Orange_Flaaffy
Jello Pokéballs
A very long Author's Foreword:
Rated G-PG/Fairy Tale/Adventure
This story was written for the '05 Nanowrimo in Nov. where one's only point and reason for being is to write 50 K in one month. I sadly only got to 30 K, half of which was odds and ends that have not as yet been added to the story yet.
It is not by any means done, nor spell checked as well as if I had a beta, nor written in much detail..and yet in a silly way I am proud of this story for all it is so far.
I have to say I like some of the ideas I have formed about Baron's world here, and that while my main character may seem mary sue like to most, well, she is meant to be as such as this is meant to be read as a simple fairy tale, and Baron is a Gary Sue in his own right to began with on canon.
Also, having watched Whisper Of The Heart, the movie before TCR will help you to understand this story a lot better
I cannot tell anymore if certain parts of this tale are deep or just long winded, but I can say that I never knew I had this sort of writing style in me. Genus or insanity brought about by too much soda and research on the subject of Barons?
I'd like to add that although I have been a fan of The Cat Returns since I first got the Japanese DVD in 2003 I have not read any other TCR fanfic what so ever in order to keep my ideas 'pure' and unaffected by fandom. Not that there is anything wrong with fandom...
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The cat waited.
It was the type of waiting that befitted a saint and gave away the demeanor of an inanimate object.
Any sane object that still remembered the night the cat had arrived had long ago forgotten the reason for his tireless devotion beneath a trick lair of dust.
Still the moon wadded and waxed and time pasted for the two teenagers who had once spent one unforgettable summer there and where soon married.
The old man that had passed away many an hour rocking in his chair and recanting tales of World War II was, in that period, tearfully buried
by his grandchildren...
But the items of the old violin shop remained, as long and forgotten by time as the cats silent
dignity.
But of course one had to have dignity, even when picked by ones base and unceremoniously
wrapped with the Tokyo Times.
One had to have dignity, even when paid for by Paypal and shipped roughly overseas.
Yes, one had to have dignity, when it was all one had, and being a Baron it was expected...always.
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Whisper Of The Heart
Or The Story of the Story Baron Gave Me
Chapter 1 : In which Girl Meets Cat, and Sanity is Questioned
There was normal waiting and then there was this...
The girl paced hopefully by the street near her apartment complex, a bit of her dirty blonde hair escaping its band before being placed grumpily back in its restraints with a worried hand.
More pacing.
It all came, she decided, from the fact that she did not have classes from twelve to three on Tuesday afternoons.
Yes, that was it.
That was the sole reason why her concrete composer and rock hard will had taken to the addictive practice of spending the last of her food budget month after month to the sinful chocolate like embrace of Ebay.
Paying no mind, of course, that she had decided to pick one of the most pricey forms of doll collecting ever conceived..
Or that she had ordered this last one from Japan..or that, say.... was today when the rent was due?
"Heisler? Rachael Heisler?" Came the uneasy dull tones of the UPS man.
He was undoubtably new and had the unrenown pleasure of delivering packages to the same address three times in one week, rather that treating it as a subject of half hearted amusement or asking what each contained as her usual mail person often did.
Rachael got the distinct impression that he merely detested the tiny bit of space each shipment took up in his van for all of an hour.
"Yes, that's me." She replied flatly, reaching out with equal distaste to sign the electric pad offered to her by the man who could not be bothered to remember her name and scribbled upon it with a fresh hurried scrawl which even the neatest name becomes when laid to such a device.
She zipped indoors with the parcel, nearly colliding ankle to paws with the inquisitive grey tabby cat who had been sitting just moments before with her front paws resting upon the unopened door.
She mewed indignity, as if her owner had just committed an unspeakable sin for not aknowledging her all mighty existence for a mere moment.
" It's here Demeter, it's here!"
Rachael chimmed, the slight bounce in her step seeming to make her appear taller than her petite frame of five two, if only by energy level that filled up the whole tiny inclosure.
The girl grinned, making a b-ine for her sofa which, being positioned right by the door, was normally a quite easy task.
As fate would have it thought the young twenty two year old woman had just a few days ago recovered from one of her 'fits' as she called them so fondly. This included among the day to day crisis of school work, several ' What in the world am I doing with my life?' Moments, and a heavy bout with clinical depression that came and went as it saw fit, leaving her sometimes unwilling to even take a shower when she happened to be confronted with certain subjects.
As it was , her apartment had still not recovered: Filled with an odd assortment of soda bottles and graded papers that graced the floor like the confetti of a low cost ticker tape parade, they mixed fondly with a pile of clean clothing that had not as yet made its way to being folded and placed into its rightful place in drawers and that now down spilled halfway onto the floor.
"Now..then!" Rachael said, helping the pile of clothing along on the floor to give herself a place to sit and holding a pair of scissors in a business like manner.
Her cat jumped up at her side, rubbing her cheek against a corner of the box as though to lay claim to it already.
Five mintents later, after wrestling with one too many layers of tap,e the top flap was free.
The open box was a sea of packing peanuts that the adventurous tabby nearly flug herself into before she was stopped by a disproving hand. The other was already fishing greedy among the sea of water solvable white foam pieces only to come out moments later with an unusual prize.
To say it was odd to what the average modern day viewer thinks of as art was an understatement.
A creature with eyes made of clear cut glass, at times shining a robins egg blue and at others a pure golden amber, the porcelain figure was indeed a cat.
But while every cat ever seen in reality had a
habit of walking about on all fours, this one stood proud and stance as any man, dressed in an all white suit and holding a cane in a very gentleman like fashion.
Even his white top hat gave his orange and yellow patterned face the very air of one who looked well respected.
Respected by whom?
To Rachael, lost in the awe of getting a brand new 'toy' it was the best $40 American dollars she could ever remember spending.
"Nice to meet you." She said with the polite air of someone that had long ago disconcerned herself with how silly talking to items of her collection when she was alone was.
Much more sanitity in the long run she figured, than all the therapy acquiring an actual human roommate would ever cause.
Rachael lifted the figure gingerly from the box, carrying it with one swift flowing movement towards her bedroom and promptly tripping over her discarded backpack.
Mumbling, but sighing with thankfulness to find her newest possession unharmed, she continued her short path.
The bedroom, like its adjoining bathroom and front room (which served as both a kitchen and living space) was small.
Framed pictures and hand me down prints of a far off county side aqured from the girls family adored the walls, with one such space taken up by a sizable poster broad, filled with scribbled post it notes and reminders held together by a few overworked tacks.
The computer that took up residence on the west wall, sidelong from her bed, was cramped but cozy and showed all the markings of a well loved human abode.
Above the computer, in a place just out of reach of cat leap distance was a shelf of honor: porcelain dolls of all small matter and fashion abounded. Ladies with perfectly painted faces and gentlemen with elegant tailcoats, a waterfall of prim lace and painted oval eyes.
Here, a boy in little lord foundry dress, and there, a humanoid cat not unlike the new arrival, but visibly made with far less skill, in her Sunday best shepherding her three kittens to some unknown destation.
Rachael climbed up to reach the level of the shelf, a tricky maneuver that required a delicate balancing act between having one foot on her office chair and the other perched perilously on the surface of the upper computer desk.
Her freckled nose wrinkled a little with effort of withstand the position but she smiled, placing the cat man gently on the self.
" Lady Annabel..." She spoke in a guff introductory voice, "Meet Lord..Lord..Hm, what should I name you?"
She pondered, turning the figure so his eyes reflected the late afternoon sun.
A crashing sound not unlike the thunder of cardboard reached her ears just then, followed by the melody of a waterfall of sirfoarm and a pitiful startled sounding 'Mrew?'
"Oh, honesty kitty.." She said after nearly losing her balance and heading off to see what was the matter.
The cat had managed to somehow toss the box across the floor in her play, spewing the little pieces of foam like a man made snow storm upon the carpet...
Scooping up the mini landslide her figures came across an odd object: A tag, no unlike the one
often seen at yard sales, yellowed with age. It's surface was covered with lines of small print, some neatly written, others hurrily scribbled in all different languages. Rachael picked out the line of Germain right away, followed by Russian and Chinese. The newest entry looked to be Japanese,
written in neat blue ink..
One of the oldest lines caught her eye last, inscribed in light cursive penciled English that she had to sqiut to make out...
"Baron Humbert Von Jikkingen." She read to herself softly, finding the name took full effect if spoken with the light Germain accent she remembered her grandmother having.
" If ever you
need help, or are troubled by something mysterious, or have a problem that's hard to solve, there is a place you can go, a place were..."
She glanced around for the rest, turning the card over.
"Hm, that's a weird thing to write with something like this..." She pondered walking back into
her bedroom absentmindedly.
Could it be a trick? She wondered No, who would go though so much trouble for something like this? Maybe it was an old superstition she had never heard of...
The thought of just now acquiring the international form of a ' E-mail this to twenty people you know or you will have bad luck forever.'
In the façade of a cat man was more than enough to make anyone uneasy.
But no, he just didn’t look like that type of crudely made voodoo doll.
Then what?
She did not have to wait long to find out the answer.
"There is a place you can go. A place where I am sure to reside." Came a voice, deep and undoubtably male.
Rachael looked up, only to be blinded by a flash of light. The blaze flashed a neon white to rival the sun, like the reflective surface of a dewdrop placed at the viewing end of a kaleidoscope.
When it died down she gasped.
The cat was dusting himself off.
It was such a matter of fact act, the feline like face cocked downward to survey the imperfections on his long white tail coat.
Looking closer, she could even make out the texture of the fabric it was now seemed to be made of, and the tiny copper buttons that fastened his waistcoat which shined like newly minted pennies.
Upon every inch of the once porcelain skin was fur, real ginger fur of varied tones and highlights
that moved with the natural flow of miniature muscle and bones hidden somewhere beneath it.
Whiskers even moved with the creatures natural breath.
Rachael’s own breath caught in her troat as the newly animated Baron's eyes came up to meet her own, with a quite fire that only animals far removed from humans could ever seem to pull off fully.
The once flat copper eyes now seemed deep and timeless pools of quiet reflection and knowledge.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss...?" He half bowed, bending halfway at the waist tentivly.
Rachael brushed the unruly forelock of her light hair back once more.
There was something just so very wrong with this picture.
Is this it then? She pondered Have I really gone off the deep end? Could a deadline and the finals paper due for my latest class toward my English major do that to a person?
She thought back to her editors last words about dropping her if she dared miss another cut off date, of the thousands and thousands of words she had yet to add to her latest thesis.
Suddenly, talking to a forty dollar Germain made creation with a well rounded set of manners did not sound like too heavy a price compared to the normal world.
" Rachael..Um, Mr. Baron Von Jikkingen...?"
"Rachael." He spoke with consideration, as though putting a title to a new investment, " Please, if
you would be so kind, addressing me as simply Baron will do. I've found my over names more a waste of valuable time and pronunciation to even my friends."
My, but my hallucinations where well groomed now a days she mused.
"Okay, Baron...Am I crazy? Where just a (pardon me for saying) doll a moment ago right..and
you did just get shipped from all the way in Japan right? And..."
She stopped to glance at the grey striped puff ball of a cross between frightened shock and fury that had once been here cat, curled up now atop her computers left speaker.
The fur running down the spine in her back was half rased like a mini gelled mohawk and her tail, usually of the short haired persuasion now resembled a black bottle cleaning brush.
"What on earth have you done to my cat?"
"Yes, so sorry, my kind does have that effect on you're Earth kingdom cats. It truly has not been
the same since the Great War."
Yay, my delusional episode has history stories to boot! She remarked wordlessly
" But you can be quite sure you have not gone insane. You see, objects made with the deep love
of their creator like myself are of a special type. We of all human creations are the few which have souls. My mission is to help anyone in need that falls under certain conditions. And you my dear certainly need help."
"Help? I don't need..." She said, folding her arms defiantly
"If you did not, I would not be here."
Rachael huffed up at the tiny form of the Baron. What did he know of her troubles?
"You are a writer I presume?" He asked
"How did you know..?"
She stopped short, the title of 'writer' stinging some long forgotten emotional wound.
She had been seventeen, her words and force of will to get the fantasy land contained within her
head out on paper was nearly a force of nature in of itself, a reason for being. Her school grades
suffered from the incurable illness of story notes in assignment margins...A loner and geeky
outcast from her peers the was long whispered about in passing, she never let it reach her realm of thought.
All that mattered was the story, like a fruit of unspoken hope that grew in her heart.
When the notice that she had placed a formidable second in The Young Writers Association Annual fiction contest it was a moment of pure unsurpassed joy.
An agent to buy 2nd print rights followed soon after, and a series of five short stories to various magazines were born hot on its heels in her first years of college...
And....now? The writer's block or whatever it could be called had taken up what felt like a permanent place in her mind right between self-loathing and bitterness.
She was normally a happy person, or so she liked to think, but the lack of writing a single fictional work in the last year had eaten an acid like hole of guilt
in her stomach.
The familiar lacking sent a well of unpleasantness though her throat.
"I know the type." Baron said, leaping down gracefully from the self with a sound that resembled a low purring growl.
The sound of a dejected tabby exiting the room was a dim whisper upon
Rachael’s far away and long ago thoughts.
"You have a tendency to not be the neatest of persons."
"Oh, so you're an expert?" She said sarcastically , flopping down upon her bed dramatically, and hanging her head over the bedside in a manner that always helped her think, her long hair tailing like waterfall.
There was no way this was real..it was just too convenient..and there was no need to be nice to an illusion who was talking down to her.
"Of a sort..."
"So what is this great miracle you can make come true Baron? With a wave of you've magic wand?" She waved her hands about in a large sweeping motion.
The cat man's ears twitched ever so slightly at her tone.
"No, you see...this will be a joint effort of constable energy..You see, to solve you're trouble you must write a story...for me..."
"Oh?" She said with half invented boredom.
"That is, my story." He added, leaning upon his cane lightly, skimming the computers surface with distaste and similar lightness.
Rachael couldn't help half giggling now, her turning over on her side causing a handful of throw pillows to tumble off the mattress.
It was a small understatement to say she had always had an interest with old things. Hours of her childhood had been long filled with hunting up in dusty attics adults had long forgotten they even had, in weathered books bounded with the begotten leather humankind had once created.
Making up far flung tales of a starry eyed lady who found she was really a princess raised by wicked parents that never let her had ice cream before dinner over an old silver spoon or the trunk of old costume jewelry that had once belonged to a witch.
Hours and hour spent building worlds within her imagination from common nicknacks...
And now one was asking her to write its...his, story! The ivory was not lost on her mind at all.
"You want me to write your story?"
"That is right." He replied, obviously use to having to wait long periods of time for others to comprehend what he was talking about.
"Well, you seem intelligent and everything, why not write your story yourself? I hear cat biographies are selling well these days."
"Even if I wished to I could not. You see, although I posse a soul it is against many higher laws that anyone but a true human may pen the tale of a creation...To go against that law would bring about disaster."
"Hmph, well, why not have a professional best selling author write it for you? They could write something a thousand times better than I could..I'm just a talent less one shoot wonder..."
"But you are the one who requires my help Rachael...Talent or not, fame or not, it is you who must do this for me..."
His words, half declaration, half request, sounding so very human, they brought a slight rosiness to her cheeks that died down a second later. What was she thinking?!
"No!" She said firmly, slowly building a slit nest of blankets around herself with her nervous fingers as she spoke.
"Pardon?" Baron replied, cocking a brow
"No, sorry, I won't help you.." She added
"Is that so?"
"Y..Yes it is so. You'll just have to find someone else to write it."
There, that was showing him!
"Well, in that case I will have to be leaving here sometime tomorrow.." He said carelessly "So sorry to have wasted any of you're time on this foolishness."
Yes, I'm winning, fight that inner demon...
"Yeah, maybe you will be able to get that one lady who writes vampire romance novels to do something for you, I hear she's quite good and she lives right in town here.."
"Perhaps I will look into that..." He said plainly with another bow.
"Well, good night then!" She yawned a bit too loudly, drawing a comforter up over her head like a fabric cocoon.
The muffled sound of small boots landing atop the outside of a mental rimmed wall clock met her ears.
"It is only eight o' clock..."
"Well, you know, I have to go to class early tomorrow and then go to work, and the wash and the dishes...Busy day tomorrow, yep, a nice normal busy day..."
"I see.."
Rachael prayed that the one thing the cat, or whatever he might be, did not see was a calender, a telltale sign that marked tomorrow as a very uneventful and lazy Sunday.
Rated G-PG/Fairy Tale/Adventure
This story was written for the '05 Nanowrimo in Nov. where one's only point and reason for being is to write 50 K in one month. I sadly only got to 30 K, half of which was odds and ends that have not as yet been added to the story yet.
It is not by any means done, nor spell checked as well as if I had a beta, nor written in much detail..and yet in a silly way I am proud of this story for all it is so far.
I have to say I like some of the ideas I have formed about Baron's world here, and that while my main character may seem mary sue like to most, well, she is meant to be as such as this is meant to be read as a simple fairy tale, and Baron is a Gary Sue in his own right to began with on canon.
Also, having watched Whisper Of The Heart, the movie before TCR will help you to understand this story a lot better
I cannot tell anymore if certain parts of this tale are deep or just long winded, but I can say that I never knew I had this sort of writing style in me. Genus or insanity brought about by too much soda and research on the subject of Barons?
I'd like to add that although I have been a fan of The Cat Returns since I first got the Japanese DVD in 2003 I have not read any other TCR fanfic what so ever in order to keep my ideas 'pure' and unaffected by fandom. Not that there is anything wrong with fandom...
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The cat waited.
It was the type of waiting that befitted a saint and gave away the demeanor of an inanimate object.
Any sane object that still remembered the night the cat had arrived had long ago forgotten the reason for his tireless devotion beneath a trick lair of dust.
Still the moon wadded and waxed and time pasted for the two teenagers who had once spent one unforgettable summer there and where soon married.
The old man that had passed away many an hour rocking in his chair and recanting tales of World War II was, in that period, tearfully buried
by his grandchildren...
But the items of the old violin shop remained, as long and forgotten by time as the cats silent
dignity.
But of course one had to have dignity, even when picked by ones base and unceremoniously
wrapped with the Tokyo Times.
One had to have dignity, even when paid for by Paypal and shipped roughly overseas.
Yes, one had to have dignity, when it was all one had, and being a Baron it was expected...always.
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Whisper Of The Heart
Or The Story of the Story Baron Gave Me
Chapter 1 : In which Girl Meets Cat, and Sanity is Questioned
There was normal waiting and then there was this...
The girl paced hopefully by the street near her apartment complex, a bit of her dirty blonde hair escaping its band before being placed grumpily back in its restraints with a worried hand.
More pacing.
It all came, she decided, from the fact that she did not have classes from twelve to three on Tuesday afternoons.
Yes, that was it.
That was the sole reason why her concrete composer and rock hard will had taken to the addictive practice of spending the last of her food budget month after month to the sinful chocolate like embrace of Ebay.
Paying no mind, of course, that she had decided to pick one of the most pricey forms of doll collecting ever conceived..
Or that she had ordered this last one from Japan..or that, say.... was today when the rent was due?
"Heisler? Rachael Heisler?" Came the uneasy dull tones of the UPS man.
He was undoubtably new and had the unrenown pleasure of delivering packages to the same address three times in one week, rather that treating it as a subject of half hearted amusement or asking what each contained as her usual mail person often did.
Rachael got the distinct impression that he merely detested the tiny bit of space each shipment took up in his van for all of an hour.
"Yes, that's me." She replied flatly, reaching out with equal distaste to sign the electric pad offered to her by the man who could not be bothered to remember her name and scribbled upon it with a fresh hurried scrawl which even the neatest name becomes when laid to such a device.
She zipped indoors with the parcel, nearly colliding ankle to paws with the inquisitive grey tabby cat who had been sitting just moments before with her front paws resting upon the unopened door.
She mewed indignity, as if her owner had just committed an unspeakable sin for not aknowledging her all mighty existence for a mere moment.
" It's here Demeter, it's here!"
Rachael chimmed, the slight bounce in her step seeming to make her appear taller than her petite frame of five two, if only by energy level that filled up the whole tiny inclosure.
The girl grinned, making a b-ine for her sofa which, being positioned right by the door, was normally a quite easy task.
As fate would have it thought the young twenty two year old woman had just a few days ago recovered from one of her 'fits' as she called them so fondly. This included among the day to day crisis of school work, several ' What in the world am I doing with my life?' Moments, and a heavy bout with clinical depression that came and went as it saw fit, leaving her sometimes unwilling to even take a shower when she happened to be confronted with certain subjects.
As it was , her apartment had still not recovered: Filled with an odd assortment of soda bottles and graded papers that graced the floor like the confetti of a low cost ticker tape parade, they mixed fondly with a pile of clean clothing that had not as yet made its way to being folded and placed into its rightful place in drawers and that now down spilled halfway onto the floor.
"Now..then!" Rachael said, helping the pile of clothing along on the floor to give herself a place to sit and holding a pair of scissors in a business like manner.
Her cat jumped up at her side, rubbing her cheek against a corner of the box as though to lay claim to it already.
Five mintents later, after wrestling with one too many layers of tap,e the top flap was free.
The open box was a sea of packing peanuts that the adventurous tabby nearly flug herself into before she was stopped by a disproving hand. The other was already fishing greedy among the sea of water solvable white foam pieces only to come out moments later with an unusual prize.
To say it was odd to what the average modern day viewer thinks of as art was an understatement.
A creature with eyes made of clear cut glass, at times shining a robins egg blue and at others a pure golden amber, the porcelain figure was indeed a cat.
But while every cat ever seen in reality had a
habit of walking about on all fours, this one stood proud and stance as any man, dressed in an all white suit and holding a cane in a very gentleman like fashion.
Even his white top hat gave his orange and yellow patterned face the very air of one who looked well respected.
Respected by whom?
To Rachael, lost in the awe of getting a brand new 'toy' it was the best $40 American dollars she could ever remember spending.
"Nice to meet you." She said with the polite air of someone that had long ago disconcerned herself with how silly talking to items of her collection when she was alone was.
Much more sanitity in the long run she figured, than all the therapy acquiring an actual human roommate would ever cause.
Rachael lifted the figure gingerly from the box, carrying it with one swift flowing movement towards her bedroom and promptly tripping over her discarded backpack.
Mumbling, but sighing with thankfulness to find her newest possession unharmed, she continued her short path.
The bedroom, like its adjoining bathroom and front room (which served as both a kitchen and living space) was small.
Framed pictures and hand me down prints of a far off county side aqured from the girls family adored the walls, with one such space taken up by a sizable poster broad, filled with scribbled post it notes and reminders held together by a few overworked tacks.
The computer that took up residence on the west wall, sidelong from her bed, was cramped but cozy and showed all the markings of a well loved human abode.
Above the computer, in a place just out of reach of cat leap distance was a shelf of honor: porcelain dolls of all small matter and fashion abounded. Ladies with perfectly painted faces and gentlemen with elegant tailcoats, a waterfall of prim lace and painted oval eyes.
Here, a boy in little lord foundry dress, and there, a humanoid cat not unlike the new arrival, but visibly made with far less skill, in her Sunday best shepherding her three kittens to some unknown destation.
Rachael climbed up to reach the level of the shelf, a tricky maneuver that required a delicate balancing act between having one foot on her office chair and the other perched perilously on the surface of the upper computer desk.
Her freckled nose wrinkled a little with effort of withstand the position but she smiled, placing the cat man gently on the self.
" Lady Annabel..." She spoke in a guff introductory voice, "Meet Lord..Lord..Hm, what should I name you?"
She pondered, turning the figure so his eyes reflected the late afternoon sun.
A crashing sound not unlike the thunder of cardboard reached her ears just then, followed by the melody of a waterfall of sirfoarm and a pitiful startled sounding 'Mrew?'
"Oh, honesty kitty.." She said after nearly losing her balance and heading off to see what was the matter.
The cat had managed to somehow toss the box across the floor in her play, spewing the little pieces of foam like a man made snow storm upon the carpet...
Scooping up the mini landslide her figures came across an odd object: A tag, no unlike the one
often seen at yard sales, yellowed with age. It's surface was covered with lines of small print, some neatly written, others hurrily scribbled in all different languages. Rachael picked out the line of Germain right away, followed by Russian and Chinese. The newest entry looked to be Japanese,
written in neat blue ink..
One of the oldest lines caught her eye last, inscribed in light cursive penciled English that she had to sqiut to make out...
"Baron Humbert Von Jikkingen." She read to herself softly, finding the name took full effect if spoken with the light Germain accent she remembered her grandmother having.
" If ever you
need help, or are troubled by something mysterious, or have a problem that's hard to solve, there is a place you can go, a place were..."
She glanced around for the rest, turning the card over.
"Hm, that's a weird thing to write with something like this..." She pondered walking back into
her bedroom absentmindedly.
Could it be a trick? She wondered No, who would go though so much trouble for something like this? Maybe it was an old superstition she had never heard of...
The thought of just now acquiring the international form of a ' E-mail this to twenty people you know or you will have bad luck forever.'
In the façade of a cat man was more than enough to make anyone uneasy.
But no, he just didn’t look like that type of crudely made voodoo doll.
Then what?
She did not have to wait long to find out the answer.
"There is a place you can go. A place where I am sure to reside." Came a voice, deep and undoubtably male.
Rachael looked up, only to be blinded by a flash of light. The blaze flashed a neon white to rival the sun, like the reflective surface of a dewdrop placed at the viewing end of a kaleidoscope.
When it died down she gasped.
The cat was dusting himself off.
It was such a matter of fact act, the feline like face cocked downward to survey the imperfections on his long white tail coat.
Looking closer, she could even make out the texture of the fabric it was now seemed to be made of, and the tiny copper buttons that fastened his waistcoat which shined like newly minted pennies.
Upon every inch of the once porcelain skin was fur, real ginger fur of varied tones and highlights
that moved with the natural flow of miniature muscle and bones hidden somewhere beneath it.
Whiskers even moved with the creatures natural breath.
Rachael’s own breath caught in her troat as the newly animated Baron's eyes came up to meet her own, with a quite fire that only animals far removed from humans could ever seem to pull off fully.
The once flat copper eyes now seemed deep and timeless pools of quiet reflection and knowledge.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss...?" He half bowed, bending halfway at the waist tentivly.
Rachael brushed the unruly forelock of her light hair back once more.
There was something just so very wrong with this picture.
Is this it then? She pondered Have I really gone off the deep end? Could a deadline and the finals paper due for my latest class toward my English major do that to a person?
She thought back to her editors last words about dropping her if she dared miss another cut off date, of the thousands and thousands of words she had yet to add to her latest thesis.
Suddenly, talking to a forty dollar Germain made creation with a well rounded set of manners did not sound like too heavy a price compared to the normal world.
" Rachael..Um, Mr. Baron Von Jikkingen...?"
"Rachael." He spoke with consideration, as though putting a title to a new investment, " Please, if
you would be so kind, addressing me as simply Baron will do. I've found my over names more a waste of valuable time and pronunciation to even my friends."
My, but my hallucinations where well groomed now a days she mused.
"Okay, Baron...Am I crazy? Where just a (pardon me for saying) doll a moment ago right..and
you did just get shipped from all the way in Japan right? And..."
She stopped to glance at the grey striped puff ball of a cross between frightened shock and fury that had once been here cat, curled up now atop her computers left speaker.
The fur running down the spine in her back was half rased like a mini gelled mohawk and her tail, usually of the short haired persuasion now resembled a black bottle cleaning brush.
"What on earth have you done to my cat?"
"Yes, so sorry, my kind does have that effect on you're Earth kingdom cats. It truly has not been
the same since the Great War."
Yay, my delusional episode has history stories to boot! She remarked wordlessly
" But you can be quite sure you have not gone insane. You see, objects made with the deep love
of their creator like myself are of a special type. We of all human creations are the few which have souls. My mission is to help anyone in need that falls under certain conditions. And you my dear certainly need help."
"Help? I don't need..." She said, folding her arms defiantly
"If you did not, I would not be here."
Rachael huffed up at the tiny form of the Baron. What did he know of her troubles?
"You are a writer I presume?" He asked
"How did you know..?"
She stopped short, the title of 'writer' stinging some long forgotten emotional wound.
She had been seventeen, her words and force of will to get the fantasy land contained within her
head out on paper was nearly a force of nature in of itself, a reason for being. Her school grades
suffered from the incurable illness of story notes in assignment margins...A loner and geeky
outcast from her peers the was long whispered about in passing, she never let it reach her realm of thought.
All that mattered was the story, like a fruit of unspoken hope that grew in her heart.
When the notice that she had placed a formidable second in The Young Writers Association Annual fiction contest it was a moment of pure unsurpassed joy.
An agent to buy 2nd print rights followed soon after, and a series of five short stories to various magazines were born hot on its heels in her first years of college...
And....now? The writer's block or whatever it could be called had taken up what felt like a permanent place in her mind right between self-loathing and bitterness.
She was normally a happy person, or so she liked to think, but the lack of writing a single fictional work in the last year had eaten an acid like hole of guilt
in her stomach.
The familiar lacking sent a well of unpleasantness though her throat.
"I know the type." Baron said, leaping down gracefully from the self with a sound that resembled a low purring growl.
The sound of a dejected tabby exiting the room was a dim whisper upon
Rachael’s far away and long ago thoughts.
"You have a tendency to not be the neatest of persons."
"Oh, so you're an expert?" She said sarcastically , flopping down upon her bed dramatically, and hanging her head over the bedside in a manner that always helped her think, her long hair tailing like waterfall.
There was no way this was real..it was just too convenient..and there was no need to be nice to an illusion who was talking down to her.
"Of a sort..."
"So what is this great miracle you can make come true Baron? With a wave of you've magic wand?" She waved her hands about in a large sweeping motion.
The cat man's ears twitched ever so slightly at her tone.
"No, you see...this will be a joint effort of constable energy..You see, to solve you're trouble you must write a story...for me..."
"Oh?" She said with half invented boredom.
"That is, my story." He added, leaning upon his cane lightly, skimming the computers surface with distaste and similar lightness.
Rachael couldn't help half giggling now, her turning over on her side causing a handful of throw pillows to tumble off the mattress.
It was a small understatement to say she had always had an interest with old things. Hours of her childhood had been long filled with hunting up in dusty attics adults had long forgotten they even had, in weathered books bounded with the begotten leather humankind had once created.
Making up far flung tales of a starry eyed lady who found she was really a princess raised by wicked parents that never let her had ice cream before dinner over an old silver spoon or the trunk of old costume jewelry that had once belonged to a witch.
Hours and hour spent building worlds within her imagination from common nicknacks...
And now one was asking her to write its...his, story! The ivory was not lost on her mind at all.
"You want me to write your story?"
"That is right." He replied, obviously use to having to wait long periods of time for others to comprehend what he was talking about.
"Well, you seem intelligent and everything, why not write your story yourself? I hear cat biographies are selling well these days."
"Even if I wished to I could not. You see, although I posse a soul it is against many higher laws that anyone but a true human may pen the tale of a creation...To go against that law would bring about disaster."
"Hmph, well, why not have a professional best selling author write it for you? They could write something a thousand times better than I could..I'm just a talent less one shoot wonder..."
"But you are the one who requires my help Rachael...Talent or not, fame or not, it is you who must do this for me..."
His words, half declaration, half request, sounding so very human, they brought a slight rosiness to her cheeks that died down a second later. What was she thinking?!
"No!" She said firmly, slowly building a slit nest of blankets around herself with her nervous fingers as she spoke.
"Pardon?" Baron replied, cocking a brow
"No, sorry, I won't help you.." She added
"Is that so?"
"Y..Yes it is so. You'll just have to find someone else to write it."
There, that was showing him!
"Well, in that case I will have to be leaving here sometime tomorrow.." He said carelessly "So sorry to have wasted any of you're time on this foolishness."
Yes, I'm winning, fight that inner demon...
"Yeah, maybe you will be able to get that one lady who writes vampire romance novels to do something for you, I hear she's quite good and she lives right in town here.."
"Perhaps I will look into that..." He said plainly with another bow.
"Well, good night then!" She yawned a bit too loudly, drawing a comforter up over her head like a fabric cocoon.
The muffled sound of small boots landing atop the outside of a mental rimmed wall clock met her ears.
"It is only eight o' clock..."
"Well, you know, I have to go to class early tomorrow and then go to work, and the wash and the dishes...Busy day tomorrow, yep, a nice normal busy day..."
"I see.."
Rachael prayed that the one thing the cat, or whatever he might be, did not see was a calender, a telltale sign that marked tomorrow as a very uneventful and lazy Sunday.