Ashenai stared at her mother, the menace in the old woman's voice  being lost on her completely. How did she not know that her daughter had known her own father? No, Mother had never told her- had never cared to tell her -but Ashenai was a product of curiosity. Naturally, she had found him. The old woman wasn't aware of her own daughter's curiosity and determination- both of which she had inherited from her mother.

"The story's too long, Mother," Ashenai said dully, knowing her useless voice would have been lost to anyone but another neko. "I discovered him in the sewers, mindless and disconnected from reality. He was just another one of them, he'd had a taste of the blood and he wasn't him- I killed him for you. I saved what I could." Her emotion spoke through her eye,an adolescent rebellion daring to speaking out against her mother's disgust. Her mother had never earned her daughter's respect, instead earning harsh words and cold gazes. The two personalities were both fire, always clashing and only making the other burn hotter. While the woman's normal reaction to such harsh news would have been to lash out in anger, to Ashenai's surprise, the old lady shook her head and forced herself to her feet, shuffling through a metal door and closing it behind her, leaving her daughter with only the clock's ticking to keep her company.

Ashenai didn't move from her spot in the chair, simply laying her gloved hands flat against the steel table. Under the black leather gloves, her hands looked normal aside from the three-inch claws protruding from each fingertip, acting as a macabre fingernail. She stared at her hands for awhile, listening to the clock tick and chime. Never once did she rise from her uncomfortable perch to check on her mother. She knew the old woman was fine in her own, maladjusted manner. She'd been kind enough to let her daughter enter her home, and since the old lady hadn't kicked her out yet, Ashenai was going to enjoy the silence and solitude of her mind for as long as her body would allow. Life on the streets and in the sewers was hard and dangerous, often loud and unrestful. It was a life she had to return to soon.

x

"Ashenai!" Her mother's enraged caterwaul made her jump, her eye wide. Ashenai's mother sat at the other end of the table, her ears perked in amusement, eyes betraying her annoyance. Obviously, Ash had overstayed her welcome after she dozed off. The young neko stood from the uncomfortable chair, stretching her thin arms above her and shaking her numb legs to get her blood flowing after misuse.

"Leave," her mother said, clawed hands continuously moving with her knitting needles, eyes cast down at her stitching. "Don't come back until you're ready to explain to me how you knew who your father was." She ended her words there, an obvious conclusion, but Ashenai stared at her mother for a moment in contemplation before seeming to make up her mind. Leaning over the table on her fists, claws digging into the palms of her hands, she sank forward, coming a few inches from her mother's face.

"Or what, Mommy?" She growled challengingly, obviously not ready to be completely exiled from her only sanctuary in Edris. She never had felt so compelled to not leave her mother's presence, yet Ashenai was not surprised when a knitting needle suddenly came flying at her. She didn't have a chance to react, the smooth metal gliding effortlessly through the thin membrane of her left cat ear. Her eye widened in pain and she staggered back a step from the table and her mother, not looking at the woman who was glaring at her with complete contempt, waiting for her to talk back again.

"Fuck you," Ashenai spat at her mother after she had overcome her initial shock, her insult coming off as weak with her suddenly-small voice. She reached for the foot of the needle that was stuck toward the top of her bleeding ear, managing to grab a hold of the now-bloody metal between her claws and pull it out. She glanced at the bloodied yellow needle once and chucked it right back at her mother, the needle whizzing harmlessly above her ears. The old lady's harsh chuckling followed Ashenai out into the streets, the single noise mocking every failure she'd ever committed in her life.