They continued walking until the sun was climbed up to be visible in the sky.
Theresa had not noticed so clearly in the darkness of the forest or by the dim light of the inn, but now that the tension of the previous night had worn off she could see that the colors of the world were skewed.
The leaves of the trees and plants growing beneath ranged from green to grey to an odd off bluish green. The trunks were mostly shades of grey, as was the path that they were walking on.
Little flowers dotted the edge of the road in various places and they were stark grey with lines down the middle of each petal in a color she had never seen before and her human mind could not quite comprehend.
It was surreal; it was like she was in a world where all the warm colors had been drained out.
Theresa looked at her sister closely. Daphne looked terrible. Her sister's anxiety, exhaustion, and the lack of color in Theresa's feline vision combined to render the usually exquisite Daphne slightly haggard.
Theresa ignored the small twinge of unworthy glee at Daphne's disheveled appearance and glanced up at the sky. At least it was still its normal blue, she noted.
They had gone on for long enough she decided it would be safe to take a short break. She could not sense any pursuit, perhaps they had lost their aunt's men.
She felt as exhausted as Daphne looked.
Theresa was also ravenous. She had forgotten her former hunger while the fear kept her heart pumping and her mind focused, but now that the adrenaline had worn off her desire to eat had come back in full force. She could hear Daphne's stomach growling loudly.
She also felt anxious to put her writing plan into action.
Theresa meowed so that Daphne was looking at her, then walked off the road until they were well out of sight. She sat down and Daphne did the same.
She stuck her nose into Daphne's bag and then looked meaningfully at her sister.
"What? Do you want to eat? I thought that maybe you would want us to save it for later..." she trailed off.
Theresa tried not to feel frustrated. Had Daphne been waiting for her to suggest that they eat? Did she not even try to make things easier for Theresa?
Daphne was fortunate that Theresa did not have hands with which to shake her sister.
Instead of resorting to physical assault, Theresa meowed in frustration and nodded her head. Daphne hesitantly took out some of the food.
"How much should we have?"
How was Theresa supposed to answer that? Could Daphne not figure out anything on her own?
Theresa gritted her strange teeth and shrugged her shoulders. It felt odd in her feline form, but she hoped that it got the point across.
Daphne's face scrunched up and Theresa was afraid that her sister would waste time crying again.
Instead Daphne put some food in front of Theresa on the ground. Theresa could not help but feel annoyed at the animalistic treatment. Was Daphne forgetting that Theresa was still human inside?
"If we run out of food, it's not my fault," Daphne announced defensively.
Theresa shrugged again. She was not going to sanction Daphne's all encompassing innocence. Whether Theresa or her sister liked it or not Daphne was going to have to make some decisions.
Theresa forced herself to ignore the fact her food was sitting in the filthy dirt and started eating.
Hopefully it would make her stop looking at mice with longing. She also noticed the songbirds flitting through the trees were also looking alarmingly delicious and she wanted nothing to do with that.
Theresa studied her sister's face closely between bites.
Daphne appeared to be basically normal so long as Theresa ignored the lack of color in her skin. Daphne's wide blue eyes stood out amidst all the grey and even then they did not look exactly right, as if something had been removed.
Theresa could only hope that the strange colors she perceived were due to her feline state and not some other unknown horror that Francine had inflicted on her.
As she ate, Theresa used her newly sensitive ears to listen carefully for sounds of pursuit. It was hard to believe that they had lost her aunt's men so easily.
Yet it seemed to be true, therefore it was the perfect time to attempt her plan of communication.
She meowed loudly and Daphne looked over though bleary eyes. She took her paw and began scratching out a W in the hard dirt of the road.
Theresa inspected her handiwork. It was shallow, wiggly, and a pretty pathetic W in general, but at least it looked something like the letter that she was attempting to scribe.
Cat paws had clearly been designed for walking and swiping, not slow and deliberate strokes. She glanced at Daphne's face.
Daphne looked at her blankly. "What are you doing?"
Theresa let out a breath which sounded remarkably like her human sigh.
She meowed again insistently and pleaded silently for Daphne to stop being dense.
She decided to move forward and her sister would surely catch on to what Theresa was trying to say eventually. She made an I next to the W. This letter was much easier since it only required one easy stroke.
Daphne was still watching quietly. Theresa knew that Daphne knew how to read.
If nothing else, Francine had made a show of having her nieces properly cared for and educated. Daphne had spent as many hours with the tutor as Theresa had.
Theresa had to believe that she would understand what Theresa was attempting to write.
Or was Theresa's mind skewed by her transformation and was she writing the letters wrong?
Or were they so ill formed that Daphne could not tell what she was doing? She missed the nimble dexterity of her human hands.
But she had to keep going. If they did not find help, Theresa feared she would spend her life in this unfamiliar form. She made a Z next to the I and W. She accidentally scratched the top line across the other two letters. Drat!
"Oh, are you trying to write?" Daphne finally said. It was about time.
Theresa let out a breath of relief and made the next three letters with painstaking slowness.
"Wizard?" Daphne asked. Theresa nodded. Then she carefully wrote out "find".
"We need to find a wizard?" Daphne asked.
Theresa nodded.
"To turn you back to human? Before we get to the capital to petition the king?"
Theresa nodded with everything that was in her.
Daphne's forehead wrinkled up. "Do you know where to find a wizard?" she wondered.
Theresa shook her head spelled out "look for".
"That looks hard to do that with your paw," Daphne commented.
Theresa agreed; it was ridiculously hard. She wanted her hands and mouth back and the rest of her human self for that matter, but it did not seem like she would get any of her parts back so easily.
"Do you think that we should ask people where a wizard might be found at the next town?" Daphne wondered.
Theresa nodded. It seemed like the most expedient way. Surely there were innocuous reasons for seeking out a wizard. It was important that they not stand out too much.
Theresa began to write another suggestion, when she heard something in the distance.
It was a terrible sound that made the hairs on her cat back stand on end. It made the cat part of her mind recoil in horror. It knew very well that it did not like the monstrous creature which made the horrific noise.
Theresa identified the sound. Dogs. Horrible, awful, beastly dogs.
Theresa had not particularly minded the creatures when she was human but as a fugitive cat they were surely the harbingers of doom.
Daphne had apparently heard them too. "We'd better run."
As if they could outrun a group of dogs when they were already terribly exhausted. Nevertheless, she threw herself into a run and Daphne scrambled behind her, leaving the road far behind them.
The two sisters used every scrap of energy they possessed.
Theresa had no trouble moving quickly; her human ideas and cat instincts were for once in perfect harmony. Both thought that there was no better plan than to put as much distance between themselves and the despicable mutts as physically possible.
As Theresa ran, she kicked herself for her own stupidity. She had known that it had seemed too easy but they had sat and enjoyed a lunch instead.
Clearly while they had rested her aunt's men had stopped to find some tracking hounds.
If only they could make it to water perhaps the dogs would lose their scents and they might escape.
Although nothing ever seemed to be so easy.
Theresa could hear Daphne's breathing growing more ragged. Theresa's feline body was also feeling the events of the past day catching up to it. There had been too many trying situations and too little time to rest.
She could feel the nagging doubt that there might not be any possible way that they could truly escape her aunt.
Even that unhappy thought was pushed out of her head by the first sight of the dogs behind them.
There were three canines running at full speed. Two were big and black and one was slightly smaller and grey. All three seemed overjoyed to see their prey and pleased to chase it with teeth bared and eyes fixed on their quarry.
Theresa resisted the insistent urge to pump her legs harder to get additional speed. Her cat mind was well aware that she could run faster, but if she did she would leave Daphne behind.
She could not abandon her sister to the pack behind them, no matter how much her cat side screamed for additional speed.
Neither Daphne nor Theresa had much left in them. They were, at least in Theresa's true form, both pampered noble women. They had nothing in their sheltered lives to prepare them for such a misadventure.
Even with their aunt's vague neglect and overwhelming control they had always been provided for physically. There had neither been any immediate danger to fear, nor hunger, nor any apparent lack.
Theresa had assumed that her aunt's goal was to force them to return so that she could fully control their fortunes again. In retrospect it seemed to be Francine's motive since the moment that Theresa and Daphne lost their parents.
But the dogs sounded so vicious they caused doubt about assumption of her aunt's intentions.
Did Francine really want them back alive, or would just their bodies be enough for her? Had they become too much trouble after running off like they had? Could the aunt who had raised them most of their lives really prefer them dead?
It seemed as though it might be the case as the dogs drew closer.
Theresa could hear their proximity with her sensitive ears; she had no need to look back.
She wished she could scream at Daphne, whether encouragements or warnings she did not know.
The dogs grew closer still.
The dog's salivating jaws came almost within touching distance of her tail and Theresa lost control.
The feline in her panicked and she suddenly veered off at a sharp right angle into the thicker shrubbery.
The dogs were left with the choice to chase the boring human or the spirited cat and they immediately slid to a halt and turned around to give chase to Theresa.
Separated from her sister and too panicked to even care, Theresa raced through the plants as fast as her four paws could take her.
Her meager supply of energy was quickly being exhausted by the chase and the dogs were closing in again.
She could hear running water somewhere up ahead. It seemed unappealing to the cat in her even with the pack in pursuit, but she would risk it if she had to.
The dogs were almost upon her and as a last attempt to survive she abruptly turned, catching the beasts off guard. She leapt towards a low hanging branch and dug in with her claws. The branch dipped under her weight.
On instinct alone she scrambled up and dug her claws into the bark to climb further up the trunk of the tree, leaving the braying dogs far below. She did not stop until she was on a branch far above them.
She allowed herself to breath one sigh of relief. She was safe.
For now.
From her temporarily safe perch, Theresa surveyed the dogs dancing around the tree below her. The two black dogs where bouncing up against the tree and making loud noises that caused terrible stress to her cat half. The barking did not exactly comfort her human nerves either.
The remaining gray dog sat on the ground and calmly watched her sit on her perch.
There was something about its patient watchfulness that seemed out of place to Theresa, so she kept her attention on the oddly quieter dog. It looked as if it was waiting for someone to arrive. It might very well have been trained to just keep her cornered for as long as it took.
Most likely her aunt's men could hear the braying and would come to drag their quarry back to Waldwick.
What would Daphne do alone if Theresa was captured? How would she even know? Theresa felt worry fill her.
The two black dogs barked with renewed frenzy; they were obviously frustrated by their apparent inability to reach her. She suspected she was still in tantalizing sight and smell, much like how her cat side felt about the skittering forest creatures.
She ignored the stupid large black dogs and watched the lighter one. Its eyes met hers. She shivered as the hairs on her back stood on end.
It almost seemed that it understood that she had nowhere to run and soon the men would arrive to capture her.
Even though she was safe for now she would only remain so until her aunt or her men arrived. She did not know how they would get her down, but she was certain they would find a way.
She really needed a plan.
But what could a cat stuck up a tree possibly do?