☆ New Chapters from here on out. I apologize to those who have read further than this, but this is the story, how I first imagined it, how I first wrote it. It's not perfect by any means, and some parts are probably better in the version you've already read, but to me, those parts lost something that made me love the story so much in the beginning. So here it is, pure and rough, Abby's full story, as I'd originally envisioned it. I hope you will come to love it like I have.☆

Each step Abby took further into the forest plucked at her nerves. The entire ground was littered with things that annoyed the girl. Thorny thickets tore at her stockings.

Pluck.

Sticky brambles caught the hem of her dress, covering Abby's brand new birthday outfit in spiky brown seedpods.

Pluck.

Her foot caught on a bulging mass of black root that erupted over the ground like lava causing her to lurch forward and almost fall. 

Pluck.

She saved herself  by grabbing a nearby tree branch that grew as straight as a column and was almost as wide. Egg-shaped red fruit, that Margo had called 'lantern fruit,' pulsed with a faint light that reminded Abby of dying embers. 

She grumbled as she stood upright, sick of the Aelurian forest and more than a little peeved at Margo, who'd never once bothered to offer Abby help. Instead, Margo'd taken to looking under any rock for one of the missing cats.

"Could they have gone somewhere else?" Abby asked as she pushed her way through yet another growth of flowers her height. 

Their massive stalks of jade shot up from the ground like mountains. Lantern fruit illuminated their tops where flowers sat like wreaths colored a translucent sort of orange reminiscent of permission jam. A warm breeze rustled through the forest, making the leaves dance, the fruits sway, and the giant flowers grin at Abby with their oddly expressive petals. It tousled Abby's hair in front of her face, and as she reached up to smooth it back in place, she realized her bow was no longer in her hair.

Pluck.

Abby's fists balled together at her sides. This place of over-sized plants and trees and blood moon and warm air had taken her cats and now, her bow, and plucked it clean off her head. Abby wanted to swear. No, she wanted to swear a lot. Swear more times than she'd ever sworn in her thirteen years of life. She wanted to find new swear words and string them together with the swell of other swears she already knew. But before she could open her mouth, Margo hefted a small boulder over her shoulder.

"Those idiot cat brothers couldn't have gone somewhere else," the mouse-woman said, frowning as she looked at the ground. Instead of finding a cat or two like she'd hoped, a  caravan of brown caterpillars, as thick and greasy as breakfast sausages wriggled on the ground, beady black eyes glaring at Margo. With a disappointed gaze Margo tossed the rock back onto the ground, on top of the heads of the now very relieved and grateful caterpillars. "The road only opened to Aelurus. If they aren't here, they fell off."

Abby quirked an eyebrow as a branch tangled itself in her hair. "What do you mean, fell off?" She huffed, fingers tearing her hair away from the tree.

"Don't worry," Margo said, her voice as wispy and light as a summer breeze. "They're here and we'll find them. Though, we should do so quickly. Wanesguard patrol these woods."

How anyone, or anything, could patrol this nightmarish labyrinth of tangles and brambles, winding roots and prying wooded fingertips was beyond Abby. But, her irritation fizzled a bit and anxiousness rose in her stomach. What or who was a Wanesguard? And why did they need to hurry?

Before Abby could blurt out a single one of her many questions, Margo was gone. Abby squinted and there, through the trees, at least twenty paces away, was her companion, her search for cats causing her to momentarily forget Abby existed...again. 

Abby sighed, it was all she'd done, and she imagined with Margo at her side, at least figuratively, it would be all she would do. Without a word, Abby lifted a tired, aching foot, and planted it down in a bramble and thicket free patch of ground. She followed with her other foot. One weighted step after another, forward, toward Margo and deeper into the forest. It was all the girl could do, considering.

Eventually, the forest fell away and Abby found herself walking toward a cliff. All but a handful of prickly black pines surrounded her now, bone-white sand crunching underfoot. No more thickets or brambles obstructed Abby's path and she was thankful for that. What she wasn't thankful for, was the massive half-circle of black rock jutting up in front of her like a row of monster's teeth.

A cave stood in the middle of the rock, a low hiss echoing from its dark depths like the quieted breath of some sleeping beast. More of the same black rock littered the ground and Margo, like a woman possessed, eyed them with glee. Abby sighed.

"They're not here," Abby mumbled as she watched the cave with bated breath. All of it unnerved her. The quiet hissing noise, the black, glistening rock, combined with the eerie red hue of the moon, made her uneasiness skyrocket. "They wouldn't have strayed so far. They would have kept close like I told you," she added sharply.

Margo's eyebrows rose. "Oh really?" She ran over to the nearest rock and plucked it off the ground. "Never know. There's at least twenty boulders here, thirty-three pieces of flint rock and thousands of grains of sand--"

"Enough!" Abby screamed. She was suddenly so done, so over, Margo's nonsense. Done with all the nonsense. "I do know, Margo. Cats don't hide under boulders, or rocks, or grains of sand. And if you think they can then--" Her brain hurriedly searched for the right words but found only the worst. "Then you're an idiot!" she finished. She knew her face was flush, could feel the heat of her anger singeing her cheeks.

And then she looked at Margo and her anger cooled. Before her stood a gleam-less, dulled Margo. Her eyes were suddenly a deep sort of blue, almost black. Her skin lost its golden luster. Her lips which had only ever housed a smile or smirk of mischief were pulled taut, into a thin line too out of place for Margo's face.

Abby swallowed hard. She'd never meant to hurt Margo but here they were. Here Margo was, standing before Abby hunched over, as if all her wind, all her magick had been suddenly knocked out of her and Abby had been the one to inflict the punch.

Abby grabbed a fistful of her dress and squeezed the fabric. She exhaled.

"Margo," she started. Margo looked at her with big glassy eyes. Abby was the only thing reflected in them. Not even a twinkle, she thought. What have I done? "Margo, I'm--"

A breeze whipped around them and stole Abby's words from her lips. The "I'm terribly sorry. So sorry in fact, I wouldn't blame you if you hated me forever," part that followed, never made the journey between the two girls.

Instead, a humid rush of air blew through them, prickling the skin on Abby's arms. The smell of salt and seaweed tickled her nostrils.

The wind died down and then, Abby heard it. The sound of distant waves lapping against a shore. "Is there an ocean here?" she asked.

"There's at least one ocean everywhere, Miss," Margo responded coolly.

Abby was surprised to have gotten a response; she'd asked that question expecting to be met with silence. She took in another deep breath of sea air. It was familiar, the only thing familiar in this strange place and yet it made Abby's heart hurt. She frowned.

"There's no ocean like the Fragilli," she said. "You know it's green in the right light? In the summertime, when the sky's clear and the sun can shine. Mimi said at those times it looked like all the leaves in Mirea had been spread out end to end as far as the eye could see."

Abby remembered that day, that conversation. The condensation that had run down the glass of iced brownbark tea Mimi had brought with her. The crunch of the butter biscuits, the warmth of being nuzzled by the woman's embrace. They'd sat on a bench outside of her father's fishing plant, rancid fish guts crinkling their noses. The sunset. The fading remnants of the Fragilli's emerald sheen.

A note of something plucked at Abby's chest. She smiled at Margo.

"And there's the Jacquer fish. As jet black as the night, and delicious. Make for the best fish stews," Abby added. "I once saw them breach the water. They jumped so high," she remembered and stared off into the distance. "Jacquer means 'fairy.' Dad told me that. When they leap out of the water, ten or twenty all at once, they look like fairies dancing."

Abby felt the tears. She pleaded with them to go away, but they fell, one after another until the sprinkle of drops turned into a downpour. "The Fragilli was a treasure, not just to Laos," she managed between sobs. "But to all of Mirea and," she frowned. "and I'll never see it again. I'll never see any of it again."

Abby fell to her knees and in seconds, Margo was there, kneeling beside her, one arm squeezing her waist, the other rubbing the small of her back.

"Let's see this ocean," Margo said after a few minutes of silence. "You'll see this one, see it's not so bad, and then when you go back to Mirea, to Laos, you can tell people there how much it sucked."

Abby chuckled despite herself and wiped her cheeks. She looked at Margo, her glow, her sparkle had returned, and she was beaming at Abby with all her perfectly white teeth.

"Come on, up you go," she said, placing her arms under Abby's armpits to help her up.

"I'm sorry, " Abby said. "I'm so sorry, Margo."

Margo patted Abby's head. "I know." Her eyes began to glow. "And don't worry, even if I were to hate you forever, it's not that long."

Abby's mouth fell open. She stopped dead in her tracks. "You heard that?"

Margo smiled and gave a curt, little shrug.

A gush of air blew around the pair, and suddenly Abby's feet were plucked off the ground. She was floating, Margo was floating, higher and higher, surrounded by warm, sea fragranced air. As they were placed back down on one of the monster's teeth, Abby saw the ocean. The smooth, black Aelurian sea, spread as far as she could see, a million stars reflected on its placid surface.

"It doesn't suck," she whispered.

Margo took a seat next to Abby and flung her legs over the edge of the rock. "No, I suppose it doesn't."

"It's different is all," Abby added.

"And different's not all that bad."

They sat on the rock for a time, a warm silence shared between them. Abby watched the sea, watched how the stars and moon and clouds moved along its surface. She felt lighter as if all her anger and sadness had been wrenched free of her gut. She knew this wouldn't be the case forever, but for right now, it was a welcomed change.

And then, a loud growl broke the silence. It brought back Abby's anxiety and dropped it into her stomach like a rock dropped in a lake.

"Was that a Wanesguard?" she asked.

Margo peered over the edge of the rock and then she shot back up, smiling from ear to ear.

"No," Margo said, chest puffed out, arms at her sides. "I'm afraid that wasn't any sort of Wanesguard. It was Sebbi, I believe."

Abby's eyes grew wide. "Sebbi? But that sounded so loud and deep. Could he be in pain?"

All sorts of blood covered images flashed through her mind. Margo placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"He's fine, and, by the looks of it, with Lucy." 

I've recovered my original draft of Abbernathy, all of a  whopping forty pages. Back then, the story was titled, "A Girl and her Two Cats"  - ingenious, I know. I've decided to share some of those things that were sacrificed and modified to make the draft you're reading possible. Hopefully, you'll find them interesting. 

Abbernathy Fun Fact 1: Abby never visited Aelurus in the original draft! I know! It's about a girl and a cat kingdom! Octavia, how can that be? Dunno, but Aelurus existed, though Abby never went there- she and her cats just kind of hid out in various parts of Mirea, running from Aelurian dangers.