[Takes place before Halloween 2020 event.]

'You need to come pick up your new license plates and registration, Nataniel.'

Nataniel had groaned about three words into the sentence, rolling his eyes in irritability because he didn't want to drive to his parents' house when they could just as easily mail him anything they received in his name. They wouldn't make things easy for him, though. His mother wouldn't squander an opportunity to force Nataniel to visit, no matter how inconvenient it was to him.

And here he'd thought it would be easier to have his 'home address' be his parents' house while he was in school, rather than risk having something sent to unreliable and ever-changing student apartments.

He'd have to pick something more permanent by the end of semester, though: a daunting and... troublesome task to be pushed off until the last minute.

Nataniel shoved the thought from his mind to be dealt with at a later date. The more pressing and immediate concern was figuring out how to convince his mother that he could only stay a few minutes. He had to do homework or cook dinner or start laundry or literally anything else that didn't involve lingering for too long. The last thing he wanted to do was spend an entire afternoon listening to meaningless, idle chatter.

Mikali greeted him with a stern expression and a wagging finger as he entered the side door from the garage, and if Nataniel had ever forgotten why he hated coming home, he was viscerally reminded now. It was never just pleasant and amicable. It was always that he wasn't meeting someone's expectations, and there had to be a reprimand involved in every greeting. "You took your time," his mother huffed. “Why does it always feel like you drag your feet when you come home?” More of a demand than a question, really.

"Because that is how far away I live," Nataniel retorted, tone soft and flat. When he glanced around her to try and spy where the mail had come in, he noticed it was conveniently out of sight. Just something else he'd have to wrest from her.

---

He’d wanted to pick a good name, a cool name. Ellian had never had his own pet before, so it felt like he should celebrate the occasion by rewarding his kitty with a really rocking title. He’d settled on ‘Maisie,’ after an actress from a tv show he liked. Granted, his kitty wasn’t a girl, but in Ellie’s defense, the character the actress played was like a badass magic wolf wrangler face stealer pirate. Any kitty should be so lucky to have a namesake like that.

Ellian had been laying in his bed on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, snacking on a bag of chex-mix while he watched Top Gear on tv. One day he’d like to have world-travel adventures like that. Eat a bunch of weird, foreign foods. Go on lengthy, challenging road trips with a couple of good friends, craftily solve problems and ‘do diplomacy’ with speeeed. Pretty much any job that was entertaining enough to watch seemed like a good sale to him.

He glanced down to Maisie.

Most of these traveling people probably didn’t have pets, though. You couldn’t be gone for weeks and weeks on end if you had a kitty to take care of. Maisie had seemed okay in his car the couple times Ellie had brought him along, though… Ellian glanced down to the cat and reached to give him a rub behind the ears. “Would you want to go to Burma?” He queried conversationally. “I know it doesn’t look exactly posh, but think of what an adventure it would be! And if we had friends with us to do all kind of shenanigans with? It’d be great, I bet. And people like watching shows with cats in them, anyway. You could be a YouTube star.”

Once this school year was over, the world was basically his oyster. He was looking forward to that kind of freedom.

When the sound of a door opening reached him, Ellian’s heart immediately fluttered up to his throat in excitement. He rolled haphazardly from the bed, flopping to the ground and then scabbling to scoop Maisie up into his arms. “My brother’s here!” He said excitedly. “You’ve never met him, but you’ll probably like- Ah, well, maybe you won’t, to be honest. But that’s not the point.”

“He’s always gotten whatever he needed to take care of his pet, but when I asked for one, I got told no.” Ridiculous. “But now I have you. I have my own kitty, so Nat can suck it. C’mon!” Bundling Maisie up into his arms, Ellian darted from the room, skidding briskly through the house as he slid around the corner in socks on wood floors.