It all started when I heard a knock on my door.

My pantry door.

“Hello? A little help? I’m stuck in here.”

A girl’s voice, from inside the pantry. I was confused, and a little nervous. Dad was working late. Mom had my four-year old brother Evan at a doctor’s appointment. I was alone in the house. At least, I thought I was.

I saved the wiki article I was editing as a draft, hopped out of my desk chair, and walked to the pantry door as the knocking became more insistent, transitioning into harsh banging.

“Look, I don’t know where I am or what’s with all these boxes, but...” she paused and thumped the door again. “But so help me if somebody doesn’t open this flimsy little door this minute I swear I’m breaking it down.”

When I arrived at the door, I looked up at the top of the doorframe. The door was locked.

You see, Dad installed a bolt latch at the top of the pantry door, to keep Evan from snitching candy without permission. In theory, you could use it to lock somebody in the pantry. I certainly felt like stuffing Evan in there sometimes when our parents weren’t home. Heck, the candy would even keep him quiet.

But this wasn’t Evan, and I wasn’t the one to lock her in.

“Hey, uh…” I started lamely. The knocking stopped. “How did you get in there?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” the girl’s voice said. “Where am I?”

“Pendleton, New Hampshire,” I said. “32 Vrost circle. Pantry.”

“Who are you? What are you?”

“Gavin,” I said. “And I’m, uh… a high school senior?”

“How did I get here?”

“No clue,” I said, still on edge. “My turn. How long have you been in my pantry?”

“All of about twenty seconds,” the voice said. “Now, the door?”

I wanted to keep it shut until I had more answers, but that wouldn’t do any good. If she wanted to break the door down, she probably could. If the voice’s owner charged the door from the length of the pantry and hit it with her shoulder, it’d pop open, breaking the locks and splintering the doorframe. I didn’t want that, of course.

Still…

“I’d like to talk a bit more, first.” I said. “Need some light in there?”

“That’d be nice, yeah,”

The pantry light switch was on my side, so I flipped the lights on.

Inside, there was a surprised yelp. “How did you do that? What… what’s that?”

“What’s what?” I asked.

“The glowing thing on the ceiling?”

“You mean the light bulb?”

Silence on the other side. Too long to be comfortable. Finally, the girl spoke up. “Nature’s glory… am I in a science world!?”

“Uh…” I stammered, dumbfounded. “Yes?” I said hesitantly.

“Are there guns?”

“Not in the pantry, no,” I said.

“Do you send energy around through wires?”

“Electricity, yeah.”

“Are there buffalo? Elephants? Corgis?”

“What are you even… yes! Yes to all those things.” I started trying to think of what in my house might be usable as a weapon. A kitchen knife? Something was not right with this girl. “Are you okay?” In retrospect, it was a dumb question, but it’s what came to mind.

“Yes! This is awesome!” I heard the rustling of some boxes from the other side of the door. Cereal? “What’s this? Food?”

“Probably. You’re in my pantry. Speaking of which, you’re in my pantry. Why?”

“Dunno. I just appeared here. Maybe you beamed me in with a transporter or something, like in those stories.” I heard the sound of a box ripping.

“Who are you?”

“Lilah,” the girl said. “I’m one of Nature’s Emissaries. Hah!” she chortled. “These look like giant deer droppings! Do you eat these?”

“Nature Emissary? Is this some kind of joke?”

“Probably,” said Lilah. “What with the whole ‘beam me in from another world and trap me in a pantry’ thing. Okay, I’m gonna put one of these in my mouth. Ready?”

“Another world? What are you even…” I trailed off, the implications slowly dawning on me.

Two possibilities. First, there really be could a girl from another world in my pantry. That seemed unlikely. On the other hand, maybe there was some sort of joke going on where somebody locked a girl in my closet and she was pretending. That also seemed unlikely, but way more likely than a visitor from another world.

Which was kind of disappointing; It’d be neat if this was real.

All sorts of inane questions floated through my head, such as “Are you sure you’re from another world?” or “This really isn’t a joke?” But I couldn’t think of anything that would actually get me any closer to figuring out what was going on. There was just one way forward.

I reached up and undid the latch, and pushed open the door to see the girl inside.

She was standing there, holding a box of malted milk balls. It would be an understatement to call her beautiful; her face was cute and her figure was perfect. She had long, braided tan hair in which were nestled a pair of honest-to-goodness cat ears. A tail draped on the floor behind her, flicking gently. She was shorter than I was by a few inches. I’d have guessed she was in her late teens, certainly no older than twenty. Her skin was fair, but her face left her ethnicity indeterminate.

But I wasn’t focused on any of that. Not even the cat ears. I was focused on her clothing.

She was wearing a loincloth that draped down to her knees and several long, beaded necklaces.

And that was it.

I stared at her naked chest for far longer than I felt comfortable.

“These things are really sweet,” she said, holding up the box of chocolates. “Do you always eat stuff like this?”

I snapped out of it and clamped my eyes shut. Not that it helped much. The image had seared itself into my poor teenage brain. “Where the hell is your shirt!?”

“Back home, I suppose. I didn’t wear it today. I wasn’t expecting to talk to humans.” I heard a crunch as she bit into another chocolate.

“I’ll get you one. Stay right there!”

I jogged up the stairs to my closet to get her some clothes. If this were a joke, it was some joke. I opened up my drawers and pulled out a tee-shirt and some sweatpants. There was a catgirl in my pantry. A naked catgirl. Well, almost. I wasn’t sure if the loincloth counted. I’ve got to admit, I was frightened. Sure, lots of guys dream of being in a situation like this, but it’s something else entirely to experience it.

This wasn’t a dumb harem anime. This was real. For all I knew, this would end with a police investigation, or I could get my face clawed off, or she could use nature magic powers to turn me into a pig or whatever. And even if this was the sort of catgirl you’d find in an anime, I wasn’t sure I’d have what it took to handle that, either. I’d never been good at talking to girls. I’d never even had a girlfriend.

I went back down the stairs, clothes in hand. Lilah had left the pantry, and was looking around the kitchen in wonder, tail swishing behind her. Her back was to me this time... but her loincloth only covered the front.

I looked away from her naked rear and stuck out my arm. “Here, clothes,” I said. “Take them. Let me know when you’ve changed.”

I heard Lilah chuckle a little. “You humans and your clothes. You sure I have to put these on?”

“Yes” I said forcefully. It’s a… a cultural thing.” I felt the weight of the clothes leave my arm as Lilah took them.

“Wow,” she said. “The weave on this is really tiny. I’d have thought that… wait. Is this knit?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “They’re machine-made.”

“A machine? You gave me clothes made by a machine? Do they do anything cool?”

“They’re clothes. They cover you. Isn’t that what clothes are supposed to do?”

“I guess,” she said, sounding a little disappointed.

I shook my head as I heard clothing rustling behind me. This girl was either really committed to her role or actually from another world. Or insane. I guessed that could be true. But then what about the tail? The ears could be fake, bit I’d seen the tail swishing around. A real girl wouldn’t have a fully functioning tail, no matter how insane she was. “So… you’re Nature’s Emissary?”

“Yep! One of them, at least. The emissary of the mountain lion, specifically. Don’t suppose your village worships mountain lions?”

“No,” I said. “My family’s Christrian.”

“Ooh! That’s so cool! How many vampires have you killed?”

“What? None!” I said. “Where are you getting this from? You know about electricity and… and corgis but you think we fight vampires?”

“Hey, how am I supposed to know what parts of the bardic tales are accurate or not? So far as anybody knows, science stories are just fun tales you read about in books or tell around a fire. There’s this string in the front of the pants. Do I just pull it, or…?”

“Yeah, you pull it to tighten it and then tie it off,” I said. “So you’ve got no idea how you got here?”

“None,” the girl said. “I had just finished my morning bath and was at home boiling some mushrooms, and then suddenly I was in the dark here in your pantry. Okay, I’m done.”

I looked behind me. Thankfully, Lilah was fully clothed, so I finally got a chance to take her in a bit more. Her ears and tail were the same tan color as her hair. Her ears were furred on the back with the same tan fur, with tufts of white fur in the front where her ears met her hair. Most notably, the spot where her ears should be, if she were a human, were smooth and bare. This was looking less and less like a joke.

Honestly, now that I’d had some time to talk with Lilah, my initial fear was slowly being replaced with excitement. I’d been studying myths about monsters for years, from ancient ones like the minotaur to modern ones like the chupacabra. It was sort of a hobby of mine. Lilah was a dream come true. A real life monster in my house! Sort of. A non-human, at any rate. And unlike most mythical monsters, which could kill you in a variety of creative ways, she seemed safe. And friendly!

Also highly attractive. But I swore that wasn’t the main reason I was excited.

The clothes I had given Lilah didn’t fit her well. The pants were too big; the fabric was bunched up in weird places and the crotch drooped nearly to her knees. She had rolled the bottoms up to keep them from covering her feet. The shirt was baggy and long. Because it was a men’s shirt without extra fabric in the front, it hung weird over her breasts.

I nodded. “Thanks. That’s… that’s better.”

She smiled at me, then held up her loincloth. “What do I do with this?” She asked.

I had no idea. “Just keep it to yourself for now,” I said.

“What, you mean you don’t want it?” she said, tossing it to me.

Girl’s underwear. Kind of. I panicked and stepped back, letting it fall to the floor instead of catching it. Lilah chuckled at my reaction.

“What’s with you?” I asked.

“Just teasing you is all,” she said, putting the beaded necklaces back around her neck. She looked a little confused.

“Is that just a thing Nature Emissaries do?”

“Sometimes, yeah. We’re playful. At least the cat ones,” she said, wiggling her ears. “Don’t try and joke around with, like, a bear emissary. They won’t appreciate it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So you don’t have any Emissaries here?” she asked, stepping forward to retrieve her loincloth.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Is that a job? Or like…” I tried to figure out how to phrase it politely. “...or like a race?” I finished. It seemed a more polite word than “species”.

“Both,” said Lilah. “Emissaries are born into the position. It’s… hard to say no to.”

“Then no.” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like you before. If we did have Emissaries, in our world, we’d probably have pictures or videos of them. Unless maybe… do you show up in photos?”

Her eyes went wide. “I don’t know!” she said, excitedly. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t? We should try!”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to take a picture, and she excitedly bounced up and down.

“You’re taking a photo of me with your hand-held computer! This is so cool!”

“It’s a phone, but close enough,” I said. I pointed the phone at her. She appeared on the screen just as I’d expect. One snap later, I had her picture in my phone. No issues. I turned the phone so she could see it and her grin got even wider, showing more of her teeth. I noticed with a small degree of alarm that her incisors were sharper and more triangular than a normal human’s, and her canines more pronounced.

“That’s so cool!” she said.

“Yeah. So… I guess either we’ve got no Nature Emissaries or they’re really good at avoiding being seen.”

“Weird,” she said, shaking her head.

“Yeah. Um…” I started rubbing the back of my head. Having Lilah suddenly appear in my pantry was fantastic and all, but it opened up lots of questions. Would anything else be appearing in my pantry? Would she be able to get home? And, in the more immediate future, what were her plans for, like, the next ten minutes, and where would she be when my Mom got back with Evan?