There was no separate dining room in Reed’s Cabin—just a fold-out table at the exact right height for the den’s two sofas. Plus lots of extra den space, in case the folded chairs hiding in the corner were ever needed.

I swear to you I did everything in my power to try and get my sofa blankets folded up before the den was converted into a dining space, but…my human hands were a lot less coordinated than they’d seemed the last time I used them. Granted, all I’d really ever done with my fingers, dexterity-wise, was grab a statue out of the water one time. But now that I was trying some finer motor functions—grabbing two different corners in two different hands, then keeping my grip as I brought them together—I got downright shaky. Reed saw what was happening and ordered Bayce to take over.

Bayce: glamorous even in the morning. Wrapped in a body-hugging gown of spring green and sky blue, with fingernails colored to match. Had she gone to bed that way—face radiant and unsmeared with saliva, a bounce in her hair, a slight sparkle in her cheeks?

“…I see you staring,” she told me flatly, taking blankets from my hands. “It’s fine, it’s fair. I did it too, as you probably know.”

Uh? Oh yeah. After the first several seconds in naked humanoid form, I’d hardly noticed that… I’m pretty sure cats don’t interpret stares the way most humans do.

“And now you should both stop,” Reed cried from the kitchen a short hall away.

Bayce smirked and, uh, wriggled playfully—that’s the only way I can describe it. She seemed to be thrusting her shoulders and chest balls at me. “What if she wants to?” she fired back.

“I-I-I-I don’t have a proper response to that, I’m cooking!”

And so she was! Sound really carried far on this first floor, because I could hear her frying away, and she could hear Bayce doing whatever chicanery I was currently witnessing.

Breakfast was ready about twenty minutes later, and Reed (with Bayce as lackey) brought in a heaping platter of pancakes, aromatic bottles of syrup and spice, and bowls of fruit sprigged with herbs. With great care, she laid forks and knives and empty plates before me on one couch, Bayce on the other, and her own spot with a folding chair.

She wasn’t sitting next to me? Aw. I guessed that was human decorum at work. I would miss her encouraging presence next to me. But I told myself to toughen up. She could still encourage me even over the grand, unbridgeable distance of about five inches.

Something else seemed missing here. Square table…four sides…three plates…

Pointing a paw at the empty table space filled poorly by the fireplace, then at the stairs, I said, “Mah?”

A dull second passed before Reed went “oh!” and Bayce went “nnrgh.”

“Chora doesn’t have breakfast,” Reed explained. “At least, not with us. She has her own routine.”

“Up on the roof,” Bayce added. “She meditates and works out and stuff like that, for two hours.”

Where’d this snark even come from? Bayce’s room and her status as an “anatomagus in training” gave me the impression that she studied way more than two hours on a typical day, so what gives? (I mean, what gave?)

“And that’s why,” Reed added in a singsong voice, “we always save our biggest news—every event that we think everyone should know, including all the stressful things—for dinner. Breakfast is for small talk. It’s also a buffet! Eat up.”

Wow! Now it hit me that this was the first time I’d ever been invited to simply eat whatever I wanted. I felt like royalty!

Could cats even digest this?

…It would also cost me SP to have hands.

Trembling hands.

“Oh no,” said Reed, watching my wide, frozen eyes. Her voice was already sulky, and heavy with that horrible human sensation called guilt. “I should have remembered…you like rabbit stew, and I didn’t serve any meat…”

Before I even got my thoughts in order, Bayce did her part to cheer her up. “Forgive yourself. None of us really knew. And now we do! It’s not like the day is ruined, right, cat? Cat-friend?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I meowed back with gusto. More because I wanted Reed to feel happy and proud than because I agreed, because I was still pretty hungry. But Bayce did tell me last night that the household had run out of rabbits…

“What about eggs?” Bayce said. “Do cats know what eggs are?”

“Don’t be rude, now,” Reed said. But a chuckle escaped her, she couldn’t hide that.

I’d already snatched a pancake straight off the top of the cake-heap, using my paws and mouth.

Food: Plimpberry Pancake A griddle favorite dotted with tart plimpberries. Heals a small amount of SP. May cause nausea in cats.

Nausea? That was a risk I was prepared to ta—hey! A food that didn’t have the standard no-healing disclaimer! One that actually had what my System considered a practical use!! Why did these, of all things, heal me? Ah, whatever, not like I was going to have any answers for the next thousand years.

I’d just take as many as I could.

Right away I Inventory’d several more, not realizing how much momentary bafflement that could cause.

I had to stop myself from Inventorizing the rest of it right then and there. Bayce’s eyes were already wide enough. She recovered with a giggle, while Reed stared on in what looked very much like horror.

…Why weren’t any of us eating?

De-Inventorizing one of the pancakes, letting it fall halfway on the tablecloth and halfway on a plate, and gnawing noisily on the pancake bits I’d captured in my mouth, I gestured to my tablemates and to the food. It was my way of saying, “Well? Isn’t what I’m doing okay?”

Reed, shaking herself out of her funk, said, “S-sorry. Please disappear as much food as you want…”

That was a relief.

I piled a few more pancakes on the Inventory stack, making sure to leave the humans two. (Wow, human politeness really was infecting me! I almost felt proud of myself for that one.)

Only then did I hone in on what I was chewing.

Ew.

The plimpberries weren’t exactly a delicacy, at least not to my cat-tongue, but at least that other one over there looked like an apple. I wasn’t in the mood for anything exotic, as it turned out. The plimpberry pancakes were abruptly ejected—the way I saw it, either I would miss out on an SP boost later, or I’d suffer potentially extreme stomach cramps, which, when you think about it, would probably balance out the gains by draining HP instead. Just sad. I guessed I could train myself to stifle my vomit reflexes later.

Anyway, we started to eat, then to relax.

No human touched the pancakes, for some reason.

And Reed and Bayce started talking about what I assumed they normally talk about: plants, weather, animals. The fact that the raccoons hadn’t come back in a few days. The thick maple tree just west of us that fell in a sudden storm last night and must’ve been three hundred years old. It surprised me just how well I could follow the conversation.

The subjects were relatable. Almost suspiciously so.

Bayce spooned apple slices and herbs into her mouth, and then—with her mouth just full enough that even I found it uncouth—she spoke. “It’s a wonderful day for fishing~” she said, subtly-not-so-subtly alluding to a certain something.

My ears fluttered.

“And I didn’t even realize it until I checked my star charts!” Now Bayce was so excited that a bit of apple skin flew out of her mouth. “Lylert is right above us—I mean, obviously—but Nimio is aligned with Zobiliuss, which also happened during the crowning of King Venix back in 2484. Two, four, eight, four…you remember the Fisherman’s Parable.”

“Right, right,” said Reed, nodding slowly as if in a trance. Strangely, she was invested in what Bayce was saying.

“Apparently I just have luck on my side, eh, cat-friend?” She tilted her head at me. I gulped down a pancake lump and nodded, confusedly.

Reed said, “Oh, that’s right. They told me about an outing today.”

“Yeah! We’re going fishing, wanna come?”

“Definitely! B-but if you’re only fishing to replenish our food supply, you don’t have to. I said I’d handle it, and I still fully intend to—”

Bayce laughed her off, reached across the table, and gave her shoulder a whack of camaraderie. “I’m your friend, Reed, not your child! I can do stuff! And, heck, so can they, if they want.”

And I was eager to. I meowed heartily.

“Then I’ll fish with you,” said Reed, stern. “It’s the least I could do.”

“Come on. Rest today.”

“I…” Her face got sulky. “I already rest sometimes!”

“That’s the problem: ‘sometimes.’ You need to be resting at least seventy-five percent of the time. It’s summer vacation.”

“Only for you!”

“Meow?” I asked.

“Oh, Bayce is going to college this fall.”

“Meow meow?” I pointed a paw at Reed.

“Oh, I’m just living here.”

“Meow meow?” I pointed a paw at the ceiling.

“Chora’s, ehm…she’s figuring that out.”

“Hey, cat,” Bayce said, “you think Reed should spend the day chilling, don’t you? You agree that the stars in the sky suggest that Reed’s about to share some not-so-great news with us at dinner, and that if she doesn’t relax now, she’ll probably worry so much she’ll make herself sick?”

Woah that was a lot of words she just crammed in my mouth. Plus a lot of star stuff I didn’t even pretend to understand. But I saw no reason why Reed shouldn’t relax. I mean, hadn’t her camping trip on Revived-Reputation Mountain been interrupted by a lost girl and a duel with an evil spirit?

I meowed and nodded.

Reed sighed. “Fine, fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll just be your cheerleader…”

Bayce squeaked.