In all her twenty years of education, Istahil never thought she'd find herself here. No, not with a new discovery under her belt and grateful cheers adorning her ears, but here. In her lecture hall. With a cat the size of a building bounding around and her Maalim in a dead faint on the floor.

Someone screamed, and the cat went crazy. Maybe because with its huge size, everyone in their gadbasars, macawises and diracs looked like colourful birds waiting to be eaten.

Istahil tore a university flag from the side of the podium, tied it into a loop and threw it around the cat's neck. 'I've got it, I've got it,' she shouted out, 'haye, calm down, alright? Calm...'

A girl ran towards the door. The wind took her clothes, fluttering them up like wings. A hot pink gadbasar wrapped around her head, and a Dirac with roses flowing down her frame.

The cat licked its chomps and pounced. Istahil's makeshift leash became a makeshift deathtrap. 'Run,' she screamed to the girl, who dove out of the way.

Thank God that stupid feline had the attention span of a caffeinated rat. The wind filtered through the thick, woven mat that served as the door to the lecture hall. The cat sniffed it and ran, pulling Istahil along in a shrieking arc.

The department of Miscellaneous sciences stood at the back of the large aqal. It was a testament to the architects that a large cat and a screaming girl burst through the woven mat that acted as a door to the lecture hall (to screams). Bounded along a building with frames made of sticks holding up more woven mats (to more screams). Burst into the large compound housing the duksi's numerous aqals (to a stampede), and the aqal still stayed strong.

Bells clanged as she and the cat burst through the duksi's gates. People moving between each other's aqals with pots of food, presents and gossip screamed and rushed into their homes. The cat bounded through the emptying road, scattering the occasional group of cows. Clouds of dust burst in its wake.

The official Matatus of the Order Keepers trailed from the sky on their cloudy paths. Warning colours flashed through them. An Order Keeper's voice crackled through an amplifier. 'Stop right there! Do you know how big that pet is?'

'It's not a pet,' Istahil screamed back.

The Order Keeper's matatu hovered close to the cat's face. It sneezed. The matatu shot backwards. The cloudy trails of its road went haywire. Inside, its occupant screamed bloody murder.

A sob built up in Istahil's throat. When this cat stopped running, she'd have a lot of questions to answer. If Hoyo didn't kill her first.

She stirred it away from the market. People running around into their houses meant nothing. But if this cat reached the market, with all its chaos and the possibility of ruining someone's business forever, then giant or not, she'd slaughter it.

It leapt above one last complex of low-roofed, dome-like homes and landed onto the main road. In a matter of seconds, it had left the homestead behind. Dusty houses faded into desert shrubbery. The cat crashed through them, yowling when their thorns scratched at it, before stopping at a lone baobab tree.

Istahil slipped from the leash that had become her lifeline and collapsed onto the ground. The sand, baked by the sun, sent stinging circles of heat through her back and created a thin film of brown across her blue Dirac, the accompanying gadbasar that had somehow managed to stay on her head through all that and her chemicals bag that she hoped to God had made it.

The cat licked its paw and nestled close to her. If she had any energy (and courage) left, she'd have punched the living daylights out of it. She closed her eyes and tried to think where she had gone wrong. Had she put too much cell growth hormone? No, no, no, too many cells would develop cancer in it, not make it grow bigger. Maybe she put too much modified, plant hormone. Wait, what inhibited plant hormones?

With a sigh, she sat up and rummaged through her chemical's bag, removing a bottle of potion that held years of her blood, sweat and tears inside it and several accompanying vials. She took one, a darkish red colour, and shook it.

She could put this in - maybe try to inhibit the plant hormone, but she had modified the plant hormone at a genetic level to work on animals, so she had to search for something else. Would the purple inhibitor work? She had extracted it from the plant, not synthesised it, but she had seen it working on the plant hormone from a genetic level, and since every living thing had the same base genetic make-up anyway...

Ah, it didn't matter. The worst that would happen would mean her killing the cat. It could die for all she cared. She would dance on its grave. She turned to it, vials at the ready, and it...and it...it purred.

She couldn't do it. Stupid, she called herself, pacing around. Soft-hearted. Foolish. Idiot. The cat purred again and she stifled a scream. She had to do it. It wouldn't die. She had better skills than that. But she had been so sure before, and what had it come to? Chaos. Utter Chaos. What if she failed again and killed it?

Then, the cat decided for her. Jumping forwards, it swallowed the bottle of modified plant hormone, its purple neighbour and burped at her shriek of horror.

'Y...you...' she pointed at the two empty bottles, 'y...my...how...what...' the cat blinked large, innocent eyes at her. The large, innocent eyes of Satan himself.

'My...' she gasped, 'gone...you...' she grabbed her sandal from her foot and slapped it hard across its face. 'You stupid, idiotic, disgusting, foolish, sadistic son of the devil,' she screamed, 'do you know how hard I worked on those? You've just swallowed years of sleepless...'

The cat snarled and slapped her back, making her spin towards the shrubbery, the blood from its large scratch flying, and sit up in a daze to find it shrinking to normal proportions.

It hissed, its back arched. 'Come on, puss, puss,' said Istahil, reaching for it, all sugar and violets, now. If she could find out how much it had ingested, then maybe this disaster would have all been worth it. Step one, find how to make things bigger and smaller would be complete. Sure, it had taken eight years, but not everything came easy. 'I'm sorry for hitting you,' she crooned, 'haye, now come here, and I'll...' it leapt at her, left more scratches across her face and disappeared into the shrubbery. She stood up, wiping blood from her lip, and praying that something would get it from somewhere in there and eat it.

Groaning, she rummaged in her bag again for her traveller's irida. She didn't want to think what she would find back in the city, but if she didn't go back now, Hoyo would hound her to the depths of hell itself.

She booted the little golden square and set it on the floor. It expanded into a door, sucking her in, scrambling her insides, turning her weightless, and spitting her out in a disoriented mess.

She stood up, her legs the shaky quality of a newborn calf. Afternoon sunlight filtered into an aqal. In accordance with the Head Maalim's boring, bare character, boring, bare sense of intellect and boring, bare scalp, the aqal stretched out, boring and bare apart from a large desk at the end where he reclined. A tyrant on his throne.

Istahil gave her most innocent of smiles. True, it had the pain of humiliation. The bitterness of defeat. The scratches of a rabid cat's claw. But she tried her best.

The head Maalim glared back.

Istahil's smile faltered, and she plucked at a little bangle she always wore. She was so dead.

Dirac & Gadbasar: Casual wear that Somali women wear around the house. It comes in the form of a long, loose dress and headscarf that may or may not be made from the same material as the dress. 

Macawis: Like a kikoy, but with different patterning. Picture below. Don't focus on the really fine guy. Focus on what he has wrapped around his waist.

Aqal: Nomadic Somalis use light, easy to dismantle houses to facilitate their migratory lifestyle. 

This Chapter is dedicated Jellied_Julia Thank you so much for your support! PS. If someone is looking for a cosy, cottage-core style book, you know, the one you can curl up reading with a cup of tea, then I really recommend checking out her work The Marchioness's Treasure. It's SUCH a cute read! And the vibes it gives off are amazing!

Who is this BEE-YOO-tiful young lady that has burst onto these pages upon her high-maintenance steed, the giant cat? You all don't know how long I've waited to introduce my baby, Istahil to you. Her story's gonna shake things up, I tell you.