Chapter Text
Mi-Yeoungwas a Korean guardian tiger. A member of a supposedly sprawling underground community of mythical creatures who hid in broad daylight using magic to appear human.
Celine had stood at the front door of her hanok, a decently luxurious but also isolated home she had chosen to spend her retirement in. She stared ahead at the woman in front of her, too stunned by the insanity of that statement to even process that Mi-Yeoung, who had disappeared over a year ago, stood at her door.
Wide eyed and gaping like a fish, a wispy “what” is all Celine managed before Mi-Yeoung shoved her way in and grabbed Celine by the wrist. Still in shock, she was pliant as she was dragged through her home and lightly manhandled onto her own couch.
Mi-Yeoung paces for a second, before taking a deep breath in to centre herself.
“I said I’m a tiger, Celine.”
“Mi-Yeoung, w-“ Celine had tried to start before a shift in the air emanated from Mi-Yeoung and suddenly she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, as if it had been sitting there the whole time, a giant blue tiger takes her place. Its piercing eyes stared at a frozen Celine as its tusked mouth opened.
“Celine, please let me explain.”
Along with a whirlwind of other information, Celine learned three more important things that day.
- The reason Mi-Yeoung ran away from idol life last year was to impulsively pursue a relationship.
- Mi-Yeoung was over 8 months pregnant.
- Miyeong wanted her daughter to be born a tiger like she had been.
The last point, of course, required the context of the whole secret society thing.
Celine could do nothing more than accept all of it, still reeling from the fact that Mi-Yeong came home.
Now, a couple weeks later, there were three more things Celine knew.
- The baby’s name is Rumi.
- Miyeong had wanted to wait until her daughter was 10 to give her the medallion that would allow her to masquerade as human.
- Mi-Yeoung lays dead in the bathroom just one door away from Celine, having not survived childbirth.
This constitutes all the knowledge Celine possesses about the purple enigma clutched in her arms. Still wet from birth, the tiger cub wriggles into the soft of Celine’s shirt. Dazed, she can do nothing more than hold the infant closer as her mind races.
Not even 3 weeks Mi-Yeoung had been back in her life, and now she’s gone again. This time though there’s no doubt about what happened. No hope that she could come back, or that she was out there somewhere, happy. Or even that she was out there miserable but at least somewhere Celine could find her.
Celine paces her house aimlessly, wandering from room to room until she’s jolted with the realisation that she’s drifting towards the bathroom where Rumi was born. Turned by fear, she’ll wander somewhere else until her mind drifts, and suddenly she finds herself near that room again.
She doesn’t know how long she’s in this state before a tiny, high pitched whine pierces through her trance. Rumi squirms in her grip, back legs pushing and front paws pulling herself forward. Lively, her head digs into the crook of Celine’s elbow. Looking down, she sees that the wetness of birth that had coated the baby has had time to soak through most of her shirt. A chill that comes from more than just her wet clothes passes through Celine as she realises that Rumi must be cold.
She turns on her heel and walks toward her linen cupboard with purpose.
Focused, she digs past unwieldy bedsheets and blankets until her hand brushes against something light and plush near the back. It’s a high end hand towel that now dangles in the air, removed from the set it had been resting with in the cupboard. Having had her home professionally furnished, this spare set was almost certainly for a guest room. Tucked away since Celine had moved in, it’s finally seeing some use.
“I’m so sorry, Rumi,” Celine whispers as she pats her with the dry towel. She feels panic starting to rise as the material picks up red stains, a stark reminder of the scene that still lies untouched just a few walls away. Once Rumi looks less damp, Celine discards the towel to the floor to be dealt with later. With a fresh towel, she wraps up Rumi to protect her from the wet of her ruined shirt.
Crisis now averted, Celine kicks herself. The baby is not even a day old and she’s already failing her. And of course there’s only more challenges to come. She has no idea what a human infant needs, much less a non-human one. Visions of Rumi freezing, or overheating, or starving, deprived of some vital nutrient that Celine is unaware she needed to provide, flood her mind. The haze that had been covering her thoughts fully lifts as her mind laser focuses on one goal.
She cannot let Rumi die.
Celine fusses uselessly for a bit before she figures that she’s more likely to get her shit together if her arms are free. Moving to her room, she lays Rumi down on the plush of her bed and stands back. Celine is struck by how tiny Rumi is. Transfixed, she leans down and finally takes in the sight of Mi-Yeoung’s child.
If not for the purple colouring, there would be no way to distinguish Mi-Yeoung’s daughter from a regular tiger cub. Rumi’s scrunched face roots around the nearby blankets. With tiny ears pinned flat to the side of her head and eyes completely closed, Celine can only assume she’s using her nose. Tentatively, the woman extends her hand to Rumi’s face and is met with another tiny whine as she pushes back in a way Celine chooses to read as reciprocation.
Dry and much fluffier than before, Rumi begins to wriggle and whine in earnest.
Celine grew up with dogs and had never been a cat person. The soft whines and way Rumi wriggles though remind her of the litter she helped her parents take care of when she was much younger.
There were 5 of them. All pudgy and bean shaped, curled together in a pile with their mother whenever Celine had come in their room to watch them during those early days. With a feather light touch, scared that the smallest pressure would break them, a young Celine would brush the back of her hand against the puppies and marvel at how warm they were, all cuddled together.
Rumi, alone on the bed, presses more into Celine’s hand.
She mentally recoils from the memory, the line of thinking making her uncomfortable. That experience with a certain type of animal could help her with taking care of Mi-Yeoung’s daughter.
With her other hand, Celine pulls out her phone.
What do tiger cubs eat?
The search results are hardly surprising. She probably could have guessed that the first suggestion would be milk from their mother. She gets more specific.
Can you bottle feed tiger cubs?
Yes, the results tell her. Many sanctuaries take care of orphaned cubs.
Can tiger cubs drink kitten formula?
Another yes.
Kitten formula
Skimming through the results, she finds an expensive brand and pays for the fastest delivery possible on a bulk purchase.
How often do tiger cubs need to eat?
Shit. The delivery isn’t going to arrive anywhere near within 3 hours.
Pet store near me
It’s 20 minutes away.
20 minutes there, time to park, find what she needs, buy it, and then 20 minutes back. She looks to Rumi and ice fills her at the thought of her being alone for an hour.
Is there a way she can take Rumi with her? She can’t just be carrying around a not even day old tiger cub. Much less a purple one. The thought of hiding her in some kind of bag crosses her mind but is immediately shot to the ground and curb stomped as she imagines Rumi suffocating.
Mind now racing, Celine swims in thoughts of all the challenges there will be to keeping Rumi safe. She definitely can’t ever be out in public looking how she looks. Are there people who would take her away? Celine knows what Rumi is, but to a stranger it would just look like she’s keeping an illegal tiger cub. She wonders if she should cancel the formula order and try for someone more discrete.
Another small mewl and insistent press against her hand snaps Celine out of her spiralling thoughts.
Rumi needs to eat or she’ll die.
How long can tiger cubs be left alone?
The answers are somewhat comforting. Tiger cubs, of course, must be able to survive while their mom hunts. Celine reminds herself that what she has on her hands is much more than just a tiger cub.
What to do if I have to leave a kitten alone?
Okay, prone to getting cold. Hot water bottle covered in a towel is recommended. But make sure to leave space for the kitten to crawl away from the bottle so they don’t overheat. Got it.
Celine looks back over to Rumi. With her squishy, bean shaped body, the baby is no more mobile than a plush toy. Barely any bigger than Celine’s hands, she has done nothing more than wriggle around in the small divot she’s made in the middle of the queen sized bed.
Celine is struck by visions of Rumi falling to the floor while she’s away.
Flustering, she gathers what she can from around the house. Things she can use to make a safe space for Rumi to stay as she lacks anything like a crib. Ultimately, she gets together as immaculate a setup as she could manage given the resources available.
While a pang of something travels through her at the sight of having Rumi on the floor, a solid setup of pillows and blankets protectively pen Rumi to a small part of Celine’s room.
Having finally changed her clothes, she gives one more look back to Rumi and forces herself out the door before she can hesitate. The sooner she can get out the sooner she can be back.
Despite the events of the past few hours, the day is maddeningly clear. The sun’s warmth bears down, glaring in Celine’s eyes as she glances back and forth between the road and the rear-view mirror. The house gets smaller and her thoughts start to drift.
It’s not only Rumi whom she’s leaving behind.
After mentally processing Mi-Yeoung’s arrival and the revelations that came with, Celine had helped her set up her sparse belongings in a guest bedroom. In the short window of time before Rumi was born, Celine had accrued a healthy amount of basic medical supplies, spare blankets, and anything else she could think of that would be helpful for the birth.
One supply run at a time, the spare bathroom transformed into a makeshift delivery room. A physical location that represented the new and uncertain future that awaited both women. Mi-Yeoung going quiet after Rumi was born is not what Celine had in mind.
Nothing in that room was able to stop the blood that pooled around the tiger.
There surely must have been something she could have done. If she had just reacted faster, or researched more about assisting childbirth, or found someone in the know who was better equipped to help she’s sure she could have prevented this.
The whole idea had been idiotic. She should have convinced Mi-Yeoung to stay human. Have Rumi be born as a human, in a human hospital, with human doctors who would have done a better job helping her than Celine could ever do. She should have been the mature one, and told Mi-Yeoung it was a bad idea. It was so easy to be swept up by the sheer whimsy of the revelation that magic, and fantastical creatures, and Mi-Yeoung (who was a fantastical creature) being back home with her, were all real.
Celine was the oldest between them and so should have taken responsibility. To push to the side the greatly increased risk of injury and death had been a failure of the highest degree.
“In 200 meters, your destination will be on the left,” the GPS pipes up robotically.
Right. She’s here for Rumi.
Celine parks and makes her way into the store at a hurried pace. Kitten formula and a bottle. That’s all she needs, and then she can bolt out.
Formula options are compared for a scant moment before a healthy amount from every brand is shoved into the shopping bag. Scanning over, Celine finds the kitten bottles. Shit. They’re all too small for Rumi.
Celine scours around the store and eventually comes up to the register with an obscene amount of kitten formula, a couple bottles meant for large puppies, a heat pad, some smaller cloths for cleaning, and yet more blankets to add to the ones she already has at home.
The cashier looks like he’s going to make small talk about her haul but thinks better of it upon making eye contact with the older woman.
The rest of the drive back is an anxious blur. She did get everything she needed, right? She palms her hand through the bag in the passenger seat and feels the bottle and formula. She notes the heat pad as well that she had picked up during her search for a bottle. It would be far more versatile than the hot water bottle Celine had managed to set up for Rumi. Safer as well she thinks as she imagines the water bottle breaking and drenching the baby.
Just 15 or so minutes, and she’ll be back to Rumi. Provided that she’s alright. That she’s not gotten tangled in a blanket, or overheated on the hot water bottle left for her, or gotten away from the bottle only to escape the makeshift crib and go cold on Celine’s bedroom floor.
Images of what else she’s returning to begin to creep in.
Celine’s hand roves over the bag again, counting formula packs and bottles.
She doesn’t even bother to park her car properly. She pulls up haphazardly to the property and bursts out the door, pet store bag in hand, before making her way to her bedroom in record time.
Rumi is in exactly the same spot she was when Celine left.
Kneeling, Celine checks that she’s breathing and warm. An ocean’s worth of pressure drop off her shoulders when Rumi lets out a tiny mewl in response to her probing.
She grabs the formula box before discarding the supplies on her bed. Instructions are read as she briskly walks. And then reread as she boils water. And reread again as she measures the correct ratio of powder and water. Staring at the back of the box, at this point she’s reading it over to pass the time while the formula cools to a comfortable temperature.
Back in her room, Celine finally brings the fruit of her labour to Rumi’s face. She immediately perks up, smelling the milk and no doubt incredibly hungry. To Celine’s relief, she latches easily, and downs most of the bottle.
With formula around her lips, Rumi snuggles into her blankets. Her breath evens out and it’s clear that she’s asleep.
Celine stands there, not quite sure what to do with herself. She looks around her room which now feels much quieter. Sighing, she does the bare minimum to clear off her bed, sets a 3 hour timer, and goes to sleep as well.