Felix, KuliKuli and the rest of her family rushed out the front double doors as soon as they heard the horses whine and stomp toward them. Na'Vi looked ahead from her perched spot on a tree branch before running after them. They approached the carriage as it came to an abrupt stop, helping Janette off the carriage. Emyri walked to the passenger cart, tapping her paw expectantly and clearing her throat. Felix moved in to open it, stepping back as his eyes flashed at the sight of the spearhead poking out. Reta stepped out and raised the spearhead to the sky, locking eyes with him briefly before stepping past him. He was about to close the door when Emyri's tail held it open, he looked at her as she shook her head and hopped inside. A gust of white magic spiraled inside and a moment later, out came a silver cat holding a smaller white cat in her mouth.
Dimyri ran up to them in a huff, crossing her arms. Emyri dropped Syri atop a patch of grass and stepped back. A strong gust of glowing white magic surrounded the pair before dissipating, revealing a disapproving mother eyeing her daughter. Syri hung her head down and held her arm, biting her bottom lip.
"What in the Lunar Gods were you thinking, running off alone like that? Look at me, you do not go off on your own without asking first. After everything that's happened, you're lucky we don't have our den anymore or you wouldn't be leaving except to eat for the next three moons."
Syri squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head, breathing in through her nose. "I was just trying to help."
"You can help by not leaving me worried to death when I realized my baby girl had gone missing!" Emyri cried out, stomping her foot down while her fur stood on edge. She stepped aside and ran her paws into her hair, taking a moment to breathe and cool down after the stress she felt.
Dimyri moved up to her sisters side and clicked her tongue. "At least let me know next time before doing this again."
"Why, so you can tell on me again?" Syri replied, leaving her and walking in the house. Dimyri scoffed and crossed her arms, her eyes falling upon Janette as she turned her attention on her.
"Thank you," She paused to look back to her mother, "For keeping her safe. It means a lot for you to do that for us."
"She helped me." Janette corrected her, catching Felix and KuliKuli's attention with her next response, "When we were apprehended, she stood up and distracted the others. I don't know if we could have-"
"Whoa whoa wait! What does apprehended mean?" Felix asked, alarmed. "That's like being captured right? You were captured?"
KuliKuli held Janette's arm with a look of concern. "What happened? Are any of you hurt?"
Janette felt overwhelmed, looking back and forth between her two friends. Everyone was staring at her expectantly waiting for a response, and it seemed that the longer she took, the more questions they had for her. She felt like she was shrinking under the gazes she was receiving, their voices began to blend together until she could only hear a ringing in her ears. She could only stammer her words clumsily as they continued to interrupt. "I... We were just... it started-"
Then, a sharp whistle rang echoed through like a siren, causing Dimyri, Emyri and KuliKuli to shriek and clamp their paws over their ears. They each shuddered and groaned, one by one looking back to Reta as she stood quietly at the far back of the group.
"Huh, didn't mean for that to hurt."
"Well it did!" Dimyri winced, stroking her throbbing cat ears. "Our hearing can be sensitive."
"Please don't do that again." KuliKuli added, looking up to see Felix was rubbing his ears as well.
"Well it worked in shutting everyone up." Reta said, pointing to Janette's satchel on her waist. "Take out your bag, we need to go inside and talk about everything that happened, along with what's going to happen now."
In a moment, everyone was huddled around the living room in silence, after the others finished explaining what happened in Farmer's Den.
Felix sat on a chair with his palms pressed together staring down. "So this hunter guy is already here then?"
"Well not here here per say, but yes." Janette answered.
"I... I don't know what to say, I knew he was coming but I wouldn't of thought it would be so soon." Emyri stammered in her speech, rubbing her paws on her thighs and looking at Syri. "Did he find you?"
"No, no no he never knew I was there. I was hiding under the big box thing the whole time."
"Carriage." Janette mentioned for her. "Even I didn't know she was there-"
"But the other men do now. These were the same who came to you the other day?" Felix asked her.
Janette turned to him and nodded, leaving him rubbing his neck in concern. "Damn."
"I offered to kill them to avoid any witnesses." Reta mentioned.
Felix shook his hands and head immediately. "Absolutely not! The last we need is to have the rest of the village coming down on us."
"Even if it is in our defense?" She asked with a raised brow. "In my village, we would resolve our disputes with a duel. Should they accept, the duel would be arranged in a public setting so that others may-"
"Well we're not in your village Reta, you're not helping!" He cut her off, rubbing his eyes. "Now we don't have the time to think about what to do anymore. I don't even know if we can travel back to the cabin without running into them."
Reta glared back in response until she caught KuliKuli's sad eyes. Reluctantly, she turned her head and kept quiet as the Nekomata moved closer to her mate.
"Master." KuliKuli reached out as she looked down on him, rubbing his shoulder.
"I know, I'm sorry. I just..." He sighed and held his face in his hands in silence.
"I, I did manage to bring this in to help us." Janette placed her satchel on the center table, retrieving an old book for everyone to see. "It's a neat little book imbued with magic."
"Magic?" Na'Vi repeated back with a puzzled look.
Dimyri leaned in and squinted at the cover. "Is that one of those loud birds with big eyes?"
"It's an owl and it's just a cover. Look, see?" She held the book open and rotated around for the rest to see. "See how the pages are blank?"
Dimyri and Syri both nodded, staring into it with a glimmer of curiosity in their eyes.
"What is it?" Syri asked.
"Oh, it's a-a magic book." Janette tilted her head, observing the pair of Nekomata eyeing the book as if they were newborn babies looking up at their mother for the first time. She chuckled in a way that sounded like a cough. "Have you guys not seen a book before?"
Emyri smiled sheepishly. "We're Nekomata's, we've no concept about books and literature. I never sought a reason to teach my girls about them when it's something we can't comprehend."
"Yea, Jay! Sounds like something you should be teaching your friends about." KuliKuli added with a show of her tongue.
Janette felt a bead of sweat roll down her brow. "W-Well you guys never asked! Besides I'm no teacher, Ah-! We're getting off topic, look! This is something we can use to our advantage. You just write down a question and it'll answer for you. A-Ask something right now!"
"Okay, what's my name?" KuliKuli asked.
Janette blinked and dug around her satchel before dropping the book and leaving the room, running upstairs. She returned shortly after with a bottle of ink in one hand and a quill pinched between her thumb and index finger. She sat down on the table and got to writing, furiously scratching the tip of the quill into the empty pages while biting her tongue with a look of concentration in her eyes. The others leaned in, poking their heads closer and closer until she pulled back with the quill raised over her head. "There! See?"
Indeed, the question asking for her friend's name was written into the book before fading away. It was like the ink was sucked or absorbed into the yellow page, leaving the cat girls cooing in awe. A second later, a black dot emerged before swirling and growing in size, forming the shape of letters before drying up as a sentence was worded out for all to see.
"Oooo, black!" Syri called out, looking to Janette. "What next?"
"Well what does it say?" She asked them.
Emyri shrugged and smiled back, twirling her bouncy silver hair. Na'Vi held her lips sealed and looked away, avoiding Janette's judging eyes. Dimyri and Syri continued staring, with Syri looking back before biting her bottom lip in embarrassment. Even Felix and KuliKuli raised their hands and paws in confusion.
Everyone looked back to each other, blinking absently as Janette sunk to the floor and facepalmed. "You mean nobody here can read!?"
"I can read and write perfectly well." Reta scoffed, "Have you forgotten that I can speak your language rather fluently? has it ever crossed your mind that I can read in your language as well?"
Janette simply waved her finger back at her before slamming her hand on the table. "Whatever, I asked for KuliKuli's name and it says KuliKuli."
"Wa-wait. not Nityri?" Na'Vi stepped back, looking at KuliKuli. Both of them locked eyes shortly, but KuliKuli averted her gaze and hung her head, slipping back beside her mate while Na'Vi remained in shock. She frowned and stepped toward Janette. "Ask it something else, that's not enough to know if it works. Ask it your name or-or mine!"
"No, ask it about our friends!" Dimyri cried out with her sister nodding in agreement.
"Ask it about the hunter!" KuliKuli added. "How can we stop him? Oh, ask it about those scary men you saw!"
"Enough!" Felix's voice bounced around the walls and echoed down the hall, leaving everyone silent. "That can be helpful but we're wasting time already. Farmer's Den isn't too far from here, and if the girls found us then it's no question that a hunter can as well. We're not safe here anymore."
The Nekomata family dropped their cat ears in agreement, each of them hanging their heads until he spoke up again. "But we can still... we can prepare for them perhaps."
He shared a look with KuliKuli as she recognized the glimmer in his eyes, her ears shooting up along with her fur. "Oh! The traps?"
"Traps?" Janette repeated with a baffled expression.
"Around the farm we would set out traps to get rid of the mice, and we would lace the fence and walls with these oils that soaked up the heat and killed any termites eating away the wood."
"That sounds unpleasant." Emyri replied.
"Okay so you're saying what, that we put up traps around my house?" Janette asked with a raised tone, standing up. "Felix, just one Nekomata slipped through inside without us knowing."
"That was when we didn't know because we weren't prepared, but we're expecting the hunter to come now." He argued back. "But if we can get to work trapping the outside of the house, it's a start."
"But he's a hunter, Felix!"
"I'm not saying this will stop him, okay? I've heard the stories about what they can do."
"Have you? Have you ever read about their feats and history? Just one Hunter alone can single-handedly slay a Gryphon, a Gryphon, Felix! Those things have a snake for a tail, large furry bodies and talons for claws with big, wall-piercing beaks that crush bones like a cow chews grass. Oh and they have wings to fly! Now how in the Gods can we stop one man who can do all that?"
Felix stood up from his chair and breathed in deep, raising his hand as it began to glow. Emyri and her daughters gasped and crawled back out of caution, staring wildly at his hand and whispering amongst themselves. Reta's eyes flashed as a proud smile began to form on her face.
Janette watched his hand before the glowing light faded back as Felix looked into her eyes confidently. "We have to try, Jay."
Her shoulders dropped and she chuckled nervously, "Whatever happened to keeping your head low and avoiding fights?"
"When I lived on my own, of course. It was easier to slip away unnoticed, but Jay? We're not alone anymore." He answered back.
KuliKuli stepped up and held his arm, asserting her claim and support with him. "And I'm not leaving my home either, or my friends and family!"
Emryi gasped and touched her lips as a smile broke through. "Your family?" She asked with quivering eyes.
KuliKuli returned with a wide smile. "I mean, yea of course. I might have known you for a bit, but you've known me all your life. You're my mother and sisters, and I'm not about to lose you all again."
"We're doomed." Janette sunk to her knees in defeat, closing the book on her lap.
Felix reached out and tussled her black hair playfully. "Yes, but at least we'll do that together too right?"
Reta shrugged before nodding in a 'why not' fashion. "Moved from one clan to another, but at least this clan is worth fighting for."
KuliKuli kissed her mates cheek and giggled before shaking her paw in the air. "Nyah, let's do this!"
"Nyah!" Her sisters cheered with her in a silly war cry, erupting in a giggling fit between the three of them. Even Na'vi struggled to hide her smile.
KuliKuli leaned into Felix and whispered to his ear. "So what's the plan then?"
He chuckled nervously and shrugged. "No clue, but we'll try to figure something."
She giggled back. "That's good enough for me, not like our lives are at stake or anything."
Announcement Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading this far! No worries, this isn't me announcing any breaks from the story, I'm just going to extend my publishing deadline and move it an hour forward. I've been consistently late with my publishing schedule by one hour so I'm hoping the shift would make it more reliable haha. Expect future chapters to be published between 8pm to 10pm Pacific Time!
Felix, KuliKuli and the rest of her family rushed out the front double doors as soon as they heard the horses whine and stomp toward them. Na'Vi looked ahead from her perched spot on a tree branch before running after them. They approached the carriage as it came to an abrupt stop, helping Janette off the carriage. Emyri walked to the passenger cart, tapping her paw expectantly and clearing her throat. Felix moved in to open it, stepping back as his eyes flashed at the sight of the spearhead poking out. Reta stepped out and raised the spearhead to the sky, locking eyes with him briefly before stepping past him. He was about to close the door when Emyri's tail held it open, he looked at her as she shook her head and hopped inside. A gust of white magic spiraled inside and a moment later, out came a silver cat holding a smaller white cat in her mouth.
Dimyri ran up to them in a huff, crossing her arms. Emyri dropped Syri atop a patch of grass and stepped back. A strong gust of glowing white magic surrounded the pair before dissipating, revealing a disapproving mother eyeing her daughter. Syri hung her head down and held her arm, biting her bottom lip.
"What in the Lunar Gods were you thinking, running off alone like that? Look at me, you do not go off on your own without asking first. After everything that's happened, you're lucky we don't have our den anymore or you wouldn't be leaving except to eat for the next three moons."
Syri squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head, breathing in through her nose. "I was just trying to help."
"You can help by not leaving me worried to death when I realized my baby girl had gone missing!" Emyri cried out, stomping her foot down while her fur stood on edge. She stepped aside and ran her paws into her hair, taking a moment to breathe and cool down after the stress she felt.
Dimyri moved up to her sisters side and clicked her tongue. "At least let me know next time before doing this again."
"Why, so you can tell on me again?" Syri replied, leaving her and walking in the house. Dimyri scoffed and crossed her arms, her eyes falling upon Janette as she turned her attention on her.
"Thank you," She paused to look back to her mother, "For keeping her safe. It means a lot for you to do that for us."
"She helped me." Janette corrected her, catching Felix and KuliKuli's attention with her next response, "When we were apprehended, she stood up and distracted the others. I don't know if we could have-"
"Whoa whoa wait! What does apprehended mean?" Felix asked, alarmed. "That's like being captured right? You were captured?"
KuliKuli held Janette's arm with a look of concern. "What happened? Are any of you hurt?"
Janette felt overwhelmed, looking back and forth between her two friends. Everyone was staring at her expectantly waiting for a response, and it seemed that the longer she took, the more questions they had for her. She felt like she was shrinking under the gazes she was receiving, their voices began to blend together until she could only hear a ringing in her ears. She could only stammer her words clumsily as they continued to interrupt. "I... We were just... it started-"
Then, a sharp whistle rang echoed through like a siren, causing Dimyri, Emyri and KuliKuli to shriek and clamp their paws over their ears. They each shuddered and groaned, one by one looking back to Reta as she stood quietly at the far back of the group.
"Huh, didn't mean for that to hurt."
"Well it did!" Dimyri winced, stroking her throbbing cat ears. "Our hearing can be sensitive."
"Please don't do that again." KuliKuli added, looking up to see Felix was rubbing his ears as well.
"Well it worked in shutting everyone up." Reta said, pointing to Janette's satchel on her waist. "Take out your bag, we need to go inside and talk about everything that happened, along with what's going to happen now."
In a moment, everyone was huddled around the living room in silence, after the others finished explaining what happened in Farmer's Den.
Felix sat on a chair with his palms pressed together staring down. "So this hunter guy is already here then?"
"Well not here here per say, but yes." Janette answered.
"I... I don't know what to say, I knew he was coming but I wouldn't of thought it would be so soon." Emyri stammered in her speech, rubbing her paws on her thighs and looking at Syri. "Did he find you?"
"No, no no he never knew I was there. I was hiding under the big box thing the whole time."
"Carriage." Janette mentioned for her. "Even I didn't know she was there-"
"But the other men do now. These were the same who came to you the other day?" Felix asked her.
Janette turned to him and nodded, leaving him rubbing his neck in concern. "Damn."
"I offered to kill them to avoid any witnesses." Reta mentioned.
Felix shook his hands and head immediately. "Absolutely not! The last we need is to have the rest of the village coming down on us."
"Even if it is in our defense?" She asked with a raised brow. "In my village, we would resolve our disputes with a duel. Should they accept, the duel would be arranged in a public setting so that others may-"
"Well we're not in your village Reta, you're not helping!" He cut her off, rubbing his eyes. "Now we don't have the time to think about what to do anymore. I don't even know if we can travel back to the cabin without running into them."
Reta glared back in response until she caught KuliKuli's sad eyes. Reluctantly, she turned her head and kept quiet as the Nekomata moved closer to her mate.
"Master." KuliKuli reached out as she looked down on him, rubbing his shoulder.
"I know, I'm sorry. I just..." He sighed and held his face in his hands in silence.
"I, I did manage to bring this in to help us." Janette placed her satchel on the center table, retrieving an old book for everyone to see. "It's a neat little book imbued with magic."
"Magic?" Na'Vi repeated back with a puzzled look.
Dimyri leaned in and squinted at the cover. "Is that one of those loud birds with big eyes?"
"It's an owl and it's just a cover. Look, see?" She held the book open and rotated around for the rest to see. "See how the pages are blank?"
Dimyri and Syri both nodded, staring into it with a glimmer of curiosity in their eyes.
"What is it?" Syri asked.
"Oh, it's a-a magic book." Janette tilted her head, observing the pair of Nekomata eyeing the book as if they were newborn babies looking up at their mother for the first time. She chuckled in a way that sounded like a cough. "Have you guys not seen a book before?"
Emyri smiled sheepishly. "We're Nekomata's, we've no concept about books and literature. I never sought a reason to teach my girls about them when it's something we can't comprehend."
"Yea, Jay! Sounds like something you should be teaching your friends about." KuliKuli added with a show of her tongue.
Janette felt a bead of sweat roll down her brow. "W-Well you guys never asked! Besides I'm no teacher, Ah-! We're getting off topic, look! This is something we can use to our advantage. You just write down a question and it'll answer for you. A-Ask something right now!"
"Okay, what's my name?" KuliKuli asked.
Janette blinked and dug around her satchel before dropping the book and leaving the room, running upstairs. She returned shortly after with a bottle of ink in one hand and a quill pinched between her thumb and index finger. She sat down on the table and got to writing, furiously scratching the tip of the quill into the empty pages while biting her tongue with a look of concentration in her eyes. The others leaned in, poking their heads closer and closer until she pulled back with the quill raised over her head. "There! See?"
Indeed, the question asking for her friend's name was written into the book before fading away. It was like the ink was sucked or absorbed into the yellow page, leaving the cat girls cooing in awe. A second later, a black dot emerged before swirling and growing in size, forming the shape of letters before drying up as a sentence was worded out for all to see.
"Oooo, black!" Syri called out, looking to Janette. "What next?"
"Well what does it say?" She asked them.
Emyri shrugged and smiled back, twirling her bouncy silver hair. Na'Vi held her lips sealed and looked away, avoiding Janette's judging eyes. Dimyri and Syri continued staring, with Syri looking back before biting her bottom lip in embarrassment. Even Felix and KuliKuli raised their hands and paws in confusion.
Everyone looked back to each other, blinking absently as Janette sunk to the floor and facepalmed. "You mean nobody here can read!?"
"I can read and write perfectly well." Reta scoffed, "Have you forgotten that I can speak your language rather fluently? has it ever crossed your mind that I can read in your language as well?"
Janette simply waved her finger back at her before slamming her hand on the table. "Whatever, I asked for KuliKuli's name and it says KuliKuli."
"Wa-wait. not Nityri?" Na'Vi stepped back, looking at KuliKuli. Both of them locked eyes shortly, but KuliKuli averted her gaze and hung her head, slipping back beside her mate while Na'Vi remained in shock. She frowned and stepped toward Janette. "Ask it something else, that's not enough to know if it works. Ask it your name or-or mine!"
"No, ask it about our friends!" Dimyri cried out with her sister nodding in agreement.
"Ask it about the hunter!" KuliKuli added. "How can we stop him? Oh, ask it about those scary men you saw!"
"Enough!" Felix's voice bounced around the walls and echoed down the hall, leaving everyone silent. "That can be helpful but we're wasting time already. Farmer's Den isn't too far from here, and if the girls found us then it's no question that a hunter can as well. We're not safe here anymore."
The Nekomata family dropped their cat ears in agreement, each of them hanging their heads until he spoke up again. "But we can still... we can prepare for them perhaps."
He shared a look with KuliKuli as she recognized the glimmer in his eyes, her ears shooting up along with her fur. "Oh! The traps?"
"Traps?" Janette repeated with a baffled expression.
"Around the farm we would set out traps to get rid of the mice, and we would lace the fence and walls with these oils that soaked up the heat and killed any termites eating away the wood."
"That sounds unpleasant." Emyri replied.
"Okay so you're saying what, that we put up traps around my house?" Janette asked with a raised tone, standing up. "Felix, just one Nekomata slipped through inside without us knowing."
"That was when we didn't know because we weren't prepared, but we're expecting the hunter to come now." He argued back. "But if we can get to work trapping the outside of the house, it's a start."
"But he's a hunter, Felix!"
"I'm not saying this will stop him, okay? I've heard the stories about what they can do."
"Have you? Have you ever read about their feats and history? Just one Hunter alone can single-handedly slay a Gryphon, a Gryphon, Felix! Those things have a snake for a tail, large furry bodies and talons for claws with big, wall-piercing beaks that crush bones like a cow chews grass. Oh and they have wings to fly! Now how in the Gods can we stop one man who can do all that?"
Felix stood up from his chair and breathed in deep, raising his hand as it began to glow. Emyri and her daughters gasped and crawled back out of caution, staring wildly at his hand and whispering amongst themselves. Reta's eyes flashed as a proud smile began to form on her face.
Janette watched his hand before the glowing light faded back as Felix looked into her eyes confidently. "We have to try, Jay."
Her shoulders dropped and she chuckled nervously, "Whatever happened to keeping your head low and avoiding fights?"
"When I lived on my own, of course. It was easier to slip away unnoticed, but Jay? We're not alone anymore." He answered back.
KuliKuli stepped up and held his arm, asserting her claim and support with him. "And I'm not leaving my home either, or my friends and family!"
Emryi gasped and touched her lips as a smile broke through. "Your family?" She asked with quivering eyes.
KuliKuli returned with a wide smile. "I mean, yea of course. I might have known you for a bit, but you've known me all your life. You're my mother and sisters, and I'm not about to lose you all again."
"We're doomed." Janette sunk to her knees in defeat, closing the book on her lap.
Felix reached out and tussled her black hair playfully. "Yes, but at least we'll do that together too right?"
Reta shrugged before nodding in a 'why not' fashion. "Moved from one clan to another, but at least this clan is worth fighting for."
KuliKuli kissed her mates cheek and giggled before shaking her paw in the air. "Nyah, let's do this!"
"Nyah!" Her sisters cheered with her in a silly war cry, erupting in a giggling fit between the three of them. Even Na'vi struggled to hide her smile.
KuliKuli leaned into Felix and whispered to his ear. "So what's the plan then?"
He chuckled nervously and shrugged. "No clue, but we'll try to figure something."
She giggled back. "That's good enough for me, not like our lives are at stake or anything."
Announcement Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading this far! No worries, this isn't me announcing any breaks from the story, I'm just going to extend my publishing deadline and move it an hour forward. I've been consistently late with my publishing schedule by one hour so I'm hoping the shift would make it more reliable haha. Expect future chapters to be published between 8pm to 10pm Pacific Time!