New Endings, Old Beginnings

Nuria Blanchette thought she was just your average high-school girl, but the day that one of her three cats started talking to her was to change that forever. Is she really the heiress to some feline land, as the cats so quickly suggest? Or, as he peers tell her, is she insane?

Chapter One

She stands out in the rain, savouring each drop of the world's pain. How long has it been, since she last allowed herself this luxury? This luxury of stepping out of herself, and seeing the world in a whole new light. That tree that she always walked by, with the magic of the rain she saw for the first time it's inner life, the struggles it faced; many years before her own birth.

And who is she but a simple schoolgirl? One with three cats and a tendency to favour animals as more human than her own race, but no doubt a simple schoolgirl. Auburn hair that she thinks of nothing more creative than a pony tail to do with and plain, brown eyes. Only a simple schoolgirl, nothing less, nothing more. She didn't particullarly like her name, Nuria Blanchette, but that was what her parents had labeled her with and for all the baby names in the world, Nuria could not think of being able to to give any of them to herself. She was Nuria Blanchette, a simple schoolgirl.

She closes her eyes now, the water running down her face and body, the tears of the world ignored until they did not come. How she wishes she could have stayed that simple schoolgirl, all those years ago. Now she is alienated in the world she was born in, how she wishes nothing had changed; and yet, even as she wishes this, she wishes that every has changed as well.

----

It had been a simple enough morning, in Nuria's opinion. She had risen at around some ungodly hour or another to begin preparations for her routine torture at the uneducation center. That was normal, as was the way her three cats crowded around her in the bathroom as she did her morning ritual of brushing her teeth, washing her face, brushing her hair and using the latrine. It was even normal the way Emblem, her oldest and furriest cat with a coat of gleaming, unbroken white, sat in the doorway -- his cobalt eyes as commanding as they always were. She laughed, patting him on the head. "Awaiting orders, General Emblem!" She said with a mock-military salute. He simply yawned, letting her catch a good whiff of his fishy breath, and padded down the stairs as if to say "Breakfast in the Barracks. Later your mission will be given to you."

She followed him, her middle cat, Honor (Better known as Lily), racing her. Lily's short, spotted coat rarely shed; at least, anywhere Nuria could see it. Her third and youngest cat, Arragonite, was waiting for all of them in the kitchen, lounging in the sunspots that were splayed across the coat was a soft, silvery gray -- nothing like the orangey stone for which he had been named for. She simply smiled at him, grabbing some things for a lunch as well as an on-the-go breakfast and darting out the door.

Her time spent at the uneducation center, better known as 'school', was always a waste of the best part of the day. But, it was the only part of the day where she had any social interaction with 'peers', and so the state, as well as her parents, mandated that she attend. However, she did not favour the smaller mindsets of those who society has deemed her equal, at times she had entertained notions of becoming a wolf and fighting for dominance, becoming a fish and swimming freely, or even becoming a bird and flying away. When she shared these ideas with her friends, the guidance counselors and a peer mentor or two, all they had done was suggest that she go for some extensive pyschiatric therapy.

Only a girl of about fourteen and still believing that other could help, and that perhaps this was simply something wrong with the wires in her mind, Nuria had complied. At first, that is. The desire to be someone other than herself, other than human, had grown stronger -- no matter what they had done. Eventually she had stopped going, stopped confiding in anyone other than Emblem, Honor and Arragonite in their evening 'chats', one-sided as they were.

Later she had returned home, and that was when it happened. Staring in despondent silence at the wall, Emblem nuzzled against her. "Nuria. Mistress Nuria Blanchette. Bored beyond belief, lost in her grief," He sing-songed, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin, knocking the chair over that she had been sitting on. Rightsiding it, she blinked at the white cat in disbelief.

"Y-You can speak!?" She gasped, astonished.

Emblem simply licked at his paw, as though this were an everyday occurance and not something to make such a fuss out of. "Everything can. Until now, our mistress has been deaf to our voices."

"Your mistress?"

A bemused look flashed across the feline's face. "A woman in this world using the title of Nuria Blanchette," He clarified.

She paled, then reddened considerably as a blush took it's place on her cheeks. With a shaking hand, she pointed to herself. "M-Me?"

Arragonite, who had entered the room, nodded. "There's no other Nuria Blanchette worth wasting our time with. Emil, are you sure that this female is really the one we seek?"

Emblem, Emil, dipped his fluffy white head in confirmation. "This is our mistress, sure as Day's Wings, I'll bet my coat on it."

"Your mistress?" Nuria reitterated, dumbfounded. Not only could these cats speak, but it seemed as though she had let them in on too many private aspects of her life; disregarding them as animals that would never be able to tell a soul, nor would they be able to remember their confidences. Now... She felt uneasy at the thought.

"We have reason to believe," Emblem said, taking on the leadership role she had so many time imagined him in, "That you are of an importance to our homeland. For all the romanticist's gossip, you might even be the heir to the thrown; in our world, at least."