Chapter 27: Qualias

During the night Violet awoke, and though the darkness always held an initial shock of unfamiliarity, the cat was stationed right next to her and Violet touched its fur with the tips of her fingers as if to convince herself that it was real before sliding back into her blankets.

The Glow was bright above her and she could see dusty streamers of rippling light falling through the control room’s window, brighter than the stars and the moon, the sky reduced to a haze because of it. It had taken on a slightly unreal appearance and through half open eyes Violet watched the light turn and ripple, not sure if she was viewing a dream or some new facet of reality.

Finally, she slept, and it wasn’t until low shafts of sunlight fell upon her that wakefulness returned. Violet picked herself up only slowly. Her headache had endured and there was a persistent sour dryness in the back of her throat, as though she’d been sucking on a coin.

The sun was well risen, above the treetops already, and Violet had to resist an urge to push her head back beneath the blankets and try to ignore it. She still felt groggy and unordered, a listlessness tugging at each strand of motivation she attempted to gather.

As she watched, the sleek black form of the cat interrupted the sunlight. Her companion was up on the control panel once more and gazed placidly down at her, framed by falls of hot yellowy light.

“Your eyes have gone squinty.” It noted.

“My head hurts.” Violet complained, and made herself sit up further, folds of dust streaked blanket puddling into her lap. More than just her head, there were other aches and pains rapidly making themselves known elsewhere. Nights of sleeping on hard floors were clearly beginning to catch up with her.

“Still?” The cat asked. “…Do you want some willow bark?”

The thought of drinking a bitter cup of willow tea made Violet’s stomach shrivel. She shook her head, the motion tiny and polite. Forming words felt strange. The idea of doing much of anything felt strange now that all of the events of the previous night were beginning to fall more firmly into place. Before, they’d been shrouded by the inherent unreality of the night, but now it was all beneath the unflinching glare of daylight, where nothing could be avoided.

Again Violet went over the events of the evening. They came in choppy, hesitant bursts, increasingly fractured. She had seen the animals and then the demons and then, controlling each false animal as surely as a chain and yoke, the deeper creeping sensation of the influence.

“I don’t get why they were afraid of it.” She said at last.

“Who?” The cat asked.

“The demons. They were…they didn’t want to go anywhere near the animals, not so long as they were being controlled.”

The cat cocked its head.

“And why is this surprising?” It asked.

“Because they’re bad. Both the demons and whatever else is out there. Shouldn’t they be working together? Isn’t that how things work, evil things on one side and good things on the other?”

“And we’re good?” The cat asked, faintly amused.

“Of course.” Violet said, unsure what the alternative could possibly be.

“What defines us as strictly good compared to the creeping malignancy we saw last night?”

“Don’t do this. I’m sick of it.” Violet sighed, her shoulders slumping.

“Don’t do what?” The cat asked with false surprise.

“The thing you do whenever I’m trying to ask you questions. You go and….” She couldn’t find the right term and blew out an annoyed breath instead. “Don’t play devil’s advocate for something that tried to break my mind.”

“I’m not playing devil’s advocate,” the cat protested, sounding slightly wounded. “It’s only that good and evil is a hell of a dichotomy to be applying to something like this.”

“You didn’t feel it,” Violet said stubbornly. “What happened last night. It was evil.”

Her companion began to respond, only for a sudden uncertainty to soften its resolve. Slowly, it closed its mouth, teeth coming together with a muted click.

“Are you sure you don’t want any willow bark?” The cat asked after a moment.

“Yes.” Violet grumbled and, since she didn’t feel very hungry either, stuffed everything back into her rucksack and exited the building without delay.

The door opened easily, much to her relief, and in an instant Violet found herself caught in a field of white, her eyes struggling to adjust to the cheery bright of a cloudless day. She squinted down at the gravel, grimacing, the throb behind her temples gaining an unpleasant new depth. Then, slowly, it passed and Violet found that she could look around herself once more.

Everything seemed slightly more definite in full daylight, the boxes in their rows, the distant form of the sagging fence running alongside, and even the gravel. Violet could see new details that had been hidden to her by the previous evening’s twilight; patches of lichen like roadsigns splotching the northernmost side of each box, dappled red and green and white. Tiny black ants worked busily amidst the gravel and when Violet knelt to examine the nearest line she could see workers busily transporting crumbs of something golden and fine, like a caravan advancing through the vast blankness of a stone desert.

The cat followed her gaze and together they watched for a silent moment before her companion cleared its throat.

“Ants navigate by pheromones.” It said, and there was a hint of something conciliatory in its voice.

Violet said nothing.

“When an ant leaves its nest,” the cat continued. “It leaves a trails of chemicals behind it, a scent that other ants can pick up on, and a sort of guideline to ensure that the roving ant does not become lost itself.”

“Like a trail of breadcrumbs.” Violet said quietly.

“Except these crumbs are invisible and undetectable to everyone but the ants. We can’t pick up on it except by looking to where the ants congregate in their neat little lines. Indeed, there are trails all over the place, unseeable pathways leading to food and water and places where building materials can be brought back to the nest.”

“Wouldn’t the ants get confused?” Violet asked. “You’d think the paths would all blur into each other after a while.”

“Think of all the roads we’ve seen on our travels. They’re fading, and only the largest and most prominent have endured. All of the smaller trails and byways have been swallowed by the forest, as if they were never there. The same rule applies for the pheromone trails the ants use. The most useful paths remain while all else is washed away. Thus the ants know perfectly well where to go, unless….”

Reaching out with one front paw, the cat drew a quick slash through the gravel, knocking a dozen ants aside and neatly bisecting the little caravan.

Violet blinked. Ahead of where the cat had cut the trail she could see workers continuing to march along, untroubled, as though nothing had happened. Behind the cut a growing swirl of ants milled and turned in place, patting one another with frantically twitching antennae, determining where exactly the path ended. Slowly, ants began to fan out along the edge of the gouge the cat had drawn into the gravel, gathering wayward companions as they went.

Their progress was gradual, the ants continuing to mill and swirl and guess, feeling ahead of themselves with their antenna, seeking out crumbs of scent. It was like watching someone try to force a combination lock by guessing every possible answer in sequence, no single attempt successful, but the sum total of the effort making completion entirely inevitable.

Within a minute, perhaps slightly less, the ants had lined back up with the other side of the cut, their trail repaired. Immediately there was normalcy, the ants gathered back into an orderly line, no attention paid to the sudden strange detour their path had taken.

“Hmm.” Violet vocalized.

“That’s an ant’s only weakness,” the cat said, settling onto its haunches, eyes still fixed upon the caravan. “They’re much too reliant on these trails. Erase them all at once and you’d kill half the nest, no stomping or burning required.”

Violet couldn’t help but wince.

“Maybe that’s how the…the thing works.” She said.

“You might need a better label for it,” the cat said. “‘Thing’ is an awfully broad term.”

Violet rolled her eyes but figured the cat was probably right.

“Monster.” She decided.

The cat shrugged, unconvinced.

“Well, what would you call it?” Violet asked, challenging her companion.

“I wouldn’t call it anything.”

“You can’t just ignore it.”

“I’m not ignoring it,” the cat said. “Lots of things I think about don’t have terms of reference.”

“Like what?” Violet asked.

The cat only smiled at her.

Violet huffed, displeased, and stood back up, looking due north. She could see the edge of the gravel and the boxes perhaps a thousand yards off. The fence there had almost entirely tumbled down and Violet figured that getting over it would be pretty easy.

“Monster.” She said again, and this time the cat had nothing to say in response.

It didn’t take her time to reach the fence, and when she did Violet paused to take in the view. The land fell away before her into a gentle valley that extended all the way to the horizon. There was a town nestled there, with rows and rows of streets and buildings beyond counting. Some had been smudged from existence by ancient fires but other sections were almost completely intact. It was all done up in color, as though a great silent festival was being held, flowers and trees and hedges consuming entire houses, entire blocks. The scale of it all was staggering, Violet thought her own village could have fit comfortably within the confines of the town a dozen times over with space left to spare.

Past the streets and houses there was a dark slash, made tiny by distance, the dark curl of a river running at the bottom of a steep ravine that ended the town as surely as anything. A lone bridge spanned the divide, gray as ash and slender as a thread.

On the other side of the river squatted an industrial space, tanks and silos and warehouses all dwarfed by the solid, imposing form of a central building. It was shaped almost like an ‘M’, the twin peaks of its roof studded with rows of sagging smokestacks. It was dark as ink, stained by years of soot, and even looking at it, Violet felt a curious cold feeling begin to swirl at the bottom of her stomach.

She could not see past the industrial space and the dark building, for it all went to haze and nothing distinct remained. For a time she remained perfectly still, observing the town and the landscape she would have to pass through, but there was no motion, no activity. The town seemed a tomb, garlanded with flowers, but with no moving life to accompany the vibrancy.

The cat had stepped next to her at some point and politely replicated her gaze. Violet glanced to it, feeling suddenly uncertain.

“Last night you said it would be okay if I turned back.” She said.

“Did I?” The cat looked up at her, doing a poor job of feigning surprise.

“How come?” Violet asked.

Her companion was silent for a time, shifting slowly in place.

“As important as it is for you to learn independence and to accomplish your mission, I…I don’t want you to get hurt.” The cat sounded almost embarrassed to have said such a thing, but internal conviction kept its voice solid.

Violet nodded.

“Okay.” She said, then took a deep breath and stepped carefully over the ruins of the fence, venturing ever deeper into the unknown.

Soon enough she found herself amongst aspens. There was a belt of green space between her and the town, what had once been a field or perhaps a park. Trees grew here and there, in spindly scatters that could not altogether erase the openness…Stands of aspens and green willows framed tiny rock edged ponds that seemed scattered almost at random. They had clearly been deliberately placed, for Violet could see the crumbly remains of mortar beneath the moss that rimed each stone, but the craftsmanship had not endured entirely. Many of the ponds had filled in with silt and were choked with reeds and dark tangled masses of brambles. But even the weeds were colorful a way, for the brambles had lit up with delicate pink blossoms, a spray of hair thin stamens protruding from the center of each flower, waving gently in the breeze. Violet could see delicate crumbs of pink pollen like minuscule pearls sticking all along the length of each petal and suddenly knew that this, or something like it, was what the ants had been transporting back amongst the gravel.

She wondered for a moment what they did with it all. Did ants make honey? Did they simply eat the pollen whole? It was a strangely normal thing to ponder after the unknowable horror of the past day, and Violet found herself wanting to linger and simply be lost amongst the flowers and the trees.

Yet even there she found irregularities, little oddnesses that jarred her from the moment. There were places where the aspens twisted as though caught flinching, and Violet realized that she could see streaks along the bottoms of many tree trunks where, incomprehensibly, flowers grew from the wood.

The flowers themselves looked almost like curls of bark, for they were white and black in the same way that aspen bark was, but their material was entirely different. Kneeling, Violet traced the spot where tree trunk turned slowly to stem and then the velvety softness of flower petals. Bunches of the blossoms clung to the bottoms of the trees, slowly twisting into vines where their presence was more pronounced. Soon enough they would envelope the trees, Violet knew, in much the same way she’d seen rose bushes claim entire houses back near the river.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She wandered slowly away, a phantom tingle lingering at the tips of her fingers where she’d touched the aberrant flower. There was a trace of white there, fine like ash, and she wiped it distractedly away, thoughts flashing back home for a moment. Suddenly she missed her ash-pile and the garden shed, the cozy closeness of her room and the presence of her mother.

It wasn’t that she felt far from it, for distance no longer seemed to hold strict meaning, instead it felt as though she’d fallen from that world entirely, like if she were to turn south and abandon her journey she’d never find it, no matter how far she walked. The feeling that came with that thought, that fear, was slow and loopy, in the same way that cold medicine sometimes was, like her thoughts had attained a new elasticity that allowed for new avenues to be explored without any of the old logic applying.

She didn’t feel frightened, exactly, there had been enough fear that it seemed to have lost all meaning, instead Violet simply felt a great, pronounced exhaustion settle over her like a weighted blanket.

Violet turned a small circle in place, unsure if she wanted to examine anything closer. Wherever she looked, it seemed, there were tiny imperfections, wrongnesses waiting to be exposed.

The cat paused ahead of her and sat down on a flat stone, tail tucking neatly around its paws.

“What’s up?” It asked.

Violet centered her gaze upon the cat and nothing else, taking solace in the uninterrupted blackness of her companion’s fur. It did nothing to make explaining the flowers any easier.

“Nothing.” She mumbled.

The cat glanced up to where the sun now sat perfectly overhead, framed by skinny streaks of wispy cloud.

“You were supposed to say something about the sky,” it gently scolded. “…But I will accept your response.”

Violet tried to smile, but her mouth did something strange that probably couldn’t be defined as an expression. The cat cleared its throat, almost expectant. It knew there was something wrong.

“None of this is right.” Violet glanced around herself, feeling helpless.

“By what standards?” The cat asked.

Violet sighed and shook her head, discomforted but far too tired to bother doing anything to correct the situation.

“Never mind.” She said.

For a moment it seemed like the cat would accept the conversation’s abrupt termination and continue on, but instead, abruptly, Violet found the cat butted up against her shins, halting any further progress.

“Come on.” It insisted.

Violet knew what she wanted to say, there were great swells of emotion swirling within her, crackles of unease and dread busily stoking everything to a boil…but translating the whole mess into words, eloquent words at that, suddenly felt impossible. And piercing through even the deepest, most confused murk was an enduring sort of annoyance, directly squarely at the cat.

“If I say then you’ll just…I don’t know, ignore it.” That wasn’t the right word, and Violet knew it the instant she spoke, but it felt right enough, and she saw a little discomforted shiver run along the length of her companion’s tail.

“What do you mean?” It asked.

“You keep turning the conversation other places or just…discounting everything I say. Like, the flowers here aren’t supposed to be like that and it doesn’t bother you. You don’t think I should be scared, so you don’t care. And you don’t think about the monster, so you think I shouldn’t either. I don’t want to do everything like you. I’m…” Violet trailed off, leaving whatever she was unsaid. It didn’t matter. Her head was throbbing even worse now and she felt simultaneously dispirited and weirdly guilty.

The cat was trying, she knew that, and though everything she’d said was valid, there remained a sense that she’d somehow scorned her companion by calling out its shortcomings.

The cat, for its part, shuffled a few steps back, gaze focused nowhere in particular. Violet couldn’t quite parse its expression but knew that the cat’s whiskers were twitching. Its tail had set to swishing in quick, irregular arcs, batting up against a small stand of daisies.

“I…well…” The cat shook its head sharply and tried again. “It seems like we’ve spent an awful lot of time arguing lately.”

Violet said nothing.

“I should pay more attention to your perspective,” the cat continued, haltingly. “And I should consider your feelings as well, not just when you’re upset. I’m not used to…this. Having to actually care about a person. I keep forgetting that you’re, well…I can’t just run roughshod over you.” The cat had begun to fidget and shift uncomfortably but this time Violet didn’t jump in to rescue it. Instead she folded her arms, fixing her companion with a hard stare.

“At the same time, I do sometimes want you to be more adaptable. You can’t expect everything to be the same wherever you go. That doesn’t mean you can’t be scared, but what you do with that fear is important. You can’t simply live in terror, wishing for everything to be homogenized around you, that’s…” The cat sighed and was silent for a long moment. “I really am sorry for upsetting you.”

Violet unfolded her arms and regarded the cat. Its apology had turned almost inevitably into a ramble, but she could see that what it had said, it also meant. And the simple earnestness of its words really did make her feel better. Slowly, Violet knelt so she was closer to the cat’s level and extended a hand.

“Apology accepted.” She said.

The cat matched her motion with one front paw, not quite sure what the gesture was supposed to be, and seemed gently amused when Violet shook it.

“Good.” It said, not bothering to hide its relief, then abruptly slipped away into nothingness, its paw vanishing from between Violet’s fingers. It felt cold in a way, like she’d just dipped her hand into a glass of ice water without getting wet.

When the cat returned a moment later it had a small cluster of black and white flowers in its mouth, as though it was about to present her with a bouquet. The flowers had been tugged free from the aspen trunks none too gently and Violet could see tiny clear streamers of sap dripping from their cut stems, the blossoms themselves beginning to droop from the rough treatment they’d received.

“You were talking about these ones, right?” The cat asked, letting the flowers drop from its jaws. A bead of sap caught the light from where it clung to the tip of one whisker.

Violet nodded, examining the flowers once more. Removed from their unconventional moorings they looked almost distressingly ordinary.

“I will say, I’ve never seen an aspen bloom like that before. These flowers are completely different from…” And suddenly it was gone again. Violet heard a rustling crash from somewhere in the trees behind her, but by the time she’d spun around to see what it was, the cat had returned to its original position, fussily swatting leaves from its back with little twitches of its tail. It had a fuzzy, reddish white streamer in its mouth and for a surreal moment Violet was sure that the cat had, for some bizarre reason, captured a gigantic caterpillar. Then she saw the rows and rows of fine, delicate blooms lining the streamer and realized that she was looking at another type of flower entirely.

“This is an aspen flower,” the cat explained. “What one ordinarily looks like, at least.”

“It’s like a lilac blossom.” Violet said, examining the streamer with something approaching caution. It was just barely beginning to bloom, tiny dots of reddish pink still just slightly too immature to have reached their full potential.

“This type of flower is called a catkin,” the cat said. “…Which may or may not be the only reason I remember the name.”

“Catkin,” Violet echoed, and smiled faintly at the name. “Is it because it looks like a tail?”

The cat laughed.

“Maybe. Probably. Anyway, look at the other flowers. Seeing them now, removed from their source, they look fairly normal, don’t they?”

Violet gingerly took up one of the strange, black and white flowers and rolled its stem between her fingers, making the petals twirl like the blades of a propeller. A tiny haze of powdery white dust, like talcum, swirled through the air, dusting the grass before her.

It did look normal, like any other flower she might have seen, but the fact that it had come from where it had come from was still enough that she felt uneasy even touching it.

“Do you know what qualia is?” The cat asked.

Violet shook her head and suspected the cat had been awaiting that very answer, for it didn’t skip a beat in continuing.

“Qualia is that which makes the abstract familiar, that which cannot easily be put into words. Like the pain of a headache, for instance. You might have a headache—”

“I do have a headache.” Violet said.

“Indeed. And you might say something like ‘it hurts’ to describe the pain you feel, but what separates that description from a bee sting or some other hurt inflicted on that same part of your anatomy? You say that it hurts but you’re able to know that what you’re feeling is a headache and not any of those other things because you can tell.”

Violet nodded faintly, not entirely sure if she was following. The look in the cat’s eyes had grown oddly intense, like it was bestowing upon her some new piece of forbidden knowledge.

“Or…” The cat shrugged. “You might see a red apple and a green apple, yet know that they are both apples despite their differing colors. You might be hard pressed to describe why they are both apples, but you’d know. There is an underlying apple-ness that endures no matter what color they might be.”

“So…like if I were to drink water and say that it’s cold, even though a lot of drinks can be cold?”

“Sort of,” the cat said. “But, it stands to reason that just as there is a qualia, there is also an un-qualia, that which lends uncomfortable familiarity to those things that rightfully should be alien; like a talking corpse, or false flowers sprouting from solid wood.”

Violet blinked.

“False?” She asked.

The cat nodded to the monochromatic blossom she still held.

“It doesn’t have a stamen or pollen. It could be called a flower with regards to looks, but there is none of the function underneath. It’s a falsity.”

Violet dropped the flower and returned her hand to her lap.

“Oh.” She said.

“An un-qualia might take something like a demon, which should have no easy comparison, and make it feel like something known…though the fact that it actually isn’t makes you feel afraid, since there’s a wrongness to the whole thing that can never be erased.”

“Is that something you came up with on your own?” Violet asked, quietly curious.

The cat gave her a surprised look and shook its head.

“Goodness no!” It chuckled, but offered no further explanation.

Violet blew out a quiet breath and stood back up, looking down to the small collection of flowers still arrayed in the grass. She nudged the false flower with the toe of one shoe, like it might be persuaded to scamper out of sight.

“I still don’t get why it even happened.” She said.

“Of course you don’t. You’re a human. Humans don’t do well with unknowns. I sometimes think that your whole species would have been happier and better off if you’d never developed an opposable thumb. Of course, some days I feel that our ancestors leaving the oceans was a bad idea, so…hmph.”

Violet sighed and stepped carefully over the flowers before continuing on, the cat trotting alongside her. She couldn’t say that she felt better, exactly, but the sharper edges had been removed from her unease. Now she just felt tired and vaguely ill.

“The most important thing is that you can decide the boundaries of this on your own,” the cat said after a moment, breaking Violet from her thoughts. “There are certainly things you should be enduringly afraid of, but others, like the flowers, are only emblematic of danger and shouldn’t be feared by themselves.”

Violet considered this for a time, then furrowed her brows.

“Isn’t that like saying that I shouldn’t be afraid of a demon’s words…even if I’m afraid of the demon itself?” She asked.

The cat abruptly acquired a new spring to its step and nodded emphatically.

“You get it,” her companion said fondly. “There is hope for you yet.”

Violet rolled her eyes, yet couldn’t entirely keep herself from smiling.

As she exited the park and filtered in amongst the buildings that lined what she guessed had once been the main street, Violet found herself surrounded once more by butterflies. There was actually quite a lot of life amongst the ruins of the town, far more than she’d been able to spot from a distance. Golden butterflies flitted along in great, placid flights, and the busy, industrious hum of bumblebees made the insides of her ears itch. Grasshoppers and crickets crackled in flight here and there, making uneven bounds as they went, the translucent panes of their wings flashing rainbow.

Ahead of her, the cat made a spectacular, twisting leap and neatly trapped one of the lower flying grasshoppers between two paws. Yet, to Violet’s surprise, the cat didn’t immediately crunch the hapless insect down. Instead, very carefully, it opened its paws just enough to let the grasshopper wriggle partially free, affording her a closer look.

Violet knelt. The trapped grasshopper was iridescent, the whole of its carapace flashing in the sun as though constructed from tiny panes of stained glass. It looked like an oil spill in motion, swirls of rainbow rolling along the whole length of its carapace. One wing worked free and the grasshopper defiantly extended it, battering the tip of one of the cat’s toes, as though it might awe its captor through some force of arms. Whatever the intent, it failed. For a moment the insect lay still, its mandibles working busily away at nothing. It seemed to realize on some level the apparent seriousness of its situation.

“You should let it go.” Violet said after a moment more, and the cat lifted its paws without comment, allowing the grasshopper to beat an undignified and somewhat staggery retreat.

“The insects are very colorful here.” It noted, and Violet nodded in agreement. What grasshoppers she’d seen in her own village were almost always solid green, no real variation in hue or shade. Perhaps she was viewing some new species, entirely unknown to science.

Violet knew the alternative, it lurked in the back of her mind somewhere close to the aspen thicket she’d just left behind, but she didn’t allow herself to consider it.

They moved on.

Along the whole length of the main street, at least that which Violet could easily see, the grass and brush was nearly knee high, all pavement and asphalt very much crumbled away. There were scattered trees every so often, but most were stunted and none took up much space. In contrast, flowers and vines and lichens abounded. Brick and steel still showed, allowing some semblance of the old world to endure, but for the most part foliage had swallowed everything, leaving only the shapes of buildings behind, everything consumed by a psychedelic swirl of color.

Above her, upon the edges of roofs that had long since collapsed, sturdy thatches of rose vines formed partial canopies over entire swathes of the street, bathing sidewalks in shadow. Slender beams of saffron sunlight fell through the gaps like comet tails. Flowers and mosses grew in the sunny patches, some more successfully than others, but around them were formless splashes of an all too familiar crimson fungi, all seeming to ripple out from some central source that Violet couldn’t quite determine.

For an instant she felt a deep, yawning emptiness open in the center of her, like the gaze of an impossible eye, and though Violet supposed that for a soul there could be no sensations like those that ruled the body, she felt cold.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, all trace of the influence evaporated and the world was back to what it had been, as though the monster had stepped politely aside to let her pass.

Violet couldn’t decide whether this retreat was a relief or could only be met with fresh worry, and though great tides of concerned words rose to her lips she said nothing to the cat. In a sense, there was nothing to say. This wasn’t at all like the concepts her companion had introduced earlier, for with the monster there was no familiarity to draw upon except for her earlier encounters with it.

The cat paused, meeting her gaze for a moment, then turned to look down the street.

“I don’t hear any demons,” it said, though it had to know that wasn’t at all what she was worried about. “Do you want me to check ahead?”

Violet declined. Again the gears of her mind were turning, delivering her back to old conclusions that hadn’t yet been explored.

“I was thinking….” She said at last, still ordering her thoughts, trying to convert them all into words. It was like what the cat had said…in a way. What she felt was certainly familiar, but actually saying it remained another thing entirely.

“Congratulations,” the cat responded, almost on reflex, then caught itself and gave her a sheepish look. “…What came to mind?”

“The ant trails. Their pherotomes.”

“Pheromones.” The cat corrected.

“The ants can’t send messages through them, right?”

The cat laughed.

“No, not at all. That’s like asking if you could see using the scent of freshly baked bread.”

Violet shrugged, feeling faintly foolish, then had another thought.

“I guess it could be like a spiderweb.” She suggested.

“You’re talking about whatever’s behind the false animals.”

“The monster, yes.” Violet said, and did her best to ignore the little look the cat gave her in response.

“So…a spiderweb?” Her companion asked.

“The monster can tell what’s going on all over the place just by paying attention, sorta like a spider can. If something trips any part of its web, the spider comes running.”

“None of the false animals are connected to each other,” the cat countered. “There are no threads.”

Violet’s brows furrowed. Again she looked to the fungi, ominous but inert.

“You’re right, I’ve never touched anything it’s a part of. I was behind a window last night but that didn’t….” She couldn’t help but shiver, her observation left unfinished.

“You looked at it,” the cat said. “Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Maybe it’s like a demon. It works off of…um….”

“Proximity.” The cat gently nudged the right word onto the end of her sentence.

“Proximity,” Violet repeated. “Except it can jump from point to point to point, from a patch of fungus to a false animal to…me, I guess.”

“Like a radio signal.” The cat said, then frowned. “I really don’t like talking about this, Violet.” Its voice was weirdly matter of fact.

“Why?”

“Because you seem to know more about it than I do, and that’s incredibly disturbing.”

“…What?”

“I’m going to make a terrible mistake right now and assume that this mysterious creature has decided to leave you and, by extension, me, completely alone from now on. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Violet held up her hands, outraged.

“No!” She snapped.

The cat sighed.

“…Good,” it mumbled after a moment. “I was testing you.”

“You’re kind of a jerk sometimes.” Violet said tiredly.

The cat considered the veracity of this for a moment, then shrugged ambivalently.

“I’m going to eat a spider.” It said, then ducked into the grass and was gone.