burke and hare's emporium [c]

Change. Louse needed change. Maybe that was why Maggot accompanied him today instead of Fish. He didn't mean to pick favourites, that wasn't very fair, but he did spend a lot of time with his brother as opposed to the rest of his siblings... and almost sibling. Almost sibling wasn't a nice way to put it either, Maggot didn't look like him, but he hardly remembered a time without her and his time with his mother he didn't want to remember, so Maggot was just a normal sibling. Except it was a little weird the scraggly cat had chosen to willingly join their unit. He wouldn't of. but he also hadn't been given a choice. Louse would look out for Maggot like the rest of his siblings which wasn't much, but it was far more than the care he took for anyone else.

"I wanted to go see the barn." he mewed to her as they walked "There's quite a few, but I think this one's the biggest and there's strange animals that live at them. You like weird things, and I like adventures and here we are!" In the distance he could make out the shapes of large strange animals, and his claws slid out in excitement- a bad habit he was yet to kick. He was about to run towards them when another shape to his left caught his eye. Amber eyes flicked to it, and he padded closer. The air began to smell sickly, wrong and his dark nose crinkled. Maggot probably loved the smell though.

The shape grew larger, and Louse realised it was the form of a cat, but it was very... still. The tom raised a paw and extended a claw, prodding the mass of fur. It twitched, but it was fairly unresponsive. The smell of sickness emanated from it. Something was wrong with the cat, and he began to feel a sense of foreboding. Amber eyes searched the cat, trying to figure out was wrong. There was a metallic smell too he realised which he quickly came to realise was blood. Louse took several steps back, shooting a look towards Maggot. "What should we do? I think they're alive, but... Something isn't right."

"Ah." was all louse said. It was a little obvious the cat in front of them was dying, he was more asking about the why he was dying. Nor was he afraid of dead cat, he'd killed before after all. Though, the apprentice had been an accident, and all the cats over yonder were rather upset with him over it. It wasn't his fault, he had defended himself, all he wnated to do was play with his rocks. The apprentice really had been no different to them either. The black tom sprawled before him was almost as still as those rocks, his laboured breathing the only difference. Who knew how long he had lain there, trying to get up. He didn't even acknowledge them, and if he was as close to death as Maggot suggested... "I could kill him now." meowed Louse blankly "I guarantee dying in your burrow would be less pleasant than my claws, we can carry him there after the deed is done."

Louse hummed pleased their sibling was in agreement. For a moment, he contemplated on how best to end the fading loner. Teeth or claws? Teeth or claws? Teeth or- an unsheathed paw lashed out, quick as a striking snake, slitting the black tom’s throat. Blood instantly welled to the surface of the wound, the cat’s life energy seeping out with it. Louse took a couple of steps back, and hastily wiped the blood on his paw off in the grass. “I do enjoy living.” he confirmed, watching as the rogue gargled on his own blood. “I don’t think we’ll end up like him though, I think he’s sick or something. That’s why I used my claws I didn’t want any of his blood getting in my mouth.”

Louse’s amber eyes drifted from the stuttering rise and fall of his chest to Maggot’s gleeful face. Their eyes were already on his frame. The two of them probably looked so odd, she was joyous in the face of death, and he could not care, nor find an ounce of regret for what he had done. They asked a question, tone light, but look in her eyes was wild and intense. He wasn’t sure he wanted to answer his sister’s question honestly. Would they find his lack of care freakish? He cared about her and Fish and Grub Jr. He use to care about his other siblings too, but they were gone now. At the time, he had felt sad, but now he did not really think of them. Their disappearance from his life hadn’t changed anything, and so what was there to care about? He could not change what had happened and so he did not dwell on it. ”I could enjoy it.” Louse answered simply after sometime “But their hasn’t been anything particularly new or exciting about the killing I have done. Besides, I’ve only killed once…” The cat between them let out a shaky rattle “…Twice, maybe my feelings will change if I happen to kill more.” It was such a flippant, unsettling way to discuss what he had done, and Maggot’s own intrigue, but it was hardly the strangest thing they had done. “Did you find it exciting?”

As Maggot answered his question, Louse eased the carcass over his back so he could carry it. He quickly surveyed the area to make sure there were no threats. It was hard to fight with dead weight. “Which way is your burrow?”