Abbernathy and the Cat Kingdom

(1) -Ivory Slippers-

Modern Day, Port City of Laos

☆

To every girl born into wealth, nothing beat a pair of finely crafted leather shoes. The same could be said of twelve-year-old Abbernathy Tells, who went by Abby, and whose favorite pair of shoes were her square-toed ivory slippers, imported from the capital city of Triad.

The shoes were fashionable yet comfortable and Abby found them appropriate for short and long journeys alike. But the reason why she loved them the best, and not any of her other shoes, of which, due to luck and her father's fortune, she had a vast collection, was because, when used properly, the slippers gave off the greatest sound after connecting with some miserable boy's crotch.

Dozens of arguments ended, before her opponents could get a word in edgewise, because Abby wielded her shoes like a soldier wielding their sword. And similar to soldiers who learned to hone their skills on the battlefield, Abby had learned how to kick a crotch with deadly precision. She had made the practice into an artform, one she was determined to master.  

Perhaps it was cruel, or a consequence of playground bullying gone on for too long, but Abby insisted it a job need doing. She only kicked the most deserving, horrible boys from her class, after all.

Boys like Gregan McEffery, who'd cast her latest Wizard Kellog book off the end of the pier, feeding its wisdom to the fishes below; the aptly named Toad Twins, Wentworth and Wriley Smoot, who'd snuck rock slugs into her favorite coat's pockets last winter, sliming them all up and ruining the fur lining; And the worst of the worst, Vicrum Alistere Hudginns. 

It was because of him, that persistent, awful crumb on Abby's shoulder, that she found herself banished to her bedroom without supper, staring at the places of Mirea that'd been painted across her ceiling. The lush greens of the hills of Royal Back, the red plains of Mingare, and the glowing blues of Dewlin Falls all provided the only color in her otherwise boring, white room.

She released a sigh and turned over, a bundle of fur purring contentedly beside her.

"Why must he be like that?"

She lifted a finger toward the ceiling, pretending she was there, in the thick of the blood plains, facing off against one of its fabled monsters. The black cat's ears flinched.

"Dad knows I had good reason," she continued lamenting, dropping her arm back at her side, the movement causing the cat to stir. Shooting her an almost irritated glance, he stood on all fours, yawned and then preceded to greet her the way he had since he was a kitten, and she a young child of six: pressing a wet nose against her cheek.

You always claim to have good reason, the cat purred, his understanding of human speech, and Abby's complaining, not lost on his ears, unlike most his kind. In fact, aside from his brother, he had never encountered another feline proficient in the two-legs' language.

Not that he tried, though. Lucy found other cats exhausting, thoughts of hunting and little else filling their heads while he appreciated the finer things in life - roasted meats, sweetened creams, head pats and napping. Ribbons that accentuated his already exceptional features.

A shame his beloved Abby couldn't understand him back.

He continued to greet her, his nose tickling her cheek. She giggled and the annoyance of being locked away in her room, temporarily fled from her mind. But it came crashing back like the tidal waves that smashed against the rocks at the Fragillian coast, when the scratching returned.