There could be no doubt. Sperantia was a familiar.
She closed her eyes, her heart pounding in her chest and her purring stilled. The walls seemed to be closing in and the door was inching further and further away, and it made her feel sick to watch. She was a dependent. An accessory, the lower, lesser half of a greater being, whom she had been tasked with guiding and caring for for the rest of her life. Just that nothing else. Everything she had just scornfully thrown in the owl's face was now her burden to bear. She had no role, no life outside of her job, a life which would end when his did. A drop of ice ran down Sperantia's spine. If Mallos died, then then she would too. No chance to fight and defend herself, no going down in a heroic battle, just... gone, if he so much as tripped and broke his neck.
And yet, if she died, no ill would befall him. How were familiars not inferior? How could Minerva consider herself Torram's equal when the laws of nature had such little regard for her life?
Her mind found relief when she realised, cued by the extended silence, that every eye in the room was upon her and awaiting her response. Sperantia opened her eyes but wouldn't look at anyone.
I I can speak Spanish, she told the bedsheets, her voice wavering under an emotion she wasn't normally privy to: uncertainty.
The air in the room seemed thinner. Unable to take the claustrophobia any longer, the black cat leapt off the bed and sprinted out and down the stairs, coming to a pattering halt in the kitchen. The sensation of being trapped in a small, airless space was ebbing, fortunately and in spite of the lack of exit. There was no obvious way out of the building for a for a familiar.
The conspicuous sound of descending footfalls indicated that Birch or Torram, or both, were following her. Sperantia ignored them and paced the length of the kitchen, trying to think... were they even her own thoughts? Was she her own person at all, or just... the cast-off of someone else? Even if she had the ability to construct her own opinions, she had no privacy of the mind. Some some god could always see what she was thinking and doing, if he cared to. There was a religious joke in there somewhere, but Sperantia didn't care to chase it.
What happened? She asked whoever had followed her down, keeping her eyes on the floor as she paced. Why don't I remember anything?
Sperantia
la soledad es un tipo de veneno
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