<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0151</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0152.txt">Next (Page 152)</A><BR>Warpings of reality, and disappearances. The immediate area of the disaster was still affected at the time of Natt's childhood, though not nearly as strongly as it was initially.<P><P>The reality warp was such that mathematics were different in the affected area. Square roots were much lower than they should have been, some subtractions acted like addition, but only with certain numbers. And those who were near the epicenter of the disaster, but not near enough to vanish, were changed. Their bodies and minds were altered drastically. But a day after the event, the effect had subsided enormously, and presence in the area only resulted in temporary "mathness", a mild kind of madness. And as the years passed, the effect diminished, along with the extent of the math differences, but it never went away totally.<P><P>Natt knew about the cats, great beasts, very rare. But everyone had their encounters, before the sinkhole mathnota were discovered. After that day, not even a single encounter with a cat was reported.<P><P>Natt read all she could about the cats, and interrogated the elderly for personal accounts of encounters with cats, which were sketchy and vague but still stoked the fires of interest in the cats within her. She wanted to meet a cat.<P><P>Two month's after Natt's sixteenth birthday, it was the day that Natt was expecting to lose her virginity. She'd been intimate with her boyfriend Jalder, but he was reluctant to go all the way. That night, however, he had promised her they would do it. At noon, she was musing on the evening, when there came a quietness. By early evening, the news was all over the place--the sinkhole mathnota had all stopped working. They had been tapped by scientists to produce energy, but now the seemingly endless streams of energy were no more.<P><P>Scholars had predicted a slow decay in the mathnota, as in the slow waning of the aftermath of the damaged mathnota. But this had never happened; the mathnota pumped out energy relentlessly. Until that day.<P><P>In the confusion and despair, there was no way the planned tryst was going to occur. And that night she spent with her family, in candlelight, the whole big family gathered around, making plans, chucking around theories, generally fretting.<P><P>Three months later, Natt was walking the hills. She still had her virginity, and was still numb at the loss of her high lifestyle. It was a drizzly day, and it was nearing dusk, and she knew she had to head for home soon, but she kept on walking. Soon, she came upon a sinkhole--she had to assume it was a sinkhole--with a mathnota partially revealed, sticking out of the mud.<P><P>An irrational rage came over Natt. The mathnota represented to her the force that took her life away from her. She grabbed a big rock, and threw it at the mathnota. The rock struck a bulbous part of the purple thing, and in a reddish flash, and a sound like slow thunder, the world around her changed.<P><P>She was transported somehow to an abandoned castle. She explored, and several hours later she encountered Beathcat. They were both trapped there, and they spent eight years there, and the tale of their relationship is a wonderful tale.<P><P>That eighth year, Natt and Beathcat found their way out. It wasn't that they were trapped on the castle grounds--but the entire world they were on, as far as she or Beathcat knew, was not inhabited by any other intelligent creatures. The castle was an anomoly, and it had abundant stores of food and supplies.<P><P>Beathcat can been there since the sinkhole mathnotas were first discovered. He was alone for almost 75 years, but he said he slept most of that time and didn't mind the solitude at all, that being the preferred lifestyle of his kind. But for a few years before the arrival of Natt, he said he starting itching a little for some company.<P><P>Anyway, they found a way out of their private world, and they took it.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0152.txt">Next (Page 152)</A>