Abbernathy and the Cat Kingdom

(39) - New Beginnings -

The blue light quickly faded into the orange glow of those fall days Abby was so familiar with. She landed with an ungraceful thud as she was thrown off the road. It took her a moment to adjust before she could really make out where she was. She'd landed on a hill, the soft green grass staining her orange robe. Fluffy white clouds stared back her from overhead, the sun setting in the west. She smelled salt in the air and on her right, she saw the tiny, white lights of a city refusing to sleep twinkling in the distance. Getting up, she felt tears run down her cheeks.

Finally, she was home.

"Love?" a small voice called. Abby looked around to see where the voice was coming from. In the distance, hidden behind a few, familiar Burla trees, she spied a pair of brown eyes, flecked with gold staring at her. Abby smiled and gathering all her strength, ran toward the boy.

"Lucy!" she yelled.

Lucy smiled and stepped out from the trees' shadow. In his lanky, human form, the clothes Margo had given him, fit perfectly. A few strands of white hair fell in front of his eyes, and over a set of dazzlingly white, and fang-less, teeth.

"That sneaky little mouse," he said as he stared at his human hands. "She did this without my consent."

Abby shrugged, feeling invigorated from her run. For the first time in a long time, she had something worth running toward. A smile so large, so grand it could have split her head in two, fell across her face. "At least she didn't turn you into a toad."

Lucy laughed and nodded. "Guess it's better than that. And," he said, placing a very regular-sized arm around Abby's waist, "I get to be with you."

Abby returned his embrace and gave him a little squeeze. Craning her head a lot less than when he was a giant cat-man, she said, "I'm glad you're here."

Abby meant every word. She wasn't alone. She had a home and she had a family. Not everything had been lost.

"So," Lucy said, as he stared out onto the Hills, "where do we go?"

Abby trembled slightly and Lucy nodded though she hadn't spoken. "Okay," he said, his voice warm and understanding.

The road had spit them out a hill or two away from where the Tells' estate had stood and it didn't take them long before Abby found herself in the middle of her mother's persimmon grove. Simon Ogretree stood miserably slouched over, his lumpy, black bark peeling, the few leaves that hung from his sad branches looking deader than before. She curtsied before the tree and sat down under it like she had hundreds of times before.

Lucy looked the tree up and down.

"What's wrong?" Abby asked.

Lucy plopped himself on the ground beside her. "It's strange is all. Simon looks a lot smaller."

Abby gave him a gentle push. "You're just bigger."

Lucy nodded.

The remains of Abby's home had been cornered off. Red lights hovered at each of its corners. The Royal Ministry, no doubt, was investigating such a large scale fire that must have wiped out nearly all the families of note in Laos and up north.

Abby grimaced. They would never find any answers to that fire, at least, not any that would made sense. And Abby certainly didn't want to hang around long enough for them to barrage her with questions. She doubted a bunch of old, crotchety men would believe a story about her cats being princes from a cat kingdom and that the fire had been started to kill them before they could reclaim the throne.

If she hadn't lived through it, she wouldn't have believed it herself.

A few stars peeked through a mound of cloud overhead. Suddenly nostalgic, suddenly overwhelmed, Abby blurted, "Can we stay here for a bit?" She took note of a tiny red star sitting in the sky beside a brilliant white one.