The door opened, and Dolanna stepped in. He had been waiting for this. No doubt she would harangue him about spoiling their one, only, and best chance to reach Dala Yar Arak and be able to move around openly. She would look at him with those eyes, those eyes that said everything to him that her mouth was too afraid to say, eyes that would accuse, show disappointment, be frustrated with him. Dolanna's opinion of him was something that mattered a great deal to him, and to see it damaged in her eyes always stung.
"Change," she ordered in a calm, sober voice. He sat up and did so, then sat down cross-legged on the bed from the squat in which he had appeared after shapeshifting. "You disappoint me, Tarrin," she said bluntly. "Renoit is starting to second-guess his agreement with us. I explicitely promised him that we would cause no mischief, and you break that promise on the very first day. What defense do you have for this attack?"
"He called me a freak," he said in a savage hiss, anger boiling up with frightening speed, the Cat awakening from its dormant place in his mind at the smell of that anger, curious to see if it was something in which it should intervene. "He was being really snide and snotty, insulting both of us. Then he called me a freak. I just couldn't take it anymore."
"I see," she said, her tone slightly hostile. "I see that it was not enough justification to strike him down. Had I not healed him, he would have died."
"Like that means anything to me," he grunted, looking at his feet.
"And that is precisely my problem," she told him in a tone that made him look at her. "I had hoped that it was the trauma that had turned you this way, that your ferality was a condition of your circumstance, but I see I am wrong, and Haley was right. You are truly feral. And there is no more hope for you now."
She stood up, looking down at him with eyes that had absolutely no emotion in them. "You will confine yourself to your cabin during daylight," she ordered. "You will not interact with the performers. You may only come out at night, and even then only in cat form."
"You're grounding me?" he said incredulously.
"No, I am isolating you," she replied, turning her back to him and walking towards the door, then stopping beside it and turning to face him. "You have done enough damage, Tarrin. Now I must contain it, and contain you. Were it not for the seriousness of our mission, I would drop you off at the nearest land and let you go, but I cannot. You cannot. There will be no more unprovoked attacks, Tarrin. I am tired of cleaning up the messes you make.
"I cannot defend your actions any longer," she told him, putting her hand on the doorknob. "I have tried to make you feel comfortable by treating you like anyone else, but I see that was a grave error. From now on, you will not be treated like everyone else. You have dug your own hole, my dear one. Now you must stand in it."
"How dare you pass judgement on me!" he suddenly roared, snapping to his feet by the bunk and glaring at her. "If anyone could understand the way I feel, I thought it would have been you! They were warned not to be hostile to me, Dolanna, and that kid did it anyway! He called me a freak! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Do you think it doesn't remind me of what I used to be, and what I've lost? I never asked for this, Dolanna, and now I'm being punished for it! Do you have any idea how helpless it makes me feel to know that I never had a choice? I had a life, Dolanna, and it was taken away from me with no regard as to what it would do to me!" He turned from her and looked at the wall. "When he called me a freak, all I could think of was that I am one!" He whirled on her, holding out his clawed paws. "Look at me. Look!" he said in a nearly hysteric tone that made her take a step back. "I used to have hands, Dolanna, human hands that could pick up a fork or spoon. I used to be alone in my own head, I used to be in control of myself. I used to be normal! But now I'm not, and I never had a chance to be anything else!
"Do you think I like being like this?" he said in a shrill voice. "Do you think I like knowing that killing a man means as much to me as picking a burr out of my tail? Do you think I like seeing the fear in people's eyes when they look at me? I've lost everything I used to care about, and all I had left was my friends. And now I'm losing them too!" Tears formed in his eyes as he stared accusingly at Dolanna. "I want my life back, Dolanna, and I can't have it! I'm so tired of being this way, but I don't have a choice!" He whirled around and put his back to her, paws on the sides of his head.
"Tarrin, I-"
"Get out!" he screamed. "Leave me alone!"
Wordlessly, Dolanna left. Tarrin knelt on the floor, then put his forehead to the wood, weeping out the pain of deep wounds, wounds that he thought had healed long ago.
Outside the door, Dolanna leaned against it, tears flowing freely down her face. Allia and Keritanima stood in the companionway, ready to help subdue their brother had he stepped over the line. That Dolanna now feared him, feared that the trust he had for her wouldn't be enough to protect her from him was enough of an indicator of how dangerous she felt he had become. Tears stained her pale cheeks, and they were out of place with the wan smile that graced her features.
"We heard the yelling, Dolanna," Keritanima said quietly. "Is he going to be alright?"
"Yes, Keritanima," she said wearily, tears and smile painting a paradox on her features. "I think that he will be just fine."
"It sounds like he is crying," Allia said in concern.
"It is a long time coming, Allia," Dolanna said. "Never before has he admitted, even to himself, the pain his condition causes him. He has never mourned the loss of his humanity, of his former life. What he is doing now is what he should have done the very first day after he was turned."
Both of them stared at Dolanna for a long moment, then tears formed in Allia's eyes. "My poor deshaida," she whispered. "Even to me, it was as if he accepted it."
"What choice did he have, sister?" Keritanima said with a sniffle. "I know how it feels to be trapped in a life you don't want."
"We should-"
"No," Dolanna said, holding Allia back. "This is not a time when he would appreciate company. Leave him be."
She gave the door a long, searching look, placing her hand upon it as if she were laying a gentle hand on someone's back. "Just leave him be."
GoTo: Title EoF
Chapter 6
There just never seemed to be an end to it.
Tarrin stood on the deck, near the bow, staring up into the clear night sky, up at the four moons. The night was unseasonably warm, with a muggy wind blowing up from the south. The sails had been raised and the sea anchor dropped so that the ship could sleep during the night, with only a trio of watchmen to look for danger and inform the navigator of how much they drifted during the night. They left him alone. They knew better than to bother him.
It had been months since his transformation into a Were-cat, and he'd thought that the trauma of it had been dealt with. But the simple fact of the matter was that he'd never faced it before. The very moments after he woke up had been spent trying to deal with the new body, the instincts. He'd never allowed himself to think about what he had lost, only how to make the best of a bad situation. There had been laments, wistful thoughts, but never did he allow himself to dwell on what had happened. Even when he had time to think about it, the chaos at the Tower always gave him something other to think about. Staying alive had been a very large part of his life since being turned, forcing him to shunt away almost everything except that one simple goal. To stay alive. Part of the acceptance was because of the very instincts inside him. They forced acceptance, had altered his mind so that it seemed natural to him to be what he was. But it wasn't natural to him, a fact that he'd only now been able to face.