‘Oh my gracious aunt!’ screamed Golden Frog. Golden Frog was sporting a frog-like head but had a scrawny lion-cub body. Frog fought the morphing force. One moment the frog’s face, and then the lion cub's predominated. However, his body was all scrawny feline.
‘I'm turning into cat! NOOOOO!’ yelled Golden Frog.
‘Yeah you're right. We all are,’ remarked Ben calmly. ‘There's nothing you can do about it either,’ he added.
‘This no right! I demand this stop! STOP NOW!’
‘You do not like your transfiguration, my golden friend?’ remarked an enormous ginger cat. The dislocated head of a huge smiling ginger cat hovered above them. It shimmered as though it were being projected onto the blue ceiling which shone down above the Arkstone's little plastic beach.
The silken-voiced feline continued, ‘If you are to enter the feline library, which is the secret domain of all things cat-like, you must become as I am. And you must enter this zone in order to proceed to the human one. The human zone is a very long journey from here. Cats are very powerful psychic creatures. This is why I am entrusted to access the Arkstone vortex. This teleport vortex can send you right to the human zone in a flash. You won't have the most honoured form for long, little frog.’
‘Don't call me little frog.’
‘Shall I eat you instead?’ said the cat grinning from ear to ear.
‘No, he'll pass on that,’ added Jodie.
‘Join me then, my friends,’ purred the cat in its deep chocolate voice. Jodie was too busy admiring her new black panther-like body to pay much attention to the feline's invite. Jodie would have been almost perfectly formed had it not been for her slightly askew snout. Danny thought the imperfection suited. It emphasized her attractiveness.
Danny was slowly turning into a scruffy looking tabby cat. Strange compulsions, urges to chase and bite drifted through his mind - alongside a gnawing hunger.
A wind started up. The cat smiled, 'See you soon.' Its image began to slowly disappear. The plasma beach began to whirl around in a great circle turning in upon itself like kneaded dough. The strange plastic substance gripped the four cat-humans, one cat-frog and the cat-orb. They stared into the smiling eyes of the enormous ginger cat whose face had now disappeared altogether. It was watching them in amusement, floating above them. Another wink and then even the eyes vanished.
They found themselves still spinning but the plastic cocoon was now gone. Walls of wind tore at them, the spinning forces pinning them to their position. They were inside a small, revolving grey tunnel made of nothing but air and wood. Twigs, branches and leaves were all hurling around them at breakneck speed in the freezing cold wind. The five entities had the thought as one: 'Hurricane!'
‘Do not be alarmed. I am Vortex of Arkstone. Where do you wish to go?’ a quiet voice said in their minds.
‘The realm of cat is awaiting us thank you Vortex,’ transmitted Danny.
‘Wise choice. Prepare for landing.’
One by one, the five creatures were flung from the Vortex into space. Arms and legs flailed searching for solidity. They were descending through a bright radiant sky - except there was no sun. Nor was there open sky above them. Or rather the sky was a great tube of blue-glowing material. They were in a self-lighting mile-wide blue tunnel, a hollow branch, some miles across. The five descended from the inner sky.
As they tumbled five mighty flying lions came into view. They were a golden colour. They arched and banked their eagle-like wings as though imitating World War I biplanes. The creatures had no sooner locked onto their targets than their great talons were upon them. The great cat-birds, for that is what they truly were, carried the five to the ground. They swept past an enormous grinning ginger cat. He must have been at least the height of two men.
They each dropped their prey a little above the ground. The last one held the strangely transformed Golf. There appeared to be some distaste from the great flying animal. Golf found himself dropped from a height. He bounced unhurt but his dignity took a tumble. Golf scowled before turning his attention to the towering cat sat smiling before him.
He found himself in a large summer meadow filled with wild flowers and irresistible aromas. Old gnarled trees were spotted here and there. Over in the distance were rocky outcrops and the entrance to an abandoned Hindu temple. It was guarded by a half-cat half-human female form. The meadow was surrounded by the beginnings of a dense wood. It was a cat’s paradise.
‘Ahh! You have arrived. How grand. Hello my friends. I do trust you are enjoying your more, what-to-say, cat-like, forms,’ communicated the great cat to the group.
‘We do appreciate you taking us into your realm here. We don't even know your name,’ said Danny.
‘How amiss of me! It has been so very long since I last saw a two-legged in the flesh, even though you now have a cat-body here in my realm of course. Oh what a treat!’
Orb felt annoyed. Obviously the great ginger cat was much more impressed by humans than mere mind-entities like her.
‘What was I talking about dear ones? Oh yes, my name. I'll just translate it into “two-legged” for you. It is...Ariel.'
‘We're very pleased to meet you Ariel,' said Danny.
‘Likewise I'm sure. I must thank Garuda, Zafearon and Marla for bringing you here.’
‘They were kind to us.’
‘We've been preparing for this for some time.’
‘Really?’
‘Well the best part of 20,000 Earth years, if you call that a long time. My partner, Venus, is on planet leave. She reincarnated as a black house-cat in a place called the Bronx, New York. She loves field research. Always curious about two-leggeds she is.
‘So, let me show you around. I am the feline “Keeper-Of-The-Forms”, a kind of cosmic librarian I guess. Just as Zafearon and Marla keep the form of “dog”, I store the entire “mind-of-cat” throughout this little old galaxy. As you might well have gathered of course,’ Ariel winked at the others.
The cat's galactic meadow was a dream-like place – it didn't look like any library the friends had ever seen before. It occurred to Danny that perhaps books are not the only place to record one's thoughts. Everything here was so intense, the smells, the sounds, even the colours. A vivid violet blue wild flower attracted Danny's attention. It seemed more real than he had ever noticed a flower being before. As Danny turned to look at the flower its petals opened and he thought he saw a glimmer of a cats face within it. The sun warmed the back of his dark gray furry neck. It was wonderful.
Everything here had a strange catlike quality to it. Even the grass and the trees seemed to mew softly in the wind. A butterfly flitted past. Danny was a little shocked. The butterfly fixed him with its tiny cat-like eyes in its micro-feline face. It wasn't a particularly friendly butterfly. Cat-butterflies were a little sinister, truth be told. Even the whimsical clouds drifting beneath the sky-tube were shaped like cats in various poses - leaping, cavorting or pouncing.
‘My “once two-legged” and “mind-entity” friends! I see the complete feline nature of this, my great domain, has you puzzled. Am I right?’ whispered the great cat telepathically.
‘Just a little,’ agreed Ben out loud.
‘Well then. I shall explain. What you see here is in fact the inside of the cat branch of the great Arkstone. This before you is the galactic mind of cat itself. Everything in any cat's mind on planets near and far is right here.’
Danny watched as one of the flying creatures swooped above a tree. It held a young lion cub in its talons. The golden-maned cat had it claws out and was taking swipes at the air with its fist-sized paws.
‘Don't worry Danny,’ said Ariel. ‘She is training our young lion cub here. He needs to get used to heights. Some time from now we'll be dropping him, and a little tribe of his friends, onto a mountainous spot of a life-planet right over on the far side.’
‘The far side?’ stuttered Ben.
‘The far side of the galaxy of course. This here, is the very mind of our galaxy. But this is not the only Arkstone. But it’s the only one for a very long way. All the best galaxies have one of these library trees I believe. Anyway, as super lovely as my domain is, sightseeing isn't why you've visited. So you guys have a little wander about and we'll get straight down to business in an hour or two.’
With that the great ginger cat heaved himself to his feet and padded off into the meadows beyond. The self-lighting sun-tube was in full shine. The group relaxed on the slightly mint-fragranced grass. The grass was green but had slightly furry sides to its stalks. They took in the mewing of the cat-trees in the warm sweet breeze. Every now and then kittens would tumble past play-fighting.
There was a large, yellow- striped tiger a little way off hanging idly from a huge tree limb. The tiger, like most of the creatures apart from the librarian, was of a normal size. It seemed to be watching them intently but without a great deal of curiosity. Ben had known immediately that the creature was there as a bodyguard just in case a passing lion took a fancy to them as a tasty treat. It looked a rather fierce looking example even from half way across the meadow. They were glad that it showed no inclination to move itself away from its perch.
The five relaxed and chatted in the sunny tube-shine for a while. Jodie particularly enjoyed her feline form. She ran and tumbled about with Orb and Danny, neither of whom had anything like her agility. Orb kept some of her previous transparent, spherical form but in addition she was now vaguely cat-shaped and had sprouted a tail. Ben pattered about on his own sniffing at things.
The strange looking Golden Frog sat by the tree and sulked. The only highlight for him was the discovery that he could mark his territory, or a passerby, with an extremely pungent odour-spray. Some hours had passed in this fashion when there appeared before them a large ghostly image of the great ginger cat's head.
‘Please excuse my appearing like this. I’ve got rather taken up with business. There's a lot to sort out at the moment.
‘The Earth humans, in fact all of the two-legged species, like to think of themselves as the single greatest apex of all evolution. They are all, in fact, merely creation's common factor. Danny, Jodie and Ben, you are but a part-reptile, part-mammal, part-everything creature. If you took every single animal in creation and boiled it down to the absolute average, you’d end up with a human - or something quite like one. Humans are merely God's common ground. Obviously cats are the pinnacles of creation. Anyhow, now you know that about humans, it is sensible that the human district of the Arkstone must be located right at the very centre of the space-tree. That would normally be a long journey from here.
‘Incidentally, have you noticed how all the great human tales have cats in them somewhere? This is because we are very psychic creatures. Even ordinary house-cats can see things that only the rare Earth human can.
‘Anyway, only the cats and the human realms have access to the great teleport Vortex of Arkstone. So prepare to be transformed!’
The cat's image gripped them. Suddenly their minds were as clear as Antarctic ice. No obstacle seemed great. The gate of mind was flung wide open. The moments passed like shooting stars in the brief night sky. The great cat averted his eyes and a hushed silence descended upon the group.
They waited for the Vortex to appear. The wind gathered from all directions and the hurricane took them in its certain embrace.