The Votes are Cast! We Gaze Into the Higher Realms!

Madame Anthemia knew from her earliest puphood in Town (that is, London) that she was destined for a life spent pursuing Higher Matters, though she wasn’t sure at first what form this would take. Her father was a porter for the posh Animal dressmaker, The House of Pennyworth, so the Flittermouses were not rich, but her parents supported her ambitions, first by paying for singing lessons (when she was convinced her true path lay in Opera), then, later, with tutoring in painting, the French language, Bordeaux-stitch embroidery, and mathematics.

She realized her true calling when she was a young Bat-lady. As she rode the tram home after a public lecture on The Wildlife of Tasmania, she beheld a ghostly form beckoning to her from a neglected garden. Cynics might scoff that what she saw was just mist (it was a very foggy night) or her own reflection in the window, but Anna at least was convinced. The next day, she returned to where she had seen the spectre. The garden concealed a narrow (Human) house nearly hidden in shrubbery, with a brass plaque by the door that said Madame Těfa, prophetess, ring to enquire.

Anna slipped away, a Changed Bat. She had not realized that being a Prophetess was a career option! Ever since she had been an infant, she had seen and heard strange things, things that others, less sensitive (such as all her brothers and sisters), might explain away, but she knew—knew!—were manifestations of Other Planes. She stopped at Kidderminster’s Animal bookshop, and purchased a copy of What You Don’t Know! by the famous spiritualist Magnus Jellicoe. By the end of the first chapter, she knew that she was not mere Anna Flittermouse but in fact Madame Anthemia, spiritualist and seeress. By the end of the book, she had remembered her Atlantean life as a Dolphin priestess and gained her first spirit-ally, a spectral Mouse named Chippers.

For the next few years, Madame Anthemia travelled extensively, giving public talks and private séances, and reading paws, tea leaves, cards, and crystals. When she decided to step back from her public life, she came to live with Miss Erminia Cupcookie, who she had met in her work. Strangers can lure her from retirement for private séances if they pay enough, but her skills are always available to her friends and neighbors in the River Bank.