Curiosity (V.K.)

[Charlotte Greene]

If there was one bad thing about Connor, it had to be that he was irresistable. Irresistable in so many unfair ways. In the best of ways - the not-bad-at-all ways - because she was his and he hers and they were together and so much good... But then also in the not-so-good ways. Because despite their relationship they both still lived in gender-segregated dorms. They couldn't share a bed or even a couch after curfew without risking punishment of some kind. Which meant that Charlie couldn't be with him at night.. and despite the massive amounts of cuddling and hugging and being close to one another, it was impossible not to think about him and wish he was there as she lay in bed most nights.

This week had been a rough one. Several large homework assignments, looking for some sort of part-time job in town, trying to make time for Connor despite those things, and since she'd been getting less time than usual, restlessly staring at her ceiling for hours thinking about him. Not that insomnia wasn't something Charlie wasn't used to. She was. But she'd gotten much better over the past... who knew how long it had been? Nobody kept time in heaven. It didn't matter. Being there for however long was good enough. Except when she couldn't spend enough time there.. and all she could do was lay awake and think about too much.

She had been better lately. Virtually stopped sleepwalking, getting a solid four or six hours most nights, spending her weekends napping awash in a sea of contentment with Connor as her pillow, blanket, and partner... But not this week. No, this week had been a bit too much like a lot of them pre-Connor. This week was a very tired, blurry one. So when Charlie finally did fall asleep, her body wasn't entirely pleased.. and here it was at some random time fairly early in the morning.. she was sleepwalking in circles around the common room of her dorm, her eyes glazed and her movements a bit stiff.. around and around and around she stalked, the tips of her exposed wings grazing the walls now and then.. perhaps not making enough noise to disturb a soundly sleeping human, but easily making enough to disturb, say, someone in a new and unfamiliar place.. especially if that person also happened to have the senses of.. say.. any of several wildcats.

Enough noise to disturb her new roomate...

[V.K Caborn]

V.K purred to herself as she was locked in a dream. It was an odd dream,wandering through a corridor with glowing golden eyes, going into the garden at night to join in a party, having to leave the party, jump the fence and swim to an island in the middle of a lake to save Steve.

The teen-cat snapped awake as her dream ended with the discovery that Steve was someone's pet pineapple. Steve, you traitor. V.K yawned and stretched her paws in front of her, pausing as she realised that they were paws. Glancing down her body, V.K instantly recognized the fur as her serval's. The girl frowned and flickered her ears as she remembered that she had forgotten to shift back to a human form before falling asleep on her bed. Muscles will scream later but what is done is done.

A soft, brushing-like sound caught her attention and V.K flicked her ears towards her open door. Nobody was there but it sounded like silk brushing against cardboard. Hopping to the floor, V.K narrowed her hazel gaze and slowly stalked out of her room and towards the source of the sound. Baring her fangs, V.K briefly wondered about her room-mate. Did the intruder do something? What was the intruder? What did the intruder do to Pillow-Hugger?!

Peeking around the corridor, V.K spotted the cause of the noise. The fore-mentioned Pillow-Hugger was... circling. Maybe the fairy-vulture had found a carcass to feed on- No, that's stupid. We are in the common room and Pillo- Charlie isn't a vulture. V.K trotted towards her room-mate and sat down at her feet. Was she sleep-walking? She hasn't done that in ages.

Determined to find the source of the problem, V.K decided to try and wake up the girl with a loud yowl, the kind you only heard in movies.

[Charlotte Greene]

Charlie may have felt a twinge of irritation if she'd known that her nickname from her shapeshifter roommate was 'Pillow-Hugger'. She didn't hug pillows.. she hugged Connor. And he was only allowed to be pillowy-soft for her. But she didn't know. She had no idea. At the moment, she wasn't even aware that she wasn't in bed asleep. She wasn't aware of anything at all. She was sleepwalking.. her subconscious sick of the pain in her back from laying down without someone to put her at ease, her poor brain so low on key hormones and whatnot that she was stalking around the common room... Was. Past-tense.

Because the thing that brought her rocketing straight out of sleep was one that would have made most people wet themselves, especially from so close. Apparently V.K. hadn't mastered her indoor wildcat voice just yet, because the sound that erupted from her in the painfully quiet room was loud enough to wake the dead. And it was terrifying. The sound one heard a moment before they never heard or saw anything ever again. Charlie's sleep shattered like the windshield of a car meeting a ball-peen hammer. Lightning fast, violently, and rather like an explosion, as her eyes locked on the wicked teeth and glowing eyes far, far too close to her.

She couldn't help herself.. didn't have time to even try, as a layer of liquid materialized almost instantly on her wings, solidifying just as quickly, those wings rushing forward for their lift, propelling Charlie back and away from the vicious deadly animal screaming it's rage into her very soul... and coated the giant cat as well as the floor and wall within five feet of her with a powerful wall of wind and some extremely potent hallucinogenic dust.

Charlie slammed into the wall behind her with a cry of surprise and pain, but it fortunately knocked her out of her terrified state... and she realized what she'd done. The last time she'd dusted someone.. Dante.. --But Dante had been used to drugs. He'd enjoyed it... This was Charlie's roommate. She'd never seen her as a cat before. Never heard that horribly loud noise come from one. Not outside of the discovery channel, anyway. She hadn't known. She'd been sleepwalking again. Which was bad enough in itself, but when it lead to this....

Charlie shoved herself to her feet with a since, cringing as she forced her wings to retract into her back.. a strangled cry escaping her as she forced herself toward the giant cat that had no idea what it was in for. "Hey.. I am so, so sorry.. but .. y-you have to shift. Right now. You have to shift back to being a human right now because I don't even want to know how a giant cat reacts to pixie dust... It.. Oh crap." Charlie was covered in her dust as well. This was bad.

"We have.. maybe two minutes.. Can you shift? I can.. I can handle another person but.. I can't help you if you're like this... Y-you could kill me.."

Sad... Charlie didn't even know her roommate's name...

[V.K Caborn]

V.K barely had time to register what had happened. Pillow-Hugger's wings got wet, then... dusty? Then she flung herself backwards into the wall, leaving me here covered in some sort of magic bodily fluid. V.K glanced briefly at Charlie, who seemed to be all right despite slamming into a solid wall, before turning down to glance at the shimmering dust which now thickly coated her fur. Wrinkling her nose, V.K instinctively ducked down and licked some of before freezing as her more logical thinking kicked in. I have made a terrible mistake.

All at once, V.K's body froze as her mind suddenly screamed at her to run, hide, bite and jump. She couldn't see properly any more, everything was getting really weird and... lucid. The alien sensation could be described as beautiful and highly freakish. Unlike those who might get a kick out of this, V.K was silently giving a quiet scream inside of herself; uneasy with what had happened and what was happening with her mind.

V.K's cat form was frozen in a sitting position; her back semi-arched, short tail stiff and bristled, claws dug deep into the carpet with her head leaning far backwards, ears flat and eyes wide. Struggling through the oddly thickening... drugginess caused by the dust, V.K could only just recognize Charlie in front of her. The other girl was clearly distressed, and fearful, but V.K couldn't understand any word of what she was saying. It was like wind chimes in a weird electro dub-step.

The shapeshifter knew she had to transform back into a human but she just couldn't. Her body wasn't listening and V.K just couldn't move. Her eyesight lightened as her pupils enlarged considerably due to the inhaled and ingested dust. Opening her muzzle to try and comfort Charlie with some sort of passive sound, a long kitten-like warble wriggled out of her throat.

[Charlotte Greene]

To say that Charlie was terrified was .. actually about spot-on. Ordinarily she'd have been worried.. scared, maybe. Ordinarily she wouldn't have just dusted a giant wildcat. No, now she was terrified. Especially because instead of the two or so minutes worth of slow descent into hallucinatory whatever-it-was, this poor girl was getting the effects fast. Too fast. Too fast to shift, too fast to brace, too fast for Charlie to do anything at all to help.... "Oh dear.."

And it wouldn't be but another two minutes or so before Charlie's own dust started to warp her reality as well. She wasn't immune to it.. She'd only experienced it when she'd dusted other people.. Er, and that once.. before Hammel. Poor Nurse's Aid. He'd only wanted to help. --But there wasn't time to think about that now. Cat-girl was.. well Charlie didn't even know what she was aside from the fact that it was neither normal or good. Whatever she was going through, it was bad. A giant cat that was more than capable of literally tearing her limb from limb was locked in a room with her on the front end of what would no doubt be a very powerful hallucinogenic experience.

And the edges of Charlie's vision were already getting a little wavely.. so she wasn't going to be much use herself shortly. But.. whatever sound the girl.. cat.. girlcat.. catgirl.. Whatever sound the room mate was making sounded.. like an attempt? At being not-bad? .. but the cat seemed frozen and completely overwhelmed......

And as the fur on the cat started to gently sway with the rhythm of Charlie's heart, the cat's eyes producing thick heavy greenish smoke that rolled off her muzzle like water, the walls of the room idly shifting left, then right.. Charlie did all that she could think of to try to keep the cat-girl calm... and dropped to her knees to wrap her arms swiftly and protectively around the girl.

Which, as it turned out, was totally the right thing for Charlie to do! Fur was amazing... She could feel the immensely powerful heart of the predator in her arms pulsing life force through it's entire body.. feel the heat slowly migrating from the skin and muscle of the feline into Charlie's pale arms... Which were still covered in fur. For that grazed against every molecule of her skin with each tiny movement either of them made.. from breathing to hearts beating to blinking.. all if it felt. Oh crap, this dust must have been potent... it was affecting Charlie remarkably fast as well.

"I am so sorry about this... please try not to kill me or hurt yourself.. I'll be right here.. You're safe, I promise... and you're so soft.... And warm..." And seemingly having lost herself to the dust that now covered both of them, Charlie giggled and nuzzled her face into V.K.'s powerful neck. "And so strong.. Hehe!" And she would make to let herself fall... If V.K. didn't make efforts to keep them both upright, the catgirl might find herself laying sprawled out on top of a giggling, hugging pixie.

[V.K Caborn]

To be honest, V.K was not paying a lot of attention to Pillow-Hugger as the pixie stood in front of her, mouthing something. The wall had grown a mouth with swollen black lips. It was waggling it's tongue. Why? Why wall? Why must you hate on me like this?!

Now, the cat-teen knew something was going on. She was obviously under the influence of some kind of drug but that was not stopping the swirling flowers from falling from the ceiling which just happened to be Mr Bean's face. Was this a bad trip? Or a good trip? V.K didn't feel particularly scared, just very very hyper. Maybe a bit curious.

Struggling to turn her foggy gaze back to Charlie, V.K stared harshly at the girl as her appearance became a lot more pixie-like. Tinkerbell, that will be her new name. The wall-mouth began to babble the starting song of the Lion King. The blonde's eyes widened as she came to an epiphany. We are Disney. I am Simba, she is Tinkerbell. W-We need to find a genie! And, er, a princess. Preferably Mulan; she kicks ass. V.K's thoughts became more and more jumbled of complete utter randomness until she felt a slender pair of arms wrap around her furry sides.

V.K could feel Tinkerbell's heavy breathing, though she was not feeling what she was at this moment. Tinkerbell, you're in the wrong bloody movie. She thought to herself, growling out loud at this profanity. Thankfully, V.K was still enough in her mind to keep her claws sheathed and head level. Twitching her ears, V.K managed to understand the giggly words Charlie was saying. Oh, the flattery! The other girl attempted to snuggle into V.K for god knows why, causing an instinctive purr to rumble out of the blonde's ribcage.

A slow, apparently deliberate pull caused V.K to clumsily tumble on top of Charlie. This could've been misunderstood by an onlooker in three different ways; thankfully, what was happening was one of the safer ways. Flicking her tail, V.K slammed her paws on either side of Tinkerbell to avoid crushing the poor girl. Well, crushing would be an exaggeration, but it would still probably hurt. The fall ended up with V.K's muzzle particularly close to Charlie's and so the teen did what was only deemed appropriate at this time. Opening her muzzle, V.K dragged her soft tongue across Charlie's face; leaving it covered in saliva.

[Charlotte Greene]

Soft warm strong warm soft giant cat-thing! .. but no hugs? Why were there no hugs? There was supposed to be a super warm soft strong soft warm weight on Charlie when she fell.. It was supposed to be safe and warm and soft.... instead there was .... a pair of very bright, very wide eyes staring directly at her.. Still oozing that steamy smoke.. which mystified Charlie for several second.. until she realized that they'd moved... gotten closer.. and Charlie blushed so bright that it may have lit up the room were this a more fictional setting.

Or.. well, in Charlie's eyes the whole room was tinted red by the light emanating from her cheeks. That was likely not the case for V.K... as Charlie was a pixie.. not a bioluminescent. Still, the thought had her almost forgetting why she was blushing... until she felt some of the wildcat saliva oozed across her cheek... and the room glowed brighter red.

"Why did you kiss me, kitty?" The question was genuine... Charlie really wanted to know why.. perhaps to know if she should be blushing... but was meanwhile busy making the room light up in a myriad of different colors given her newfound bioluminescence... The cat's face changed from red to orange to green to white as light shined from her body... She liked the cat best with the green shading.. so the made it brighter. Made the whole room burn a pleasant shade of pastel green and stared at the brightest thing.. the wildcat still staring her in the face.

She decided that there should be tigerflies. If there were dragonflies it only made sense.... and since she couldn't give the giant cat wings, she decided that the next best thing would be to let her room mate-cat borrow hers. And with a swiftness that might be almost alarming, she squirmed out from under VK and wrapped her arms back around the cat.. girl. Girlcat. Catgirl. --The room mate. And gave a heave.... lifting herself and VK into the air...

[V.K Caborn]

"Why'd you kiss me kitty?"

Normally, V.K would've been slightly offended at being called 'kitty'. It was not a desirable nickname, pretty much a pet name. However, at the moment she was too out of it to summon any sort of directed attention to the name. Instead, the large cat's attention focused on the word 'kiss'.

Her large ears flicked back against her skull as her lick was referenced to a kiss. Was that what it was? Whenever she licked someone, was she actually kissing them? V.K would have blushed, maybe not as bright as the fire-truck fairy below her, but a definite tinge of pink would've been visible on her cheeks if they weren't covered in soft fur.

Though it wasn't noticed by V.K, the visual hallucinations had dulled down to unreal patterns or shapes embedded in the walls or furniture. Colours still burst here and there, like briefly flickering fireworks of blue, red, yellow, green and purple. Her mind also began to clear, but it was still foggy; like getting hyper after sniffing a heck load of glue. A nagging thought kept telling her to turn back, but V.K ignored it; she would probably blush back at the Tinkerbell if she were to shift over her. Maybe her current form was making the dust's effect fade, though this was improbable. 

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around her sides. Tinkerbell had squirmed out from under her paws and, with a another tense, lifted them both into the air. This was not the best idea. Not at all. Cats aren't meant to fly. V.K gave a startled yowl and squirmed about, sinking her claws into Tinkerbell's clothes; thankfully avoiding scraping her skin. The elevated shock would've normally turned V.K back human, but the sane thoughts that still lingered shouted at her 'Stay as a cat!'. It was understandable why, V.K tended to drop her clothes when she shifted and there was nothing to cover herself with; since she was in the arms of her still-high room-mate.