I Built This City Chapter 50: Chapter 50

Read chapter 50 of I Built This City by ThePudding on NovelPedia.

Merchant Ellen Most of the time, sleeping with the other Ellens was surprisingly comfortable. They were warm bodies, and there was nothing weird about cuddling up for warmth under the numerous furs and blankets they’d all collected. Occasionally, she felt a little wobble of discontinuity when she remembered that she was surrounded by bedmates that shouldn’t exist… but the fact that she could trust all of them implicitly steadied that feeling. And she did trust them all. Even the newest quartet, though strange, she just knew had no ill designs upon her or the others. They could keep secrets, sometimes, but every time a secret had been revealed Ellen had immediately seen the logic behind keeping it silent. Each Ellen was also respectful of the others. Those who needed to awaken a little earlier than the rest always slept on the edges, so they could quietly disentangle themselves from the mass of warm redheads and slink quietly to the side where they could get dressed and start their morning business—whatever it may be. On this particular morning, every Ellen had a much more violent and rude awakening. “OW!” “HEY!” “STOP IT!” “WHAT?!” “OOF!” “EEEEEEEEK!” Ellen felt the breath knocked out of her as one of the four cats that had been lounging about the longhouse landed atop her and bounded off, the quartet of early rising felines yowling as they announced the morning with complaints of their human bedmates still sleeping. She didn’t know what had roused them to be so demanding this morning, but they’d taken out their frustrations on every Ellen in the room. All nine of them trying to sleep in bed. “I’m up.” “Me too…” “Nnnngh…” It was something of a relief for Ellen that the four new Ellens did not wake up and react with the same synchronization that they’d demonstrated the previous night. They were just as disoriented and bleary as the rest, and only once every one of them was awake and had pushed themselves into a corner of the fur pile did they start their odd behavior. In this case, they immediately began brushing one another’s hair and helping one another get dressed, without so much as a word exchanged between them. Once awake, they moved in perfect harmony, almost as one unit. Ellen shivered. Did they really think I could be a part of that? The thought made her bite her lip. How could they move like that? It was like they were just anticipating what the other Ellen wanted and trusting in that to… Of course they could. If she trusted another her to think like that, she’d have done the same. Just because she liked numbers more than the rest of them didn’t mean she couldn’t understand everything else, did it? If we let ourselves be like that, we would be less like individuals, she realized. The new quartet did not care about that. They didn’t see themselves as individuals, and in fact saw the idea of being separate people as a detriment. She only started to see differences as the four new Ellens got dressed. Not because they acted much differently, at first, but just because limited clothing was available and they had to choose different things. “I’m headed out,” Hunter announced, slipping into some homemade fur shoes she’d put together. “I’ll go with you,” one of the new Ellens offered, hurrying to throw on a cloak. “I’m going to be starting out with Hunter so it’d be good to get that out of the way.” Ellen watched as Hunter waited a moment—strange or not, the other Ellens had to work on their Class advancement and they all wanted to help with that—then both slipped out the front door, revealing that the snow had piled up to ankle-height during the night. Crisp, cold air blew in, and Ellen interrupted her own ritual of getting dressed to toss a few more sticks on the fire, to get it built up. All four of the cats that had been meowing plaintively bolted out the door. “Little brats just using us for our warmth,” said one of the new Ellens, surprising Ellen with the sudden statement that wasn’t done in unison. Not too surprising,