Mr. Fluffington, a gray cat with nothing more than an identically gray bow tie wrapped around his neck, stared into two black pits of death. The snout between them pointed down, and the sixty foot dragon leaned toward him until their faces nearly touched. One step forward from the dragon and he would be crushed. One bout of fiery breath and he would be burned to a crisp. One bite and he would be digested. Instead, the red, scaly dragon sighed.

“I mean, I dunno. It just stopped workin' for no reason whatsoever.”

The dragon held a three foot long device in her clutches. It looked like a gear, mostly because it was a gear. Blue lights glimmered off its bronze surface. They created images that danced, flickered, and stuttered, but which mostly stuttered.

“I gave it to my grandson, Scorched Fiery Earth, to use for a day. He gave it back to me the next mornin' saying that it was already broken.”

“Don’t worry, I got this,” said Mr. Fluffington. He picked up the device, which was weightless for its size because of magic, and prodded at it with a paw. He shook his head. “Did you try turning it off and back on again?”

The dragon growled. Billows of smoke shot out from her giant nostrils. Her yellow eyes narrowed.

“Yes, of course! But the load of junk keeps doing that! I’ll tell you what, I’m never buyin' off any wizard ever again! In fact, if I so much as see one tryin' to peddle his devices off again I will tear his―”

“Alright, alright, relax,” said the cat absentmindedly, having dealt with his fair share of disgruntled clients.

He proceeded to take a step back in case. There was plenty of room for him to move because they were standing on a hill in the middle of a grassy plain. Normally, there would be other animals. For some reason, today it was empty. No birds sang. Nothing else moved. The wind was on break.

Mr. Fluffington appraised the device solidly for several seconds before making up his mind. He grabbed one of the levers connected to the center of the machine and pulled. The lights turned off completely and the machine went dark. The dragon groaned. He then pulled a different lever before he could be reduced to ashes, and then he set the device down on the grass. It began to make a whirring sound.

Ah, so that was the problem, he thought. The center console had overheated. Anyone with the manual or an ounce of knowledge could’ve avoided the problem altogether, but―he looked up into the eyes of the dragon―you couldn’t blame her. She was pushing a thousand years old, and she was born in a time when they had to physically write down incantations. Back then, cats ate mice, hawks swooped down on rodents, and wolves hunted deer. Now wizards went around selling magical trinkets without caring whether their buyers would be able to use them or not, dragons were nearly extinct, and cats like Mr. Fluffington helped their neighbors fix easily solvable problems.

In the end, it all worked out though, because Pillars Of Sky paid out three golden coins and flew back to her cave with a mostly working nexus. She would surely be back by the end of the month, but that at least meant three more gold coins.

Mr. Fluffington, otherwise known by the name Fern Five Fluffington, headed back home. He had that name because his mother used the nearest object at his birth for inspiration. That was why his siblings were named Pebble One, Branch Two, Leaf Three, and so on. It was also why he went by his last name in public. It was a leftover habit from when he naively believed it was less embarrassing than going by Fern Five. He was wrong. Oh, well.

It was now noon. The green sky reached its maximum brightness. There was no sun, only greenish white light pouring down from somewhere an infinite miles above. No one knew why it happened. The birds had tried flying up to no avail. Squirrels and the like had attempted climbing up the occasional great trees which seemed to touch the sky, but even they tired before the trees ended and the answer could reveal themselves. Rays of light came down from the untouchable canopies during the day, little to no light came down at night, and that was that. During the mysterious light’s zenith, the forest became more alive than any other point. Sheep and horses grazed in the fields (when they were certain no dragons lurked nearby). Trout and carp skipped along the river. Birds circled the sky. Through it all, no one noticed the cat walking down the main dirt path except, ironically, for Cattrap the mouse. She appeared out of the reeds and tall grass off of the road while waving a bundle of rolled paper in the air. She scampered toward him using only her hind legs. Sophistication, thought Mr. Fluffington, a plague on animalkind. Then again, he was the type of cat to believe everything was a plague on animalkind.

“Fluffy! Fluffy!” Most animals that couldn’t be bothered to use his full name especially couldn’t be bothered to pick a non-embarrasing nickname. “Did ya' hear the news? Did ya' hear the news?”

Mr. Fluffington stopped and slowly turned around. His eyes were little slants with how hard he narrowed them.

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Cattrap’s fur was as white as cloudy snow, except that their part of the Forest neither snowed nor had clouds. Her pink eyes looked blank while focusing on the area somewhat behind him. Shortsightedness paired with a nocturnal animal awake during the day generally had that effect. You needed hearing and smell. You also needed extreme patience when dealing with her salesmice attempts.

“I am fine,” said Mr. Fluffington. “I don’t want the paper.”

“But ya' should see the news, it’s incredible!”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“It’s incredible! It’s incredible! It’ll only cost ya' a morsel of food. Please.”

She continued to wave the papers in the air as if waving them might magically persuade him to buy one. It persuaded him to do something alright, but it certainly wasn’t buying a paper.

“Go away.” He said the last word with an edge that only a small mouse, its target audience, could miss. Besides, he didn't have anything on him but the bow tie and three gold coins, none of which were items he was willing to part with.

“Please, just take one. For free. It’ll be on me!”

She peeled one of the papers away from the pile and dropped it. The slightest of breezes that had been running through just so happened to blow it into the cat’s face. He pinned the paper to the ground with his nose and stepped on it with a paw. He decided then that the least he could do was read it for her.

The paper was in fact a poorly woven sheet of linen. The words at the top read: “Cattrap News: Weekely Editon”. The rest of the paper had similar spelling with grammar and handwriting to match. There was a story about lost eggs (two sentences), a weather prediction, and an ad promoting Cattrap’s very own hiring services. For only one “morsl” of food, she could apparently find an exclusive inside scoop for you―also known as snooping. Mr. Fluffington read the entire paper in less than a minute and most of that time had been spent trying to decipher the words. The poor little mouse watched him the entire time. She had set the papers on the floor beside her to free up her paws so that she could anxiously rub them together in anticipation for his response.

Mr. Fluffington looked up and tried, and he really tried, to smile.

“Wow. It’s very good.”

“Really? Would ya' be willing to pay then?”

“No, I’m leaving right now.”

He turned around and marched off.

“Please!” she shouted.

“See me about it another time,” he said, instantly regretting it, and then he was gone.

Mr. Fluffington’s mind didn’t so much race as it hovered over each memory from earlier in the day and spat on them one by one. Stupid day, stupid job, stupid life. Stupid mole couldn’t find the entrance to the burrow right in front of him. Stupid snake knotted her tail. Stupid dragon couldn’t figure out stupidly simple technology. Stupid mouse tried selling her stupid papers. In a stupid world made up of stupid animals, he knew he was a beacon of light. His mere existence as a cat gave him all the egotistical confidence he would ever need. The mere existence of his home, however, brought him back down to reality each day he returned. It was hard to be confident, satisfied, or proud when you owned a house like his.

He stopped short of the humble abode, a hollow cutaway in a short hill. A tree sprouted from the top, but its roots had been hacked away long ago. It had enough leaves to feed a single deer. It was about as tall as one too. At the bottom of the hill, where it flattened considerably, there was a small sign that read “Form” instead of Fern. He didn’t bother fixing it because most animals were illiterate anyways, and those that weren’t wrote papers about stolen eggs. The same effect applied to the straw mattress on the ground before the door. The words that had been carved into it almost got half the letters in ‘Welcome’ correct, but they were still in the wrong order.

Mr. Fluffington rubbed his paws on the rug to get off the dirt, because he had principles, and then opened the door with the key which was one of his sharper claws. It swung open with a creaking sound reminiscent of the last neigh of a dying horse. The room was dark, but he could still see after shutting the door by using the light that seeped from under it. He walked past his drab room furnishings. There wasn’t much walking to do because his house was one room large. It had one icebox, a cabinet, a rug, and a mattress consisting of straw and leaves. He felt like a bird but didn’t care as he went past everything else, dropped the coins on the dirt floor, and headed toward the silhouette of his mattress. He flopped on top of it, exhausted partially because he had to deal with other animals all day, but also because he was a crepuscular species of animal. There was something about the daytime that unnerved animals like him. It was perhaps due to an old gene from generations ago, or maybe it was because no one liked the cocky daytime falcons and eagles that thought they were better than everyone else simply because they could fly. Cattrap was always awake during the day, so there was also that.

Curtains emulated the night in his home by shutting out the daylight from the only window, and the well-padded walls and ceiling blocked out most external noise. Mr. Fluffington’s eyes and ears would have to do the rest in shutting out the world.

On his first attempt to fall asleep, he was awoken by a screeching hawk. It happened some hundreds of feet above, but it woke him up anyway. He cursed the skies in gibberish and turned on his pile of straw. On his second attempt, he was interrupted by his own growling stomach. He cursed his stomach before getting up to eat some synths―that is, synthetic meat―which all carnivores and omnivores put up with despite the fact it definitely tasted worse than its real equivalent. After eating three strips, he went back to bed. Then, on his third and final attempt, he was awakened by an inhale of breath. It wasn’t his, and he didn’t have time to curse it. The following events that transpired marked the second worst day of Mr. Fluffington’s life. The number one worst day of his life wouldn’t occur until next Saturday, six days away.

In the meantime, an arrow shot out from the dark recesses of his home, killing him instantly.