Summer 82, 124
Sjal looked at the cat in front of her. It was a kitten, a stray, but she'd taken it in. Partly because it wouldn't leave her alone and partly because it was so cute. She wanted a pet, even if she didn't admit it. She meowed at it and it meowed back as she held it up and stared into its cute little eyes. It was so precious. She didn't want any harm to ever come to this little guy and she'd only known it a short while.
She knew that it was possible to form a connection with animals. Her childhood education taught her as much. It was possible for people to form a connection through something called animism. She knew little of the subject outside of the bare basics, but thought that it couldn't possibly be all that difficult to dredge up old memories. She continued to meow at the cat and it continued to meow back. They were talking to each other – it was just that neither of them knew what the other was saying. The cat's ability to speak was juvenile at best and Sjal… she was more or less just making sounds and hoping for the best.
Sjal continued to practice with the sounds she made until she made something that lit a spark in the kitten's eye. Sjal reproduced the sound several more times and she found that she kept the kitten's attention.
"Interesting. So it is possible to learn like this… it's just going to be incredibly slow." She thought about how long it would take to master a language from scratch with nothing to guide her but the subtle responses of a baby cat. She shook her head, it just wasn't to be done.
"As much as I want to talk to you, I need a teacher," she said to the little kitten. "That, or maybe you're just too young to talk to." She had little confidence in pulling up memories from a decade in the past. It was so much easier to think about using a sword, or running quickly.
She focused harder on her lessons. She hadn't gone to the best school, but this sort of thing was expected to be learned. There was no reason why she shouldn't be able to form a bond with something as simple as a cat.
Some basic words and phrases came to mind, which she repeated back. The kitten was an attentive listener, but the words were still not making much sense.
"You, me, friends. Yes?" Sjal managed to say in beast tongue. She messed up at first, instead of saying friends she said the word dog which made absolutely no sense.
"Friends. Yes," the kitten responded. Well, it wasn't really speaking, but its meows were translated through the connection they were forming.
"Good. Me you friends. Long time?" Sjal asked with what she hoped was a questioning tone.
"Long time?" the kitten asked back.
"Long time. Today, tomorrow, after that."
"Who cares about tomorrow? Let's play!" The kitten leapt at her like a mighty lion only for Sjal to catch it in her hands. She held it up and looked at it again before setting it down. She had never bonded to an animal before which was why this was so difficult. More because she was so busy training her body than anything else. She also had a lack of interest. She didn't like life in this country. The things she heard about other countries interested her more.
Big cities, technology… those were the things that she wished she'd grown up around. Binding to an animal was a waste of time, in her opinion, unless you found a powerful companion, like a tiger. But who had the space to house one of those? Who could afford to feed one? She was reliving the thoughts she'd had a decade ago.
"I'm getting off topic," she said aloud as she shook her head. Her teachings were slowly coming back to her and she remembered the basic process of canting saol.
The kitten didn't want to sit still as she tried. Instead it wanted to scamper around wildly and play with a piece of string that hung off of one of her shirts. It went around and around so quickly that it made Sjal's head spin.
"Okay, that's enough!" she shouted, but was ignored. "Oh right, I need to cant." She then began to cant. It started slowly as she got the pronunciations wrong many times but she recognized her mistakes and fixed them. She started to speak more confidently and loudly. After several minutes of this, the kitten finally started to calm down. It nearly shook with its pent up energy, but it sat down and looked at her curiously. She finally had its undivided attention.
"Now, let us bond," she said.
"Why?" the cat seemed to ask. It was a good question. Sjal really did not have any reason to bind with it other than to practice.
"You, my pet," she explained. That much was true, at least.
"Why?"
"Because you're cute, and I think it would do me good to have a cat like you around. You could eat mice, play around. I will feed you and make sure you don't starve."
"You already do that. Why bond?"
"That is… a good question," Sjal thought. "I wasn't expecting so much sass from a little kitten."
"Are we done now? Can I play?" It leapt away but Sjal started canting again. The kitten was visibly getting irritated now. "I don't like this trick of yours. Let me play!"
"After bind" Sjal said. "Accept. Or, I find another cant."
The cat's eyes sank and it looked sad for the first time since she'd found it. It said "okay."
Sjal felt bad and didn't really mean it, but she didn't know how else to get the cat to listen. Saol flowed between them for a short while and then the binding was complete.
"All done. I think," Sjal said unsurely. "Go play," she continued, in beast tongue.
The kitten went back to playing as if nothing had happened. Sjal let it play around for a few minutes then said, "enough. Come here."
The kitten took a few minutes to stop what it was doing, but it came over obediently. "Good job," she said. She looked around for a treat, finding nothing but she could remedy that. She waved her hand and opened up a portal to the market. "Come. Milk time."
"Hooray!" the kitten said in response, leaping up to her legs and clawing its way up into her coat pocket.
"This is so much better than having a normal pet," Sjal thought. She didn't think the kitten would have ever listened to her if she couldn't speak directly to it. She would have to work on her pronunciation and vocabulary to make better use of her ability.
They went over to buy a bottle of milk, which Sjal poured into her cupped hand so the kitten could lap it up. This continued as she walked around. It wasn't very busy so she could multitask. She spotted a book store and went inside, though she'd stopped feeding by that point. She browsed around until she found a book on animism, beast tongue specifically. She tucked it under her shoulder and shook her head when the kitten started trying to scratch at it.
"Behave," she commanded. She also found a book on glamour. These were very low level books, meant for children… but it was where she would have to pick up her studies. There was yet another book on flora that she grabbed, but she wasn't planning on binding to any plants in the near future. From what she knew from her father, it was a lot of work to make use of a flower's magic. She was trying to get good at one thing, not spread herself thin.
She paid for the books and took a portal back into her home, far from the store. She had noticed that she'd gained a few pounds since she had become a mage. It was much more convenient to just take a portal everywhere. She made up for that with combat, but she couldn't deny that it made her a little too lazy.
"Alright, time to read," she told the kitten. "Go have fun. Enjoy. Leave me alone." She flipped through the book and learned a few more words. "I like you."
"I like you too."
Sjal read for an hour, which was a lot for her. Then, she put the book away and stretched. She had learned a lot of words, but she was sure she would forget them. The only way to learn this sort of thing was to use it in practice. So, she called over her new friend and started talking to him. The cat was confused as to why they were talking about random topics. All it wanted to do was sleep. In fact it did fall asleep when she spent several minutes rifling through the pages looking for a particular word. A smile crept on her lips when she noticed. It was a good stopping point anyways, so she let him have his break. She realized she ought to rest as well.
