Am feeling guilty about the general lack of commenting that’s happened for the last two micfics. I’m glad that we’ve gone through to the end of the volume, though.

If I’m going to nit-pick, the box “locked with your mind and with your emotions” is perhaps a little obvious and flatly stated, in contrast to the nuance of the rest of it. But it’s an extremely minor niggle.

The beginning of this reminds me of the scene in the Ghostbusters movie, when Bill Murray’s character is testing some people for psychic powers using those cards that show stars and wavy lines and such-like on them.

> “It’s… not bad. It’s not too bad.”
I had originally read this as being a statement about what Casey was seeing, rather than on Casey’s performance. On a second reading I thought it might be about Casey’s performance (since the second paragraph begins by talking about that, and it seems to be the general vibe of the piece), but I’m not always 100% about that. For instance, there’s:

> I thought that was a good sign.

which I’m still unsure how I should read (is the cat throwing up good, or is Casey seeing this good?).

I thought that the piece was humorous (for instance, the naming of the “mandible guys”) and light-hearted; it was fun to read.

I laughed This was great. At first it played along with the confusion I had as to what I could be writing about for this theme, which amused me. And then it turned into a story where the cats and money weren’t actually the theme, but a mistake about the true theme. There’s a lovely meta-ness in that which I enjoy.

> And maybe the money[,] but the cats?
Maybe missing a comma.

> He was very helpful, he gave me
I thought that this maybe should have been two sentences. Or used a semi-colon.

I enjoyed the whole piece-meal story telling, it feels like you crammed a whole short story into the length.

I enjoyed the approach to the training – somewhat silly and slightly unclear – and the lightness and everydayness of the process.
I think the form worked well for doing all the little bits you needed: The humour, the intro to the multi-species world and introspection about how humanity fits into the universe.The changes in style and place in time keep it fresh and pacy as you read it.

Really liked the humourous touches around the species names and our humanness.