At twenty five your mind has finished developing, just in time for your body to start degenerating. For one year you are at your biological best, strong of mind and body, and it’s almost always spent in anxious chaos wondering who you are and why you’re here. A sense of being lost and an overwhelming need to find yourself, but no time to do it in. Cora unlocks the door and slumps into her apartment.
“Rascal no! Shoo! Git!”
She attempts to summon authority over her roommate's pet cat as it wraps around her ankles threatening to trip her and spill a week's worth of groceries all over the floor. A nefarious scheme to be certain, the cat is aware that the floor is his domain and he desires the bounty of snacks the shopping bags are sure to contain.
“Mreow”
He feigns innocence as he continues his faux affections. Cora sighs in resignation and lifts her knee as high as she can, extending her leg out far past the cat before putting her foot back down and pulling her other leg up behind her trying her hardest to avoid stepping on the animal.
“You’re very difficult you know”
She scolds as she hurries to the kitchen before the cat begins again. The bags hits the counter and the cat has lost. Cora begins putting away the groceries, keeping an eye out to make sure the cat doesn’t leap to the counter to try again. Her roommate appears out of the next room, picking up the cat and greeting her,
“Hey Cora.”
“Hey.”
Cora answers back, continuing to put away the groceries with renewed speed now that the cat had been restrained.
“Oo pomegranates!” Her roommate snags a pomegranate out of one of the bags on the counter
“Thanks Cora!” She says over her shoulder in a sing-song voice as she takes the cat and the fruit back to her room, the cat now distracted from his attempts to wriggle free by his new goal of acquiring the pomegranate held in his mother's other hand.
“Welcome,” Cora manages to say before her roommate's door clicks shut. After putting the few remaining groceries away she decided that she would treat herself to a pomegranate as well, cutting one open with a knife and smacking it over a bowl until all the seeds fell out. After plucking out the remaining handful of seeds she discarded the bitter skin and took her bowl into her own bedroom, licking the juice of the seeds off her fingers. She places the bowl on her desk and sits down, opening her laptop and pulling up her netflix account, idly scrolling through for something to watch with one hand as she eats the sticky seeds with the other, careful not to get any of the juice on her computer. After scrolling through all the recommended titles and remaining unsatisfied with her options, Cora switches to youtube and puts on a video of some vlogger playing a new game she had heard some good reviews of.
Much later that evening, Cora turned off a youtube video about conspiracy theories and missing children with a yawn, grabbing her empty bowl and taking it to the kitchen sink for a quick rinse. There is no more daylight streaming in through the windows, and her roommate has already turned off the lights for the evening and headed to bed, so Cora creeps as quietly and carefully as she can through the darkness.
“Mreow”
A familiar meow kills the silence as a pair of green eyes blink into existence a few feet in front of her.
“Shhh kitty no” Cora silently pleads with the cat to be silent and not wake up her roommate whose door she was right outside of.
The eyes blink twice, then once again the cat lets out a
“Mreow,” he's getting louder, the little bastard is doing this on purpose she just knows it.
“Noo good kitty shhhhhh, just stay quiet please,” Cora continues attempting to reason with the creature, “wouldn’t want to wake Chloe now, would you?” The cat, it seems, would in fact like to wake Chloe now.
“MREEOOW”
“Rascal no!” Cora raised her voice into a harsher whisper, trying to sound authoritative as she continued to plead with the cat. He paid her no mind, rising to his paws and slinking up to her in the darkness. Coras eyes had adjusted enough to see his movements, the black of his fur contrasting ever so slightly with the shadows in the hall. A chill ran up her as he rubbed up against her legs, mirroring his actions this morning, weaving between her feet and making himself an obstacle. If she attempted to step forward now, she would likely either kick him or step on him in the poorly lit hall, which of course would cause even more of a commotion right outside her roommate's door.
“Rascal…” she whispered in a warning tone, “We cannot play this game right now.”
“Oh but I do love games.”
Coras blood turned to ice in her veins.
“What.” she whispered, certain that the low, smooth man's voice she had just heard could not have been real.
“Games, I love games, what’s wrong with a little game?”
Cora pondered, for a moment, if her roommates Alexa had been given the voice of George Takei with which to frighten her by talking back in the dead of night. She stared down at the cat who was now belly-up between her feet, purring softly.
“Rascal, did you just talk to me?” She felt foolish for asking, but the alternative was infinitely more frightening and she wanted to postpone the certainty that there was a man in her house for as long as possible.
“Purrrrrhaps.” The cat's eyes blinked up at her again. Cora could not manage more than a whimper in response.
“Come now, that was funny, why do you not laugh?” Cora felt her breathing become heavier.
“Where are you?” She managed to squeak after several attempts to catch her breath.
Rascals head tilted to the right,
“I am at your feet dear girl, can you not see?”
At that moment, it all became too much for Cora, she screamed, a high pitch, horror movie scream and dropped the bowl she had been holding as her hands flew to her head.
Rascal skittered to his feet, narrowly avoiding the falling bowl as it shattered where he had been lying moments ago.
“Cora what’s going on?” Chloe flung open her door in alarm, switching on the light in her room. The light spilled out into the hallway, revealing the broken dish at Coras feet and Rascal, looking scared out of his mind at the end of the hall, his back arched and his fur on end. Worse off still though appeared to be Cora, her hands were gripping her hair so tightly, Chloe feared she would rip it out, and her face was devoid of any healthy color, and a cold clammy sweat dripped from her brow. Her bare feet were surrounded by small shards of the broken bowl and she could hardly take in a breath.
“Cora, hey, it’s alright just breathe, tell me what’s happening.” Chloe reached out and gently grabbed her friend's shoulder, squeezing softly for comfort. Cora took several gulps of air and muttered out something about a man's voice, she thought she heard. Chloe nodded sympathetically and put on some slippers to protect her feet before turning on the lights in the hallway and the living room and even Cora's bedroom, looking in every corner for any sign of an intruder. With every corner of the apartment that was searched Cora breathed easier, but even upon receiving the all-clear from Chloe she could not shake the chills from her spine or the nausea from her stomach.
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“It was probably just your mind playing tricks Cora, it’s pretty late and you clearly haven’t slept.”
Cora nodded and Chloe helped her carefully step over the bits of broken porcelain around her feet. Rascal was perched up atop the back of the couch, watching intensely as everything unfolded.
“Oh baby, did Cora scare you? She didn't mean to, no she did not,” Chloe baby-talked the cat as she lifted him into the air before pulling him close to her to hold.
“Mew,” he meowed pitifully, turning to make eye contact with Cora as she returned with the dust-pan and broom. Cora felt that chill in her blood once again, then shook her head. Chloe had to be right, she was just tired, cats don’t talk with the voices of beloved actors, they don’t talk at all. She broke eye contact with the cat and started sweeping up the broken bowl in the hall, Chloe holding Rascal until she was done so he didn’t get any pieces stuck in his paws, and then they both returned to their rooms for the night.
Cora found herself lying awake for several hours more, grateful that the next morning would be Saturday and she wouldn’t have to go to work. She could not stop herself from replaying what had happened in her mind. The cat spoke, he spoke to her, he said he liked to play games and he told her a pun, how is it that she imagined that all so clearly? She had never before heard voices in the darkness, or imagined that cats were speaking to her, she just couldn’t reason out why this would start happening now. Eventually her whirring mind fell into a restless sleep, and when she woke she was vaguely aware of a dream about Rascal on the USS Enterprise.
It was well into the morning by the time she woke up, dazed and still tired she got out of bed and went to shower. The bathroom was open, Chloe had likely left already to go seize the day the way she loved to do, and the water heated up fast as Cora put on some music to jam to while she washed up. By the time the bathroom mirror had fogged up, the fog in her mind had cleared, and she was singing along to her music with hardly a thought as to what had happened last night. When she had finished washing away yesterday, she dried off and wrapped up in a towel, heading to her room to get dressed.
“Feeling better?”
Cora whipped around to find the cat once again sitting at the end of the hall. This time she refused to answer, standing there in silence as the water left in her hair and on her body began to pool at her feet.
“What’s the matter Cora? Cat got your tongue?”
She took a deep breath in, and a long, slow breath out.
“Come now Cora, do you not find my jokes amusing?”
Rascal stood and began walking towards her down the hall, and against her better judgment, Cora turned to run back to her room. It was a silly thing to do and she knew it, running from a cat because she imagined he was talking to her how foolish. Almost as foolish was attempting to spin herself around and take off when the floor beneath her feet was soaking wet and terribly slippery. As she pivoted on the ball of her left foot, her right leg already raised for the first step down the hall to her room, the water beneath her caused her left foot to slide out behind her and she fell forward onto the floor. She did, thankfully manage to catch herself enough to spare her face from slamming into the ground, however she was now laying on the ground in a towel trying to escape her roommate's pet cat. Her cheeks burned red, thankful that she was only imagining the cat could talk and therefore he would not be able to tell anyone about this.
“How charmingly graceful. I suppose we cannot all land on our feet.”
Rascal sauntered up and sat directly in front of Cora.
“Are you ready to talk now dear? Or shall we play more games of breaking dishes?”
Cora glared at the cat who now seemed to be taunting her.
“What could a cat possibly want to talk about?”
“Ah there's a good girl,” Racal purred down at her, “perhaps you would like to continue this conversation somewhere more comfortable?”
Cora stood up, keeping the towel wrapped firmly around her as best as she could, and walked past the cat directly to her bedroom, shutting the door in his face. She heard a light scratching on the door.
“Coraaa, I believed we were past this, do not continue to ignore me, Coraaa” Rascal whined in the same manly voice he took last night. Cora let out a deep sigh and dressed herself as quickly as she could, Rascal whining and scratching at the door all the while. When she was finally dressed, she pulled the door open and Rascal stopped mid whine, looking a bit surprised. He stood there a moment, and then sat down in the doorway.
“Are you going to come in?” Cora finally spoke.
“I rather like doorways.” the cat answered. Cora rolled her eyes, grabbing her desk chair from across the room and pulling it over to sit in front of the cat in the doorway.
“Go on then. What is it that is so important?”
Rascal, seeming to enjoy finally getting Cora to talk to him, sat silent a moment and began to lick his paw.
“Rascal…” Cora warned, grabbing the door as if threatening to shut him out again.
“Now now dear no need for that,” the cat spoke, stroking behind his ear with his now damp paw. “I have waited twenty years to deliver you this message, a few more moments for dramatic effect will make little difference.”
“Twenty years? You expect me to believe you’ve lived that long? You’re a cat.” Cora said indignantly.
“Cats, my dear, have nine lives, I have spent three following you so that I would be with you when it came time.”
“Cats don’t actually have nine lives, that's nonsense.” she said to the talking cat, immediately feeling her cheeks burn again with the foolishness of it all. Rascal seemed to raise an eyebrow, pausing his bath to stare her in the eyes.
“No? Are you sure about that?”
Cora remained silent.
“Very well then, while you were in college, there was a cat who lived outside your dorm that was affectionately referred to as ‘Mascot’ and was fed and cared for by the residents of the dorms until he was found dead one morning, it was heartworms. Before that, I was your sister's cat, Tabby, that you found outside one day and adopted. I was hit by a car that time. Then before that, I was the cat you called ‘Mittens’ who seemed to live at your playground in elementary school before mysteriously disappearing. Every time I died, I had to be born and weaned and then find my way back to you, it usually didn’t take more than a month or two.” Cora sat in stunned silence.
“Any questions?”
“What happened to Mittens?” Cora asked with a sheepish curiosity.
Rascal shuddered,
“Coyotes.”
Cora cringed.
“Why twenty years?”
“You needed to be twenty five before I delivered the message, very important.” Rascal said as if it were the most sensible thing in the world. Then he continued,
“and now if you are ready, I do think it’s time you hear it.”
Cora nods in agreement, her curiosity at this point overwhelming any sense of shame or silliness.
“Very well,” Rascal cleared his throat and sat up tall, “Cora Ani Malidell, first of your name, first daughter of your mother, court-less mortal of earth, are hereby summoned by your fiancé Clymenus Ardor Edowrn, first of his name, tenth son of his father,”
“What do you mean fiancé?”
Rascal continues on disregarding the interruption.
“Prince of the Court of the Favored Wood, to begin your trial of harmony in this your twenty-fifth year.” Rascal finishes his speech, and proceeds to relax his posture, returning to his task of bathing himself starting with his other paw.
“I don’t have a fiancé.” Cora states after a few seconds of silence between them.
“Of course you do, I witnessed the betrothal myself.” the cat retorted.
“What betrothal?” Cora was becoming frustrated. Rascal stops his grooming and meets her eyes once more.
“Do you truly not remember?” Cora shakes her head. Rascal repositions himself with a sigh. “Twenty years ago, you and the young prince built a cairn in the center of a fairy ring to summon me, then you bound your hands with cord and swore to bind yourselves eternally. This is a betrothal ceremony. "Cora stares at the cat in shock, his story summoned vague memories of a green-eyed boy in her kindergarten class. With a little more focus she could bring to mind a memory of a playground wedding in a mushroom circle, there was a pile of rocks involved, but she didn’t remember anything involving fairies or talking cats.
“You have been summoned to begin the trial,” Rascal interrupted, “we should prepare for your departure.”
“Where am I going?” Cora asked, almost too shocked to question.
“The Favored Wood of course.” the cat replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.