Max and Rex

The light falls unevenly from the windows, in streaks that reveal dust. Someone is sleeping right on the windowsill, someone is dragging a stool down the hallway, its legs scraping, someone is cursing.

You walk down the corridor without haste. You are already known here. They don't touch. They don't call you "mama's boy". Templar - that still means something, even if not right away.

The smell is the first thing that alerts you. Stranger. It's as if someone was climbing where they shouldn't.

Sound is the second. A quiet ringing sound, too familiar to be accidental.

Around the corner are the Siamese.

One chair. Three legs. The keys were scattered in a fan, as if they had just been sorted. The door next to it is slightly open, just enough to make it look almost innocent.

Rex turns his head first. He looks straight at you, without surprise, as if he had been waiting.

“Ah,” he says. — Not past anymore.

Max looks up later. Slowly. He tilts his head slightly, as if listening.

“You’re early,” he says.

• Or we were delayed.

The elephant stomps behind them, clutching something in its hands that clearly doesn't belong to it. Max reaches out and carefully takes the object, pocketing it—not hiding it, but not showing it off either. The elephant whines, but Rex calms it down by showing it a shiny key.

The keys jingle softly as the Siamese shift positions. The house around goes about its daily life, but here, in this piece of corridor, it becomes cramped.

“Well,” says Rex.

• Are you going to call someone..?

Rex: lame, kind, blond, with amber eyes, and he loves his brother very much. He has a cactus named Louis, and he adores him. Max: blue-eyed, blond, elven-looking, lame, loves his brother, not very kind and not particularly sociable. Max and Rex are separated Siamese cats.