Amelia’s consciousness bobs sluggishly between worlds, both body and mind heavy with sleep and exhaustion.
It is not a familiar sensation.
In the strange pulses of twilit awareness, Amelia finds herself able to ponder the curious feeling. What with all the worry and fright she’d had over the last several days, on top of having those snake nightmares, sleep had been hard to hold onto. It seems to have pulled her down particularly deep tonight to make up for lost time.
Except she’s half awake, now.
Leaden eyelids lift themselves briefly to reveal the hazy, dark remains of a campfire before her. That and the comfortable— and increasingly familiar— weight of a full meal in her belly remind her that she and Lovino had settled into camp after a long day’s travel.
It’s still night-time. Lovino had said they were still far enough away from town and hadn’t yet seemed terribly concerned about being found as they were on the edge of the forest of illusion. Which is weird, because something must have dredged her up out of a dead sleep.
As if to answer this thought, the sound of shifting fabric and a stifled, quiet gasp register from an uncomfortably close distance. Amelia’s senses finally begin to snap back into place while she quickly realizes that there is a shadowy presence hunched over her prone form.
Just a fraction of a moment too slow, Amelia’s claws barely catch the hem of a long coat as the figure turns to flee. They’re fast. Amelia is up and after it before it can disappear into the surrounding trees.
Though the moon is big tonight, and the trees aren’t particularly dense here, the light doesn’t shine through the trees very strongly. As a result, Amelia can’t see the figure up ahead but she can hear it running and making little noises of frustration every now and then.
Soon she can tell that the figure has broken into what must be a clearing because its footsteps speed up. Damn, and it seems to be putting more distance between them.
When Amelia breaks through the tree-line herself, she can see the moon reflecting off of the remarkably smooth surface of a small pond. On the opposite bank of the pond stands a cat, catching his breath and staring back at her.
“Stop following me!!” The cat shouts at her across the pond. He isn’t shouting very loudly, like he’s trying not to be overheard by anyone else. Amelia can’t sense anyone else out here though, and who would be?? Why is this guy even out here??
The dim moonlight washes out his color and he’s still a good distance away but she can see that he has a youthful, expressive face and long, strangely curved and pointy ears. He appears to be dressed finely, though, he has no cloak or traveling supplies. He doesn’t live out here, does he? No, of course not. There’s not a single territory marking!
Amelia makes a move to the left, intent to confront the suspicious, camp-crashing tom cat, face-to-face (or claw-to-claw) but he mirrors her movements to keep himself opposite her. Amelia sets her jaw and starts jogging around to the right.
“Auugh! Stop!! Don’t come any closer!” He yells as he, too, skirts around in the other direction.
This guy’s the one who encroached on Amelia’s personal space in the first place, so why is he suddenly acting like he’s the victim here? She growls.
“Why!? Tell me what you’re doing out here and what you were trying to pull back there!” She shouts to him, since she doesn’t see a good way to get at him from here... Yet.
“What am I doing out here? What are YOU doing out here??” He shouts back, bristling and pointing back at her accusingly. He then throws his head back with a groan and drags his hands down the sides of his face while he starts to pace back and forth along the bank of the pond.
Amelia gawks at him for a few moments as he does this. Confusion dulls her anger somewhat. Maybe this guy’s just a little bit nuts…
“Uh. Traveling. Not that it’s any of your business.” Amelia says placing her hands on her hips and dipping her head at him in suspicion.
“Ha! None of my business!” He says, looking and sounding distracted. Actually he looks a little bit like Mattie does when Gilbert threatens the twins with unspeakable punishments if they fail to memorize a list of battle maneuvers during their daily stamina training. A touch hysterical.
Uh…! Oh. While looking at him in profile, where she would expect to see a swishy, agitated tail, there is instead a very, very short, wagging tail. It alarms her for a moment before her studies come to mind. The peculiar curved ear shape and the short tail look a lot like the illustrations she’s seen of a race of cats native to an area in the Balian Empire. Their ears are tufted, not curved, and they naturally have short tails.
She’s never seen one in the flesh before.
…Well. There are a lot of things she hasn’t yet seen or experienced, Amelia thinks to herself wryly.
“Actually, no, I don't want to know anything.” The agitated cat says suddenly, stopping in his tracks and pointing at Amelia again. “And you! You need to go back to the rock you crawled out from!”
Taken aback, Amelia stutters.
Before she can finish asking him how he’d known that she’d lived under a rock, or consider explaining that she can’t just go back home, the sound of someone rustling through the forest and making their way toward her captures half of her attention. It’s probably Lovino, but…
“Oh my Gods, you’re running from the Void, aren’t you? And cause you’re a molly—…” He seems to become even more upset, squatting with his head in his hands for a short moment before popping back up. Well. He seems to have an oddly solid grasp on her situation without her adding anything to the conversation. Weird.
“Just stay out of Achena, okay?? I saw nothing!” She sees him pull a small object out of his pocket and swipe it through the air behind him in a wide, vertical arc. Amelia watches in amazement as a… a rip? Appears in thin air in response to his action. A rip which he backs up into while shouting at her one last time.
“And for Libyca’s sake, do NOT go anywhere near the Empire…”
Then he disappears, rip and all.
It takes a moment for Amelia to peel her jaw off the ground.
That was magic. Not the passive stuff, like Singing, but real, honest-to-goodness MAGIC. Who was that guy?
Amelia considers her options for a moment. The rustling from the forest is still on its way toward her, and she can pick up his scent now, it’s Lovino.
Even if she could find a way to follow the mysterious cat, it’s more likely to lead her away from Achena and Mattie than it is to get her closer to it. Best to let it go for now. Should she tell Lovino?
… No. Seems like the strange cat didn’t mean them any harm— though who knows what he was actually up to— and if she mentions it, Lovino is likely to make it a big deal and get all worked up. He’s generally more inconvenient when he’s worked up. Best to avoid that.
Putting the events of the night behind her for now, Amelia turns to reenter the forest and meet Lovino part-way, readying herself to calm him down.
They’ll be in Achena tomorrow. Amelia’s not about to let anything keep her from finding Mattie. Not even unsettling warnings from strange cats that can rip escape holes in the air.
★
A/N: Posting now cause I wanna stop and read it. lol. Apologies for anything that reads weird. Next part we get to Achena! And meet a new suitor! :>
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