Izupie

Ryuu immediately panicked. “Caro! Caro!?” He raced back along the corridor to where they had been before in the entrance, but there was still no sign of his companion. Aunt Claire would murder him if he lost him in the spooky mansion! Ryuu stopped for a moment and clenched his eyes shut. Think! He took another useless deep breath and retraced his steps back to the door. The door was gone. In its place was just a blank wall. The paint was peeling like in the rest of the mansion, and cobwebs were hanging down from the ceiling like there had never been a door there in the first place. Ryuu shook his head and backed away from it until his tail bumped into the wall behind him – he’d somehow turned solid in his sheer disbelief. He yelped and whipped around to see a painting where the eyes of the Kamishiba inside it were definitely looking straight at him! He growled at the painting, but his growl was cut short when it suddenly swung inwards. Ryuu didn’t even hesitate before he jumped

The bowls of candies and treats were ignored by both of the adventuring duo when they entered the mansion of the once famous writer. Ryuu gave them a glance and cringed away. They looked innocent enough; bright wrappers and tempting looking candies, but that’s exactly what made it more suspicious. He noticed Caro sniff the air and tilt his head in the direction of the bowls, but he made no move towards them. Just who had put them there anyway? The writer had been dead for many years, hadn’t he? Claire had given them a brief history of Clawsterious before they’d set off – with a gleam in her tired looking green eyes, and some energy in her expression again before she’d shuddered and climbed back into her blankets. Ryuu shook himself of the sad memory, hoping that she would be okay. When he looked around at the interior that the two of them had walked into, he suddenly had the hope that they would be okay. There were so many paintings on the walls… eyes that seemed to be looking right

There was something seriously just… wrong with Dysania Forest. Ryuu shuddered as he wondered through gnarled branches, reaching out like claws ready to snap him up. Not that they could anyway, he mused, letting another dark, twisted branch phase straight through his head. A loud crunch made him turn around, and he winced as his travel companion tripped over another exposed tree root. There was a piece of paper rolled up and tied around his neck and when he righted himself, he touched a paw to it, just to check it was still there. “Caro, you okay back there?” The skinny Kamishiba nodded, but his ear wings flattened down. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re doing great. I’m sorry I keep going fast. Just call me if you need me to slow down,” Ryuu said gently, smiling encouragingly despite the fact he wouldn’t be able to see it. Maybe he’d be able to hear it in his voice? “It kinda sucks that you can’t hear me move, huh? It must be hard to know where to go if you can’t follow my paw steps.” Caro

One of the very best things about moving to Stardust’s Doom was the clear, cloudless night sky – sprinkled with the brightest stars Ryuu had ever seen. Even better was that he could sit on the roof of Café Cinnamon and look at them for the entire night without feeling the cold, or getting tired, or even needing to rest his eyes. Blinking was a habit he never wanted to get out of (Wish only knows how horrifying it would look if he didn’t blink anymore) but when he was gazing up at the sparkling galaxy stretching almost infinitely in every direction, littered with twinkling lights in so many colours and sizes, it was hard to remember. His mind went so blank at these times that it was almost reminiscent of sleeping. It was nice. Ryuu took a slow and deliberate blink as he thought about it. Claire had already talked him into a trip to the local market with her the next time she needed some ingredients, because she promised him that she’d treat him to a telescope. She even said she’d fix

Day 1 (5:30pm) This is so weird. So. Weird. I mean, I know I'm only holding one of Aunt Claire's old ratty quills, writing in a notebook, but I'm actually writing! My paw feels kind of numb though... Can't feel a thing through it. (Which is my excuse for this really awful penmanship...) The first time I... became solid I guess? I was so focused on being able to touch something that I didn't really know how it happened. But that's actually the key! I have to concentrate really really har -------- Day 2 (4:10am) Well that didn't last long. I'm hoping it's something that I get better at controlling with practice? Aunt Claire thinks so. It's so sad. I tried to pick that quill back up for hours. H o u r s. If I could still get headaches I'd definitely have one now. But no matter how hard I stared and pawed at it, my paw just kept on going straight through. Not fun. I went for a break and sat at the top of the stairs for a while, listening to Aunt Claire making coffee for the late

"Light," Claire breathed. "You're light." Ryuu's eyebrows scrunched together. "Light? What- what does that even mean? How... how can I be light? But not be dead?" "Because you're made out of it, see?" Claire pushed an open book to him and pointed at a series of diagrams of a Kamishiba in various forms and stages of 'ghostly-ness'. The text at the top of the page said 'LUX ESPECTRAL' and there was an image of a strange looking ghostly soap looking object underneath it labelled 'BODYX ERASER'. Ryuu tried to use his paw to point at it and it went straight through the book. He really needed to stop forgetting it would do that. "Th-That's the item I used!" he exclaimed. "Mm-hm, thought so. I knew I'd seen something about ghost Kamis in one of these books." Ryuu opened his eyes wide. "So you think there might be more like me out there?" "I mean," Claire said carefully, "I've never actually seen anyone else like you, honey. But if it's in the book, documented like this, then that'll

Claire's bedroom was at the top of a secret staircase behind a door at the back of the café. It was an unassuming room, compared to the care and attention she had taken in the rest of the building. Various books, blankets and coffee cups littered the floor and Ryuu let a snort of amusement huff out of his nose at the sight - she was so untidy. Claire held the door open as she entered so that Ryuu could pass, despite him being able to walk straight through the wood, and it was such a small consideration, but it meant the world to him and filled his heart with affection. "Aunt Claire, you're so messy," Ryuu said with a laugh - glad some things never changed, even if he had. Claire skipped ahead into her bedroom and turned back to him with a toothy grin, her ear wings pointing as high as they could. She didn't do regrets or shame. "Who's got time to be tidy when there's a café to run day and night downstairs, huh nephew?" Ryuu shook his head slightly and followed. But stopped short