Unfamiliar Familiar [Unfinished. I don't know what this is]

He comes from a long line of wizards, which really doesn't mean much at all. None of his ancestors have ever done anything famous or infamous. Mediocrity is practically a tradition by now--birth, training, familiar summoning, miscellaneous magic-related jobs, and then retirement while you watch the cycle begin again. It might sound depressing to someone else, but to him it's downright comfy.

He's not much for excitement. Excitement means pain. He was twelve when the lab accident happened, but that was old enough to appreciate the lesson. He's thirteen now, and still subscribes to the watchwords of stability and normalcy and things not exploding.

So of course he flubs it.

Most people who summon familiars end up with lizards or birds or canine varieties. Him? He ends up with a little girl. Okay, so it's clearly not an actual little girl, not unless one shrank in the wash (and picked up a couple of cat ears on the way). But she's got two legs, two arms, and the face of a child. And she's wearing a dress. This is clearly not something that is supposed to happen.

"This is clearly not something that is supposed to happen," he says.

His father looks on and agrees--but hey, it's a familiar, even if it is an usual one. And it seems to like him, anyway. So why not go with it?

His father, he thinks, as the creature leans against his leg and giggles, is altogether too easygoing for anyone's good.

---

A familiar's supposed to protect its master. Fetch reagents and supplies. Basically act as servant and bodyguard and pack mule all at once.

This creature (because he won't call it a girl, he won't) couldn't protect a cheesecake. Or itself, which is why he hasn't sent it into the forest for herbs and flowers yet. And a pack would probably just topple her over.

She is good helping him study, though. No, of course she hasn't got an inkling of magical theory, but he only has to point and say, "Get me Jirat's text on numerology--the purple one," and she's off and back again, appropriate book in tow. He doesn't even have to specify color a second time. That indicates intelligence, which is worrying. He's never thought of it before--the morality of keeping an intelligent being in servitude. Nearly every wizard's got a familiar, after all. It's just normal. And it's easy to ignore the issue when the being in question's got scales or an abundance of legs or in some cases no physical body at all.

This? This looks like he's bossing around a little girl. A little girl who's all too happy to make herself useful when she needs to be useful. And even when she doesn't need to be there she is anyway, staring after his alchemy circles like she's trying to memorize them or perching over his shoulder and making like she's reading along with him how to play rock-paper-scissors with the elements. It makes him feel a weird sort of guilt.

Which is ridiculous. Because she's not a little girl. She's his familiar. She's got cat ears. Little girls do not have cat ears.

He repeats this to himself until he is certain it is true, and he can order her to fetch the jar of patchouli without flinching. Then he heads downstairs and finds his mother's set a place for her for dinner and that's all that progress gone.

---

"Your familiar is a little girl," Karosta says.

People like wizards. They're handy. People like the explosions and supernatural hijinks associated with wizards a lot less. It's for that reason that wizards tend to live apart from the general population--it's not a law, but cooperation engenders good feelings, and he likes good feelings.

Plus, less people around to see his weird familiar. That's a bonus. Or was a bonus, anyway, up until Karosta decided to drop in unannounced because having a wizard friend was cheaper than going to the apothecary.

"It's not a little girl," he says. Karosta wanted something for a headache which has proven contagious. Someday he's going to make him pay him back for his generosity. "It's got cat ears. Little girls don't have cat ears; my familiar has cat ears. Ergo, it's not a little girl."

"It's a little girl with cat ears."

And how can he argue with that total lack of logic? He twists his face instead, and automatically sticks his hand out--Catherine is there already, with the bottle of spiraea extract.

Catherine. Apparently, his mother always wanted a daughter, and this entire situation has brought out maternal instincts great and terrible. Who names a familiar like it's their offspring? No, better--who names someone else's familiar? Who names someone else's familiar and then makes that familiar's dinners and then makes that familiar little dresses?

He wants to complain about this, passionately and at length, but he suspects that Karosta would be wholly unsympathetic.

"She's not a little girl," he insists, instead.