As Chora and I sat together on the highest stone stair of what seemed to me like an absurdly long pathway to the village, I looked around at the night in silence, and I wondered…

Wait, if I had won that race back there, wouldn’t I have gained Experience?

And how much? Chora seemed good at this, at least when she really pushed herself, so…a lot?

That’d make sense, right? Huh? …System huh?

Error: “Huh” is an Invalid Request.

Something didn’t seem right about that. I didn’t push it, though.

Eventually, Chora exhaled long and loud enough that I knew she was about to speak. I turned to her.

“That was a good run,” she said. “Now I’m about ready to get some food and rest. Was…that your plan?”

“Meow!” I said. I had no confidence that she could see me nodding. Nights were deep with no moon in the sky, and…I couldn’t even remember a night rich with moonlight. Maybe their moon was dim. Maybe I needed to watch the sky and its signs more.

“I thank you for your wisdom, spirit.”

My nekomata form might have blushed in bashfulness at that. Actually, I physically shrank back a little. I very much wanted to find a way to tell her that all that excess formality did nothing for me! In fact, the more she used it, the more uncomfortable I became with it. Weirdly, I had enjoyed it at first, but now…since I was becoming a little less cat and steadily more human, it just felt like dishonesty, like we needed to be equals.

“Well,” she said, standing up, “let’s be on our—”

…Why was she stopping mid-word, mid-movement?

“Crap, I just thought of something,” she said in an abashed whisper. “You have another soulbound form. One that looks more human—a cat-human.”

I meowed.

“Maybe it would be best if you assumed that form and…wore a hat. You know, over the ears. And if you kept your tail low and unobtrusive…or maybe you have a coat to hide it under…”

Suddenly she broke off and hissed to herself. “Crap again. I’m making this too convoluted. Okay,” she said with more determination and volume, “you can come with me to the village as you are. But you may want to stick to the shadows. A-assuming that you are a less sociable spirit. People will want to get to know you, ask a lot of questions that…frankly you can’t answer.”

Uh, I couldn’t argue with any of that. Staying away from the light sounded like a good idea to me—that and averting my shiny, shiny eyes whenever someone came close. And if I was caught, hopefully I could just kind of skitter away and they’d…uhh…forget about me?

“It’s not a huge deal,” Chora added. “It’s just that we’re here to stop and rest. Not much more than that. And we’ll just eat in our room at the inn, after you sneak in. Does that sound good to you, spirit?”

More stuff I couldn’t argue with! I was starting to feel excited again, and my tail wobbled with anticipation.

Not far from us was the mysterious village, and far beyond that village was, I had to assume, the rest of Vencia. It was too dark and distant to be anything but indistinct wavy hills on a black horizon, even to my eyes. What mattered was the small town below, a place that must’ve had less than five hundred people. I focused my senses, and soft cries of farm animals—cattle, ducks, the now-familiar sheep—reached us even up here. So did chatter from humans, but not as much as I was used to by a long shot.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get started. Welcome to the village of Outlast. It’s mostly farmers and artisans. I always like stopping by.”

And we made our way down the incredible stairs.

I felt bad for the humans who lived here and had to climb these things. I mean, I felt bad for myself too, given that I’d run a little marathon just earlier, but…not enough to take the less taxing ramp. These stairs were so old and well-worn that the middle of each one sagged, and I could see distinct impressions of footsteps piled on top of each other—feet upon feet upon feet.

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When we left the stairs and hit the winding road, smells started coming to me. The windows of houses were wide open. People must’ve been settling down to dinner: smoked chicken and fish, roasted fruits I couldn’t name, nuts, steaming vegetables, and a strong hint of beer. Huh, and here I’d thought it had to be midnight by now.

The road was as wide as one and a half car lanes, close-packed between wooden buildings of different heights. There were no towers except a couple I saw a little distance away. They reminded me of farmyards. Silos?

Beside every door was a welcoming paper lantern, lit with a lightning-bug fire. But hardly anyone was walking the streets except us. Still, I dutifully kept to the shadows, stayed close to Chora’s feet.

We rounded a bend, and I could see that eventually this road would hit a huge center plaza. That plaza would, like the center of a wheel, split into a dozen other meandering paths, some upslope, some downslope, all lined with buildings crammed together. Unlike every Earth plaza I’d ever heard of, this one was full of life…domestic animal life. Was that a sheep pen, a row of stabled horses?

But instead of heading in, Chora stopped us short. We had to be next to some kind of potion shop or pharmacy, since I could see glass bottles glittering from behind a darkened window. But her attention was on a bulletin board. “Let’s see…might as well check here briefly…”

It was just lousy with things I couldn’t read, white and dull tan papers competing with each other with all the advertising brashness of toothpaste. Chora knew I couldn’t read it, though, and explained that it was a general news board, one of many.

“People might report missing objects—which is what we’re most interested in—but they also mention special events, holidays, guild meetings, council assemblies. They might even be announcing…” She got lost in thought as she searched for some specific item and, after several seconds, didn’t find it. “Ah, maybe in a few weeks.”

“Maow?”

“They have a huge festival at the end of basically every summer to mark the Coming of the Moon. Do you know what the moon is?”

W-wh…

Yes, Chora, I knew what the moon was, but it kind of made sense that she would assume I might not…because never had I ever seen one in Vencia’s sky. This whole time! And now its absence was suddenly disturbing! I mean, the sun and the moon are such an important pair of opposites on Earth. What did Vencians have to replace it? More stars?

Well, Chora had just given me both the question and the answer. Vencia did have a moon, it just didn’t appear that often.

“The moon is a rock that orbits our planet,” explained First-Grade Teacher Chora. “I assume you don’t have one orbiting the spirit world, do you…”

I shook my head, but my “no” was deeper than Chora could imagine.

“Well, it’s like a glorified comet, and around the time when summer transitions to fall, it decides to start reflecting light.” She narrowed her eyes as she added, “It’s also the one night when lycanborns who go outside involuntarily transform. If you want, I can set aside time to serve as your bodyguard that night…”

I, uh, genuinely appreciated that, but the threat was so abstract and so far in the future that I didn’t feel any gratitude about it. I meowed as if I did, though.

Chora seemed lost in thought again for a few moments. Then she laughed.

At first I thought it was a sneeze.

“That was so bad,” she said, half to herself. “Sorry, spirit, I’m remembering the first Coming of the Moon festival I went to. It was that same summer when everyone in the cabin went to the mansion thinking we’d do all these cool things. Reed, Bayce and I, we all got together and decided we’d play instruments and form a band. Mind you, this was two weeks before the festival.”

I blinked up at Chora, already imagining all the ways that could’ve gone wrong. Maybe this was presumptuous of me, but…most of them involved a young Bayce falling over.

“We played the—” Chora snort-laughed again, this time hiding it poorly behind one hand. “Sorry, it’s not even that funny. We played the—” She chuckled and shook her head. “Okay…we thought it was amazingly clever at the time. You have to keep that in mind, or else it’s not funny. Please don’t look down on me for laughing, okay?”

I meowed in the affirmative, but I could make her no promises.

She took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders. “Okay…so Reed played a reed, Bayce played the bass, and I did vocals.”

…That was it?!

I didn’t know what Chora wanted me to do here. She took a dramatic pause—as in one to be filled with laughter—but my cat vocal cords didn’t even have a cackling, hyena-laugh-type thing inside of them. And I was not going to Morph for one instant just to give her canned laughter!

Anyway, I did like seeing her laugh. At first, it’d seemed so unlike her, but…now that I saw it in action, so to speak, it felt right. Like she should’ve been doing this more. Like there were two sides to her, and the disciplined, stiff one had dominated in way too much of her life.

Or maybe I just thought that way because I had no discipline whatsoever and, when left to my own devices, made even worse jokes.

Still, I had to respond. Now, before Chora interpreted my silence as awkward disapproval. Instead, I would turn this into well-choreographed disapproval. I shook my head, put one paw over my face, and went, “Murrr…”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m with you. We were disappointments to our families that night. All three of us.” For once, I knew she was being tongue-in-cheek. “We only knew one ‘real song,’ so in between renditions of ‘Toothpicks’ (a song for babies), we played that ‘real song’ over and over again and pretended like we were ‘improvving’ and ‘jamming.’ It was really sad, and it should never be repeated.”

You didn’t film this?

I’d ask someday. Or loot Reed’s basement and find a secret cache marked “NEVER TO BE VIEWED.”