It was easy to get into a public swimming pool as a lucid creature. There were fewer attendants than during other times, of course, with all spontaneous or near-spontaneous visits simply less likely to occur. The seniors were still all here, though, and some families with children. //Routine//.
Greet sat curled on one of the benches, her back to the wall, willing her unease about the droplets of water being flung about away. As long as they hit only her human component, nothing was likely to happen. The bigger problem was that she had to //stay hydrated// - drink water, of all things. There was no substituting the process with oil. The chronic, background pain was thankfully dim enough to ignore, but on some days, she was nonetheless tempted to evict her baryonic identity and make do without it and its idiosyncracies.
What was it about water that was such a problem? She wasn't likely to be able to divine the answer from simply staring at it, but she'd convinced herself that she was here for that reason alone. There was safety in staying here, of course, safety from the Cheshires she knew, beyond the mere trade of one territory for the next. She stayed close to the edges of the areas they called their own, inasmuch as she knew them. The parts that were guesswork still made for dangerous interactions. Where was she now, relative to Cheshire claims? She didn't know.
//Cheshire//. The most natural descriptor for the invaders, on the one hand. On the other, how many of them chose to stay purely acorporeal? She wasn't sure how to see them, feel them - she was too dependent on her own two eyes. They gave her definitive answers, not vague suggestions of minds and their thoughts - but they could also not penetrate walls.
//Beta, Gamma.// She dropped her glance down to the notepad she'd brought, the descriptions Adrian had given her of territorial behaviour, of habits, any indicators one could use to identify a Cheshire as an individual. They had joked that //Alpha// was reserved for Adrian, or some kind of grotesque end boss, so they'd started the count as //Beta//. At least she felt reasonably confident it had been a joke - Adrian was a degree more alien than she was. Made of the same material, of course, but less preoccupied with his human form.
Her job was finding something to describe as //Delta// - or be found, as it were.
Humans were strange creatures that required poison to live, so her territory had a large internal lake stuffed inside a building. She'd thought of removing it but wasn't quite sure how to put a hole in it without getting any on her. And technically only the top quarter of it belonged to her and the rest was below 'ground' and not her territory, but she'd promised to mark the corners so it didn't flow into her friend's territory either.
Maybe she could make a human do that for her if she promised not to eat the rest of them? Then drop them into the hole afterwards. A thank you for that lovely chase the other day. Yes, this sounded tasty.
One enlargened window later - they were cavorting around //water//, the humans didn't need that piece of glass anyway - and she was inside and prowling along the wall looking for a good meal and hunt. Someone DRY. Hm. Would her prey stop coating themselves in water if she ate the lifeguard?
Senses flared and the Cheshire locked onto the strand of //intruder//. Someone in her territory? Someone... strange. The phantom grin widened. Oh, now this could be interesting...
Some of the human children were making squeaking noises more reminiscent of little piglets than something as large as a five year old. Greet watched them play in one corner of the pool, the shallow end, throwing water at each other. She had memories of that being a fun past time - adopted memories, of course, that was rationally obvious, but emotionally it still //felt// like her. //Margreet Wauters//. That clearly was her own name. It had belonged to another life once, but did that matter much if she identified with it?
She was picking up the notepad, tempted to doodle something to soothe her anxieties around the large body of water, when she noticed something had changed. She wasn't altogether sure what it was, but it was something about the geometry of the hall connected by a corridor, providing her only a narrow view of it. She could be misremembering, maybe, or-
A window. Something had taken a chunk out of the wall of the window. What she'd first noticed was a slight draft, obvious to her now. Her grip on the notepad turned into something punishing as she abused it as an emotional anchor, daring to slide her legs off the bench and onto the wet ground. Even if she were barefoot, her feet would not complain, too human to mind, but now they were saved by the soles of her boots. Her attention strained toward the flaw and around it, trying to find the Cheshire - if she wanted to avoid looking toward it, wanted to avoid being an obvious target, she had to know where it was.
The prey did not feel merely human. But she was staring directly at it, crouched behind a crate of brightly coloured 'float in the water' things, and it wasn't staring back at her. So. Not a Cheshire, but not a human either. Too close to the water to attack. Was it immune? Was it trying to claim the water as territory?
...she wasn't sure how she felt about that. Her territory was HERS, she was not going to surrender it, but this lake was not exactly hers either. It was hers by default, not desire. Hm. If this one leapt into the water willingly, she'd ask what it was seeking. If it ran away from the water, she would hunt.
Unaware that she'd already given herself away, that her nature made her easier to pinpoint than the average human, Greet strained to find evidence of an intruder. On the other hand, she told herself, a Cheshire might eat the building from the outside, but why would it come in here? A thought, chilling: //Because you're in it.// She wasn't human. If the Cheshire had sensed her, it might assume a breach of territory at best, or recognise her as a rogue at worst. Quietly, Greet crouched down beside the pool, aware that she was increasing the risk that someone might push her into the water - a Cheshire might do the same, even - but preferring to use the body of water as a shield to the potential negative consequences. //Where are you?//
And it was doing neither. Instead it was curled defensively next to the water. Why would an intelligent being stay next to something that could melt it? Either it was immune or foolish, but one made it dangerous and she couldn't assume which. With a hiss the Cheshire prowled out from behind the flimsy cover, her favoured form distilling itself out of the shadows into an emaciated shape, two tendrils of dark splaying themselves widely to embrace HER territory and curved to help control the avenues of escape.
//There//. Greet tenses, shrinking down against the ground a little more, eyes wide, by some miracle keeping herself quiet. The notepad vanishes into a jacket pocket in an almost absent-minded gesture along with its pen, fabric distending a little as the motion continues a little longer than strictly necessary. Acutely aware of her heartbeat, she struggles with the rational advice in the back of her skull: //Look down. Glance somewhere else.// Did that even work if it had already spotted her and was tracking her? Dangerous experiment or not, she forced herself to lower her gaze into the water, then began to inch sideways from her current posture, fighting her instincts to keep the predator in her field of vision, to know exactly where the danger was. //Just leave, remain quiet, move slowly, don't freak out.// Her heartbeat hadn't gotten the memo about the last element of the plan, threatening that part in the chain listed immediately before it.
Again it confounded her. Half appropriate reactions, half insanity. Maybe she should remove it just to eliminate a potential headache even if it wasn't a threat. It was dry, there was a lake behind it, a simple swipe may be enough... except that if it WAS immune, it would now be immune //and wet// and she was not gambling her territory for some... thing.
Prey talked baryonically. Maybe this did too. "Why are you here?" she growled as she stalked closer, not quite within projected splashing range.
The Cheshire addressed her, startling Greet further. No, looking away was evidently not returning her to any hypothetical invisibility she might have had. //It's okay,// a part of her tried to reason. //There's a huge body of water here that you can use as a shield. If it was ever a safe place to talk to a Cheshire, this is it.//
"I could ask you the same thing," Greet commented, her voice smoother than she thought it had any right to be. There was a chance her heartbeat was drowning out some of the irregularities in it to her own perception, though. "It would be a lot more appropriate. You could eat Mars instead," she offered. "Lots of iron. Good for you," she mused, well aware she was talking nonsense, clinging to some vestige of humour adopted from a culture that barely classed as her own.
...might as well try to establish whether this one was the //Delta// she sought or some previous encounter that wanted to know what Nightshade was doing //here//, of all places. "Do you know what I am?" she asked, her voice still not yet wavering, although she felt close to that point. Was this formally part of the territory that the Cheshire that loomed near her had claimed? Would the Cheshires bother to claim areas with such a large water presence? There was much data to collect here, assuming she could both keep calm enough to gather it and survive the process...
**✘ IN PROGRESS**