File 0001.5: The Fantastical Tale of Mr. Edinger part 4

Ten minutes past and Edward slowly started to feel better and also a bit drowsy. He opened his eyes and looked around. The cat had not moved and appeared to be asleep but as soon as Edward sat up he opened his eyes.

“Feeling better?” the cast asked.

“Yes…” Edward replied not entirely sure.

“Good, well I can see you are very confused by everything happening so let me be the one to officially welcome you to: Earth!” the cat said proudly.

Edward got up.

“That cannot be, I’m from Earth and cats don’t talk on Earth,” he protested.

“Aaaaaaah, but on this Earth they do,”

“This Earth?”

“Yes, my dear Edward…this Earth…you have travelled to a parallel earth, very similar to the Earth you know but in many ways completely different, in here…some animals have the capability of speech for example and there are many other things different that I cannot go into right now,”

“But how did I get here…Arthur you said?”

“Yes, Arthur,” the cat nodded. “I do not know exactly…I am after all…just a cast, this is way beyond my expertise but I might know of someone who knows more about travelling between worlds,”

Arthur got up and suddenly jumped upon Edwards shoulder. With one paw he pointed towards a path

“That’s where we need to go, we should be able to make it in an hour or two if we walk in a decent speed,” Arthur said.

“We?”

“You,”

“That’s what I was afraid of…” Edward said having giving up the hope that anything ever would make sense anymore. he started walking with Arthur on his shoulder. So many questions in his head but he wasn’t sure if asking a talking cat was going to give him answers that he wanted. Maybe he could ask his questions to this mystery person…he assumed Arthur was talking about a person…but for all he know it could be a great talking horse named Bonzo.

Arthur meanwhile prattled on about the differences he knew about. Apparently travel between Earths used to be more common in the far past but currently it didn’t happen that often. In fact, Arthur noted that Edward had been the first in years as far as he knew. There were only certain places where travel between worlds was possible and Arthur liked to hang around these places. Not because he was expecting someone but according to him, cats were particularly well adapted to feel magic so that particular place was very attractive to cats.

“Magic?” Edward asked.

“Yes…I understood from the stories that magic does not exist on your Earth,”

“Indeed it does not, only in books,”

“Well, the person who we are going to meet can do magic…maybe she can even teach you…if that is what you want,”

“Currently…I just want to go home,”

Arthur nodded but didn’t reply. Edward, already accustomed to Arthur always having an answer ready was slightly concerned when he suddenly was silent. For another 15 minutes they walked in silence when almost seemingly out of a no where a big wooden hut appeared, build in a tree, 15 meters from the ground.

“Here we are,” Arthur said jumping from Edward’s shoulder and easily made his way up the tree and looked back.

“You coming?”

“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not a cat…climbing doesn’t come as naturally to me,” Edward complained putting his hand the tree and pulling himself up a bit. It was fifteen long minutes of climbing and he was all sweaty and out of breath when he finally made it up.

“I can’t…imagine…who ever…lives…here…does…that…every…time…they…want…to…go…in…or…out,” he panted.

“Of course not, they would use the stairs over there,” Arthur said pointing at a set of stairs a little bit to the left of where they were sitting, hidden from view from the angle they approached the hut.

Edward did a double take and glared at Arthur. Arthur just rolled over laughing

“You should have seen the faces you made when you were climbing up!” he said between laughing. Edward stood up and decided to ignore the cat. He walked up to the door and knocked.