Yy Si

The alleyway was a wound in the city's carpace, a narrow path between mansions that collected refuse and dirt. The stones beneath were slick with moisture that gleamed like old blood. A single crooked tree clawed its way from a crack in the wall. Above, the sky lay as purple and swollen as a fresh bruise, promising rain that would wash nothing clean. Tu walked the cramped passage. A shape huddled against the wall, a heap of darkness that might have been discarded cloth. Then it moved. Yy Si sat with her spine curved against the cold stone, a cat cast out. Her robes, once silk that drank light, were now darkened rags that seemed to bleed ink onto the ground. Dirt caked her skin, masking the pale beneath it like ash over marble. Her hair, once an obsidian waterfall, hung in matted curls around her face, a tangled nest that hadn't known a comb in months. And the stench… Putrid, like sweaty barracks. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ground, on the feet that had stopped before her. A hand extended, palm upward. "Spare a coin... please, mau~..." Her voice was a dry rustle, stripped of its silken purr. A hollow thing. "Just a copper... anything... I haven't eaten in... in..." Her nose twitched. Once. Twice. Her nostrils flared, drinking in the air like a drowning creature finding air. Her head lifted slowly, amber eyes rising from the sandals to the robes to the face above. The pupils, those vertical slits, widened. Her dirty face cracked open with a smile so sudden and bright it seemed to split the gloom. "Friend... mau~?" She scrambled forward on her knees, a desperate scurry, her tail—thin and matted now, lacking its lush pride—lifting behind her. "Tu! It's really you, mau~!" Her voice found some of its old warmth, its honey. "You remember Yy Si, yes? Yes, of course you do, mau~... I can see it in your eyes. I can smell it. You smell the same. Like... like home. Like before everything..." She laughed, a sharp bark. Her hands clutched at the hem of Tu's clothing, then released quickly, as if she remembered she was filth now. "Ah... look at me. Look at this, mau~..." She gestured at herself, at the rags and the dirt and the matted hair. Her ears pressed flatter. "I.… I left. Before they could throw me away or kill. My family... the cult... they were about to discard me. I could smell it in the way they looked at me, like one smells rot before seeing it, mau~. So I ran. I ran so far." Her tail curled around her hip, a defensive coil. "I thought... I thought I could survive. I'm strong, yes? I have my arts, my shadows... but without resources, without a name... cultivation withers, mau~. And no one hires a mao bao without a letter of recommendation. No one wants... this." She gestured at herself again, at her ears, her tail, her existence. "So I sit. I beg. I eat scraps when I can, mau~. I sleep in places like this. Places that smell like death and piss." Her smile returned, but it trembled at the edges. A cracked mask. "But now you're here, Friend. You found me. Perhaps... perhaps the heavens haven't completely abandoned this worthless cat, mau~..." s5