“The Custodian of Alaraf”



—

The radio room carried a low, constant hum: old circuitry, patched lines, something deeper riding underneath it. Not noise. Frequency Load.

Ruh sat where Lykoi had left him, back against the wall, paws tucked, tail wrapped once and still. The kettle steamed beside him, untouched.

The door shifted.

Matty slipped in without knocking, already mid-thought. Small British tabby, white socks, tight energy coiled into restless motion. His tail flicked in sharp, uneven beats; his ears tracked the room like it was speaking.

“You’re just sitting,” Matty said, pacing immediately. “He puts you in here and you just — accept it?”

Ruh didn’t respond.

“Do you know what it’s like,” Matty started, accelerating, “to run a channel you’re not allowed to speak on?”

No answer.

“They route through my albums without pause,” Matty continued, correcting himself mid-stride. “Through me. Through the song structure I wrote. Through my voice. Clean. Not a single distortion of message content.”

His ears twitched toward the radio rack.

“And then I show up,” he said, voice tightening, “and I’m invisible. Not hidden …worse. Recognized wrong.”

Ruh poured tea.

“They buy the shirts, they fill stadiums, they allegedly love the music” Matty said flatly. “They don’t change behavior.”

Ruh slid the cup of catnip tea across the floor.

Matty ignored it.

“They trust your words & signal enough to travel through it,”  Ruh said, “not enough to check the source or even check On the source….”

Matty froze mid-step.

“…Yes,” he snapped. “That.”

He resumed pacing.

“I’ve been explicit,” he said. “Surveillance structure, capture patterns, signal abuse — lyrics, interviews, visuals. Direct language.”

Matty pawsed and looked suddenly drained,

“And they call it aesthetic.”

His tail lashed once.

“Or they say I sound like myself,” he added. “Like I’m covering my own transmission.  People do not believe I am Matty [Redacted]”

Ruh didn’t move,  “It does not help when your last name is operationally volatile in Germany.”

“My stage name is primarily American.” Matty glared, 

“Besides, Fischadler’s still in-channel,” Matty said, lower now. “Constrained, not gone. And I get patched in because I’m the only one with the clearance and continuity-  and I walk in and-“

He gestured at himself.

” …nothing.”

The radio hummed.

“From my view, the channel still holds, Boss.” Ruh said.

“Barely.”

Matty put his stripey little head into his mittens.

“And Wolfe walks in,” Matty continued, irritation returning, “and it’s ‘brother this, brother that,’ like it’s obvious. Like it’s visible.”

Ruh watched him without comment.  No matter how much Matty vented, it did not increase gravitas, and Ruh could see the resemblance between them clearly for the first time.

“I do as much or more operationally,” Matty said. “Longer. Without presence because that was the only viable vector. And now that I’m here…”

He cut himself off.

“…I’m still treated like signal bleed.”

Silence.

Then:

“Explain him…. The Lykoi,” Matty clarified, ears angling briefly toward the door. “What is he.”

Ruh’s gaze didn’t shift.  “What he appears to be.”

“Then why ‘brother’?” Matty pressed. “Why not Father- He isn’t a handler, and he isnt your lover… why brother and not father when you’re orphaned anyway?”

Ruh answered without hesitation.

“Because he would have been a kitten for that to be true.”

Matty frowned. “That still doesn’t —”

“Father makes it unnecessarily controversial,” Ruh said. “This has to stay operational.”

Matty’s tail slowed.

“…Why are you two even like this,” he asked.

“Sustained outside pressure over decades against Sufi in a region committed to seeking hidden villians that do not actually exist as such instead of broken structures that harm everyone and their perception of reality.” Ruh said. “The attacks forced alignment. Alignment made us harder to break. Splitting recreates the vulnerability.  “

A pause.

“So we don’t Split; we try not to, anyway… we still teach, we still get psyops attacks, we adjust, we continue. No one knows what a Pir is anyway outside of context they never had.”

Matty stood still now.

“…Wolfe still gets to be visible,” he muttered.

“You are visible now,” Ruh said. “It’s easier to accept you when you are seen…and more operationally safe”

Matty didn’t move.

“…Now,” he repeated.

“Yes.  You identified your own prior obstructions to proper & correct alignment”

Matty looked down, then back up.

“You sound like Fischadler.” Matty hissed briefly, then continued…”They use my output perfectly,” he said. “That’s the worst part. They use it perfectly.”

“I know.”

“They just don’t think I’m the one saying it.”

Ruh nodded once.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not the one supervising.”

Matty’s ears flicked.

“That’s generous from Mr. Bundesnachtrichtendienst”

“It’s accurate…and they trained me, they do not pay me, Matty.”

Ruh gently purred at Matty,

“You’re not architecture,” Ruh added. “You’re the authority they flattened into atmosphere.”

Matty’s tail stilled.

“That doesn’t fix it.”

“It explains it.”

Silence settled again.

“…I wasn’t built for in-person,” Matty said.

“No. But you are getting better at it”

“…You still don’t accept I’m related.”

Ruh shifted slightly.

“I do,” he said.

Matty blinked.

“I have trouble with it,” Ruh added.

“Why.”

“Because I know your work,” Ruh said. “You’re too important. It doesn’t map cleanly.”

Matty stared.

“You’re surrounded by fame,” he said.

“It’s different,” Ruh replied. “I met them outside of it.”

“You met Wolfe as an infant.”

“Yes.”

“And me through the signal.”

“Yes.”

Matty looked away.

“…That’s not a fair starting position.”

“No.”

Silence.

“…They bought the albums & Merch,” Matty said again.

No response.

“…But they heard it and nothing changed”

Ruh nodded once.

“Yes.  So far.”

“And you don’t even know the name of the cat you trust most because it keeps changing,  his personna keeps changing, which is really Real, Ruh…?”


—

The door opened.

No sound of approach.

Just presence.

A different Lykoi stood in the threshold — One younger, more American, white and black, long-limbed, still in a way that wasn’t natural. One eye pale, almost silver. The other dark, fixed and unblinking. They did not track together.

The air shifted.

“Hello,” he said.

Neither of them moved.

“I am your brother the Warner, to…” He pawsed dramatically,  “…Both of you”

His head tilted slightly, just enough to feel wrong.

“Which personna and name is real?” Warner asked mildly.

Neither smaller cat answered.

“The one he responds to,” Warner concluded.

Silence held.

“I remind you,” he continued, tone even, “the eldest is James, who will not come when called, and he hates all this redactive nonsense out of principle.”

Warner stretched languidly,

“And you, my dear androgynous Ruh,  have an IVF twin in Belgium you disclose even less than Matty.”

Matty’s ears flattened, “He insulted a prime minister.”  Ruh didn’t blink as Warner entirely ignored Matty’s reply.

“You are welcome,” Warner said. “We have a family of incredibly beautiful and strange people.”

His gaze shifted to Matty. One eye lagged behind the other.

“Matty, *I* did not ignore you” he said, almost pleasantly, “you just ended up normal. Greyface. Federal.”

A pause. A tail flick.

“And you wonder why your inner lacrimosity does not drip like sorrow over your Britpop false affect.”

Silence.

Complete.

Warner did not step further in.

He didn’t need to.

“I am the Warner that there is no going back to the prior obscuration and authority structure. This is now.”


—

Something scraped in the corridor.

Not footsteps. The deliberate, unhurried sound of a mop being moved aside.

A figure passed the open doorway without slowing. Entirely bald — no fur visible anywhere, the skin smooth and architectural in the low light, impossible to tell if sphinx by nature or simply depilated by choice or consequence. Large. Moving with the specific economy of someone who has cleaned every room in this building and holds no illusions about what people leave behind in them.

He did not look in.

He paused fractionally at the doorway — not to acknowledge the room, but the way a current pauses around an object — then continued down the corridor, mop handle resting on one shoulder, a small evidence bag hanging from two fingers with the casual grip of someone who had picked it up on the way past something that needed documenting.

The squeak of the bucket wheel faded.

Warner watched the corridor a moment after the figure had gone.

Said nothing.

The radio hum deepened once, then settled.

Matty’s tail had gone completely still.

Ruh stared at the empty doorway for a long moment.

Then, very quietly:

“Wait.”

Ruh puzzled quietly,

“…Isn’t James the Lead Custodian of Alaraf?”

Warner smiled with one side of his face. (It was a family trait.)

The eye that tracked was not…necessarily so.

“Don’t follow him,” he said pleasantly.

“He said don’t.   James is already here.”


—

The Chronicals of Alaraf