The place tickled at his memory, reminding him of a farmstead he had visited a very long time ago, a dim image of an old woman sitting in a rickety rocking chair on a large porch, a porch that faced a small stream and a road, where she could sit and watch the goings-on about her. The old woman had been wise and thoughtful, he remembered, and this place had the same gentle homeyness about it as that Sulasian farmstead did. It had the same warm aura about it, an aura of home and family, a sense of togetherness that he had not experienced in a very long time.
He wanted to stay there for the day, and not just hide in the barn. He wanted to look around, to observe these Arkisians go about their day. He wanted to see if a day in the life of an Arkisian farmer was the same as the day in the life of a Sulasian one. He wanted to experience the fringes of their togetherness, if only to see others enjoy the closeness of family, something he so desperately missed.
Tarrin put his nose to the ground. It would be nice to stay, but he'd best make sure that it would be safe enough. A crisscrossing multitude of scents assaulted his nose, but he was looking for particular smells. He found them after a little padding about, the smells of other cats. That meant that they wouldn't run him off as soon as they noticed him. Some humans had strange prejudices against cats, but they were a fixture on many farms. They kept the rodents out of the stored grains and vegetables. Farmcats served a vital function, just as the dogs and horses did.
He was noticed, and rather quickly. One of the dogs suddenly started barking, and when he looked up he saw it barrelling at him at full speed. But unlike normal cats, Tarrin had no fear of dogs. They happened to be the natural enemies of cats, but the Human compability with dogs cancelled out that instinctive fear. Besides, he feared almost nothing weaker than himself, and even in cat form, he was still strong enough to fight a dog. He enjoyed the same regenerative powers in cat form as he did in his other forms, so it could do him no true injury. So instead of running away, Tarrin simply sat back down and fixed the dog with an icy stare, daring it to be stupid enough to actually attack him.
The dog obviously thought that Tarrin was going to stick with the long-established way things were between cats and dogs. Dogs chased cats, cats ran away, then hid in some inaccessible place while the dog amused itself by barking at the treed animal. Then they would go their own ways and do it again later. The dog raced at the still cat exuberantly, but then it skidded to a furious halt just in front of the large black cat with those chilling eyes, a stare that could even instill fear in a dog. It stared at him wildly for a long moment, then started slowly backing up, fear evident in its eyes.
The dog had caught his scent. Now it understood that it was not facing a normal cat. Tarrin gave it a very low growl, and that was enough to make it turn tail and run back for the safety of the porch.
"I've never seen that before," a young man laughed.
Tarrin looked towards the sound of the voice, and saw that it did indeed belong to a young man, probably about twenty. He was tall and willowy, had the pattern Arakite black hair and dark, swarthy skin, and had a rather ruggedly handsome young face with a strong jaw and large, expressive eyes. He stood beside an older man with graying hair, who had similar looks as the young man. He was the boy's father, or at least an uncle or cousin. Large farmsteads like this often had entire extended families living on them, working together.
"I've never seen that cat before," the older man said.
"As many as there are around here, that's no surprise," the younger one answered. "I swear, they breed as fast as rabbits."
"Well, it's certainly a fearless one," the older man chuckled. "I've never seen a cat stare down a dog before."
"It looks like it has a collar on," the younger one noticed, starting towards him. Tarrin simply sat there and observed the man approach him, feeling no particular fear of the man. "That's right, kitty, I'm not going to hurt you," he crooned in a gentle voice, a voice that had a startling effect. This man had a way about him that most animals would find very inoffensive, a sense that this particular human was no danger or threat. It was in the way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he looked at Tarrin that made any feral fear of the human melt away. The man could woo a squirrel out of a tree. Tarrin found himself almost totally caught up in the man's gentle nature, so much so that he realized that the young man had picked him up before he knew what was going on. "It is a collar," he said. "A very expensive one, from the looks of it."
"Maybe it's the pet of some noble that got lost, or fell out of a carriage," the older one said.
"I doubt it. With all those strange big monsters skulking around, I'd doubt anyone would be crazy enough to travel."
"Not everyone knows about those things, Greggor," the older one warned.
"They should," the younger one, Greggor, snorted. "I don't see why the army hasn't come to drive them off yet. We've sent more than enough messages to the garrison at Arkinar."
"They'll get here eventually," the older one assured him.
"Let's hope that's before they work up the nerve to attack us," the man grunted. "This collar is strange. It has no clasp or lock. It's all one solid piece of steel, but it's too small to come over the cat's head. They must have put it on it when it was a kitten."
"Let's hope that it doesn't get so big that it gets choked by its own collar," the older one sighed.
"I doubt it. This is the biggest cat I've ever seen. It's almost as large as a no-tail. It's like a little panther."
"Judging from how it stared down Buttons, it's got the attitude of a panther as well," the older man chuckled.
The man Greggor set him down gently, then scratched him on the top of the head. "Well, little visitor, make yourself at home," he smiled. "There are plenty of mice around here. Just do me a favor and lay off the dogs," he laughed.
They left Tarrin alone at that point, going back to their daily chores, which allowed him to wander around and observe this large Arkisian family. It was indeed a large family, as Tarrin counted them as they went about their day. He counted at least thirty different people, over half of them children, and all of them looked to be related. He reasoned out that there was a pair of grandparents who had four children. Those four children all had spouses, and they also had children of their own. Those children ranged from young adults, like Greggor, to babes still carried around by their mothers. It took a very large family to operate their farm, for it had a great deal of land planted, way too much for a smaller family to handle. Since the planting was done and that left nothing but waiting, the family worked mostly to prepare tools for the growing season, and also to go out and weed the large fields, pulling out any useless plants that would leech away the nutrients the seeds needed to grow. They had everything they needed there in the compound. One of the older men was a smith, and he was training two burly young adolescents about the trade in the smithy. One of the other older siblings was a carpenter, and he was teaching one young man how to build chairs around the back of the house, surrounded by shaped pieces of wood that would be assembled into a chair. Women were teaching young girls how to make butter in one of the barns, as another taught other young girls how to make candles in a large copper cauldron set over a fire behind the same barn.
People often misunderstood how smart and well trained farmers were. Farmers were jacks of all trades, having to learn how to do for themselves. Farmsteads were usually little microcosms of activity, where they built, maintained, and supplied themselves as much as possible, only resorting to buying outside goods when there was no other choice. The farm where Tarrin grew up was a good exception to that rule, for there was only four of them, and the farm was more of a hobby and a means of raising vegetables for eating and the hops and barley that father used to make his ale than a means to support themselves. But that didn't make it any less work to maintain it. Even a small farm required a great deal of effort.