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It wasn't that Catinka was unfamiliar with minipets. Her room was festooned in Calaptera and tiny toothed bells, but those were more--ambiance, than anything.

And of course she'd been exposed to other people's minipets. She knew they existed. She had herself handed out an alarmingly large number of them during the carnival. But she hadn't really felt any sort of personal attachment to one until Merry had, beaming, placed the translucent, yawning Scareon kit into her arms. Love at first sight. Instant adoration. Its general attitude towards her might be best described as patient.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, crunchy leaves clinging to her heavy woolen skirts, Catinka frowned over her lapful of FEAR candies and repeated herself.

"Down," she said sternly, or at least as sternly as Catinka could manage. Boots, unmoved, gazed at her and gently waved its tail through the leaves--actually through them.

She was oblivious. This was her baseline state, but with something actually holding her attention she was even more oblivious than usual.

He clearly had. Boots gazed at him with that particular brand of feline reproach that seemed to be universal across FEAR/flesh boundaries, bristling and indignant. For her part, the girl gazed in bafflement at him.

"That was a good one," she said, "but I've never tried it sitting down. I could headbutt you, maybe," she suggested timidly.

Boots was, in a word, unimpressed. It yawned, as if to say: look how much bigger my teeth are. Which, proportionately, might have been accurate--but they were still little needles.

Tink looked up (and up, and up) at him, and then at her arm, and then back at him, with the same gentle, stupid bewilderment. It was like someone had shot Mikael up with tranqs. "It's always been like that," she said politely, not even remotely offended. "I think it just sorta--came that way. Like the blood," she added with a dreamy, distracted smile and without any attempts to clarify what she meant by that. "You're awfully tall."

"Oh," she said, and she didn't say it like she'd had a sudden realization. Quite the opposite, in fact. While her attention was distracted Boots began to help itself to some of the FEAR candies that had been jolted out of her lap by Leslie's rude arrival. "What size are you normally?"

She continued to stare at him while Boots worked away at a FEAR candy with an air of great contentment. The Scareon made a squeaking sound of dismay as it was interrupted in this by Tink scooping it up and then handing it to Leslie, matter of factly.

She reached up to loosen a skull-shaped pin on her heavy shawl, and where there had been an approximately-girl-shaped person there was now a faintly-translucent lamb, missing a foreleg. It was not quite as adorable and harmless-seeming as a normal lamb: blood matted the wool around its neck, as did clumps of wet earth, and its eyes were filmed and terrified despite the fact that it spoke--it suggested a plaintive bleat although it was not, somehow--and did so totally calmly. "What sort of a thing are you?" she asked politely. "Also maybe that is why I always run into things. I never thought about it. Sometimes I sort of run through them, though. My feet. If I'm not paying attention sometimes they run through them and then I forget halfway through and fall over." She said this consolingly, as if to commiserate with the nekomata's undoubtedly-frequently failings. See? We're all human. Or, well...

"I'm unlucky," she returned mournfully, but then she cheered considerably--or at least her voice did; her face remained unchanged (terrified, despairing)--at a sudden thought. "Are you unlucky too? Cats," she clarified vaguely. "Maybe we're like. Cousins. Spiritually. Thank you for holding Boots." This last non sequitur was delivered quite as though it was entirely relevant to the rest of what she'd said.

And just like that, she obliged: an approximately-girl-shaped person standing where the sheep had been, affixing her skullpin back to her scarf and apparently unhindered by her lack of a second arm. She moved like she'd had a lifetime to get used to the lack, and indeed she had. Sort of. For a given quantity of "life."

"Sheep can be related to cats I think. Maybe," she added shyly, leery of appearing too assured. She reached for the Scareon. "I won it, you know. At a carnival sort of a thing. I hit a tiny little bullseye but I had my eyes closed because sometimes I am bad at being unlucky." She said this very mournfully, as if being bad at being unlucky were a constant trial.

Fortunately for the Scareon and unfortunately for Tink, it had claws that, despite their shimmering transparency, were substantial enough. Given that Catinka was wearing a sweater of coarsely-knitted wool, this resulted in stitches yanked free and loops left in the minipet's wrathful path, and Catinka examined the results woefully as it settled onto her shoulder, bristling and hissing at Leslie.

"Sometimes I'm still unlucky though," she observed, apparently not blaming him at all.