Chapter Text
Lizzie was a cat. She may have learned to walk upright, to have fancy handwriting and speak like the other rulers, and she may even have the best disguise, but Lizzie was still a cat, and sometimes, cats and humans didn’t get along.
Her wild ancestors, the wild ones, as her mother called them, were captured and caged, forced to perform and wear costumes their captor chose. When the Jungle Kingdom was left to rot, some of her ancestors managed to escape, but most died and rotted with the kingdom, stuck in silly costumes and iron cages. Powerful beasts born to prowl and hunt, forced to beg and perform for survival. Lizzie had never known the Jungle Kingdom, but her mother had, She was a mixed cat (which Lizzie later learned was called Savannah cats by Humans). The old jungle ruler had found domesticated cats, and had breeded them with her ancestors. Her mother was an outcast, just for her parents.
Smaller than tigers or leopards, larger than the calicos brought to the Jungle. Too wild to be pet, yet, too domesticated to run with a Coalition or Leap. Even after the Jungle Kingdom’s collapse, the calicos were hunted, and the wild ones considered Lizzie’s mother closer to a calico than a wild.
So her mother ran. She ran through the Jungle and into the plains. She stopped running, but she never stopped walking. Lizzie’s mother was known to by most as ‘the Wanderer’. Even after meeting Lizzie’s father, she stayed for a single night before returning to her endless journey. She only stopped her journey after Lizzie was born. She settled in a vast and lush birch forest.
It was beautiful, and it was dangerous. Bulky, cunning foxes were common, even though her mother had told her that foxes usually only lived in a very specific forest called a Taiga. But, here her mother and she was, competing for food against an overpopulation of foxes, and the occasional lone wolf or pack that patrolled in the dark.
The day her mother died, she had been carrying a limp chicken. Lizzie was in the hollow, the place they slept, and was about to scitter out to eat, when her mother’s ears perked up, flicked, then flattened, and her tail fluffed up. Danger. A fox with hungry, wide, yellow eyes licked its lips and rose from its haunches and it stalked towards Lizzie’s mother, never breaking eye contact.
Foxes ate chickens. Foxes also ate kits, especially if they were hungry. Lizzie flattened to the ground, letting out a small squeak. With her body pressed to the ground, she couldn’t see what was happening, but she could hear the struggle, and she couldn’t react as she heard her mother yowl before falling. She couldn’t see the fight, but she could tell. Her mother was dead. The fox yipped, grabbed the chicken, and trotted off, leaving her mother’s dead body. Lizzie slowly rose from the ground, and stepped out of the hollow towards her mom. She was nearing a year old, but she shouldn’t have been on her own. Lizzie didn’t know how to hunt. She curled up, and buried her head in her mother’s fur. In the morning, she padded away from the body. She didn’t want to, but the body would only attract scavengers, and she wasn’t large enough or skilled enough to fend against a wolf or a flock of ravens.
Sometime later, she was walking in the birch forest, her eyes wide and observant and her ears up and alert, and they pinned as she heard a commotion.
Leaves and sticks were crackling and crunching in the bushes next to her, and strange, foreign noises, like a strange bird’s song, rang throughout the otherwise silent forest. It was odd, but as she craned her neck to hear, she realized it almost sounded like the songs her mother would howl in the night.
”So you don’t forget our wild ancestors and heritage,” she would meow when Lizzie asked.
The more she tried to strain to understand, the more it definitely sounded like a song. She was so focused on the noise, she didn’t realize it was steadily growing closer, until a wolf and a large… thing exited the bushes. The wolf immediately noticed her and pinned its ears and growled. Lizzie replied by pinning her ears and arching her back. The tall thing blinked at her, pausing its song. Lizzie’s eyes widened as she realized what the thing was. This was what her mother warned her about. It was a human, she hadn’t seen a human before, only heard the tales from the Jungle Kingdom. The human knelt to the ground, putting a hand on the wolfs shoulder, who stopped growling, but still gave a distrustful gaze.
”oOOooOoO,oOoO?” Its noises made no sense, but it had a gentle, soft tone. Nevertheless, no matter how kind it seemed, it was still a human. Her mother said humans were the reason her ancestors were caged, so she hissed and bolted into the bushes. Immediately, she turned around, her curiosity getting the best of her, and she peeked through the bushes at the human. It lifted its shoulders, made more noises, before continuing to sing and walk away, the wolf following. Lizzie blinked, before she decided to follow them, at a distance.
She was a cat, after all, and cats are curious.
Her mother had said, that in the Jungle Kingdom, some of their ancestors were forced to speak and walk like a human. The Jungles ruler had thought their pain was a cool party trick for their guests.
Lizzies ear flicked. Her mother had made it seem bad, but what if, if she learned to speak and walk like a human, would it help her survive? So Lizzie decided following the Human and their wolf (which she later learned was now a dog) and observed them.
Learning something meant to be biologically impossible was, naturally, incredibly hard, which Lizzie realized when every time she even tried to get on two paws she fell poorly and hurt something. The human noises were hard to learn too, but it was fine. She was barely a young cat, closer to a kit, so she had plenty of time.
~~~ (2+ years into the future)
She didn’t remember now for how long she had been following Oli- she had learned that was the humans name- but she was definitely not a kit anymore. She was much larger, larger than her mom and ever been, which she thought was odd, since her mother was closer related to the wild ones than Lizzie was. It was getting harder to keep herself hidden from her size. Oli stopped suddenly, grabbing out a shovel and digging. Lizzie knew he had been tracking something for a long time now, had he found it? She followed him hesitantly, many, many paces behind him. She figured now was a good time to 2-leg walk.
Speaking of the way humans walked, she had gotten quite good at it. Although it was painful at first and unnatural, it was easier now after practice. She moved fluidly, and unless you payed attention, you couldn’t even notice her legs bent in the opposite direction a humans did. It was as easy as walking on 4 legs. If she looked the part, Lizzie thought that no one would notice. She would have to create a costume or disguise.
She could understand and speak the human language, too. Understanding was always harder, but when she had learned how to listen and understand what they were saying, talking came naturally. The sounds were hard to make at first, since they weren’t natural, but she got used to it. It also helped Oli was always singing song after song.
She stepped forward silently, her front paws- hands if she were human- folded up by her neck. Oli dug deeper and deeper, until he reached a place created from stone bricks. He passed through room after room, while Lizzie followed from a place where she was unnoticed, but still could see Oli. Even after following him for so long, she was nervous. Her mother had drilled into her that humans were dangerous.
For someone always singing, Oli was quiet, focused. He walked into one final room, before stopping. Lizzie poked her head into the opening where he had walked in. Oli started to place what looked to be eyes in empty slots in a square. When the placed the last one, the now filled slots trembled, and with a large rush of air, a glowing, black, swirling shimmer appeared.
”Portal done, and now it’s the end of the adventure at the end,” Oli seemed happy (she couldn’t see his face, but she assumed he was smiling), and he giggled, “The end is at the end,” he took a deep breath, before jumping into the shimmer, which disappeared quickly afterwards.
The… End? What an odd concept. Lizzie shook her head, her ear flicking, before she turned around and walked away. Years of following Oli, only for him to disappear in glimmer. She walked back to the staircase to the outside, and she began to think.
As well as speech and walking, Lizzie had observed Oli creating and crafting things, as well as memorized a few recipes, like armour. She had even figured out, in theory, how she could create a lifelike mask to hide her face, on that would make almost any human believe she was the same. She went back into four paws, and began to track down some cows and sheep. She killed a few of both, a task she once thought impossible, but now she thought was easy with her new size, and collected their tan and wool to make human clothing, as well as that mask. Now that Oli was gone, and she hadn’t seen any hint of humans aside from him, she decided she would head back to the birch forest, and wander a bit like her mother. She put on her costume, returning to 2 legs, and started to walk in the direction she had come from- to the Birch forest.
Her plans of wandering were interrupted when she found an interesting place, where there were a bunch of humans. Dressed anywhere from casual to wedding formal. Some of them, she could tell, weren’t human. One was short and had green skin, and another technically could have been a human, but he was taller than most of the trees. Again, her curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to see what they were doing. She walked quietly on 2 legs towards the area. She had thought she was being incredibly stealthy, but the very tall man suddenly yelled, his voice loud and like crackling thunder.
”Another ruler? I suppose we counted wrong and forgot one,” they spoke, and the other rulers slowly turned towards where she was standing. She did her best to stop her tail from flicking in nervousness. “What is your name?” The tall person spoke again. She sighed a little in relief. They thought that she was human- that she was one of them. They thought she was a ruler.
”I am Lizzie,” her voice was soft. She hadn’t used it to speak to anyone directly before. The tall man flicked his wrist, motioning for her to join them. She tentatively walked to the gathering.
”Welcome!” A friendly looking girl smiled, “I’m Shelby, but you can call me Shubble, it’s very nice to meet you! Right now, we are splitting up territory,” she explained, “any place you want?”
Lizzie blanked out. A place she wanted? The only place she could think of was where she was born.
”There’s a birch forest,” she replied. The green skinned guy lit up, gasping and smiling.
”That’s close to where my territory is! I’m Fwhip, by the way,” he laughed heartily, and introduced himself. The tall man cleared his throat, getting the others attentions.
”Any objections?” He said. Everyone was silent, and to Lizzie’s shock, golden letters began to form in the sky.
Welcome new ruler, Lizzie. Territory: Birch Forest.
Lizzie wasn’t the best at reading, but reading these words was almost instinctual. As she finished reading, she felt a tingly feeling in her gut. Since she was a young kit, she had felt tied to the land, and she had known death was final. But now? The feeling of connection to the land was amplified, and death? Something in her gut told her now that death was temporary. She would return, as long as she was a recognized ruler. She also had knew that if they found out she was a cat, there was a high chance they that her ruler status would be gone, revoked by the others, and she’d be nothing but wild and something to cage and tame. She whimpered in fear as quietly as she could. After all of the rulers claimed territory, they split up. Lizzie walked quickly into the woods, before making sure she was alone. When she knew no one else was there, she took off her disguise and ran on all fours all the way to her forest.
Her forest. The forest she was born in, was officially hers. Even the animals recognized it. Foxes that would eye her warily or hungrily, seeing if she was a threat or good to eat, stopped and gazed at her respectfully, dipping their heads. Sheep who would bleat and run in fear now stopped and accepted their fate quietly, as if dying at her hands was as good as life.
Lizzie used to only be able to understand other felines, then she learned human. After becoming a ruler, she had been given the gift of understanding and being able to communicate with her citizens, no matter the species. That was when Lizzie started considering if she could create a utopia for animals. A place where they are free and happy.
~~~ (one year later)
After a year of hard work, Animalia, her country, was thriving. She had different districts for the villagers that focused on one field of work, and the animals that wished to learn how to walk on 2 legs and speak human were encouraged. The critter council, filled with the animals she trusted most, helped her to handle the day to day affairs of Critter City and Animalia as a whole. On top of that, Animalia was quite rich with their exports, Amethyst, Chicken, etc. They also had an alliance with Gobland and Fwhip, which further made Animalia even more powerful. When anyone asked, she could say those in Animalia like to look like woodland natures so they could connect with nature. No one knew the villagers just were animals.
No one suspected she was a cat.
Well, almost no one.
Shubble. The kind one, who had explained the territories. Shubble had the kind of eyes that were warm, but also stared straight through you, like they knew everything. It was starting to seem, to Lizzie, that Shubble was catching on.
Once in a casual conversation, Shubble had asked if Lizzie was ok because she noticed the way her legs bent. In another conversation, she had mumbled something about odd posture and an aversion to water. She might not know, but she was getting close to the truth, and Lizzie had to make sure she had her hands full and she was occupied.
Lizzie would have to think of something quickly. Her time was running out, and Lizzie did not want to be caged.