suffered an unpredictable, truly bad luck electrical short and burned to the ground, and he was separated from his human family in the aftermath. His super abilities grew in gradually but noticeably as he recovered. He's now a friendly if shy stray on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin.
Khallo's humans are Hispanic and Latinx, and Spanish was the first human language he learned. It's still his admitted favorite, and his human default. He has an ongoing bias toward the city's Latinx and Spanish-speaking residents as a result, and he knows it. He is determined to find, or at least find information about, his human family. He currently has no idea if they survived the fire (they did), and the extremely scant few applicable details he retains from kittenhood memories of them don't help his search very much. He has, for example, neither surname nor street name to work from. This doesn't stop him trying.
Uniform: None. He goes nude, except for a very generous coat of fluffy, fancy fur.
Qualities: Good (+2) resourceful, good (+2) fierce, good (+2) stealthy, good (+2) cat skills, good (+2) loyal, good (+2) observant, good (+2) sense of justice, good (+2) one beautiful kitty
Poor (-2) skittish
Powers: Good (+2) superintellect, good (+2) human speech, good (+2) charcoal wards
Khallo's superintellect puts him on a level with a well-educated human. His facility for nonfeline speech is a mystery to him, but he's unlikely ever to object to the ability.
If he concentrates, Khallo can create a type of intent-based energy shield or ward on or around an object of his choosing. This manifests through his footsteps, and results in charcoal pawprints being left anywhere he walks while actively warding. They can be intentionally swept or brushed away, though natural forces i.e. wind will not disturb them. He frequently uses his wards as a fire-retardant shield or forcefield barrier, often while assisting or protecting local minorities.
Motivation: Todo por mi familia.
Logan Reyna Duarte
Description: Just slightly taller than average, and slim but not at all unhealthy. Logan is openly both sexually female and genderqueer. They prefer to use they/them pronouns, but will answer to she/her. They are currently a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and have just turned twenty. The hair on their head started changing from dark brown at puberty; all their usually-visible body hair has been entirely teal for several years. Any hair commonly concealed beneath a swimsuit has not changed, though they aren't in the habit of revealing this fact to the public. Their eyes remain dark brown. Their heritage is Latinx, specifically settler and indigenous Bolivian.
Qualities: good (+2) student, good (+2) approachable, good (+2) deductive reasoning, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) thoughtful, good (+2) multilingual (English and Spanish, and a few words of Imara)
Poor (-2) patchy family acceptance
Powers: average (0) teal hair, average (0) extended ultraviolet vision
Jordan Gonzalez Reyna
She has middling brown skin, dark brown hair and eyes. She's fairly average in height, and is reasonably physically fit; no one's likely to call her fat. Jordan is currently twenty, not quite twenty-one, and a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She's good friends with her cousin Logan, who's of similar age. Her heritage is Latinx, mostly settler and indigenous Bolivian.
Qualities: good (+2) student, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) approachable, good (+2) colored pencil artist, good (+2) multilingual (English, Spanish, and a few words of Imara)
Poor (-2) target of discrimination
Powers: supernary
Jordan is actively working to improve her sense of direction and situational awareness, among other things. She isn't entirely sure in which direction she wants to go with the improvements to her skills, though she's considering training up to assist domestic abuse survivors.
Abd-al Latif (Rahim Abdullah)
He has short, straight black hair, dark skin and black eyes, and a short length of neatly-kept beard. He is tall and as muscular as his profession requires, though not overly bulky. He's currently twenty-six years old. He's a certified and well-respected construction worker locally, and an active member of both the African American and Muslim communities in the city.
Qualities: Good (+2) construction worker, good (+2) friendly, good (+2) honest, good (+2) watch out for the other guy, good (+2) civic skills, good (+2) Muslim, good (+2) emotional first aid, good (+2) Green Heart, good (+2) African American culture
Poor (-2) DWB
Powers: Average (0) empathy
*Jordan and Logan were inspired by two (presumably female) college-age people I met when getting horribly, embarrassingly turned around on State Street! They were absolutely lovely, and thus got written up as characters of the same sort. I have no idea of their names, origins or circumstances, but I very much appreciated their assist. Whoever you two were, thank you again for sorting out my silly self.
*Wind Sled is a white cape regional soup living on Lake Superior's south shore. He takes his cape name from the vehicles used as travel between islands and the mainland once the lake's iced over. He has good (+2) ice powers and average (0) snow powers.
*This poem was inspired, first and foremost, by a magnificently fluffy former stray of a shy sweetheart over at Love And Hisses. I've altered his name, because that'd get me smacked for copyright infringement of an already-fictional universe (the actual kitty's name is Khal Drogo!). It'd also be crossing a line I'm unwilling to cross. On a related subject, the circumstances of this poem's cat losing his first home are in no way meant to reflect back to the And3rson folks. I got the permission of the delightful Robyn of L&H writerly fame before posting any of this to DW. Thank you, Robyn!
*If you want to see what the floofily fabulous inspiration for this poem looks like, go over here and scroll down. The caption connected to the last picture in this entry is where a few verses came from. The charcoal wards thing actually sprang from that same kitty getting up the chimney of the (not in use!) fireplace, then climbing back down and leaving little black footprints all over the house. :) All the permanent resident cats featured on that blog, including the marvelous flooftastic house panther in question, have dedicated tags of their own, though prepare to lose time both reading and squeeing if you click!
*The second inspiration for this poem came from an entry to a livejournal comm that I can no longer find, and if the poster is reading this, please speak up? Someone had, and eventually had to say goodbye to, a black and white rescue cat whose first couple years were unknown to her. She was certain that, due to Oreo's (?) reactions over the years, his first family had spoken Spanish. She speculated that there'd been a woman in his first house who'd crooned ballads like a Spanish-language star on Telemundo, and a teenager who'd sung in the shower like Lady Gaga. ... I wish I could find that post.
*For reference, all the streets mentioned in this poem are real and local to Madison, Wisconsin, but the houses of worship have had their names altered. See above and crossing lines.
*During World War II, a red-tailed plane distinguished the all-African American Tuskegee Airmen from other flyers. The military was still very much a segregated organization at the time.
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And, yeah. Anybody wanna f*** with the gravestone of a Red Tail deserves a lot more than having her outfit ruined. I have the utmost respect for those gentlemen; they were the best of the best of the best, first class.
(I remember getting to see a panel discussion by a few of their number here some years ago. During the question period at the end, this old codger stood up and said, "I _was_ one of those bomber pilots. Thank You.")
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And that particular evildoer got more than just a ruined outfit out of the deal. A tattletale flash is the prelude to a camera going off, per a recent poem Ysabet posted. Quick-witted passerby got the jump on the paint-soaked, cursing someone exiting the cemetery with an empty bucket in hand and yeeeeah, busted. She'll probably get questioned about just WTF she was trying to do, at least.
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Wow!
Re: Wow!
I'm biased. I love my city.
I'm also more and more a fan of the idea of friendly wardwork in all sorts of forms.
Re: Wow!
I love Madison too. :D Let me know when you're writing Polychrome stuff there, and I'll link it.
>> I'm also more and more a fan of the idea of friendly wardwork in all sorts of forms. <<
It's quite doable. In parts of New Orleans it's routine -- they use red brick dust and white chalk there, along with charcoal. Results are rarely this dramatic, but you never know.
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Is this the kitty you mean?
http://www.love-and-hisses.com/the-anderson-kitties-permanent-residents/khal-drogo/
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The local comment about the black US servicemen was: 'they're such nice boys, but who are those horrible white men that they brought with them?'
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Okay, with that out of the way: Oh, wow. I hope Khallo finds his people, but he's doing a lot of good on the journey.
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Thank you very much! He will find his people. I don't know where, when or how, but it'll happen.
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Caught this on second reading: The idea acrews like a snowdrift.
From context, I think the word you want there is "accrues".
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*All misspellings in this comment are deliberate!
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