#a cat from our world and the forgotten witch

[manga-meow]

[missmouseeyes]

Some assorted manga featuring an older woman as a protagonist

BL Metamorphosis - Kaoru Tsurutani

Okashi no Ie no Madame-san (“The Madam Of The House Of Sweets”) - hara

A Cat from Our World and the Forgotten Witch - Hiro Kashiwaba

Umi ga Hashiru End Roll ("Ocean Endroll") - Tarachine John

[faline-cat444]

From the mailbox

[schrodingersauthorii]

“In her youth, Jeanne was a powerful witch who vanquished the evil Demon King and saved the world- but over time, the people she rescued have forgotten her. Now she is a lonely old woman living in a secluded forest… until she accidentally summons a cat from Earth to her home! The former city kitty is now gigantic and must acclimate to this new world. Can a cat from another world soothe the loneliness of the forgotten witch?”

EXCUSE ME?!

Spoilers under cut:

The “forgotten witch”- who had her powers sealed in a highly rape-coded scene- summons the cat- who died via truck while *chasing after its owner’s herse*- as a last ditch attempt to prevent dying from a hate crime/ home invasion.

I personally think that this is an amazing story. But. Holy shit, dude: just a *smidge* of warning- even the reading the first chapter gives absolutely no indication that things are going to *real* dark *real* quick. 10/10 story, but 3/10 for not “warning” for content that should have been “warned” for. There needs to be some indication- a more reflective summary, or a few words describing why the book’s rated 13+ (violence, whatever) to give people a heads up to check Does the Dog Die or whatever.

[purpledragon42]

I won't lie... I LIVE for this trope. Also, adding my current fav (although it's not a show... to my knowledge.)

[owilder]

A Cat from Our World and the Forgotten Witch by Kashiwaba Hiro is a short series at only five volumes. This is certainly a shame since the manga's deepest issues lie in lack of development, an issue which could have found remedy in having twice as many volumes. The world-building, the magic system, the main conflict between heroes and villains, all are underdeveloped and, in the case of the latter, was not built up enough to build tension or leave an impact. That said, the characters at least are fun, the humour is enjoyable enough, and the art is delightful if not a bit generic. If you're not a heavy reader of isekai, as I'm not, or you are just really enamoured with the idea of a cat getting isekai-ed to a fantasy world where it's the size of a dragon, then it's a delightful waste of time. Otherwise, it may be a bit of a let down.

[stardustandrockets]

What's the last book you picked up from the library on a whim?

Every time I go to the library for physical books, I always make sure to check what's new in the manga and comics section. I usually find stuff that's never been on my radar. Which was the case for A Cat From Our World and the Forgotten Witch.

I'll admit once I found out what caused the cat to be sucked into the fantasy world I got really sad. The flashbacks are also kind of sad, but I think it's meant to be a happy story? Idk. Cat stories are always hit and miss on what's going to be sad. Especially for me when cat content makes me cry more often than not. But I enjoyed these two volumes and look forward to reading more of them.

[bangtansjuniper]

got some of my pre-orders delivered today

[manga-meow]

[the-pact-diaries]

Strawberry Moon:

Mid-chaos, Wednesday Gratitude, Spirits in Envelopes, Strawberry Spellwork and Just Two Girls

Tonight is the Strawberry Moon.

It’s already humming through the house.

I'm humming, too, deciding where to place more furniture, where furniture can be placed so it doesn’t disturb anyone.

Iris called it "the rhythm of nesting."

Maybe.

It feels more like rearranging thoughts, spells, priorities.

Iris is right about something else too: Wednesdays are good for writing down what you’re grateful for - the week is half over, after all. So I did.

Quietly. Between lifting heavy things and avoiding sharp corners.

I'm grateful for strawberries ripening in the garden,

for the hum of the envelopes that arrived this morning,

for the djinn and the angel inside, both looking at me like I was the only place left in the world that made sense.

And for so much more, we'll tell you.

“Thanks for taking me home,” they said, almost at the same time.

I just nodded.

The djinn felt charming.

The angel’s presence felt heavy. He’s not unknown.

Iris smiled. She always sees it before I say it out loud.

She’d already prepared the welcome party - like always.

“We should write a guide for haunted objects from antique stores,” she said, “and spirit attachment and transportation on purpose, in cases like this. It's different, for those who not know.”

It’s on the to-do list now.

The moon tonight is supposed to be about sweetness, love, ripening things. That’s what the Internet says.

It’s not wrong, just sometimes incomplete for your intentions.

You can make it better.

The energy goes deeper.

It’s about returning to what was almost forgotten.

About letting joy seduce you back into your own hands.

I’m making Strawberry Moon Water tonight.

It’s not a recipe I follow. It’s a spell.

And spells change, like we do.

You create it.

But you can invite others to bless it: your ancestors, your spirits, your gods.

Or just your own raw, blood-and-bone self. That’s enough.

Iris said something else earlier:

“We never imagined it like this. That we’d be… this.”

She was talking about us, I think.

We were two girls doing business.

Two girls who didn’t realize they were waiting to meet each other this way.

I met her right at the beginning, the time I met Berith.

She helped me manage everything, made the demons do their work, but also brought good mood into the house like lighting a candle in a smoke-filled room.

It didn’t take long before I declared she’d be my right hand in charge.

Apparently, two straight girls can become bi for the right girl - in a way, I'm not sure how to describe it. Just love. Touching her doesn’t startle me anymore.

It just feels like magic settling.

The djinn sits beside us and the angel across from us as we unwrap more packages.

Warm sunbeams stretch lazily across the hallway, pooling at the sleeping cats and the cat bench like melted gold.

The forest breathes beyond the windows, its shadows soft, its leaves whispering secrets to the glass.

Dust glows where it floats, caught midair in the light like the last traces of a spell.

Some days feel like Christmas.

That’s something else I’m grateful for.

In the next post, you’ll find our Strawberry Moon Water to-go recipe that’s not a recipe, but so to go-to.

We hope you enjoy, witch.

Yours, Doris.

[faline-cat444]

Think this is all that remained for the week's expectations

[fabuloustrash05]

Hi, Sorry to bother you again but You seem to be like...a lorekeeper of TMNT 2012 Knowledge.

How the hell does Magic work in that show? I'm aware RatDad Kinda has it with the healing hands, and I also saw Shinigami has it? I don't know. I'm confused. I kinda fell off in the middle of S3 and only know stuff based off the Wiki.

First off, don't always trust the wiki. Lots of fans edit it and add false info just to push their own narrative or make ridiculous claims with no source to back it up. I also recommend checking out the rest of season 3 and onward! It does get kinda sloppy by season 4 but it's still a fun watch! Reading a wiki ain't gonna do the series justice lol

Now, to your question, imma be honest with you, regarding the magic in TMNT 2012, I really don’t know how it works XD

TMNT 2012 barely acknowledges the magic concept, granted it was a very out of no where thing like "hey magic also exist in our universe btw!" and when it does show up it’s gone before you can even process it was there so it gets forgotten quickly (at least to me when I rewatch the show).

The magic in TMNT 2012 I don’t think shows up until season 3 (someone correct me if I'm wrong) when Leo is confronted by the deer spirit in the episode Vision Quest (who btw never shows up again, put them on the list of one and done 2012 characters). After that, every other magic related thing is very subtle cause the series focuses way more on the sci-fi angle, which was the theme that was established in the first episode and was continued to be explore throughout the series. I just crack it down to it being a spiritual ninjutsu thing, but I've rarely put much thought into it.

For those who are curious, the magic and even paranormal things we see in TMNT 2012 are few but what we got are...

The Deer Spirit

The Healing Hands Technique

(which btw I wish they used this technique more cause it would've been VERY helpful in other situations later down the line...)

Sir Malachi

Was it magic or did he just drug the Turtles to play discount DND with him??

Alopex's cursed Blades of Vengeance

Ghosts and possession

Cults and Demons

Magic users such as Jei and Kintaro

Yokais such as Bake-danuki and Jorōgumo

(granted these mostly existed in Usagi's universe so they probably don't fully count in the Turtles world but who knows)

And the very existence of Shinigami

Though Shini and her whole magic thing is barely explored or explained. They say she's a witch but we barely see her do witchy things. Most of her tricks and techniques seem more like blink and you'll miss it magician stuff than an actual literal witch. We know she can hypnotize people and make them see scary hallucinations, and it's also suggested that she can shapeshift into a cat but she only ever does it once and it's very subtly to the point that some fans probably didn't even know that the black cat in her intro scene in her first episode was her.

Btw, according to Shinigami's concept art, her hypno stone weapon (as seen in gif) is said to be a family heirloom, meaning she comes from a supposed long line of witches and magic users. Sure wish THAT was explored more for her character instead of her just being there as Karai's hype woman and another chick for Mikey to drool over...

[mysticdragon3md3]

"Gene Bride" by HItomi Takano "Kageki Shojo" by Kumiko Saiki "Natsume's Book of Friends" (Natsume Yuujinchou / Natsume Yujin-cho) by Yuki Midorikawa "Aria of the Beech Forest" by Yugiri Aika "Ikoku Nikki" ("Journal With Witch") by Tomoko Yamashita "A Cat From Our World and the Forgotten Witch" by Hiro Kashiwaba

[canmom]

Animation Night 193 - Harpier cries: 'tis time! 'tis time!

PREVIOUSLY, in the dark halls of ANIMATION NIGHT, you have born witness to such horrors as these...

Animation Night 25: HORROR, featuring Kakurenbo, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, and many episodes of Yamishibai

Animation Night 77: Once More, Halloween, featuring Blood: The Last Vampire, Seoul Station, The Wolf House, and Shoujo Tsubaki - and more Yamishibai...

Animation Night 129: Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed..., featuring Hellsing Ultimate, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, Mad God, Ujicha's Violence Voyager, and guess what? Yamishibai...

Animation Night 176: The Hedge-Pigge Whin'd, a rather scuffed production which, contra the writeup, ended up just showing the Darkstalkers OVA from 1997. And some Yamishibai of course.

And now, my friends, and now... the witching hour is soon to be upon us once more, and it is time we revelled in the darkness and terror, for tonight is hallow'een, easily the best festival in the western calendar.

Many thanks go to @glitch-critter and @muzothecat, who provided me some excellent suggestions for animated horror that I have yet to see. Not that reruns would be the end of the world, there's some excellent shit on the list above I would be immensely glad to see again.

To begin with, we have the recently-released The Birth of Kitarō: The Mystery of GeGeGe (幾多郎誕生：ゲゲゲの謎). Which provides an excellent excuse to get into the subject of Kitarou. So let's begin our dark and sordid tale... well, it's actually a pretty positive tale, but that's not really in the spirit of things.

GeGeGe no Kitarō is a truly classic manga series dating back to the 60s, created by Shigeru Mizuki. But it's actually older still: the earliest incarnation of Kitarō is in a kamishibai performance written/illus. by Masami Itō and Keiyō Tatsumi back in 1933, called Hakaba Kitarō (Kitarō of the Graveyard). It tells the story of a ghost boy called Kitarō who lives in a graveyard; like many kamishibai it was aiming at straight up horror. Here's a board from the original (photo by translator Zack Davisson, thanks wikipedia):

So, you know yōkai? You're reading this blog, so probably, but just in case, they are the various freaky spirits of Japanese folklore, from kappa and tengu to nekomata and chōchin-oiwa. And the reason why they are such a popular feature of modern popular culture (you all know what a kappa is, right?) is in large part due to this manga.

Shigeru Mizuki, born 1922, had a pretty wild life. He was drafted into the army in 1943 at age 21, and lost his left arm in a bombing the next year; during his recovery he made friends among the Tolai people of New Guinea. He came home after the war, and found work renting out an apartment building and drawing kamishibai on the side; gradually the kamishibai work took over. In 1953, his brother Sōhei moved in after being tried for war crimes (the timeline does not mention the outcome of the trial); in 1957 at age 35 he moved to drawing manga, debuting in rental manga with Rocketman.

Starting in 1960 at the behest of Mizuki's publisher, the Hakaba Kitarō manga adapted the story of the yamishibai, introducing a wider audience to ghost boy Kitarō with his floofy hair and little third eye on a stalk. It proved explosively popular (despite being at first deemed too scary for children), telling the stories of Kitarō's encounters with all kinds of yōkai. The state of English translations is a bit scattershot; some of it is available on mangadex.

In 1964, at age 42, Mizuki debuted in serialised manga in Garo magazine - a name you might find familiar, the avant-garde magazine which also published authors like Suehiro Maruo (ero-guro mangaka, the author of Shoujo Tsubaki) and Hiroshi Masamura (the guy who made the cat manga we looked into on AN188). There, he rebooted the Kitarō manga, starting once again with the story of the birth of Kitarō. Before long he jumped over to the much larger Monthly Shonen Magazine, and retooled Kitarō to be more kid-oriented. From then on it's Kitarō city - and the immense success of the manga gave him the chance to regularly return to the newly combined state of Papua New Guinea.

In 1968, Kitarō arrived in animation land, one of Toei's early projects. It quickly became one of those classic famous Toei anime, you know the type, the kind of thing that every Japanese person of a certain age would have seen on TV. Mizuki himself composed the OP, and it continued to get sequels throughout the ensuing fifty years, with the most recent being in 2018. This is an old and widely beloved anime so there is a lot of it: the 1968 series accumulated 65 episodes, the third series in 1985-88 is the longest at 115, but the others are no slouch either; even the 2018 series pulled out a mighty 97.

As such, it's... perhaps a little daunting! But...

The Birth of Kitarō is a prequel to the 2018 series... and rather than being a spooky-fun kids anime, it's intended as a genuine horror story aimed at adults, presumably adults who grew up watching Kitarō, returning to the earliest Garo-era tone of the manga. Set in the 50s, the story sees salaryman Mizuki arrive in a village in pursuit of a mysterious medicine, where he finds the village ruled by an old superstitious family. Naturally, before long, murders start happening. And a mysterious white-haired man is somehow involved...

Seems like the perfect way to get into Kitarō. I missed the chance to see this film at Annecy this year, but it's already out on nyaa, so let's jump on it.

So that's our first act. What of our second?

Junk Head is a stop-motion scifi film pretty much enitrely solo animated by Takehide Hori who, at age 40, heard about Makoto Shinkai's solo-animated film Voices of a Distant Star (AN44), and was inspired to spend the next seven years working on a stop-motion scifi epic of his own. It tells of a cyborg from a future where humans have lost the ability to reproduce, venturing into a strange underground realm full of freaky creatures that, I'm told, invite comparisons to the art of Giger, Bosch, Escher and Gorey, and the films of Švankmajer (whose Alice we watched on AN50), Gilliam, and the Quay Brothers. del Toro lauded it as a 'work of deranged brilliance'.

Which is to say this is exactly the kind of thing we like to show here on Animation Night. I can't believe I didn't hear of this film before. Sources are not exactly abundant, but I was able to find a hardsubbed 720p version with a few seeds on it, so that's what we'll be watching tonight.

Speaking of the Brothers Quay, who enjoy a remarkably in-depth and thorough wiki page, they have yet to appear on Animation Night, and it's about time we remedied that! A pair of identical twins from the Pennsylvania who moved to the UK in 1969 to study at the RCA, they got their start in illustration before making a turn to stop motion film using bits of dolls and various other materials in the vein of Švankmajer.

They are incredibly prolific as a pair, making shorts in nearly every year from 1979 to 2021 (bar a couple of hiatuses). Most of their films are without dialogue, set instead to the music of Leszek Jankowski and a great many other other composers. They are huge book nerds too, adapting authors from Lem and Kafka to Emma Hauck; honestly there's a ton to dive into here and I will for sure be returning to these guys on a future Animation Night. Tonight, however, our pick will be Street of Crocodiles (2021), a musical piece in which a puppet walks through a desolate realm of "mechanical realities and manufactured pleasures", widely celebrated as one of their best films.

Stop motion seems to be a theme tonight, huh? Somehow, stop motion is just spookier than traditional animation. That theme continues with The House, an anthology piece for Netflix depicting three different stories taking place in the same house. Animated in London, each piece brings in a different director, respectively Emme de Swaef and Marc James Roels co-directing the first, Swedish director Niki Lindroth von Bahr the second and Mexican-British actress turned director Paloma Baeza for the third.

The stories span a few hundred years, from the 1800s to a flooded post climate change future. In each case, the house is the stage for tales of obsession and misguided ambition leading to disaster, whether it should befall anthro rats, humans or anthro cats. Widely praised for its animation and general weirdness, I'm quite excited to see what this mix has in store.

And returning of course will be Yamishibai, the wonderful long-running series of ridiculous cutout-animated creepypasta horror in the vein of old-school kamishibai boards. You know we gotta. And hey, if we're feeling in a really good mood at the end of the evening, I might bring Shoujo Tsubaki out of the vaults too. We shall see.

Animation Night 193 shall begin, with its gruesome course of animated horrors, at seventh hour.... which is to say 7pm UK time, just over four hours from the writing of this post. Be there, or be forever haunted by the ghosts of frames unseen (unless you gotta go trick or treat or something, we understand). The place? Upon the heath... of twitch.tv/canmom!

Hoooohhooohohoohooohooohohoooooooooo!

[hyper-lynx]

Two Cats Attend the Blue Moon Ball

Chapter 1: Dusk

Featuring @wizblr-blue-moon-ball's Lurien and @flowers-the-sun-witch, along with Hemi and Liam of course. This is the first chapter of probably several that I will make for some of the prompts. Character appearances will vary and can be removed on request!

A calm wind blew over Wizard Island Island’s coastal region, bringing a mild warmth over the old stones and dozens of pointy-hatted towers dotting the landscape. The sky was overcast, but it was clear despite this that the sun was near the horizon. The shimmering line of the ocean adorned the horizon. Along a path of well-trodden cobbles, the air bent and tore, until, with a burst of chromatic power, two felines landed onto the earth. Hemi, wreathed in the gentle fabric of his deep indigo dress, felt the lukewarm air suddenly about his legs until the dress behaved itself. The emblem of the moon was dim in the low light, but still plainly visible. Shortly behind him, Liam practically flowed out of the rift. His gown had the general design of the lunar hibiscus -- pink and, in Hemi’s opinion, somewhat bulbous, but still quite elegant. He held the corners of the dress in a way that suggested he had experience landing from a dimensional vortex in such attire. Once both cats exited the distortion, reality was quick to mend itself.

“Aha, we’re-- um.” Hemi looked around, then let his head tilt. “Where’s--”

They stood at the long-forgotten gates to a property that was seemingly completely absent. There was not a trace of any building -- in its place, an immense crater marred the landscape. The only thing that remained was a tarnished silver archway and a few mana crystals that poked out from the ground at the edges of the place.

Liam gasped. “Did something--?”

“Impossible. If something this big was -- gone, I’d have heard about it. Besides, that gate… must have been abandoned for a hundred years.” Hemi closed his eyes and tried to visualize the route on the invitation he’d been given, but he was certain it led to this general area, and there shouldn’t be any other large estate in the vicinity. Were all his days of anticipation really --

“Oh--! Hemi, look!”

Hemi opened his eyes to the sight of what looked like an angelic being descending through the clouds. He plummeted rapidly and then came to a sudden stop in the air just beyond the gate, not displacing any air or showing any discomfort in the process. An elf with radiant wings, blue into yellow, clothed in shining white silks. Despite his short stature, the elf had a golden power behind his eyes that commanded respect. The emblem of the Blue Moon shone in iridescent stone, adorning his crown.

“Greetings! Hyperlynx Hemi, I presume?” The elf spoke with a quiet tone that nonetheless carried through the emptiness. “I see you’ve found our ‘back entrance’.”

“Oh--! Um, hello, sir--?” Hemi stammered in response as both cats approached the gate.

“Lurien is fine. In any case, I’ve arranged transport for you and your partner. Please proceed through the gate.”

Hemi tilted his head to the opposite side and gazed into the spiky, terrifying chasm just beyond the rusted passage. “Um-- I ah, don’t have any flight spell active…” He glanced at Liam, who shook his head silently.

“That’s fine, sir. I assure you there are accommodations for all creatures at the Blue Moon Ball.” He looked down at some kind of brass handheld timekeeping device. “Although, I would insist you move swiftly. The event will be starting momentarily.”

Hemi huffed softly and looked to Liam, who took the lead. Liam gathered his gown about his feet and cautiously stepped through the gate. He half expected the world to suddenly burst into light and color around him, but no such thing happened. Instead, his foot met with a soft resistance, an invisible surface. It felt a bit like walking across a mattress. Seeing the leopard defy gravity, Hemi followed suit.

“Impressive spell, but where is--” Hemi was cut off when the platform was suddenly thrust skyward. The earth fell away, and waves of amber light emanated from the invisible surface above them as it blocked the wind. Lucien cracked a soft smile -- the emblem across his chest shimmered softly as the three beings were brought up. Even the clouds broke around the barrier above them, until--!

The sun, from its place ever-lower on the horizon, lavished golden light across a wondrous skyscape. A great layer of clouds the size of mountains formed the base, speckled with tiny sections of floating stone -- likely pieces of distant floating islands that came in the wind across the sea. Beyond the shelf of clouds, the light glinted on the water. Above it all, though, a grand estate was situated. The main island consisted of an immense floating mansion. In a way, it was almost more like a town  -- the lower section was something of a hull, with docking ports for flying ships and tiered gardens protruding from openings in its sides. Atop, the mansion sprawled across a massive expanse of once-natural earth, with what must have been hundreds of rooms and halls. Near the center, the peak of a wizard’s tower wis visible, adorned with the same lunar emblem.

Lucien watched the two cats take it all in as he platform moved in a grand circuit through the air above the venue. “Sunset really is wonderful at this altitude, isn’t it?” He noted. The light cast off everything, and the shadow of the floating manor lengthened forever across the clouds. Hemi took a moment to glance down at Liam, whose eyes were literally wide with wonder. 

Their dutiful invisible chariot let them down in the plaza just before the main gates. It seemed nearly everyone else was already somewhere inside, since this courtyard was otherwise occupied only by a trio of gnomes who seemed to pay the cat-men no mind. Lucien directed their attention to a statue of a human woman, depicted 20 feet tall in marble stricken with veins of some shimmering blue mineral. Water flowed from small slots below the woman’s feet into small channels that fed this section of the gardens.

“This is the original owner of the manor, Mistress Areth Lunacai. It’s said she discovered the arcane properties of lunar sapphire, and therefore mastered the art of permanent levitation. In her time, her genius was not recognized, so she wrested her family’s estate into the skies, where it still remains.”

“Wow…” Liam looked up at her. Hemi, however, was already distracted by looking at the venue itself. As the light of dusk began to fade, Hemi crossed his arms over his chest.

“Lucien, sir?” He interjected. “Are we late for-- anything?”

Lucien raised an eyebrow. “You accuse me of being late to my own ball?”

“Um--! Well, no, I--”

The host smiled. “No, it’s understandable. You are actually somewhat early. While most attendees have made their way to the main hall and its waiting rooms, the formal schedule will not commence for half an hour at minimum. Plenty of time, no?” Hemi nodded and looked to the side. He thanked the gods for the impenetrably thick fur that hid his now-red cheeks from view, then took a deep breath. There was no great rush. This was an event for fun, after all. The sleepless night before preparing… the weeks of anticipation… It all led to this night, where everything was arranged for him. He walked closer beside Liam.

Lurien turned over his shoulder, towards a figure in a blue dress who had appeared amidst the gardens. “Ah, I see a new guest has arrived. Excuse me.” Lucien bowed and began to gracefully stride towards the newcomer.

“Hey Hemi, do you want to go meet them? The person over there, I mean?”

Hemi looked to the newcomer, then back at the red wisps of frozen clouds high above. “I think I’ll watch the sunset for now. You go ahead -- we’re all going to the main hall anyway, right?”

Liam nodded and followed Lurien’s path through the gardens as quickly as he could without letting any dirt get on his outfit. By the time he arrived, the host was already leading the other person back up a scenic route along the terrain’s edge towards the fountain. Their long brown hair -- adorned with red flowers -- was tied into a set of four pigtails that dangled about elven ears and onto the shoulders of a truly cute blue dress, tied with a red belt bearing a once-live sunflower. They looked up at the approaching beastman with only momentary confusion. Lucien, without even looking in Liam’s direction, nodded. 

“I’ll allow you two a moment to become acquainted. There’s a matter I’ll need to attend to.” Lucien announced. A moment later, a great eagle flew dangerously close to the edge of the island and began circling the courtyard. Lucien sighed and, with a subtle movement of his wings, lifted off to redirect the bird’s rider.

“Oh gosh!” The witch put a hand against her mouth and giggled.

Liam shook his head. “Some people…” He turned his attention back to the immediate environs. “Well-- ah, greetings!” Liam gave a curtsy. “My name’s Liam.”

The witch returned the favor. “I’m Flowers, the Sun Witch. It’s nice to meet you! I like your dress.”

“Thank you~!” Liam twirled around a little. “Yours is very cute.”

The witch smiled, but didn’t reply verbally. The two watched for a moment as the now distant eagle followed Lucien -- from this range, a point of light -- towards the arcane beast stables on the lower levels. “I’ve not seen a dress of that style in a while. Lunar hibiscus, right?” Liam’s head tilted slightly. “How did you--”

“I don’t call myself ‘Flowers’ for no reason. The color’s pretty accurate, too. Though, those flowers are pretty rare on the island…”

“Ah, I’m not actually from here. I’m not even properly a wizard -- that title belongs to my partner. I’m his plus-one.”

“Oh!” Flowers looked along the rim of the floating landmass. “Is that him?” She pointed out Hemi, sitting alone on an outcropping, watching the redness leave the sky as night took over.

“Yeah…” Liam put his hand behind his head. “He’s a little shy. I’m sure he’ll warm up when things kick off.”

“Flowers nodded, then tapped her foot. “I hope the host is back soon… I hope everything’s alright with the bird situation.”

As if on cue, on a beam of light, Lucien appeared next to the two guests. “I apologize for the wait, Mx. Flowers. I hope you’ll forgive  my cutting your tour short for the moment, as the floor will open momentarily. I suggest you both make your way to the main hall and meet some more of the guests in the meantime.”

“Ah-! Of course, thank you.” Flowers began to walk down the garden path towards Hemi. Lucien, apparently satisfied, vanished into light.

“Um--” Liam trotted after her surprisingly quick gait. “The fastest path is to the right.”

“We need to collect your partner, don’t we?” The sun witch glanced back at him. “Besides, I need to compliment his dress, too.”

By the time they arrived, the sun had completely set, so Hemi was just staring off into the swirling expanse of the clouds below. His ears were somewhat askew-- when Liam approached, they swiveled to face him.

“Hey, we’re supposed to go inside soon.” Liam let a gentleness into his tone.

Hemi stretched and stood. He used a quick gesture to disconnect the dirt from his dress’ fabric, so it became fully clean in an instant. When he turned around, he started at the sight of the witch who accompanied Liam.

“Oh--! Um--” Hemi gave a clumsy bow. “Hello-- I’m sorry, I didn’t notice you.”

The witch extended her hand. “I’m Flowers. What’s your name?”

“...Hemi.” He said, and shook her hand with his paw. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You as well. I like your dress~!” She told him. Hemi’s ears flipped, but he smiled in response.

A latch sounded at the main door. “Ah, it seems it’s time to enter. Have a wonderful time, you two--!” Flowers curtseyed again, and was off.

Liam looked at Hemi with a soft grin..

“What? I was surprised…”

“Nothing, nothing.” He took Hemi’s hand. “Another adventure, right?”

“--Right.”

The two cats proceeded towards the gathering group of wizards and the great oaken doors. The blue moon shone bright overhead.