It was starting to feel weird again, sleeping in the common room alone.

By now it was well past midnight. The first floor of Reed’s cabin was nearly deserted. If I strained my ears, I could just hear Bayce at work now and then, shifting some table or chair. And the cabin, as usual, subtly creaked.

I was alone and sleepless in the makeshift bed.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t sleep—I had the Catnap Skill for that very thing—it was that I didn’t want to. My mind was abuzz, reflecting furiously on everything that’d come to pass in the last few hours, the last few days.

It was buzzing about the distant past and the future, too.

Once upon a time, sleeping down here had been weird because it was indoors, because it was a space for humans, because I didn’t want to know people and thought I would never want to. But now it was weird because…it was lonely, and I knew that it shouldn’t be lonely.

This room was too large, and desolate, to keep being a bedroom for just me. The night of the marshmallows and the storygame, when Reed stayed down here and conked out on the couch by mistake, was so recent, yet it hit me with a nostalgic pang. If everyone else hadn’t retired already, I would’ve said something about it…

Oh, right. I’d had the perfect moment to ask about it this very night. This was, after all, the night I’d gotten my reading cantrip. But funnily enough (if anyone’s laughing), words failed me in the moment, and I’d talked about…blather.

An hour or two ago, I’d “spoken” to Reed for the first time, spelling my name in the Merianne book. She greeted me, and I hadn’t known what to say next. Choice paralysis.

Well, I could ask a very elementary question.

“HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

(That was something people said in introductions.)

“Nineteen. How about you?”

“I DONT KNOW CATS DONT REALLY COUNT YEARS. REGULAR ANIMALS”

“O-oh…so you wouldn’t be one hundred, two hundred years old, or anywhere in that range?”

“WHY WOULD I BE THAT OLD?”

She’d laughed too loudly and said, “Because we’ve all been thinking you’re a spirit, and some of them are old like that. Not that it’d be a bad thing if you were old.”

“OK”

And we blinked at each other.

“THANK YOU”

Alright, that message was an easy choice. All this time, I’d been wanting to thank Reed for everything she’d done: supporting me without question, holding me up when I felt down, offering her home and a part of her life to me—

“Of course!” she said. But the word was too shallow; her “thank you” here was not my “thank you.” “I’m so glad we have another way to communicate. I wish cat body language were easier for me.”

I nodded. Then I moved to spell “THANK YOU” again and prepared to go into more detail. But as I planned out my sentence, I realized how many, many minutes that would take, and coincidentally, at the same time, Reed let out a gigantic, though not impolite, yawn.

“UM”

I didn’t know why I bothered spelling out that one. I got the feeling I was just wasting her time.

“Sorry, I’ll have to go to bed pretty soon.”

“UM LETS KEEP READING UNTIL THEN”

So there it was: a plodding, halting, awkward conversation. I learned her age. She learned my boringness. She had to, because only after she hugged me tight and departed for her room did I shudder, realizing that I hadn’t even thought to tell her anything important. Like the stuff in that big marble book.

Or even what had drawn me to her in the first place. It wasn’t the convenience of her cabin, or Sierra urging me on. Just…her kindness. I didn’t thank her for her kindness.

I hadn’t managed that or told her anything cool about myself. I mean, at the very least I could’ve been narrating my greatest achievements out in the wild, or the funniest. Granted, telling some long-winded story might have been an awful decision because spelling out words via pointing at a book took a pretty long time. We’d have been yawning midway through the great tale of how I tried to climb that one tree and fell a thousand feet.

Still, now that it was raging through my mind, the idea of sharing stories with others, in detail, made me more exhilarated about the bare thought of communication than I had in…my whole life!

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But I would just have to save that energy for tomorrow.

If that was possible.

For now, I was willfully restless, forsaking my Catnap so that I could think.

I mulled over my Quest rewards, the boons I got from getting all the ingredients for Bayce to make the cantrip. They were welcome, of course, but not nearly as cool as the cantrip itself, and I got the feeling that Sierra and/or the System itself knew that, because slaying a couple of gackerns would get me just as much in spoils. 2000 Experience and 500 Gold to add to the vaults.

Taipha Calico Ranger Lv. 21 EXP: 77% (2419/3150)

A few minutes spent scanning my list of Skills was very unproductive. I wanted to strategize on a higher level, but…I had no clue how to start the process.

That’s what friends are for! I told myself, and that was the first real note of enthusiasm since my cabinmates went to bed. Instead of bothering Bayce—who I figured was bound to be at her less-than-best anyway, this late—I realized that I wanted a gentler mental exercise. I wanted to read.

I am pleased to make an acquaintance with any being, spirit or mortal, that meets me in these sacred woods. I wish you safe travels and many meals.

- Heidschi Opus

The letter lay between me and the refrigerator, which glowed with a steady yellow light. Sure, I did have night vision, but it was reassuring to have the added light, particularly with the printed letters I was comprehending for the second-ever time.

With a sliver of metefry hanging from my mouth, I pawed the letter out of the way and took out the Book of Sister’s Shadow. I tried to bring it out of my Inventory delicately. As if that was even possible. Put a clunky invisible carrying case together with a huge marble chunk and I’m surprised it didn’t wake up the whole house when it landed.

DOOM. Well, there it was. I worked it open with my nose. It was a bit of a relief that gaining the ability to read human words didn’t make me lose the ability to read these human-illegible ones. Not that that told me anything about what this book meant.

Nah, I did know exactly what it was: a willfully obscure diary. And between now and the moment I’d first acquired it, it’d gained another entry:

Two

Now I understand the rest of my Maker’s decree.

I see it all clear now. If I “become more human” then I can use the tools of the human. They move through the forest as they did through the city, but that is where the similarities between the two worlds end.

A squirrel won’t train beyond a certain level. Nor a krigrie, nor even a bear. But certain humans have the will to train, and they can craft and use tools. They only lack the talent. Hence I might really be the best of both worlds.

…I hate that I know what wordplay is now.

At first I thought this System must be broken. If so, then my powers are broken. But to believe this is to believe that my Maker gave me something which is broken and to assume that my Maker is wrong. Isn’t it?

The Inventory did not want to open. I made it open. A human-made metaphor has told me that I “forced the lock.” Inside of the invisible world were this book and a pen. The descriptions are illegible. But I can write with the pen, almost like they do.

I would call the process “satisfying,” but it doesn’t sate a hunger. “Relieving”?

Reading this book fresh off of a vicious swarming bug attack and reading it in the calm of a fridge light were vastly different experiences. The person who wrote this book seemed ruthless and calculating, like she had before. Someone interested in conquering and dominating. Not like me, a cat who’d wanted to survive. And yet a little like me—an animal lost in a new world, with odd direction from on high. Enough to call my “sister”? No…the idea of that made my stomach knot a little.

This whole thing about the Sapphire Queen deserved more conversation. It was just too ominous to leave alone for much longer. I didn’t want her to be the first topic of the day at our ordinarily blissful breakfast, but maybe that’d be best.

Knock.

My ears twitched so hard they rattled my head.

Knock…knock.

Okay, calm down, Taipha. Whatever that was, it wasn’t someone at the door. The direction was wrong. Besides, the sound was too soft for that. More likely it was the house creaking especially loud. Or Bayce finishing her work, pushing her chair in for the night.

But still.

I took a look at my Inventory. I still had Chora’s Crystal on me and the Debug Blade, plus two Minor Heals. Now I slotted in the Book of Sister’s Shadow and Merianne in Otherland. Why not? Space was no longer an issue. If we’d had any plimpberry pancakes left in the fridge, I would’ve taken a few of those two, and braved the taste.

Tick.

That one definitely wasn’t someone at the door. It was someone at the window! Someone who could evidently see me.

I charged closer. If I’d known who was knocking, I could’ve added Cloak, but for now I could at least keep an eye on whether Stealth and its minor Speed boost were active. (And they were not.)

No way I was getting within sight of the window. As much as it hurt not to get a look at the foe, that foe was not getting a look at me. So I stood parallel to it a few feet away.

If an intruder tried to get in through there, I’d assess, then take off. A Leap and claws to the face might do. Man, I wished I had a Fireball or some other offensive Spell left over, but that was fine—Air Cutter wasn’t too much weaker. And I could—

Ahh, oh yeah! The Debug Blade, I’d been thinking about that one lately! This restless night had been a great chance for me to actually ruminate on how I could use it without my brains dripping out of my ears. Good, because in fairy tales and stuff like that, a trusty guard needed a sword.

One side of me raved about swords in the back of my mind. The other stared ahead, vigilant, focused on the space before the window.

I thought I saw a shimmer in the air.

Knock.

The sound—the intruder—had moved again, and this time it was the door.

Then all sound stopped.

My thoughts seemed to become ear-splittingly loud. I stopped them.

My heartbeat was still going, but the delicate sound of it—inaudible.

And the entire room, impossibly, grew a few shades darker.