| "The Adventures of Kat and Clara" Part I: The Departure There was little to say about the state of the young world in which the brown pantheress Kat and her friend, the black pantheress Clara, lived in peace. A rather large planet, an enormous stone in the blackness of space, such as theirs was full of wonder, danger, and excitement. Unfortunately, neither Kat nor Clara, both aged 21 and 22 years, respectively, were ignorant to the rest of the faraway lands outside their village on the Plains of Clay, where they lived together since their childhood; not once had they set forth outside their homeland. Kat was a moderately tall girl, strong in the legs and very attractive and beautiful. She had seductive purple eyes, gentle hands, and a slender body. Clara was equally outwardly attractive, with a pair of vivid green eyes that often caught the attention of everyone in her peripheral vision. Both of them were in outstanding physical condition; since their days of education, they had both learned the ways of the two-handed sword. Kat herself owned a great broadsword standing over half her height; Clara also possessed a blade of her own, which had a single, giant sapphire imbedded in the bottom of the hilt. The two girls lived amongst several hundred other villagers in the small settlement of Lamuth, where their buildings and churches were created of great grey stone and mortar. The village was governed by no specific single or group of individuals; instead, the people lived according to their own whims. On one fateful morning, Clara awoke in the brick home she shared with her beloved friend Kat to find the winds blowing in unusual patterns. She climbed from her bed and dressed herself; she put on her undergarments, then slipped into a lavender dress that reached her knees. On a chair by her bedside was a blue, waist-length cape that she put on her shoulders. She finished her dress with pair of black, leather, elbow-length gloves, which clung tight to her forearms. Still struggling somewhat to awaken, she stood to stretch, then looked out of her clouded window in her bedroom. The winds were quite abnormal on this particular day; the sky was grey, even in the early morning, and while the trees far from the village in the neighboring forests were heavily swayed to and fro with violent force, the trees just outside homes of both girls and other settlers were strangley still. Clara stepped outside to gain a better look. She could not understand what could be happening. Confused, she returned to the inside of the house and went to awaken Kat. The young cat girl lay in her bed asleep as Clara came into her quarters. She knelt down by the bedside and took Kat by her forearm. "Wake up, Kat," she said, shaking her arm gently. "The morning is here; it is a new day." Kat was immediately startled awake. She opened her eyes to see Clara, then kissed her on the forehead. "Good morning," she said. "Normally you never wake me up like this. Why today, of all days?" "I am upset with the behavior of the weather," Clara replied. "The winds are strange and difficult to understand. They affect the trees outside the village, but not in it." "I don't think I can help you to understand this event," Kat said, sitting up to dress herself. "But I can try. I will be ready soon." Clara left the room to go find others in the village, leaving Kat to don her clothing. After putting on her undergarments, she obtained her red cloth leotard. It was additional fitted with forged steel, gold plated cups to conceal and protect her breasts and fit snug against her body, leaving her arms and legs otherwise bare, and was held up by a pair of chain-mesh straps that fastened behind her back. Like Clara, she also wore a pair of black leather gloves. Kat finished her outfit with a royal purple cape worn to her ankles. After dressing, Kat emerged from the dwelling to find Clara in intense conversation with a small family of foxes. "Are you certain that you know not about this happening?" Clara asked, a desperate tone in her voice. "I already told you," the father replied. "I know nothing. Clara, it may be a result of the geography of the plains or the surrounding ar--" "Clara! Look!" Kat exclaimed, pointing into the foggy distance, forcing everyone to turn and look in that direction. The group of villagers watched intently as a great cluster of hundred-foot-tall trees were ripped by the winds from the ground and tossed about in a violent hurricane heading towards the settlement. "Take cover!" Kat cried repeatedly, as settlers panicked and ran to hide in their homes to escape the deadly storm. Kat and Clara themselves ran to their little house and climbed into the little cellar under the floor. It was a small space big enough for the two of them and maybe a few other items. Fearing for their lives and the lives of others, the two girls each took their swords from their rooms and took shelter in the cellar, hoping that they would not be lifted in the hurricane and possibly turned into killing missiles in the winds. The two girls each lay on their bellies on their sheathed swords, holding each other's hands. The wind howled above them visciously, as did villagers who may have been taken to their eventual demises by the hurricane. Suddenly, there was a great creak in the woodwork of their house, and the heavy stone building was soon ripped up from the ground and stirred into the funnel-shaped entity. Kat and Clara embraced as the winds took its toll on the village. Several minutes passed, and the wind suddenly died down, until all that could be heard outside was the chirping of song birds. The two pantheresses climbed from the cellar to find nothing except the doors leading into it; their entire home was gone. The settlement had also been entirely decimated; all the buildings once made of stone were now scattered about brick by brick. Trees that Kat saw leave the ground were now laying erratically stacked about, uprooted, bent, and twisted by the killing winds. All around them were dead villagers, men, women, and children; it was certain that Kat and Clara were the only survivors of the hurricane. Page 2 |