"Good morning, Your Majesty," purred the cat. The King calmly rolled over and hummed a quiet interrogative, something akin to "who?" and "what?" if the two were combined and then made completely unintelligible. As he opened his eyes to see the toothy grin and black fur of the cat, he bolted upright and clasped his hands to his mouth with the intention of catching his royal shriek.

"Sire!" said an Ace of Hearts, one of a pair (his counterpart being a Spade) who had come in on hearing the sound. "Are you alright?" The King was alone, of course, and slowly turned his eyes to the semi-alert card guards, hands muffling his response. The Ace leaned towards him and shook his head. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but your hands are difficult to hear through." The King dropped his hands and took a deep breath, replying with a nervous and shrill voice.

"I said I am quite well, thank you. Return to your posts." He was not quite well, to be sure, but they'd known that for years now. The King had been having night terrors since he could remember, which was admittedly not a long span of time. As it happened, he'd also been having those terrors since the guards could remember, which was far more worrying. They assumed this was just another of them, saluted, and returned to their station outside the chamber door. The King looked around apprehensively once he was alone, and let out a sigh of relief, assured that he'd simply been dreaming.

The cat assured him otherwise. "Forgive me, sire." Another partial-shriek erupted from the surprised King, but this time no guards came in after him. The cat paced on the bed, watching the monarch put a hand near his heart and take some calming breaths. "You know how the rituals of courtly audience frustrate me so."

"Yes, yes, good morning and..." The small man rubbed his eyes and glanced at the windows. The curtains were still shut, but there was clearly no light coming in around them. "Did you say 'good morning'? There's no light." Some people focused on the least important things, thought the cat.

"You're awake now, aren't you?" came the sly response. It took the King a moment to accept this, but then he nodded and seemed content with that explanation. He was not, however, content with having been woken up.

"What's your business, cat? I am a very busy man, and my sleep cannot be interrupted for every little thing." With his small voice, the King tried to summon up every ounce of authority he could. With any luck, it would be enough to order himself some extra sleep. The cat stopped his pacing to lean down and stretch his front paws foward, shredding a small portion of the bedcovers with his disturbingly sharp claws. They were the only thing stopping the King from admonishing the cat.

"A bandersnatch in the forest is everyone's business, Your Majesty." The cat's smooth voice carried an air of non-chalance. The King's voice suddenly decided it needed to take an immediate vacation. When no reply came, the cat continued. "His friends looked hungry." At this point, the voice remembered that it had left its hat, came back to the King in the form of a mousey squeak, and then rushed off again. It took the color in the King's face with it. "I expect you'll have that solved by the time I come back, won't you?"

Here was where the voice received a very urgent letter bearing news of having just been inducted into the Interesting Things Hall of Fame, and that it should report back to its body immediately to claim its prize. When it did return, it found that the prize was actually a burly jailer with a mean attitude. The King's voice was, needless to say, quite surprised.

"What? Come back? Where are you going?" There were a great many things that could ruffle His Majesty like that. The cat enjoyed each of them immensely. As such, he suddenly felt the need to smooth the fur on the top of his head by first licking the back of a paw. This was very important. "This is a most serious matter!"

"Yes, it is," replied the cat, who had now stopped washing his head and was once again grinning at the King. "Your hand can trump a few monsters, mm? I am going to solve the problem at the source." It took a moment to figure out what the cat meant, but then the King's eyes went wide.

"Y-you mean you're going b-back to the human world?" The idea was perfectly sound, to be honest. It was the idea of being without the land's most deadly hunter and best source of information that upset the King. "Unacceptable! I forbid it!" To which the cat laughed, a sound that chilled the ruler to the bone.

"Your Majesty, would I ever leave without your permission?" It was very like a denizen of that world to answer a rhetorical question, and in fact fully expected. The cat was quite pleased that the King had resumed his quiet tones again.

"Y...yes?" He seemed unsure of where this was going, but was certain it wasn't anywhere good. As the cat's stripes began to change into puffs of smoke moving up his body, the King felt he should have just waved him off and bid him a safe journey. It was his paws and tail next.

"Then what makes you think you can stop me?" By the time the sentence finished, all that remained where the cat had been were black and grey wisps of smoke. The haze slowly cleared, and the King felt very alone. It was times like these he almost missed his Queen. Such a shame about her.