[crow]

Rhodes was sitting out on the balcony of a window enjoying his tea when he saw the stuff. It was a typical day for him, mostly paperwork, and the occasional errand--- or rather, he had been compiling a list of errands to run, at that point, and thinking about how to make the most efficient trip of it.

Not the most exciting stuff a cat his age could be doing, but some things were necessary to run the household.

[crow]

This just happened to be one of those things, whether Rhodes liked it or not. And lately, in recent years, that was what his job had pretty much become--- the running of the household, and the estate itself at large.

It wasn't an easy job, but someone did have to do it. And as much as he did love the young master, and the young lady that accompanied them, neither of them were really fit for the task.

[crow]

The young master was... not one for paperwork, to put it as nicely as Rhodes was able. That much was readily apparent.

Rhodes had at least made the attempt to teach him, but he had quickly arrived at the conclusion that this was futile. It was possible that Sivain had pretended to be worse at it than he was in an attempt to get out of it, but that told its own story, did it not?

[crow]

And if he was so unwilling to take on the task of doing the paperwork, then Rhodes wasn't going to force his hand to it. When it came time to actually do the job for real, if he acted the same way, then they would be in more trouble than if Rhodes has never set him to it in the first place.

As for the young lady, she was eager enough to learn, but much too young.

[crow]

The problem was partially that she was going to be much too young indefinitely, never to age as normal children would. She could learn it by rote, some of it, and these days she did occasionally help him fill out what he needed to fill out, if it was easy and all just the same. Sometimes it was this--- just the same things, over and over.

But if it got more complex, then she was out of her depth.

[crow]

And there was a certain degree of subjectivity to a lot of fields even on conventional forms, which he then had to explain to her. He didn't like it either, but at least he could navigate it

Never mind, of course, that a lot of what Rhodes had to do also involved letter writing. He couldn't entrust that to her at all. She had a good heart, but she really was a child, and any misunderstandings she could cause with her phrasing...

[crow]

And, of course, some of the matters he dealt in were simply not for children's eyes anyway. Which wasn't to say that they were of some debauched nature, but that not everyone in the world was kind, or had good intentions.

If Rhodes could at least preserve the young lady from having to experience that herself, he would. Most children did need to grow up to face the world eventually, but Suvi would remain as she was.

[crow]

She would remain that way as long as Sivain's magic continued to keep her alive, which it did. Therefore it was imperative to try and preserve her innocence as much as any of them were able.

And as for the errands... Well, Sivain hated shopping almost as much as he hated paperwork. And Rhodes did send Suvi to buy and fetch on occasion, though it felt a little odd asking a lady of the house to do it.

[crow]

But it was always simple things, and things that didn't involve a large sum of cash. Given the nature and scope of the estate, this still meant that he was running most of the errands himself.

He could have just hired an assistant, he supposed, but who was going to listen to orders from a talking cat? And the effort he would have to go through to insist that he wasn't a butler, he was merely the family accountant...

[crow]

But even busy accountants needed breaks. Even if they did, over time, become something that resembled a butler more than the profession they had originally signed on to perform. Breaks were essential to the continued quality of the work that Rhodes performed.

If he permitted himself to get too tired by working without rest, then his work would begin to become sloppy. And he owed it to his employers, he always maintained, that he do the best work he could possibly do.

[crow]

He had had worse jobs, after all, and worse masters. It wasn't even that he was forcing himself, at least this time around, even if things did become a bit tedious sometimes.

And so it happened that he was taking a nice bit of tea on a windowsill. These were the small pleasures of being a cat: you could perch on such small spaces. The young lady greatly envied him this particular advantage, in the fanciful way that children were wont to do sometimes.

[crow]

He didn't often profess it himself, but he was fond of it too. He may not have gotten as much respect afforded him as he would have liked, taking this form, but there were small blessings to it too, that he would be loath to give up.

And the tea, well... That was an advantage of being a cat who had become, in the words of his very first mistress, 'steeped in magic for a little too long'.

[crow]

Though if you asked him, he had been steeped in her magic for just long enough, thank you. Rather, he wished that they had been together even longer, not so he could soak up magic but because he missed her. If she could be with him now, he wouldn't have said no to the prospect.

But the magic she had managed to give him was enough for a great deal of things, and he had always been grateful for that too.

[crow]

Things might have been much more difficult for a lone cat such as himself in the world when she had passed, if not for that. But one of the small, more mundane advantages was that he could eat a great many things that his simpler brethren could not. Tea numbered among these small and special pleasures.

That sense of magic was what first warned him that something was afoot too, though of course it wasn't courteous enough to tell him what it was, exactly.

[crow]

It merely specified that something was happening, and that maybe he would want to take a look at it. His ears perked up, and he began to survey his surroundings with more acute attention.

Within the room, everything was fine. He could sense that almost at once, though he spared a cursory glance for it all the same. You could never be too careful, even when you weren't necessarily expecting to find any danger around you.