Life in Clocktown is exactly as one would imagine it to be.

Not very punctual, if that’s what you’re thinking. And not very fast-paced either. It might have said a lot about the place, and yet it says nothing at all. Not that the residents of the town care. They wake up each morning to the sound of whistling trains and ferry horns, and go about their businesses like clockworks. Life is easy. Life is slow and steady, and there’s no race to be won. Life doesn’t change, and maybe it needs no changing, because life in Clocktown is exactly as one would imagine it to be.

It’s probably a good thing that Willow Whitman doesn’t have a bright imagination.

She hasn’t quite needed one for quite sometime, born and brought up with an average childhood, small desires and practical ambitions, all distilled in the dreary, slow-paced life of Clocktown. She is a very pragmatic seventeen years old, or so she would like to think, because anything else in the last year of high school is a recipe for disaster.

Her mother’s words, not hers.

A rebellious part of her brain craves the aforementioned recipe like a masochistic fool. Not that Willow would ever disclose the fact to anyone. Like all of her other, not so average desires, she’d probably take it all to her grave.

‘Probably’ being the keyword.

Nothing quite happens in the place, not even if you stay up late at nights and stare intently out of the windows for hours at a stretch. Not even if you tried climbing out of the said windows to go for secret late night excursions for no apparent rhyme or reason. Willow has learnt it the easy way. Hence the so-called pragmatism.

Her high school classmates are, however, a different story. Last month a group of grade twelve boys had sneaked out at night and plucked down the ‘L’s from the ‘Clocktown Clubhouse’, a community hall of sorts with a rusty old signboard and solid acrylic letters hung above its dreary front door.

Needless to say, none of the adults wanted a ‘Cocktown Cubhouse’ in their neighborhood.

The parents were called and the due lectures were given out, all in a very solemn manner. No fuss was kicked up, not in any way that she (and several others of her classmates) had hoped for. The boys sat through the whole ordeal with indifferent faces, probably because they’d already known deep down that nothing ever blows out of proportion in Clocktown. There had been some brief hollering on the club manager’s part, but that too simmered out as quickly as it came.

Mathias, the lanky leader of the bunch, had walked out of the police station with a scowl on his face. “If nothing ever happens, you gotta make things happen, dammit!” He’d said with a conviction that no one was willing to share after the fiasco. Willow privately agreed (even if her classmates’ way of making things happen were hilariously juvenile), and kept her face mercifully neutral throughout the whole aftermath of the incident.

One of these days, she is scared that she will suddenly wake up in the morning as a full-fledged adult, and unknowingly step into the same unchanging life that she has detested so much. She knows with a bone deep certainty that it will happen sooner or later, and she won’t bother resisting when that time comes calling.

When you grow up in a town like this, you inevitably molded into its unchanging lifestyle.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place.” Says Elsie with a sigh, one lazy evening. A sentiment Willow can agree to. She is sitting with her childhood friends in one of the town’s unfashionably drab cafes. “I don’t want to waste away my life in Clocktown, waiting and waiting for something to change till the day I die.”

“I know what you mean!” Serah pipes in enthusiastically, stirring her coffee with a vigour that sends froth flying. She is vigorous about almost everything, from her schoolwork to fashion to her dance lessons and her coffee. Especially about her coffee. “Like seriously, life is all about getting out there and exploring new options! Life is about living vigorously!”

Incidentally, ‘vigorously’ also happens to be her favourite word. She’d won the spelling-bee in fifth grade with this one after all.

Willow stays silent but nods along.

Willow is an avid reader, and when she isn’t drowning in midterms and assignments, she reads away her days in her small room. The books are a strange solace, with even stranger stories that make her feel all weird and tingly inside. She reads books of fantasies and fictions, of heroes and heroines and the chosen ones. She flips through the pages as their worlds grow root and blossom inside her mind. She hesitates to put herself in the protagonists’ shoes because they are oh-so-different from her; they don’t go about finding adventures, the adventures willingly come to them.

She reads and reads past the fading daylight until the acute longing in her heart becomes unbearable. Then she closes the book, shoves it down into its rightful shelf and goes back to being the ever-pragmatic Willow Whitman of 15/4, Raven street, Block 12 in Clocktown. The level-headed girl who goes by the norms and never by her heart.

Willow doesn’t believe that rules are meant to be broken. To be fair, she also doesn’t quite believe that all rules are meant to be obeyed. She treads a thin line in the middle, like the pragmatic creature she is, with one foot occasionally on each side. Because some rules keep you safe. And some rules are plain dumb and ought to be discarded when no one’s looking. Some rules are unspoken and unanimously agreed upon. Some facts should not be questioned.

Like the fact that pigs don’t fly. Or that ‘don’t anger the math teacher Mr. Grimond’. Or that ‘don’t try to flirt with the cafeteria lady’. Or the fact that ‘the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but it’s all the same in the ever cloudy Clocktown’.

Or that ‘animals should not talk’.

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Willow blames it on the little detour that she has taken on her way to home from the cafe that day, past the muddy fields and along the banks of the Cavarone River. Because it’s a rare, sunny morning in the town, the kind that lifts your mood just by a few centimeters and brings a smile to your face. The girl skips on the grassy path, humming an old song and comes to stand before gentle slope that leads down to the shimmering river.

There a rustle behind her.

The bushes part and out comes a black cat with a furry tail and golden eyes. It walks out with an air of confidence like it owns the road, riverbank and all. Willow pauses and stares, because cats are not a common sight in Clocktown. Is this one perhaps a stray?

The cat pauses too, and regards her with the same curiosity as any adult would regard a children’s TV show. There is a short staring match between the girl and the cat, the kind which leaves you wondering what either of them is thinking. Willow looks away first, feeling foolish and a tad overwhelmed. And then a wave of humiliation washes over her, because which idiot gets overwhelmed by a cat?

Pragmatic idiots, apparently.

The aforementioned cat eyes her with unblinking eyes. Willow has a brief internal debate about trying a ‘Hello kitty kitty!’ or turning away and leaving the animal to its own devices. The cat makes the decision on her behalf. It swishes its black tail lazily narrows its unblinking, golden eyes at the girl.

“I guess you’ll have to do.” The cat says to her.

To her credit, Willow doesn’t freak out immediately. She doesn’t jump to conclusions either. She blinks, turns left, and then right, and proceeds to clean the gunk out of her ears. There’s no one in the vicinity, which is funny, because she could have sworn that there was a voice talking nearby.

The cat sweeps a critical eye over her again.

It is a sleek black feline, with a slightly furry tail and unblinking golden eyes. Eyes that bore into hers with a lazy intensity, like it is trying to make sense of a particularly obnoxious piece of puzzle. There hasn’t been a single meow so far, which is kind of bizarre, but not as bizarre as a talking cat.

No, no, no, that’s kind of impossible. The girl has half a mind to search around the bushes to find the source of the voice, probably some dumb brats playing pranks on an unsuspecting high school girl. But then again, Willow is self aware enough to know that she looks pretty gullible at the first glance.

The cat seems to think so as well.

“Follow me, girl.” The sound is unmistakably coming from the cat, for the better or the worse. Willow stands rooted to her spot, fingers fisted on her loose trousers. Either the cat considers itself too smart, or thinks that she is too stupid. Who in their right mind would follow a suspicious talking cat into who-knows-where?

The aforementioned cat pads ahead leisurely, before pausing again to look back at her. There is a hint of irritation on his face, although Willow isn’t quite an expert judge of feline expressions, or the lack thereof. “Well, what are you waiting for?” It says haughtily, as if fully convinced that the girl would follow without a word.

The girl, with all things considered, simply wants to turn around and run. Run all the way to somewhere far and familiar and normal, and devoid of talking cats. Especially devoid of talking cats. She contemplates briefly about the pros and cons of bashing her head against the nearest wall when the absurdity of the situation hits her with full force.

This is not normal. Of fucking course it’s anything but normal. This is the most abnormal, incomprehensible thing she’s seen all her life. Not many people in this world can boast about chancing upon a talking cat smack dab in the middle of the day. Hell, she is pretty sure that she’s the only one so far.

This might be a hoax. This might very well be a prank. Or this might totally be a rare species of talking cat that she’d somehow neglected to take into consideration all this time.

This must be a daydream. She must have finally gone mad, hallucinating things that weren’t meant to be.

Or maybe, just maybe, this is the sign she’d been waiting for all her life.

In the end, her curiosity wins over the pragmatism, and Willow finds herself taking tentative steps after the strange feline. In that moment, both her mind and heart are one, single-mindedly focused on the animal in front of her. A person with more self-preservation might have taken a moment or two to weigh their options, but Willow doesn’t dare.

If she lets this moment go, she will go back to the monotonous, oh-so-normal life of Clocktown. Come tomorrow, she will again wake up precisely at 6 in the morning to train whistles and ferry horns and the clock chimes of her alarm, go to school with sleepy eyes and spend the rest of her day in the same old, same old routine with a practiced smile and a head full of whimsical dreams that would never come true.

The talking cat looks like a strangely appealing alternative, as stupid as it sounds in her mind.

The cat lets out a satisfied sound at her compliance, which is somewhere between a snort and a meow, and leads the way again. It takes her through winding lanes and shady alleyways, under hidden archways and over the ledges, through narrow spaces squeezed between walls and strange shortcuts that she could have sworn didn’t exist till now.

Willow half walks and half crawls, unmindful of the curious stares thrown her way, till they leave the bustling neighborhood behind and reach a quiet clearing. Beyond the wooden fence are patches of wild grass and overgrown shrubs, and a muddy trail that disappears into a forest of pine.

The cat effortlessly jumps up and over the fence, with the girl following suit. She walks with one eye on the cat and the other on her surroundings, ready to bolt the second something goes wrong. Her fears are unfounded for a while, until the cat finally comes to a stop.

A decrepit tunnel stands before her, hidden cleverly behind overgrown bushes and curtains of wildflowers hanging over it. It is small and narrow, probably a head or two shorter than her, and Willow for the life of her cannot imagine why it should be here in the first place. The cat probably can, or it sure as hell does, because it scratches its ears with a paw and looks at Willow expectantly.

“C’mon girl, get in. What are you waiting for?” It says primly, as if crawling headfirst into a dark, ominous tunnel in all fours is the most natural thing in the world. Willow lets out a magnanimous

“No.” and shakes her head for good measure. Let it never be said that she was an idiot enough to follow a talking cat into a shady tunnel. Oh, no. No sir.

Mercifully, there is nobody to remind her that she’d already followed the said cat all over Clocktown into this forest.

Still, Willow sets down her purse and tries to peer into the tunnel. It is darker than the darkest night she’d seen in her uneventful life, and there is no light at the other end in sight. No wind passes through the opening, no rustle of leaves or squeak of rats is heard, and the girl knows instinctively that it is a bad idea to go in there.

The cat is momentarily annoyed, because it lets out a growl. The sound reminds her of her mother’s exasperated groans when Willow is being especially stubborn. “And why not? You’re supposed to want to go in there!”

“Uh, listen.” The girl tries valiantly, even if she feels a tad foolish. “Only an idiot would willingly follow a stranger into who knows where.”

The cat levels her with a stare that says ‘You just did.’ Willow flushes and they says defiantly. “That was that and this is different. The tunnel looks dark and creepy. Sorry but this is where I draw the line.”

“Look, there’s more to this world than you know.” The cat begins sagely. He sounds like one of those persistent salesmen. “Trust me you’d want to go in there. You’re meant for much greater things.”

“I’ll decide that, thank you very much.” Willow doesn’t want to lose an argument to a cat of all things. Even to a cat that speaks like a salesman.

“Alright.” The cat says at last, eyes glowing even more golden, if it were possible. “I didn’t want to do it this way.” Before Willow can ask it what it means, the little fellow has her teal purse held between its teeth, and is scurrying down into the tunnel at full speed. The startled girl gives a shout and tries to grab its tail, but the dratted cat has already disappeared into the darkness.

Willow is left at the opening with a furiously beating heart and a gnawing fear in her gut, because of course the talking cat would do the most cat-like thing in the end and snatch away her belongings in the most ill-opportune moment. She is certain that she should not, must not go inside that tunnel at any cost, but her school id is sitting innocuously inside that purse. Getting another id from the school in her last year, last semester would entail an hour long lecture from the vice-principal first, and her mother second, including but not limited to a myriad of other headache inducing complications.

She can already imagine the disappointed looks her mother will be throwing at her all the way home. Really, her imaginations peak at the worst possible moment.

So Willow gathers what is left of her dignity and peers into the tunnel once more. The daylight is going out fast; the shadows growing longer by the second. The girl swallows a lump in her throat and thinks: ‘To hell with it. I’ll dash inside catch that damned cat by its scruffy neck.’ All she needs to look for is a pair of glowing feline eyes in the dark, and retrieve her school id before daylight goes out.

Willow crouches low and parts the bushes gingerly. Into the ominous tunnel she goes, thinking of all the creative ways in which she could explain the muddy clothes to her mother when she returns home.

The idea of ‘If she returns home’ should have crossed her mind at least once. But it does not.

It would seem that this time, curiosity killed the girl following the cat.