The story I am about to tell is one of those. One where you may recognize the person as your best friend, and not be able to handle what you discover. Hopefully you are more open minded then that, and you will recognize that she has more to offer than you have to lose. After all, sometimes, having a cat shifter for your best friend can come in handy.
Katschka
She was lithe, graceful and clearly afraid. I watched her from my spot on the park bench. I had been assigned to this city because of its high number of paranormal citizens as well as the many happenings that seemed to follow them. Katschka was one of the first shifters I had come across. I decided to watch and report on her first. After all, she seemed to be living a fairly ordinary life for a cat shifter.
However, after a week of discreetly being the places she hung out, the bookstore she worked at, the coffee shop she took her break and the bar down the street from her house, I discovered that her life wasn’t quite as ordinary as it had first seemed. Katshka wasn’t afraid of me. She knew who and what I was and had welcomed me into her life. As a matter of fact she wanted me to chronicle her past as well. She was a kit with a family life like no other, and she knew it. She had been raised here, in the open, where she was welcomed by the townspeople even if she was different. Katshka knew that this was unusual and wanted the credit due to be given.
She was afraid now though. She had started cancelling our meetings about 2 days ago, saying something had come up and she didn’t have time to meet with me. This is very odd as most love to meet with the Satinela, knowing their story is going to be told, chronicled forever. To stop meeting with me raised all my alerts. Now, I am not supposed to get involved, just be an impartial observer, but I have never been very good at that part of my job. As a matter of fact, sometimes I think the Consiliul sends me places because they know I can’t stay out of things.
Back to Katshka. I started following her when she stopped meeting with me. She had to know I would. It was my MO. Everyone in the paranormal and Consiliul community knew about me because I was a rule breaker. There were those who were happy to see me come and those who knew I meant trouble for them. Those were the ones I had to always be on the lookout for. Fortunately I had made some friends high up in each of the breeds so there were few who would mess with me for fear of their own Consiliuls or families or whatever they had running them and setting down their rules.
In this case I had already contacted Katschka’s pride leader to see if he knew what was going on with her. He didn’t. As a matter of fact he wasn’t even all that interested. He told me that I was free to figure it out, but that those of his pride that had been raised with humans didn’t warrant his undivided attention. Snob. I hate those that feel they are better than others because of their breed. Humans fell to the bottom of the list no matter what, because there wasn’t anything special about them. Fortunately I wasn’t quite human. Of course I wasn’t quite a full anything either, which is why it was good to have friends in high places.
Glancing up from the notes I was going over I noticed Katshka heading into the forest that was on the edge of town, across from the park. Usually on the werewolves and gnomes voluntarily headed into those woods. It wasn’t that others weren’t welcome, but that the tree guardians were partial to the wolves and gnomes. As a cat shifter, even a large cat like Katshka was, didn’t go into the woods without a purpose. Standing up slowly I actually had to think about whether I was going to follow her. Tree guardians didn’t like to be interfered with and they saw Santinela as interfereing…even when we weren’t. But Katshka was my friend and her story deserved to be told from beginning to end. With that thought in mind I went into the trees…
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