Out of respect for Haru, I will be leaving certain parts of this story deliberately blank, because the world doesn't need to know what all the Cat King does with her. I know posting a story like this won't earn me any popularity points, but what if this happened? What if a knight in shining armor didn't appear until long after the damsel in distress needed him?

A romance like Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, that's what. Except cleaner, if I have any say in the matter, and I will.

Idea partially donated by EagleBlaze954.

Chapter One: A Sad Account

I don't know if writing this will help me, or if it will make some sort of difference in my predicament, but it's a lot better than idly rotting in the pits of despair. I should know. I've been rotting for a couple of months now, and it's getting a little boring.

To start off with, my name is Haru Yoshioka. If you know me, or of me, chances are that you know me as 'Queen Haru', or 'the Cat Queen'. That title seems so contradictory, now that I'm looking at it on paper. I don't feel like a queen. I feel like an expensive pampered pet that's to be strutted around in public for people to coo over.

That's what I've been reduced to, a status symbol. My name isn't even Yoshioka anymore, it's Felinus. That means 'cat' in Latin. No one told me that, but I've been taught enough Latin to understand that much.

Why, do you ask, would a queen have such low self-esteem? Why would she become a queen, if she clearly has no love for the position, or even her husband?

It's a long story. But since I literally have nothing better to do with my time, I'll tell it.

To make one thing clear, I am a human. Or at least I was born as one, and lived as one before the Cat King pressed his suit.

I am the only child of a quilter and a magician. I remember my father's favorite outfit was a dark blue suit with a matching top hat. He used a long cape for special occasions, but my soft spot was for the top hat. It made my father look like an old-fashioned gentleman, but he always acted like one, even when he wasn't wearing it. My father was special for a number of reasons, but the one that will always come first to my mind would be the way he could make me dance. I loved being in his arms, and how safe and warm I felt in them. The only time I could ever dance with grace was when I was dancing with my father.

Dad died when I was eight, fighting in a war. Mom wouldn't tell me what war it was, and we moved from Europe to Japan shortly afterward. We changed our names, since Dad apparently had a few powerful enemies that weren't going to be satisfied with his death alone.

My mother's name is Naoko. She was never quite the same after Dad died. She had loved him deeply and even into my high school years, I would sometimes catch her crying. She usually throws herself into her work, to ease the pain. Me? I study, and I dream. I know languages like Latin and Egyptian, and have a good idea of the world's history. I loved stories with a passion, and fairy tales were a marked favorite among them. I adored the theme of love practically from the cradle.

I always wanted a romance like the one my parents shared. Dad didn't use his magic to gain Mother, but they had an honest admiration and respect for each other. If Dad had a bad day at work, Mom would know immediately and do something special, just to make him smile. Their strong love for each other was such a comfort to me, both before and after my father's death.

But this story isn't about a romance, at least not mine.

The trouble started when I was eight years old, but I didn't recognize it as trouble. I was walking home from school one day, eating a box of fish crackers. We had been studying sea life and the teacher had given out the crackers at the end of the lesson. Suddenly, I could feel someone behind me. I looked around to see a filthy little kitten. Her fur seemed to be white underneath the dirt and grime, but her eyes were a beautiful blue, one that could rival a summer sky.

I'm guessing that this was because my father was a magician, but I had always been able to talk to cats. I had forgotten about it entirely, but the ability was still there. I talked to the kitten, and gave her most of the crackers after she said she was hungry. She nearly purred with pleasure, licking the box clean for any remaining fragments.

After I had gone home with my mother, it occurred to me that the kitten might have wanted a home with me. The next day, I look around the area, but didn't find her again.

Sure, this seems like an ordinary encounter, but it turns significant afterward. Years afterward, actually, when I was a junior in high school. Life wasn't exactly the greatest, since I was late to school every day, so much that the teacher didn't have to look behind him to know when I was trying to sneak in. Everyone would laugh at me, including the guy I still have a soft spot for.

Machida Mishuzi.

He was very tall and very cool. He also happened to always treat his girlfriends (he only had one at any given time, to avoid confusion for whoever's reading this) like a lady. But the only time he ever noticed me was when I was late to class, which wasn't exactly me at my best.

The day my life turned sour seemed like all the rest. Get up late, run to school, get caught by the teacher, and get laughed at. Admittedly, getting hit on the head with a volley ball during gym was new, and so was nearly burning my hair off in chemistry. I was griping to my best friend, Hiromi Hashima, on the way home after school, when she said that it has to be an omen that something worse would happen. She had no idea of how right fate would prove her.

She started teasing me about my crush on Machida and we started chasing each other. Suddenly, a dark gray cat wearing a gold collar walked between us, carrying a ribbon-bound box in his mouth. We watched him look both ways before crossing the street, and for some reason, I couldn't stop looking at him.

The light changed colors and a truck started coming up the road.

And the cat lost his grip on the box.

He refused to leave it behind on the street, and the truck was coming in fast.

Even now, as I write this, I wonder what I was thinking, to do what I did. I had Hiromi's lacrosse stick in my hand, and the cat was about to lose his life. I ran into the street, swept the cat into the net of the stick, and delivered him safely out of harm's way. If I had been half a second slower, the truck would have hit me. I would have died, just to keep that cat alive. I wish I knew why I was so willing to help him.

I broke the stick on a parking meter and the cat and I fell to the other side of the bushes. After regaining my breath, I looked up, and got the shock of my life.

The cat was standing on his hind legs and brushing himself off like a human would. He thanked me for saving his life, said he would repay me later, and left with his little box. I was in shock for the rest of the day.

Later that night, when I was asleep, I was woken up by a lot of the neighborhood cats making a fuss. They're usually pretty quiet, so I looked out my window to see what the problem was.

It looked like a parade. Made entirely of cats. Since I figured this had to be a dream, I came down the stairs and out the door, to get a closer look.

The party was centered around a golden rickshaw, which carried an old, greasy longhair with a purple gem between his eyes in the manner of a crown. The rickshaw stopped directly in front of my house.

A robed cat, one I know now is named Natori, started talking about how the cat I saved was really Prince Lune. Who would have thought, right? So the king said thanks, and had another advisor give me this scroll, which said in Cat that I would be receiving gifts for my bravery.

I was grateful, and said thank you. But when I woke up the next morning, it felt like I had woken up to a nightmare.

First, Hiromi calls me up and demands to know where all the lacrosse sticks came from, since they were apparently swamping her front steps. Then I find cattails covering our yard, which I was allergic to at the time. Then a bunch of cats chase me all the way to school, because SOMEONE snuck into my clothes and covered everything with catnip perfume. Why the heck would I want catnip perfume?! I may have wanted males to notice me, but not feline ones!

After I escaped into the school, I tried to open my locker, and found that it was stuffed full of packaged mice. Packaged live mice. They started wiggling out, and climbing all over me and the cats from before stormed the locker room and started killing them. After that, I ran towards the showers and bumped into my homeroom teacher. He could see that I was distraught (and fragrant), so he gave me leave to miss first hour so I could shower and try to get rid of the scent. While I was standing under the water, the tears fell like rain. I was so humiliated, and scared. What was happening to me, and why? I thought the advisor said that marvelous gifts would be showered on me, not all these terrible pranks.

During lunch, I looked at the scroll to try to make sense out of it. The markings were similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, which makes sense when one thinks about it, but I couldn't quite decipher it on my own. At the bottom of each column, there was a picture of one of the gifts. I had received the first four, but the cat wearing a crown at the end confused me. Would a royal consent to becoming my pet? It didn't seem likely.

I chose later to take Hiromi's turn at clean-up duty, so she could watch her crush's big ping-pong game. His name's Tsuge Nashito. I was taking the trash out, when I spotted Machida with his latest girlfriend. She was so pretty, and confident. Machida seemed to be entranced by her aura. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't notice that I was walking into a spare gym hurdle until I tripped over it, spilling the trash everywhere. I was being depressed over myself when I suddenly heard a familiar voice calling out for me.

It was one of the advisors from the night before. I ran over and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and yelled at him. He was shocked that I didn't like the gifts, since everyone had agreed that they were great. I told him exactly why the gifts were wrong, and he was actually embarrassed. I felt a little ashamed with how dejected he looked, since they thought they really were making me happy. I apologized, and then explained that things haven't been going all that well for me.

Then he, Natoru, that is, said something that shocked me. He was surprised about this, but supposed that pretty girls like me probably have problems, just like everyone else. I couldn't believe it. The only man that had ever said I was pretty, at least to my face, was my father. I should have realized right then that trouble was brewing.

Then he offered to give me a private tour of the Cat Kingdom. He talked about how beautiful it was, and how I would be welcomed with open arms. It sounded great, but then Natoru started talking about my upcoming wedding to the prince I saved. I said very firmly that there was no way I could possibly marry a cat, being a human. Natoru said not to be so hard on myself and that Prince Lune was very cool.

I'll admit this right now. What I did next wasn't the smartest thing I could have done. I wasn't quite aware that Natoru wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you get my drift, so I went philosophical. I said that maybe living with cats wouldn't be so bad. Natoru immediately assumed that I was accepting the proposal. I tried to stop him from leaving, and say that I wasn't accepting, but he got away before he'd listen to me.

I was scared. I mean, how would a wedding look between a human and a cat? How was I supposed to call a cat 'Husband?' I didn't know what to do. More than anything, I wished that my dad was there. I finished panicking, and ran back inside the school to call my mom. I wasn't sure what I'd say to her, but all I got was an answering machine. Mom had left on an overnight quilting bee, that day of all days.

This meant that I was on my own, since I knew I couldn't tell anyone else what was happening. After some thinking, I decided to go some place where they wouldn't think to look for me. I went to my sanctuary.

But since the library closed at nine, I soon found myself in need of a new place to hide. And I was found, before I could find the next place. Natoru had returned with a posse of gray cats, which managed to trip me and take me through a blue portal to the Cat Kingdom.

The king was so unbearably smug, when the kid-cat-nappers let me off their backs. The king immediately grabbed my arm, and started showing me around, like a grand host. I tried to tell him that I wasn't interested in marrying his son, and that Natoru had messed up the message. Then he got all indignant, and asked if his son wasn't good enough for me. I assured him that wasn't the problem, and explained the slightly obvious species barrier, unaware that I was slowly shifting into a cat.

I flipped. I shamelessly flipped out when I discovered what was happening to my body, and the entire castle got a demonstration of my extremely powerful vocal chords. Why hadn't they thought to warn me that this would happen?!

I tried to tell the king that species wasn't the only reason why I didn't want to marry his son. I was seventeen and had my whole life ahead of me. And although I knew that Prince Lune was a very gentlemanly cat, we still hardly knew each other. I wanted more time, which I wanted to use to make my own decision.

After that, the king started ignoring me, saying that I would have plenty of time to get to know the prince after we were married, and that I was just experiencing pre-wedding jitters. I would have appealed to Prince Lune for help, but he was off on 'official business'.

Or so the king thought. The prince returned to the palace a few hours later (time that the king tried to use to make me feel more at home) and demanded to know what was going on.

Get this. He already had a bride in mind, and it definitely wasn't me. A beautiful servant girl had caught his eye, and Prince Lune proposed to her right there in the banquet hall with everyone watching. Let me see if I can remember the exact words. They were beautiful.

"Yuki, will you accept these crackers, as a symbol of my love for you, for as long as our nine lives shall last?"

Admittedly, it wasn't the first thing a human girl would expect for a proposal, but even I can admit that it was beautiful. But then Yuki opened the box, and showed me the contents.

They were the fish crackers I had given the dirty kitten years before. The ones that saved her life. Yuki was the little kitten I had saved, and Lune had almost gotten killed, trying to give her that special gift again, to say how much he loved her. She had been the one to warn him that trouble was happening.

So, thanks to me, the servant girl and the handsome prince were engaged to be married. A perfect ending to the tale, right?

But no. The story just kept going. The king approached me almost before Yuki finished accepting Lune's proposal. He said that I must have felt like such a loser, for the prince to choose someone else over me. I tried to tell him that I was fine with it, but he just brushed off my protest again, saying that I should marry him instead.

That thought horrified me. The Cat King had been creeping me out ever since we met, the night before, and his habit of calling me 'babe' made me sick. The thought of marrying him made me throw up the fish I had reluctantly eaten only an hour before, and only because I was starving (I'm a vegetarian, usually). The king was disgusted, since I had been aiming for him, but I only got his hind paws.

After my stomach was emptied, I wiped off my mouth with my wrist and said, in as plain terms as I could manage, that I would never be interested in marrying him, and my terms were non-negotiable. If he really wanted to show me that he was grateful for his son's life, he could change me back into a human and send me back to my world. That was all I wanted.

But the king refused. He said that the scroll explained that I would wed a royal, and he wasn't about to back down from the contract. I once again said that I wasn't interested in becoming a royal. He tried telling me about all the gifts he would shower on me, if I would be his queen, but I still said no.

I've never been the type of girl that would choose wealth over intelligence, and the king wasn't showing much of that. But he still refused to take no for an answer. I think he must have always been given whatever he wanted, for all his life, for him to turn so violent over not getting his way for once. Getting hit once or twice on the head as a kitten wouldn't shock me much, either (it would explain his crazy eyes).

Lune came between us and defended me. He said I should be given what I asked for, and his father told him to butt out, since he had lost his own chance with me. Lune said correctly that my opinion mattered, and that a chance with me wasn't what he was after.

The king attacked his own son, in his fury. I tried to help him again, but my arm got clawed badly from the king's raw fury, enough to draw blood. How could I wed such a violent monster? The king somewhat came to himself, hearing me cry out in pain, but he wasn't about to give up, despite the fact that Lune would never be able to completely recover from what his father had done in his rage.

The king locked me into a fancy room, with an even fancier white dress lying on the bed. I tried to rip it apart in my frustration, but even with my new claws, I couldn't damage it in the slightest. It was probably spelled, to be able to withstand the kind of abuse I was giving it.

An hour or so later, the door unlocked, and the king opened the door slightly to look within. I was about to tell him off again, but then he finishes opening the door to reveal my mother. She was still a human, but she was bound and gagged, her disbelieving eyes wide with fear.

The king held a long knife to my mother's throat. He said very calmly that he always got what he wanted, even if he had to fight dirty. If I didn't marry him within the hour, he would kill my mother and make me watch him do it.

Well?! What would you have done, in my place?! Where's a knight in shining armor when you need one, right? Well, one didn't exactly appear on the horizon to save me. No one could help me.

For my mother's life, I sacrificed everything I had ever loved. I gave up my dreams and hopes for the future I could have had as a human, to become the Cat Queen.

And I've been drowning in the pit of despair ever since. All I have left that is truly mine is the small consolation prize my father gave me, before he left my life forever. But it will have to do.

For now.