With the other two housemates asleep or just gone, Reed and I were alone in the den of the cabin.

The fire still had a lot left in it. Chunky logs sizzled away. A couple of twiggy, ash-coated bundles sat next to it, each solidly smaller than the palm of Reed’s hand. Fuel for the fire? Incredibly small fuel.

We ate in silence for a little while—me eating crackers, Reed eating muesli, me swaddled in the blankets, her leaning back on pillows with legs outstretched. Then she started to twiddle her feet. They tapped each other and swayed back and forth.

She looked up at the ceiling, and I followed suit.

“What do you like to do, cat friend?”

My ears flicked. I knew a decent amount of the things Reed liked to do, but besides drinking milk and killing small animals, she didn’t have a clue about my own interests.

Then again…what were my interests?

I didn’t exactly have humanesque hobbies. Humans might go butterfly collecting and pin their catches to a wall. I mainly just liked swatting at them. An Earth human who didn’t have at least one abiding interest at least listened to cool things on the radio. But on Vencia, radio maybe didn’t exist.

Humans often wore their hobbies on their sleeves, but most of the time I didn’t have sleeves.

So, really, aside from me toying with my System and talking to Sierra (the latter of which I did sometimes like doing, but I always hated myself for it), I had no hobbies that a human couldn’t gather from watching me prance around outside for five minutes.

For my response, I settled on a questioning, “Mraow?”

“I figure you probably don’t do many human activities, but maybe you…wouldn’t mind doing them?”

I tilted my head. Like what?

“Things like puzzles and games, and story—sorry, maybe not storytelling.” Her feet tapped with the rhythm of her thoughts. “Or, hey, maybe there is a way we could play a story together!”

I squinted, thinking she must be throwing the wrong nouns and verbs together. But the more she explained it, the clearer it was that what she had in mind really was both telling a story and playing a game.

“So one person pretends to be the main character in the story,” she said, “moving through the world, making decisions. The other person plays the author. And dice, or cards, or some other way of determining random events, make everything unpredictable!” She tamped down her excitement. “Unless you’re not interested. There are tons of other things we can do. Or none at all!”

But clearly she was revved up.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about this—I still didn’t really get it. But that wouldn’t stop me from trying it!

Still, I pointed up toward the stairs and gave a questioning “meow?”

“They don’t really like story games. And the only crowd-pleaser I have is Panoply, which takes forever… Bayce really doesn’t need more excuses not to study.”

Had Reed even ever played this with someone else before?

As she returned from her room, tiptoeing back downstairs, reading over the rulebook on the way, I decided that no, she probably hadn’t. But she clearly loved the idea, and I was starting to get into it too. Hopefully these were magic cards, like magical virtual reality! The idea of being in another-nother world was just too funny.

She plopped down in front of me and said, “Ho-kay, this is a game inspired by the children’s story Merianne in Otherland. Remove the top five cards and lay them out…these will represent the player’s Attack, Intelligence, Defense, Wisdom, and Speed…”

Oh, wow, it was that kind of story game.

What followed was a two-player tabletop role-playing campaign, one with a massive amount of events left up to dice rolls, card draws, and the nigh-infinite tables in the rulebook. Merianne reached too far forward into the river and ended up falling in, but instead of drowning, she fell into a wacky universe filled with nonsense beings. Half of them wanted to take her soul and the other half invited her to eat cheese and crackers.

“Will you dine with the Relentless Badger?”

I shook my head. Then, by tapping on the card representing my Attack Stat (cards with suits from 1 to 10 make a really unbalanced Stat spread, but at least an 8 in Attack was something to be proud of), I signaled my desire to battle.

“Engarde!” said Reed, raising a fist. She’d been cautious about her volume before, but now that was starting to slip. The more she got into the world, the more I did too.

Frankly, cats don’t have much of a need for imagination. Aside from pragmatic stuff, and maybe creatively insulting those we dislike, we have no pressing need to daydream up weird stories. Going into this game, I had no interest in dreaming up my own world the way you might have to with a book, but Reed’s enthusiasm was really rubbing off on me.

Plus, defeating fictional badger-humans was rewarding!

Under my careful guidance, Merianne narrowly avoided transforming into a pumpkin and rotting to a slow death. She fenced the King of Sours to a stalemate, then slipped at the last minute due to a lousy dice roll and left a laughingstock. Then she talked to the wrong fox—and was eaten.

“Wow!” Reed said. “I was pretty sure she’d be a kind one.”

I shook my head, both to show my own disbelief and to mourn the loss of a totally fictional character.

“Aww. If you like, you can give Merianne a saving throw. But she’ll have to lose something great, like a high Stat, or an item she holds dear.”

Death has to hurt a little. Didn’t I hear something like that before?

Reed was fighting off sleep with sheer love of the game. But I could see the bleariness in her eyes, and possibly she could see it in mine too.

I shook my head more, for longer, making a huge giant sweep of my head. Then I curled up on the floor and closed my eyes.

“I can keep going!” she blurted. “If you’re worried about me—”

“Maow!” I insisted. I was not looking out for her exclusively! We’d come to a natural endpoint, now that Merianne’s soul was suspended in whatever ether Vencians called the afterlife.

She grinned and gave in. “I guess it has been long enough! Good game, though. Or good work, maybe I should say?” She started scooping the cards back together. “Just let me clean up here…”

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That could all wait for tomorrow! I hissed, violently shaking my head. Everything but the fire, just leave here!

And yet the last thing I saw as my head sagged deep in the blankets was Reed shifting the dining tray off the blankets, then beginning to fold the top one.

My consciousness slid seamlessly into my dreams, and my dreams were a kaleidoscope looking upon everything I’ve done, highway steel crossing into nightships, twinkling of gold leaf, stars of untold name and meaning taking me in and I dissolved until I was exactly fifty. Apple cinnamon zest palm fronds over pink lemonade seafoam with gray waves splashing me under the sea, until I was just as lost, everything made warm.

Even in my sleep, I wasn’t weightless. But I did feel dizzy. Light in the head and light in the body.

Somehow I was ecstatic just to be living here.

***

The next morning, I lurched—some instinct, or some end-part of the dream that I’d already forgotten, told me that Reed had left and I should be scared.

But that wouldn’t make sense. Reed was gone, but she was in her room!

…No she wasn’t. She was here downstairs, still near me, asleep, and her arms were underneath mine.

I didn’t have arms, usually.

—I’d transformed? In my sleep?! Again?!?! Whyyy…

Add to that the weird position my body was in, or…not weird, just hard to get out of without stirring Reed. In my sleep, I’d been sort of sideways-hugging her while leaning forward, my legs folded sideways-under me. Like I was halfway-sideways praying to Reed, prostrating myself.

Huh. I’d chosen the exact right moment to get clothes.

Never before had I seen a sleeping human this close, her face so peaceful. I didn’t wanna wake Reed up, not when she’d clearly worked hard to get things going last night, and stayed up a little too long.

So how the heck was I going to escape without shifting her around?

The first thing to occur to me was that I could simply Morph back, but the poof made noise, and that was a risk. The sudden jarring movement of her arms, torso and face as they hit the ground would be a risk too.

But if I pushed my human reflexes to the limit, maybe I could sliiide my arms out…as if they were blocks in a big rickety block tower.

I steeled myself.

By shuffling backward on my shins and keeping my arms perfectly stiff, I could do it!

Shf shf shf shf.

With each shimmy, I inched just a smidgen farther. My arms came away from her middle with the lightest possible touch.

Ooh, I was good at this after all. I bet her shirt didn’t even wrinkle when I let it go.

Not more than three minutes later (yeah!), I was out, still prostrating myself but now officially doing it before Reed, not around her.

It had all gone smoothly until, right after my victory, Reed’s eyes drawled open of their own accord. Then she rolled over.

It was horribly sloppy, and “terrific” in the biblical sense. She tried to stay on her side and then, victim of gravity, slid completely onto her forehead. Luckily, that bopped into a plush blanket. (I guessed that was why everyone used so many.)

She was the unwitting Jenga tower, and I had made her fall.

Aw, no…then she woke up for real with a yelp and flung herself upright so fast that she bopped the back of her head against the foot part of the couch behind her. Aw, Reed…

Overcome with the urge to escape, I instinctively changed back into my cat form and—

Realized that there was no time to run away, since Reed had just caught sight of me! (Plus, even if I’d tried, I would’ve ruffled the carpet, the blankets, or some of the many cracker and plate leavings from last night!)

“—Meow,” I meowed, my body turned toward the stairway, my head staring at her expressionlessly.

Reed was rubbing the front and back of her head at the same time. “Ouch…darn…I don’t usually wake up like that…” She blinked up at me, then put on a fresh smile. “Good morning!”

Indefatigable!

Her attention flitted to the big mess around us. “Oh! How could I not have put all these things away last night? I’m so sorry.”

I grumbled, knowing it would be too hard to tell her what I wanted to say. Which was: don’t be angry at yourself, for crying out loud, get angry at me for probably-sorta making you hurt yourself just now!

It was kinda…sad. And yet also valiant. She didn’t seem to assume any ill will from me. She didn’t assume anything at all.

The least I could do was change into a catgirl again and help pick up the dishes and stuff. I Morphed, then did my best to fold up the blanket I’d just been lying on.

“Thanks,” she said as I struggled to match up corners. “I appreciate it a lot. You really don’t have to—”

“Mraow!”

She laughed. How dare she laugh?! “Okay, I’ll let you help as much as you want to…”

Reed pitched in, and soon we had all the quilts piled back in the cabinet standing in the corner of the den. Frankly, she did the bulk of the blanket-folding. Hands just weren’t for me yet.

Once we’d taken a couple final cups and bowls to the kitchen, Reed went to the rack of pots and pans and said, “Now to make you—”

“Mraow!” I cried.

What was wrong with her?! When was she going to get herself ready?! That trail of saliva on half of her chin was still there!

With a stern look, I pointed back to the stairway.

Reed had a nervous smile. “W-what room?”

“Meow.”

“Mine?”

I pinched at the corner of my shirt.

“Oh my gosh! I didn’t even notice your new outfit at first!” Reed was about to fall over herself with compliments, but that wasn’t what I was after (though honestly, I would take it).

Instead I made myself a little clearer, pinching her shirt.

“—You want me to get dressed,” she guessed.

“Meow.”

“Alright…I’ll do that first, if you want me to.”

I considered grabbing the skillet and preparing breakfast for Reed myself, only…I had no cooking skills. I didn’t wanna break any pans.

Instead, I checked my SP—

SP 43% (144/333)

—which was waning every second, yet surprisingly not too terrible. Maybe that was a sign that when things were low-stress, I lost less SP to Morph? Anyway, I decided to conserve my energy now that the idea was on my mind. I un-transformed.

Reed went padding up the stairs. “I’ll be down soon! You just relax,” she said.

“Meow,” I said from the den.

Then I ran onto the stairs and began to follow her.

She stopped when I was at her ankles. “D’urr…what do you need now?” she said.

I just bumped her ankle-lump-bone.

“…You’re trying to follow me? But”—nervous laughter—“y-y-you can’t do that! Not without warning! I-I-I need to—”

She bolted, ducking into that room at the end of the hall that I’d never yet managed to find my way into. I ran after her, but as I went, she was already closing doors and swishing things away. When I arrived, she had just finished and was standing primly in front of a just-locked closet door. A bit of a shirt sleeve trailed out from under it.

“Th-th-th-this is my room…” More nervous laughter. “You like it?”

I walked into the center of the room, on a rug so plush it came up to my backwards cat-knees. Then I paused. There was so much to absorb that I had to just stop and stare.

It was clear as day now that whatever wooden animal figures stood guard in Chora’s room were drippings from Reed’s own. Three whole rows of shelves along all four walls were dedicated to the creatures, who were close-packed and bound to multiply. And I could trace a variety of styles between them, one that must have spiraled out through the years. At the top in the far corner, they were small, rough, and painted in gaudy colors—one even had googly eyes. The styles changed: all-bark, smooth-and-bark, cubist, botched realism, real realism, and all the way down and around to the languid style she had today.

Art didn’t stop there. A few canvases sat against the wall with the grand, lace-curtained window. Their colors were bold, their brushstrokes expressive, abstract. Vaguely I could see earthy colors below purple night skies, all smothered beneath emotional strokes. A dresser was topped with sketchbooks and writing tools. Another: assorted junk, eraser tops without pencils, curled sticky notes, and very tiny sepia photos in glittering frames.

At a different end of the room was a bunk bed. Context clues told me that was a relic from the days when multiple siblings lived here and two or three no doubt shared a room. In fact, there was probably space for a third bed that got dumped at some point. The upper bunk had been converted into a kind of couch for people on stilts.

“I know it’s messy and there’s not really any place for you to sit… You probably think some of this stuff is weird, and that’s okay! I—”

A paw over my mouth and a very low purr stopped her there.

Startled, she nodded and smiled. “Okay,” she whispered. Hands behind her back, she parked herself against the wall, looking at me look.

This was good, and being outside, and on my own, was also good. And she was good, they were all good. Someday I would let them know that. On the same day, I would thank them.

…Okay, what was that smell?

It was coming from the window. I drew closer to it with my head high in the air, trying to signal to Reed.

She didn’t get what I meant at first, but then she followed me to the windowsill and shoved it open. That was when the aroma of the trash directly below us hit us in the face.

Hm, maybe my sense of smell was actually a step above humans. What did it? Higher Wisdom—me concentrating on a sense when it hit me? Higher Attack—attack of the nose, that is??

Well, either way, before I could go around thanking anybody, we’d have to work on the trash bags first.