Chapter Text
There was a bright light. A weight on top of me. The world seemed to slow down. I couldn't move out of the way in time. My heart pounded.
Then there was a flash. And a voice. I reached out…
And I was somewhere else.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I was lying on what appeared to be a carpeted floor. In front of me, I saw a bed with pink sheets. A dresser stood behind it, as well as a desk littered with books, papers, and a laptop computer. Laundry was piled up on top of a chair in front of it. Posters and drawings decorated the walls, but without my glasses, I couldn't make out their details.
"Ohmygosh, it worked?!" exclaimed a voice from behind me. I twisted my head to look. A blonde girl in flamingo-pink pajamas was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to me, her hands over her mouth in shock. From my perspective, she seemed very large.
Very large.
Something felt wrong.
I tried to sit up, and I got a glimpse of the pentagram painted on the carpet around me. More importantly, I got a glimpse of my hands, which were not, in fact, hands. They were paws.
"What the fuck?" I said, scrambling to my feet—all four of them. "Where am I? Who are you?" My voice sounded wrong. What the hell was happening?
The giant girl grimaced and held up her hands, palms forward. "Okay okay don't panic! I know you probably weren't expecting to be a magical talking cat all of a sudden and I'm sure it's really weird and disorienting for you and okay yes it's my fault but just let me explain!" She took a deep breath. "Sorry. I've never done this before! I can explain, I can, I swear."
A cat. Fuck me. As absolutely batshit as that sounded, it checked out. I could feel my tail flicking behind me instinctively in my agitation. And the scale of this room…well, I'd never been a cat before, but it sure looked like how I would expect a bedroom to look from a cat-sized perspective.
"Um. So. Basically. I cast a spell, to call a familiar. And, um, that's you! Familiars are supposed to have increased intelligence and the ability to talk to their bonded mages, which is why you can talk. And the whole, uh…black cat thing, it's…well, that's just what a cat familiar looks like. I mean, with the reagents I used. I guess I could have also asked for a raven, or a bat, or a rat, or an owl, or…"
"Slow down a little. Just…slow down." I padded around the inside of the pentagram, questions whirling through my head. The girl stopped babbling, looking embarrassed. Now that I had a little more context, I could see that she was only a teenager. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, seventeen years old.
"Before you summoned me, a truck was about to run me over," I said cautiously. "Does this have anything to do with that? Did you 'isekai' me so I could be the Salem to your Sabrina? Pull my soul from another dimension, or something?"
She fidgeted a little, uncrossing her legs and folding them underneath herself to sit a little taller. "Oh, uh, you don't just talk, you also make pop culture references, huh? That's cool. Very cool. Um. No. Not that I know of. I mean, maybe. I don't think so? And technically it's a calling, not a summoning."
I gave her my best feline glare. (I think I did okay for a beginner.) "Explain."
"Okay," she said. "So, a summoning spell sort of captures the essence of a creature from somewhere else and temporarily recreates it at the caster's location, but a calling spell actually bodily transports that creature, and—"
"Not the difference between a summoning and a calling. The other part."
"Right. So, this is a calling spell, which means it's supposed to teleport you here, to me, from wherever you were. There's also a binding element, which I guess must be working, because I can understand you, and you can understand me, and that's supposed to be a function of the bond. And there's a transmutation element, obviously, which is why you look all…Halloween-ish. But doing something like this across dimensional barriers on top of everything else would take a lot of power. I'm still sort of a beginner, so my spells shouldn't have enough energy to do big magic like that."
I nodded. "I think I got it. So we're still in my world, just in a different place. Where are we?"
"Northern California," she said. "Sonoma County, to be precise. This is an unincorporated area in between Sebastopol and Graton. I don't know if that means anything to you."
"I'm from California too, but a different part of the state. I was in Davis when you…called me?" I had been riding my bike. Picking up groceries for dinner. It was dark out. And I swerved to avoid a squirrel, and hit a pothole, and wiped out. Then the truck came out of nowhere, and my leg was pinned under my bike, and…
Oh my god. Did I die? Was this my mind, inventing some absurd dream as my body was lying bleeding out on the pavement? It had to be. But…I flicked my eyes up at the alarm clock on my Sabrina's bedside table. 8:45 PM. I looked away, then looked back. Still 8:45 PM. No. Not a dream. That's a basic lucid dreaming technique: reality checks. In dreams, your brain can't keep track of things like that. Look at a clock twice, and the time will change. Do the same for a book, and the text will change. When you see that change, you know it's a dream.
I checked the clock again. 8:45. It ticked up to 8:46. Not a dream.
"I think you saved my life," I said slowly. "If what you're saying is true…you teleported me away right before I would have been pancaked. I'm not really sure how I feel about this bonded familiar…thing, but I'm sure I'd rather be a familiar than a smear on the road." I looked her in the eyes. "Thank you."
She blushed. "It wasn't on purpose. But you're welcome?"
"My name is Kate," I said, offering up a paw for a handshake. "It's nice to meet you."
She leaned forward and extended her own hand, gently taking my paw to return the gesture. "Mallory. You can call me Mal. I'm really excited to meet you too!"
As we touched, a tingling sensation ran through me. She must have felt it too—I could sense her surprise. "Oh, that's the bond!" she said, excitement creeping back into her expression. "I forgot it's supposed to react to physical contact! Dang, I guess I just broke the barrier of the summoning diagram too. That would have been really bad if you were a demon or something. Ha! Hey, you're not a demon, right? Just a normal cat?"
"Um. No. I'm not either of those things." My eyes narrowed. "Did you think I was a normal cat?"
"I mean, you know, obviously not anymore —you should be a super cool magical cat now. But yes, that's how the spell is supposed to work? See, look," she pointed toward the five points of the pentagram, "the foci that I used were designed to bring forth a cat." At each of the star-shaped diagram's five points, there was a lit candle and a mundane object.
"The drawing of a cat, that's obvious," she continued. Following her finger, I could see a handmade charcoal drawing of a black cat, scratched onto sketch paper by a talented hand. "It’s at the north point, because it’s the keystone. Then I used a broken chain link over here to represent freedom, because I didn't want to steal someone else's pet. The valerian root on this point represents happiness, so that I wouldn't end up with a cat who would be miserable to be here. Maybe that's why the spell found you right before you were about to get hurt? And then the mini Umbreon plushie over there represents both magical power and cuteness, obviously, and the eyeglasses here represent intelligence."
I flicked my tail again as she sat back up straighter. "So yeah!" she said. "A little unconventional, but my book says the exact objects aren't as important as their symbolism, so it should have found a cute, smart, independent cat with high magical potential who was willing to come when I called…right? Did…did I do something wrong?"
"I think I see the problem," I said. "That plushie is the exact same as the one I kept on my keyring. I recognize the brand. The chain on my bicycle came loose when I crashed. And those glasses…Mal, I wear those same frames. Exactly the same. It wasn't just symbolism."
"It was sympathy," she whispered. Her face fell as she put the pieces together. "Keyring. Bicycle. Glasses…oh gods. You're a human."
I nodded. "Yup. Katelyn Winters, human female, 21 years old. College student. I was going to school to become a CPA."
"And I turned you into a cat. Oh, oh no, oh no, that’s..."
I nodded again.
I could feel her shame and horror through our link as clearly as if it had been my own, and I knew she was about to cry. So my protective instincts kicked in, and I did the only thing I could think of.
I climbed into her lap.
"I'm sorry," sobbed Mal, tears brimming from her eyes as she stroked my back. "I'm so sorry. I fucked up. I didn't know. I didn't mean to."
"I know," I whispered back, nuzzling against her arms, feeling the tingle of the bond between us as we tried to comfort one another.
"I don't know how to reverse the spell."
"Sshh. It's okay. We'll be okay."
"I'm so sorry, Kate."
And we sat there together, sharing each other's pain.