shalvis yayayay yippee

"Alvis, you still..."

Shulk shook his head, rueful. It wasn't ever possible to talk to Alvis about anything mundane, was it? "I suppose that'll never change, no matter the world."

He returned to the third or fourth page of the novel he'd been repeatedly beginning to read, while Alvis sat on the windowsill and organized Shulk's makeshift collection of Mechonis mechanical junk and carelessly dried flower petals. The vase out in the kitchen was Shulk's faithful companion in responsibility, acting as his living (or, alternately, dying) reminder to feed and water himself as well as Fiora's vestige, but here, disintegrating Azure Hollyhock and stamenless Utopia Crocus ruled the roost.

With a final intent (futile) righting of a Grape Spring, Alvis asked, "I still what, Shulk?"

Oh, slow as ever. It took a few moments for Alvis to even turn and level gaze upon him.

Shulk sighed. Nothing for the novel, was there? One of Dunban's favorites, but a little too swashbuckle-y even in the first few pages. Shulk was sure he'd kept turning the second leaf over and back, over and back again, at first because the words weren't filtering into his brain and then later because they had and they didn't quite make any sense.

"You're so mysterious. Like somehow, even though you told me exactly what you were - what you are - I'll never know exactly what's going on behind those eyes of yours."

And did it trouble him?

Alvis's eyes. Windows to the soul, to the past, to the future. Shulk's eyes, now only windows to the present, and longing, and love.

Now the left twinkled (and the right might have as well, but it was obscured by fringe).

Another sigh. Shulk clumsily closed the book and slid it onto the desk, adjacent to a pile of other artifacts waiting to be returned to their rightful owners, who'd long forgotten about them. He tilted back in his desk chair, planning to catch the underside of the top drawer with the tip of his boot as an anchor, but just as the back two legs of the chair had reached a forty-five degree angle with their original flat position and Shulk's toe was about to catch the lip of the drawer, something landed on his shoulder.

And Shulk would have screamed, scrambled, but the something that it was swiftly counterbalanced itself in perfect measure.

He didn't mind fluffy, fuzzy things. Though Rabbit Diodes weren't such, Shulk had never been particularly afraid to reach out and touch one. However, just as the weight, the sudden brush of fur against his cheek might have made him start, but then...

Shulk chuckled. "Always eager to please, Alvis?"

And Alvis wasn't. The cat's tail flicked, toyed with Shulk's ahoge.

So now Shulk put thumb and forefinger to chin and pondered. He took care not to lower his foot. (He suspected that if he did he might remain in equanimous suspension, just because Alvis felt like it. Just because Alvis could.)

Would he have been so shocked, if Alvis had appeared to him as a cat? Which spoke, of course, but nevertheless - a cat?

A Feris. Sleeker, though. Prettier. Yozel, the leader of its pack. Alvis, the master of none.

No, no. A Mane Cat, no doubt. A friend to High Entia...

As cats had inured themselves to humans, so too had Alvis. We mark cats neither lesser nor greater for doing so. They are aloof, have their own all-important concerns.

Except that Alvis didn't. Alvis was attached like a shadow to Shulk. Faithful, unpredictable, moving within and without the sun.

"Will you stay like this?"

Alvis blinked at Shulk, showing sleepy squinted eyes.

"...ah." So he'd leave Alvis to it, then. Not ask too many questions. Help out if and when and as only he could.

As Shulk could. No god for the feline to worship.

Alvis's capacity for mischief was indeed comparable to that of a cat. Not like a jester, a playful muckabout scamp, but instead like a wise, refined creature that either slowly, smoothly, surely pushed drinking vessels off the readily available edges of countertops, or tangled itself into webs of string and net while attempting serene suavage. A small, potent presence, not larger than life but perhaps deeper than it, easily able to pretend innocence but never, to its familiars, achieve.

So Alvis's capacity for joy, too, was catlike. Not grins, not guffaws, not jumps and japes and kinesics. Instead, a secret. An elegant puzzle. An echo of a smile occurring somewhere back beyond the sky that has only just reverberated down to the humane surface, after thousands, millions of years.

One eye open. One ear piqued.

And Alvis, feline or humanoid, either and both, beamed as the light from an invisible sun to see Shulk's animation in a body made anew, untethered from and untainted by Zanza.