Chapter Text
Art class was last on Mal's schedule, and it mostly consisted of time for students to work on their own projects. Again, I discreetly scanned the room for signs of magic, but this time, nothing pinged (besides us). Mal spent the time sketching a few cantrips to top up her spell slots after casting Prestidigitation earlier, and the resulting abstract drawings were quite beautiful.
Meanwhile, the student sitting next to her, whose name was also Caitlyn (but with a "C"), asked to do a drawing of me, a request which I found very flattering. She showed Mal and me the final result once she was done, and both of us agreed it was an excellent likeness.
Then the final bell rang—school was out, and I followed Mal back to her bicycle, walking at her heels. "So, that wasn't too bad, right?" she asked me. "I mean, I hope you weren't too bored. I know there wasn't always much for you to do."
"Not always, no, but cats are champion nappers," I replied, eyeing the bike basket warily. "You wouldn't happen to have a more comfortable place for me to ride, though, would you? The basket doesn't offer much protection against the wind, and it doesn't have seat belts or cushions. I wasn't thrilled with it this morning."
She grimaced apologetically. "I think I picked that up in your emotions, yeah. Sorry about that. For now, you could try to squeeze in my backpack, but I bet that's even less comfortable. Or we could use the Pokéball spell, which I know you're not a fan of for other reasons."
I sat quietly for a moment. Against my will, my mind started to imagine being thrown from that bike basket, and then a truck barreling toward me as I lay helpless in the street, unable to run, unable to hide…I shuddered.
I sighed. Twist my arm, but…"Okay. Pokéball me."
Mal was a little surprised by my sudden acquiescence, but she nodded. "Which pocket?"
"I'll take the inside pocket in your coat."
She unclipped a little Pokéball keychain from her backpack. "I call upon the power of Familiar Pocket!" she proclaimed, brandishing the keychain in my direction, and then tapping it three times against the pocket that I had indicated. There was a brief flash of red light that seemed to originate from inside the coat.
"Did it work?" I asked, my tail flicking behind me.
"I think so," Mal said. "Try climbing in." She kneeled so I could reach. Gingerly, I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then stepped forward and slipped into her pocket.
Even though I knew how the spell worked, it was still a little jarring when I slid in all the way from my whiskers to my tail without any resistance, easily fitting inside what should have been a cramped space too small to hold me. The interior of the extradimensional space was lined with soft fleece, just like the coat, and it was shaped like…well, like the inside of a pocket: two vertical walls of fabric sewn together, open at the top, with seams along the sides and bottom. I don't know what else I expected.
But it was comfortable. Warm and soft, and snug, like being wrapped up in a blanket. And it smelled like Mal.
I decided maybe I didn't mind it so much after all.
"Are you okay in there? Can you hear me?" Mal's voice was slightly muffled, but still easily audible.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied. "I can hear okay. Can you hear me?"
"Yeah, but it's weird," she said. "On my end, it looks and feels just like an empty pocket, Kate. No bulge, no weight, it's like you vanished into nowhere."
I could feel the space being jostled from the outside. "Please try not to move me around so much," I said. "I'm afraid I'll throw up in your jacket."
"Sorry! Hang on a second." From the left-hand side of the pocket, I heard the sound of a zipper, and the jostling stopped. "Is that better?"
With the coat zipped up, it was much less likely to flap around when Mal moved, and now that the pocket was pressed closer against her in real space, I could feel the tingle of our bond more keenly, and I could hear the gentle lub-dub of her heartbeat through the fabric. "It's perfect," I said. "Thanks."
"What does it look like for you in there? I'm kind of curious."
"It pretty much just looks like the inside of your pocket, except that it's big enough for me to fit inside it," I said. "Hey, I wonder, what would happen if you put something else in the same pocket?"
"Let's find out!" There was the sound of a zipper partially unzipping, and then a hand poked through the top of the pocket, holding a cell phone. "This is so odd," Mal said. "I can sense you nearby, but from my perspective, it just feels like an empty pocket."
"From my perspective, I'm seeing your hand and your cell phone above me, but you're nowhere near the bottom of the space," I said. She let go of the cell phone, and it seemed to stop in midair. "...Aaand now it looks like it's just floating there. So, I guess the 'real' space and the extradimensional space overlap enough that I can see whatever else is in there, but not enough for it to follow me into the extra space?" I batted experimentally at the phone. I was able to move it, but it seemed to be confined to the dimensions of the original pocket. Fascinating!
"Fascinating!" said Mal. "It makes a lot of sense, though! The spell is designed specifically to hold the caster's familiar, and it doesn't have enough bandwidth as a level 1 spell to include anything that isn't soulbonded with me."
"And this lasts until dawn, right?" I asked.
"Yeah. There's another version that lets you instantly teleport in or out of the space at will, but it's only good for a couple hours of use. I figured the longer duration was more important."
"What do you think would happen if I transformed while I was in here?"
"Oh, please don't do that!" she said quickly. "The space can't expand any more than it already has. It would probably tear, and, um, I'm not sure whether it would just eject you and destroy my jacket, or create a rift in space and suck both of us into the Astral Plane? But, uh…"
"Right. Got it. Let's not do that, then." I am against being sucked through spatial rifts. Message received: do not fuck around with extradimensional spaces. The Astral Plane is probably littered with mages who learned that lesson the hard way.
"On that note," I added, "I have to admit that this spell is comfier and cozier than I expected, and I think I actually like it. It's nice."
Mal swelled with pride. "Oh, that's great to hear! I know how nervous you were about it!"
Yeah. But that was only because I don't want to feel small. Feeling small feels too much like feeling helpless. And feeling helpless feels too much like being unable to move, danger bearing down on me, horn blaring, lights flashing, small, helpless…
Ah, shit. Fuckin' trauma! I knew it would rear its ugly head eventually. Well, fuck you too, brain, I thought to myself, taking deep breaths. I'm not in danger. Listen to that heartbeat! You hear that? That's Mal's heartbeat. She's right here. It's her pocket that I'm in. No matter how small I am, I'm safe. I'm safe with her.
Gradually, I managed to pull my mind back from the edge of the impending trauma flashback. Bleh. At some point, I was going to have to find a therapist who accepted feline patients.
"Um, everything okay in there?" Mal's voice was concerned. She obviously picked up something over our empathic bond.
"Yeah, uh, sorry," I said awkwardly. "I think I, uh, I have some PTSD or something going on, thanks to my near-death experience? Must've stumbled over a triggering memory. I'm okay for now, though."
I sensed sympathy through our bond, coupled with worry on my behalf, and a pinch of relief that my distress wasn't because she did something wrong. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"Maybe later."
"Okay. Well, I'm here for you."
The irony of the emotional support cat having an emotional support human was not lost on me.