Wow. Thank you everyone who reviewed! I really appreciate it. And now, without further ado, here is Chapter 3 --- errr --- 2!


Engel's Zimmer
Chapter 2 ---Hand-Me-Down

"Muta, can you think of anything?" Haru asked as she sat down at the kitchen table, stirring her tea. Morning had come with no surprise. Baron was still a stiff wooden figurine, and Muta was still as hungry as she'd ever seen him. He garfed down another platter of her mother's Angel Fruitcake without so much as a chew and proceeded to the pancakes.

Haru sighed and quickly snagged one pancake to eat herself before fatso ate them all. "There has to be some way . . . or else how could he have come alive in the first place?"

Muta shrugged and downed the first syrupy pancake. "Maybe someone made him come to life? I don't know, kid, I met him ages before he made himself a name at the Bureau. In fact, I blundered by him one day in an antique shop, he couldn't even walk since he was a wooden toy without much of anything, and asked me to lead someone to him. I didn't know why and never cared to ask."

"But, it was because he didn't have a complete soul yet, right?"

"I think so, now that you mention it. So I lead a girl to him."

Haru sipped her tea, recalling Miss Shizuku's story. "What was her name?"

He shrugged. "Kid, I can't remember the girl's name, but Baron told me what she looked like, so I led her to the craft-guys shop and she saw him."

"Was her name Shizuku Tsukishima?"

"Yeah! That's the human's name." Another pancake went to the wasted space in his stomach. "Why?"

Haru grimly smiled. "She wrote about the Baron when she was in junior high. Now she's a famous writer --- we studied about her my junior year of high school. Do you think she . . .?"

The last pancake vanished from the plate. "One way to find out, kiddo."

---

The sweet string music swelled and vanished as Haru and Muta listened from outside the front door. Beautiful music, so grand that the notes almost seemed to float by. Ringing the doorbell would be rude at this time while Seiji tested and played a newly built instrument, so they resorted to listening from outside until Shizuku walked up behind them from a trip to the grocery mart.

"Haru?" the novelist asked, "What are you doing here?"

The young woman spun around, her hand tightly on her purse with the Baron inside. "Shizuku-san . . . I wanted to ask you a few questions."

Shizuku stared down at the strangely familiar fat cat with a raised eyebrow. "About what, dear?"

"The Baron."

"Baron?" the woman had to think for a moment. "Oh, that Baron. Then come on inside, Seiji can forgive us for interrupting his art." They followed her inside to the kitchen, where she put her food away and sat down at the kitchen table with them. Seiji came in a few minutes later, quite perplexed. "Seiji, this is Haru and . . ."

"Muta," Haru replied quickly. She didn't know if Shizuku could hear Muta, so it would be better if he didn't speak at all. "Or Renaldo Moon, however really."

The author glanced to the cat. "Renaldo Moon? That's the name of the fat cat in the first story I ever wrote. I think Muta serves him better." She watched as the cat climbed into Haru's lap and rested there. "Now, about this Baron."

Seiji interrupted, "The Baron from my grandfather's shop? Is that what this is about? He was stolen a good twelve years ago . . . a few weeks after you, love, last saw him." The bright man took a seat beside his fiancé. "Has he been found?"

Haru squirmed. "Kinda . . ."

The two couple looked to each other questionably. "Kinda?" Shizuku echoed. "Haru, what do you mean? Is it because of that dream you told me about? The one about the Baron?"

The young woman sighed and began to rub Muta around the ears, who gave a grunt and pawed her legs. He didn't much like to be petted, but Haru kept on anyway. "Shizuku-san, I haven't been honest with you. It wasn't a dream --- don't think I'm insane, please --- but it was real. Baron was as real as you or me or Muta."

"A statuette, real?" Seiji shook his head sympathetically. "Haru, a statue cannot come to life." A bit of graceful humor came into his charming voice. "Figurines aren't real."

"But he did, and saved me from the Cat King, he took me on a waltz and guided me through a labyrinth . . . he protected me when the building fell, and he never gave up on me even when I gave up on myself. 'Trust yourself,' he told me, and I did, but now I need you to trust me. Baron is dead. Death took him, and I need to know why."

The couple again exchanged mute thoughts, then turned back to the teenager. Shizuku spoke softly. "Haru, have you been under any stress lately? Final exams are coming, and so is the prom, so maybe you are just ---"

Muta poked his head onto the table to glare at the two humans opposite of him. "She's not crazy, and even if she were, you should still help her."

"Muta!" Haru snapped, shoving him back down onto her lap. It was too late to strap his mouth shut for the couple had already heard the unbelievable cat speak, and suddenly their skeptical faces became ones of disbelief.

Shizuku stared for a long, silent minute before asking again. "Do you have the statuette?" Haru pulled the figurine out gently, and set it down upon the table. The Baron's eyes were dull in the shadows. "Seiji! It is him!" she bent across the table and ran her fingers across Baron's eyes. "But those eyes . . . they're duller than I remember . . ." She looked to the young woman sitting stiff in her chair. "Haru, I believe you."

The young woman shook her head. "It's not a matter on believing me, but believing in the Baron. If we get enough people to believe, maybe he will come back. Maybe he'll come back from Death."

Seiji now took the figurine in his hands to inspect it. "There's not a detail faded, remarkable since all paint fades and wood wears away . . . but this is almost . . ."

Again, the fat cat slunk up from Haru's lap to finish Seiji's sentence. "Magical? How much poking will it take for you two to believe? I'm starving."

"Magical isn't the word," the man remarked, "surreal is the word --- alive. Haru, I will believe, if only to see a work of art alive as you said he was."

"And I will believe too," Shizuku added. "This gives me more than enough incentive to finish my latest story." When Haru looked to her in question, the woman smiled, "I have been trying to rewrite the story of Baron that I had finished as a child, but I stopped a while ago." The writer shook her head sadly. "But I cannot finish it Haru. I've tried and tried. Maybe you can."

Haru gasped, startled. "I couldn't! I can't write . . ."

"Haru, you don't know what you can do until you try. Maybe you should try to finish it and put a little of what you believe into it."

But the young woman shook her head sadly. "But that's the thing. I'm afraid if I believe in it too much, then it will never happen."

---

"Muta, do you ever think of anything else but food?" Haru argued as her cat friend devoured more than half of her fast-food dinner. She poked him in the gut with the butt of her fork. "You gastronome!"

"Hey, don't call me fat! I'm out on a wing for you."

"Alright Moo-ta." Her set frown spread into a small smile. "I remember that, don't you?"

"Vaguely." He guzzled down another handful of fries. "You gotta stop living in the past, kid."

A wise set of words to someone so lost in them, but as deep as Haru burrowed within those cherished memories, if she resurfaced now, Baron would be surely lost forever. Not in a literal since, but in a figurative since inside her very mind.

She knew this too. "Muta, I'd love to put the past behind me, but sometimes you can't let things go as soon as you want to. Sometimes you have to hang on. Hang on so hard that your knuckles turn white and your arms go numb, but you keep on holding on, don't you?"

Muta knew she referred to the fall atop of the portal tower to her world again. That great fall where none of them let go. "But kid," said the helpless cat, "you'll kill yourself trying to bring a figurine that should have never been brought to life, back to the living. Have you ever thought that Death took them away because they were never supposed to live?"

"But then why did God give them the chance when it would only be taken away?"

Muta stared to her, then ate the last fried mushroom from the take-out basket. After he finished off Haru's diner, he pried his nose under her hand like most cats do when they want attention, then heaved her hand onto his head. "That means you scratch it, you know," the fat cat finally queued in, "you know you want to."

The young woman gave a hundred-watt smile, dimmed by a veil of sadness, and scratched the cat's ears. "Thanks for being here, Muta."

He responded with a low, deep purr.

---

Haru flipped through the spiral pages of Shizuku-san's story, head filling with thoughts of dances and mazes and so many cats. Cats, cats, and more cats. Of meowsy dancing and subtle adventure, that burning feeling right in her chest every time she read Baron's name.

How much more of this would she take? It was hard for her to answer such a question. A part of her wanted to throw these spiral pages into the trashcan beside her desk, yet the other half urged her to read forward, push on to uncover some hidden truth. Some miraculous way to bring Baron back from Death.

But miracles only happen for the living . . .

And Baron was very much dead.


Strange question, but Continue or No? :D