* * *
Aly was giving Catty her lunch in bed, which consisted of mashed-up and watered-down fruit mixed with herbs meant to speed up the healing process. Neither of them looked like they were enjoying the joined assignment. Every time Catty sipped through her reed straw, she shut her eyes and swallowed hard. Disgusting.
When she turned her head away, refusing to drink any more, Aly set Catty’s lunch down and scooted back in her chair. She tried scratching her wrist, as the cast she wore made it itch, but she couldn’t reach the spot agitating her. Catty tried shifting to her side, but stopped the second she felt like needles were jabbing her ribs. Aly had broken two of them, in spite of how developed Goolian skeletons were.
Cattalice walked in with a tray of fresh food. She set it down in front of the desk Aly had scooted to, and Catty felt her mouth water at the sight of the leaves and bread.
“My thanks, Mistress,” Aly said, unwilling to look at the mastra.
Cattalice forced a smirk and left the two alone. When she got downstairs, Quongun was walking through the front door.
“How does she be?” he asked.
“Which one?” Cattalice headed over to the office area of the house so she could tally up the current figures of the day.
Quongun scratched the back of his head as he went up to Catty’s room. Aly was using her good hand to eat when he tapped Catty’s opened door.
“Alytchai, you shall have to use your other hand eventually, yes? It be a near week now, and it needs to gain its strength.”
“If I may, it hurts whenever I try to use it.”
“Very well. Suffer at your own pace then.”
He got up and knocked on the wall. A maid came to the doorway seconds later.
“If you do not mind, may I suffer a moment with Catty?” he asked Aly. “And once you have finished your lunch, why not help the Mistress?”
“Um, I fear your mate no longer likes me, Master. Thus I do not think she would fancy my assistance.”
“Nay, dearest.” Quongun rubbed the Little One’s face. “She simply lacks the words to say to you at the given moment. Fret not. I am sure she still loves you as if you were our own. Now, off we go.”
Aly got out of her chair and headed to the dining board. The maid picked up her tray, nodded at her lord, and followed after her.
“As for you, Mastra…” Quongun pulled up the chair Aly had been sitting in. He sat down and patted Catty on the shin. He then handed her some papyrus, a writing tool, and a wooden block for her to write on. “The mouth still hurts, yes?”
The Little One nodded.
“And I take it Aly has yet to apologize for the fight.”
Catty sighed through her nose and nodded again. Quongun smiled and caressed the mastra’s tents.
“Yet I feel you have not demanded one either, nay?”
The Little One didn’t give a response at all. She looked down at the paper and closed her eyes. Quongun sat back in his chair and crossed a leg.
“I thought it best to give your body a moment’s rest, yet your mammai and I believe that I should converse with you now. Aly told us how the brawl commenced.”
Catty turned her head away, but Quongun made her look back at him. When she opened her eyes, however, she still didn’t stare at him.
“The look of shame you currently bear indicates that there be no need to waste my time with a lecture. Even so, I can only ask why. Little Cattalice, you and Aly were the best of friends prior to starting school. What changed within a mere three years?”
Catty paused, then picked up the writing utensil. She dipped it in the nearby ink block, and her left hand flew over the papyrus as she wrote.
“I merely wanted the other lot to like me,” is what she wrote. “Yet they were to make fun of Aly, and when I was to defend her, I would suffer with her. I had no other choice beyond join––”
Quongun snatched the utensil out of Catty’s hand and slammed it on top of the block, making the Little One jolt.
“Yet you did have a choice,” he said. “You put self before others. Truly, there is no other way to put it. And you know our people seek the greater good of all. You disappoint me.”
His last three words struck harder than the blows Aly gave her face. She didn’t have enough time to catch the first tear from dropping onto the papyrus, making some of the inked lettering run down the edges. She picked up her pen and wrote, “I’m sorry.”
“I suppose you are, given your current state.” Quongun leaned back. “You have thus earned your punishment, since this be the case. Yet, once you two are both well enough to return to the learning boards, what shall this one do then?”
Catty wiped her eyes and looked down at what she had written so far. She shrugged. Quongun rubbed his eyelids.
“And after all that has happened, you still lack the sight to see the error of your ways.”
Catty quickly shook her head and her hands zipped over the papyrus again. She lifted it up after she finished writing, and handed it to her pappai.
“Nay,” her words said. “Yet the other Little Ones can be so cruel. I fear what shall be done to me if I seem to befriend one that no one else likes. Not only shall I lose my friends, yet they shall surely mock me as well.”
Quongun tapped his chin. “There be an old saying: Sticks and stones may break one’s bones, yet words can never hurt you.”
Catty must’ve surprised her pappai by the look she gave him; he straightened up, but she didn’t care. She wrote on another piece of papyrus, in big symbols, “YES THEY DO.”
She then wrote down some more on another sheet. As if punishing Quongun for his own ignorance, she didn’t bother handing what she wrote to him that time.
“My bones may heal, yet what one says to another can never go away,” she wrote. “I think they may linger for a lifetime, yes?”
Quongun didn’t say anything as Catty kept writing on another sheet. He watched every word form out of the ink, each one looking heavier than the last.
“Some of the same folk have poked fun at my social stature for years, and yet those insults still pain me to this very day. With all due respect, your proverb is foolish and stupid.”
Her pappai didn’t seem to appreciate that last sentence, but Catty folded her lips in, assuring him that he wouldn’t get an apology from her. Anything he did to her then wouldn’t make up for the years of hurt she had to endure while going to school.
Regardless, Catty tried her best to keep a straight face as her pappai stood up and towered over her. She watched his face fidget in order to keep his composure. And then, without warning, Quongun bowed.
“Such wise words for one so fresh in age, and so true. For that, I apologize for my careless metaphor.”
Catty’s eyes got big, and Quongun laughed as he sat back down.
“Truly, perhaps that be the first time I have come to a point in begging pardon in your regards,” he said. “I suppose it be a sign of your growing maturity. Yet, since that be the case, should you not practice what you preach? If you know and fear the pain of words, then why throw such daggers at Aly to the point of the blades becoming physical?”
Catty picked up her utensil and held it over the next sheet. She stopped when it pressed against the papyrus, and no words came out of it. She kept looking and waiting, but nothing ever came, so she placed the utensil down and shook her head.
“That be what I thought. There be a word for that: hypocrisy. And that is no honorable word to bear.”
Catty didn’t look at him, but her pappai more than likely knew she was listening once her left ear twitched.
“And here be the more important thought. There are a grave deal of people who share the quality of decency. Such people have no problem in declaring a bad act to be wrong. You understand this, yes?”
Catty nodded.
“Yet, there are a few who are beyond mere decency,” Quongun added. “Indeed, in a group of thousands, you may perhaps be able to count them on one hand. Such is
why they are to be so cherished. What resides in them is a substance that one is not simply born into. Nay, not like some petty social stature, such as nobility.
“See, not only will these few confess an act to be wrong, yet they are willing to go beyond their comfort zone and do something about it. Those individuals bear the seeds of greatness, and they shall forever be remembered by their selflessness. Which one shall you be, Cattalice the Younger? The sort to get by with mere talk, or the sort willing to make a difference for others by making an act?”
Quongun kissed Catty on the head and let her get some rest.
* * *