The apartment Ellis chose was small, a bedroom and a bathroom and nothing else. She liked it quite a bit, considering she would have chosen such an apartment for herself if she were still on Earth. But that was not the matter at hand. She was busy adjusting everything when a wave of nausea hit her. She ran to the bathroom and puked for a few minutes before coming out.The room to the apartment was ajar and Nin stood at the door frame looking anxiously towards the corner of the room. Logan had brought over a pile of gifts to decorate her room, it seemed. His torso was twisted, looking over his shoulder and his arms moved back and forth. Ellis walked around to the other side and gasped with shock when she saw all the blood. To see so much blood in one day…“Logan!” she ran forward and grabbed his arm, forgetting her rule not to touch him. “Stop it! What are you doing?”

Logan came over for lunch the day, sitting silently and eating. It was astounding how much food he consumed, clearing the full table of food. Laurel and Isabella had mentioned that Zothean men would pack on the pounds before the birth so that they could incubate the eggs later on. In this case, they would not come out of their burrows or eat. Apparently, Logan would survive off of his fat stores and his body would shut down apart from all vital functions.“I need to go to the market today,” Logan said. Laurel had told her how Logan went out to get pillows every other day. He critically fluffed, poked and prodded every single pillow in the market stalls and agonized over the fabric types. Ellis refused to partake in such an activity as it would drive her insane.“I can’t go along,” she told him. “I have a lot of work and I need to visit the Koln hospital to see Arkan.” Ellis

Though in the middle of the night, Logan rushed out of his apartment and sprinted towards the government quarters where Ellis was still residing. Guards watched in bewilderment as a large Zothean running towards them. Their fear grew and they found themselves on guard to fight off whatever fiend it was until they realized that it was their frantic Emperor.They stepped aside and watched as his form became smaller and smaller as he went down the corridor. He was sweating and panting mess by the time he reached Ellis’s door. Nin was stationed outside, her eyes trained in front of her. When she saw him at the door, she stood up and bowed.“Emperor, what brings you here so late in the night?” she asked.“I wish to see Ellis, please,” he said. He was humbling himself in front of someone else but the realization he had an hour before had rendered him incapable of feel

Ellis was trying her best to sleep. However, she ended up staring at the dark ceiling. She had learned to read the script on the ceiling and knew it to be a Zothean romantic poem. She was still unclear about the meaning of it. Her body was still overcome with exhaustion, but she was still unused to not having Logan beside her. She missed the sound of his purring, the sound of his heartbeat when she pressed her head to his chest. She missed the feeling of his tail wrapped around her arm or ankle as if even in sl

“What do you think about the name ‘Tom’?” Laurel asked on the way to the bath.“You took the whole cat metaphor literally, didn’t you?” Ellis joked. Laurel didn’t understand. “God, have you been here too long that you have forgotten the masterpiece that is Tom and Jerry?” she paused. “Which reminds me, we might have archives of Tom and Jerry and Roadrunner, right? Oh my god, Children must watch such a thing.”