As the far-off rustles of so many disturbed trees changed to a closer murmur, the possum waited at the top of a rotten quarter of a log and stared at me. The lights in their eyes had dimmed, but still swirled like milk, and a faint mist wafted from their teeth.

I stared back, hackles slightly raised.

But then I realized that the possum wasn’t staring into my eyes with the same challenge as before. With head angled a little downward, front paws close together, and shoulders lowered, they seemed to be…maybe not surrendering, but backing down? And asking a wordless question.

Whatever animals were rushing toward that gap between us, their murmurs had risen to a roar of activity. Soon they would whoosh past. And then what? The possum seemed to know best.

They made a “come on” motion with their head right before diving into a hole that could have been a snake’s den.

Without hesitation, I raced forward. If this was a tactic on the possum’s part, well, I had my claws and would be ready for close combat. But maybe they were honest.

I dove in after the possum and found the den way smaller and shallower than I’d expected. Prodded by my enemy’s urging nose, I snuggled in as much and as tightly as I could. The ground had actually begun to tremble, and I couldn’t help wondering if I’d have been safer atop the trees than down here.

What was even going on? A stampede? That seemed likely until the rushing sounds outside became even clearer.

Bats? Bats. Lots and lots of bats. It explained the chitters and the flapping of wings against leaves. But when I actually saw the tide roar past, I second-guessed that assumption too.

THWOOSH. The whole screaming choir flew past, wings nearly scraping the edges of the pit and filling it with a harsh gust. Above us were endless blurred figures, squealing like rodents, slender like fish darting in a pond.

Scattered throughout the flock were—blares of red?!

I instinctively trembled. Not because I was scared, but because I really really wanted to touch them. Those lights I’d seen earlier. I had an urge to go out and scamper and slap them all.

They actually made me kind of angry. What were they and why were they so defiantly flashing past with…with all these flying bat-fish? Without explaining themselves? The nerve!

When the flock had been hurrying past for several seconds, the possum started moving, and I stiffened. I knew it, I thought, flexing my claws. Kind of.

But I shifted as much as I could in this tight space and let the possum have their way. They seemed less interested in landing a blow on me, though, than in jumping back outside. Front paws were anchored on the pit’s edge, and their still-fading eyes stared out.

Again they swung their head toward me (though so close up that their nose could’ve knocked me out). “Come on!”

They wanted me to follow? Um, okay…

Not just yet. The flock was still racing past with its infuriating trails of red, like it would never end. So the possum was waiting for the perfect moment—and hopefully that moment wouldb be as clear to me as it was to them.

I only had so much space to stand upright and get ready to dash myself. With my body in a U-curve and my nose against the possum’s tail, I threw in my lot with a stranger and got as ready as I could.

Luckily, the signal to jump was as clear as I could’ve wished.

First I noticed a change in the noise. My ears picked up an absence: the back of the flock was coming up.

Squinting, I studied the soundscape harder. Hm…that may have been the end of the flock, but there was certifiably something else there. Like a predator. Something that made large wingbeats.

Seconds later, I saw it come to pass. The flock ended, taking with it every light and tiny shriek, and loosed leaves fluttered in their wake.

Then I heard a human laugh.

An image of the lycanborns flashed in my mind. I shrank back—the possum wasn’t getting me into that kind of steep trouble, were they? No wild animal in their right mind would do it!

But I felt that I was in too deep to doubt. I stifled a sigh and did as the possum did.

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A whoosh almost as great as the flock’s came to the pit—and that was when we jumped.

A vast silhouette passed overhead. It could’ve been a humpback whale for how long and massive the moment seemed to me. Or was that only the way their wings blocked out all light, replaced the hot red?

Either way, we were jumping into what could’ve been a void, and turned out to be a scaly tail.

As I latched on, I heard another laugh. But it wasn’t human, it was the cackle of that possum hanging on right next to me.

They were fully wrapped around the tail as if they’d done this before—I almost wondered if they’d switch to hanging by their own. Considering this animal was racing through the bog at high speeds, that’d be a feat! Meanwhile, here I was struggling to anchor my back legs on the speeding, waving scales.

I knew that I couldn’t project every human interpretation of laughter onto this animal’s cackle…but a few of the same feelings were there for sure. Exhilaration, relief, pleasure. Impishness.

The tail of the speeding, night-darkened dragon tried to scrape us off on a tree on a hard bank. The possum simply held on tight and glowed blue—I was caught by surprise and couldn’t use Guard in time. Still, I held on too. The damage was practically a scratch.

Just as I was wondering whether we were going to ride on this thing all night, a current of aura rocked the tail. It whipped so fast and so violently that the possum and I had no choice but to be flung away, in two impressive arcs.

I curled up and used Guard, and from the corner of my eye realized that the possum had done it too.

We arced down through the trees—wow, we’d gone that far?—and crashed to earth.

Well, it was more like bouncing to earth. We hit soft, intriguingly springy soil, and it took a second to land for real and go still.

I unfurled on a carpet of moss. A second later, so did the possum.

Again, it was wrong to interpret their smile as a jolly one. Just as wrong as interpreting my own face as permanently pensive and unamused. As you know, I’m amused by many things in life..and it was just as likely that this possum was greatly unamused.

You look to body language for that part. With the light in their eyes nearly gone, they groomed a little bit, showing that they were relaxing a little and hoped that I could do.

Also, they were laughing again now, a little too hard. So hard that it felt awkward for me not to contribute anything.

“Meow,” I offered, so quietly that it seemed ridiculous.

The possum came closer, looking playful. I took a sauntering step back, but the possum approached me again with a massive grin—and chomped it right over my throat.

We fell over in a wrestling tangle, teeth over jugulars, claws pressed against one another’s hides, rolling and rolling on surprisingly springy moss. We were play-wrestling, fighting without malice, growling and pressing but careful not to break the skin.

Then, a minute later, we rolled apart…and I remembered that I was no longer just a feral cat, but partly human and partly an adventurer. I looked back the way the dark dragon had gone, the way the human laugh had gone, and checked it against my Map.

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map101-1.png]

All of this battling and, uh, sudden spontaneous traveling had taken me to the southeast corner of this smelly bog. And just like I’d suspected, the red flock and the dragon had gone further south.

What were they doing out here? Maybe the dragon was corralling the red-light bat things, sort of like a shepherd would in the far more normal western half of the Vencian Wood? I still kind of suspected this was like a whale chasing krill. “Predator chases prey” certainly wasn’t an uncommon woodland motif.

More importantly, though…what was I doing out here? Looking at the possum again, it was almost hard to imagine that I had just sort of gone with everything that had happened over the past several minutes.

But that’s how it goes with wild animals sometimes. If you don’t share a common language beyond gesture, you can never really discover what happened on an odd night, or why another entity does the things it does. Not only true of humans, but true of countless species—and countless individuals and their odd habits of following red trains and jumping onto the caboose, or what-have-you.

We ended up fighting again. Real-fighting and not play-fighting, but still a fight forged on understanding. I wanted to get stronger, not to eat or maim them, and given what we’d just been through, the hiding and the wrestling, the possum seemed to believe me in that.

I liked fighting in close quarters. The possum obliged.

We did the dance in the mossy clearing, in full view of the stars. Glowing cream-yellow and blue, we slashed at each other, darted back, coated ourselves in aura, and whipped energy at ankles when we sensed our foe was getting too distant and too cocky. I focused on blending my fighting style with more ducks, dodges, and quick dashes away—on the union of power and speed.

We stopped when both of us were tired. The possum not only lolled out their tongue, but defiantly rolled, mid-attack, onto their back. The way they exposed their belly was almost proud. They knew I would not hit them.

At close range, the possum seemed to be a tanky and defensive fighter by nature. They’d switched to more active offense, but only for my sake, and I could practically feel the difference. I appreciated it. It was hard, though, to accept that this might be as close as I could get to meeting my match on some random outing in the woods. I wished I could just fight my mirror image—or, better yet, my mirror image who also had a couple of Levels on me.

Still, this would have to be good enough. When all was said and done, I flopped to the ground just as the possum flopped over on their back. Letting myself breathe deeply, I wondered, with a pang of fright, whether we’d both get zero Experience Points for all this trouble. Did a tie count for anything?

Well…in a worst-case scenario, it had given me more combat training, and that running and dodging earlier had stretched both my legs and my brain. But I couldn’t help feeling cheated by the—

Victory!

Never mind, then!

The possum across from me laughed. It sounded like a cheer.