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"What trouble?" Myxie said. "It is sometimes fun. We think we won't punish you this time." And he gave a smile with many, many teeth, firmly wrapping his arm about Gil's waist.

"Our favourite. You deserve all this and more."

The vision faded away and Lysander looked startled. "Woah." he said. "That was intense. I didn't expect it to be so strong. I could... it was like I was there but I could almost feel both of them. Wow! These mushrooms are awesome!"

Herald also looked concerned, having had a similar experience and not sure how she felt about the magic at work at all.

"You try a bit too Ros!" Lysander said, a little bit excited now.

Herald rolled her eyes judgementally at Gil, thinking him a silly stallion and little else. She didn't think his brother - if that was who they'd seen - impressive at all.

Lysander came out of Ros's vision breathless and left with the lingering need to fight back tears. It had been a day he remembered too, even more now than he had then. It had made him appreciate things he had a great deal more acutely.

He laid a hand on Ros's shoulder and leaned in close to him, giving him a surprisingly tender kiss, because in the moment he felt like both of them could benefit from it.

Herald plucked a mushroom from the ground and took a bite of it.

The memory this time was oddly scrambled, like a VHS which didn't function properly, hopping from one moment to the next erratically.

There was a city. It was raining. It was obviously in Halloween but there was something less fanciful than usual about it. The streets were empty and a huge equine made its way along them. Oily rainbows washed into the grates at its hooves. It oozed pollution, trailed it, nothing wanted to touch it, even those normally tolerant of messy denizens avoided it, tired of telling it to be polite, to at least gets its side effects under control. This was a city. This was civilised. It hated demons, it hated reapers.

Another moment, passing a street, a glimpse of someone ducking away.

This time it was a different place, different time and the rain hadn't stopped, a family sighted through a window, one partner pecking his wife on the cheek while a scareling played behind them.

The memory was scrambled and corrupted but the spike of jealousy was like an arrow to the chest, and then it was over.

Herald snorted as it faded.

Lysander nodded, giving Herald a curious look as he went to get his own mushroom. He still didn't know much about his weapon and it was still really really weird to even think of her as a living creature with feeling, wants and needs.

Lysander's mushroom didn't taste all that good, making him wrinkle his nose as he took a bite, closing his eyes at the strong sour flavour. Even as he did though the world seemed to shift and in a heartbeat he wasn't himself any longer, he was somewhere else.

He hadn't showed up on the last day of court. His lawyer had told him he needed to be present, Roswell had stressed that missing days looked bad and might impact him negatively. Everyone had tried relentlessly to get him to show face, to argue and fight for the care of his daughter.

When the judge gave his verdict he was out riding, the powerful young horse galloping along the path through the land his family owned, down past the shallow winding brooks and into the forest. It was fall then too, the trees a brilliant crimson, all the world in a splendour of reds and oranges, heavy with the fruit of their labours and with animals everywhere bracing themselves for the trials of winter. He barely saw any of it, barely registered anything else in the world except himself and his own fear and pain. He ran from it because he was a coward, because he didn't want to think about it, didn't want to deal with the potential of a life without Odette, without the stability he'd known. He didn't know what it would mean to have a life after a divorce if he didn't have his daughter.

He loved her so much and they'd just tell her he hadn't cared enough to stay, and when she was old enough they'd tell her he hadn't even cared enough to show up to her custody battle.

People were looking for him everywhere, some assuming that the worst had happened, his brother's texts for once even seeming frantic when he didn't normally care about anything much. He'd not even told Roswell where he'd gone, unable to face anyone or handle any further lectures about where he needed to be.

Reaching the cliffs both he and the horse were exhausted for their own reasons and he paused just to look out over the sea of trees, not even needing to pull his coat closer in the brisk wind. He didn't care about the cold, he didn't care about much.

It was night time when he went back, noting one of the stablehands as he put up his horse texting someone. His brother arrived and yelled at him for being irresponsible but he barely heard him because it was too late and it was over.

He didn't go home. Instead he drove through unfamiliar neighbourhoods to somewhere he'd surprisingly never been, parking the sleek sports car right outside of Roswell's house, burying his face in his hands across the steering wheel.

He regretted letting the other man down, knowing if anyone could have loved Odette more than him, it was his assistant.

Ahead, there was the shadowy form of a cat, and it seemed as if a path they'd never noticed before was suddenly there, the trees twisted aside where before they'd been too dense to navigate.

Roswell seemed sober after the vision, but reached for Lysander's hand, sure and affirming.

"I knew," he said softly, "how much she has always mattered to you."

The cat kept crossing their path. The strange, unnatural path in front of them.
Zigging, zagging, and then suddenly it was at his ear and shoulder. It took him a moment to realize he was only seeing it out of one eye.

His other eye.

"You could have fixed it," it told him, "kidnapped the girl, killed his exxxxxx. Given the whole trial a real show. You've done worse, haven't you? Ssssso well-behaved," the cat hissed in his bad ear, "and look where it's gotten you."

Now it was Roswell's turn to hold his head, covering his eye, which didn't stop the flickering visions or the voice.

His hand faltered from where it had been holding Lysander's.

"Stop," he said, "Be quiet."

"You can fix it now," The cat told him, and he was back at the trial again. Something was wrong about it. Warped. Everyone there was smiling.

He knew what kind of cat it was.

Suddenly, they all had cat heads. They stood from their chairs. "If you'd fixed it," they sang, "You wouldn't even be on the island."

Long claws extended from their fingers.

"Off with his head. Off withhhhh hissssssss-"

Gil was gone. Roswell took a chair (a twisted branch), and looking feral and disheveled, backed away from the group, the business end of the stick pointed at all three of them.

"It's a dream," he said miserably, and as the first cat pounced, ragged wounds ripped through his arm, and he swung the chair, knocking the cat (Gil, who had reached out with concern) aside.

"I'll drink the blood from your useless head," Odette said, looking more like a cat than Odette.

He swung at her with a half-sob, missing Herald.

Stepping into the courtroom were more familiar faces. "We'll put you away for good this time, Fest. We knew it would come to this. It was just a matter of time. Bonus, looks like your brother's not here to protect you. Should be easy, now that the the odds are finally even."

"I'm not that anymore," Roswell said, still covering his eye, not sure why he was explaining anything to these types. "Does whatever this is look like people to you? This can't be happening. I shouldn't be here!"

One of them smacked their fist, coming closer. They only listened to one thing.

They took him by the shoulders. This was it. And he was the worst of them, always liked to hand out a round beating regardless, and then he'd be back to jail, forever, and why- why?

Roswell.

Came from his mouth, and Roswell didn't understand, because he would never have called him that.

Thomas.

He said again, and he hadn't brought a knee up into his gut, Roswell looked down at his shredded arm, and it was whole. He looked at the shining courtroom floors, and in its place was wrongly-colored grass.

And the voice was wrong, too. It wasn't his voice, it was...

"Lysander," he said, good eye coming back to recognition. "Cats," he warned Lysander suddenly, "There was a cat, a Chesire Cat..."