The world is quiet in the Valley of Storms.

​

Free from humanity and the destruction that accompanies it, free to live his forsaken life in this world where one perishes at the whims of forces always greater than oneself. Here, he longs for no one and for nothing, content to hide himself away—unreserved, unchanging, unlike the rest of the world. He watches, standing still as everything else, even fate itself, is carried along only by the passage of time in its predetermined line.

 

Here, the world is quiet.

​

​

Faust is drawn from the edges of the main street bazaar into a side alley by the insistent meows of a stray cat. The cat itself—smaller than many of the others he usually encounters slinking through the markets, and with fur dark enough to melt into the shadows—circles around him impatiently as he follows it further in.

​

“What is it? Are you hungry?”

​

He keeps his voice low so as not to startle it away, a caution that turns out to be unnecessary. It jumps regardless, bounding over to the furthest corner and up along the building’s ledge with movements so agily he barely manages to keep up. The cat pauses where the light meets the shadows, as though ensuring it has Faust’s full, undivided attention before it readies its legs and leaps up. It glances back at Faust repeatedly as it leaps from one ledge to another, its tail flicking back and forth every time it stops.

​

Watch me, it commands, eyes sharp as it leaps and lands next to where he stands. Praise me, it commands, head held high as it stares down from above.

​

Far too proud a being to seek anything from him, he thinks as he reaches a hand out, petting the cat however it desires. Not only is it aware of its own strength, it has confidence in it—but the higher up, the harder the fall, and it’s a delicate, dangerous balance to maintain when such self-assurance lends itself as easily to hubris as it does to humility. 

​

If Faust gives it the gentle nudge it desires, will that balance tip? Even after how many times he’s seen it happen now, the outcome still seems no less tragic whether it falls in one direction or the other.

​

Faust kneels down, holding out a treat. “You’ve earned it,” he murmurs as the cat leaps down from its high perch and eagerly devours its prize. Right when it finishes, its head shoots up, eyes wide and ears alert, locked onto a sound Faust hears a moment later from around the corner.

​

It must require a thorough investigation. Faust steps back, and indeed, the cat instantly dashes off on its hunt. Faust wishes it success, and hopes that wherever it falls, it’s at least able to stick the landing.

​

He returns to his errands with a quick mental note to add a pie to his shopping list before he heads home.

 

 

The low thud of a small animal landing on the windowsill interrupts what had been shaping up to be a very promising attempt at sleep.

​

Faust remains flat on his back, a precaution against startling the creature away. He peeks only one eye open to find a scruffy cat with eyes warmer than the desert plains of the southernmost region of the Central Kingdom staring at him. If it weren’t for the occasional twitch of its ears, one might think it another unremarkable fixture of the room, blending amongst the candles and talismans like it belongs there.

​

Faust risks lifting a hand. The cat jumps down to meet the gesture halfway, brings its nose close enough to Faust’s hand to sniff, and finally backs away a comfortable distance to resume its sitting position. He lets his hand fall.

​

A few minutes later, dark clouds begin gathering in the sky. Faust lifts his hand slowly, giving the cat plenty of time to escape before he shuts the window with a wave of his hand, but all it does is blink slowly at the dreary world outside, then at him as it folds its paws under itself and curls its fluffy tail around its body.

​

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you. Were you searching for a place to hide from the rain?”

 

You’re one to talk, its eyes laugh as it blinks slowly again. Join me, its relaxed posture suggests.

​

Faust huffs, amused, but not quite able to laugh. A strange one indeed to be perfectly comfortable in a curseworker’s home. He wonders, not for the first time, if his old companions would feel as at ease around him as this cat. Whether they would join him if they saw what’s become of the person they used to know, or choose the rain and run away.

​

He lets his head fall back with a sigh. Not that that matters now anyway. Especially not to a cat.

​

“You’re welcome to stay,” he says as he closes his eyes, voice as gentle as the drops of rain falling against the house, “if you have nowhere else to go.”

​

When Faust wakes, both the cat and the rain are gone. A small pile of herbs rests on the windowsill where there hadn’t been any before, and atop those is a shiny trinket—something most likely dropped by a human that got lost in the valley.

​

...Well, he’ll check if it’s possible to return it to its proper owner later. For now, he’ll appreciate the sentiment as he opens the window back up a little wider, just in case another soul in need of some shelter from the rain finds its way to him.

​

​

A chorus of clinking noises greets Faust as he opens the door to the Eastern wizard’s classroom and the half a dozen bottles he’d left on his desk knock each other over and scatter.

​

Amongst the mess crouches the culprit: one of the strays that lives near the manor, the same one that’s found its way in for weeks now to get a closer look at Faust and his lesson materials. No doubt it’d been in the midst of doing just that and gotten startled by his entrance, but it rights itself quickly, its previous interest in the bottles entirely forgotten in favor of whatever novelties Faust might bring to it.

​

Light shines off the cat’s sleek fur as it smooths back down underneath his palm, the motion encouraging the cat to stretch up into his touch and rumble gently, its guard lowered.  “You should be careful,” he chides, but it’s light—the kind of gentle reprimand reserved for instances in which no harm was done and no one around whom he has to keep up appearances is present.

​

A small smile spreads across his face as he gives it one last pat before setting about preparing for the day’s lesson. The cat sits patiently as he reorganizes the bottles (in a drawer, where this incident is less likely to repeat) and continues to do little but watch, even as it shadows him around the room, unless he pauses to encourage it to investigate something safe.

​

Guide me, teach me, ask its eager eyes as it hooks its claws into the bundle of plants dangling from his fingers and brings it up against its nose. Thank you, says the grateful push of its head against his hand, followed by the length of its body and the curl of its tail around his palm.

​

The cat remains too inquisitive to leave until it’s eventually called back by the others. It twists round his feet with a meow, a quick goodbye before it leaps up to the window and squeezes through the slim opening out into the sunlight and away.

​

It’s laughable, really, that Faust should be here, teaching wizards young and old alike when he’d once misguided countless others to a fate crueler than the irony of it all—and yet here he is, and here he will stay, until those he now guides can stride ahead and follow the path to fate themselves.

​

Faust closes the window behind the cat. If it wants to return here again, it will find its way back; after all, Faust taught it how, and it still has so much more to learn.

​

​

The world is no longer quiet in the Valley of Storms.

 

Shino’s examining some animal tracks around the nearby trees, gauging the size of his potential prey and throwing his requests for what to make with it at Nero. Nero’s laughing back about how they only just got here and he’s already thinking about dinner, but his eyes roam the garden as he does, undoubtedly searching for whether Faust’s vegetable garden holds just the right ingredients to pair it with and directing his own request for assistance to Heathcliff. Heathcliff, kneeling over a recently seeded plot by the base of the house, rises to his feet quickly, uses his discerning eyes to find exactly what Nero’s looking for and calls back to Shino, warning him not to take on anything unknown without informing them all first.

​

At some point they call out to Faust too, as though he’s a part of the conversation simply by virtue of being there. He responds with something short, almost dismissive, but they all smile at him anyway. Shino’s the first to the door despite how far away he’d been, though he still waits for Heathcliff before striding past Faust and inside. Heathcliff follows closely behind, nodding quickly to Faust as he does, his earlier smile still on his face. Nero lags behind, watching them with something between amusement and (very badly veiled) affection, but he spares Faust another smile—and a quick two raps on the shoulder as talks of rearranging the furniture to prepare for a night here in the valley begin immediately.

​

Faust thinks he would have minded this, back when he longed for no one and for nothing, when he stood still as everything else moved along. But there are voices other than the one in his head to hear now, and footsteps beside his own as he walks towards the future, and somehow, that’s quite alright with him.

​

Faust’s world was quiet, here in the Valley of Storms.