The Cat, the Crow, and the Moth

Riley did not believe in omens.

He stepped on cracks, walked under ladders, and gave fate the middle finger as often as it pleased him. With his mascara and mended sweatshirt, he warded off misfortune with appearances, glaring at anyone who got too close. Others crossed the street to avoid his path.

He hiked his backpack over his shoulders as he walked to school, the holes in his sneakers squishing from puddles. For a Kirkland morning, it was actually pleasant, the mist humid on Riley’s skin and the clouds a light shade of gray. Cherry blossoms plastered the pavement and cluttered the sidewalk like chalk art. All around, straining towards the sky, new-construction apartments and offices with giant “FOR LEASE” signs glistened from last night’s rainfall.

Ten minutes, Riley thought, checking his phone. First period is Mr. Matthis—he’ll check attendance on the dot. Damn it.

He kept moving, passing the local pet stores advertising domesticated wolpertingers and half-phoenix parrots. A nest of amphipteres, ball pythons with the wings of songbirds, watched Riley sleepily as he passed.

A mob of crows descended into a nearby alley.

Riley slowed. Crows in huge numbers were par for the course around Seattle, especially with feral griffins competing for prey, but a mob like that—

Something yowled, alone and afraid.

Heat spiked in Riley’s chest. His vision narrowed.

Riley dug in his shoes, rounded the corner, and sprinted into the mob. 

“Hey!” he shouted, waving his arms.

The crows cawed, voices guttural and harsh as they moved in a great flock, wings a susurration as they swelled and flowed. Riley swung his backpack from his shoulders and fought his way to a soppy, black-furred lump crouched on the asphalt. Riley planted his feet and swung his backpack at the crows until they lost interest and fled to the sky. In the mouth of the short alley, passersby took one look at Riley and gave him a wide berth; one woman’s miniature unicorn pinned its ears back and neighed disdainfully as its owner turned her nose up at Riley.

Yeah, yeah, keep walking, Riley thought, his lungs heaving.

He wiped his sweaty face with one sleeve, his backpack hanging heavy in his other hand.

Something mewed behind him. Riley turned around.

The black cat on the asphalt shook out its fur and the inky feathers growing around its ruff. From its back spread two sets of moth wings—forewings dusky brown, hindwings yellow with brown stripes—and nestled between its shoulderblades was a yellow marking that looked eerily like a skull.

Cat, bird, moth.

A triameri.

Riley watched it with a furrowed brow. Triameri were about as common as amphipteres or guinea pigs, kept as pets after centuries of coexistence with humans along with other magical creatures. His mother, Claire, had a triameri back at the apartment—Masha—whose watchful eyes scoured everyone and everything that entered the door. The ones who didn’t have human homes scoured the city for scraps.

“Hey,” Riley said, his voice low. “Are you okay?”

The triameri’s ears flicked forward as it caught Riley’s voice. Up close, Riley could see the jut of ribs under its sleek black fur and the small tears in its wings.

Riley knelt and held his hand out.

The triameri flared its nostrils, the tip of its slender tail twitching, and then—slowly—it padded forward until it bumped its nose against him.

Riley let out a soft breath. Carefully, he curled his fingers near its neck, rubbing the black feathers and feeling for a collar that wasn’t there.

“…You’re on your own?” he asked it.

The triameri didn’t respond. It kept sniffing Riley’s hand, and it rubbed its chin against his knuckles like any ordinary cat—until it stiffened at a rustle of feathers overhead. Riley looked up—

Crows descended on power lines and the pines between commercial buildings, beady eyes watching the triameri as if Riley didn’t exist. A feral griffin, built like a wildcat with the beak and wings of a hawk, perched on a nearby rooftop and fixed its hungry eyes on the triameri.

“Hell, no,” Riley said. “Get breakfast somewhere else, assholes!”

The beasts ignored him. The griffin shrieked; in Riley’s shadow, the triameri sank low over its paws, fur stiffening on its back.

A yellow bus rolled by on the street. Riley watched it pass, ignored the students watching him through the windows, heard the bus squeal its brakes outside the high school just a block away.

A warning bell rang from the school’s outside speakers.

“Damn,” Riley murmured. 

The triameri looked up at him with wide amber eyes.

“…Can you keep quiet?” Riley asked it. “Like, for a whole school day?”

The triameri curled its tail around its front paws, still staring at Riley’s face. It blinked slowly.

Riley sighed, running a hand over his black hair. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he murmured, “but I can’t afford to skip again, and if I leave you here those assholes are gonna mess with you. Come on.”

Riley unzipped the main pocket of his backpack. The triameri sniffed it curiously, tail flicking back and forth, and at Riley’s coaxing it crawled inside and nestled on top of his physics homework. Riley zipped the pocket closed, leaving a couple centimeters as an air pocket, and gently shouldered his backpack.

Crow calls echoed in Riley’s head the rest of the way to school.

#

Riley had never paid less attention in class.

They focused, sure, eyes on the whiteboard and chin nodding to teachers’ lectures, but they watched their backpack in case the triameri tried to make a break for it or start yowling for food. Bailey, the biology department’s blind basilisk, seemed to watch Riley from across the classroom, and Riley nudged their backpack further under their desk. Their leg bounced, fingers clutching their pencil so tightly their knuckles resembled the Cascades.

God, please tell me I didn’t kill it by mistake, Riley thought when they checked on the tirameri at lunch.

They sat on their own, as usual, keeping to the end of one of the long tables and letting the cafeteria din wash over them. Someone had brought a harpy feather and was passing it around like a trophy. Surreptitiously, Riley unzipped their backpack and peered inside.

The triameri was sound asleep, its furry chest rising and falling against Riley’s notebooks.

Riley stuck a piece of garlic bread inside and closed the pocket, careful not to disturb the beast. As soon as the end-of-day bell rang, Riley booked it out of the school and unzipped their backpack just enough for the triameri could smell the sky, its dark fur safe in the shadows.

#

Riley hesitated outside his family’s apartment.

It’ll be fine, he thought, holding the key tightly between his fingers. The saw-tooth edge wavered as Riley stared between it and the keyhole.

The triameri had kept quiet the entire walk back from school, but as Riley had climbed the stairs to get to his family’s second-floor unit he could feel the animal growing restless—squirming, pressing its paws against his school things, rustling its moth wings with a ghostly whisper. A neighbor taking their truesight hound to the apartment’s dog park waved at Riley like nothing was wrong—though the dog stopped to sniff the air when it passed Riley’s legs and woofed suspiciously.

Keep walking, Riley thought at it. I know you can’t read minds, but get that x-ray vision away from my friend.

“Cleo, come,” Riley’s neighbor insisted.

The truesight hound woofed again but relented, trotting after its owner with its stumpy tail aquiver.

Riley sighed, shoulders slouching. His school things pressed into his back as the triameri stretched.

I know, I know, I’ll let you out, Riley thought, but not here. Someone could raise a fuss with the landlord if they see you; unregistered magical creatures aren’t allowed in the building.

But I’m not tossing you into the streets, they reasoned. People think black cats are bad luck enough; plus, you’re so skinny, you wouldn’t last the week. Especially if those crows think you’re a meal.

Sticking the key in, Riley turned the knob and came inside.

The apartment was as neutral as the Seattle sky: whites and grays, a hint of blue here and there, with black industrial accents and crisp lighting. Riley’s mother, Claire, fluttered from the kitchen counter to the peninsula behind it, ferrying bowls of snacks and rearranging honeydew slices in a bowl. Keith, Riley’s father, was watching a Mariners recap on TV with beady eyes.

“Riley, how was school?” Claire asked pleasantly.

Riley eyed Keith on the couch, who turned up the sports recap by a few clicks in lieu of a greeting.

“Fine,” Riley replied.

His backpack squirmed.

Claire tilted her head in confusion; Masha, her triameri, pricked her brown ears and narrowed her eyes at Riley’s chest from her perch on the side table.

Riley slung his backpack around to his chest to get at the pocket. Through the gap he’d left for the triameri to breathe, he could hear its disgruntled warbling.

Damn, Riley thought. I don’t want to, but they’ll find out eventually—I forgot how sharp Masha’s senses are.

Please behave…

Riley unzipped his backpack.

The black triameri leaped out of the pocket and fluttered its moth wings, the yellow skull mark between its shoulderblades distorted as it scampered into the living room.

“Riley!” Claire exclaimed.

“The hell?” Keith said, getting off the couch.

“What?” Riley said. “I rescued it!”

“When, and why,” Keith said, fixing his gray eyes on Riley’s green. 

Masha hissed at Keith, flaring her white-and-tan moth wings. She was twice as big as the black triameri—built like a Maine Coon, her shoulders coated in thrush feathers, the eyespots on her rosy hindwings bold enough to make Keith flinch.

Claire clicked her tongue; Masha lowered her wings slowly, swallowing her hiss into a growl. Masha fixed her watchful eyes on the black triameri instead, her fluffy tail twitching.

“This morning, on my way to school,” Riley said, looking between his parents. His black bangs flowed fur-like over his forehead. “I had it with me the whole day and it was fine.”

“Riley!” Claire scolded. “Why didn’t you take it to the vet right away?”

“And land my ass in an in-school suspension? You and Dad really want that?”

At once, Riley knew he’d said the right and wrong thing. Claire’s face went still, her mouth in a pained line, and to her right Keith let out a low, rustling breath.

“Look, I saved it from a mob of crows and a feral griffin that wanted to tear it apart,” Riley said, gesturing open-palmed at the triameri currently investigating an armchair. “It’s starving! It could’ve died if I hadn’t stepped in! How is that a bad thing?”

 “That’s a bad omen,” Keith said, pointing with a bony-knuckled finger. “Black cat, crow feathers, moth with some kind of skull on its back? That animal doesn’t belong under this roof.”

Heat, angry and coiling, pooled in Riley’s chest. “What?” he asked.

“Triameri used to reflect peoples’ souls,” Claire said, her voice gentle and strained. She smiled, but Riley found little warmth in it. “Long ago, they were considered almost holy, revered by ancient civilizations and their people. The combination of animals that make up any individual was said to represent the person that triameri bonded itself to. Nowadays, they’re getting into trash cans and roaming the streets like an ordinary stray cat, but they do have historical significance.”

“They’re pests,” Keith clarified.

Claire gave him an exasperated look, twisting her wedding band with her other hand, and turned to face Riley so Keith was out of her line of sight. Masha stared at Keith until he looked away.

“I think you should listen to your father,” Claire said patiently. “Maybe take it to the vet so they can set it up at an adoption agency?”

“No,” Keith said.

Claire’s mouth strained as she tried to maintain her smile. Riley bristled; Keith’s voice had gone gravelly, a warning caw, rough-edged and prone to escalation.

Riley swallowed the anger heating his throat.

“Riley doesn’t have a learner’s permit,” said Keith. “You’ve got that book club thing, Claire, so you can’t take him, and I’m busy—and without knowing the rules of the road, the boy’s not driving my car, that’s for certain.”

“Not a boy,” Riley said lowly.

Keith waved a hand dismissively and kept talking. “He’s got homework, the buses will take hours just to get to Redmond, and that newfangled hippogriff rideshare is an accident waiting to happen. A vet’s gonna charge to take the stray in—money we don’t need to spend—and by the time Riley gets back, daylight’s wasted. At any rate, we don’t have space for another one of those animals. The answer’s no.”

The black triameri flicked its ears back and trotted around Keith in a wide circle, coming to Riley’s side and curling around his legs. Its bony shoulders bumped Riley’s calves.

“Awful lot of ‘we’s,” Riley said.

Claire looked at him and subtly shook her head, wringing her wedding ring, as Keith fixed his beady eyes on Riley.

“Because under my roof, you answer to me and your mother,” said Keith. “Take the stray outside and let it loose.”

Riley gathered the triameri in his arms, hiding his painted nails in its black fur. Its claws hooked into the dark fabric of his sweatshirt. Words, hot and barbed, unsheathed claws on Riley’s tongue. 

“Now,” Keith ordered.

“Please,” Claire whispered, her fingers flitting nervously.

Riley let out a long, low breath through his nose and kept eye contact with Keith as long as he could, walking backward to the door and fumbling the knob. Fury kneaded under his muscles as he took the back staircase into the alley behind the apartment complex. Faintly, the barking of dogs from the building’s dog park echoed between the glass and concrete.

Riley knelt and set the triameri down on the pavement.

“He’s such a hardass,” Riley cursed, his voice a hiss between his teeth. “‘Under my roof’—Mom pays the mortage, not you, asshole. Ugh.”

The triameri sniffed his jeans. Riley stroked its feathery ruff, fingers brushing the skull mark between its shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “If Dad’s in a mood, there’s no arguing with him. And sneaking you back in’s out of the question; either Dad’ll find out or Masha will. She seems to like you, for what it’s worth.”

The triameri started to purr.

Riley swallowed, the heat from his chest and throat pressing behind his eyes. He blinked; his vision watered.

“Survive,” he murmured.

The triameri watched him as he backed away, fumbled the door handle, and let himself back inside, the impression of its amber eyes an afterimage whenever he blinked.

#

Riley saw the triameri every day for the rest of the week. Sometimes, it watched them from the alleys, its eyes bright against the mist and rain. Other times, it trotted along like a chaperone, staying close to Riley’s legs up and down the hill and leaving pawprint tracks on the sidewalk.

Crows flocked overhead.

People in the streets seemed to flow around Riley and the triameri like there was a ward over them. Flower-eating mice snacking on cherry petals stopped until Riley passed. Two men with amphipteres coiled around their shoulders separated to let Riley through; the drift of their latte steam coiled over Riley and the triameri like a sage cleanse.

“They’re just paranoid,” Riley told it Thursday morning, after the woman with her miniature unicorn took one look at the two of them and jaywalked across the street. “Black cats are bad luck. But I think that’s stupid; you’re not an omen, you’re just a little critter trying to make its way in the world like the rest of us.”

The triameri meowed and held its tail high.

Cars honked up ahead as an SUV sped through a four-way intersection without stopping. Riley blew a raspberry under their breath; the triameri lowered its wings and raised its hackles, the feathers around its neck and shoulders ruffling.

Riley didn’t see the triameri on Friday.

They looked for it in every shadow, under every awning, in front of every store and around every building on their way to and from school. When Riley returned to the apartment, they left their backpack under the kitchen peninsula and went to the window, walking in front of Keith’s sports game.

“Watch where you’re walking, Riley,” Keith warned from the couch.

Riley ignored him. They scanned the sidewalk past the windows’ heavy condensation for a hint of black fur or a yellowish skull patch. 

“Riley!”

Heat snarled in Riley’s stomach. They tore their eyes from the street and glanced at their father.

Keith was glaring at him with beady eyes, holding the TV remote between his fingers with his thumb over the mute button. He pointed at his eyes and then at Riley’s.

“You look at me when I’m speaking to you,” Keith said.

Riley swallowed, heat burning their throat. From the corner of their eye they saw Claire emerge from their parent’s bedroom—she took one look at the living room and fluttered behind the kitchen peninsula, her eyes wide. Masha leapt onto the counter and lifted her moth wings warily.

Guttural caws swirled outside.

Riley spun around.

There—darting between the café and the real estate office—a streak of black with a glimpse of yellow-brown twisted away from a mob of oil-black crows.

Riley’s heart thudded in their ribcage. They ran in front of the couch, ignored the swipe of Keith’s hand, bumped their hip against the peninsula and slammed their feet into their slip-on sneakers.

“Riley!” Keith shouted.

“Riley?” Claire asked, her voice almost lost.

Riley wrenched open the apartment door and ran for the stairs.

They emerged on the sidewalk breathless and panting, one of their shoes rubbing at the heel, hair already dampening under the ambient mist.

There, Riley thought.

Crows—ten, twenty, a sea of feathers—assaulted the black triameri on the sidewalk as it struggled to defend itself. It swiped its cat claws and hissed open-mouthed at the birds, patches of fur slick against its malnourished sides from mist and blood. Passersby kept a wide berth around the scene—some snapped pictures, some gossiped head to shoulder, but most kept walking, eyes on their lattes and backpacks and phones. Two feral griffins commiserated on a rooftop, waiting for scraps.

Riley ran across the street and swung their arms into the mob.

Feathers brushed their skin. Talons snagged their sweatshirt. Beaks and claws nicked their cheeks with flares of pain and scrapes of blood, but Riley pushed forward until they reached the triameri. They waved their arms and thrust their body in the way.

The birds fixed their beady eyes on Riley.

As one, they turned their talons and beaks on them, driving them away from the triameri. Shielding their face with their sleeves, Riley stepped down as the curb leveled into the asphalt street. Crows pushed them back and back with beating wings and scraping talons, scoring their skin again and again.

The triameri suddenly flared its moth wings. It launched itself at Riley and knocked into their chest full force. Riley let out an oof of surprise and bowled over backward, falling onto their ass—

—as a car squealed to a stop where they’d been standing seconds before.

Riley tugged their legs to their chest, clinging to the triameri as its claws hooked protectively into their sweatshirt. The car’s brakes slid on the slick asphalt, the door a sharp slam in the misty air as the driver let out a string of curses. Crows fled into the telephone lines and pines fringing the street.

“The hell were you doing!” the driver snapped at Riley. “Running into the street like that, you could’ve been killed!”

Riley got to their feet and mumbled an apology, backing toward the apartment entrance, clutching the black triameri against their sweatshirt.

The triameri looked up at them with wide amber eyes and began to purr. Riley hugged it tight. 

“Thank you,” they murmured.

Riley held the black triameri close to their chest as their parents and several concerned neighbors emerged from the apartment building. As Riley returned to the sidewalk and let their parents talk with the driver, feeling the press of bony shoulders and a heart that beat survival.

When the driver left, Claire handed Riley her apartment keys and had them bring the triameri inside. 

Riley watched their parents from the living room window. They couldn’t hear the argument, but they saw Claire throw her wedding ring at Keith’s feet, saw her flutter into the apartment lobby with a cellphone to her ear, and somewhere in Riley’s chest the angry heat dissipated into the warmth of a lantern in the dark.

Riley still did not believe in omens.

But they had room for luck, on occasion.

###