Shards of Light

He lost his wings.

There was an ache where they should have been, though ache wasn’t quite the right word. There was a void around his shoulder blades beneath his T-shirt. It felt uncomfortable. Wrong.

When Jessemine rolled his shoulders, instead of feathers unfurling there was just…air.

Without his wings, he was nothing. So, full of nothing, he tied back his long gold hair, donned jeans and a relatively clean black T-shirt, grabbed a coat, and took himself off to get as drunk as someone like him could get.

The bar was mid-week quiet. A few groupings at the tables near the back. The soft click of balls hitting each other at the one pool table angled so you had to skirt past the action to get to the grotty toilets.

Some soft music Jessemine didn’t recognize underlined the calm, comfortable feel of the night, all plaintive vocals and acoustic guitar.

But inside? Jessamine was anything but calm. And he hadn’t known comfort in what felt like a hundred years.

The bartender, a white dude with a goatee, early 30s, set another Jameson on the dark wooden bar top. Jessemine—Jesse—was the only patron at this end of the long curve of mahogany. A man and woman sat at the opposite end, engaged in one of those quiet, flirtatious conversations that blocked out the rest of the world. Jesse didn’t know whether to feel jealousy or disgust.

Mostly, he just didn’t want to feel.

“Want to keep a tab?”

“Yeah, man. Thanks.”

Jesse raised the heavy lowball glass, with two fingers of amber liquid cradling a single massive ice cube. Taking a careful sip, he rolled the smooth liquor across his tongue. It was mellower than what he usually liked, and sweeter, but what are you gonna do? Bar like this didn’t stock Laphroig or Ardbeg. He looked at the rows of bottles on the back of the bar. Shades of green and amber. Clear for the vodka and gin. A few beers on tap. Dim lights that glinted off the glassware.

A world inside a world. A place where you came to celebrate or to escape your problems.

Sometimes? A bar like this felt like a place you came to die.

It wasn’t so much that Jessemine had lost his wings. Really, there was no way for that to happen. He’d forsaken the ability to will them forth. To call upon his better nature. His wings lay dormant in the in-between, while he was trapped inside his mind in the here-and-now.

Trapped inside memory and regret.

Jessemine had lost not only his wings, but his shine. He wasn’t sure exactly when that part had happened. Sometime in the last week or so.

After Sarah…

He looked across the bar to the silent television. Some talking head bleating on about another war. There was always a war. Or a flood or fire. Disease. Some disaster or another. It was a wonder humans were able to survive at all. They were such weak creatures. So fragile.

At least it wasn’t sports night, when this bar would fill with fans screaming at the glowing box and spilling beer and greasy chips on the dark, shadowy floors.

He liked bars on off nights. A few hardcore patrons drinking quietly after work. Or having conversations that didn’t have to include the whole room in drunken loudness. Jesse turned his head to scan the place. He sat sideways to the room. Easy to keep tabs on the door, and the whole space, all the way to the back. Easy surveillance, without having to be obvious about it.

Four guys played darts in the back, next to the pair of women engrossed in their game of pool. Another trio of women leaned across the table of a scarred booth, jeans and dark sweaters a contrast against the red seats. He wondered what they were talking about. Could be relationships. Could be stock options. Could be that local mining for natural gas was messing with the water table again.

He’d watched people for centuries: working in the fields or the trades. Cooking, cleaning, spinning, caring for children. He’d watched commerce, celebration, discovery, famine, and yeah, war.

He watched people’s souls. Sometimes he didn’t much like what he saw. Other times? They shone so brightly, it brought tears to his eyes.

“My heart beats only for you…” sang a woman’s voice on the sound system.

“Bullshit,” Jessemine mumbled. The bartender looked up from where he was washing glasses, dunking them into suds and letting the three stable bristle-brushes do the scrubbing. The bartender sent an inquiring glance, one eyebrow raised. Jesse shook his head. What he needed, the bartender didn’t have in stock.

He missed her.

Sarah. Missed her long dark hair. Her wild laugh. The way she furrowed her pale brow when she was working on something in the lab.

That was the ache. Not his damned missing wings.

Sarah had just…dropped… from the window after the men had cornered her there, thinking he would catch her, as he watched her descent from above.

He saw that look on her face that said “I trust you.” A look he would carry until his presence finally winked out of existence, however many æons from now.

He had been too slow, stumbling toward the window, screaming, as three men held him back. The men had drugged his wine. Jesse had fought them anyway. Even slowed down, he had hurt them. Vases crashed in the apartment. Tables shattered. Just as Sarah had fought alongside him until that fatal moment when they had lost to the forces of devolution and despair.

They had lost to the ones who would keep this world in thrall.

But Jessemine had lost more than just another battle. Sarah had been lost, because of his failure. His wings had been lost. His soul was forfeit.

He had come to earth to learn. And to serve the Bright Ones who were seeded here so long ago. The shards of light whose task was to repair this stinking world.

People like Sarah…

The code was in all human DNA, and some of the other animals too: octopi, whales, silverback gorillas, condors, tortoises. The brightness was there in all of them, but needed activation. His bosses never knew, watching Earth, who exactly would awaken. Though conditions were set in certain places, too much was out of their control.

But he’d also come searching…

Jesse touched his face, running fingers lightly over his cheekbones. His jaw. He healed too quickly to be sore anymore, but the skin was still sensitive to his touch.

Sarah wasn’t lost either. He had to stop using that stupid word. His wings weren’t lost, he had left them behind in his grief. Sarah wasn’t lost. She’d lain broken on the sidewalk, then her body put into a bag and taken away.

The women at the table gave a loud guffaw. They must have been drinking for awhile. He needed to catch up to the rest of the bar, clearly. He lifted his glass toward the bartender, who nodded, giving change to another solo flier at the middle of the long sweep of polished wood before grabbing the green glass bottle and sauntering over to pour.

The Bright Ones were always meant to save the place. To eat the fruit, gain the knowledge, figure things out, and help spread the news. Sarah was his latest charge. She’d been getting closer and closer to something that felt important to the larger pattern, something that would shift the wheels a quarter turn.

It was his job to protect her.

Jessemine didn’t deserve his wings.

“Two more.” That voice was unignorable. Deep as the ocean, smooth as the down on a week old baby starling. Jesse had felt him approaching, but ignored him. Maybe he would leave.

Raniel. Big. Beautiful. Well, all angels were beautiful, but Raniel was particularly well formed. With his broad shoulders, chiseled face, flared nose, and perfect dark skin, the Golden Mean had been made to his measure, not the other way around. Renaissance artists had literally slobbered, open mouthed, at the sight of him. One of them had even shit his pants, not from fear, but from the sheer inability to process so much beauty.

Raniel had learned to tone it down since then. The women from the booth still noticed. They’d grown quieter. Jesse glanced at them. Smirked. They were perfectly still. Barely breathing. Not even able to go into preening mode. “Gobsmacked” Sarah would have said.

Yeah, Jessemine had truly lost his shine. Those women hadn’t even given him a cursory glance.

The bartender set two more whiskeys down. Jesse finally turned to look at Raniel. Raniel stared right back. Massive shoulders strained at the deep red dress shirt he wore. Jesse felt underdressed as usual. At least his T-shirt was clean.

“You didn’t kill her.”

They both took a long drink of the sweet amber.

“I did.”

Raniel sighed and placed a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. It felt cool and went a little way toward easing his discomfort. Where Jessemine was a Protector, Raniel’s job was Healer. Jesse fought against his brother’s gift. He didn’t deserve it. But right now? Raniel was strong. Much stronger than Jesse.

Finally, he gave in, relaxing into Raniel’s presence, letting a healing trickle flow through him, twining its cool stream with the warmth of the Jameson inside his churning gut.

“You always did take too much on,” Raniel said as he worked. “We aren’t supposed to take things this personally, you know? Maybe it’s time for you to come back in from the field. Visit Haven. Take a rest.”

Jessemine tensed at that, fighting once more against the release of his anguish, his grief. “No. I failed. My soul is forfeit.”

He needed to suffer. For as long as it took.

Raniel laughed softly, shifting his hand from Jesse’s shoulder to his arm. He took another sip of whiskey.

“To forfeit your soul, you’d have to do a lot worse than allow yourself to be drugged and lose a person in the process.”

Jesse shook his hand off his arm. “Fuck you.”

Raniel grabbed his wrist. No light touch this time. Bone and muscle gripped him until it almost hurt. Jesse set his glass down, hard, on the wooden bartop. Took a shaky breath. Being a chosen Protector was supposed to make Jesse better. So he could help the Bright Ones find their destinies. So all the worlds and the in between were knit back together again. Made whole. Not this sundered, shattered, mess.

Jesse raked his fingers through his long golden hair, dislodging the rubber band that held his locks in place.

When had the world gone so wrong?

Raniel leaned in, voice urgent and low, breath raking Jessemine’s cheek. “You think you’re the only one to care? You think you’re the only special one who made a big mistake? You think you’re the only one who failed in your mission or had someone die?”

Jesse pried the fingers off his wrist. Grabbed his coat and stumbled toward the steel clad door, pushing through it and onto the darkening street. Looked around for a cab. Cars whooshed by, booming bass and rattling with treble.

Raniel was a few beats after. Must have settled the tab. “Jessemine, stop. Slow down. Think.”

Raniel touched him again. Jesse blacked out. Before he fell he had one thought: “I didn’t know I could faint.”

***

Jessemine’s sandpaper dry eyes blinked as he looked up at the pale yellow ceiling of his apartment. He squinted toward the windows. White sheer curtains moved in a soft, cool breeze. From the look of the light, it must be early morning. Just past dawn.

Raniel sat calmly at his side. He’d pulled the purple arm chair up to the white couch Jesse was laying on. Sarah had loved that chair, and would always sit in it when she came to visit. Jesse struggled to sit up, blinking at the light. He must have slept through the night. Raniel had put the whammy on him. Typical. Healers always think they know best.

“Orange juice?” he croaked.

Raniel padded to the kitchen. Jesse could hear him getting a glass. Shutting the fridge. Liquid pouring. He walked back into the living room, red shirt and dark trousers still pristine.

“How do you do that?” asked Jesse, as he took his first swallow. Oh. Good. Not as good as freshly squeezed, but still good. A little tart under the sweet.

“Do what?”

“Stay so clean after carrying me home from a bar, and then watching over me all night.”

“It’s just my nature. I watch over people. And Healers need to be clean, so we are. I am. You haven’t figured that out yet? After all these millenia?”

“I just never thought about it before. It didn’t matter so much when we all wore robes. I hated those things. Always got in the way during a fight.”

And if it was a Healer’s nature to be clean watchful? What was a Protector’s nature? Wasn’t that to keep people safe? To keep the shards of light burning until the time of the Great Change?

Raniel cleared his throat.

“You don’t have to give up your wings, you know. You can still fly.”

“Just. Don’t.”

Raniel shook his head, then fished into his back pocket. Brought out a phone and began scrolling. Held it out. Screen too bright, but Jessemine could still make out the image.

It was a photo of a child in a brightly woven shawl and a red hat, face lit with a smile, hair straight and black, white teeth with gaps waiting for adult teeth to fill in.

“Peru?”

“Yes. In Arequipa. Down near Chile.”

“Another girl.” Jesse drank more juice. His breath was coming more easily.

Raniel shrugged. “She’s just the next one on the list. Grandmother is a shaman. She’s been having dreams about DNA. Twining serpents, made of light and fire.”

“The girl has?”

Raniel nodded. Stepped forward. Placed his hands on Jessemine’s temples. Jessemine saw it then. Saw it again. That thing he hadn’t thought of in a long time. He’d been too fixated on Sarah, on her research, on her laugh. On her beauty. He’d fallen in love with the particular. He always did.

Every single time.

“See the big picture, Jessemine. Look.”

Jesse saw. Pinpoints of light on mountaintops. In cities. On the ocean floor. Clusters of light. And isolated beams. It was light, though. Bright Ones, shining. All over the world.

“It’s happening,” Jesse whispered the words, half afraid to speak them aloud. It meant he couldn’t give up. Or could he?

He had failed. He was not worthy…

“It is. Are you ready?”

No, his mind screamed under Raniel’s cool hands. I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready. Leave me alone!

But his body knew better. His body betrayed him. It always did. His cells were called to protect the light, no matter how shitty he felt. No matter how much self pity he swam inside. No matter how much he wanted to lose his mind to alcohol and time.

Jesse began gasping, lungs clawing for more air. It came on quickly, his nature. Overpowering. Something shifted along his back. Between his shoulder blades. He writhed on the couch, trying to make room. Seeking comfort that might never come again. Seeking an end to the pain.

The pain of growth. Of change. Of time moving on in endless spirals. Æon upon æon.

Raniel lifted his hands away from Jesse’s head. Stepped back.

Finally, Jesse stood. His lungs filled and his eyes rolled back in his head. There. His wings moved out, shifting, moving in between the weave of the soft fabric of his T-shirt, getting bigger.

Flexing, he raised them up. The feathers went all the way to the ceiling. He could feel his cells begin to hum inside him. Feel the shine return.

He shrugged his shoulders. Up. Down. Flexed his fingers. Testing.

Close his eyes. Found his center. Sent off a quick and wordless prayer.

Then he looked at Raniel, who stood, calm. Waiting.

“If the host will still have me, I guess I’m reporting for duty.”

Raniel nodded. His own wings unfurled, larger than Jesse’s, so big the tips poked through the ceiling. He brought Jesse into his strong, healing embrace.

Jesse felt the last of Sarah’s spirit go winging on its way. The ache of her absence remained, but there was nothing to do about it anymore.

Fucking bosses up at Haven never gave him more than a week or two to mourn.

“What’s the girl’s name?” he asked his brother.

“Ch’apa.”

Venus. The morning star.

Jessemine closed his eyes, and breathed in all the pain and beauty the world had to offer. He breathed in Sarah’s voice. The feel of morning air upon his skin. The sunlight, filtered through white curtains.

He breathed in the promise of a new day filling his heart. His mind. His wings.

Finally, Jessemine was ready.

“Let’s go.”

##

T. Thorn Coyle

October 2014/August 2021

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This is reader funded writing. One thousand blessings to all of my Patreon supporters. I couldn’t do this without you.

#angels #shortstory

The Liberators

book cover: The Liberators. A cat with pink and green colors added to fur. Sparkly background. Another cat’s ears descending from above.

Ralph liked living in the lab just fine.

Oh, the smells were not that great. There was a sharp, astringent scent that filled the air at least once a day that he particularly did not care for. And the light was a bit harsh at times, bouncing off the white walls.

Ralph didn’t like that.

But he liked the other kittens. The other kittens smelled warm. And soft. Like milk and naps.

He liked the Piles of Blankets, too. The Piles of Blankets came in pleasant colors and smelled like kittens.

And Ralph liked the food well enough. Once he was weaned, and onto soft, solid food, he was treated to a whole array of tastes and scents he did not even know were possible before.

So yes, the lab was fine.

Though he didn’t care for getting poked and prodded much. He particularly did not like the probes attached to his skull once a day. They stung a bit at first, then itched, and made it hard to move. But he did like the pets and scratches he got and the treats for being such a good kitty after the tests were done.

But the thing Ralph liked most of all?

Flying.

He loved to scamper and run, and bounce. And he loved to leap. And then, one day, the leaping turn to flying. Amazing!

Now Ralph flew every single chance he got.

Ralph was a champion flyer, the white coats said. Best of his litter.

Now, if only he had opposable thumbs. Because he would like nothing more than to fly in the scrap of blue he could see through the high, bolted window up above.

A kitten could dream, couldn’t he?

***

“There’s a new litter in need of rescue,” Bruiser said, stalking back-and-forth in front of her comrades. “They’re weaned now, so just old enough to break free. The question is, how are we going to do it this time?”

A dozen cats sat in a loose semicircle on the cracked concrete floor of the cavernous space. The cats lived in a compound in an old human-made warehouse, with high, wooden walls, dark rafter beams, and the faint smell of oil and, of course, cat. Not urine, though. The older ones trained the new recruits to use the latrine areas well away from the shelter of the building.

No one peed on a blanket and lasted very long in the freehold. Kittens excepted, of course.

The crew gathered in front of Bruiser were the current core committee. The rest of the compound cats were out hunting, patrolling, or training up the latest litter.

Bruiser was a battered cat who had battled many a battle and fought many a fight. She was in her prime, and could take on any cat in the freehold. That was why she currently held leadership, though no position was permanent among the compound cats.

She stalked back and forth, tail held high to show her authority. But a cat didn’t just take charge, not here. A cat was given the honor of leadership for as long as it served the rest of the freehold, or until the leader decided they’d had enough.

That was the way of things.

First of all, you never knew when disease or a predator would take a comrade down, and second, cats just didn’t like to work under anyone’s authority for long. Oh, trading expertise was well and good. And someone needed to be the final voice sometimes. But mostly? Cats were anarchists. They did their own thing, and if what you wanted to do was what they wanted, too? Well that was all right then wasn’t it?

“How can we be sure these kittens want to go?” Celeste asked. Celeste was a small, attractive tabby cat. She was currently catting around with Tom, a handsome marmalade fellow that Bruiser had tumbled with a time or three in the recent past.

“We’ll have to ask them, won’t we?” said Bruiser. “After we tell them what is possible outside the confines of their cages.”

“After we tell them they don’t need to be experimented on,” growled Tom.

“That’s right,” Pipsqueak, a small, black and white cat, piped up. “They have to be running the tests on them by now. No one likes the tests.”

Pipsqueak shuddered, as if remembering.

They all remembered.

Every cat paused in silence for a moment. They all had their stories—of the lab, or of the streets. They all had the memories that hunted them at night.

“I say we break them out first, ask questions later.” That was Hemingway, an older gray cat with handsome whiskers and six toes on each foot. He had trained himself to use those toes like humans used their hands. Hemingway was quite useful, and only spoke when it was necessary, so the rest of the cats tend to listen to him.

Bruiser stopped and scratched behind an ear, throwing up an arc of sparkles that meant her powers brewed close to the surface, ready to burst free. Bruiser’s magic was far-seeing and teleportation of small objects, which came in handy in all sorts of situations.

“I agree with Hemingway,” Celeste remarked. “If the kittens want to go back to the lab after we bust them out? Well, that’s up to them.”

Tortoise—a fighting cat with flying powers—cleared his throat. “We can explain to them what their options are once we have them here. We can’t do that while they’re locked inside.”

“So what’s the plan?” Pipsqueak asked.

“That’s what we need to figure out,” Bruiser replied.

There was always too much to figure out, even for uncommon cats like they were. They all had magic, extra powers, or unusual skills of one form or another. Some of them came by them naturally, and others were human implanted. But there was no hierarchy of talent here. They were all just cats, living together.

Trying to get along in a world that treated them as strange.

***

Ralph flew in circles, laughing with his friend Petunia. They shrieked as they circled one another and pushed their paws off against the shining white walls.

Petunia was a stripy black and tawny kitten to Ralph’s gray.

And he liked her very much.

Ralph had taken to bumping his head against Petunias and asking her to fly again and again. More often than he asked anybody else. They often curled up together at night at the edge of the huddle of the other kittens.

Ralph had strange feelings for Petunia, but he didn’t know what they meant. All he knew was that he wanted to be near her.

A white coat came into the room and grabbed Ralph from the air. He shrieked and Petunia cried out his name before scrambling to land.

Ralph fought against the rougher-than-usual grip of the human’s hands.

“You’re up next, buddy,” the white coat said. “Time for the old snip snip.”

Ralph didn’t know what the old snip snip was, but it doesn’t sound good. He fought harder, scratching at a hand, and got a clout against the head which stunned him temporarily.

Ralph kicked his little hind feet, and the white coat gripped the scruff of Ralph’s neck, making him submit.

“Dammit. You couldn’t make this easy could you? Calm down little buddy. You won’t feel a thing.”

As the big metal door clanged behind them, Ralph heard Petunia call his name.

***

It didn’t take long at all to formulate a plan that led a small pride of six comrades to the slight, wooded rise just beyond the parking lot of a long, low building that squatted like a metallic toad beneath them.

Once Bruiser got an idea in her head, the rest of the freehold pretty quickly figured out a way to get it done.

Besides, they were used to these sorts of operations. It was what they were known for: rescuing cats in need. There were cats in the compound who had been saved from fires and floods, from strange humans who crammed too many cats into too small a space, from beatings, from abandonment at roadsides…and from cages of all kinds.

Other cats whispered stories about a shadowy group of superhero cats they called The Liberators. They were talking about this compound, whether they knew it or not.

All cats weren’t superheroes, but some superheroes were cats. And it was a superhero’s job to help where they could. Otherwise, what was the use?

But the cats of the compound did not call themselves anything other than Free Cats. And that was what they wished for every cat living in misery. Simple freedom.

So, Bruiser, Hemingway, Pipsqueak and the others crouched outside the large ugly box of a human building. Pipsqueak had come from there most recently and didn’t like to talk about it.

The little cat trembled slightly at Bruiser’s side.

“You okay?” Bruiser growled.

“I’ll be fine,” Pipsqueak replied. And she would, Bruiser was certain of it.

Tom padded up. “The other two are in place by the door, ready for us. All seems quiet enough. You’re sure the humans aren’t in the kitten room?”

Bruiser closed her eyes to check again. She saw humans in white coats gathered around a table, eating food. There were others in a different long room, peering at glowing machines.

She opened her eyes and stared at the marmalade cat. “The kitten room is clear.”

Then she turned to Hemingway. “Go ahead. If you need help with any locks, I can try to teleport the screws or latches, but I think your paws should suffice.”

Then she looked from cat to cat. “Remember, trust your instincts and trust each other.”

Hemingway and Tom ran lightly back down towards the back door of the building, with Bruiser and Pipsqueak following several cat-length’s behind. Bruiser’s heart pounded in her chest. It didn’t matter how many operations the crew successfully pulled off…

This could always be the one that didn’t work.

This could always be the one where someone got injured, died, or worse.

Got captured.

***

Ralph’s stomach didn’t feel right, and his head was woozy. He blinked his eyes and the bars of the cage enclosure wavered in and out of focus.

Where was he? Why wasn’t he in the big blanket pile with the other kittens?

And then he remembered.

The white coats. A strange, sweet, scent, and then darkness.

“Ralph?” That was Petunia’s voice, coming from somewhere beyond his cage.

“Ralph,” she repeated, “are you okay?”

He struggled to sit up, but his stomach heaved in protest. Ralph gave a mewling groan.

“He doesn’t sound so good.” That was Fee, another one of the litter.

“What should we do?” Another familiar voice spoke, but Ralph was too tired to figure out who.

“I’ve seen this before, it happens.”

That was Mother’s warm voice. Oh, she wasn’t the one who had given birth to them, just as the rest of the litter weren’t Ralph’s real brothers and sisters, but she was the adult cat who took care of them, they all called her Mother just the same.

“They take them away and cut off their little balls,” she said.

“No!” Toby said.

“Really?” Petunia squeaked.

“Yes. It means they don’t want you to breed more kittens. It’s a terrible, terrible, thing,” Mother continued. “But it is our lot in life.”

A thought struggled to surface in the back of Ralph’s head. A mild protest at Mother’s words. How could this be his lot in life?

He was a cat who could fly.

***

Hemingway got the outside door open, with only a small amount of help from Bruiser. The six cats skulked into the overly bright corridor, lined with doors. Bruiser wrinkled her nose at the harsh scents that filled the air.

“Which way?” Tom asked.

Bruiser paused. Tried to listen past the low humming of the lights and the soft hissing and whirring sounds that came from behind closed doors. She heard human laughter further on, but before that noise…

“The kittens are in the third door to the right. I can smell them.”

She could also hear some low, distressed meows. She only hoped they were not too late.

Bruiser whispered, “Hemingway, you work the latch. Celeste and Tom, be ready to pounce. Tortoise? You and I will get the lay of the land. I saw blanket boxes and but there are cages in there, too. I’m not sure at this point how many are locked up, so we’ll need to make decisions as we go. Follow my lead if you can. If humans come? We all know what to do.”

She turned to the littlest member of their squad.

“Pipsqueak?”

The little cat snapped her head to attention.

“It is your job to reassure any cat who is afraid.” Bruiser looked into the kitten’s green eyes. “They will trust you.”

Pipsqueak dipped her head in acknowledgement.

“Let’s do this,” Bruiser said.

***

“Drink some water, youngling,” Mother said.

Ralph swung his head and saw a metal water dish. He looked at it through blurry eyes. He was thirsty, but his stomach still felt wrong.

“It will clear the poison out faster,” Mother said. “That is what happened to the others. The sick feeling goes away more quickly.”

Ralph scooted toward the dish and obediently lapped up some of the cool liquid. When nothing bad happened, he lapped up some more.

As he drank, a rattling started at the door. Ralph froze. Were the white coats back again?

The door opened with a burst, and six shapes barreled through, low to the ground. Not white coats.

Cats.

One shape took to the air. Another flyer! Ralph drank more water, trying to clear his head. This was all so exciting! Nothing like this had ever happened before!

“Ralph!” Petunia flew up to the cage so he could see her little face. His eyesight must be clearing. She looked beautiful. “Two cats are going to open up your cage. Stay back from the door!”

Then she disappeared replaced by a noble gray face that just cleared the bottom of the cage. “I’m going to help you, son.”

Two great paws reached for the latch. Were those six toes? And how could the cat bend them that way?

The cat looked down. “I’ll need your help to lift the latch.”

Ralph heard a steady voice answer, and then his stomach lurched again. Something weird was happening. The latch rattled, but focusing on that made his head go funny, so he looked out past the bars. Cats were running everywhere, and the flying ones swooped and dodged. It looked like some cats were escaping the room!

“Petunia!” he called for his friend. She flew into view again.

“Don’t worry, Ralph. They are here to rescue us! These cats will set us free!”

He heard humans shouting down the hall. Petunia lurched in alarm.

Ralph heard the latch snick free.

“Come along, son.” The gray-faced, six-toed cat swung the cage door open. “Do you need help getting out?”

Ralph stood just as two white coats burst into the room. He was still a little woozy.

“I don’t think I can fly.”

“Can you jump onto my back?” The other cat spoke. She was large and solid looking, with a fierce gaze.

“I… I think so.”

“Then jump on. We’re out of time.”

He could see that. Petunia and the other flying cats raced toward the white coats, claws extended like tiny rows of knives.

Human voices bellowed, cats hissed and yelled.

Ralph crouched, closed his eyes, and leapt.

***

Luckily, the kitten made it. Bruiser winced as his small claws dug through her fur.

“Hold on!” she said. “Hemingway! Run interference!”

The big gray cat barreled toward the thicket of human legs and fighting cats, creating a small opening. Bruiser imagined herself a small projectile, as if she could teleport herself and her small charge through that space and out of the building.

It worked. Soon enough, she followed the stream of paws and fur, racing down the hallway to the open door. Sunshine glowed at the end of the corridor.

Without a thought, Bruiser followed Hemingway toward the glowing rectangle, focused only on that space.

She trusted her comrades to take care of the rest. Tortoise and Celeste would see it through.

And Pipsqueak? Bruiser just had to hope the little cat’s brave heart would keep her safe.

Humans shouted behind her, and she felt a whoosh of displaced air as if a large hand grabbed for her tail.

Bruiser put on speed and barreled toward the light.

***

Ralph couldn’t believe it.

He was free.

Oh, he’d lost the contents of his stomach after lurching off the big cat’s back once they’d reached a nice little place filled with good smells and things called trees and bushes, with intriguing flying creatures darting in and out. They had feathers instead of fur, and there were a lot of them.

But Ralph had been able to climb back onto Bruiser’s back, and held on happily until they reached what the other cats called “the freehold.”

He was curled up with Petunia on a soft cushion in a vast human-building that smelled nothing like the lab. The light here was soft, not harsh. And there were cats everywhere.

“Are we in heaven?” he asked Petunia, before his eyes shuttered again. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep ever since they arrived. He couldn’t help it.

Mother said it might take a day for him to feel like himself again.

“You are not in heaven,” a bass voice growled. That was the strong flier called Tortoise. He’d set himself to guard Ralph and Petunia’s cushion. Ralph was glad. Tortoise made his heart feel safe.

“You are in the compound of the Free Cats. This is your new home, if you want it.”

Petunia licked Ralph’s ears. “Did you hear that, Ralph? Home.”

“Home,” he purred.

Then, snuggled next to the best kitten in the world, Ralph slipped back into sleep.

You can now buy this story as part of the five story collection A Speculation of Hope.

This story was funded by my amazing Patreon supporters. I give them thanks. Without their support, my work would be much more difficult.

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Bookshop Witch

I’m launching a new series on Kickstarter that’s already been named a “Project We Love.”

I’m calling the Seashell Cove Paranormal Mystery series “paranormal cozies for freaks and geeks” and I’m very exited about it!

Check out the Kickstarter here.

Why paranormal cozies for freaks and geeks?

I love cozy mysteries, but sometimes they’re a bit too straitlaced for me. Witches, ghosts, gnomes, land spirits, and pixies? That’s the paranormal part, natch, with a dash of urban fantasy thrown into the mix.

Freaks and geeks? That’s my affectionate way of saying that these books are about people I love: tabletop role playing geeks, medieval re-enactment nerds, bookworms, bisexuals, lesbians, genderqueer people… you get the idea.

These are cozy mysteries for those of us that don’t quite fit the mold.

Whether that’s you or not, I hope you enjoy this peek into my subconscious. Grab a cup of your favorite tea and curl up with Sarah, Rhiannon, and their friends.

Maybe you’ll even meet a centaur or two.