Episode 67: Shifting Places (Onyx)

Onyx climbed the staircase to the master suite. He hated climbing the stairs; they were slippery and he was certain designed to keep him off the second floor.

Today, he climbed to the third floor, the loft.

He padded up to Gramm and Jade’s four post oak bed and jumped onto the end.

They were practically eating each other, ravenous and happy.

He rolled over, wedging himself between them, and purred. His paws batted them, claws retracted of course.

“Onyx!” Gramm growled.

Onyx purred louder.

“Out, cat,” Jade commanded.

Onyx closed his eyes, his limbs stretched, and left his cat form for his mouse body waiting for him in another world.

Onyx was more than just a black leopard, he was a Wiccan leopard hybrid. He had been created in the hopes that he could be a more perfect wiccan by fusing the familiar form with the human mind.

He was almost one of a kind, except that his soul had been linked a mouse – an Onyx – that was owned by one Ms. Delaney Lefevre. She was the proud wiccan owner of a mouse familiar and a wiccan snow leopard hybrid.

His mate – his Kyori – was right there, and she thought very little of him.

He stretched his paws and tried not to get one of the nails stuck in the fabric of Delaney’s bra. Somehow, she had decided the best place to keep a mouse was nestled in the space between her breasts. It was warm, and the bra did provide a comfortable cradle to feel safe in while he was busy being Onyx the cat.

He ruffled his ears and poked his head above the line of her shirt.

Delaney was in her bedroom, with Kyori lying on the floor in a very sphinx like pose. In front of Delaney, sprawled out on the bed, was a thick, leather, old book that he knew.

He arched more forward and she put her hand up to catch him before he fell.

“This book even has the spell they did on me!” Delaney exclaimed. She set Onyx beside the book. “Maybe we can find a way to undo it!”

That was all well, but Onyx was more curious about the spell a few pages away – the spell that created. He could tell them who he was.

Onyx squeaked and jumped in the page. He pawed at it, hoping she would turn it; he even made direct eye contact.

“That mouse is up to no good,” Kyori said, licking her paws.

Onyx crawled away from the book toward the edge of the bed. He leapt onto Kyori’s nose and scurried down her body, along her tail, and under her. He rolled on his back and used his claws to tickle the skin under her belly.

Her tail twitched and she huffed a few times, her body threatening to squish him.

“How do you undo something done before you were born?” Kyori asked Delaney.

Here was his perfect, magically created, companion and she would rather he stay stuck in some southern town with humans, unable to speak like she did or play or run free.

He ran free, that part of was an exaggeration, but by law he was required to run free within a fenced area.

The humans were always telling him to stay in his pen. As if he would choose a pen over a quilt and a fire.

He was only half cat, after all, his soul fused with a human.

“I don’t know,” Delaney replied. “Careful planning? Trial and error?”

Kyori twitched again, her skin rolling with the pickling of his nails. Satisfied, he crawled out from under her white and grey fur and back up onto the bed.  

He began clawing at the book again, pulling at the page.

Finally, his darling Delaney, the other half of his mousey being, and one of the many loves of his life, turned the page.

There it was.

The book depicted a human and an animal, fusing them as one. The spell had been done twice to Onyx. Once to make him a cat, and again to make him Delaney’s. The mouse body was some expression of her, but his soul had been tethered to her magic. Enhancing it. Protecting her.

It was embarrassing. He was a cat. She was a human. She had other tethers to her; too many cooks trying to spoil her potential.

He had his sights set on Kyori, someday. He had to get to her first. Though, when he wasn’t nestled in Delaney’s shirt or tucked in the crook of her shoulder, he did enjoy the curve of Kyori’s head as it bent toward her ears.

He wished he could read. The picture though, he knew it was the spell. He could finally tell them who he was They could find him.

Delaney looked at the page, unusually pale.

Onyx jumped up and down, squeaking madly.

Delaney, in all her audacity and blindness, closed the book.

“What?” Kyori asked, her ears perked straight up.

“What what? Nothing,” Delaney replied. pink crept up her neck and away from her cheeks and tie-dyed her face in some form of humility that was unnecessary.

Still, he nuzzled her finger for a moment, then began squealing toward the book.

Kyori growled at him.

He tried to growl back, forgetful that this body didn’t have that ability.

Delaney pulled him away from Kyori and smoothed his tail down, from its alert and pointed state. He let it fall around her finger and looked up at her, again nuzzling her hand. She kissed the top of his head and set him on her shoulder.

It only took a moment to get comfortable; he spun in a circle rubbed against her neck. He wove his way through her bright blonde hair and his eyes and nose gazed down.

Kyori chuffed at him.

He squeaked back.

“It’s just a spell for…burning people alive, from a distance. It had a disturbing picture,” Delaney lied.

“I know when you’re lying,” Kyori said for him.

She was such a lovely cat.

Delaney looked down at the book, “I’m sorry.”

She had mistaken his own attempt to confess as taunting Kyori. He sighed, in his own mind, then picked himself up and slid down Delaney. From there, he moved to Kyori and rubbed himself against her; he didn’t mean for this to disturb her. He loved her as a cat; it wasn’t their choice but it was who they were. She had no idea there were others like her, waiting.

He ran over to the mirror, squeaking and prancing. He returned to Kyori, then the mirror, and back again. He wanted her to stand on one side with him on the other. He hoped they would get the hint.

Kyori didn’t move, so he circled her and ran again.

“Your mouse has lost its mind,” Kyori told Delaney.

Delaney laughed, which made Onyx pause.

“He’s trying to tell you what the spell is,” she said. she tucked her hair behind her ear, her face still a barrage of pink and cream.

He squeaked a loud, “No.” It was nothing more than a squeak to them, though.

“Which is?” Kyori asked.

“The spell that made you a cat-person,” Delaney admitted.

Kyori growled.

This was useless.

Onyx searched the room. He found half a bagel on Delaney’s end table and ran to get a chunk.

“I’m not going to try to undo it! Or let anyone find it,” Delaney defended.

Onyx made trail with the bagel from Kyori to behind the mirror then went back to her.

Kyori laughed, instead of following, and he realized he was never going to convey this message as a mouse. He would need to find another way. Possible collecting scraps of magazines.

“Now your mouse also hates food,” Kyori said once her belly stopped rumbling and she caught her breath.

Onyx glared at her as he stuffed a piece of bagel into his mouth, then he twitched his whiskers and ran up Delaney, rolled down into her bra, and snuggled against the curves of her chest.

“You think I should undo it?” Delaney asked.

“I think you don’t want to, even if you think you do,” Kyori replied.

Delaney scoffed as Onyx shut his eyes and drifted back to Gramm and Jade’s bedroom.

Onyx’ eyes were full of wood.

He rolled her body, so he could see the room, and yowled.

It may have been a bit belated, but he had been tossed off the bed.

“Liam is fixing the fence today,” Gramm told him from the bed.

It was approaching lunch and all he could talk about was caging some sentient cats that were at as much risk of running away as Kyori was of discovering he was a cat.

“Is she breaking it on purpose?” Jade asked.

As Onyx righted himself and shook his body, so the fur would readjust itself, Gramm looked to Jade, “Do you have to ask?”

He kissed her, then looked toward a window.

One of Gramm’s daughters, his eldest Mim, enjoyed letting Onyx out before work so some human would come by. Onyx thought there were better ways to get attention but he loved the freedom.

“Did you open the window again?” Gramm asked. He had turned back.toward Jade and was pulling her deeper into the sheets.

At least as a cat he didn’t desire to bury himself often. He didn’t understand that behavior.

Jade laughed at his window comment, “She can just walk out the front door you know.”

Gramm seemed upset; Onyx prowled toward the window and used the edge as a perch for his from paws.

Nothing out if the ordinary.

He smelled the air and moved around. There was something, arid and sandy smelling, in the air.

“I meant the breeze. You don’t feel it?” Gramm asked.

“Breeze?” Jade asked.

“It’s relentless, like a storm,” Gramm told her.

Onyx studied Gramm. This was new.

“Relentless?” Jade asked. She was starting to asses him; check his body and head.

“Hold on,” Gramm said. He removed himself from bed and began looking around, then turned.

“I don’t belong here,” Gramm stated.

The house moved. Onyx looked out of the window again and they were inside a forest of tall trees.

Finally. Progress.

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