"I think that's all. Thank you very much."

"I don't think I've ever meant 'No, thank you' more."  He exits with a two-fingered salute.

Cam goes into his camper and reclines his chair and snuggles his cat and drugs himself to sleep because it's faster.

When he next opens his eyes he's dreaming, and knows he's dreaming, and knows the dream isn't an ordinary one.

He's in a patch of forest - no, the same patch of forest that he was summoned to initially, right down to the circular indent he's standing in, but it's unburnt and thriving and the ash at his feet is missing.  Crisp autumn afternoon sunlight dapples through the turning leaves despite the fact that if Cam looks up or far enough through the trees he can see a night sky with stars densely speckling everywhere not obscured by strangely-colored clouds.

"Finally," mews a voice behind him.  "But still a little sooner than I expected."

"Sorry to keep you waiting. What were you expecting?"

There's a teeny kitten - not that much smaller than Mr. Mistoffelees in size but visibly quite a bit younger - sitting on a branch conveniently at Cam's eye level.

"I thought you said you were going to wait for nighttime!  Not that that would have made a difference, obviously."

"It's getting a little late!" He has had a busy day bopping all over the place resurrecting the dead and discovering slavery and the electrical grid running on crystals. "And I wanted to know sooner than later. How can I help you?"

"You already have - immensely, tremendously, boundlessly, extensively!"  The kitten is speaking cat-phoneme-friendly English rather than catspeak.  " - But actually you should tell more people how to resummon you as soon as you can."

"- okay, uh, is Fireheart in danger -"

"No, he just might die soon."

"...that seems like it might constitute danger!"

"When new Clan leaders receive nine lives, they don't end up with ten to lose."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that something is likely to happen to Bluestar, one way or another, and Fireheart will be given nine lives - or eight, if things go well - and then he'll be able to die nine-or-eight times before fully joining us, not ten-or-nine, because the leadership ceremony kills cats once."  The kitten sighs.  "See this is why I haven't given out prophecies before; I hate it when people are confused by words."

"You seem perfectly able to hold an intelligible conversation, I just had to clarify because I didn't know that about leadership ceremonies! Why are prophecies so generally cryptic?"

"They each have to do more than one thing, sometimes a whole bunch of things.  Like 'Fire alone will save the Clan' was about your circle, but it also had to get Fireheart accepted into ThunderClan so that he could finish it, and for other reasons I guess he's just a good cat to have around - and I think there are myriad more things it was referring to or causing but I don't know what exactly.  That's not my department."

"...what is your department, who are you?"

"I didn't have a name when I was alive and I haven't picked one yet because it should be the best word I can find!  Or the best two words, if I decide I want a thingthing name.  I don't think I do because I wasn't a warrior or even a Clan cat - did you know Clan cats call thingthing names warrior names?  I think that's dumb because plenty of cats who aren't warriors have them, like medicine cats and elders mostly but also kind of queens depending on how you look at it.  And if people who I didn't know were talking to me they might ask why I didn't have a thingkit name instead and that would be annoying but it's so hard to narrow it down to just one word!  Especially now that you gave us so many words - it's so many; you're the best thing that has ever ever happened to me or any cat, already, just because of the words.

I think 'people' is my favorite out of all of them; it's just so beautiful to be able to call people by the fact that they can understand things instead of what species they are, but I don't think it would make a very good name.  You have a thingthingthing name, or maybe a 'thingthing name thing' name depending on how you look at it, and I like that and I like you so maybe I'll do that instead.  You know Crookedstar, the person who you tried to save but he died anyway?  His thingthing name was Crookedjaw because he had a cruel mom, but also it's basically what Campbell means and I think that's really funny.  He's doing fine up here as far as I know; you don't have to worry about him but some RiverClanners said thank you for trying anyway.

Anyway I'm not the person who gives all the words to all the cats because there are a lot of cats and a lot of words, but I am the one in charge of all the dead cats who do that and I am the one who's been giving specific words and also literacy to all the cats who you've individually been talking to today and yesterday."

(Apparently dead dream cats don't need to breathe; he doesn't once pause in his delivery.)

"Oh, is that how that works. It's very convenient of you, I appreciate the work your team is doing on that."

"Thank you; we're all very dedicated.  You should set Princess on getting machine translation going; we can teach all the cats Englatin but we can't teach the Twolegs catspeak.  Yet.  Not for years, at least; translation's definitely going to be faster."

"Good idea. Why specifically Princess?"

"She's the only one so far who's fluently literate."

"This time tomorrow Cricket and Mr. Mistoffelees will be too! And probably Tigerstar! - do y'all happen to know if Bluestar is nuts or if Tigerstar is evil."

"I made her literate and we still have to do that manually for every individual cat, while also dealing with your incidentals and giving everyone important concepts like personhood.  There's a lot to prioritize."

"You're doing that manually? Yikes, I'll get machine translation chewing on stuff and teach Princess... How do you know all the stuff you know?"