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Mirror, Mirror...

Shadows in the Light

Updated March 25th, 2013

I could only feel fuzz in my head at first. Almost a buzzing in my ears, but it was hard to make sense of. The world faded in slowly, even though my eyes were still full of the sand of sleep. Then I realized it wasn't just my head that felt fuzzy. Pretty much all of me felt fuzzy actually. Quite comfortably very warm, but decidedly fuzzy. The buzzing in my ears finally begin to make more sense. Barely. It was purring. Lots of it in fact.

I stayed completely still for a short time, trying to simply make sense of the situation. Well, also because of the total amount of furred weight on me holding me down. It was... That mirror! I remembered now. The old man at the yard sale. The big mirror. It had a cat in it. Kind of.

Only I could see or hear her. She could touch me when I was in the same room as the mirror. She almost killed me. Then she healed me. Then I went to see the old man when she insisted... and ended up finding out... What did I find out? I forgot. It seemed important.

I vaguely remembered being exhausted last night. Then I remembered that she had helped me undress, even though she could only touch me and not my clothing. I was cold when I flopped on the bed, but I fell asleep with a huge cat draping itself over me. It helped keep me warm a little.

The problem with the current situation was that this didn't feel like one cat. In fact, if I paid attention to the purring, I could hear several distinct voices. That and a huge body to either side of me, plus numerous small bodies, all added up to a good bit of confusion on my part. Not that I could move easily to figure things out with all these cats on me.

Based on the light sneaking in past the drapes, it was early afternoon again. Hmm. I think I fell asleep around 4 am. Early for me, since I worked nights normally. This was about the right time for me to wake up though.

I shifted slightly and the cats all moved in unison. The feeling of then vanishing suddenly was almost a bit more than I could handle, but I managed to not jerk too much in shock. The sudden lack of warm fur against my bare skin left me a bit sad though.

"You slept a long time, but it was late last night," she said. Wait... The voice was... male?

I rubbed my eyes to get the grit out of them before sitting up. The lights were still on from my return. I felt the invisible feline nosing at me and then walking around me, checking me over. I peered intently at the mirror, still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I could see this cat in the mirror but not in person. Then the change was more obvious.

"I thought you were female," I said slowly. In fact, I distinctly remembered small breasts on the cat's chest when it was humanoid last night.

"Oh, I was last night," he answered. He must have sensed my confusion. "I'm technically a demon anyway, at least the way your world would define me." I shied away and he was quick to explain further. "I've been told that humans say that things from other worlds and without natural forms in this one are called demons, but I forgot that most humans consider demons to be only evil things. By the definition wizards use, it just means I have no form that you could comprehend when I'm in my own world."

I gawked as the cat in the mirror sat and changed into a distinctly female humanoid feline again. His... Her? voice changed as well. "When I was bound to the mirror, the only defining rule was black cat. So I can be any size, any overall shape, as long as I am instantly recognizable as a black cat." She smiled, showing off long fangs. "I do like some forms better than others though. Like I don't like to make my legs too much like yours. It's very uncomfortable."

I blinked a few times, squinching my eyes shut for a bit as I considered. "Okay, but why did it feel like I was covered by lots of cats when I woke up?"

My mouth fell open when the view of the room through the mirror was suddenly covered in black cats of all sizes, from tiny kittenlings to a massive cat that would outweigh a horse just beside my bed. Some were humanoid, also small to large, but most were just four on the floor variety cats.

"Number doesn't matter to me either," they all chorused at once. "It's still black cat, so it follows the rules."

My mouth worked a little, though I didn't have much to say before I managed to get my wits back about me. "Thank... you for keeping me warm..." was all I could think to sputter. Thankfully the cats began to vanish, first a few at a time, then all but three gone in one swell foop. One tiny kitten, one male panther, and the female humanoid cat beside me. The kitten busied itself with chasing motes of invisible dust on my bed while the panther curled up behind me. This made it much more comfortable to sit up, leaning back against him like the back of a chair.

"You're very welcome. I admit, it was somewhat selfish, since any pain or discomfort you have is only felt by me, so you being cold was no fun," she said.

"But you let me in enough that I also feel the positive sensations you get," the male cat behind my back purred. "Just a tiny bit. You'll never lose those yourself, unless you decide to push them all onto me too, so don't worry."

Okay, that was going to take some getting used to. One ... ..... 'creature'?... One entity?... Three creatures talking. But it was the same person in all of them.

"Person?! You think of me as a person?!!" she exclaimed happily before bowling me over backwards with a joyful pounce. "Oh, that's so wonderful! Not the word itself, but the meaning you have behind it. I haven't had a master who thought of me like that since when I was with Harv."

I was somewhat confused. Harv. That was the old man. "I thought you were just with Harv. He gave the mirror to me."

She calmed down, becoming sullen atop me. It was odd, I couldn't see her, but I could feel her body language against me. "No, I was cut free from him... Ummm..." She started mumbling slightly. It sounded like she was counting. "Well, about 14,000 years ago linearly for me."

My mouth fell open again. "14,000 years?! I thought you said the mirror was made a hundred years ago." Then I thought for a moment. "Wait... You did say that it was more. Something about not going straight through time or something?"

"Yup," the panther said, rolling beneath me to drape his front paws across her own back. That concept in and of itself was just mind-numbing. "Harv thought of me as a person. He lost me though and I was picked up by another wizard. Then another. And a third. When that wizard had an accident, he cut me free so I wouldn't be stuck. Harv found me again, but I can only link to a wizard once. So he kept me safe until I could find a new wizard."

That entire set of information from the panther behind my back was less-easy to pay attention to as the feline on my chest was busily grooming my face. She stopped at this point and began speaking.

"I've been around linearly for almost a hundred thousand years. Only Harv, who had me for 13,000 years, and one other mage who had me for four hundred years actually thought of me as a person." I was far too aware of her lithe form against my bare body as she squirmed happily. "It makes me so happy! It means the good feeling I had about you will hopefully be true."

I blinked as the tiny kitten's voice sounded just beside my ear. "I've been abused by so many owners. Others just used me. Even though they didn't abuse me actively, they didn't care either. I've been owned by a lot of warlocks, and even a necromancer once." The bigger kitty atop me gave a shudder.

The panther took up speaking. "Every mage I've been owned by has been much kinder. Harv and the other were both wonderful to me. The others at least took my feelings into consideration but still considered me just a famulus."

I was still trying to absorb all this information. "What do you mean considered you just a famulus?"

The panther sighed. "A mirror famulus is just a construct to most wizards," he said. "They don't take into consideration at all that we are intelligent beings from elsewhere or that we feel our own emotions. Some just use us as pain receptacles, and health batteries effectively. After all, if they get injured, we get the hurt, and we heal them to save ourselves."

I frowned at that thought. "You're talking about wizards and mages and stuff. What does that all mean?"

The little kitten answered. "A wizard is any kind of human or ex-human magic user at all. Mind you, I had to learn this when I was originally bound to the mirror. But I do learn a lot in that long a time." The kitten sniffed a little. "I also forget a lot honestly, but I try to keep the important things in mind."

"Anyway," the girl-like cat atop me continued, "within this broad definition, it gets broken down further. A mage is a person with no innate skill who studied to learn the craft. They use the power of their mind and their learnings to manipulate energy and magic. A warlock is... hmm. How best to describe it?" She was silent and thoughtful for a moment.

Then the panther spoke, "A warlock is made. By accident usually. Some force suddenly imbues them with skills and poof! They are now warlocks. They tend to be power hungry and lack in brains, since they just got power with no work or skill. Most of them don't last long enough to get into much trouble, but the lucky ones become unlucky for others in most cases.

"Most of the cruelest masters are warlocks. They feel entitled because they never did anything to earn their power, they just got smacked upside the head with it." He ended up growling softly and I could feel him pull his female self against me more tightly for a moment.

She continued. "There are then different skills. Necromancers and aquamancers and generalists and pyros and shadows and lots of things. It gets all very confusing really."

I agreed. I was quite confused honestly. This was more like something you'd hear in a Harry Potter film than something any sane person would consider to be real.

She promptly laughed in all three forms, though the panther was more of a chuckle. "Don't worry, I'll keep you sane even though you're a sorcerer," he said kindly. "Especially since you consider me a person. I don't want to lose you."

I considered this. "Okay, what is a sorc...?" I began to ask, but I was interrupted by a cough from my bedroom door.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize..." a semi-familiar voice stammered.

I glanced over to see the old man's granddaughter standing there, her face averted and a huge blush on it. I froze, unsure of what to do when being held down by a cat while draped over a cat.

"I, um, brought a time bubble and some stuff to set up. I'll... just get that done in the living room," she said, hurrying away.

I barely unfroze in time for a bit of a scramble to try to squirm away from the grip of both felines however I was sent spinning again as a weird feeling came over me. I stopped struggling for a moment, dizzy.

She poked her head back around the door frame and promptly blushed again. "Okay, you're good! Bye!" Then she literally just vanished. She didn't pull her head back, she just suddenly wasn't there.

I was far too late in trying to reach down to cover myself when I realized that I was stark naked atop my bed and she could not see the cat in reality at all. I was also hampered by the fact that one arm promptly hit the foreleg of the panther on the way. Then of course with the cat girl atop me, my other spread hand simply stopped at a pert yet invisible buttock.

Despite the absence of the visitor, my face promptly turned a distinctive shade of red hitherto unseen since ... Actually, best not to think about that while my thoughts were not all my own.

"Since what?" she asked curiously, arching her rear into my touch a little. I tried as hard as I could not to think about it, but just like The Game, it came to my mind unbidden. She promptly giggled. "That sounds like fun. Except the fact that you were upset about it."

I coughed lightly, trying to remember what I was asking about before I was interrupted.

"You were asking me what a sorcerer is," the panther said, leaning up to lick my arm. I wondered for a moment about the fact that cat tongues were supposed to be sandpapery rough, but this was only slightly rough and more soft than scratchy. "I only have to look like a cat. Everything else is at my option," the panther said.

"Anyway," he continued, "A sorcerer is a human who was born with the power. Not that they necessarily know how to use it. They might die without learning. But it is a gift, or some think a curse, presented to them from the very start." He licked again, making me jump. "Some say that they are not even really human, but rather magic in a human form. But because of this marriage of power and form, they are much more in tune with things.

"Where a mage needs to train their mind to work the energies and fight to keep that training current, a sorcerer simply IS. Magic is natural to them. They just need to release their inner self to do things." He rubbed his cheek against my arm. "Sorcerers are known to be the kindest and most responsible of all wizards in general because they are so in tune with the magic. The majority of druids are sorcerers for example."

I blinked. "So... I'm... made of magic?" I wondered what my mom would think of that.

"That's just a theory," the kitten said, pawing at my ear lightly while the girl atop me rested her head in the crook of my shoulder. "Nobody really knows for sure. At least, if they do, they aren't telling us. Since I know yer gonna ask, the time bubble she mentioned keeps your home in a pocket of time away from the outside world. Definitely safer for us this way right now until either you can protect yourself or I can protect you."

She apparently caught my questioning thought before I voiced it, as she continued, "Yup. No time is passing outside. If it was, things would be trying to find us. Possibly bad things too."

I shivered lightly. Just the way she said bad things gave me a sense that it would be substantially worse than the most vivid and disturbing nightmares I could possibly comprehend mixed with a horror movie or two. She nodded on my chest. "Okay, so how do I release my inner self then?"

She raised her head off my neck and licked my nose. "Well, there are apparently a few ways. For example, one way is for me to consume you completely. Mind you I'd have to eat small pieces of you at a time and heal you all the while. It would hurt me a lot though. Especially when I was eating your brains."

I likely made a very odd face at that point, but she continued. "I don't think I'd like that way too much though. They say it's a matter of bringing out the animal in you, or putting the animal in you, or something. Since it's like finding your instincts. Ummm..."

She was silent for a good while and I finally began to wonder. She eventually deflated and became a little smaller. Literally in fact.

"I really don't know. I only know the eating you way as a fast way. The only other is the slow way," she said sullenly. I was about to ask, but she didn't let me again. "The slow way is to have lots of sex."

I blinked and my mouth fell open again. Lots of... Was she serious? That was... okay, that was just weird.

"Okay, okay, you're right, not really" she said, becoming even a touch smaller atop me. "Can't be mad at me for hoping though. The slow way is to just be linked to me and wait for it to develop on its own. You get more linked naturally and eventually I have a full link to you instead of just a link from you. Then everything works better. Plus you also can start to learn your magic after that."

Mad at her for hoping? Was she teasing me or what here?

"Oh, no, I'd never do that," the panther answered. "Not in the mean way like you are thinking. Maybe in a nice way though. But really, I get all of your pain and right now enough link to share a little bit of your pleasure, and honestly until we link there's not much else to do. Plus it's fun. I found that out tens of thousands of years ago. So you can't really blame me for being hopeful that somebody like you who seems to care and should be a nice wizard would share that kind of fun with me."

The fact that it was the male panther behind me saying that was... yeah, just a tad weird too.

"Sorry," the kitten beside my ear said. That honestly didn't help matters.

The third version of her squirmed atop me worriedly. "I didn't mean to upset you, I'm sorry. Please remember that I will never hurt you. You can't be hurt even. Your health and happiness is literally my entire purpose right now, so I just want you to enjoy having me here."

I was more and more aware of her furred, warm body against mine as she spoke. I was honestly quite torn. From a purely tactile sense, even just having her snuggled against me was exquisite. But the thought of doing that with an animal was...

I realized quite quickly that she was crying. What was wrong? Did I do something?

"So now I'm an animal, and not a person?" she asked sadly.

Shit! I didn't mean that! "No, no... I didn't mean it that way. It's just..."

"You don't like the way I look or feel."

"No! You feel wonderful! It's the way the world says people should be. It's the way society expects me to act and how they push definitions into my brain." I sighed. "It's just the way I'm trained, I guess, as a human being."

I realized that humans really were quite bad that way. I did consider her... him... it... it didn't matter... to be a PERSON. I knew she looked like an animal, but animals don't talk to you, or keep you warm for your benefit, or worry that much about you, except maybe in a very basic way. Animals couldn't claim thousands of years of experience or share tales of torture at the hands of magical maniacs or teach you about the distinctive differences between warlocks and mages.

I had thought of her purely as a person until she mentioned sex. Then society's grip on my mind went and tried to turn her into an animal and make me push her away. She didn't deserve that at all. It was so wrong of me to do that to her. Yet it was still tearing at my mind in both directions and pulling me apart.

I felt her scoot up my body a little and she nuzzled my ear, then whispered, "You get to be the master of your own mind. You control it. You need to bring out your animal and find the animal inside you. I can feel you fighting your mind. I can feel you fighting the training you got."

She was right. I wanted to treat her like a person. I wanted to treat her like a very special person in fact. Somebody who was bound to me. It was like a fairy tale. If I thought about it hard enough it was hard to say that she wasn't forced into loving me.

What was love after all? Any pain I could feel was pain for her. She could not leave me without suffering. If I hurt, all she would think about would be easing my pain and soothing me. Maybe it was of a different origin, made by magic and bound in literal ways, but then what was love between humans except chemical processes in the body?

All of my upbringing screamed at me to throw this animal away, but I knew she was a person. I knew she loved me. I knew that no matter who she was linked to, she was forced to effectively love them. But she had no choice in that. She was the victim. She was the one ripped from her home and stuffed into this form. She had to love whoever her master was, no matter how kind, or how cruel.

I knew the cruelty in the world already. Children who would laugh as they poured gasoline on a dog and lit it on fire, watching it thrash about as it suffered and died. Groups who would shun or even kill others for not thinking or looking the same way they did. I knew the cruelty first hand as well...

"Oh... I... I'm sorry..." she murmured, tears coming to her eyes again as she was subjected to my thoughts of my past. She wrapped her arms around me and the panther squeezed her tighter against me as even the tiny kitten reached up to hug my ear. Just the thoughts brought wet to my own eyes, despite the fact that "men don't cry".

"I can heal your body, but I can't heal the pain in your heart," she said softly. "I'm so sorry... I am failing you."

I squeezed my eyes shut, the small streams of water drifting from the corners of them. "No... I'm failing." I murmured. I let my hand finally leave her bottom and curled that arm across her lower back. I wrapped my other arm around her and hugged her close. "You have no choice. You have to feel my pain. But I don't want you to. You can heal my body instantly, but maybe if we work together, you can help heal my heart and mind over time."

I sucked in a shaky breath. "I want to fight my mind. I want to fight the training. It will help me too. I want to get to where I never see you as an animal. I want to be able to see you as a person in all ways, no matter what your form is." I took my own turn to press my face against her neck now, the soft fur soaking up my tears.

"You have no choice about me. I have a choice about you, and I want to do the right thing. I can't break years of training in a heartbeat, but I can work on it." I had my eyes closed, pushing the thought that I was desperately holding an invisible cat girl out of my mind. "Please help me," I whispered.

I felt soft tongues against my cheeks, warm breath on my skin. My companion would not let my tears stay. Her breath fell on my ear lobe as she returned to her prior, larger size atop me. "I will," she whispered near my ear, barely loud enough for me to hear. "I will."

I opened my eyes and tried to clear the tears from them without letting her go. It didn't seem to be effective, I was seeing strange shadows. Then my eyes focused better. The dark shadows moving in my vision were extremely ghostly felines. Two panther-sized faces to each side and one from her form atop me.

"I can see you," I murmured. "A little," I admitted. "Just a teensy bit." All three of them stopped licking my face and peered down at me.

"As you let me get more linked to you, you'll have more from me," the cat on my right said. "Until then, it won't be safe to go outside the time bubble at all. So we're stuck in here for a while. I hope I can help you free yourself quickly."

I shook my head. "I can't stay in here, I have work on Sunday night."

The cat chuckled. "I don't think you could leave if you wanted to anyway." Then all three of them looked contemplative. "In fact, I absolutely know you can't until you specifically know how. It's okay though, it's going to stay Saturday outside your apartment for as long as the bubble is active."

Going to stay Saturday...? I couldn't leave?

"Nope. Come see!" the cat exclaimed, them all of them vanished, leaving only the panther behind me. He pulled his paws in and pushed me carefully to a sitting position. It was definitely going to take some getting used to that he/she could read my mind and hear my thoughts.

I looked around the room. The glow of daylight from behind the curtain was gone. In fact, I didn't see any light source anywhere. How could I see anything?

"It's a high quality bubble," the panther said, hopping off the bed. It was odd, seeing him in the mirror but not feeling the bed react at all to his weight. "Very high, otherwise you'd see the inside of your eyelids also. Everything is falsely lit evenly."

I stood up and looked around. He spoke the truth. Everything was the same brightness. There were no shadows anywhere. It looked really fake actually, like a 3D model. "I don't see why though. I have perfectly fine lights in here and I even have spare bulbs if they burn out. If no time is passing outside, it's not like the unpaid bill is going to get my power turned off."

"Electrons take time to flow from outside into your wires. No time means no electricity."

I blinked in surprise. Quickly I walked to the door and flipped the light switch. No response. That could make things more complicated.

"Go open your front door," the cat said near my waist.

I walked out to the main room of my apartment and stopped dead in my tracks. Hovering close to the ceiling was a... a... I didn't know what it was really. It didn't seem to make sense. It made my head spin just looking at it. I couldn't even wrap my mind around a shape to describe it as, nor a color. In all honesty, if somebody asked me to describe it at all, I really wouldn't be able to.

"That's the time bubble. It's an enigma. Or a paradox. One of the two. Every wizard calls it one or the other. Sadly the thing never gets easier to look at, so you probably just shouldn't look at it." I looked to my waist where the voice came from and saw what looked like a very fine, black mist in a feline shape. Not nearly as well-defined as in the bedroom. The general region of the head swung up to look at me. "It'll get better, don't worry. Go peek out the door."

I tried to keep my gaze off the enigmadox by the ceiling and unlocked and opened the door. I was greeted by a black plane that also looked really wrong, just in a different way. It literally gave off no light at all and it seemed that my gaze would literally slide off the outside of it.

"It's safe to touch," the cat said.

I couldn't help myself. I reached out and placed my fingers against it. It wasn't warm or cold, and it was smoother than anything I had ever felt before. It was completely solid, though it didn't precisely feel hard, it definitely had absolutely no give to it whatsoever.

"What is it?"

"That's the outside world," the cat said. "It takes time for anything to move. Light, air, anything at all, takes time to get from one place to another. Since no time is passing at all, no air can move out of your way and no light from outside sources comes in. In fact, if you had a normal light in here for too long, all of its photons would hang at the edge and be released into the outside world all at once. Technically from inside it wouldn't get out until the bubble dropped, but from the outside perspective, there is absolutely no time between this moment in here and the end of this bubble."

I wasn't a science person, but as I thought about that, the repercussions struck me as overwhelmingly scary.

"It is," the cat said solemnly. "Many young wizards have been known to quite effectively kill themselves by trying to stop time around them. That instantly locks them in a solid tomb of no air and complete darkness and they don't last long. Playing with time without the necessary precautions is exceptionally dangerous. Some wizards have even created exceptionally dangerous weapons and traps out of things as simple as laser pointers and flashlights."

I could see how that would work. A laser pointer couldn't even be felt, but I had seen the ones on the internet that would pop balloons after a second or two. Stop all of that energy at one spot and release a few hours' worth all in one swell foop and the energy it focused in such a short time and space would be very bad. I closed the door.

I walked over to the couch and flopped into it, my mind spinning for other reasons now. According to the science behind the magic, I was completely cut off from the outside world. I didn't even want to think about the sudden spike in radio my cell phone was gonna create at that point in time. Let's see... No power for cooking or keeping anything in the fridge cold, so I should see to that in short order. No water for showers. Or for drinking. In fact, I'd run out of food soon. In fact, I'd run out of air eventually!

"Nonono, you'll be fine on that," the cat hurried to assure me. "Go look in the kitchen."

Still shaking from the fear my revelation gave me, I got up and walked to the kitchen. There was a complex device sitting on my counter that looked like a cross between a microwave and a coffee machine. "What is it?"

"It's made for this sort of thing. It keeps the air clean and provides food and water. Nothing fancy though. I think Harv gave you some help with that."

"I wouldn't be able to use this to shower though."

"I'll just lick you clean."

I blinked, wary of the idea for two reasons. "You didn't bounce the bed or move anything else. I can feel you, but you don't have any effect on anything else in the room. How can you have any effect on the dirt on my body?"

He chuckled again. "How can I pass through your clothing, yet still sit on the bed and not fall through the floor? How could I lick your tears off your cheeks? If you were a mage, you'd have to learn those things. But you're a sorcerer. You just need to know it works, and know that because you know, you can do much more than a mage or warlock can. Mages can only make things work that they can figure out. A warlock can only do whatever power was given to them and only if they happen to figure it out also. You will be able to do so much more."

He reared up and put his paws on my shoulders. I almost thought I could feel a little pressure from it, though I could still only see a smoky shadow. "As for your second concern, don't worry, I guarantee you'll enjoy it."

I gave a little shiver. It was a dual shiver though. Part of it was because his voice was so sensual that it gave me a tingle of enjoyment just hearing it. The other was a bit of a squick because his voice was still male and the fact that I got a shiver of pleasure from it rang alarms in the society-trained parts of my mind.

He stayed with his paws on my shoulders though. "You'll never look at me and find me appealing like a human," he said. "You'll never get aroused by the fact that I'm a beautiful woman, or have a lovely butt or breasts. You'll still be quite wired in your normal way and still like porn and panties."

He leaned closer to me and murmured in my ear. "You'll be aroused because you know what I will give you. You will know that it is good, and that we will be together, and you will enjoy it no matter what. You won't change what your original programming says you do like. You will simply be able to escape from what society says you shouldn't like."

I closed my eyes and thought on that. I could deal with that idea, maybe. It wouldn't be quick to overcome the way my brain worked, but I wanted to do right. She... He... told me of how it was abused in the past. He was a person. I wouldn't rescind that. It was bound to me for better or for worse. I couldn't stop that. Heaven knew I needed some consoling myself. I would do what I could, and things could be better for both of us.

"Thank you for realizing what my link means in your terms. Seeing it as loving you will help you give back to me. The most power comes from us sharing together," he whispered. He took his paws off my shoulders. I still couldn't feel him much out here, but I could tell he had. I opened my eyes and looked down to see his smoky form sitting there.

"You should get some food and a drink of water, then come back to the bedroom and I'll groom you properly," he said.

I nodded. That sounded like a good first step. I walked over to the strange device and looked at it. Honestly, it made no sense to me. I opened the door on it and it promptly made even less sense. There was a coiled up tube inside that really wasn't a tube, as it wasn't hollow. More like a solid piece of surgical tubing. There was a small lever beside where it came out of the device as well. And there was a small thing that looked like a glass plate with a tiny white pill on it in the precise center.

"Suck on the rubber thing for water. The pill is a meal. Best to swallow it whole. It's not very appetizing otherwise. Just pop the pill in your mouth and suck to get some water to swallow it," the cat told me.

The rubber piece was not even a tube, but I was willing to ignore oddities so far. I tested it, placing it in my mouth and sucking lightly. Sure enough, it was like a straw and offered no resistance to me drawing water out of it. Carefully I plucked the pill off the plate and sniffed it. No scent whatsoever. It was a tiny little thing. This was a meal?

"Get a bowl and reconstitute that one if you want to see." I was confused for a moment. "Just put it in a bowl and then put a little water on it using the lever and the tube," he clarified.

I couldn't resist the urge to do so, so I got a bowl and dropped the pill into it. Bringing it back, I was shocked to note that despite the fact I had taken the tiny pill off the plate, there was still one there. Well, if that pill was food, then I guess there had to be more than one. I grabbed the tube and held the end near the pill, then worked the lever slowly. The cat said there was enough water after just a few drops.

I set the odd hose back down and peered at the wet pill curiously. Seconds ticked by with no change whatsoever. Then suddenly a small bubble appeared in the pill as something burst from it and the bowl promptly filled with a pudding-like brown goo. I stared.

I picked up the bowl and it was definitely heavier. A quick prod confirmed the goo was of a chocolate pudding consistency. I had no idea how all of that came out of that tiny pill and a few drops of water. It looked like about enough to be easily eaten in its entirety and be a good enough meal. A sniff revealed it to not have much scent, though it did smell quite edible. A quick lick of my finger revealed it to not have much taste either, though it was mildly sweet. I could see why just popping the pill would work and be preferable in many cases. It didn't look or really taste at all appetizing.

I wondered how I could clean it up without just eating it. "It will fade in about 15 minutes," the cat said. "Some wizards still like the idea of swallowing food, but cleaning things would be a pain, so it's self-cleaning unless you eat it."

I was curious enough to simply set the dish aside and see what happened to it. In the meantime, I picked up the other pill, noticing that literally even as I picked it up, another was on the plate. With a bit of misgiving, I put the pill in my mouth and with a small sip of water, swallowed it. I braced myself for the worst, but though the feeling of the tiny thing expanding to a full bowl of food inside my stomach was horrendously odd, it wasn't actually bad. Definitely would be a bad idea to swallow too many pills at once.

Then I realized that using the restroom was going to be a challenge, with no way to flush it. "No problem there," he told me. "I just get rid of it from inside you with my healing." I was confused about this. "Well, consider if you had an infection," he explained. "I'd have to get the bacteria out of you, so I just vanish them. I can vanish anything inside you, though your liver is important. But toxins, bullets, knives, etc are just fine to get rid of. So is waste."

I blinked. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Well, that was handy enough. "Wait... if you can just vanish things from me, why would you need to lick me clean? And why was I still covered in all my blood after you ripped my throat out? And how did I get enough blood back into me to not die from blood loss?"

"Thinking about trying to become a mage now?" he asked slyly, teasing a little. "Told you before, best not to ask, because you don't need to know. It gets really complicated. Anyway, if I just instantly make you clean, I'd never get to lick you all over."

Okay, I could deal with that. Long story short, though, it didn't take more than a quick nudge of a nose against my belly when I was in the bedroom to ease the pressure in my guts and bladder, so I was willing to accept it as workable.

"Now, get comfortable on the bed," she said, her voice female again. Possibly for my mental comfort. "You need a good grooming."

I ended up on my tummy to start. I admit, I was nervous. In her humanoid form her head was about the same size as mine, but the feline features gave her much more tongue than a human. Also the idea of being licked all over to be cleaned was... Well, it would definitely be a new experience. I only had to remind myself once on the idea of "person", which quite pleased her.

"You don't need to be nervous," she purred in my ear. "I'll try not to tickle, and if you get upset, I'll stop."

She didn't start by licking me though. She started by simply rubbing my feet and then up my legs. She had a magic touch. I mean, it was obvious that I was tense, but I was swiftly calming down.

I jumped a little when another lynx-sized feral copy of her started kneading my back with forepaws, but it was just because I wasn't expecting it. When a third joined in, I simply sighed happily, finding it easy to ignore the fact that my lower back and waist was being kneaded by cat paws the size of my head.

I had pampered my cat when I was younger, even giving her massages around her shoulders. I remembered how much she liked that. Now I was being pampered in return by three - and soon four - felines. With this delightful treatment, I wasn't even upset when she pulled my legs apart enough to be able to rub my inner thighs and ass.

I was just kinda melted into a relaxed goo (at least it seemed that way to me) when the licking started. It was a head ducked between two paws that were on my shoulder and middle back. The soft, warm lick just felt so natural and friendly that I couldn't help but enjoy it. Soon three more tongues joined in and I was in bliss.

I was glad she didn't have as rough a tongue as real cats. They were as soft and velvety as could be, warm to start and leaving just a tiny bit of damp behind to give a comfortable chill. Paws pushed and tugged on occasion to move my arms and legs for easier access and all in all it was delightful. I tensed up a little as one of the paths a set of licks was taking reached the sensitive cleft of my bottom, but was quickly distracted before that by a tongue curling lightly around the side of my neck. When the other one below did reach there, it felt surprisingly better than I expected.

When my entire back had been groomed, one big cat hooked its paws across me while another burrowed beneath me with a nose and they had me flipped over with minimal effort on my part. I started to get a blush and was about to cover myself when I realized I was half-aroused from the pleasantness so far, but one hand was taken lightly in her own hand and the other was blocked by the neck of a cat that started to lick my tummy quite nicely.

"Shhh, it's okay," she murmured near my ear. "It flatters me. Enjoy the grooming, I won't go further today than you are willing and comfortable with."

She took my hand and placed it on her waist as she leaned down to join the tongues already drawing across my skin. More cats began to arrive and if I could see myself in the mirror, it probably looked like a carcass surrounded by a huge pride of felines. But there was no eating going on here, only the caress of tongues on my bare skin and the soft tickle of whiskers and some fur as they craned to get further along me.

The sheer deluge of sensation from all of the licking made it seem quite natural that my now-solid arousal was not left untouched. The distraction of all the warmth and affection left me caught unaware as a delightful orgasm snuck up on me. By the time I realized I was about to cum, it was too late, and far too many cats around me anyway to get away from it.

My body language must have belied my peak before it happened because I vaguely felt a massive maw closed gently around my flesh just before I exploded. A tiny squeak of pleasure escaped my lips as the cat suckled on me, keeping the result from making a mess on my freshly-groomed belly. My hands found fur to clench against no matter where I put them and my touches elicited purrs from the cats they graced.

My peak seemed like it would last forever, but I finally began to come down from my intense high, panting deeply and feeling light-headed and tingly all over. One by one they stopped licking, some taking a chance to rub their cheeks against where they had been licking before they vanished. Soon only the humanoid copy of her and the massive feline who still held me in its muzzle were the only two I was left aware of.

I pulled my legs up a little, discovering that the big cat down there was laying between them, so I rubbed its sides with my legs. It began to purr and finally let my spent flesh fall from its mouth before giving me a delightful lick from my ass, right across my balls, up my cock, and finally to my tummy. The shiver that went from my toes to my nose was intense. Then that cat vanished and the one humanoid feline curled up against my side cozily.

"I understand most humans like to bathe once a day usually, but I think I may be able to encourage you to try more often while we are here," she said mischievously. "Oh, not that you are stinky or anything," she said with mock chagrin, "but it's probably a good idea to empty out that pipe more often."

I simply laid there with a befuddled grin on my face. Now, don't get me wrong, but I was a young adult male. Prime of my life and all of that. While the whole situation still weirded me out a little if I could wrap my mind around anything right now, I could probably deal with the unexpected bonus of what basically translated as a mind-blowing full-body orgasm.

She started to purr softly and I came to my senses enough to slip my arm around her. She gave my nose a small lick. "You like me like this. We need to stretch your boundaries a little at a time. Hold me like this..." Her whole body changed in my grasp, a normal panther-sized massive cat in my arms.

I blinked at the ghostly form and almost began to inadvertently pull away, but she flopped a paw over me and tugged me close with a strength I couldn't hope to match. I tensed up a little, but her tongue slipped up the side of my neck. "You were the one who said I'm forced to love you. I hope you can love all of me in return, not just some of me."

My mind flopped back and forth between knowing that I wanted to treat her well, thinking that this was the form of a massive animal, and a primal fear vying for attention with the observation that I was held in the clutches of a deadly predator. She squeezed me against her and the power behind her purr was intense. I sunk my fingers into her fur, and with some deep breaths I managed to calm down and simply enjoy.

I realized that I barely caught the musky and heady scent of her feline body now. It was as ghostly as she was to my vision, but it was progress. I felt a hand on my shoulder from the other side and I glanced up to see a face there now too.

"Roll over. I know this is a lot for you at once." I rolled carefully at her direction as the panther subtly grew even larger, one foreleg forming a plush pillow for my head as I rolled onto my side with my back to it. The humanoid version of her laid down in front of me and scooted her back against my front, putting me into a deliciously-enticing position spooned around her.

The panther behind me curled its haunches up closer to spoon me as well, its upper forepaw curling down over her waist and pulling her more tightly against my front. I was sandwiched between the two intensely-warm bodies and more comfortable than I had been in years.

"While we are in the time bubble, we will work on feline time. We sleep when we want to in short naps, we wake up and do stuff. We eat when our bellies call for food," the cat behind me said. "Now it is time for a nice nap."

I had to admit, after the recent events, I was willing to do this. It would take some work still, but I thought I was making progress.

"You are," the cat said. "I'm very proud of you."

I felt a warm flush of satisfaction. Then I realized something. "What is your name?" I asked.

"I don't really have one," she murmured. "Some masters have demanded I stay one gender or another and have given me names that fit that gender, but doing so is very uncomfortable for me. I was unbound in form before, and so changing forms works best for me. So I really normally am just called Cat. Or sometimes a name for each major form or for each gender. But then masters often treat me differently between them. I am me no matter what my form is and I want to be treated the same and do the same things in all of them."

I thought for a moment. "I am not good with names. I will think on it, but until then, I will call you Cat as you desire." Then I gave her a hug of my own, and got a squeeze from the panther pulling her against me again in return. "I'll do everything I can to treat you the same regardless of your form." I nodded gently against the back of her head. "Whatever form you are in will get the same as any other. It might take me some time to get used to, but that will be my goal."

Both sides of the cat sandwich I was contained in began to purr softly. "I hope so," panther Cat said. "Now, nap, silly."

I smiled fondly and relaxed in the comforting vibrations of the two purring bodies. It didn't take long for a soothing sleep to find me.

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