Outside the castle, the shouts of the people and the crackling of the bonfires still filled the air. The lord and his knights were still hunting the evil cat known as "Cheeko."
Barrett lifted the cat with both arms, his deep blue eyes meeting the narrowed black pupils of the feline. With a serious face he asked, "Are they looking for you?"
The cat nodded obediently.
"Why would they want to catch a little kitten like this?" EeDechi asked, puzzled.
"This isn't a little kitten. This is a fat kitten," Barrett corrected her.
He set the plump feline gently on the bed. The cat rolled onto its back, staring up at them with huge black eyes. Its round belly spread out like a furry pancake, and its face wore the most innocent expression imaginable.
"If it could talk, it could tell us why the lord is hunting it," Barrett said. "Too bad it only knows how to meow."
The cat seemed to understand. It flipped over, stood up, and jumped off the bed with surprising agility. It dove into Barrett's pack lying on the floor, rummaged around for a moment, and came out with a sheet of parchment and a white quill clamped in its jaws.
"It's… going to write?" Barrett said, stunned.
The cat nodded obediently. Barrett quickly pulled an ink bottle from his spatial ring, unscrewed the cap, and placed it on the ground.
The cat used its front paws to smooth the parchment flat, then gently bit the middle of the quill. It dipped the tip into the ink, coating it thoroughly, and even wiped the nib against the rim of the bottle to scrape off the extra drops.
EeDechi and Barrett both stared in shock. The cat's movements were so practiced and sure it was clearly not the first time it had done this—writing not with a hand, but with its mouth.
Using both front paws to hold the parchment steady, the cat gripped the quill between its teeth and began to write with meticulous care.
Once again the extraordinary cat had left EeDechi and Barrett speechless. Its handwriting was neat and elegant, almost as beautiful as the ornate printed script in fine books. Barrett had to admit to himself that his own penmanship could never compare to the cat's.
It wasn't the "cat language" EeDechi had guessed. Instead, the words were in the Common tongue—something the two adventurers knew as well as their own names. Soon, a line of elegant cursive script appeared on the parchment:
{Hello, my name is Cheeko, and I am a cat.}
Barrett gazed at Cheeko's shimmering sky-blue body and thought to himself that the creature truly saw itself as nothing more than a cat. He crouched down and asked, "Why is the lord trying to kill you?"
The cat's pointed ears twitched. With a soft scratching sound, it wrote on the parchment:
{I was born a long time ago. My mother passed all her knowledge on to me. I was curious about the world outside and wanted to see it for myself. So I left her body and rolled off in one direction.
{In the forest I met an orange creature. It was very fluffy and many times bigger than me. It pounced on me and bit me with its teeth.
{I was so scared that I accidentally swallowed it.}
EeDechi and Barrett nodded in understanding. After all, Cheeko was no ordinary cat. At its core it was a strange slime-like being.
{A little girl ran over. She was more than ten times my size. She cried and told me I had killed her cat. Her crying was loud and shrill. I was terrified.}
"Then you swallowed her too?" Barrett asked, completely at a loss for words.
The cat shook its head and kept writing:
{She said I had to make it up to her for the cat. From the knowledge my mother gave me, "make it up" meant using the round metal pieces humans call "money." I had no money, so I panicked.
{That was when I felt my body changing. A head, limbs, a mouth, ears, and a tail grew out of me, making me look almost exactly like the cat I had swallowed.
{The little girl said that if I couldn't pay her, it was fine—as long as I became her pet. I agreed. She carried me back to the castle, and I became hers.
{Her father, mother, older sister, and older brother all loved her dearly, but from the day she was born the mistress had suffered from a strange illness. Her body was terribly weak, and no magic or healing arts could cure it.
{I sensed that the mistress had been cursed—something was draining her life force—but I didn't know how to help. All I could do was play with her, talk to her, and try my best to keep her happy. She was the one who taught me how to write.}
The cat's story flowed on like a gentle stream. EeDechi couldn't help but picture the scene: beneath the beautiful glow of the setting sun, a little girl in a dress sat on the stone steps, petals scattered across the landing.
The well-behaved cat lay beside her, quill clamped gently in its mouth, writing and drawing on the pale yellow parchment. The young mistress would tilt her head and say something to the cat, and the cat would answer with neat, elegant handwriting on the parchment.
"How heartwarming," EeDechi murmured softly.
{But later,}
The cat's head drooped low, and the tip of the quill began to tremble.
{The mistress grew weaker and weaker. Her illness never got better. One day, she passed away.}
The cat let the quill slip from its mouth. The light feather quill fell silently to the floor, just like the sorrowful end of the little mistress it had described. It lowered its body, rested its head on its two front paws, and its whole form quivered gently, as if it were crying.
EeDechi crouched down and gently stroked the cat's head to comfort it.
The cat named Cheeko picked up the quill once more, dipped it in the ink, pulled itself together, and kept writing. This time its strokes were strong and forceful, heavy with anger.
{The last healer who treated the mistress was a highly respected high-ranking alchemist. The mistress's father summoned him, and he swore with absolute confidence that he could cure her illness. But in truth he was completely powerless and did nothing to save the mistress's life.
{His vow shattered, yet to protect his own rotten reputation he actually shifted all the blame onto me!}
For the first time Cheeko used an exclamation mark. It slashed the parchment fiercely with the quill tip, its fury plain to see.
{He made up a clever, well-reasoned lie, claiming that I had devoured the mistress's life force. Because she spent every moment with me, she fell into the arms of death.
{But in reality I can only swallow solid things. I cannot devour something as intangible as life force. And under the mistress's guidance, aside from swallowing crystals I have not eaten anything else for a very long time.}
{But people would rather believe a long-bearded alchemist than a cat that could write.
{I was nearly killed. I escaped the castle with nowhere to go, so I decided to leave and start traveling.
{To stop the mistress's illness from spreading, the mages suggested she be cremated. It suddenly occurred to me that while she was alive, the mistress had always dreamed of traveling beyond the castle walls.
{So before her ashes could be buried, I stole the urn. That way I could carry the mistress with me and together we could see the whole wide world.}
"That's actually really beautiful," Barrett said, feeling an unexpected touch of romance in the story.
A cat, carrying its mistress's ashes to fulfill her lifelong wish, setting out on a journey with unwavering resolve.
Cheeko's lifespan was almost endless. They could sit together on the grasslands watching the stars flicker in the night sky, sail on storm-tossed ships to see the tides rise and fall, feel the brilliance of the aurora in the far north, or stand atop a mountain peak and gaze at the world's distant wonders.
"If you were already traveling, why are you still here?" EeDechi asked, looking down at the writing cat.
Cheeko's ears drooped. It looked as if it had done something terribly wrong. It bit the quill and wrote:
{The mistress's urn was too big and hard to carry, so I put it inside my body. The next morning when I woke up, I discovered that the urn… had been digested…}
EeDechi and Barrett stared at each other in disbelief. The outcome was completely unexpected. Even Cheeko seemed to have forgotten that it wasn't truly a cat but a slime-like creature capable of swallowing anything it could envelop.
Cheeko hung its head, looking utterly dejected, and continued writing:
{I had made a terrible mistake. I ran back to the castle. The only thing left that could hold the mistress's memory was her belongings. Her parents never cleaned out her bedroom and kept it exactly as it had been, so I often sneaked back into the castle and curled up in her room.
{Her parents hated me with all their hearts. Every time I showed up, they wanted to kill me…}
EeDechi and Barrett didn't know what to say. Cheeko had stolen the lord's daughter's urn and then accidentally swallowed it… no wonder the lord wanted the cat dead.
The cat kept writing:
{Then I realized something: the mistress's urn had become one with my body, so she lives on in my heart. At the banquet I heard you two are adventurers who have traveled the whole world. Could I travel with you?}
It released the quill, sat down obediently, and looked up at EeDechi and Barrett. Its black-gem eyes were full of hope.
"Wait a second," Barrett said, turning to look at the feminine decorations covering the room and the bookshelves lined with stories a young girl would love. "You said you often sneak into your mistress's room to remember her… The room we're staying in wouldn't happen to be the lord's daughter's bedroom, would it?"
{Yes.} Cheeko wrote honestly.
"That's way too much!" EeDechi burst out. "What kind of parents make guests sleep in their dead daughter's room?"
"Using us as the knife," Barrett muttered after a moment's thought. "The lord knew Cheeko would definitely come running to his daughter's bedroom, so he put us here. He knew we'd catch the cat for him."
EeDechi nodded in agreement. The lord's plan really was clever. He seemed far more calculating than the gentle, honest man he appeared to be.
Knock knock knock. Someone rapped on the door. EeDechi frowned, quickly stuffed Cheeko into the pack, and Barrett went to open it.
The door swung open. Sure enough, it was the lord Martin Smith holding an oil lamp and smiling at them. When he spotted the glowing crystal lantern in Barrett's hand, his eyes lit up with barely hidden eagerness.
Martin asked, "Honored guests, have you seen a sky-blue cat? It is an evil cat cursed by magic. It killed my little daughter and caused irreparable harm to our entire family! I must kill it to lift the curse."
Barrett shot EeDechi a questioning glance: Should we hand Cheeko over? After all, the cat really had stolen the lord's daughter's urn and made a terrible mistake.
EeDechi gave a tiny, almost invisible shake of her head and whispered so quietly only Barrett could hear, "Let's take it with us."
Barrett told the lord, "Sorry, we haven't seen any cat or anything like that. If there really is one, I promise it won't bother you again."
"Really?" Martin Smith's gaze lingered on EeDechi for a full two seconds. He left hesitantly, his figure melting into the darkness.
In the darkness, he glanced back once. His eyes flickered with suspicion and confusion, along with a trace of surprise and anger…