Occulus, the weird cat that belongs to the Archives acting as it’s ever watchful guardian. It’s a very normal cat, we swear. (With @nopaintjustpain~~)
Oculus: *doing a threat display @ Elias*
Elias speaking in Baby voice: aww are you gonna pluck my eyes out?? Who’s the big scary predator? You are!! Why yes you are!! Look at you so poofy! What’s got you all worked up, huh sweetheart?
(It’s fine, he knows Oculus is just playing.)
(Lore under the cut)
Elias has a huge soft spot for this Creature after enjoying its companionship for 200 years. It’s traditionally the companion of the Archivist and has been since the time of Alexandria, but the thing is fond of him too. It gets lonely, losing its Archivist every couple decades, and Elias is its longest lived friend. Also, Gertrude spent the last 50 years rejecting it :( She kicked it out of the Archives and refused to have anything to do with it, so it sulked in Elias’s office for a couple decades.
Elias got used to having it around. Then Jon came along and suddenly Elias is yesterday’s news. Elias can understand the appeal for Oculus — finally, an Archivist that loves it back after being chased away from its Archives for 50 years, and Jon is so primed and ready and perfect to be Beholding’s next avatar, so of course this Creature which is a pure manifestation of Beholding would be interested in Jon — but he MISSES HIS CAT GODDAMNIT. They’re about to get into an UGLY custody battle.
(Elias refuses to even call the cat Oculus because he thinks the name Jon gave it is very silly. It’s a timeless ageless aspect of fear?? It doesn’t need a name?? It pisses him off SO bad that “”Oculus””answers to the name. Him hissing under his breath at it like ‘this is beneath you!!’ while Oculus gets belly rubs and treats because Yes I Am A Normal Cat Thank You Please Love On Me
You know who else is loves that thing? Michael 👀
Oculus’s preferred method of feeding, besides fetching the Archivist fresh Statements of course, is to stalk and Watch someone until they start to question their own sanity. Surely that can’t be the same stray cat watching you at both home and work. You’re on vacation in Mexico, that is NOT the same cat. It’s totally normal that that cat is watching you, right? Like, completely unblinkingly. You never see it move but one minute it’s watching you from somebody’s garden wall and then when you pass out of sight and round the corner now it’s watching you from someone’s porch and when did it get past you?? Also the owl perched on the tree outside your window at night can’t be the same as that cat but maybe they’re in cahoots (pun intended) because you SWEAR it has the same eyes and the damn thing won’t just LOOK AWAY FOR TWO SECONDS. You’re changing clothes in your room with the curtains drawn and you swear you can feel its eyes on you. Then you turn around and there’s a cat on your bed and you DON’T HAVE A CAT. But it’s watching you, purring lazily, and there’s a door in your room that you don’t remember being there, which the cat entered through. Surely you just forgot that you got a cat. Yes, that must be it. You lay down for bed and the cat — a sweet, cuddly thing — drapes itself on your chest, purring the entire time, and GOD it’s heavy, so heavy you can barely expand your chest to breathe under its weight, and it won’t stop staring at you. You’ve never seen it blink. Surely you’re losing your mind.
(Michael and Oculus take turns with the victims depending on what the person ends up most afraid of: the so-called “”cat”” itself, or the certainty that they’re losing their mind. Sometimes Oculus plucks their eyes out and eats them, then sucks the dreams from their head like marrow from a bone. Other times Oculus tempts them into Michael’s door with the most adorable little meows. Michael is always polite and drops his little friend back off in the Magnus Institute with a careful scratch behind the ears.)
Michael Shelley remembers that cat. He never pet it when he was Gertrude’s assistant, Gertrude barred everyone from interacting with it and some quiet primal instinct told him to listen to her. But he left out tuna for it and he never chased it away. And now that he’s the Distortion he gives the GOOD scritches. Plus, the little guy has quite the impish sense of humor! Whenever it wants to go somewhere it can’t easily fly to, it’ll meow plaintively at a blank stretch of wall until a door appears to take it to an ideal ambush site from which to prank its next victim (or Elias or the archival staff). It’s a symbiotic Eye & Spiral relationship!
Meanwhile the Archival staff do Not understand why Jon is so unconcerned by the “”cat””. They’ve seen the shapes its body makes when it’s half in shadow, out the corner of their eye. Felt the Weight of its gaze. They don’t like its strange eyes. Don’t like the way it follows Jon around. But he’s so smitten with the thing, and it acts so Normal around him like it’s trying not to scare him away.
