By dawn, the sky outside had already brightened.
Swish!
Vera, her face grave, yanked the curtains shut and flumped back into the sofa. She took a piece of chicken from the super-sized fried chicken bucket Sha'er was holding beside her, opened her mouth and stuffed it in. Her eyes narrowed into a smile as she nodded along with a pleased "mm-hmm," her cat ears twitching back and forth twice.
Sha'er gave her an unblinking glare for ten full seconds, her cat tail standing straight up.
Olivia was sprawled across the sofa, her legs bent back toward her waist as though she were attempting some kind of stretch. After a while, she gave up and collapsed lazily onto the couch, yawning. With her tail, she picked out an unopened bag from among the fifty or sixty empty potato chip bags scattered across the floor, leisurely poked a hole into it, tossed it beneath the sofa, then used her cat tail to pull out chips one by one and eat them.
Crunch, crunch...
Crack, crack...
In the pitch-black room, the only illumination came from the glow of the Cat Lamp Witches' tails and cat ears, as well as the Cat Lamp film playing on the television:
Cat Mountain Journey
It was a comedy about a group of Cat Lamps who wanted to steal other Cat Lamps' dried fish by pretending to be sick cats, only to run into a genuinely mad cat and get beaten into a frantic scramble. They fled and gave chase all along the Cat Lamp railway.
The story was absurd and entertaining. Aside from the lead Cat Lamp needing injections of temporary mad-cat potion, and the supporting Cat Lamps having to endure being chased by the mad-cat protagonist, the script was fun and amusing.
"Meow-ow! It's no fun,