I admit, I was hooked. Having superhuman abilities, using magic, knowing secrets… it was enough to make me forget about the whole “you have to be a catgirl” thing for a bit. But she did reassure me I’d be able to attend courses normally in the Fall semester, and I could quit any time I wanted (subject to certain rules), so I figured I might as well sign the employment contract and NDA. There were some extra forms for payroll and benefits but I could take care of those later.
The employment contract looked fairly normal, at least to my 19 year old ass. It included the “no quitting for the first two weeks” rule and “two weeks notice” rule Sable had mentioned. It was otherwise at-will employment. It even mentioned I’d get health insurance. A minimum of 10 hours of work per week was required.
As for the non-disclosure agreement, I had heard of these as being a thing but had never seen one. The wording seemed less legalistic than what I expected, however. There were three rules:
Do not intentionally disclose the existence of or details about magic and related phenomena to those not already aware of it.
Do not intentionally disclose your status as a familiar to those not already aware of it, nor the identity of your master.
In the event that accidental disclosure occurs, comply with all orders given by your master related to mitigating the damage.
I finished up with the most important documents and handed them back. Sable checked them over.
“Everything looks to be in order, and the contract magic has taken effect”
“Contract magic?”
“Yeah, you don’t think witches use lawyers, do you? No, you sign a contract with a witch and it just… holds. If you use the right ink, anyway. Real hassle to get it in printer cartridges.”
I quickly found myself wondering if I should have read those documents more thoroughly.
“I’ll email you a copy of the docs you signed, don’t worry. And whether you trust me or not, I’ll at least say that it’s not my intention to screw you over here. I need an assistant who wants to be here, not one who’s going to do a half-ass job because she’s magically bound.”
“Fine, too late to worry about that now anyway. So, what’s all the secrecy about?”
“Now that you’re an official employee, I’m happy to share at least the low level details with you. Some things will take longer to explain, but these at least are things you’ll need to know to do your job. Hopefully they’ll also motivate you to want to do your job.”
She went on to explain that due to some sort of magical phenomenon, plants and animals of a magical nature occurred with greater frequency on the grounds of her property. This was both an opportunity and a risk: these organisms had rare and useful properties but could cause issues if allowed into the outside world. Invasive species, basically. So the Ward family has long kept a magical barrier in place around the mountain that keeps these creatures from spreading beyond it. However, the wildlife still needed to be managed and the barrier needed regular maintenance to prevent weak points from forming.
“So what kind of risk are we talking about if the creatures get out? Is this just about keeping magic a secret?”
“No, though there is that. I can’t go into the details just now on why, but some of the creatures that could potentially escape are extremely dangerous, at least to normal humans. If the barrier went down there’s a good chance this town, including the university, would quickly become uninhabitable by normies.”
That was higher stakes than I’d expected. If what she said was true, Sable was keeping the town safe from an ecological disaster all by herself. Of course she’d need help.
“Why have you been doing this alone? Didn’t you mention other workers and familiars?”
“Yeah… about that. You have a right to know. There was a high-threat creature on the property last month. My other familiars at the time, the normal ones, were wiped out, and my workers… well, they weren’t really combat trained.”
My eyes widened with concern. “Did they—”
“No, no fatalities. But they’re all out on medical leave right now. The ones who didn’t quit after that, anyway. And don’t worry, the threat was pacified, you won’t need to deal with that kind of thing right away.”
“Wow, sounds rough. I’m glad the situation was resolved, though.”
“Uh, yeah. Anyway, I’m sorely lacking in help as a result. I need someone who has the skills to go out there safely, survive, and perform both wildlife maintenance tasks and barrier maintenance, which needs at least a smidge of witchcraft knowledge and mana. I can’t do it alone, and the local job market for witches is particularly bad right now. That’s why I needed to expedite your onboarding.”
“Yeah, I guess I can understand that.”
“And while you can technically quit any time you want within the rules, I do hope you realize that doing so before things fully stabilize here could mean you won’t have a degree program to go back to come fall.”
That was a heavy blow and a large burden to suddenly get tossed at me. Be my catgirl familiar or the town may be destroyed, no pressure…
After breakfast, Sable led me out back to take a tour of the site. There were several other buildings back here, mostly appearing to be related to agriculture or wildlife management — greenhouses, barns, kennels, and other structures less easy to identify from the outside. There were also a number of rows of some sort of crops, perhaps herbs, and some paddocks, currently empty. It seemed that at some point in history someone at least hoped to do a good deal of research or work with local plants and animals.
Sable pointed at a gate near the back of the area near the main fence. “Go through there and you’ll be inside the barrier. There’s some paths, but you should be fine going off road as you are now. Explore the area, learn the lay of the land, maybe climb the mountain a bit. I’ll be monitoring your senses remotely in case you need directions or have questions about what something is.”
“Are there any dangerous magical creatures back there?”
“At the moment there shouldn’t be anything above your pay grade, at least not that you’re likely to run into without trying. If I spot or sense any I’ll direct you appropriately, but you should be more than a match for anything that might be in there now. For the moment I’d like you to primarily explore the area to get to know it, but while you’re out I have a list of herbs I’d like you to harvest if you spot them.”
She handed me a small pamphlet with pictures and descriptions of plants I’d never heard of, which could have looked quite normal if the descriptions and harvesting instructions didn’t tend to read like “The stalk shudders when you hold it” or “The fruit looks and feels like a breast” or “Do not approach the gourd if its eyes are open.” Sable also handed me a foraging bag on a belt along with a set of harvesting tools.
“These tools are silver-coated so they should cut through most of the plant stalks here.”
Despite all that had happened to me, I gave her a skeptical look after reading through the pamphlet about herbs.
“Seriously, just keep an eye out, you’ll learn to spot them and others soon enough. Especially the moaning melon.”
“Will I hear that before I see it?”
“Unlikely, it only moans when you stroke it.”
I shouldn’t have asked. I gave her a disgusted look before sighing and heading for the gate, leaving her behind to explore. I wasn’t wearing my hiking boots, but the gravel path under my bare feet didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable. There were thick but soft pads on the balls of my feet and toes, and my toe claws extended just enough to give me a strong grip on the terrain as I walked.
As I neared the gate, I could see faint traces of… something in the air around it. As I got closer, I could see that there were lines of translucent green energy floating in space in and around the gate, and they seemed to become almost solid as they connected to the gate structure itself.
I tried using my shared senses with Sable to ask her about it by speaking aloud. “Sable, what am I seeing here?”
My pocket buzzed. I pulled my phone out and saw a text message from Sable.
“barrier touching gate - normal”
“And I can go through at the gate?”
“✅”
“Can normal people see this barrier too?”
“no even I need glasses u r magic”
She needs some sort of glasses to see this? Huh. Guess being a magical creature lets me see it. Putting my phone back into my pocket, I passed through the gate. It felt very unusual, and raised the hair on the back of my neck, as well as the fur on my tail. The atmosphere on the other side of the barrier felt… charged somehow. I set my phone to read texts out loud for now. Not great usually, but better than trying to read them on the phone while trying to enjoy nature.
I walked down the trail a bit before trying out some jogging and finally running. It felt great to run this way, even on gravel, and I could run quickly and lightly over the terrain. Eventually I neared the foot of the mountain. There was some sort of stone structure built up against its base. My phone piped up.
“Message from Sable. Don’t go in.”
“Hmm? Why not?”
“Message from Sable. Delicate magic not trained yet no entry sign emoji”
“Fine, I’ll stay out, but the path ends here. What now?”
“Message from Sable. Explore forage whatever”
“Good enough for me.”
Getting my bearings and setting up some GPS waypoints, I set out onto a game trail looking for anything interesting or magical. The area was beautiful but I hadn’t seen anything unusual yet.
After a minute or two, I spotted a plant that seemed to be glowing faintly, so I stopped to check my pamphlet of magical herbs. Based on the description it was probably something called Emberleaf, though no mention of the glowing was made… it’s probably not actually glowing, just whatever magic sense I now have, or some other cat-related visual artifact. Either way, the leaves were supposed to be useful in fire magic and the fruits were… explosive if damaged. Apparently it was a seed dispersal strategy that could also take out predators. Great, fun, do not eat.
Based on the harvesting directions, I was supposed to carefully snip the leaves off as close to the stem as possible, and do the same for the fruits to avoid damaging them. I took some cuttings, making sure not to take too much so that the plant could recover. Satisfied with my work, I continued hiking.
Making my way around the base of the mountain, I encountered and harvested several other herbs, though they seemed to largely be innocuous sorts that were only interesting to a trained alchemist. They went in my harvest bag and I continued on, diverting up a trail onto the mountain proper.
As I progressed up the mountain, I got a sense of being watched, and not by Sable. Something small was behind me, moving from tree to tree. My cat ears twitched, focusing in on the sounds. Flapping. A bird? I stopped to harvest an herb, allowing me an excuse to casually glance in that direction. Definitely a raven or some other corvid, and it had a slight glow about it, just like the herbs did. A magic bird, though it didn’t look unusual at all. I muted my phone so as not to spook it, then whispered, hoping Sable would hear.
“Sable, there’s some sort of magic raven or something following me, is that one of your familiars?”
There was a long pause before she texted back.
“no catch it”
Catching a bird might not be out of the question now that I had cat-like speed, reflexes, and claws, though I might still need some strategy. Proceeding down the trail as though I suspected nothing, I turned a corner around a rock face, but instead of following the path, I quickly scampered up the side of a nearby tree. That was fun. Watching down through the branches, I waited, hoping the bird would come through the lower branches of this tree as it had been other trees I’d walked past.
After a minute or so, I saw it land, looking curiously around itself at the area around, trying to figure out where I’d gotten to. If I wanted to catch it I’d need to move quickly before it started a search pattern. I somewhat involuntarily wiggled my butt from my perch and then pounced — success! I had grabbed the bird with both claws, being careful not to damage it, but I’d made a miscalculation. The tree branch I’d landed on wouldn’t support the force of a catgirl landing on it, and both the bird and I plummeted to the ground. Of course I was a catgirl so I landed on my feet, but there was a strange flash and sudden feeling of weight from my hands, and I suddenly found myself pinned down between a set of dark, scaly thighs.