Roses and Thorns

19- In The Basement

Ace stirs in his sleep more often than he used to, but not since that fateful night have I been bought back into Asha's tumultuous dreams. Today, as always, he awakes with a distant, preylike panic in his eyes before settling back into his own skin, like water seeping into the ground after the rain. He gets to his paws and turns to me before heading out.

"What's the news?" I ask.

"You were there again... but not as, well, you." he hesitates, looking me up and down. "You had brighter fur, I think. A cuff about your paw. Save for that, the dream itself was near the same. It's been less taxing lately... those herbs Ivy gave me are really helping. It's hard to keep making up nightmares for her, though, and Anassa keeps offering to analyze them for me."

"Just tell her you have the same dream every night." I suggest.

"Then they'll really want to analyze it." Ace ruffles the cloth near the edge of the bed. "Speaking of Ivy. Do you know where she's been lately? She moved out of Anue's house not long ago."

"Stocked Pantry, in the cellar." I've never been down there myself, but the scent of old apples and wheat on her pelt is unmistakeable. It compliments her herbs quite well, and she often carries the delectable aroma of an entire feast. Between that and her recent upswing in posture and hygiene, she looks presentable if not gorgeous lately.

Despite that, we're still as distant as ever. I can't recall a conversation with her and a content Ivy is just as foreign to me as a grieving one.

"I should visit," I say aloud.

"We have a day, don't we?" He headbutts the door open and strides into the morning sun, which is sharp and provides little warmth and instead glares straight into my eyes. Still, I follow him and we head to the north side by side, only to be split apart by an angry white Canis.

This is the worst possible way to start our morning.

"Tammory. How nice to see... you..." Ace starts, but his enthusiasm trails off as Tammory's displeased expression intensifies.

"I'll be taking Rose, if you don't mind."

"We were going to..." He sighs, steps back, and I cast him a look of utter betrayal as Tammory falls in beside me.

"Come with me."

"Am I sitting in for the half moon meetings again?" I snort. "I didn't even do anything wrong this time."

"We have too much to attend to. No, I just thought you'd like to see something. Did you have anything else to do today?" she asks as we walk away from Ace, but the glint in her eyes tells me the question is more rhetorical than anything else.

I'm not taking this. "Yes." I snap, matching her level and dry tone. "As a matter of fact, I was planning to speak with my sister."

"This wasn't a problem for the last two months, now was it?" She escorts me into the Table, savoring my sour expression the whole way. When I take a seat at the table, I spread myself across it, lowering my front paws and head onto the stone with a fiery indignance masked by an outwards apathy.

Tammory walks all the way to the back, making a great deal of opening the records, all the while calling to me from across the room, "So, on our last encounter, you mentioned the Hunter wasn't dangerous, correct?"

"Verhamera's tails, not this." I resist the urge to slam myself against the table.

"Funny story." Tammory rolls out a long, scratched-up scroll across the table, which ends just a pawlength before my snout. It's full of hastily scrawled minor offenses of every variety, ranging from minor plots like releasing the Kaanin from their pens to far more nefarious crimes such as poking a very large hole in a barrel of cider, along with creative misdemeanors including mixing feathers into the meal used for bread, later determined to be from a goose carrying several moderate illnesses. "These are all the crimes we couldn't trace to Shea."