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🕑 Added 2023-12-13 01:34:44 +0000 UTC“Well, the fourth path has to be this,” Tzi said aloud, standing in the middle of the crossroads some minutes later. While she'd been inside the inn, the sky had shifted, and the titanic blue planet now filled most of it, rings and all. The overall level of light seemed brighter, and bluer—but not by much in either case. Was that going to be how day and night worked here? She couldn't wait to get home, murdering former master and all.
With a sigh, she stepped off the path between the only two blondewood trunks which didn't have a trail between them, and life immediately got more difficult. Pushing through the ferns and thick grass was a petty sort of annoyance, though, so she wasn't about to kick up a fuss.
Tzi made extremely slow progress, and not just because of having to navigate around the vegetation. The ground was hilly and liberally speckled with both thick bushes and the trunks of cinnamon stick trees—a designation which annoyed her even further now, as she had recalled reading that yes, cinnamon did come from trees and it wasn't these. All of this made for a difficult hike, especially for someone unaccustomed to wilderness hiking. Tzi also kept her wand out and her eyes constantly moving, mindful of vruphs and whatever jaggabans were. This forced her to be keenly aware of how low the visibility was in this forest. Especially with the dense underbrush; she could've passed close enough to a vruph to pat it and never seen the thing if it was crouched amid the bushes. Hopefully the predators in this world were like those in her own, as far as not generally wanting to hassle with large humanoids. Maybe being bigger than a Mirbal would help her, here.
The basket certainly didn't help. It was unwieldy and kept getting snagged on what seemed like every single bush. Tzi wasn't sure whether this trip would be easier or harder going back the other way; a loaded basket would be too heavy to be snared so easily, but would obviously be more effort to carry. Especially over terrain that forced her to watch her footsteps so carefully...
She turned, periodically, to look back the way she had come and make sure she was going the right way. The innkeeper had said to go straight ahead from the crossroads, and that she would reach her destination before getting out of sight of the four great blondewoods. That, she quickly discovered, was bunk; she was out of sight of them within ten meters in this verdant mess. Their towering blue canopy, however, was periodically visible through gaps in the red cinnamon foliage, and she used that to stay oriented whenever she could spot it.
Due to the thick growth and deep shadows of the forest, Tzi arrived at her destination well before realizing she had. She began to notice heavy vines climbing the trunks of some of the cinnamon stick trees as she passed, and soon saw them hanging from the tufts high overhead. The woods thickened progressively, trees growing closer together, and she started to observe some of these vines trailing between the crowns of different trees. Only when she first spied one of these trailing lower to the ground, almost within reach, did she realize this was what she'd been sent after. This particular vine was laden with a cluster of bulbous red fruit.
Tzi approached this cautiously, raising her wand to cast a quick Divination.
“Sazja vines!” her Grimoire reported seconds later. “These would be the fruits we were sent to collect, master!”
“Hmmm.” Tzi craned her head back, staring up at the vines, then slowly turned to look deeper into the forest, where more clusters of fruit began to appear in the near distance. “What are the chances of some of them being...closer to the ground?”
“Slim, master; any windfalls were probably eaten quickly by animals or Mirbals. I think I understand why we didn't see any on the vines until traveling a distance from the path.”
She sighed, turning back to the first bunch she'd found to study it more closely. Though situated in large clusters very like bananas, the individual sazja fruits seemed to be shaped and sized roughly like eggplants, albeit bright red in color with patterns of white stripes. And they grew well out of her arms' reach from the ground.
Tzi turned and crept carefully through the woods, seeking any more convenient bunches, though the Grimoire was probably right; the low-hanging fruits surely went first. Well, this made a certain amount of sense. After her interactions with that innkeeper, she'd been suspicious that he would give her a task so apparently easy.
She paused, catching sight of something else, something she had not been looking for, and headed toward it.
Glimpsed through the cinnamon stick trunks, it was just an unusually regular shape in a dark color that stood out from the surrounding gloom. As she approached, the shape resolved itself into an enormous rectangular tablet of basalt, standing upright in the middle of the woods. The thing stood well more than twice her height, and broad enough that if she pressed herself against it and spread her arms, her fingertips would barely reach over the sides. The edges and its inlaid carvings were crisp and precise, suggesting it had not been here long enough to erode, and yet it was partly covered with moss, both hanging and climbing, and had sazja vines both clambering up it from below and entangled around its top. There was no apparent way for such a thing to be transported here; it wouldn't fit between any of the nearby trees, and the ground showed no signs of recent activity. But if it had stood here long enough for the forest to grow around it, there was no accounting for its pristine condition under all the overgrowth.
“...magic,” she whispered. “That's the only explanation.”
“It seems the most likely,” her Grimoire agreed more cautiously.
“What's it doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Monuments are supposed to be seen. Why not put it near the path?”
“Perhaps this one, specifically, is not meant to be seen. At least, not by most passersby. Master, can you uncover that symbol, there, at roughly your head height?”
The markings on the tablet were mostly obscured by moss and hanging vines; putting away her wand, Tzi grabbed one of the latter and began tugging away at it. They were well entangled and didn't want to budge. Growling, she dropped the basket and seized it with both hands, digging her heels in and hauling backward with all the strength she could muster.
Something came loose in the tangle and Tzi went tumbling backward with a squawk, holding a length of suddenly loosened vine. She then frantically threw her arms over her head as more tendrils unraveled from above, tumbling to the ground, accompanied by heavy thumps.
Peeking out from between her forearms once the noise subsided, she found two large bunches of sazja fruit on the ground nearby, amid piles of coiled vine on which they'd grown. Between them, more than enough for fill her basket.
“Well,” she grunted, getting up and dusting herself off, “that's one problem sorted.”
Tzi left the fruits alone for the moment, though, returning her attention to the tablet. She had succeeded in baring a swath of the carvings after all. Its upper half was engraved with a depiction of the great ringed planet and several surrounding circles that were probably its orbiting moons; the meaning of it was clear even with half the design still buried by trailing sazja tendrils which extended from the nearby trees to the top of the monument.
Lower down, though, conveniently at the height of her face, a wide circular depression had been set into the stone, and in the middle of that, a symbol deeply carved, its grooves glinting in the dim light. Tzi stepped closer, peering carefully, and realized it was somehow full of glass or crystal. It did not glow, but now that she was aware of it, she felt the faint tingle of enchantment present.
“I thought so!” her Grimoire said excitedly. “Master, that's the sigil for–”
“Divination,” she finished, drawing her wand. “Believe me, I know. I've been seeing it in my head a lot today.”
“It's a message,” the book continued. “A message left in such a way that only a wizard could read it. I believe I understand why this was hidden away from the path, master; primitives like the Mirbals we have encountered so far would probably try to chip the crystal out of this carving. Depending on what enchantments it holds, they could either ruin it or severely injure themselves in the process.”
“Message received,” she said, taking aim with her wand and casting the spell indicated.
This time it went differently; she nearly aborted it in panic. When she visualized the sigil and its accompanying sensations, the visualization took on a life of its own, seeming to glow brightly inside her own mind and convey a sense of indefinable pressure. It passed before she could react, though, leaving her standing with her wand half-lowered, blinking uncertainly.
The Grimoire rose and opened to a new page, thick with text. “We were right, master! It's a missive left by another wizard!”
She took the book in her free hand, frowning as she studied the words that had appeared in (disturbingly) her own handwriting.
“Three races you will find upon the moons of Dysland.
“First, the Syrr, once lords and masters of these worlds. They are gone, for which you should be grateful, Traveler, both because they have left behind the powers and knowledge that draw us to this place, and because they were in their day a force with which we should not wish to contend.
“Second, the Mirbals, once the servants of the Syrr, and now the heirs of these moons. They are as many tribes as there are lands they inhabit, some friendlier than others to visitors. Though they may seem primitive, pay heed to them, and make friends and allies among them where you may, if you would tread the moons for long. These lands belong to the Mirbals, now, and their aid is above value.
“Third, the Travelers, the likes of you and me. We come from a distant world, and only those of us well-versed in magic will find paths to the moons of Dysland. Few are our kind here, and that is for the best. If you survive the wonders and perils of this place, knowledge and great power is your reward. Never mistake that survival for a certainty, whatever challenges you mastered on our world.
“Be a good neighbor, Traveler. Be good to the Mirbals you meet, and leave behind records for those who come after you. These moons are no place to journey alone and unprepared.”
“Don't I know it,” Tzi whispered, raising her eyes from the page to stare blankly into the trees, her mind churning.
“Dysland,” the Grimoire said aloud. “Oh...I get it.”
She frowned, returning her gaze to the book. “You get it? Then you're doing better than I am. What's to get?”
“That is a gas giant, master. It's essentially a titanic ball of vapor, with no solid ground, no land. Dys-land. It's actually sort of clever.”
“Huh,” she grunted. “Then what we're standing on is... What'd that old fart say? Xyzz?”
“More important, master, there was more than a message recorded in that stone!” It turned a page, revealing a ritual circle diagram, and a list of components and instructions—an arrangement with which she was well familiar from her apprenticeship. “The Ritual of Mirbal Speech! Once you have performed this, you will be able to communicate easily with any Mirbals we encounter, no matter which of their languages they speak! I presume, if the race is scattered across multiple moons, they must have several different tongues.”
“Now that is something!” Tzi said, excitement rising in her—and, for what felt like the first time in ages, hope. “Between this and Conjuration, we're finally getting somewhere! Ah, speaking of...” With a little regret, she released the Grimoire to shut itself and float back to its pouch, and bent to retrieve the basket and resume the task for which she'd come out here. First fruit, then ritual components, then progress.
She picked up one of the bunches, grunting at its weight, and set it in the basket, then immediately decided that wasn't going to work. It fit, but just barely, and trailed awkwardly over the side. That would be a nightmare to haul back to the inn, and anyway, the slightly curved shape of the bunch meant most of the interior space of the basket was unoccupied.
Tzi carefully selected a clear-ish spot in the underbrush, set the basket next to her and pulled the bunch into her lap, and began pulling off each sazja fruit and setting them inside—carefully, as she wasn't sure how easily they bruised. This wasn't hard—the stems weren't very tough—but it was time-consuming and meticulous, and after five minutes she called a break. Not out of dislike for the work; the subtle smell of the fruits was reminding her that while she was much less hungry than before, a Mirbal-sized portion of trail mix hadn't done more than take the edge off.
Sazja fruits, it turned out, were remarkably easy to eat. Each split neatly into wedges like an orange when pulled at, the white stripes marking seams where they broke. Their red outer covering was a thin skin which, as she discovered upon biting into it, was not edible. It peeled easily away from the fruit, however. The pink flesh within was dense and soft, very like banana in texture, but with a mild, tangy flavor that was extremely pleasant.
Tzi ate one; they were decently big things, and while she could probably have scarfed down another, the study of magic required self-discipline. Over-eating caused the mind and body to be sluggish and brought on sleep, and she couldn't afford to impose any weaknesses on herself.
“What I could really use is a backpack or something,” she muttered after wiping her hands off on the vanilla grass. “Be nice to take some of these along for myself...”
“After this, master, you will be able to Conjure more!”
“Yeah, but like you said, I don't wanna get in the habit of eating Conjured stuff if there's anything better to be had. Well, I guess I know where they are now, after all. How much longer will these be in season?”
“It appears to be the very beginning of their ripe season, master, so weeks more at least. Of more immediate concern than the passing of the seasons is competition. Such easy-to-eat fruit must be popular with animals and Mirbals alike. I think it odd, in fact, that we have not encountered anything else here except the rodents and songbirds in the trees.”
“Maybe they're spooked by seeing a...Traveler.” Tzi sighed and resumed loading the basket. “Well, hopefully I can snag a few more meals here while they're fresh... And who knows, by then maybe I'll have expanded my options somewhat.”
“I'm sure you will have, master!”
Tzi worked in silence, not replying with the obvious observation. She had better have more options by then. If she was still scraping by with fruit and Conjured kibble in a few weeks, she was not going to make it in the long term. Not if this place was as dangerous as the Traveler who left the monument implied.
***
Grunting, Tzi hoisted the basket onto the bar more roughly than was necessary, but by that point she felt entitled. In the end, she had ended up shucking the entire bunch of sazja fruits and about half the second into it, piling the basket as high as she could without making an unstable load. Her reasoning was that the less excuse the stingy innkeeper had to claim she hadn't fulfilled the job, the better; Tzi would not have put it past him to renege on the deal if he found the slightest fault with her offering. She had immediately begun to regret that decision upon picking up the basket, however, and by the time she'd made it back (after numerous stops to rest her arms, flex her aching spine and cast a small Healing), she had the feeling she had well and truly outsmarted herself.
To add insult to injury, he didn't even look.
“Nice,” the innkeeper said from beneath his hat. He was still slouched in the recliner in the exact same position, not appearing to have moved an inch the whole time she was gone. “A good haul. T'be honest, I expected you to just chuck one bunch in there and make do with that.”
“Excuse me, but some of us are conscientious about our work,” Tzi said stiffly, surreptitiously knuckling her spine. “Also, that made the load awkward.”
“If you do good work like that, I may have more for you in the future,” he replied in his languid monotone, as if chatting about the weather. “Slack off on me once, though, and that's that. Your payment's right here, along with a little extra for making more of an effort than I expected.”
She had, of course, noticed the bundle immediately; it was the only thing different in the whole place when she returned to the inn. On the bar next to his head sat a leather drawstring bag atop a thick book.
Tzi picked up the bag and opened it, peering critically within. Candles, chalk, piece of quartz, another small pouch that was probably the bone/ash mixture... No athame or anything, she would have to find something to mark the candles herself. Oh, well, twig would do in a pinch. Also, she realized after recalling her dilemma back at the sazja grove, the bag itself would be useful for carrying things after this. Setting that aside for the moment, she picked up the book, and wrinkled her nose.
“Principles of Architecture: a Survey? Well, I guess it's in a language I know, so...thanks for that. I don't see the point, though.”
“Master!” Her Grimoire shot upward from its pouch in such an excited hurry it grazed her elbow in the process. “This is perfect—we couldn't ask for anything better!”
“Huh?”
“I see I'm dealing with a real mind,here,” the innkeeper grunted, and Tzi forcibly repressed the urge to club him with Principles of Architecture: a Survey.
“Once you perform the ritual,” the Grimoire chattered on, “you will be able to create physical objects, remember? Well, one of the functions of Divination is in expanding my component texts! If you Divine that book, I will have full access to its contents, and you can then Conjure—”
“Entire buildings?” Tzi said, catching the Grimoire's excitement.
“When you're an archmage, maybe,”said the innkeeper, still without looking up. “If by some miracle you live that long. Stick to your original plan: focus on surviving, for now.”
“It is not quite that simple, master, but with a little practice you can chain Conjuration casts and create linked objects. With a solid grounding in architecture, this will enable you to construct buildings! Not all at once—it will inevitably be a somewhat laborious task. But once the effort is made, you will at least have permanent shelter! And potentially quite comfortable shelter, at that.”
“I see,” she said, running her thumbs along the cover of the architecture book. “Then...that really is excellent. Exactly what I didn't realize I needed. Thank you,” she added, turning to the innkeeper and forcing a polite tone.
His shoulders twitched in what might almost have been a shrug. “Wasn't much of a job, but you still exceeded expectations. I pay fairly in all transactions. I catch you saying otherwise, to anyone,and we will have a problem.”
“All right, then!” she said, carefully moving the bag on top of the book and holding both up against her chest. “Next I'll need a pace with a flat surface where I won't be disturbed. Can I borrow the kitchen for—”
“Whoah, no, you don't,” he snorted. “No ritual casting on the premises.”
Tzi stared at him. “But... It's just a—”
“No. If you're an apprentice, or ever were, you know better. Nobody who knows what's what is gonna let you cast complex rituals in their place. Make a mess of your own home.”
“I don't have a home!” she shouted. “My home is in another galaxy! That's the point of all this!”
“I'm so glad we met,” he said sourly. “Before today, I almost never got screamed at about stuff that's not my problem.”
“I AM NOT SCREA—” Tzi cut herself off just before her voice cracked, and deliberately breathed in and out a few times, as slowly as she could manage. “Look... I can't just do this in the middle of the forest. I need a flat place to inscribe a circle, on a surface that will take chalk lines, and some way to ensure I won't be interrupted. If I waste these components on a botched casting, where am I going to get more? I've got a funny feeling you aren't going to make it any easier.”
“Being talked at with a semblance of calm about stuff that's not my problem isn't much better. Magic is earned, kid. I've just handed you the means to spit in the face of the conservation of matter and energy, one of the most fundamental laws of the universe. Master that and it will change every single little thing about your life here, guarantee the difference between immediate survival and being vruph chow. And you wanna give me lip because I'm not gonna hold your hand the whole way through it? Magic's not supposed to be easy to acquire; if you weren't so fixed on feeling like a victim, you'd realize this is a lot easier than it'd be if you were learning it from your own master. You're supposed to put in an effort, squirt. People who expect to have whatever they want just handed to them are the absolute last people who need to be walking around able to alter reality with their thoughts.”
Tzi stared at him in silence. For all she could tell, he might have fallen asleep the instant he stopped talking. Her Grimoire hovered near her shoulder, its embossed face making a worried expression.
“Thank you,” she said finally, “for all your help.”
She was almost to the door when he spoke again behind her. “Don't mention it. You want a place you won't be disturbed, animals and most Mirbals stay away from Syrr ruins. Any except Khetri, really.”
Tzi stopped, closed her eyes, and replied in a defeated tone. “Whatis a Khetri.”
“Mirbals who don't stay away from Syrr ruins, try to keep up. And the Khetri haven't discovered the landing pad.”
She opened her eyes and rolled them. “And if I ask what the landing pad is, are you just going to lecture me about how stupid I am?”
“Maybe. Are you asking?”
Tzi gritted her teeth and adjusted the book and bag to the crook of one arm so she could open the door. Hand on the latch, she paused.
“...wait. That platform, in the valley up in the mountains, the old crater? Is that it?”
“It's a pad, and I'm betting you landed there. Congratulations on displaying a rudimentary ability to reason.”
“I have to walk all the way back up—” she started to whine, but cut herself off again.
“Well,” he drawled, “you don't learn quick, but you do learn eventually. I'll give you that much.”
Grinding her teeth, she opened the door, stepped outside, and took a petty little satisfaction in slamming it behind her.
***
The ritual turned out to be the easy part.
Dysland had apparently set at some point during her adventures; by the time she emerged from the forest again, with the steep hill rising before her, its rings were peeking above the horizon once more. In a different direction, she observed. Tzi's education had, of course, included astronomy, but at a rudimentary level which was little beyond an inventory of the planets and constellations visible from her own world. Information that was useless, here, and she had no grasp of the mechanics or math that would explain this moon's movements.
Once back into the quiet of the valley, she actually began to relax a little; the knowledge that nobody and nothing came here helped, now that she was so informed. That calm, though, was soon to be tested.
A quick look at the “landing pad” showed that wasn't going to work for a ritual surface; quite apart from the fact that it was clearly magical, and therefore certain to mess up her casting, it was marked by deep grooves that would make it impossible to draw an uninterrupted circle. Eventually, after a long and increasingly tedious survey of the rim of the crater—she'd only been over less than a quarter of it before—she came across a workable spot. The stone surface was half-covered in dirt which she had to laboriously clear off without the benefit of tools except for a scavenged cinnamon stick bough. It was flat, though...well, flat enough. And positioned as it was against the outer wall of the crater, it was shielded by an overhang of stone which seemed to function almost like a roof.
After finally getting the space clear enough to suit, she was filthy, sweaty, and exhausted, and would have killed for a hot bath. That, obviously, wasn't in the cards.
It took another hour of meditation to ease her mind into a state calm enough for ritual magic. At least the light never diminished; apparently that just wasn't going to happen here. Dysland itself climbed through the sky, casting a bright glow, but even in its absence there was light reflected from other moons, of which many passed overhead. How many moons could this planet possibly have? Tzi was too tired to care, except in the abstract.
After all that, the ritual itself was almost anticlimactic. She had done plenty of ritual casting; it was only hard when creating complex effects, like her Grimoire. Simply learning a new spell was little more than calling up power, and creating a mental state connected to the sigil so that in the future, she could visualize its sigil again, accompanied by a rush of associated sensations and a rush of magic, and cast it.
The sensory reminders were the individual part of a spell, unique to each wizard, and to an extent dependent upon the circumstances of the casting. Tzi's learning of Conjuration came after her day on Xyzz, and the spell in her mind was forever imbued with the almost-tangy smoothness of sazja fruit, a pale blue light beamed by Dysland, by the not-unpleasant burn of well-used muscles, by gentle wind through alien grass. Even if—when, she insisted to herself, even when—she got home, every time she used the Conjuration spell for the rest of her life, those reminders would accompany it. Dysland had already made its mark on her.
Half an hour later, the initial exhilaration of being able to create matter by pointing her wand had already worn off, and Tzi felt like she was on the verge of collapse.
Psy wasn't used up by magic, exactly, except in the sense that using magic required effort and concentration, which made one tired, and being tired for any reason could impair psy. It was a gauge of her overall mental and emotional state, and Tzi was exhausted and as upset as she'd ever been in her life. Even the recent session of meditation hadn't fully put her mind right, and her initial attempts at Conjuration had only worsened her mood—damaging her psy and ensuring that subsequent efforts would go even worse, in a vicious cycle against which Knauer and her spellbooks, and even the senior apprentices, had warned her.
“Perhaps this will do for tonight, master,” the Grimoire suggested while she crouched in the pathetic results of her attempt to create shelter.
“I'm pretty sure it's gonna have to,” Tzi replied, fighting back the quaver in her voice. Bursting into tears would be the most asinine possible end to her day, but...the day had sort of earned it.
Conjuration encompassed Banishment, the annihilation of whatever material she had summoned, but Tzi had quickly stopped bothering as her mental reserves ran low. The whole vicinity was thus strewn with her efforts to build a simple little shed, most of which amounted to nothing more than logs, planks, and piles of stone. Reminders of her incompetence just to mock her.
She had finally managed a wall—one simple wall, a thin but sturdy arrangement of blondewood planks bound together with cross-beams. It was a very lucky thing she had thought to Divine a nail back at the inn. Conjuring the arrangement of planks, beams, and nails little more than two meters square had taxed her to the brink. Tzi had simply leaned it against the outer wall of the crater near where she was trying to work, and given up.
Simpler Conjurations had been easier, and she had summoned a replica of the inn's couch and one of its oil lamps. There she sat on her couch, her head brushing the top of her improvised little lean-to, with the sides open to the elements and her lamp not even lit because she was too frazzled to conjure fire that carefully. Launching a weaponized fireball was easy but...not a good idea, here, unless she wanted to start everything over with her eyebrows singed off.
So she sat there, slowly munching on a Conjured sazja fruit and not caring that it had less nutritional value than the real thing, doing her best to calm her mind and feel good about herself. The innkeeper was right. All this junk was substance created from nothing;it was by no means a small matter. Once she got the hang of this...well, the sky was the limit. This was a fantastic development, not only in her odds of survival here on Xyzz, but for her progress as a wizard.
But she was still tired, stressed, alone, and wanting to cry. Reciting reasons one should not feel depressed did absolutely nothing to keep the emotions at bay. That was very basic psy theory. Tzi slowly chewed the fake fruit, staring at nothing and reaching for calm. Happiness, even serenity, wasn't really a prospect. She would settle, right now, for calm.
The Grimoire, rather than ensconcing itself in the pouch Rhynnian had given her, had settled down on the cushion next to her and leaned against her thigh in a comforting gesture. After time had passed and Tzi had finished her sazja fruit, another little weight appeared on her other leg.
She was, fortunately, too tired and lost in her own moroseness to jump or shriek. Instead, she just turned her head to look.
A little black and white cat was standing on her couch, looking hesitantly up at her with one paw resting experimentally on her thigh. It was such a non sequitur on this alien moon that she could only stare blankly for a long moment before memory came back. She had seen this cat once before.
“You survived,” Tzi whispered. “Knauer didn't get his sacrifice. Oh, god, and you ended up here. Poor guy.”
Her voice seemed to make up its mind, and the cat immediately crawled up into her lap, where it leaned heavily against her chest, its deep, almost frantic purr resonating through the whole little shelter.
She wrapped her arms around the warm, familiar creature, even as tears finally slipped through her lashes. “And you still trust people. Even after everything that happened to you, y'little rascal,” she whispered, gently scratching behind his ears. “You know what, if you can keep going, I can. We can do this. We can.”
He didn't leave her; when she finally lay back and managed to drift off to sleep, it was with the comfortable, purring weight of the cat on her chest. Before that, she got the oil lamp lit, and its warm golden light pleasantly suffused the ragged little shelter.
None of it amounted to much, but it was a start.
Comments
George R
Thanks for the chapter
Devin J Russell
Aww, that cat should do wonders for her psy.
