Yeah, he'll do that. He spends a few moments watching from under the tree, first, checking for predators or other dangers.

It could be worse - the sun is out and it's not actively snowing. For now. Thick blankets of snow cover the earth, criss-crossed with tracks from the local wildlife. If there's anything bigger than a songbird around at present, it has mastered the art of hiding from feline eyes. 

Out he goes, then, looking for signs of prey or humans or anything else interesting and making a point of staying close enough to the trees that he can climb one for safety if need be.

There are many signs of prey - small (and not so small) birds huddled in the branches, mice and voles tunneling beneath the snow. Even with it being winter, he's hardly seen so rich a hunting ground. 

After a few minutes, he encounters a very strange thing - a mass of faintly glowing snow in the shape of a ptarmigan, bustling about fussing over the tracks left in the snow. Where it passes, the snow is left whole and unbroken, as though it had just fallen. 

That's weird and he should get under cover about it. (He does.)

Denice is pretty sure that's not normal bird magic - it's possible that there's another kind besides birds-in-general and parrots, but restoring snow seems off, and anyway it doesn't explain the glowing. It could be bee magic, though; you can never be sure what to expect from bees, and unlike humans they can familiarize other bugs, and if they had a firefly that would explain the glow, maybe.

Bees are generally fine with other creatures in their territory, as long as they don't act threatening; she has her familiar watch from his hiding place for another few minutes before venturing out to check, just to be on the safe side.

It seems utterly preoccupied with the state of the snow; certainly it ignores a mouse it drives away from the roots of a tree with a chirp and a bluster of wing-driven snow, once that mouse is no longer a threat to its pristine snow. No bees or bugs are visible within its body. It seems to not be a danger, or if it is, it's one that can be avoided quite easily simply by staying a few meters away. It seems quite safe to venture out, if this is all that's around.

She doesn't, on reflection, particularly want to make contact with the bees, if this is bees; they probably won't be able to communicate anyway. She directs her familiar to keep going, circling around so he doesn't get too far from her tree.

He hears, in the distance, a strange ringing, almost too faint to actually listen to. It sounds like no bell he's ever heard - most like the sound of crystal glasses being pinged, or rubbed with a wet finger to produce a long note. 

What a pretty sound. She sends him to check it out.

In a place where a great eruption of rock has created a surface with little soil, and, due to it's steep angle, little hope of creating some, the pine trees are suddenly replaced with a stand of tall crystals in a shape not entirely unlike that of a tree, if a tree was rendered at an extremely low poly-count, and then carved from the finest ice-blue crystals. They shift and tinkle in the wind, each meter-long "leaf" of crystal glowing softly in a way that erases all shadows from an otherwise much-shadowed forest and leaves the entire thing with a wholly surreal look, like nothing on earth. 

...that's... what?

She's pretty sure magic can't do that, even bee magic.

She has her familiar watch from a bit of a distance for a minute, though he can't wait too long without starting to get cold.

The ice-crystal-trees continue to exist! They do not seem to be much more lively than the existing trees, apart from the glowing thing. If you get too close to them, the air seems faintly colder, like they're less a living thing with insulation and more like they're great poles of cold stone or metal, ready to suck the warmth from you just by existing. The snow doesn't seem to want to stick to them, but it is piled around them as much or more than the pines. A strange bird, with iridescent blue feathers that almost match the colour of the crystal, flits from branch to branch before disappearing into a nest cleverly hidden beneath where a cluster of leaves joins to the trunk. No other animals seem to much like the crystals - they stick to the pines, from what can be seen. 

Pretty understandable that the other animals are staying away, if the trees are cold. She calls her familiar back, too; not that she doesn't want him near the trees, but she doesn't want him that far away at all if they're... in whatever situation this is, with magic she doesn't know about and can't predict. He can check out the area around her, instead.

The area immediately around her contains:
- A little creek determinedly bubbling along despite a heavy encrustation of ice along the banks. 

- long gap a few meters wide cut through the trees, where a cloud of pine needles and snow-flurry are blown around in a way that doesn't seem wholly natural, on second inspection. 

- a clearing where several tree-stumps show signs of having been cut down by an axe, and impressions in the snow might imply a disused fire-pit. 

Denice is starting to get chilly, even under cover and with another cat for warmth, by the time he's done; it's time to dig a den to keep the group warm. She picks a spot a little ways from the fire pit for it - she doesn't actually want to interact with any humans but they tend to stay away from predators if they can, so it's at least better than nothing as a sign that the area is safe.

Her familiars catch the pair of voles she flushes out in the course of her excavation, and the three of them settle in to get warmed up when she's done.

The digging goes much easier than she is used to, even taking her magic into account, and she rapidly gets down below the line of frost and into the soft, warm, earth. 

... then she breaks through, into another, larger tunnel, almost large enough for an adult human to crawl through, also wending it's way into the earth. 

She scrambles back up the tunnel, and after a moment when the floor seems disinclined to crumble out from underneath her she creeps forward to knock a bit of dirt into the tunnel so she can hear how big it is.

That done, she digs around it, leaving a generous amount of dirt between it and her tunnel, and digs out a small den at the end, just big enough for herself and her familiars to all fit and be able to shift around.

Time passes and they can rest a while. 

Until something decides to investigate what's dug a hole in the tunnel to it's own den. 

See, this is why she dug around; the hole is on one side of their tunnel and she's on the other. Still, something to keep a close ear on, especially if it sounds like her tunnel - and her air supply - might get blocked.

Indeed, the creature at the other end of the tunnel cannot reach all the way down the tunnel. It mews with annoyance. 

Kitty! <3

...That's a big kitty, though, and she's not sure how hungry it might be, or what it might consider food. She stays put and stays quiet.

Eventually, it will give up, make a rough attempt at patching the hole, and go back to what it was doing. 

That's fair; she was originally planning on patching it herself once she'd rested.

After a few minutes she gets bored and goes to check on the patch job; finding it haphazard, she decides to improve it a bit.

Oh! The thing is back! 

... and it's a smol. 

A pair of tentacles will come, seemingly out of nowhere and grab Denice. 

She screams and flails and claws!

(It's not very effective, though her claws are still kitten-sharp. It's immediately obvious just from holding her that she hasn't been eating as well as she should; she's skinny, without much muscle.)

The tentacles will drag her up to a mouth. 

Which will give her a long, maternal, lick. 

Aaaaaaaa it's gonna eat her aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

...

...

What.

At which point her familiars show up. She's too stunned to stop them from pouncing on the apparent threat, or at least trying to.

The threat is not where it appears to be! They pounce on empty air where paws had appeared to be! 

The threat will huff with confusion, transfer the existing kitten to it's mouth, delicately held by the scruff of the neck, and try and scoop up the remaining kittens with it's tentacles. 

One of them is pretty readily scoopable;

the other manages to dodge, once, before he's caught.

(These two are much more reasonably well-fed.)

Well, that's good, that some of them are in better condition! But this is, overall, pretty bad! They're still very small (and possibly not the same kind of thing? They don't have the right number of limbs).

They will be taken back to the den proper, where the displacer beast has moved into a chamber much larger than any digging animal would make for itself. On one side, there's a big patch of warm soft earth and piled-up fluff for sleeping, and on the other side there's ... a pile of bones. Human bones, some of them, leaving a scattering of possessions along with the more biological inedibles. One such possession is glowing, somehow, low red-gold light filtering and flickering through the bones. 

It is in this strange light, that Denice gets the first proper look at the creature which has captured her. She is, at base, a snow leopard, but one strangely lengthened, with six legs instead of four, and a pair of tentacles akin to the primary hunting tentacles of a squid, rising from their shoulders. 

The strangest thing, however, is the way that it's appearance seems to drift from location to location. Even while held in it's arms or mouth, and thus quite sure of where it is, it's hard to keep track of it's location in any other respect, perspective and perception warping to confuse the location of the beast. 

What.

(This place has different magic, that's got to be some of what.)

(And it's holding her kitten-style, not like prey; that's pretty indicative.)

(Being held like this is honestly kind of nice; it's weirdly soothing. Helps her think, instead of panicking quite so much.)

(Probably what they should do is cooperate until they have an opening and then run?)

(Her familiars are not really on board with 'cooperate' at this time; she can probably get their attention about it once they've stopped panicking though.)

(Okay, that's fine, she can work with that.)

She gives her best kittenish mew.

Yes! Kitten! Cold kitten! You are going to go in a big pile and get curled up in chest fluff. 

That's nice, honestly. It's good to be warm.

Has she forgotten that they're going to get eaten, here. That seems like the important part.

She doesn't think they are, is the thing, or at least not right away; can they chill for a minute?

Absolutely not. They're already running away.

Look, she just lay down and now they're running away. She hesitates for a moment and then they're gone, and pursuing them would be an endeavour and a half. She is going to stay right here with this less ungrateful kitten. They'll come back if they want food and warm. Maybe. 

They'll be all right for a little bit, probably. For now she's going to cuddle up and get warm.

They think they'll be all right; they've got a good tree to hide in the branches of.

Denice waits until they're calmer and starting to get chilly again to point out that it's going to get really cold come nightfall.

...that's not a problem best solved by getting eaten.

And look how eaten she's not!

They'll think about it.

Unaware of any such conversations, she will curl up and doze off, happily protected from the cold by the earth. 

The next morning, she will wake, and gently lick her kitten (kittens?) Clean and awake. 

Yeah,

'kittens'. They snuck back in overnight.

They're all startled at being woken; there will definitely be some flailing.

That's okay, cats kittens need a lot of sleep. They'll be able to go back to sleep soon, but she's going hunting and wanted them to know she was leaving in a controlled and sensible manner. Soon, she will be back with food for kittens!  

All right then.

So they're going to go dig a den of their own somewhere else now, right?

Actually Denice is thinking they might stay? It's warm here, and she half expects the monster to bring them breakfast. And they'll be in much better shape to go explore once they all have their winter coats in.

It did get pretty cold last night before they were sure enough the monster was asleep to come back.

That's... true... but she's still pretty nervous about it.

How about if Denice digs them a little bolthole in the back of the den, so if something happens they have a place to go where the monster can't get them.

Yeah, that'll help.

She'll do that, then, and if there's still time before the monster gets back she'll poke through the bones and see if she can figure out what that red light is.

Was it mentioned that for some reason digging is really easy? It continues to be really easy, and she has a den dug out in no time at all. 

The remains include parts of the possessions of at least three humans, who appear to have been armed to the teeth in classic medival style. As well as the source of the glow (a helmet with a lamp-light on the front, somehow flickering with a red-gold flame both heatless and sourceless.), and many things rendered unrecognisable by time and rot, she finds several swords, an axe, most of what was once a chain shirt now blackened with dried blood, several purses full of what look to be solid gold coins, and a broken-open backpack full of books and glass vials full of strange herbs and tinctures. 

She doesn't recognize most of the gear right away - she's seen swords in cartoons, but not often, and coins even less - but the books are interesting. She listens for the monster coming up the tunnel to make sure she won't be caught, and shifts to her human form for a moment to prop one up against the cave wall and put the light nearby, then back to cat form before looking to see if it's readable.

Scholars have theorised many reasons for the inexplicable ability of the monsters from beyond the bounds of the universe - Ninnuani Lords, Ghenenan warbands and more unique and strange things besides to comprehend and speak arbitrary languages, often thinking it innnate to those lofty beings as it is innate to angels and thier ilk. In fact, the answer is well, albiet inaccessibly, documented in the Library of All Things, which weilds its divine domain over language to ensure that offworld visitors are able to communicate productively.  

Denice knows none of this, of course. To her, it is simply the case that the book, despite being written in the secret script of the druids, is entirely readable, and so are the other three books, despite each being in a different language. 

One is titled "Druidcraft in Our Age". Another is titled "Alchemist's Herbarium of the Northwestern Surface". The third "Living Among Beekeepers" and appears to be a travelouge of sorts. The final book is a slim, relatively speaking, volume, made from rag paper rather than parchment, titled "Commercial Success as a Woodswitch".

Denice didn't check the books' titles, just grabbed the first one that came to hand; luckily, it's the druidcraft one. She settles in to read.

The book has a brief but awkward opening where the author summarises their reasons for writing the book - apparently the organisation they were in has dissolved into many smaller local groups and they wanted to ensure that these group retained proper access to their full body of technical knowledge (and implicitly, to cleave to the author's prefered flavour of post-schism heterodoxy).

After that, it gets into the real meat of the book: the magic. The book describes a series of excercises and meditations designed to alter the soul in such a way as to enable the user to percieve and alter the fabric of nature in ways beneficial to them, resulting in the ability to cast a handful of spells whose number and strength will increase as the practitioner follows the guides and "strengthens thier soul by the usual means". What the usual means are, exactly, are taken for granted, but they are implied to be dangerous. 

(It also contains an extensive glossary at the back with the index, if such is needed despite the translation magic, as might be the case for some technical terms not otherwise described in the text.) 

She looks through the spells, and - oh, oh yeah, they sound very useful.

Anything stopping her from trying the exercises in cat form?

An important part of the exercises is mapping the new soul-capabilities to physical actions and words, so that you can actually invoke them without sitting down and taking ten minutes to an hour of meditation to plunge back into your soul. This process seems to be a mix of designating psychosomatic triggers for spiritual actions, designating places to grow new (spiritual, not physical) organs, and enforcement of practical considerations like "if you want conjure a hurlable ball of fire to hurl it at people, you want to make sure the fire arrives already in your hands and not, say, down the back of your shirt". Constructing an alternative mapping doesn't seem to be impossible; the book contains off-hand advice for several situations including having a non-standard number of arms (more or less), being a horse with wings, or being a giant wolf, though none for if you are a housecat. Developing a suitable mapping seems like it would be the work of months, added onto a project which looks like it will take at least a year of part-time work. If she's canny and doesn't have anything better to do with her time, she might even be able to get it done inbetween mediation.

It's magic, she'll make time, not that she expects it to be very hard to. Which is good - she doesn't just need to figure out a mapping for a housecat body, she needs to figure out one for three, with her familiars. At least the wolf mapping gives her a starting point.

No time like the present to get started; her familiars will alert her when the monster is on her way back, she's sure.

One soul in three housecats is hardly the weirdest form of life that's tried and succeeded at learning druidcraft, in the history of the world. It certainly seems possible.  

It is only a few hours until the monster returns, carrying with her a pair of snow-hares, quite dead. 

Her familiars do indeed alert her when they hear the monster coming up the tunnel, and by the time she gets to the den the three of them are lying together in the nest, watching alertly, the larger two slightly fluffed up with anxiety.

One of the snow-hares, bigger and fatter than they are, will be dropped in front of them, that's their share. She will eat the other, checking back on them to make sure they understand how to eat properly with her example, if for whatever reason whoever was looking after them before didn't cover that. (They seem to have been bad at their job, which is why it's her job now.)

They aren't used to prey with fur this thick, but they can figure it out, probably.

Right! Then it's time for more sleeping, because sleeping is good and also, it's late winter. The hunting will be better soon enough. Then the kittens can grow big and strong? 

Denice doesn't need as much sleep as a normal cat, conveniently; she'll meditate some more while the others do.

Time passes beneath the earth and snow as she meditates on the nature of the soul and the rhythms of nature, and learns how to tie the former into knots and thereby affect the latter, aided and abetted all the while by a displacer beast who supplies her with ... honestly, more meat than she can reasonably eat, in the form of snow-hares and ptarmigans and on one occasion a whole deer. 

After a month of this, she successfully pulls forth the profound cosmic powers, touches, in the shallowest way possible, upon the grand cycle of birth and death and rot and rebirth, and suddenly, a shank of deer that was quite past it's prime, at this point, is no longer past it's prime - in fact, it's smells as good as it was the day it was killed, even to the finely-tuned senses of a cat. Exactly as expected. 

Oh thank goodness. Good grief that was stinky. Also! She can do this new kind of magic! She was genuinely unsure if it was going to work, but it did!

That's really cool!

And the meat is tasty, too!

Now they just have to see what their host makes of it. Denice is pretty sure, at this point, that the displacer beast is smarter than a normal cat, if not quite up to the level of a human, so it wouldn't be that surprising for her to figure out that it was druidry, or to realize that it means something strange is going on here.

Thier host has certainly been aware that the smallest, smartest, kitten has been Up To Something. This is not what it was expecting, though it wasn't sure what it had been expecting.  

It will tentatively taken a mouthfuls of the purified deer meat. It seems good? It will leave the rest for the kittens, who are still very small and in need of fattening up. 

The kittens are working on that. Well, mostly the littlest one, who has definitely put on some weight, and feels much less bony; none of them have really gotten any bigger, though. And it seems like they just aren't as interested in food as she'd expect, from kittens, or as lively, though they don't seem unhealthy at all, just weirdly calm.

At any rate, they're eating now, and snuggle up to her when they're done.

Good, Good. It's important for children to eat well and grow up. Maybe in the spring she will let them out and teach them to hunt. For now, she will keep them safe and hidden and make sure they have everything they need. Even if they are filled with kittenish delusions of adequacy at surviving exploration.

(Yeah, it's pretty stressful how they can't leave the cave without being tracked down and brought back; she's given up on it, herself, but her familiars keep trying from time to time. She is pretty confident that they could get away if they needed to - she's extended the little bolthole she made the first day into an escape tunnel, digging for half an hour every day after the monster falls asleep, and she's not sure she's outside her range yet but it's got to be reasonably close - but it's still cold out there, and she has no way of bringing the book with her. It's a tough tradeoff, but the long-term benefit of having more magic wins out.)

A few more weeks pass and Denice's progress in magic continues at a good pace. She won't have the full extent of even first circle druidry mastered without a full cycle of the seasons passing, but what she does have is still useful enough to make the practice useful.

Spring arrives, in due time. The warmth doesn't penetrate this deep into the earth, not yet, but the drip of melting snow does, creating muddy puddles around the entryway of the den but mercifully leaving their sleeping space dry.

Spring! Perhaps it's time to take the kittens to learn to hunt? That's an important skill for kittens to learn, and it might not be too cold.

Yes yes yes let them ouuuuut!

Outside! Hooray!

Denice flattens her ears slightly and looks back at the displacer beast, lashing her tail once - can you believe these guys - before bounding off after her familiars.

She will follow! Her appearance is even more disconcerting when she moves at full speed to keep up with the kittens, since her image will appear to collide with trees that the real beast has smoothly mived past, and then it will flicker and jump to another displacement in another direction. Moving at full speed through dense forest, this will happen every second or so. 

They are all going to get covered in snowmelt-mud pretty fast. 

A bit of mud is fine. They do try to avoid the worst of it.

They're much more interested, right now, in putting distance between themselves and the displacer beast than in hunting.

Denice tries to keep up, but she's smaller, clumsier, much less experienced with mud, and in worse physical shape, and she quickly tires out and scurries under a bush to catch her breath.

They rush past sparkling creeks and trees shedding their loads of snow. Was that an eagle with a crown of flames? Was that mask carved into a tree-trunk? No time to check!

Wait, what. Dammit, where did they go? She has superior stamina but they can take paths she can't fit into, so they can, with difficulty, loose their pursuit. For now, at least.