We Got Lucky

Lucky ran over to Ginger-Biscuit, pouncing on the tip of his fluffy orange tail. “Got you!” she called to the excitable ginger cat. Ginger ran over to Hope and leaped up, just missing her little gray tail. Hope leaped up and began to fly, one of the superpowers she used sometimes. As she flew across the sky, she began to fall, crashing to the ground with a thump.

“What happened?” they both asked, running up to their friend. 

“I don’t know!” Hope replied, “I was flying and then I just … fell. It was like my powers disappeared.” 

“They disappeared?” Lucky asked. 

“That's weird.” Ginger-Biscuit said. “That's never happened to me before.” 

Lucky shrugged and said “Let’s not worry about it. I’m sure it’s fine.” They walked back to class and sat down. “Magic practice is boring.” Ginger-Biscuit said. 

Their teacher, Miss Catnip, stood up, “Kittens, today we will be practicing how to use your powers to get away from danger. Please stand up and get into groups to begin practicing your magic skills.” She said, sitting back down and starting to grade the homework they had done the night before. 

“Okay!” Lucky said, and then to Ginger and Hope, “Let’s play a game! I’ll be the monster, chasing you, and you have to use your magic to get to the other side of the classroom before I catch you!”

“Sure!” Ginger said, leaping to his feet. Hope stood up as well, gently walking over to one side of the classroom. Lucky stepped behind them and said, “Okay, let’s go!” and ran after them both. Ginger-Biscuit readied himself to teleport, his power, and jumped. He landed on the floor and shouted, “Yes! I won!” until he realized he was standing in the same place as before. “What?” he asked. “It didn’t work?”

Lucky ran up to him and pulled him into a hug, saying, “I got you!” She then ran over to Hope and did the same thing. Soon, all the cats in the class were saying the same thing. Shouts of “What?” and “It doesn’t work!” drowned out the worried calls of Miss Catnip saying, “It will all be fine” and “I’m sure there's a logical explanation!” She told them to start practicing their hunting and sniffing out whether an animal was prey or a predator, and then walked out of the classroom. Lucky and her friends played hunting games until the end of school, walking back home together afterward. Lucky was having a sleepover with Ginger-Biscuit and Hope anyway, so they would be able to talk about the problem with their magic.

When they got home, they picked up their snacks and ran upstairs. They all sat down on Lucky’s bed and began to talk about their magic. “Hey, Lucky, can you still do magic? You’re the only one of us who hasn’t tried to use it yet,” Ginger asked. Lucky reached one of her paws up and suddenly, green sparkles began dancing across the room, making stars and swirls in the air. A sprout appeared from the ground, shooting up and growing into a small oak tree. “My magic still works!?” Lucky said, quickly pulling her paw away from the tree.

“Wait!” Ginger shouted with a confused look on his face. “What if our magic just doesn’t work at school!” He and Hope both tried, he trying to jump into his portal and she trying to leap into flight, but neither of them could. “Wait, so your powers work, but ours don’t? How does that work?” Hope asked. “Let’s find out!” Lucky said. “Let’s go out tonight and explore! I remember at school we learned that our magic comes from the rainbow crystal in the shrine at the center of the village, so let’s go check that place out!”

“I don’t know…” Hope said worriedly. “We might get in trouble.”. 

“It’ll be fine,” Ginger said. “Let’s go!”. They went downstairs and walked out the door, trotting in the direction of the shrine. 

When they got there, they walked over to the crystal and touched it gently. “If it’s still here, why doesn’t our magic work?” Hope asked. “Shouldn’t we be able to feel the magic when we touch the crystal?” Ginger asked, looking confused. Lucky picked up the crystal and turned it over in her paws. She spotted something yellow on it and then read it out loud. “$20? Why does this have a price tag on it?” 

“Why would the crystal have a price tag on it if it’s what makes our magic? Are they selling it or something?” Ginger asked. 

“Selling it?” said Lucky. “Wait! What if the crystal isn’t real? That would explain why we couldn’t feel the magic, and why you two couldn't use it either! The crystal must be fake!” Lucky said excitedly. “But then how can you still use your magic?” asked Ginger. “How can you do it if we can’t?”

“I don’t know, but that isn’t important right now! We need to find the crystal!” Lucky said. “But…I already found the crystal,” Ginger said. “Where?!” Lucky said excitedly. “Right there, of course,” Ginger said, pointing at the fake crystal they had just found. “Ginger, that isn’t what we're looking for! We need the real crystal!” Lucky groaned. “Um…guys?” Hope said quietly. “What?” Ginger asked. “I think I found something,” she whispered. She held up a small shard of blue gem and said, “Could this be a clue to where the crystal is?”

“I found another piece!” Ginger-Biscuit said excitedly. There was a small path of blue gem shards leading into the woods, so the three friends followed it into the trees and began to look around. They didn’t find any more gem pieces there, so they walked deeper into the forest and started searching there instead. They found a little dirt path while walking, so they followed it to try to find more clues.

After a while, they had been walking on the path for a long time, and they weren’t really getting anywhere. “We should stop following this trail. We’ve been walking for ages and we aren't finding anything, right, Ginger?” Lucky said. “Uh, Ginger?” Lucky said, turning around. She looked around behind her, but no one was there. “Ginger!?” she shouted, looking around for her friend. She heard a loud cry of “Help!” and began to run through the trees, following the sound of shouting. Eventually, she came to a large weeping willow tree, and dangling upside-down from one of its long strings of leaves, was Ginger. “Um… Little help here, guys?” he asked, grinning sheepishly at them from up in the tree. “How did you even get up there, Ginger?” Lucky asked him. “I don’t know! I was trying to use my teleporting magic to see if the crystal was close by, and then it worked! But…It also resulted in me getting stuck here, so it wasn’t all good, but at least it worked, right?” “Wait…” Lucky said. “I… I think I… know this tree.” “What!? How?” Ginger-Biscuit said, confused. “This was the first tree I ever grew. When I first got my magic.” She said.  Every cat got their magic when they were ten in cat years, about six months for humans. “But if your first tree was a weeping willow, wouldn’t your name be willow?” asked Hope. “No it wouldn’t. Look closely at the leaves.” said Lucky. As Hope looked more closely at the leaves, she realized that Lucky was right. Instead of normal leaves, tiny clovers sprouted from the long stalks that hung down from the tree. “My dad built me a swing and a treehouse on this tree to celebrate. I went on the swing every day, and I turned the treehouse into my own little house that nobody else knew about except him.” She climbed up the tree, and pulled back a small curtain. There was a tiny wooden house, painted green, with little windows and a tiny door, just big enough for a ten year old cat to crawl through. Ten was actually quite young in human years, so a ten year old would act more like a six year old. “I know I put a secret entrance in here somewhere…” Lucky said to herself, running her paws along the wooden walls. One log was painted a slightly darker green than all the others, so she pressed it and the whole wall opened up. “I  always knew I would need this place for something when I was older, so I made a secret entrance that was bigger than the actual door.” They walked inside, and looked around them. There was a couch, two hanging chairs, and fairy lights dangling from the ceiling. They wandered around and tried to find the crystal. They searched under the couch, behind the curtains, and they picked up every cushion there was. “What about behind the couch?” Hope asked. “People always lose things under the couch.” “True.” Ginger said. “But if it was lost, why would it be here?” “Maybe it got hidden there?” She asked. “People also hide things behind the couch sometimes.” “Let’s check.” Lucky said, trying to stop the disagreement from turning into an argument. She looked behind the couch, and sure enough, the crystal was there. “We found…it.” Lucky shouted, just as the King of Catville came in, with a missing gem on his crown. Hope’s eyes darted from the pieces of gem in her paw to the place on the crown with no gem. Suddenly, she gasped in surprise as she realized where the gems had come from. 

“You-you stole the crystal? Why?” Hope asked, looking terrified. 

“What do you mean? What crystal?” he asked, looking confused. “I didn’t steal anything! I’m just here on an innocent stroll!” Lucky took a deep breath and marched up to the king. “You’re lying.” She said  “If you were ‘just taking an innocent stroll’ how would you end up here? A king wouldn’t just wander off, deep into the woods, just for a stroll.” “Yeah!” Hope shouted, finally finding her voice again. “And there’s a flaw in your alibi as well! This treehouse isn’t yours, and yet you came in here anyway! Unless you have the same pawprint as Lucky, you would need a key to get in here! If you don’t have anything of value in here, you wouldn’t have a key!”. A hint of anger flashed in the king’s eyes, and he didn’t quite manage to keep his ‘innocent’ look.  He must have realized they were on to him, so he let out a growl and leaped onto Hope. They rolled to the ground, clawing and biting each other, until Hope pulled herself away from his grasp and stood up. “I thought you were a good person.” She said, shaking slightly. “I thought you kept our village safe. But you have shown me that you never wanted to be a good person anyway. You have shown me that you never even tried to help any of us. You just wanted power.” She leaped up, and began to fly around the room, flying around and around until she bolted out the door. “Follow me!” She called to them, flying across the forest. Lucky and Ginger chased after her, Ginger teleporting himself from treetop to treetop, and Lucky growing long vines so she could swing across the trees. Soon enough, they were out of the woods, so they all collapsed on the ground, exhausted. “Sorry about that.” Hope said. “I made a quick decision to go tell the queen about that, and there wasn’t time to explain.”  “That’s fine.” Lucky said, panting slightly. “Let’s go to the palace.”. The three friends picked themselves up off the floor and began to walk in the direction of the Catville Palace. 

When they arrived, they walked inside the castle and made their way to the throne room. A few guards tried to stop them, but when they heard what the trio had found, they let them pass. When they finally got to the throne room, Lucky raced up to the queen and said to her, “Your Majesty! We have found the crystal and identified the thief!”. The Queen of Catville, an elegant and regal bengal cat, stood up from her throne and told them, “Well done, kittens. Thank you very much for finding the crystal for us. Now, you claim you know who the thief is. Tell me, and I shall banish them from Catville.” Lucky put a sincere expression on her face, and told the queen about everything that had happened, and then took a deep breath. “Because of everything that has happened, we believe that the thief is none other than your husband, the King of Catville!”. The queen gasped in surprise. “M-my husband? Stole the crystal?”. “Yes.” Lucky said.  “We are afraid that he did.” “You’re lying!” the Queen shouted. “The King would never do that! Leave the castle at once!”. “Wait!” Lucky said. “Hope can show you the evidence!” Hope held out the pieces of blue gem that they had found leading into the woods. “We found these on a path into the forest.” she said. “We went into Lucky’s old treehouse, and we found the king there, with a place in his crown where the gem used to be!” The Queen gasped in surprise when she realised that these were the pieces from the king’s crown. The Queen immediately called her guards, and instructed them to search the woods for the King, and bring him back to the palace. She told Lucky, Hope and Ginger-Biscuit that they should go back home, because the King might do something dangerous to them when the guards brought him back. She assured them that she could handle the situation and that the King would be locked up in the Catville prison. 

A few days later, the news came out that the King had been dethroned, and was now safely locked up in Catville prison. At school, every cat was talking about how weird it was that they got their powers back at the same time as the King got arrested. Some thought the King stole it, some thought he found it, but tried to keep it for himself, and some just thought it was a coincidence. Hope, Lucky, and Ginger exchanged glances, but neither of them said anything. After school ended, they walked home together and decided they would come round to Lucky’s to talk about their adventure. As soon as they got inside, there was a knock on the door, and they opened it to find one of the queen’s guards standing outside. “A package for Lucky, Hope, and Ginger- Biscuit.” He said. He handed the package to Lucky, and they raced upstairs to open it. “Uh… Bye.” the guard said, walking away and closing the door behind him. They opened the package, and found three sparkling collars inside, each one with their name etched into a gold colored charm. They also found a card inside, with ‘Thank you’ on it. They opened it, and written on it was; Thank you for saving the crystal. I have sent three enchanted collars, and they should help make your powers stronger. I hope you continue to be brave and kind, and I would like to thank you for what you did to rescue the rainbow crystal. Best wishes, The Queen of Catville. Lucky, Hope, and Ginger put their new collars on straight away, and then tested out their powers. Lucky’s plants and trees could now grow twice their usual size, and Ginger could teleport further and faster than he ever could before. Hope could fly even higher and for longer, and all three cats couldn’t wait for their next adventure.