“Dust bunnies?” I say, stomping my foot.
As if I could be so stupid.
He shrugs. “They’re real! It’s a dimension made of various kinds of dust, and the creatures eat dust!”
I grumble as I jam a spoon in each serving. “Be honest with me from now on, please.”
“I will,” he says as he sets the book aside.
“So, it’s just the one hunter left, then?” I ask.
He sighs as he pulls his bowl close to him. “I’m not certain. He could’ve survived Oscar’s assault and told others. He could’ve died wherever he landed. Hmm…”
He looks at Oscar. “Did you get his soul?”
Oscar looks up from his bowl, crunching on a pebble. “Mah ah.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Bastian murmurs.
I snicker. “Really? Fiddlesticks?”
“Has the curse fallen out of favor?”
“A while ago,” I say, then blow on my chickpea curry.
He blows on his, too. “It’s safe to assume he has told someone about us. If he had died soon after teleporting away, Oscar would’ve claimed his soul.”
“That is so weird,” I whisper as I glance at my orange tabby.
The unassuming little kitten turned out to be a legend of old.
I’d looked up Cluasan Mora and cat-sith first thing in the morning when Oscar’s yellow eyes were still closed. Scottish folk creatures, black cats with white spots on their chest that would steal the souls of the recently dead. It was also believed that they themselves were witches, and that a witch could transform into the cat form nine times before being stuck as a cat.
There was a lot of bad rap for them, overall. It was determined much later that they were probably just Scottish Highland cats, or Kellas cats. But now that I’ve seen little orange Oscar turn into a black cat the size of a freakin’ Irish Wolf Hound, I’m not so sure.
“What’s the deal with cat-sith,” I ask.
Bastian hums as he savors his first bite. “I’m developing a great appreciation for your pink, fleshy sustenance.”
“Are you deflecting?” I ask.
“Mhmm,” he hums.
I tsk and eat my food.
I can’t possibly believe that Oscar is a witch that transformed into a cat too many times. Plus, why would he be an orange tabby, or ahefor that matter? The witches in the folktales were all female, and in league with the devil.
When our bowls are empty, Oscar jumps on the table. He looks Bastian dead in the face and meows a few times, none of which I understand like I think maybe I had last night.
“He says I can discuss his origins with you,” Bastian reports.
I offer my hand to Oscar, and he pushes his head into it. I’m trying not to fear him, but I find myself asking permission to touch him a lot more…
“It was a long tale he shared last night while you slept. An interesting story that fed my magic enough to handle the body of the remaining hunter.”
I’d wondered where that had gone. I didn’t want to assume, but there were lots of horrible things that came to mind when I considered where that body could’ve gone.
“He and his kind settled in the Scottish Highlands many centuries ago, finding themselves most at home in the rolling green hills. They had been displaced from their realm, but he was too young to know why or how.”
