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This was how Chero remembered the rest of the day: Dante carried him home and he was very happy. He loved being so little that he could be moved with such ease. The body holding him had a beautiful male smell that made him feel safe right to the moment he was put to bed. He fell asleep easily.

It was evening when he woke. He gripped his throat and coughed up what tasted like sand. A glass of water was brought to his lips and another paw held his head. He choked and spit it out.

"Don't drown me! Bolli-san...ugh...Dante, please, not so much..."

He retched. There was a horrible smell that hit his nose and he couldn't pinpoint. He was distracted by how much of Dante's arm was around him holding him up.

"Good, the fever broke." He held up the water again and Chero sipped it noticing the terrible taste in his mouth. "Take it all, you're dehydrated."

Then a hot cup of tea was brought to him and Chero winced at the taste. "Did you add sugar to this? It's too sweet."

"You need the sugar to hold water," Dante growled. Chero averted his eyes and swallowed without further complaint.

"You shouldn't keep holding me like this, darling...what would people say if they saw us like this?"

Oh.

Oh, he had made the kitty angry.

He was propped up with his tail tied to his ankle. The panther brought over more tea and forced him to drink. "You're too quiet, say something."

The panther shrugged but Chero's voice rose higher. "I liked you enough to share a happy memory with you! Don't make me regret it or I'll never forgive you!"

"You were kidnapped! You were drugged! Some pedophile took you away to Ghana-knows what horrors, and that was happy? You are zsha!" [1] Dante had the silly expression come over his face again. Chero started to giggle again but Dante shook him. "Stop that! You're not supposed to laugh!"

"Then what?" Chero choked back twice. "It happened! It's done! I've already filled a sea, so would you please be kind? Pretty please be pleasant? Pretty please?"

Dante threw down his fists and stormed across the room. He paced back and forth until it wasn't funny anymore.

Chero pulled the blankets up around him. That was the horrible smell. He'd been sweating. He was filthy. He stood up and fell back with a groan.

"Stay there! You're still sick!"

Dante came over but Chero slashed the air in his direction "I will be if I don't wash!" Chero gripped the nightstand and forced himself upright. There were spots in front of his eyes and a surging headache. He moved locked at the knees, held up from falling by the hideous smell that followed him.

He stumbled into the bath before he was grabbed. He thrashed and hissed, but his strength had been sapped. The water came on and it was too cold to stay in. He was forced down to sit and kept there.

This time the bath was angry and brief. The claws scratched him and the temperature was wrong. "Stop it! You're too rough! Stop it!"

The soap and the towel struck the basin at his feet and he jumped.

"Just tell me who did it, Chero-san. Tell me his name. Tell me so I can find him and gut him!"

The teeth in front of him were scary. The brow was heavy and not handsome anymore. Chero was still hidden under his arms however feeble the attempt. "It doesn't matter. If he's not dead by now, he will be soon."

"...You know where he is? And you won't tell me?" Chero kept his head ducked and down from the shock. Why couldn't he just leave him alone?

Now he recognized the look that had made him laugh. It was one he'd seen on many other faces before. The incomprehension, the confusion, the desire to want to forget, all mashed into something so hideous he had chosen to laugh instead of running. He'd never had the chance to run away before.

So he became as small as a stone and did not move. Dante washed him through, but this time handled the toweling. This was all he would do, no matter what was said.

***

The next morning, Dante was already awake when Chero stirred. He was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper by the window. He glanced over and tipped up his cup before coming back.

Chero wobbled when he stood but came over and joined him. There was a pot of tea already there he moved with shaky fingers.

"You were talking in your sleep again."

The mouse shrugged and poured himself a cup. "What did you hear?"

Dante spoke a name that made Chero's stomach hurt.

"Who was he? You called him for hours."

A face came unbidden to Chero's mind and his vision blurred. "He used to sleep with me almost every night. He always kept the bathroom light on for me. He loved to gamble and he always kept fresh flowers for me. He even remembered I -"

He bit into his finger until he could taste blood. Anything to distract him from the festering wound inside. "Please stop asking so many questions. I...I can't think about him...I can't..."

"You think it's going to get any easier? Chero, when you find your family, and you will, they're going to want to know all this. They're going to ask and wonder, and they should. When you show up, can you imagine how shocked they'll be? Any pain you think you have about what happened will by a hundred times worse for them, because at least they could have told themselves you were gone."

The mouse choked. Dante couldn't be right, he couldn't. He wouldn't listen. He couldn't listen!

"And maybe we should get you an apartment," Dante grumbled as an afterthought. "This place must be costing a fortune."

***

The playground was in the precinct where Bartheki was reported missing, so Dante's original theory had some weight. Remembering the time of departure now gave them a precise yearly range. When pressed for his name initials, Chero recalled the characters from the playground as a guide, but felt less certain than before they meant anything. They could have been doodles for all he remembered, not the personal stamp of two siblings.

At the office over files, Chero paused at lunch while Dante worked. Over the past week, Dante had grown more serious and direct in his efforts. He looked over documents more carefully for clues that might point them in the right direction. Now Dante was surprised when a white paw touched his arm. "What is it?"

"Thank you." Chero swallowed with effort. Not all of the illness had departed yet. "I...I don't know if I could have done this on my own. Whatever happens, you've already helped me more than anybody should have. I'm grateful."

"I'm not really helping you here," he said putting down the folders. "This is a tedious way to find the truth in this world. Records are long and filed in the wrong places all the time. Whoever said that reason and analysis would get any of us to where we needed to be was taking too much liquid."

Chero paused, then squeaked furiously. "I can't understand you!! I open my heart to thank you and you toy with me! You're so...SO..."

The mouse clenched his fist in Dante's direction with a stifling growl. The panther only glanced lazily out the window.

Chero put his fist to his head. "...You think you have a better way than this?"

"Yeah, I do." Dante reached into his bag and pulled out a crystal ball. Chero smacked himself in the face. "Plus I'm bored to tears sitting inside all the time. If I wanted to sit with books and at desks all day I'd be at the university again."

"Alright, I give up." Chero put his head to the desk and covered his head. "This makes no difference, so play your games bolli-fortune-teller, play!"

The panther gazed into the ball of quartz and rolled it around in his paws. He hummed a song and rocked back and forth in time to an inner rhythm.

"I see...hold it...it's coming to me..."

Chero braced himself. This was going to be ridiculous. There was no way it could be anything but ridiculous. He could only imagine the absurd thing that was about to come out of his mouth. It probably was -

"Pie!"

The mouse dropped his head against the desk. Hard.

"Strawberry-rhubarb," Dante concluded. "Looks fresh."

Chero played dead.

"Good excuse for lunch though! Come on!"

***

Instead of driving, they walked. They needed to stretch their legs and take in the mild weather while it still lasted. In the dead of winter, even in the desert city, there could be days of cold that would require the tightest of body wrappings.

There were plenty of better places to eat near the precinct house, but fewer the farther they walked into the residential area. Dante was insistent on finding the target of his vision.

"This is absurd and juvenile," Chero finally complained.

"It can't hurt. At least it's a walk."

"Oh yes it can!" Chero made a display of his perfectly sculpted midsection. "Do you have any idea what it takes to keep abs like mine? The sit ups, trunk twists, yoga and dieting? Of course you don't! You're pudgy!"

Dante laughed as he patted his belly. Today he was unflappable. "Girls like the padding, Chero-san. They like a little bit of soft."

Chero groaned.

They took half an hour to pass through an ugly neighborhood. Stores were boarded up and the sidewalks were in desperate need of repair. Most of them had eroded away or been so overrun with weeds that the property lines blurred. The dens were rundown and there was hardly any sign of life. In the whole neighborhood, they only passed a family of Rats, who gave them dirty looks as they walked by.

"Friendly people, eh?" Chero wished his cloak were a more subtle shade of gray. He stood out too starkly against the brown and yellow landscape.

"Hey, if anybody messes with us, you're here to protect me. The opponent that backs down is the one with poor oral hygiene."

Round a corner and over a bridge through construction, the world changed into an alien landscape. The streets were bustling with people of young, middle-class stripes. Shops were open and serving, while music floated in from a café. With all the new stores and better-fed people were newer dens and residential areas. Normal people? In a safe neighborhood? How bizarre!

The mouse was awestruck. The panther lifted his arms in time to avoid knocking over young teenagers heading past him home from school. "Do the people here even realize what's so close by?"

"Must be the new zoning laws. Those old places looked like they should be condemned. I heard some of the insulation was toxic."

"Yes, but where will families go instead that they can afford," Chero wondered.

They moved through crowds of people living their lives. There were conversations of friends, days with their mates, children playing and the elderly taking afternoon strolls. There were several rabbits, guinea pigs and rats, as well as a pair of bears doing their afternoon shopping.

"Surprised you care. You've got more money than everyone we can see and probably the ones we can't." He picked up an apple from a cart and paid the vendor with pocket change and lint.

Chero shrugged off the accusation. Defending himself would mean having to remember the means of his acquisition.

Dante stopped and beamed. He pointed into a window and flashed his tail with triumph.

"See! Told you! Right there! Look, it just came out! It's still weeping!"

So it was. Fresh strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Chero threw up his arms in disgust. "That doesn't mean anything!" he yelled. "It just means these owners don't care about the slave labor involved in producing fruits out of season for our bloated capitalist nation!"

Several patrons and servers outside stared at him. Chero's ears turned bright red and he tucked his head down. "This still doesn't help!" he whispered angrily.

The panther ordered a slice and put it in front of them at a standing table. Chero crossed his arms and looked away.

"Eat it."

"I can't, it has too much sugar."

"Just a little bite? Come on yana-chan, it's good for you."

"Honestly, who's the bigger fool now? You, or me, for listening to the prattlings of an amateur taking shortcuts instead of -"

The mouse looked down the end of the spoon out of his mouth with wide amazement. The panther had perfect timing.

"Now chew and swallow, yana-chan, every bit."

The mouse growled as he swallowed the piece as fast as he could. Then he spit out the spoon and kept his whiskers flared.

"Hey! It's good though isn't it? See?" He put a piece in his mouth as fast as he could and chewed. Chero still couldn't decide whether to smack him or not. He might choke.

Before he could make the decision, there was a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. He turned around to where it had gone.

A hope sprung from somewhere deep inside. He hated himself for being caught off guard.

No, it was not his sister.

It was shawl of pink and white roses draped over a gray body. He looked up and saw the female Fox taking a cup of coffee from a server.

Dante kept speaking, but Chero wasn't listening. He walked over as if in a trance up to the female and along side her until she noticed him.

"Oh! I'm sorry, is this yours?" The Fox held out the cup to Chero. "I think it might be, I asked for no sugar. Lovely brew, shame to waste it."

Chero took the drink but didn't notice the taste. It just gave him time to take a good long look.Now he understood, he knew her.

She was Bartheki's mother.

***

[1] pathological indifference. Pronounced 'sh'ja-aah', shortened medical term.