pinkgothic:
It was 24:05 local time - just shy of midnight - when the door on Leila's tiny apartment chimed. Like everyone else on Mars, Leila had an apartment about the size of a tin can, with neither a kitchen nor a bathroom of its own. And as with everyone else on Mars, Leila's bed doubled as a couch. There was more than enough room to stretch, but if she wanted to exercise, she'd have to do it in the communal gym.
Like everyone else on Mars, personal sleep schedules were all over the place. Forty approximate extra minutes each day added up for some people. If you had somewhere to be synced up with everyone else, you made sure to catch some sleep beforehand.
But what you didn't do was ring someone's doorbell without knowing their personal biological clock.
By corollary, the person ringing her doorbell was either an asshole or Mateo Kasun.
Nymphetamine:
Leila was awake, but barely, still rubbing the bleary sleep from her eyes. “Just a moment!” came the shout from the insides, perhaps forgetting whether or not anyone could hear her. She made quick work of pulling on her clothes, discarding the sleeping shirt in the small hamper for that purpose before finally turning to the door. Placing her hand on the door lock, she activated it into opening, her eyes focusing on the man standing outside her tiny apartment. “Mr. Kasun. What a pleasure to see you at this hour…” Really, Leila was trying not to be sarcastic, but she was still acclimatizing herself to life on Mars.
pinkgothic:
Mateo Kasun had both arms wrapped around Adhafera in an awkward posture and looked even less awake than Leila.
He opened his mouth, and a sound came out with all of the articulation of a Neanderthal, although with a prim and proper authority to it. An awkward second of silence hung between them, before Mateo blinked. “…that wasn't–,” he started, vocalising his self-reflection. “Wait. Isn't–?” He gave an exhale that was more sigh than not, gathering himself. His gaze dropped to the stoic cat a few times, head canted in a manner that struck Leila as slightly odd, although she couldn't quite put a finger on–
“Okay, let's just– won't get better if I just stand here, I get it. So, ah, you know I hate asking favours, but, uh, can you take care of Haffy for a few days?” he asked. There was a hint of a slur to his voice - and much more than just a hint of deep apology.
The Martian Peterbald mrowled a remarkably clear assent, peering at Leila with feline interest.
Nymphetamine:
The cat in his arms was a bit of a surprise, but more so was the lack of articulation in which he spoke, the vocalization nothing close to words. Blinking in mild surprise she looked at him with some confusion flooding into her face. A pause at that, as she watched the man attempt to collect himself, trying to find the *proper* words for this exchnage. It was all so very strange, and she wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. Even more so when he asked if she could take care of his cat. Eyes drifted down to the feline in his arms, met with the uncanny notion that the cat knew exactly what its master was saying, and agreeing. “Um… I guess… Sure?” she said, stumbling on the words a little hesitantly, because it seemed like she was potentially getting herself into more trouble than may be worth helping out a co worker. “He's not sick or anything, is he?”
pinkgothic:
For a moment while she spoke and asked her questions, the tip of Mateo's tongue poked out between his lips. Then it politely disappeared again.
It looked like it all took a bit of effort, like there was a bit more to it than just the obvious exhaustion. Drugs? Had someone smuggled in some alcohol, maybe even something harder? The recreational drugs they allowed on Mars - not much more than caffeine, nicotine patches and psychadelics - all didn't have symptoms like this.
“No, she's fine,” he assured, nodding a little for emphasis and almost losing himself in the repetition of the motion. “I am just not getting enough sleep.”
If Leila were to count the number of pets on Mars, it would fit on one hand. The two cats on base were a curious, friendly breed, hairless as not to add to the clogging of the air filters, happy with absurdly tiny territory by careful genetic selection. While their diets had been hardened to omnivorous, every couple of months, they needed an injection of special proteins to deal with the lack of meat on Mars. Even if they'd slaughtered all of the chickens they had up here, it'd only last the cats a few months, so they didn't.
And still.
Mateo was a sorcerer. His apartment wasn't like everyone else's, he had about twice as much space as she had. Granted, most of that extra space was taken up with a desk sporting two monitors fed by a slim desktop blade in a drawer, but maybe there was a reason both cats belonged to sorcerers with their real estate privileges.
Maybe.
Mateo was sweet and friendly and hadn't said a bad word about anyone in the few weeks they'd known each other professionally, but maybe, just maybe, he hadn't thought this one through. It would certainly be on brand for whatever he'd been smoking.
Hopefully he hadn't literally been smoking anything, the filters would hate that.
“She's not disruptive,” he clarified in afterthought. “I just– side-effects. Turns out I can't sleep if she's awake, not while she's my familiar.”
Oh. Oh.
Maybe he should have opened with that one.
Nymphetamine:
She eyeballed the little hobgoblin in his eyes, the hairless feline not a *strange* thing to her, but nonetheless a *strange* thing on Mars. That he was one of the few people that had a pet in the dome was not entirely a surprise, though the fact he was bringing it to her was. Trying to suss out what exactly was going with him, her eyes continued to drift between him, and the cat. “She's not–” and she was cut off, as he mentioned that she wasn't disruptive, despite this lack of sleep that he was apparently dealing with. “Er… I see.” But then he admitted the actual problem, the one that had taken him a while to build up to to tell her. “That's uh… that's a terrible arrangement,” she said, despite knowing how much cats slept, though lesso at night. “That's… She's not going to keep me up too if I take her or is that only the um… the bond?” she guessed it would be called, but wasn't entirely sure. “Do you have her stuff? Food dishes? Toys?” Were feline familiars really that different from regular felines? “Sweaters, maybe?” for the cat, of course.
pinkgothic:
“No, she's not fussy or noisy,” Mateo promised and then confirmed: “It's just the bond. I had her for, um. A year now? I think it's been a year? A year. Earth year, not– yeah. Anyway. Bond's just been there for the past two days. It's– kind of? Kind of like I can hear her think? They're not really thoughts, more–” One arm peeled off the cat to gesture at the air.
“Food's in the communal area. Toys… uh. I can get those. Mostly a plushie, fills the baby niche for her, though she bites it, remind herself that it's not a baby, that sort of thing…”
It was increasingly apparent that Mateo Kasun needed two things: Sleep and distance from a cat he had some kind of psychic bond with.
“The temperature's okay for her. She will steal your blanket if she thinks otherwise. Or just sit in your lap or your shoulder, whatever's more comfortable. Cat seats.”
By now, Adhafera was purring, still peering across to Leila.
Nymphetamine:
She couldn't believe she was going to be responsible for this sorcerer's cat for an undetermined amount of time. Sure, it would be a nice way to get in with the sorcerers, but she wasn't so sure if she was the best person tolook after his cat. Still. Ambition was what it was, and she wanted certain things. “Alright… I uh… Well, this is weird Mr. Kasun, but I'll do it. So long as she's not going to pee everywhere?” Leila sounded hopeful about that as she reached out to take the cat from him. “How long is this arrangement going to last?” she asked, probably the most pertinent question of them all.
pinkgothic:
Mateo shook his head, answering the first question. For a moment his mouth opened and the posture of his neck shifted just as though he were going to lean down and lick his cat - which, perhaps, was precisely the urge he was slave to - but then he instead swallowed pointedly, chin moving up in the process, and turned the gesture into speech: “In all honesty, I haven't the faintest idea. If it lasts longer than a week, I promise I'll find another arrangement.”
Nymphetamine:
“And she's gonna be okay with this?” Leila asked, her expression a little dubious. The cat was apparently well behaved and hopefully wouldn't be causing either a mess or damage to her meager furniture. “Well… I guess I can help out. This time.” Said as though she hadn't quite believed what she was saying, surprised by herself. “If it's not gonna last more than a week…” She could endure this. Do a favour for one of the sorcerers, maybe get in with them and start her own tutelage, though she wasn't sure how clandestine that might have to be. Now was not the time to ask.
pinkgothic:
The Peterbald did not wait for Mateo to release her fully and set her down, half squirming, half hopping out of his arms, landing with a natural grace that showed that she was quite accustomed to Mars's lower gravity. She didn't seem to be young enough to have only ever known Mars, but it was evidently where she felt at home now, her tail pointing straight up, the tip a happy curve as she slipped past Leila and into her living space.
“Thank you,” Mateo said, visibly deflating with relief. A sadness twinkled in his eyes as he watched Adhafera inspect the living space. “I'm going to go grab some sleep before it's time for work.” It sounded as though he were making a promise. “See you there?”
It was fairly rare that they didn't, seeing as they were both assigned to the greenhouse, although sometimes it took half of the day before they crossed paths. The structure made up at least half of the base, likely more - neither of them had measured, or looked at blueprints - made worse for the various compartments it was cut into to safeguard their oxygen supply from micro-meteorite impacts.
Air was still expensive up here. It was something of a logistic problem - which mass, exactly, were they planning to use for it? Phobos and Deimos were cute little moons, but barely enough to put a dent into anything. Mateo had mentioned, off-hand, that he and Nyarai were trying to figure out if they could crack the old rule that alchemy either shifted molecular weight or repurposed molecular component parts, but never both, not even in sequence. It wasn't Leila's field of expertise, but she understood enough that if they did crack it, it meant producing atmosphere out of thin air - somewhat more literally than usual.
But most of the time he was doing grunt work with the soil, less because it was a good use of his time, and more so his brain wouldn't rust completely in the limited academic environment of Mars.
Nymphetamine:
She watched as the cat, who seemingly knew about their arrangement in an uncanny display of intelligence, jump down from her master's arms and padded into Leila's small room like it knew exactly what she was about. Leila watched with a bit of surprise and then had to attribute that to being a sorcerer's familiar. She gave Mateo a little tight lipped smile, and nodded when he said he'd see her there at work. That wasn't too long from now, but they only had a little bit of overlap, on most days. As a botanist, her duty was seeing to their oxygen producing forest and greenery, and whatever the sorcerers were up to was something of a mystery for her.