It wasn't one of the better Council meetings.
Dominic was bored, bored, bored: aside from the fact
that, for once, there wasn't anything specifically
important to his Word on the agenda, there was the
fact that Laurence had gotten a bee in his bonnet
again about the lack of civil defense. The Archangel
of the Sword had many laudable qualities: brevity was
not one of them.
It was about then that the Archangel of Judgement felt
the now-familiar weight on his shoulder disappear. He
swiftly turned, but it was too late. Justinian had
wandered off.
In the aide's gallery, Bronwen winced and began
heading to the 'floor'.
This wasn't the first time, of course, that Dominic's
kitten had gone off exploring. Normally, it wasn't a
problem: Justinian always stayed in Heaven, and people
that like hurting kittens are pretty much on Hell's
reservation list anyway. The absolute worst thing
that had ever happened to him was the time that a
still-not-identified person or persons dressed him up
in a miniature copy of Dominic's cloak, placed him on
the front steps of the Tribunal, rang the doorbell and
then ran away (very) quickly.
Predictably, the kitten refused to go anywhere without
the blessed thing, now.
Anyway, the kitten was safe... but Dominic's dignity
was not. Thankfully, Bronwen had adjusted to
kitten-catching as quickly as she did everything else,
but expecting her to sort this out by herself would be
unJust. Dominic got up and started looking, himself.
This was not actually a breach of protocol. The
nature of the Council Chambers was such that the
concepts of "moving" and "standing still" were
meaningless, anyway: the Archangel of Judgement could
get away with searching, as long as he was discreet
about it and nodded in all the right places (Laurence
never varied this particular speech, so doing that
wasn't too difficult). Locating one kitten couldn't
be that hard, surely.
Twenty 'minutes' later, Dominic wasn't so sure - and
he was starting to get mildly worried. Justinian
wasn't sleeping in Novalis' arms, cadging treats from
Marc or even purring at Jordi (three of the kitten's
favorite activities). It was starting to look like
Dominic would have to start checking outside. That
wouldn't look good: among other things, the second the
Archangel of Judgement left, every other Superior
would take the opportunity to run off as well, leaving
an annoyed Laurence to finish his speech in an empty
chamber.
It had happened before. The Archangel of the Sword's
perennial speeches were often endurance contests.
All in all, it was a bit of a relief when Bronwen
covertly waved her Superior over. Dominic breathed a
sigh of relief, moved to join her - and swallowed an
oath.
Justinian had discovered Michael. More specifically,
Michael's Axe.
It was big, and shiny, and had lots of wood to
sharpen one's claws on, and - best of all - there were
these strips of leather on the ends to bat around. So
Justinian had started batting. Needless to say, the
Archangel of War was perfectly aware of this, and was
covertly jiggling the strips around. He was good at
it, giving the kitten enough of a challenge to keep
him occupied while avoiding accidentially flipping
Justinian into a wall.
Dominic cleared his throat. Michael looked up
guiltily: when he saw Dominic, he gave him a
Gee-can't-you-even-keep-track-of-a-_kitten_? smile.
Dominic let his cloak fade back far enough to give
Michael an equally-nasty
My-my-look-at-the-big-bad-warrior-play-with-the-Hyena's-kitten
smile. Both smiles suddenly snapped shut as the
Truths behind both sunk in.
The two Seraphs tried to glare at each other further,
but neither's Heart was really in it. Justinian broke
the deadlock by giving the leather one last bat and
jumping up into Bronwen's arms. Her face was
carefully neutral as she settled the kitten back on
her Archangel's shoulder.
Laurence finished his speech, with the usual mixed
gratification and suspicion at the amount of applause.
Dominic moved back to his usual spot, lifted
Justinian from his shoulder, and shook one finger
mock-seriously in the kitten's general direction.
"You should be a little more careful about who you
play with."
Justinian looked at him solemnly (Dominic wondered
again about just how much his kitten understood. He
really _wanted_ to speak to The Angel of the Selfless
Gift), cocked his head, batted Dominic's finger and
protested,
"Mwr."
Dominic reluctantly nodded, conceding the point.
Truth.
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