The first step is not to interrupt the cat while it's eating. Even a domesticated dog will snarl if it thinks you're taking its food. Literally the worst time to try anything. The correct move is to wait, patiently, until it is full and satisfied and sleepy and calm.

And so the Angel of the Harvest waits. She sits cross-legged and lets the world glide past her. The coldness of the stone walls. The soft rip and crunch of muscle and blood. The slow motion yearning of wood and root; the distant echoes of air pressure changing and wind fluting across cavern mouths. She thinks mourning thoughts; past friendships and failures, so much vital life rendered into blood and flesh, then ash and nothing. These patterns continue with her still; all the arguments she's had with herself, run so many times until they're perfectly smooth stones with no flaw or purchase, clean enough to skip across a lake. It was not designed to think like a human, to model human thoughts and anxieties. It was designed to be broken; burdened with guilt, forever unsure if it was correct, if it was trustworthy, if its hand was holding a knife. It was strange how often that made humans relatable to it.

Only when the great feline is settled does she approach. Slowly but not cautiously; head down, hand extended, small and fragile and no threat at all. Less than a scavenger; a kitten. Something to be benevolently tolerated as it investigated and - hopefully - nipped.