Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Haru Yoshioka had been 16 for a very long time and, had she been written later, she would have made a Twilight reference out of it.

She wasn't entirely sure how long, for in the pages of her book the only calendars that existed catered to the timeline of her narrative, marking it constantly the 26th or 27th May (and occasionally some time later in June, thanks to a 'one month later' epilogue) but it had certainly been a matter of years since they'd last been read.

And life had… well, it had mellowed since they had originally been published, even in a tale filled with talking cats and magic and living figurines. After all, their purpose was their story, and if they weren't being read… well…

So Haru Yoshioka, schoolgirl and resident protagonist, was bored.

Even – or especially – the antagonists felt it, and the Cat King would regularly lament with, "Do you remember when we had Readers?"

And Natori, his advisor, would dutifully agree with a, "Yes, sire."

"Once a week, we'd be read – out loud, no less!"

"Yes, sire."

"To a whole room of adoring listeners! Remember the prestige! The drama! The glory!"

'The disorientation,' Natori mentally added. Having a single Reader was (relatively) simple; you simply catered to the imagination of one mind, but to a dozen… you always felt like you were moving through a kaleidoscope, your appearance, clothing, and even your voice varying to fit the precise image each Reader held of you. Not to mention the slight echo of your voice as your dialogue was mirrored by the external narrator.

So the day-to-day living in The Cat Returns was not filled with daring rescues and feline kidnapping and all the things the author had originally planned, but instead was occupied by the mundane. The Cat King had taken up water painting, and Toto and Natori would meet up for a weekly comparison of their respective king/leader/babysitting duties, and Haru would spend lazy ever-sunlit afternoons in the fields of the Cat Kingdom.

Sleep was just beginning to steal over her during such a stint when the ground rumbled and a fan of light – bright and natural; not the artificial gleam of the books back-up lights – began opening in a corner of the sky.

"Reader!" gasped a nearby cat.

"Book opening!" cried another. "Book opening!"

Haru sprang to her feet. The Cat Kingdom was on page 98, and she was supposed to be on page 3. She made a run for it, dashing between paragraphs, even as the shadow of their Reader loomed overhead. She could hear Baron's opening monologue starting, and knew she had precious seconds to get back. She took a shortcut, circumventing the Cat Bureau chapter entirely, and landed ungainly on page 3 just as the Reader finished on 2.

She dashed under the covers of her bed and hoped the sheets would cover the fact that she was very definitely not wearing pyjamas. Her alarm clock beeped insistently, and she slammed a hand down on it and rolled over.

"Aren't you up yet?" cried her mother, who sounded like she'd run some ways also to reach her opening lines.

"I'm up! I'm up!" The fact that she was dressing from her comfy end-of-book clothes into her school uniform was probably easily dismissed, right? She tied her hair up into its bun, made to run downstairs, but faltered a moment to double-check her appearance in her mirror. In her early years, she had done this action many times, but never with quite so much relief as today. She flicked a stray blade of grass out of her hair and hoped the Reader didn't notice. "Whatever."

"Really, dear," her mother recited when Haru came fumbling into the kitchen, "why do you bother setting an alarm clock?" A smattering of quilt squares were gathered up in a newspaper which had been dumped on the coffee table; evidence of Naoko's attempt to change the kitchen table to breakfast with all of five seconds' warning.

"Gotta go!"

"Too bad you don't have time to eat," her mother teased. "It's delicious!"

The book flipped shut and the story was thrown into darkness. After a moment, the back-up lights flickered into life, just in time for Haru to see her mother spit back out the mouthful of toast she'd previously taken.

"Evidently, I do have time," Haru said, and she flopped into the chair opposite her mother. "What are you eating?"

"The emergency toast," her mother said.

"The one we keep in the fridge?"

"I didn't have enough time to properly prepare anything." Her mother binned the rest of the breakfast. "Now you're here, do you want some actual food?"

By way of response, Haru groaned and sank deeper into the kitchen chair.

After so long without a Reader, and then to have been read for only a handful of pages… She wondered whether it was something they'd done. Perhaps if they'd been written with a more immediate start – she'd heard from the newer books which had joined her shelf that first-line hooks were all the rage now…

"Do you think we'll ever get Readers again?" Haru asked.

"We just did."

"No, I mean proper Readers."

"I'm sure we will, someday," replied her mother vaguely. Apparently reassured that their limelight was over, she went to collect up her quilt squares and carry on the project she'd been so rudely interrupted in. "Now, can you see where I left my thread?"

Haru was just rising to search through the debris on the coffee table when light spilled out across the story again – but this time on the other side of the book. Haru exchanged glances with her mother, and then broke into another sprint.

One of the pros of being the protagonist was that she got plenty of page-time.

One of the cons of being the protagonist was that she got plenty of page-time.

She bypassed the Cat Bureau section once more, skidded into the Cat Kingdom chapter, and had to clamber between the margins to get to page 130, where Natoru and Natori were desperately trying to prologue their scene.

"Muta's not that strange a name," she could hear Natoru offer. "I knew a cat called Mute once." There was a long, hopeful pause in which the Reader's attention did not divert. "And another called Mytho."

"Mytho isn't quite the same as Muta, however," Natori replied slowly.

Haru skidded to the dressing room and the three maids began throwing the gown over her almost before she had come to a halt. She felt the Reader's eyes turn to her, and, still fumbling with the shoulder pads of her dress, plunged into her lines.

"So-King-I'm-really-flattered-by-all-this-but-I-don't-want-to-get-married," she gasped.

The Cat King beamed at her, before remembering to school his expression into something of shock. "You what? I was told you'd already consented."

Finally released from the banality of small talk, Natori slipped into the room. The elderly advisor cat shot her a quick thumbs up for her eventual entrance, before returning to his scripted role. "She has consented; that's what I was told."

"What about the – heh – what about the prince?" Haru fought against the urge to laugh as a maid latching her fish necklace about her neck unintentionally tickled her. The gasp turned into a rasp as another maid tightened the corset. "What-does-he-say?" she rushed before either could break her character.

"He's not around," said Natori. "He is away on official business."

The sound Haru was meant to make at this point was a thoughtful sort of hum, whereas the actual noise she made was a wheeze. She leant against one of the mirrors. "Look, first of all, we don't really…" The mirror began to slide across the floor. "We don't really know each–" she made a grab for it and missed – "other!" she cried as the mirror toppled over with a tremendous crash, and somehow didn't shatter. "Oh no!"

The maids screamed, and one fainted clean away.

Somewhere, someone was laughing.

"And he's a cat," said the Cat King, who in the chaos had remembered it was someone's line, but not whose, "and you're not."

"Yes!" Haru cried. "So clearly I cannot marry him!"

"Yes!" agreed the King.

"But we have already taken care of that," interrupted Natori, before the Cat King could diverge any further from his appointed lines.

"We have!"

The laughter grew louder.

"And why is that?" Haru prompted.

"Because–" The Cat King glanced worriedly to the mirror and maid strewn across the floor. "Because you're not a cat – I mean, you are! You're a half cat already!"

The maid who was just coming to gave the nearby mirror a shove, and it skidded in Haru's direction, just enough to show her half-feline appearance.

This line, at least, Haru was sure of.

"CAAAAAAT!"

The laughter briefly rose, and then settled back. The Reader slowed and, from above, there came a murmur that Haru only just caught.

She glanced up, and saw the face of their Reader, a woman with reddish-brown hair. The Reader's eyes crinkled with humour and… something else, and then the book was gently closed once more.

"Page 130," the King muttered as the back-up lights returned. "Why can't these Readers be responsible and start at the beginning, like they're meant to?"

The maids collected up the mirror and their fallen brethren. Natori raised his gaze up and, readjusting his glasses, said, "Be prepared; the Reader might decide to jump to another chapter again."

But the Reader didn't and, after too many years of being abandoned on a shelf, The Cat Returns was once again Readerless. Melancholy settled over the characters, who had almost forgotten what it was truly like to play their parts before an audience.

Only Haru didn't feel it, for she was too preoccupied with the muttered words she'd heard from the Reader.

"I don't remember writing that."

Chapter Text

Shizuku Amasawa was cursed.

"What a thing to call writer's block," said her husband. He set down his offering of tea on the patch of desk not taken by Shizuku or the woefully blank pages. "It'll come back to you; it always does."

"And what if it doesn't?" Shizuku bemoaned. "What if this is me, Seiji; wordless, idealess, until the publishers finally lose their patience and send the story bailiffs after me?"

"Where they'll send you to the Prison For Naughty Authors, I guess?" Seiji teased.

"It's the same place they send you when you return library books late," Shizuku muttered into the desk. It'd been a month now, and she still didn't have a concrete answer for her publishers as to just what her next book would be.

A shadow rolled over her, and she flopped her head to one side to stare balefully at the figurine.

"Just believe in yourself, Shizuku," Seiji intoned in his best Baron impression. He bobbed the wooden statuette from side-to-side. "Do this, and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear."

Shizuku laughed and batted her husband away. "Unless Baron is offering to write for me, I don't think he'll be much help."

"He's just happy to see you smile." But Seiji did set the figurine back on his shelf. "Still, it's funny that he reappeared after all these years. I guess someone found him and recognised him from your stories, and decided to send him back to us."

"You're forgetting the obvious explanation."

"Oh?"

Shizuku waved her hands. "Magic."

"Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow morning and found he's typed up a new manuscript for you," Seiji joked.

"If he's feeling really kind, he'll edit it too." Still, Shizuku had hoped that with the mysterious return of the Baron, her writer's block would have come to an end; that by the figurine's mere presence, she'd find renewed inspiration. Instead, she had a still-empty page and an extra ornament cluttering up her already-full bookshelves.

"How did your re-read of The Cat Returns go?" Seiji asked.

"As expected." Shizuku leant back in her chair. "How would you feel playing on the very first violin you sold, after just playing on your most recent one?"

Seiji considered. "I'd remind myself that it still sold. Shizuku, The Cat Returns is good–"

"It's clumsily written, thematically simple; there are scenes I don't even remember writing…"

"And it was your first published novel," her husband gently reminded her. "Of course it'll be a little rough around the edges. But you still wrote it and people still love it." He pushed her tea closer. "Did it spark any ideas?"

"Only that I'm a sham and should resign myself to the role of Crazy Cat Lady already."

"We don't have any cats."

"Correction." Shizuku tapped the Baron. "I have one." Seiji raised an eyebrow, and Shizuku signed in defeat. "Okay, so it wasn't all bad. I even laughed at a few scenes."

"See, there you go." Seiji kissed his wife's brow. "So all you need to do is keep writing Not All Bad scenes and then edit them into Actually Pretty Good."

"I'll need an idea first."

"It'll come," said Seiji with confidence. "I believe in you."

Shizuku grumbled as he returned to his own work, but then she side-eyed The Cat Returns. It seemed to side-eye her back, almost begrudging her for her flippant comments earlier. Then, pushing aside the instinct to deride her younger self's work, she opened it at the very beginning and began to read.

In the past decades, she'd forgotten what it had been like when she first wrote The Cat Returns. Once she got past the clunky style and the surreal world-building, she became drawn back into the story, into the place she had been back in her teens when she had been so unsure of herself that she had found comfort into sharing that insecurity in a fictional character.

She even didn't notice the strange inconsistency when the Cat Kingdom chapter didn't have the mirror incident.

And then, when she got to the end, she did something she hadn't done in a very long time.

She turned back to page 1, and started from the beginning.

x

Haru couldn't remember the last time they'd been read cover-to-cover. Twice!

The second read-through was thankfully slower, the Reader deliberating over the words with a strange sort of thoughtfulness that the cast of The Cat Returns were unfamiliar with, and after the second time, the Reader would flick – apparently without rhyme nor reason – between random parts of the book.

Eventually, the book was left open during Haru's search for the Cat Bureau, and Muta let out an exhausted sigh. "Thank goodness," he grumbled. "If I had to do another 50-page sprint…"

Haru glanced up to the sky, where the Reader's face was nowhere to be seen. "What do you think that was all about?"

"Who knows, Chicky." Muta stretched, yawned, and started to amble back along the alleyway. "I'm gonna get some cake from the Bureau. You coming?"

"In a minute." She continued to watch the sky. "Do you think the Reader is coming back?"

"Geez, I hope not. Not today, anyway; I'm bushed."

Haru made an automatic sympathetic sound in the back of her throat, but didn't offer up any other condolences. It was odd, the way in which they had been read today; flicking between seemingly unrelated passages as if the Reader was searching for something they could not find. It had been exhausting also; they had not had to perform in so long, and then to tell their story twice over and then some… But Haru's curiosity was piqued. She couldn't help it; it was just the way she had been written.

Within the rustle of the breeze came a gentle sigh, like the slumbering breaths of a giant.

Sleeping, Haru realised. Their Reader was sleeping.

'And has left our book open too, the carelessness,' she thought, but with no real malice. Assured there would be no more rapid scene changes – at least not at the moment – she decided to follow after the long-gone Muta and take him up on that cake offer.

Instead, however, she saw an alleyway that should not have been there.

Everything else was still in place, but where there should have been a brick wall, there was a small opening into a gently cobbled street. It was not unlike the Bureau's opening, but on a much less grandeur scale. It had never been there before; that, Haru could be sure of. And, if she had any common sense, she would ignore it until it was not there again.

Unfortunately, Haru thought as she strode straight towards it, she had been written with curiosity, not common sense.

The path steadily changed around her, so that at no moment could she point out any definite shifts, but that she was definitely not on the same route she'd begun on. The paving between the cobbles darkened, taking on a midnight sky gleam, and the cobbles themselves became speckled with glittering gemstones that shone with an inner light.

"Hurry," whispered a far-off voice. "Faster!"

Haru picked up her feet and the alleyway darkened into a tunnel, dotted with those same luminescent stones.

"Faster!" repeated the voice. It felt familiar, but Haru didn't have time to untangle that particular curiosity. She could hear footsteps up ahead. "Only one stone is genuine!"

"Which one?" cried out another voice – younger, female – and Haru broke into a run. "Which one is real?"

"You are on your own now," replied the first voice. "You must make the choice yourself!"

Haru turned a corner and there, illuminated in the gemstone light, was a girl about Haru's age, dressed in a blue and white uniform and scrabbling at one of the stones in the floor. She pried it free and its turquoise shine flickered over wide eyes and dark hair. And then it faded, and the girl screamed.

Haru shot forward and cradled the girl's hands in her own. She saw not a gemstone in the girl's palms, but tiny dead bird, which dissolved into dust and floated away.

"This is the part where I wake up," the girl said. She looked up into Haru's eyes. "You shouldn't be here."

The cave about them shivered, and Haru knew with certainty that bad things would happen to her if the girl vanished. "What are you looking for?"

"The stone. Only one stone is genuine." The girl's eyes shone, but this time with unshed tears. "I need to find the real stone, but I keep choosing wrong!"

"Well then," Haru said, "we just keep looking then."

"You don't understand, I only have the one chance!"

Haru turned the girl's hands over in her own, slipping her palm into the girl's, and led her through the tunnel. "Says who? If that one wasn't the right one, then we just need to keep going until we do."

The girl followed behind her in silence, and when she did finally speak again, her voice sounded different. Deeper.

"This isn't how this dream usually goes."

"Oh?" Haru scanned the stones about her. How was she meant to spot the true one, when they all looked the same?

"I choose wrong, and then I wake. That's how this always goes."

"Well then, it's just as well I'm here."

"Yes. I suppose it is."

Haru pointed to a stone which looked more purple than green. "How about that one?" She turned back to the girl, but the girl was gone now. Instead, Haru held the hand of a woman with reddish-brown hair – but the eyes, the eyes were the same.

"It's been a long time since I dreamt of any of my characters," said the woman.

"You're our Reader," Haru said.

The woman blinked. "I suppose you could call me that." She looked on Haru with that same sort of humour and… something else which had characterised her earlier breeze through The Cat Returns. From this proximity, it looked to be a strange sort of sadness. "You look just how I always imagined you."

'Of course, I do; that's the power of a Reader's imagination,' Haru thought, but instead she asked, "Do you have this dream often?"

The Reader sighed. "Only when I'm struggling with a story." She laughed. "Which is more often than I'd like."

"What's the story?" Haru asked, for that was something she understood. Mysterious gemstones and girls who changed to women in the blink of an eye she did not, but stories were her flesh and blood.

"I don't know yet – that's the issue."

"You're searching for the gemstone among the stones," Haru said, gleaning some insight into the strange dream.

"I suppose." The woman took a seat on the glittering floor. Haru followed suit, and she was given another strange look-over. "I wish I could have borrowed the self-confidence I gave you. I wrote you the character arc I wanted for myself – and now look at me. Barrelling towards middle age and emotionally outstripped by my fictional creation."

Haru didn't quite follow the entire meaning of the Reader's rambling – but, then again, she rather felt she wasn't meant to – but a few choice words stuck out to her. Gave. Wrote You. Creation.

"Are you," Haru asked, "our Author?"

The woman smiled. "Once upon a time."

"Are you writing another story with us? Is it a sequel? A prequel? Is it in our world? What happens in it?"

The Reader – no, the Author – laughed, again with that strange sadness. "I don't know," she repeated. "I haven't decided yet."

"Why not?"

"Because none of the ideas I come up with feel quite right." Moments passed. She glanced to Haru, but her eyes betrayed that her mind was far away. "You know, The Cat Returns was the first story I published, but it's not the first story I wrote."

"Oh?" Haru scooted closer. "What was, then?"

"It was... It was about the Baron," said the Author, "and his fiancée."

"Fiancée?"

"Louise."

"Oh." Haru hadn't spent much time around Baron or the Bureau – with a plot that ended with the admission of a crush on the former, it made talking to him awkward, even if those feelings didn't extend into actual reality. The name rang a bell, but Baron's past was not something that was covered in The Cat Returns, and so was more inferred in choice background settings.

"I had this whole story about Louise being kidnapped by some evil cat," the Author continued, "and him setting out to rescue her, years later. It didn't work out, in the end. I took the Baron and rewrote him into another story – your story – about him rescuing someone else. But now… my mind keeps coming back to it."

"Do you think that perhaps now is the time to try?" Haru asked.

The woman sighed. "I never seem to get a grasp the protagonist. It was easier, in a way, when I first wrote The Cat Returns – I was your age, and it felt like writing a friend. Like," she said, "I was writing for the person who I could be, or who I wanted to be, or who I felt it would be fun to be."

"And now?"

The Author smiled. "Well, look at me. I'm all grown up and you haven't aged a day since you first appeared on your page. I've forgotten what it was like to be young and foolish."

Haru didn't argue with that. Young, she certainly was, and even if she wasn't written to run out in front of a lorry for the sake of a single cat, she had still wandered blindly into a Reader's dream, hadn't she? "I've been both of those things for a very long time," Haru said. "It's no better or worse than being anything else, I think."

"Do you wish you could change that?"

Haru laughed. "Change that? It's how I was written."

"Yes. By me." The Author was looking at Haru with a new kind of fervour, with that zeal of a fresh story coming into being. "Haru Yoshioka, how do you feel about growing up?"

"You can do that?"

"A sequel could." That strange sadness had been replaced with relieved excitement. "Maybe that's what I've been missing. I've grown up; maybe it's time I stop trying to chase after something I've forgotten and instead write something that feels true to me." She looked to Haru. "If you don't mind, that is."

The world shimmered about Haru. The Author was waking up. "Will I still have adventures?"

"The Baron will be there, so you'll have plenty."

"Will I have to be rescued again?"

The Author grinned. "I think you'll get to do a little rescuing of your own."

The gems' light flickered, and Haru realised she only had a handful of seconds before the dream dissolved. "Then sign me up," she said, and she started to run in the direction she was sure she'd come from. The midnight-black began to fade, and Haru spotted the cobbled stone of her world. It was just coming into reach when the tunnel dissolved away in an array of stars, and she leapt for the familiar alleyway.

She fell short.

What rested in the space between a Reader's mind and her book? She didn't know, but she was sure she didn't want to find out. It seemed to be nothingness, just a white, bottomless expanse, and she wondered what would happen to her story if she were lost. Would it go on without her, an empty story circulating around an absent protagonist, or would it adapt into a new narrative without her?

But as the cobbled street fell away from her, talons curled around her arms and hoisted her up into the air. She looked up to the ebony wings of Toto, somehow grown as if she were as small as her Cat Kingdom shape.

"Now, what were you doing outside our story?" he asked.

"I think," Haru said, "I might have met our Author."

Chapter Text

Haru supposed she must have been written once already, but she hadn't been aware of it at the time. Now she was, and she was finding the whole experience extremely disconcerting. For starters, there was the matter of Time.

Time had been standing still for the entirety of her existance, so to have it suddenly start up was altogether rather dizzying. The twenty years that she had happily sat out on began flying by, continually shaped by the narrative that their Author was imagining and reimagining for her. Sometimes she grew up to be a writer. Other times a librarian. Once a curator. But the shape of her stayed the same – that hard-earned (narratively, speaking) confidence that she had forged at the end of The Cat Returns sticking with her no matter her occupation.

That, at least, her Author seemed to understand.

Everything else, however, was apparently up for grabs.

"I woke up yesterday knowing the Dewey Decimal System," she complained to an aged, but still surprisingly spry Muta. "And the day before that, I had an extensive knowledge of the Yamato Period."

Opposite her, Muta was making light work of the angel food slice on Haru's kitchen table. "At least you're getting something out of it. I just got old."

"Not that old," Haru said.

"Old enough."

"Not many cats live to see their twenty-something-plus birthday," she reminded him.

"Magic," Muta grunted. He tore his attention away from the cake long enough to appraise their surroundings. "Nice flat, by the way. Is it yours?"

"Apparently." Even as she watched, the book spines changed titles, shifting from historic to artistic. So she was a painter now. Fun. Information rearranged itself in her mind, forgetting dates and learning brushstrokes instead.

Evidently, the change didn't go unnoticed, for Muta asked, "So what are you now?"

Haru sifted through her new memories. "A moderately successful artist," she said.

"Guess that explains the painting."

Haru glanced behind herself. In the living room adjacent to the kitchen hung a large, fantastical painting. A winged horse flew above a forest cabin, a crimson moon illuminating the scene, and behind the horse's head was the ghost of a girl's face.

"Kinda creepy, if you ask me," Muta said.

"Mm," Haru said, non-committally. For in her mind rested the memory of painting it, of the sense of capturing something once lost – something almost forgotten amongst the mundanity of regular life. She had experienced this with some of the other lives she had almost lived, and it had been growing stronger with every reiteration.

'Just what a woman who once fell through the sky on a staircase of crows might create,' she thought, and that was when she saw the magpie painted in the shadow of the winged horse.

x

"The age I can live with," Naoko said when Haru came to visit. "It's the technology that gives me a headache." She gestured to the flatscreen TV. "I remember buying that," she said, in the tone often used by character's recalling their upated memories. It was a special kind of uncanny, remembering that which had happened and yet not. "I remember thinking how far technology had come and how clear the image was, but what I cannot seem to remember is how to change it from TV settings to DVD."

Haru laughed and retrieved the remote control from her mother. "For what it's worth, I think that's more a generational thing than anything else." She navigated the input settings until the DVD menu screen came up.

"See? I never had any of these problems before our Author got ideas about sequels."

"No, you just argued with the radio on a regular basis and kept leaving the landline phone off its cradle," Haru replied with a grin.

"Yes, well, now when I lose my phone, I get to lose not only my phone, but my address book, my emails, my music, and my calendar." Naoko swiped the remote off Haru and started the movie. "What happened to keeping everything separte?"

"You don't have to use your phone for all of that," Haru pointed out. "You can still keep a physical address book and a calendar and all the rest of it."

"Yes, but it's all so convenient on the phone."

Haru grinned and settled back into the sofa.

x

Time had caught up with everyone, and instead of the age tiring people, it instead sparked a fascination amongst the characters.

"Did you hear?" whispered one cat to another. "We're getting a sequel."

"With a fresh plot?" replied the other. "I don't know if I can be doing with learning new lines at my age."

"But just think of the Readers a sequel will bring!"

And even if Time hadn't been quite so overt, there was a definite sense that the story had shifted somehow. Their narrative was still there, but the words were… faded, as though either time or tracing paper had obscured them. The story remained, but they were no longer woven so close to its text.

What would happen, Haru wondered, when it vanished entirely?

x

Shizuku didn't move when her husband entered her office.

"No matter how much you stare at the Baron," Seiji said teasingly, "he's not going to pick up your pen and write this for you."

"Maybe if I wish really hard…"

"If he does, let me know, and I'll ask if he feels up for a little violin crafting."

Shizuku broke her absent-minded stare and looked balefully up at Seiji. "I know what this story is going to be about," she said. "I just can't seem to get it moving."

Seiji leant over her shoulder and regarded the empty page. "I see."

"I have made some progress!" Shizuku insisted, and she waved a sheet of hastily-scribbled notes. "But the actual story itself… It's not happening."

"And why is that, you think?"

Shizuku began to respond, but then she faltered. She scrutinised her husband with narrowed eyes. "Amasawa Seiji, are you rubber ducking me?"

"The tradition of explaining your issues to a rubber duck is a long and well-proven one," Seiji said, "and, if you have any better ideas for crawling your way out of writer's block, I'd love to hear them."

Shizuku glowered, but there was no real annoyance to it, and slumped in her chair. "It's Haru. I know I'm going to bring this story into the modern day, and I like the idea of letting her grow up, it's just… I don't know where to put her."

"She's going to be part of the story, then?"

"Yes. I mean, I could use my original draft, which had a younger human protagonist, but there's something, I don't know, satisfying about letting The Cat Returns characters expand past their original selves."

"Maybe you don't need to worry about that just yet."

"I need to worry about it sometime," Shizuku muttered. "People don't just grow up in a vacuum. They need experience and a setting and a job." She said the last word with disgruntlement, as it had been the main piece escaping her.

"But the meat of the story is about the Baron, and his finding Louise," Seiji prompted.

"Well, yes, but–"

"Then why don't you start with that, and see where Haru naturally fits in?" he suggested.

"But I like starting with the human element," Shizuku complained.

"Then go back and edit it later so it does. But, right now, all you have is a page full of contradictory notes, and a blank manuscript, and that's doing nobody any favours. Anyway," he added, "sometimes a change in format can be good. Nobody says a first draft should be perfect."

Shizuku grumbled. "However did I marry such a wise man?"

He kissed the crown of her head. "You're welcome."

"You're meant to compliment me back when I say something like that."

"You're beautiful and amazing and you still have a blank manuscript."

Shizuku made a face. "You're a menace," she said, but her hand intertwined with Seiji's long enough to give a quick, thankful squeeze, before returning to her task at hand.

"The feeling's mutual. Dinner's in an hour; try not to get too distracted by then."

But even as Seiji finished speaking, Shizuku was already poised, with pen over paper, concentrating on this new angle. If the story was to begin with Baron reuniting with his long lost love, then he would need something to start that search. A cry for help, or a forgotten heirloom, or talk of her being seen, or…

She closed the gap between pen and paper.

It all started, as many stories do, with a love letter.

Chapter Text

It all started, as many stories do, Shizuku wrote, with a love letter.

Then she stopped and had to convince herself not to reward herself with a break. She stared down at the single line, and a familiar thrill – the thrill of knowing she had found her first line – ran through her. This was going to be the beginning. This was going to be the line that grabbed her readers and propelled them through curiosity into the story.

Now she just had to follow it up with the rest of the book.

She groaned and decided that perhaps she had earned some tea and biscuits. As celebration. 

x

The past twenty years had passed somewhat differently for the Bureau compared to the rest of the book. After all, save for Muta’s steady advancement into old age, Time didn’t hold much sway – and even Muta’s lifespan was mostly spared through extensive living in the Sanctuary.

Baron was, naturally, aware that Time had passed, for he had accumulated a fresh batch of memories from cases, but little in his day-to-day existence had actually altered. Muta and Toto stil bickered, he still made tea, and cases were still solved by the skin of his teeth. During the last two decades of their story’s existence, Baron had actually done very little adventuring – the only grand adventure he had was the Cat Kingdom plot of the book, and he knew how that ended.

Between readings, he was mostly relegated to keeping the peace between Muta and Toto, and solving small mysteries – like finding lost items or tracking down characters who had wandered too far from their chapters – so it was something of note when an unfamiliar letter slipped out between the pages of a book he hadn’t read in a long time.

He must have made some sound, for Muta glanced up from where he was on the Bureau sofa. “Whatcha got there, Baron?”

“I’m not sure.” He retrieved the envelope, and his gloved hands tingled with the sensation of Plot. “Something narratively important, I think.” Yes, for sure he could sense the narrative now. He had heard the rumours of a sequel in the works, but until now he had bared it little notice. Was this how their new story began? With a letter stowed between chapters of a dusty tome and forgotten to time?

“Yeah,” Muta said. “And what is it?”

Baron collected up a letter opener from his desk. Age had tired the glue which had once stuck the envelope’s seal in place, and it took barely a touch for the contents to be revealed. He slipped the letter onto his desk. Faded and delicate calligraphy filled the page.

To my dearest Humbert, it read. Time and circumstance have separated us for too long, and I fear it must see us apart for yet longer.

It was never my intention to leave you, but when I was stolen away I was lost in a world where space was warped, where that which was close seemed small, and that which was far away seemed large, and to flee only left my senses more muddled than before. My attempts to escape by any conventional means would, more often than not, result in my ending in the same place I began, and so I have been searching for less orthodox methods.

I think I have found a way, but it is not without risk, and so I write this now. I have heard you run a Cat Bureau now, helping those in need, and so I hope the magic of your home will bring my letter to you. I hope that this letter never need find you, but if I do indeed lose myself in this attempt, there are things that need saying.

Do not hold yourself accountable for my absence; there is little you could have done at the time, and there is little you would have been able to do since. Sometimes life changes beyond our control, and we must learn to live with that. Do not punish yourself for that.

Do not distress yourself with finding me if this does not work out. Either my plan will succeed or it will not, and I doubt there will be much of me in the finding if the latter results. If this letter finds you, simply know that I did my best, but sometimes even our best is not enough.

And, of course, there is the most important thing:

I love you, Humbert. From the first day we awoke side-by-side in that apprentice’s workshop, I have loved you. You are kind and you are courageous, and I am so proud that you put those strengths into helping others through the Cat Bureau. I am sure you will go on to do great things.

I love you.

Louise.

“Baron? Hey, Baron, what’s it say?”

Baron sank into his chair, his limbs abruptly heavy. “It’s Louise,” he said. “It’s from Louise.”

“The Louise?”

“The Louise,” Baron affirmed. He set the letter down on the desk, unnerved by the Plot surrounding it. So this is the way our Author means to go, he thought. It was quite a different kind of beast from The Cat Returns, or any of the other cases which existed in his memory. Those were oft client-centric, both figuratively and emotionally, but this… This was personal.

“Well, shoot,” Muta said, in the kind of tones which implied he’d be using stronger language if he had been written that way. “When did that appear?”

“I don’t know. Louise seems to imply that the Sanctuary may have magically brought it here, but there’s no telling how long it’s been in this book – or whether it’s only just arrived.” It didn’t feel like a recent letter, though; there was age in the envelope, and a faded air to the ink, and he wondered why the Sanctuary would only reveal it now, when it was possibly far too late to be of any use.

“And?”

“And she claims she may have found a way to escape,” Baron said, “but has not specified the method.” He resisted the urge to pace. “She also writes of it being a risky endeavour.”

“And we’re still gonna go find her, right?”

Baron glanced up from the letter. He didn’t focus on Muta immediately, but seemed to struggle to rein in his thoughts. “Find her?”

“Of course. That’s what we do, right? We get a plea for help; we stick our nose in someone else’s business; we fix things and we go home.”

“She writes as if that will be impossible.”

“Yeah. So when are we going?”

Baron faltered in the face of Muta’s stubbornness. Then he shook his head, but only to clear his thoughts, and rose to his feet. He began to scour his bookshelves. “She gives no name of the world she found herself in, but details that physics seems to be at odds.”

“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” Muta said. “Most worlds are a little sideways when it comes to things like gravity and whatnot.”

“She wrote of how the size of things relating to their distance seemed reversed.” Baron collected up a few potential books, and flipped through them. Some were old enough to kick up a blanket of dust in the searching. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have to go on.”

x

Hours passed. Muta threw his paw into the mix, despite his usual disinterest in Baron’s ‘dusty old tomes’ and even Toto lent a wing when he arrived, even though books weren’t the easiest thing to handle without hands.

“Perhaps the answer isn’t to be found here,” Toto gently said. “We’ve worked our way through your library, Baron, and there’s still no mention of any world matching Louise’s description.”

“There has to be,” Baron said through gritted teeth. He dropped one book onto the mountainous reject pile, and moved onto the next. “There has to be. I wouldn’t have found the letter, if not.” The letter was Plot, and the Author would not have revealed it to him if this was only meant to be a dead end. He had to believe that.

“There is always another option,” Muta said slowly. There was a strange glimmer in his eyes as the two Creations turned to him, and Baron couldn’t help but wonder if it was not the touch of the Author’s pen lending him words. “Maybe the information is somewhere else.”

“Genius,” Toto deadpanned. “Thank you for your contribution.”

“What kind of somewhere else?” Baron asked, before Muta could retaliate.

“There’s a place,” Muta said, “called the Cat Library...”

Chapter Text

The day when everything changed started entirely ordinarily for Haru. It was a beautiful spring morning, and she was just popping off to the shops to pick up a few necessities when –

No.

She was at her favourite tea shop when –

No.

How about the library –

‘Oh, make up your mind,’ Haru internally grumbled as she changed set for the third time in as many minutes. She hadn’t found her way back into her Author’s dreams since that first encounter, but if she could, she would have sat the woman down and explained to her that rapid scene changes were not unlike missing a step on the stairs, and three scene changes in quick succession was the mental equivilant of falling down a stairway.

However, on the third shift, the scene settled. Haru stood behind a desk, holding a patron’s library card.

“Are you okay, miss?” asked the man.

Haru looked at the patron, tall, wearing a suit, and checking out a popular thriller, and then down at the card. “I’m a librarian,” she said.

“Apparently,” he replied. “Do you think it’ll stick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think I could check out the book then, before it changes?”

Haru grinned and scanned through the card and book. There was something different about this setting, though. It felt… stabler, than the others. The words Chapter Two rose through her mind and she wondered just what had happened in Chapter One.

“Haru, are you okay to close up this evening?” Another librarian, a woman already grabbing her coat, paused by the desk. “It’s just I need to pick up my son from table tennis practice, and I’m already running close to the wire as it is.”

“Sure,” Haru found herself saying. “No problem.”

“Thanks, Haru; you’re the best.”

Haru snorted and passed the other librarian’s bag across. “Just don’t forget you promised to cover my early finish next Wednesday–”

“For your book club, I remember.”

Haru watched her colleague go and, upon checking the time herself, began to usher out the stragglers still floating between bookshelves. Officially, there should have been two staff on close-up, but life didn’t always quite work out that way and what Head Office didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Even so, as Haru tidied up the empty library alone, her mind played all the usual tricks with shadows and old building noises.

She was experienced in such matters, however, and so knew to pay no heed to the creak of the floor above that sounded like footsteps, or the wind whistling which mimicked voices, nor the shadows that flickered as if cast by some humanoid form.

“Blast these stupid steps,” whispered the wind.

Haru paused.

“I thought you said you knew the way,” breezed the wind.

“I said I’ve been here before, a long time ago,” a stray gust retorted. “They’ve renovated the place since.”

“Figures you wouldn’t have stepped inside a library since,” a rattled a voice which Haru was very much doubting to be just a breeze anymore.

Haru picked up the biggest book she could find to hand (The Oxford Classical Dictionary) and stalked upon the voices. Three intruders, all male, by the sounds of things, which didn’t put her in terribly great odds, but this was her library and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least try to put the Fear of Librarians into them.

She turned a corner, book raised, and prepared to rain words (both verbal and very, very tangible ones) down upon the trespassers, when…

“You?!”

The Bureau flinched and turned, as one, to face Haru. Baron – still looking just as he had upon his and Haru’s original meeting – was the first to recover his wits. He bowed, sweeping his hat from his head. “Miss Haru. A pleasure to meet you again–”

“What are you doing here?”

Baron faltered, and Haru received the distinct impression he was unaccustomed to people cutting him off, mid-spiel. “We have come to borrow a book,” he said. “This is a library, after all.”

“This library is closed.”

“This one, sure, Chicky,” Muta said. “But not the Cat Library.” He was rapidly detouring off from the rest of the Bureau and was being suspiciously curious in the shelf pertaining to the history of tap dancing.

“Then you’re in the wrong section,” Haru deadpanned. “You’ll be wanting biology in the 570s. Also, still closed.”

“Nah, not books about cats. The Cat Library.”

“Are you telling me that there’s a hidden cat library in this building?” Haru asked.

“According to Muta, there is,” Baron said.

“Because I’ve been working here for a while, and I can promise you there’s nothing behind these walls but the back end of the shopping centre. All you’re going to find is brick and spiderwebs and probably a few books that fell down the back of the shelves in the last decade and have been lost since–”

As she spoke, Muta prodded something in the bookcase’s side, and a foot-tall double door engraved with feline eyes and pawprint impressions rippled into being.

“Well, that’s not in any Dewey Decimal System I ever learnt,” she said. 

“Yeah, it’s filed under Magic,” Muta said. “Right, so I’ve shown you the way, Baron; have fun, good luck.” And he made to walk away, only to find his way intentionally blocked by Haru.

“Muta…” Baron said.

“Oh, come on! I came with ya on the Cat Kingdom fiasco, and I spent half the time there stuck in catnip jelly! I’m opting out of this one! Cat worlds don’t agree with me.”

“I thought you had been pardoned by the Cat Kingdom,” Baron said.

“Yeah, no, I have.”

“Aw, is the little kitty cat afraid of a few books?” Toto teased.

Muta growled and stormed up to the tiny double-doors. “Fine. Fine,” he could be heard to mutter as he disappeared into the room beyond. “Fine!”

Baron looked to Toto. “Was that really necessary?”

“Hey, it got him there, didn’t it?”

Baron could argue little with that, so he turned to Haru to bid her farewell, only to see her eyeing the door with a stubborn sort of curiosity. “Miss Haru? Would you like to accompany us?”

She broke out of her reverie with a guilty start. “Really, I don’t want to get in the way of whatever case you’re on, and it looks like I will have problems fitting anyway…”

“We are entering a library; having a librarian on our side is sure to be a help, not a hinder,” Baron replied. “And as for the matter of your stature, well, why don’t you give it a try?”

She looked to him like she was trying to gauge whether this was a trick, and approached the door.

A very peculiar thing occurred as she neared. When she was stood a good several metres from the bookcase, the door appeared to be only a foot in height, but as she approached it grew in size far quicker than anything adhering to physics should.

By the time she could reach the door handle, she was on eye level with Baron. She looked to him, and it occurred to her that this was probably the first time she wasn’t either towering over him in full human height, or looking up at him through Cat Kingdom magic. Then it occurred to her that she was on eye level with Baron, and everything that meant.

“This is reversible, right?” she asked.

“Naturally.”

“And is that in a Cat Kingdom if-you-don’t-jump-through-these-hoops-first-it’s-permanent kind of way, or is this actually, safely reversible?”

Baron hesitated, and Muta stuck his head back out of the doorway. “Heya, are the rest of you coming or…? Hey, Chicky, you joining us?”

“Apparently. Muta, is this,” and she gestured to her reduced size, “permanent?”

“The height thing? Nah. Yer just head back out and everything goes back to normal.” He withdrew back into the library. “Yeah, that ain’t the thing you need to worry about.”

“Somehow, that does not reassure me,” Haru muttered.

“There’s no need for you to accompany us, if you’d rather not–” Toto began.

“Yeah, no, I’m coming,” Haru said. When Toto didn’t look entirely relieved, Haru gestured to the grand double doors before her. “It’s a magic library, Toto. I have to go see. The Grand High Council of Librarians would revoke my librarianship if they ever found out I passed up on the chance.”

Toto shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

x

The Cat Library seemed to be a world of its own, quite separate from the Cat Kingdom. It must have been, Haru felt, for any building that large would have dwarfed even the royal palace. Rows upon rows of bookcases ran down corridors so long that Haru couldn’t see their end, and an upper balcony bore the weight of yet more tomes. The ceiling above was carved with the same kind of stone art which Haru had seen in her visit to the Cat Kingdom, but on a much grander scale, filling the ceiling for as far as the eye could see.

“So, where do we start looking?” Haru asked. She eyed the front desk which looked conspicuously abandoned. “Is there a librarian we can ask or…?”

“Nah, librarian’s long gone,” Muta grunted, and he moved with surprising surety between the bookcases. A moment passed in which there might have been the shadow of another expression, before Muta rolled his eyes back at Haru. “D’ya really think there’s any cat that’ll stick around stacking bookshelves when there’s the Cat Kingdom and its never-ending noontime to laze around in instead?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Oh, and you’ll want to keep an eye on your watch,” he called back.

“My watch?”

“Check your pockets. It’ll be there.”

“But I didn’t bring a–” Haru faltered as her hand secured around something round and metallic in her coat pocket. She brought out an old-fashioned, clunky pocket watch, from which emitted a persistent ticking.

“Yer time’s imprinted on that,” Muta said. “This place has a way of making folks lose track of themselves and their time, but as long as that’s ticking, you’ll still be able to find yer way back. You too, Baron, Birdbrain.”

“What about yourself?” Baron asked, as he retrieved a similar device from his waistcoat pocket.

“Eh, time doesn’t have the same kind of meaning for cats.”

Haru turned the watch round in her hands and returned it to her pocket, where she could now distinguish the ticking from the rest of the library’s soundscape. A curious thought caught in her mind, a suspicion at Muta’s knowledge of such things and the empty librarian desk. “So what are you looking for? What brought you here?”

“It’s Louise,” Toto said. He hopped behind them, wings tightly held to his sides to avoid any kerfuffle with the bookcases. “We’ve received a letter from her.”

“Louise?” ‘The Louise?’ Haru wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come, and it was with an ungainly mental catch-up in which Haru recalled that technically she had never heard the name within the pages of The Cat Returns. And so, caught within the story which she could feel their Author writing, even now, such knowledge was barred from her lips. “Who’s Louise?”

Thus, in a flourish of exposition, Baron revealed the history of his lost fiancée, of the Creation made alongside him who had been stolen away all those years ago and never seen since. It was familiar and yet not to Haru; a tale she had extrapolated from context clues and background details, but not one she had ever heard told so overtly. And when it came to its natural conclusion – of the letter and of their search for this elusive world mentioned within – it seemed that the telling had tired out not only Baron, but their Author too, for Haru only got as far as suggesting that they look for the 910s (Geography) before the narrative released them. There was a sudden snap of tension, and Haru felt her lines dry up.

“Guess the Author’s going for a break,” Muta groaned, and he collapsed down into a nearby chair. “Ugh, I’ll be glad when this story is finished and I can just learn my lines and not be dragged around like a talking puppet.”

Haru echoed her agreement and sank into another chair. She leant back to watch Baron still perusing the shelves. “So,” she said, “this story is yours then, huh, Baron?”

The Cat Creation returned the book he’d been skimming through and glanced to the sole human. “It would seem so.”

“Do you know where it’s heading?”

“I assume to a reunion with Louise,” Baron said, and his tone was strangely measured. “To my other half.”

Haru exchanged a look with the other members of the Bureau, and read in their faces that they also heard the muted emotion. She shifted in her chair so she was fully facing Baron. “But?” she prompted softly.

“But, despite all this narrative talk of her being my other half, I have never, in all my time in The Cat Returns, felt that I was anything less than complete.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what will happen to my character when we find her – and I have grown quite attached to the person I am now.”

“Everyone changes, Baron. I mean, look at me – after two decades as I was in The Cat Returns, this sequel is finally giving me a chance to live the next stage of my life. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“Yeah, well I,” Muta said, “look forward to seeing a lovesick Baron.” He grinned at his friend. “Yer always been far too composed for yer own good.”

Baron chuckled. “Thank you, Muta.”

Haru reached out and, before she could reconsider her actions, gently took Baron’s hands in her own. “Well, Baron, there’s just one thing you need to remember.”

“Never put the tea in after the milk?”

“No. Believe in who you are. Do this, and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear.”

The smile that Baron sent her way quite scattered her thoughts in ways she hadn’t been prepared for. “Miss Haru,” he said, “are you quoting my own words back at me?”

“Technically, she’s quoting back our Author’s words,” Toto pointed out helpfully. “They’re the one who wrote them.”

“Exactly.” Haru patted his hands and released them, and she wasn’t sure if it was him or her who hesitated in drawing away.

The schoolgirl crush she had harboured in The Cat Returns was one scripted, one played so often that by the time their book had been shelved for the last time, it had become mundane. But as her heart beat out a strange staccato rhythm, there came the uneasy sensation that she was feeling something that might have actually been real.  

x

The narrative picked up a little later, and there was all the usual hijinks to be expected – close calls where the watches were concerned, books with a life of their own, and something which had grown to fill the space of librarian, the latter of which apparently didn’t take kindly to visitors without a library card – but finally the Bureau and Haru found the information they were looking for.

“Here it is,” Toto read, carefully nudging the book open with the tip of his talon. “A world where physics are a law unto their own, perspective is reversed, and one’s senses cannot be trusted.”

“Reversed perspective sounds promising,” Baron said. “Where is it?” His heart sank at Toto’s hesitation. “Toto?”

“It’s a place called the City of Dreams.”

Chapter Text

To travel to the City of Dreams was no place usually accessible by regular means, at least not for the likes of mortals.

“One can, as the name implies,” Natori told the Bureau, “dream one’s way there, but it’s said to be a sprawling, changing place, impossible to securely navigate while in a true dreaming state.”

After discovering the name of the City of Dreams in the Cat Library, there had been little else in the way of accessing the world, and so the Bureau (with Haru at their side) had travelled to the Cat Kingdom in search of more practical information. Their request to King Lune and Queen Yuki had brought Natori out of retirement – with the previous Cat King in tow, and Haru received the general impression that this was to make sure he wasn’t causing chaos in Natori’s absence.

“One can?” Baron echoed. “Does that mean there are surer ways of passage?”

Natori nodded. “For those who maintain a higher level of cognitive thought while sleeping, it should simply a matter of follow the right paths. I believe Creations fall under this category?”

“We can, if we choose to.”

“Then, under the right circumstances and with the right knowledge, you should be able to travel to the City of Dreams during sleep, and bring the rest of your team with you.”

Haru’s attention to the plot was waylaid by the ex-Cat King motioning to her to approach. Unsure whether this was a scripted moment or him passing by undetected by the Author, Haru stepped over to him.

“Hey, babe,” he said, and Haru didn’t take the endearment personally. (‘Babe’ had been written in his character so much that it was permanently hardwired into his lexicon for anyone of the female persuasion, despite several attempts to drop it.) “I hear you have our Author’s ear.”

Okay. So definitely not a scripted moment. Haru glanced to the exposition happening across from her, but it seemed the writing had stalled, for there was some definite small-talk springing up. “I’ve met her once,” she said.

“I need you to ask her to do something for me.”

Haru regarded the ex-king. He wasn’t a bad sort, simply the required antagonist for The Cat Returns, and – when the plot wasn’t in force – was mostly a good natured, if slightly over-enthusiastic and clueless cat. “What sort of thing?”

“I need her,” he said, “to give me a name.”

“A name?”

“Yes! Everyone else gets one, but I’m just the Cat King! And I’m not even that by the end of the book!”

It was, as requests went, fairly innocuous. “I’ll do my best,” Haru said. “But,” she added quickly, before the ex-Cat King could start thanking her, “please don’t go telling everyone that. Otherwise everyone and their aunt will be coming to me to fix every little grievance they have with the original book.”

“Done!” the ex-Cat King promised, although there was an excited glimmer in his eyes that made Haru seriously doubt it was going to be one he was able to keep.  

Baron appeared beside her. “Haru, I believe our Author is about to pick up the story again.” He passed a curious look over the unusual gathering, before he and Haru returned to the rest of the Bureau. “What did he want?” he asked quietly.

“A name,” Haru whispered back. “Apparently he’s heard I’m the one to ask if people want the Author to change something.”

“And are you?”

“I’ve met her once; I don’t know if she’ll actually change anything I ask.” Haru shrugged. “How about you? Since it seems I’m taking requests, is there anything you want me to pass along, should I meet her again?” She recalled their conversation back in the Cat Library. “Any character concerns?”

“I will trust our Author for now,” he said, although it sounded like he was picking his words with care, “but should it come to it, I will air my thoughts for future revisions.”

“As you wish.”

x

The dreamworld looked startlingly familiar to Haru. While Baron examined the lapis lazuli stone he cradled in his hands, she ran her gaze across the midnight-black tunnel, lit by a hundred glittering gemstones embedded in the walls.

“I hate to break it to ya,” Muta said, “but this don’t exactly match Louise’s letter.”

“We’re not there yet,” Baron replied. He rotated the gemstone around in his hands, passing gloved fingers over the engraved surface until it burst into light. “That’s not my light show,” he said, before the light swallowed him up entirely and he vanished.

The lapis lazuli dropped to the ground, dim and dead.

A beat passed.

“Was that… was that meant to happen?” Muta asked.

“Certainly not. Haru – don’t touch it!”

Haru looked up from where she was knelt on the ground, fingers already curling around the stone. “We’re going after him, right? So this is our best bet.”

“We have no idea where it took him.”

“And that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it?” Even so, as she turned it over in her hands, it didn’t respond in the same way it had to Baron. “What exactly is this, anyway?”

“It’s a wayfarer,” Toto said. “It’s used to navigate worlds like this, where the path may be obscured or hidden.”

“And it shouldn’t just spirit someone away like that?”

“Most definitely not. You should tell it where you wish to go, and it should show the way; that is all.”

Haru nodded and raised the stone to the level of her face. It was a beautiful blue, with engravings across it which Haru had initially – when Natori had passed it to Baron – taken to be map markings. But at this proximity, it was more like runes, like a spell carved into its surface. “Take me to Baron,” she whispered.

The lapis lazuli glittered, gently at first, and then a thread of light shot out from it. It led off into one of the branching tunnels, diminishing into a thin beam quickly swallowed up in the cavern’s depths. She turned to what remained of the Cat Bureau. “Well?” she asked. “Are you coming?”

x

As they travelled, the swirling darkness of the tunnel began to weaken, natural sunlight slowly filtering through, until they stepped out onto a grassy verge with a sudden drop. Haru halted at the edge. Beyond and below the cliff lay a world of greenery overrunning a city. There was no defined style to the settlement below, for every part seemed to hail from another place or era, connected only by the foliage which called it home.

The lapis lazuli light led unerringly to a floating island off in the distance.

Toto shuffled his wings. “And this is where I come in.” He took to the skies, but no sooner was he in the air and making his approach, than he was veering abruptly to avoid crashing into a tower that had surely looked more far-off than that. He swerved and landed heavily back on the grassy patch. “No good. The perspective is all over the place here. I can’t tell where anything is.”

“Maybe yer just aren’t as good a flier as yer think you are.”

“Says the cat who walked into a wall yesterday.”

“I was aiming for the door!”

Haru stared at the string of light leading, so sure of itself, to the island. “That which was close seemed small, and that which was far away seemed large,” she repeated to herself. She inhaled, and backed up to the entrance of the cave. Too caught up in their bickering, neither Toto nor Muta registered her actions until she was running towards the sudden drop and leaping off.

The world spun around her, perspective shifting and lying as she flew through the air, and then she was landing on the far side of the floating island. She staggered back and steadied herself. There was shouting coming from behind her, and she turned to see both cat and crow seemingly halfway across the world. “Just jump!” she shouted. “It’s much closer than it looks!”

Both scolded her as soon as they joined her.

“What were you thinking, Haru? You could have fallen!”

“Geez, Chicky; we didn’t save you from the Cat Kingdom just so you could scare us like that!”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“That,” Muta grumbled, “is not the point.”

“The wayfarer is showing us the way,” Haru said. She held up the stone, the light of which was directing them to another apparently distant island. “It can see where things lie, even though we can’t.”

“There are other ways to put that to the test, Haru.”

“Yeah. How about next time you, I dunno, throw a rock instead of your whole self?”

Haru blinked. “I didn’t think of that.”

Muta rolled his eyes and muttered something which sounded suspiciously like she was being compared to Baron.

A cry rang through the dreamworld. Familiar in its voice, and yet utterly alien in its shock, Haru didn’t wait to see if either Toto or Muta recognised it. She leapt to the next island marked by the wayfarer, and barely paused to regain her bearings before she was off onto the next step. She flew on, the Author’s narration pushing her along and leading her with surety of step, until she finally came in sight of Baron.

He had evidently jumped and miscalculated, for he was scrabbling on the edge of a tower. His claws had shredded through his gloves in an effort to claim a grip on the mossy rooftop, but even that did not seem to be enough as gravity steadily dragged him back. One hand lost its hold and before he could return its hold, his second hand slipped.

He fell.

Hands grabbed his wrists and he jarred to a halt. Above him, framed in the otherworldly light of the dreamworld, was Haru. Her breath came out in gasps, as if she had run a great distance, and her hair was slipping out of its bun in dark strands.

“I guess it’s my turn to leap into a strange new world and rescue you,” she joked. She dug her elbows into the ground and started to heave Baron up onto the rooftop. Halfway there, the rest of the Bureau caught up with her and lent a paw/wing to the attempt.     

“This is what comes,” Muta said once the danger had passed, and with a pointed look at Haru, “of leaping before you look.”

“Looking was not the problem,” Baron said. “It’s knowing whether to believe your eyes that’s the question.” He regarded his rescuers. “How did you find me?”

Haru raised the lapis lazuli, the light of which was pointed solidly at Baron. “This showed us the way.” When Baron began to reach for it, she held it away. “And I think we can all remember what happened last time you had this. Let’s not do that again.”

Baron smiled. “A sensible precaution.”

“So what happened back there?” Muta asked. “It ain’t like you to miss a landing.”

Toto snorted, but didn’t add anything. Haru rather got the impression the falling from the Cat Kingdom might not have been the first time Toto had had to intervene in the fight against gravity.

“I thought I had figured out my bearings in this place,” Baron answered. “Given how perspective is warped between locations, I believed that if I aimed for a building that seemed further afield, I might be afforded a safe landing.” He paused. “It looks like perspective here isn’t a consistent factor. I suspect it might be nigh on impossible to navigate this plane without a wayfarer.”

“It is.”

As one, the Bureau looked to the newcomer’s voice. At the far side of the grassy rooftop stood a brown-furred feline, bearing some resemblance to Baron in the nature of his bow tie and gloves, but wore a navy-blue jacket and a cape. The cat tipped his bowler hat. “Pleasure to make you’re acquaintances. It’s been a long time since I’ve had visitors.”

Baron stilled. “You.”

The strange cat bobbed his head. “Me.”

“You’re the one who took Louise.”

“Aye, that I did.”

Baron closed the gap between them and, in a curt show of efficiency, latched the loop of his cane into the loop of the cat’s bow tie and pushed, so that the latter was leaning precariously over the long drop. “Where is she?”

The bowler hat cat only curled a hand around the cane to steady himself, but otherwise didn’t seem fazed by Baron’s actions. “Gone.”

A growl rose through Baron and the cane jutted further out.

The bowler hat cat’s shoes scrabbled at the edge, and now there came something approaching urgency to his voice. “She left this place of her own free will!”

Haru’s hand appeared on Baron’s arm, and she slowly manoeuvred herself into his line of sight. “We knew Louise was trying to escape. What we don’t know is how, and we’re not going to learn anything if we lose our one source of information.” Her hand tightened its grip. “Are we?”

Baron’s gaze flickered to Haru’s, and once it made contact, it stayed. She watched clarity return to his eyes, and the tension loosen. “Right as always, Haru.” He snapped his cane back, sending the cat reeling – but reeling towards the safety of the rooftop. “You – explain yourself.”

The cat took his time steadying  himself, even going so far as to right the tie Baron had malformed with his cane. “My name is Duke,” he said, “and I was made in the very same workshop you were.”

“My artisan only made myself and Louise,” Baron said.

“You were made by an apprentice toymaker,” said Duke. “Apprentices have masters.”

Baron’s silence was begrudging, but not entirely disbelieving. “So what does that mean in this tale?” he asked. “Why take Louise?”

“I was helping.”

Baron’s cane twitched, and the Duke decided to elaborate.

“Even in your early days, the human world was no longer a safe place for the likes of us. Science had replaced magic and belief in the old ways, and I knew there would be no home for Creations.”

“So you stole Louise to… protect her,” Baron said, but the tone of his voice gave shallow understanding.

“I had walked the human realm for decades before you were created!” the Duke snapped. “I have seen what they are capable of, the cruelty they inflict on each other, let alone on anything different, and I wanted to spare you from that! Even by the time I found Louise, the two of you had already gone through so much, separated by humanity and their wars. How long, then, until their foolishness destroyed what little magic was left? Until they destroyed the magic created by my artisan and his student?”

Baron’s eyes glittered like gemstones, but there was nothing comforting in them. “So what did you do with Louise?”

“I brought her here. This place is beautiful and full of magic – and safe. I was going to bring you also here, but then…”

“Then what?”

“Louise didn’t appreciate what I had done, and made plans to escape. You’re right – the only way to navigate through this place is with the aid of a wayfarer, so I laid a curse across this land. Any Creation who tried to use a wayfarer would be transported across the world, leaving the wayfarer behind. I thought that would curb Louise’s attempts to flee.”

“But it didn’t,” Haru said. “You said she was gone.”

“Yes. She…” The Duke faltered. “She gave up her Creation form and became a mortal soul.”

Baron lunged for the Duke, but Muta was quicker, and he held his friend back.

“What does that mean?” Haru demanded. She shot looks between both Cat Creations. “What happened to her?”

“It means she’s taken on a mortal form,” Baron growled. He had slowed in his efforts to pull free from Muta, but his form still shook. “In her efforts to escape from here, from you,” and he spat the last word out, “she gave up her immortal lifespan, her body, her memories, and reincarnated in a mortal form.”  

“That’s why she never found you again,” Toto breathed. “She forgot you.”

“How long ago was this?” Haru asked. “If she reincarnated, perhaps we can find her again, remind her of who she was–”

“I can’t be sure,” the Duke replied. “There is scant little way of telling time here, but it was somewhere between thirty and forty years.”

Muta glanced significantly to Haru. She did the maths a moment later. “No. No way. It’s not possible.”

“It’s not,” Baron said. His breathing had slowed and Muta cautiously released him. Baron looked to Haru, and she saw him make visible effort to soften his words and his gaze. “She would have been drawn to a form close to her original body. Almost certainly feline, not human.”

“One thing I don’t understand–”

“Only one?” Muta deadpanned.

“–is why you’re still here if Louise has gone,” Toto finished.

“He can’t leave,” Baron said. “His own curse has seen to that.”

The Duke nodded. “Without a wayfarer, I’m trapped, and no Creation can wield one here.”

“But I can,” Haru said. She hesitated, before adding, “I can lead us out of here – all of us – and back to the real world.”

“And let him go, after everything he’s done, Chicky?”

“I…” Haru faltered. She wanted to argue that the Duke had already served a sentence of sorts, trapped alone for nearly fourty years, but she was all too aware that it was she who he had grieved. “Baron, it’s your call.”

The Duke shook his head. “I’ll save you the hassle – I’m staying here.”

“But–”

“The human world out there is no place for Creations and magic anymore. So here I will stay, safe.” He glanced to the other Creations. “Either of you are welcome to also stay, if you so wish.”

“I’m good, thanks,” said Toto.

Baron approached the Duke once more. The ire had faded, but in its place had solidified something else, an anger that no longer blazed, but simmered. The Duke grinned. “Are you still thirsty for revenge, Baron? If you wanted to take it, I will not stop you.” He glanced back to the sheer drop behind him. “I don’t know how far the ground is from here, or even if there is a ground eventually. Perhaps there isn’t, and I’ll just fall for eternity. A fitting punishment, no?”

That same terrible stillness fell over Baron. “You have locked yourself away in a prison of your own making, trapped by the very same curse you used to trap Louise, all for fear of the outside world – of change.” He stepped back. “There’s no punishment more fitting I could devise for you.”

Baron turned to Haru, and the smile, although it might have been weak, was no less genuine for it. “Miss Haru, I think it’s time you brought us home. We have a reincarnated soul to find.”