The Collaring of Chloe Ch. 38

She smiled inwardly at herself for feeling so uncomfortable in such comfortable clothes, remembering a time when she'd have felt too embarrassed to be walking around even her current state of dress; even in her own apartment where she lived alone. And now, they felt almost too modest, too wholesome. She found herself unbuttoning the shirt again, just to feel more 'normal'.

Pouring the heated water into a cup with a bag of cinnamon chai tea, she inhaled the wonderful aroma of the drink, letting it soothe her mind. Adding a little bit of sweetener, she stirred the tea for a moment, trying to let it cool enough to sip.

The motion of the spoon seemed to stir up a fresh memory, one from the large event at Thorn Marks, where Master Heron believed she'd first gotten the idea of being a lifestyle slave imbedded in her mind. That night had been such a blur, her senses nearly overloaded by all the sights and sensations she had experienced. People were giving demos of all sorts of different fetishes, many inviting people to experience things first hand.

She'd witnessed or volunteered to try many things she'd only been told about and some that she'd never heard of before. Though her local scene had introduced her to a number of things, most of it had been fairly basic or variations on basic forms. This event had gathered people from all over, employing all manner of interesting styles of play and devices. Nearly everyone was dressed up in exotic clothes, most wearing masks, which was part of the theme of the event. Chloe herself had started the evening with a cheap plastic mask as well, but had lost it early on.

From out of that sea of phantasmagoria, she unearthed the memory of a man dressed up in a way that had made her think of the Phantom of the Opera. As she took a sip of the tea, it seemed to reinforce the memory of him somehow, as though the chai was some magic potion. She vaguely remembered he'd been flirting a bit with her, though in a charming way. Had she not had her head so full of all the other delights and spectacles around them, she might have even allowed herself to be charmed by him.

As she took another sip, she remembered something he'd said and she nearly dropped the teacup. She realized that this was the stray memory that she'd almost had while thinking of that final visit to her Aunt's grave. It had been something that he had said that she'd been trying to recall for the last hour or so.

Though she couldn't remember the exact words, she recalled the general gist of them. It was a comment about the general nature of complete submission, about how it allowed the submitting person to let go of all the things that usually weighed down the mind. That they could focus simply on 'what it felt like to just be alive'.

And suddenly, as if a scattering of puzzle pieces were coming together in front of her, she sensed an answer to the question she'd been asking herself for weeks trying to come into view. Was this why she wanted so badly to be as pure a slave as possible? Why surrendering herself so completely felt so good to her?

It allowed her to feel truly alive, as she'd not ever felt as a child, or even as a young adult. She was able to let go of all other worries and concerns as a slave, her only requirement was serving her owner. All other needs were provided for her. Giving up everything to someone left her unbound by the chains of vanilla life and free to just focus on what it felt like to just be.

The idea felt so right in her mind, made so much sense to her. She'd never directly considered that those words had been what had sparked this feverish need to just let go, but she knew that her dedication to become a real slave had been born in those moments. Despite that, there felt like one last small piece missing that she couldn't quite put into place.

Even so, the revelation was almost overwhelming in its immensity and implications. By that logic, the better choice for her was to choose Mistress Victoria. She was who most allowed Chloe to completely surrender herself without limit. With Mistress, Chloe would best have that release from all other weights and pressures. The very fact that Chloe's stress and anxiety was stemming from the fact that she knew Master would expect her to make the final choice of who owned her seemed to support that.

As much as she loved him and Mittens, the very fact that he required her input showed that she would never be as pure of a slave, would never be as free to completely surrender everything, as she would be with Mistress. In that moment, all her resolve that it would be Master whom she chose wavered horribly. As it did, the thought of losing the amazing connection she had with him and his amazing cat made her insides roll.

In the next instant, she was dashing to the sink, stomach heaving and expelling itself into the basin. It took a couple minutes for the horrible nausea to pass, sobs wracking her body between wretches. When she finally felt there was nothing left in her belly to bring back up, she shakily took a moment to rinse her mouth of bile, then sank to the tile floor and tried to compose herself.

The tears continued to stream from her, her mind a tangled mess of jumbled thoughts, feelings, and brand-new questions. She no longer knew what to do, needing both Master's loving heart and the need to make her desire to be freed through enslavement real. She felt like she would lose something important no matter which way she went.

Through the haze of her emotions, she heard someone come into the kitchen. Looking up, she saw Mittens standing in the doorway, eyeing her with deep concern. "Chloe? Are you okay?" She asked worriedly.

Chloe swallowed the thick lump in her throat and wiped at her eyes. "No." She whimpered.

In a flash, the compassionate cat-girl was wrapped around her there on the floor, holding her tightly. "What do you need?" She asked soothingly into Chloe's ear.

Chloe leaned into her sister submissive, the feeling of her arms around her giving her the balm she'd hoped to receive from the tea. She knew she needed to tell Mittens something, but didn't even know where to begin. However, the cat-girl didn't badger her for any sort of answer, just held her until she could find the words.

Finally, without really thinking about it first, Chloe asked a question. "Why a cat?"

Mittens blinked in surprise, caught off guard. "Huh?"

Chloe reached up and pinched at the fluff of Mittens' paw. "Why is being a cat so important to you?" Despite her earlier revelations, she hoped that maybe there was still some further truth to find and hoped that maybe understanding her sister submissives' own obsession, maybe she could find some way to sort through her own.

Mittens paused for a moment, either to consider how best to express her answer or simply to try and figure out why Chloe wanted to know. When she finally responded, it was with a question of her own. "Did you ralph? I smell..."

Chloe gave a dreary laugh, in spite of herself. "Yeah, sorry. I'll clean it up. I'm just, I don't know, working through some things." She leaned a little more into Mittens, grateful for her simply being here when she needed her. "I'm trying to understand my own desires and I'm hoping that understanding why you chose to be a cat will help me somehow. That may sound stupid, but I'm kind of grasping at straws."

She tilted her head to look up at Mittens. "I get that you needed a way to distance yourself from your bad childhood, wanted to leave that person behind, but why was it a cat that you decided on?"

Mittens paused again, regarding Chloe, then gave her a kiss on the forehead. "I could probably give you a dozen theories, like wanting to go as far away from that life as I could, that my favorite book as a kid was 'The Cat in the Hat', or unconsciously wanting to resurrect the stray kitten I found when I was nine, whom my mother killed 'to teach me a lesson'. Any one or all of them would sound reasonable as excuses for it, but while they might have had their influences, none of them are actually why."

She shifted so that she could better look Chloe in the eyes. "The real truth is that I didn't create 'Mittens', to escape 'Rachel' or as an homage to any cat, real or fictional. Mittens is just who I always was. Rachel was the mask I had to wear to survive my mother. I simply shed that shell so I could free the kitty within."

"So, you wanted to be a cat even when you were a child?" Chloe asked, trying to understand.

Mittens laughed. "Sort of, I guess, but not really. I did once daydream about turning into a cat and running away, but the truth was, back then, the real me didn't have a specific form. Why a cat? Because at first it was a joke and then it wasn't. The idea of transforming myself into a cat just gave the real me a form to take."

She put a paw on Chloe's face tenderly. "Here's the thing though. I'm not 'a cat', I'm 'Mittens The Cat'. There is a difference. Remember how amazed you were that they let me wear my ears in the picture on my driver's license?"

"And let you put a breed of cat as 'Race'." Chloe added with a chuckle. Regardless of where this was going, she was already starting to feel much better.

"That too." Mittens agreed with a toothy grin. "However, I think you were so focused on that, it went over your head that I actually HAD a driver's license."

Chloe peered at her, not quite following. "Why is that strange?"

"How many other cats can drive, Chloe?" Mittens asked with a laugh. "The point is: I am not trying to be 'a real cat', I'm being the cat who is inside me. For all my extremes, I don't worry about being whether I'm 'cat-enough'. I'm just being who I am."

She caressed Chloe's neck lovingly. "I told you that the reason I love Master so much is because he saved me. By that, I didn't mean him giving me a place to live or helping me finish school. 'Rachel' would have found a way to survive, but would have had to live her life as the girl her mother forced her to be. Master allowed me to take that mask off and become the real me, who just happened to turn out to be a cat."

She leaned close, touching the tip of her nose to Chloe's. "Just as being a 'slave' is who YOU are. You are the most natural submissive I've ever met. It's who you have always been, down inside. And, I wager, who you will always be. You no more have to prove that through some profound act than I have to prove that I'm a cat by only ever doing things that a cat is able to do. We define what these things mean to us and Master allows us to do that."

Chloe digested this a moment, feeling the words soaking through her soul. It astounded her how simple it sounded, almost too simple, but more 'right' than any reason or excuse she could ever compose. In her mind, her perception around the events that had brought her to this decision changed. Instead of the man's words having been some sort of inspiration towards something she wanted to become, she now saw them as simply having helped her recognize what was in her heart and give her the courage to be the person she had always been.

And in that new point of view, came another thought. Her desire to be as 'real' of a slave as possible could simply be because it was another major part of who she was. She thought back to Mister Webber mentioning how good she was at her job; a job she'd practically hated. Aunt Nina had brought her up to always do everything as expertly as she could. It had become part of her way of dealing with the need to be always be self-dependent. Her drive to make it 'real' might well be nothing more than her natural desire to always do everything she did as well as possible.

In that revelation, she saw, for the first time, that what made her 'real' WAS her drive to serve. Mittens was a cat. She was a slave. And Master was someone who would always allow them to be what they wanted to be, without ever pushing them to be more than what they needed to be. In fact, she could finally see his attempts to get her to slow down at times as nothing more than him making sure she never walked over an edge.

Going back through all their little talks and private moments, she could finally see that this was something he'd been trying to tell her since the beginning. That her own dedication to the role was what made her his slave, not some extreme or profound show of obedience. She'd been trying so hard to live up to some imagined standard of what being a true slave should mean, that she'd lost sight of what it meant to her.

She looked at Mittens, fresh tears, these of joy, filling her eyes. "Thank you, my love." She said, pulling the cat-girl to her and hugging her tight. "You just solved everything."

"Tha' cause kitties is clever creatures." Mittens said proudly. "We's amazing."

"You really are, Mittens. You really are." Chloe agreed, kissing her deeply and gratefully. She could feel all the weight in her mind and spirit gone now. Her way forward as clear as glass. When he asked her what she wanted, she had her answer and was now quite happy to give it.