Sunlight found the brash orange kitty meandering across the beach aimlessly once more, for what had to be the seventh time this month. In other words, it really wasn’t a very rare sight to see the energetic sage cat exploring the beautiful beaches, though with her around, the natural music of the sea – waves crashing against the sand – was much more pronounced because Hattie, in awe of the landscape, was amazingly silent. She noticed this too, as she reveled in the glorious sound that all others would have dismissed. Really – the only other time she remembered being so quiet, without so much as a meow, was that time she’d run into Tim the Enchanter! Fleetingly, Hattie remembered how odd the little man had looked. How agitated she’d been when he kept on jabbering so quickly she hadn’t been able to get in a single word!

But now she was silent by choice as she strolled along the now familiar coast, occasional breaking into a run for the simple joy of it. She tended to do that a lot less, however, after she misjudged the waves and got soaked with salt water. It was just so gross! A few minutes later, a grumpier-looking Hattie, with salt dripping out of her soaked pelt still, gave up on trying to roll the water out of her fur since all that accomplished was accumulate gritty sand in her already sullied coat. What suffered worst of all, however, was Hattie’s poor hat, drenched completely and with half the beach’s sand sticking to it.

Suddenly she saw someone else – a youngish looking man. Her interest was immediately piqued, since it looked like he only had one arm. Eagerly she began to bound towards him, bursting with questions.

Grateful for a break from his daily guard session, Hal decided to visit the beach. He never seemed to have the time to visit all the luxuries in the world, and it was hard for him to get a better job than this, being 16 and having only his left-arm. Sometimes Hal wished he was an "average" child, but his wishes were never granted anyways...

Hal walked slowly down the shoreline, taking in all his surroundings. The waves gently came in and came out, soaking his feet. The soft, wet sand felt good on his blistered toes, and heels. It was nice to get away from all the clamor and glamor of the city. As he walked slowly down the shoreline, he suddenly noticed a sage cat running right towards him! He looked frantically for a weapon to defend himself, as the oncoming cat approached him...

Skidding to a stop just short of the man – who looked even younger than she had anticipated, now that she was closer – Hattie cocked her head with some confusion, causing he soaked hat to almost plop off with exhaustion, when the young man, who looked to be a knight, was looking about the area frantically as if for an escape route. What? How dare he not be mesmerized by her cute charms! Those were Hattie’s indignantly huffed thoughts, before she realized that, in this bedraggled state, she looked like something the cat dragged in – no pun intended. Seeking to remedy the problem so that she looked less like a hairless dog, the mage kitty simply cast an illusion over herself – as if throwing a cloak over herself – of her regular appearance, gazing up at him soulfully, examining his arm. A second later, she broke the silent.

“Woof!” That was her cheerily barked greeting, meant to confuse him, before she hit him with a barrage of questions, giving him no time to adjust to the fact that she was a talking (and barking, apparently) cat.

“HI! I’m Hattie! Do you like the beach? Is that why you’re at the beach? I love playing by the beach! Except there’s no cute little duckies here. I like ducks. Do you think I’m cute? Wanna pet me? I don’t bite. Hey, what happened to your arm? Does it hurt? It must feel weird? Of course, I have zer o arms, but…Whatever! How did you lose it? Was it bitten off by a crocodile? An elephant? A hippo? Ooh, a bet it was! A hippopotamus bit off your arm, but then you pulverized him, right? Like ‘KAPOW’ and like ‘Give me back my arm you potatao head’. Right?”

Hal saw no way to escape the crazy sage cat, and braced for impact. But just when he thought he was in for the worst, the cat skidded to a halt. Hal was confused: The cat wasn't here to kill him? Now that he thought about it, the sage cat was too cute to harm anyone. Then again, appearances are deceiving... He decided to give the cat the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly, he heard a bark. Wait, what? A bark?

"Wait, isn't this a cat? How is she barking...?" Hal thought, confused.

He stared into her large eyes, and tried to see if there was something wrong with her.

"Hmm, she must be mentally impaired... The least I could do is make nice with her."

Just as he was about to say something, he was pummeled by a barrage of questions?

"Whaa? Oh, um, yeah I like the- Because I'm on a- Yeah, oka- No, bu-," Hal said, caught off-guard.

The amused cat giggled, clapping her hands enthusiastically while she watched the young knight trip over himself as he tried and failed to keep up with the unrelenting torrent of questions. More slowly this time, Hattie tried introducing herself again, sitting down on her haunches with exaggerated grace. She even went as far as to daintily lick her forepaw between breaths.

“Uhm…Let me try again. Maybe this time you’ll give me more than an incoherent babble, hmm? My name is Hattie and I like magic and a whole bunch of other things which you probably don’t wanna know about. Believe me. Once I tried counting them all but I lost count around a thousand and sixty. I’ll really have to try again. Sometime. I really don’t have the time, y’know? Between everything and food and sleep and exploring places…Oh, whoops, am I rambling again?...You really ought to stop me when I start off on some spiel. Otherwise…Yeah. Hey, you wanna see a magic trick?”

Flamboyantly, the cat whipped off her top hat. “Nothing in my hat…” Then she rose up on her hind legs, batting at the knight’s legs with her forepaws. “Nothing up my sleeves of course, seeing as I don’t have any…” Now the cat waited, tapping her paws along to an imaginary drum roll, and then leapt up at him, transforming into a dog mid-leap. Yapping, the cat who now appeared to be a golden retriever found back down, tail wagging furiously.

“See? I can be a doggy too?” Hattie proved it with a bark.