41 No ghost under the bed, but a kitten in the cabinet

Once Jaros left, they quickly sorted through the issues with the school, before spending the remaining day moving furniture around, making empty wardrobes fill up with clothes, an empty kitchen fill up with tools and added a wool mattress as well as bed sheets to each bed.

With all their work, the living area turned from an empty place with some pieces of furniture, to a real place where people could actually live. Pretty chandeliers with magic lights were distributed in the rooms and not only the walls and floors, but even the larger pieces of furniture was spelled with fortification magic by Myra.

These spells would not hold forever, but Myra expected them to hold at least 500 years. That should be more than enough time to refresh them, if it ever became necessary.

Most impressive of all the rooms for Rae by far though was the large bathroom.

Not only did it look extremely pretty, with white marble walls and floors with dark red stone as contrast and pretty carpets, it was one of the most magical places in the whole building – quite in a literal sense.

The floor as well as the bathtub had heating magical formations embedded, while the water itself would be crystal clear as it was summoned directly into the bathtub. Even the bathtub itself had an added special material called flower root that would turn magical power and water into a fluid that would give off the smell of fresh flowers.

"Rae! Aaron! Dinner is ready." Myra called out to the little kid, as well as her boyfriend who both came down the stairs as soon as they heard the call.

It felt strange for Myra to say something like that. She was used to her adoptive parents always calling her when dinner was ready, not it was the first time, that she called someone for dinner instead.

"I hope you like fish. I got a fresh one from the market, did my best to get it battered and made some side dishes for it. We have rice and potatoes and some salad. Oh and don't forget to wash your hands!"

Doing her best imitation of her adoptive mother, Myra felt really happy that she remembered all the little bits and pieces she learned about cooking.

It was not any kind of luxurious dinner, but it did taste decent and both Rae and Aaron were happily eating her home cooked meal.

"This was delicious! You should have told me earlier, I could have helped a little." Aaron honestly praised her cooking and Rae quickly agreed. "Good fish!"

"Well, if you liked it that's great. I don't often get the chance to cook something myself. I hope this will change, now that we have a real kitchen and don't just have the dorm rooms to bring some cold snacks."

"Oh by the way, I got a letter from Ethan. We will be meeting up at my parents' home in Firestone over the weekend. Will you come with me?"

Aaron looked at her and didn't have to think about it for a long time. "That sounds like you would like me to join you? I would be happy to meet your parents. Will I be joining you as a friend or as your boyfriend?"

Myra smiled at him. "Obviously as my boyfriend. Not only would I never try to trick my parents about something like that, they would likely see through me within minutes."

"What about you darling, would you like to come to my parent's village and meet your grandma and grandpa?"

"Yes! I will come too" Rae quickly agreed.

With dinner a complete success and night quickly approaching, Myra decided that they would use the transference array to return to the academy the next morning.

"I hired some people to take care of the other children while we are not here. You should be able to join them, while we are at the academy learning things and when we get home in the afternoon we will pick you up again."

"You will be here today and back tomorrow?" Rae cautiously asked.

"Yes darling, I wouldn't want to leave you with some nanny for a whole day anymore. I'd rather spend some extra time travelling and do my best to return sometime in the afternoon."

"Nice! Can I bring the kitten to play with the others?"

"What kitten?" both Myra and Aaron asked at the same time. Rae looked at them shyly before pointing to her room. "The one I played with yesterday and today. It lives in my cabinet with her family. I thought you brought it to me mommy."

Aaron was the first to point out that something was rather odd. "The kitten lives in your cabinet?"

Rae nodded. "It always comes out from there and then munches the air around me."

"Oh." Myra seemed to have forgotten about something and Aaron remembered that small word, a word she would always use before things exploded or went haywire. He totally expected the room to blow up or something similar, but things stayed calm.

"Didn't you attempt to summon some phantom cats at some point? Don't tell me you didn't just look for them, but broadcasted some call?" Aaron made an odd guess.

"Well, I did just summon pretty much every phantom cat in range of the spell, maybe I used a little bit too much power." Myra admitted.

"How far would such a spell reach?" – "I don't know. Maybe 50 miles with an orange grade mage using his full strength. I did amp it up and change it a little bit to suit my needs."

Aaron already started to see where this was leading to. "So, how much range would a violet grade mage achieve?" – "Hmm, probably 300 to 700 miles? It's just a guess."

"I see. How much power did you use?" Silence for a long time.

"Myra?" – "Well, I guess I might have used earthen grade strength to send it out."

Rae listened to her 'parents' conversation quietly, curious about how the kitten came into her cabinet, but she still didn't really understand how it did that.

"So what you want to say is, that there really is a family of beasts living in our daughter's cabinet with the stronger ones probably at the level of a skylord?"

Myra frowned now that she thought about it, but quickly shook her head.

"I guess that's true, but you don't have to worry. If they followed my call, they are basically following me. They would not hurt Rae, they see her as part of our pack I guess."

"Also they don't exactly live in her cabinet. They live in the spirit dimension that probably connects to her room, or to several rooms even. They live off of the uniquely high spiritual and magical power surrounding me, but I guess I could give them some sort of welcome gift and feed them some more than what the area itself provides."

Aaron rolled his eyes. "This makes the situation so much better. So they don't munch on any of us, they only munch on the magic in the area and probably the fortification spells and the transference array."

"No, they cannot munch on the formations, that's not really easy to do. They would get indigestion."

Myra explained all of this with a calm attitude and serious voice.

Aaron put his face in his palms and just sat there like this for a moment.

"I think now I've seen everything ... phantom cats with indigestion because they munched on formations. Well, at least it seems like the situation with the mounts will be resolved sooner rather than later."

Myra looked at Rae again. "You played with one of their kittens?" When the child nodded Myra smiled. "You should give it a name. Magical beasts communicate in a different way than we do and a name will help both of you to have an easier time communicating."

"It will also give you a name in their language. You will probably get used to getting called by that name. They cannot pronounce human language."

"What is a good name for a kitten?"

"Well, one day it is going to be a big cat, so it likely doesn't want a name that will make it appear small in any way. Cats are very proud, maybe give it a name that sounds majestic or powerful."

Seeing Rae do her best to think of a good name, Myra just grinned and let her come up with something by herself. This was after all an important step of bonding with a magical beast. It wouldn't do for her to influence it.

"As for your question about bringing the kitten along with you, you have to ask the family of the kitten. Just send your thoughts at the place where the kitten returns, like you would do when sending me your thoughts when you want to talk to me when I'm not around. That should work."

"If they agree you can go play with the kitten, but if they refuse, then you have to accept it. Maybe they will agree to it later once they get to know you better."

Rae said that she would listen to the kitten's family and when Myra finally told her to get ready for sleep she sighed and quickly did what she was told. She really wanted to think about a good name some more, but it would have to wait till the next day.

"And I really thought she would spend all that time reading my picture books. Who would have thought that she was playing with a kitten all the time? No wonder she was so quiet and never looked bored throughout the day."

Myra still couldn't believe that she missed a whole group of magical beasts settling down right under her nose in her home. She must have subconsciously included them in the protective arrays, since they were already here when she laid down the basics for the protective spells.

"Don't worry, I'm sure she also read some of the picture books, she might have even used them to explain our world to the kitten." Aaron tried to cheer her up and it did indeed work better than expected.

"You think so? Maybe I should make something else instead. There are so many different toys that I would like to make, but I have no idea how to make them."

Happy to have survived just another 'normal' day in this family, Aaron was finally dragging Myra to bed.

She still told him about her unusual ideas when getting ready to sleep, still told him about her ideas while she was cuddled up next to him and he felt really lucky that he could not remember any dreams the next day.

If he could have remembered any dreams he was sure that Myra would surely have appeared there as well, to tell him of amazing new things she planned to create.