Hallelujah

Element · 01-15-2011, 10:27 PM

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One thing.

The old cat sat in the middle of his beloved library. He was now old...so old. Fourteen years old. He was very, very old. Older than he had been when he first came to Souls...when he first met Flower.

If there was one thing he could take back.

He wished he had never left her alone that night. He would have stopped her from wandering off. He had made his peace with her death so long ago, but now...for some reason, it was haunting him. The cat that used to be a deep, dark shade of ebony and now had a muzzle that was ringed with a shade of gray was now haunted by the memories that were buried deep inside himself. He was alone now.

He didn't mind.

The old cat sat in the middle of his library, his library, his...home. He had never applied those words to anything before his thirteen years in this old, old place. He had never thought he would apply those words to anything. He stared at the books, looked at their flat covers now caked in dust. Dust that rose from the floor and danced their ethereal dance, right next to the window where the moonlight filtered through in beams across the floor. Above, the stars were circling in their patterns of the heavens, like they always had - a celestial cycle that would never end, long after Element was gone.

Element knew this. He knew that the world would go on long after he was a dead cat, an old cat, a cat that had sunk into the ground with defeat. He knew that the world would go on for hundreds of thousands of years old; he knew all these things, for he was old, and had read so many things that so many didn't know simply because they couldn't, wouldn't, didn't read.

The things he knew...he knew that, as he looked up at the heavens, that the moon was enormous, much larger than he would have thought. It danced in circles around the Earth, which in turn spun itself, slowly turning around the sun. A dance worthy of the heavens.

He knew that, as he looked up at the great orb in the sky, humans had once reached those heavens - had set foot on the moon. Long, long before Element himself was born.

He knew that the flowers soaked up sunlight and changed the golden streams into energy that they ate. He knew that in the center of the very Earth itself, there was a great ball of magma and lava that would incinerate all it would touch - a living hell. He knew that everything, even animals like himself, were made up of tiny particles called atoms. He knew that, as he looked out into the deep, dark abyss of space, there were things unthinkable, unimaginable out there - planets with other life, galaxies that spun and twisted and shone, worlds that would kill a person as soon as they could stand on it. The edge of the universe itself.

Element turned away from the window and back to his beloved books. All of these things he had learned from those precious, dearly loved books. They weren't his, no - they were the human's, in all retrospect, but he had cared for them, keeping them out of windows where the rain and sun would wear them out, chasing out rats and raccoons that would chew the pages and gnaw at the precious knowledge that lay inside. Luperci came and went, borrowing books and returning them, and he had watched from the shadows, only occasionally coming out to say hello and ask what book they were choosing. He would nod and ask about it, why they were choosing it, perhaps have a nice, long conversation with them. It rarely ever strayed from canines and cats and books.

Some of his own were on those shelves, he reflected proudly. Bound in animal skin and bark and written by others than himself, they were his own creations. Most about cats, although some had the main characters of canines or even humans - whatever came to him was what he wrote. It was such a good feeling, a feeling of possibility and wonder and endless, endless opportunities to explore lives other than his own. There were lives that were different, lives that were the same, but they all had a place in his soul. And those shelves.

He was curled up in the windowshelf - the moon lit up his fur and cast a silvery glow on the library. Someone had cushioned it so that it was plush and soft for him - and that was where he slept each night. Element was content.

And so he slept.

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