The downpour of rain only got worse as the day passed. Rather than be stuck in the Triolo, Hannah decided to gamble and rush home in the wet weather. We missed the worse of it by just an hour.

When we got home, the first priority was warmth. On the ground floor the landlady was tending to the fireplace, the heart of the buildings central heating. It's roaring flames licked at her stained hands as she threw on more fuel.

We headed up to the third floor. The cascade of rain sounded distant now that we were indoors. I'd escaped getting damp by hiding in the satchel. I'd be soaked in my own fur otherwise and that would by no means be pleasant.

“Why can't it rain after I'm back home?” Hannah grumbled as she hung her best clothes up to dry. Placing a wooden basin beneath them, she hoped to catch the water before it seeped through and down into the floor below.

I roamed the floor, looking for anything overtly out of place. A habit I'd made over the last few years. I hated surprises.

The floor was more than could be expected for the rent the landlady charged. There was a plainly decorated bedroom, a general area for eating and food preparation with a pantry off to the side, and a toilet room which I tried to avoid.

This place could comfortably house a family and yet Hannah had it all to herself. What a waste of good space. It went without saying that something about this arrangement irked me. I couldn't decide whether it was the suspiciously benevolent landlady or the amoral use of good housing space.

Since I was, for the time being, cursed to be a cat, I decided to drop the politics and direct all my suspicions upon the landlady. It was hard to be malicious to a lady for being nice so I rarely if ever voiced my thoughts.

It didn't take me long to find somewhere comfortable to lie down. Up on the one of counters there was a pile of discarded dishcloths. Nestling myself into a comfortable position I set about the exhaustive task of napping. Life as a cat is filled with hard work.

Nothing much happened the rest of the day. I was thankful about that as well. The morning had been hectic and the evening before even worse. There was a comfortable silence between me and Hannah.

All I was interested in now that we were both seemed to be at home safe and sound was a good decent rest. And I got it.

I slept through the evening straight into next morning. Intermittently waking up to roam and stretch only to satiate my boredom and fill my empty schedule with further sleep. It was glorious. No arms being burnt. No children hitting me with sticks. I wasn't passed out from pain and there were no eerie whispers in the back of my head troubling themselves over whether I did or didn't recognise some random corridor in the Triolo.

There came a point during the next day where I was stirred out of my slumber by the savoury scent of smoked salmon. Perking my head up and looking around, I vaguely realised it was the morning of the next day. If only I could spend every day so idle and absent-minded, I'd be living in a world which would pass me by at a comfortable speed.

If only I'd been cursed to live out the rest of my days as statue of a cat rather than an actual cat.

“When you perk your head up like that at the mere smell of food, I wonder to myself how much of you is actually cat.” Hannah mused with a slice of salmon dangling from her mouth. “I just got back from the morning market. Want some smoked fish?”

It was no ham but smoked salmon was a delicacy in it's own league. If it were ever possible to get tired of ham for breakfast, I'd switch immediately to salmon. Not to say that salmon was not equal in value to ham, but rather that ham was simply filling the number one preference because it got there first.

She didn't even need to ask. “Look at my teeth. Their not for chewing. They are for ripping and tearing meats which falls apart in strips. I've no time for starchy veg.” I do miss apples though.

“I'll take that as a 'yes please' then.” Hannah threw a meagre strip of smoked salmon my way and back to preparing food. She was encasing little chunks of soft cheese in shells of smoked salmon. After she was finished, she had stacked a small tasty looking pyramid of these bite-sized food parcels.

With such wonderful scent in the air, it would now be impossible to sleep. Smoked salmon comes with a price of its own. Unlike ham, I would never be satisfied with just one piece. Smoked salmon was high up there in the league of foods I could gorge myself on. It was right next to salami on that list.

The promised day of breakfast had finally arrived.

“How's your arms?” They must have been getting better if she could prepare food so deftly.

Hannah pinched her way to her elbow, feeling for the sensation of pain and then shrugged. “I'm feeling more than I felt yesterday.”

There wasn't a single sign of scarring on or along her arms. These silky smooth looking limbs were a testament to the skill of a very grumpy Nurse who claimed to have no medical licence.

“How's your ribs?”

“Better after a long calm night of rest.”

“I'm not sure broken ribs heal that fast.” She pensively munched on one of her snack parcels.

It wasn't something I could explain away with the expression 'grin and bear it' but it wouldn't be the strangest thing about me. “I'm not sure horrifically burned arms heal that fast.”

“Well... magic.”

“Well... curse.”

Clearing a workspace for herself on the table Hannah rolled out some empty parchments and set down some pots of ink. Open books for study and diagrams of patent designs were lying everywhere after just half an hour. Whilst she didn't produce any new scrolls to replace her old ones, she began planning to do so by lightly tracing designs onto the paper with soft lead.

It struck me as I watched on-mostly to gauge when her attention would slip away from the food parcel pyramid enough for me to steal a few- that I knew next to nothing about what she was doing.

The designs on the scrolls looked like fancy geometric pattern. Straight linear lines would branch out from a circle at the bottom of the page. They intersected in great tangles before shooting off to form an increasingly complex weave. I could only recognise the circle that started it all as the primer. That's what everyone else seemed to call it.

The scroll had to be a decent size and the hand that drew with the brush had to be steady. The ink and paper were ordinary as far as I could tell. Magic worked with ordinary things so I wasn't particularly surprised. It did make me wonder how magic was discovered.

To foster that innate ability to spellcast, mages used light houses or back in the day, practice scrolls. It helped them get a grasp of the feeling of using magic. I believed the term used was spell dexterity. So somebody had to make some kind of physical patent and activate before they could even become aware of magic.

How insane must that person have been? The first person to have done it, I imagine, did it by accident. Drawing crazy geometric patterns on a wall to satisfy some unknowable brain itch. Planting their thumb dramatically at the centre, they shout alloud about some weird invisible god whilst their partner and children cower in the kitchen. Much to their surprise, their god answers them when they are blown to smithereens. Magic is thus introduced to the world.

Whatever the truth, I preferred my version.

“Huh, so that's what the cursed cat makes of magic.” Hannah mused after I shared my story.

“Not cursed cat, cursed to be a cat. There's a big difference there.” I huff. “I'm not a cat which has been cursed. I'm a person cursed to be a cat.”

Hannah shrugged and with a rather malicious grin she retorted. “You could be a cat cursed to believe it was a person.” The mere thought drew out an angry hiss. “I mean how would I know the difference? How would you know?” She continued teasing mercilessly.

“What's so surprising about my views of magic anyway? If there's one thing I've learnt, its that nobody knows how it came about. A wild story here is as valid as the posturing of any scholar. Nobody knows what makes patents work. ”

Hannah set aside her work for a moment, switching off her light-hearted teasing. Her eyes had the glint of excitement at the subject. “That's right. What makes magic work? What gives some people innate ability and some none? There has to be rules. For instance,” She lifted a brush off her desk and let it fall from her hand. It hit the desk with a dull clatter and rolled to a stop. “When you drop things, they go down. And object will start falling the moment nothing is left to support it. We've accepted that at face value. An invisible force keeps us tied to the floor.”

“So the rules are invisible? Great.” I muttered.

The glint in Hannah's eyes lit into a fire, unwilling to leave this at such a stupid conclusion. “But it's not unknowable. I read in the library a theory by an old scholar from Barakesh. Objects in free-fall have near enough the same acceleration downwards. Book, sword, apple, they all gain downwards velocity at the same pace. They are all being pulled upon by a force you can quantify with a number. It's not an unknowable rule and it's effects are not invisible. You couldn't see a rope dragging that brush I dropped back down the table, but you could see the effects of the force.”

“And how does that relate to magic?”

“As I said, invisible is not unknowable. People make out magic, the thing that fuels the changes we do to the world around us through spell, to be either some kind of divine providence or unknowable miracle. We just aren't measuring the right things. We don't have the right instruments. But mark my words we will learn the truth behind it eventually and then with the science of magic we'll do incredible things.” She puffed out her chest proudly and grandly as she nodded, agreeing with every single one of her own words.

Her determination was almost admirable. I wondered whether on the day the book on the science of magic is written, it'll have a little paragraph in the credits about the little witch who bravely sacrificed both her arms in pursuit of the truth.

“And yet you.” Hannah pointed a finger at me accusingly with narrowed eyes. “You take what magic does and put it into an extreme that really does make it seem miraculous. What sort of magic could make a cat talk without opening it's mouth?”

“It's just an illusion-”

“But what is that? How do you control it? I mean that's just the easiest part to address. The hardest and most egregious affront to my cause of finding the science in magic is explaining how you turned into a cat. And yet...” Hannah paused. “The fact that you are what you are proves one thing. Someone understood magic to such an extent they could pull something like that off.”

I paused, mulling over her words. “Man I must have really pissed off the wrong person.” I sighed. What were the odds they were still alive? I've lived what feels like forever as a cat so it was possible they could be doing something similar. The idea however was as terrifying to me as it was attractive to believe. Someone so powerful was no doubt someone I didn't want to be around, doubly so if that's how I ended up looking like a cat.

Hannah crossed her arms and tapped her fingers thoughtfully. “Adam, you're old right?”

“Somewhat? Old enough to forget most of who I really was. Old enough not to know how old really. Old enough to not remember how this happened to me.” Tl;dr, I was very very old.

“I just assumed you'd believe more in magic being divine providence than anything. With your entire life seemingly at the mercy of such a powerful curse and possibly such a powerful person, it must feel like something only a god could do.”

Nowadays it didn't feel like I was at the mercy of exclusively powerful people. Or perhaps I should change my mindset and understand that even a single human child from the perspective of a lot creatures, was quite powerful.

Whilst this curse of mine felt near impossible to fight, I didn't believe it was the act of a god. Trying to apply the title 'god' to the person who made me like this brought a distinctively bitter taste to my mouth. God would be the last word I used to refer to the bastard which did this to me.

“You think I believe the story about the eight?” When talking about god or gods, it was safe to assume it was about the eight. Hannah nodded in reply. “Eight powerful beings. Seven patrons of humanity around the world and one patron of all the evil that can challenge it. The eight born from a single great god, given the duty to guide and protect humanity. Safeguard it from its own sin and malice. Seven took up that mantle, and the eighth gave into the base desires that came with its incredible power and tried to play god. It's not a nice tale to believe in you know? Although one of any of those eight could do this to me if they actually existed.”

Hannah laughed. “So you pissed off a god.”

“A demi-god.” I corrected. “Or an angel. Depends on where you're from. Do they call them gods here in Kasper?”

“Yep. Never heard of this 'greater god' they were born from though.” That was a little surprising. That was a pretty important detail to the story in my opinion. “As far as I know, the story in all of the churches in the kingdom of Tallis is that seven of them are gods, and the eighth is the arch-demon, creator of all monsters.”

I felt a little sorry for this eighth. Seven against one didn't seem like a fair fight in the slightest. The story matched with a lot of what I heard. And of course this all tied back to magic. One of the seven made magic and gifted it to the humans in order to fight monsters whilst the seven fought the arch-demon. I imagined there was some variance on which of the seven got the bulk of the credit depending on the church holding the sermon.

Hannah finally brought the discussion back to her original point. “And you, a talking cat, sound a lot like a monster.” She said without a hint of fear. If anything, she seemed proud of the fact I might be a monster. “So I'm a little surprised you don't talk that much about gods.

I was not all that impressed. As far as monsters go, a talking cat seemed pretty lame. They took an already normal and otherwise unimpressive creature and slapped on a feature that let it talk. “So not only am I a black cat, the root cause of all misfortune to ever befall the human race, but now I'm also a monster? My advice to you all is that if that's the case then you should all start running as soon as I figure out how to breathe fire.”

“Of course you'll let me live right?”

“You'll probably accidentally kill yourself with your own magic eventually anyway so hunting you would be a waste of effort.”

“Ouch.” She winced at my blunt reply. I waited for the glare the moment the words slipped out of my mouth but she simply laughed it off. Well at some point she's going to notice that I'd stolen about four food parcels whilst she was working through the morning and I'd get some threat of physical violence. But at the moment, her expression seemed almost too light and sunny.

“You really love magic... huh.” The words slipped out without much thought. But on reflection it did explain her almost fanatical determination to succeed. Hannah stared at me blankly, probably wondering what I meant by my comment. Rather than cower away I decided to push on. “You're in a really good mood.”

Her lips turned upwards with a tinge of regret. “Well... That's because this time I can spend my weekend doing what I want. Usually I'm so weak after Mather's experiments I can't even hold down food let alone talk about magic like this.”

That's right. Every weekend she looked like a haunt of her previous self. How could I forget? Did I really brush over that? Next weekend would be a return to the normal. Sure her arms being burned had soured her mood. Failing her basic licence exam had made her anxious and impatient. But all of that could be worked away. She had her weekend back even if it was just a one off. All of these problems were probably exacerbated when she felt like she had less days to work with.

“For the first time in a while, I've got two entire free days I can do whatever I want with. I'm going to make the most of them.” She grinned as she rolled up her sleeves and got turned back to her study. “By monday, they'll be singing legends about how much I did in forty eight hours.”

I watched her for a while longer. She'd be like this for another two days. And yet next weekend even she knew she'd be thrown back into her struggle.

I still didn't get it. She didn't need to study here. She didn't need to take part in whatever sadistic tests were run on her. It was beyond stupid to be smiling now when she was going to be marching back into the same fire that was burning her up.

Humans made me beyond bitter. It was no wonder I didn't want to get involved.