Catherine already knew what her fatal flaw was, although she didn't actually expect it to ever be fatal. In fact, she didn't really even think of it as a flaw. Being inquisitive was a good thing, as far as she was concerned. It was a sign of an active, intelligent mind. And it had never really gotten her into too much trouble. Sure, she'd gotten a few scoldings as a kid for trying to find out what her Christmas and birthday presents were--she remembered her dad saying, "Curiosity killed the cat...Cat," and the two of them bursting into giggles as he couldn't hold his frown. But apart from giving her an interesting nickname, Cat had always thought of her curiosity as, at worst, an endearing quirk. She never tried too hard to repress it, and loved to indulge it.
All of which explained why she couldn't help but stop, that warm summer day as she biked through the forest. It wasn't that it was so unusual to see someone sitting by the side of the bike path, although you didn't get many people this deep in the trails. It wasn't that the person she saw appeared to be a little girl, sitting under a tree with her knees drawn almost all the way up to her chin, staring intensely at Cat as she approached. It was that the girl had a box balanced on her knees, an ornate wooden box with beautiful baroque carvings, and she held it tightly with both hands as if to keep it safe, even this far away from any potential thieves.
As soon as she saw it, Cat wondered what had to be inside the box to make the little girl so protective, and she knew she'd never get any peace until she found out. And if that wasn't a fatal flaw, it was near enough.
She brought her bike to a skidding stop just a few feet past the girl and leaned it against a tree, then turned back to the girl. "Hello!" she said brightly, just before her voice froze in her throat. Not out of fear, merely out of embarrassment--up close, the 'little girl' looked to be about Cat's age. She was slender and willowy, with barely any breasts to speak of, but Cat could tell that it had just been the girl's clothing and body language that had suggested youth. Her eyes told a different story. Nobody looking this girl in the eyes could mistake her for a child, even if her long black hair was done up in pigtails and she had a little pink ribbon in her hair. Cat felt silly for greeting her in the kind of tones you reserved for talking to very small children.
"Um, hi," she said casually, trying to salvage her pride. "My name's Cat. What's yours?"
The girl looked up at Cat, her face slightly glum. Cat couldn't quite shake that impression of the girl as child-like, and her voice didn't help. "Zoe," she said, sounding every inch the bored child humoring a grown-up.
"Hi, Zoe," Cat said, trying not to sound like Mister Rogers when she said it. "That's a really interesting box you have, there."
"S'a birfday present," Zoe said. It sounded almost affected, like she was a grown-up impersonating a child. Which, Cat reminded herself, she clearly was. But why come out here, all the way to the middle of the woods, and impersonate a little girl for the benefit of a chance passer-by? "It's magic," Zoe added after a moment.
"Magic, huh?" Cat said, sitting down next to Zoe. "What's inside it?" She'd meant to ask, 'What's magic about it?' But the desire to know what was under the lid that Zoe held so tightly shut could only be forestalled for so long, and Cat had never been known for her patience.
Zoe scooted around so that she was facing Cat. "Take a look for yourself," she said, handing the box to Cat.
Cat hadn't really expected it to be that easy. From the way Zoe was holding the box, she'd expected to have to do some serious cajoling to get the girl to let her see the contents of the 'magic' box. Still, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Cat set the box on her knees (sliding her feet forward a little to lower the box so she could look into it more easily) and opened it up.
She was more than a little disappointed at what she saw. "It's empty," she said.
Zoe rolled her eyes. "Well, duh!" she said. "You haven't put anything in it yet! Just keep looking." Cat furrowed her brow in confusion--what was she supposed to put in there? But after a few moments, she saw something in the box. A tiny sprinkling of glittering dust just seemed to...appear. It was like it just caught her eye, and suddenly she couldn't think how she'd missed it.
"See, it's a magic box, just like I told you!" Zoe said, responding to the change in Cat's expression. "It's a thought-eating box. When you look into it, it takes the thoughts out of your head and puts them into the box. And soon, it's going to suck away every single thought in your brain until there's nothing left but a docile, obedient slavegirl."
Cat burst out, "What did you say?" Because she couldn't believe it, not at first. It just sounded so absurd that the words exploded from her lips before she could even think about it. But the glittering golden dust did seem to have covered more of the bottom of the box in just the few moments she was looking at it...a sudden chill crept up Cat's spine. Something was very wrong here. Zoe had been waiting for her, waiting to trick her into looking into the box so that it would...would...it would do something, Cat knew. Zoe had just said it, she could almost remember what it was, but before she could recall, the words were already gone.
"Wh-what did you say?" Cat repeated, not in shock this time, but simply out of confusion. She'd said something about the box, hadn't she? Cat thought she remembered thinking that she needed to stop looking inside the box, but the second she thought about it, the thought slipped away from her and she couldn't remember what it was she was supposed to stop doing. So she just looked into the box, hoping that the memory would come back to her.
"Nothing important," Zoe said. "Just keep looking. So what brought you all the way out into the woods today?"
"Um..." Cat stared at the box for a long moment. The glimmering, sparkling dust was really very pretty. "I was biking, just exercising." She suddenly wondered how long she'd been sitting here. "I should really get back to my...um, my..." She suddenly couldn't remember how she'd gotten out here. She hadn't walked, she knew that. She'd used the thing, the thing you rode... "It's the thing with the pedals," she said absently as she racked her brain for the name. She knew what it was, she was sure, she'd seen it dozens of times...but as she thought about it, she couldn't actually recall ever seeing one before. Every time she thought she remembered a...a thing, with the things...the memory vanished.
