When the Superiors Arrive

The air crackled with a weird, ozone-y kind of energy, the kind that usually precedes my toaster deciding to embark on a solo mission to the moon. Except this felt… bigger. And less likely to involve burnt bread. I was mid-air, attempting a particularly ambitious leap over a rogue banana peel I’d somehow manifested on my own living room floor, when the shimmering distortion appeared. It was like looking through a heat haze, but instead of shimmering asphalt, it was my slightly-less-than-pristine shag carpet.

Arke, who was attempting to discreetly groom a single stray whisker with the focused intensity of a brain surgeon, froze. His ears, those magnificent, twitchy things that still made me giggle every time I saw them, swiveled in unison. His mane, which was currently styled in a way that screamed ‘effortlessly regal’ (even if it was usually the result of me attacking it with a comb and some questionable hairspray), seemed to puff up instinctively.

“Sandy,” he began, his voice a low rumble of alarm, “that energy signature… it is highly irregular. It signifies a Class-4 interdimensional arrival.”