It seemed that life in Ashdown was ever changing. One day she had been Autumn Smith, unknown blogger and stylist. Now, she’d taken up with a rather unusual group of friends, gained some notoriety for her blogging, and was in regular contact with the band of weirdos who’d found themselves dragged into Other Ashdown that day. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy it- she did! Autumn very much, in fact, enjoyed being regularly called on and socializing. It was just taking her some time to adjust to the amounts of magic that were regularly occurring in this world. Yer a Wizard, Harry didn’t even begin to cover the copious amounts of s**t Autumn was being exposed to.

So on her day off, Autumn had gone to the park with a cup of green tea, intent on taking the day to chill. Everyone needed chill, really. Only now she was afraid to pursue and/or use bath bombs, in fear of being plunged unwillingly into Other Ashdown. On the negative, she was missing some great bath bombs. But hey, positive thinking: Her wallet was thanking her for her now paranoid behavior. Now, she had a hell of a lot more money to dedicate to her tea budget.

Raising her thermos to her lips, Autumn prepared for a delicious sip of tea when she saw something moving in the distance. Squinting against the sun, she stood up to get a closer look, and found herself breath-taken by the sight before her.

A cat. Not just any cat, though. The world’s most beautiful cat. It was long and elegant, with fur that rivaled her hair on the best conditioning days she could manage. And its eyes. Oh, its eyes. Piercing blue, like the summer sky, staring at her from across the way. They were the kind of eyes that obnoxious writers waxed poetic about in shitty teenage romance novels. Were this cat a male protagonist, this is the moment Autumn Smith would’ve fallen in love.

But then, the cat was turning away. Distracted by something. With a flick of its tail, it bounded across the way and ducked through the branches, into—

Oh. Oh no. That beautiful, perfect animal stood no chance in the Otherworld. Scrambling to get all of her s**t together, Autumn clicked her thermos shut and threw it into her purse. Thank god she’d worn flats today, or this could turn into another ugly episode of Autumn ******** Up In Her Heels 2k16. She threw her purse over her shoulder and took off, willingly throwing herself back into hell to follow after that magical cat.

The bent branches were a bit small for Autumn standing, but she was willing to duck down and possibly muck up her hair for the sake of an animal. Call her a sap, but animals were just something special. Something worth protecting. Animals weren’t evil in the same way people could be. They were just pure and good.

Taking a deep breath, Autumn attempted to quell her nerves as she pushed through the trees and into Other Ashdown. She was going to find that cat, by god, or her name wasn’t Autumn Smith.

And she was still pretty sure that was her name.