Chapter 31: The Cat on Popcorn and the Nature of Society

It didn’t take long to get a fire started, for both the cat and the beast worked quite quickly to provide her with material. While she waited for the flames to spread and coals to form, Violet set out her blankets and unfolded the tarp. She didn’t think it was likely to rain, for what clouds she could see were thin and harmless looking, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

The cat had gone off to investigate the other side of the living room and Violet could only guess as to what it was doing. Her companion’s ears swiveled busily back and forth like furry radar dishes. The beast had folded itself into something close to a sitting position on the other side of the fire from her and was staring intently into the center of the ring, the tip of its skeletal nose barely an inch from the nearest tongue of flame. Its body had set to billowing, as though mimicking the movements of the fire, and Violet abandoned her current chore to watch, mystified.

Suddenly, a piece of the flame had detached from the rest and was moving on its own, carrying across the heat shimmery air. Violet blinked hard, then put together what she was seeing. The beast had leaned too close to the fire ring and set a corner of its fabric alight.

“Um…hey….” Violet stammered, shifting anxiously as she tried to get the beast’s attention. It hadn’t noticed the fire just yet, but upon catching the look on Violet’s face immediately glanced down before folding in on itself, extinguishing the errant flame with a puff of oily black smoke.

The beast glanced quickly up at her, suddenly very sheepish. A distinct scent of burnt plastic hung at the edge of the air but Violet did her best to ignore it.

“I set my hair on fire once.” She said, feeling a little bit sorry for the embarrassed beast.

“You did?” The cat asked from right behind her and Violet just barely managed not to startle. Her companion settled next to her, maintaining a careful separation from the cheerfully crackling flames.

“I leaned in too close to a candle,” Violet explained. “…And a second later the left side of my head was on fire. My mother had to smother it with a blanket. It took forever to grow back.”

The beast examined the singed corner of its form, then buried the nose of its skull into the charred patch there. It seemed faintly troubled, yet said nothing. There was probably some reassurance she could offer, Violet knew that, but nothing apparent came to mind. Instead, she dug into her pockets, wondering if maybe some more candy could be a solution to the problem at hand. Her fingers plunged past crinkly cellophane and instead found the wax paper packet of corn kernels she’d recovered from the cinema.

At home her mother had used a large cooking pot with a lid over top to cook corn. Violet had a pot, much smaller than her mother’s…but no lid to accompany it. A part of her found this faintly troubling, for there had to be a reason her mother had always tightly sealed the kernels away until they were done popping.

Still, she did want popcorn.

Violet tore the top off of the wax paper packet and poured the kernels into the bottom of her pot in a small, rattling cascade. She followed them with a splash of oil and stirred the kernels into it with one finger before carefully clearing a space where there were only coals and settling the pot atop them.

With that done, she sat back to wait. It all felt very much like what her mother had done back home, lack of a pot lid not withstanding, and Violet couldn’t help but feel slightly proud of herself.

The beast watched all of this from the other side of the fire, still nursing the damage done to its fabric. After a moment Violet felt a small, staticky prickle touch the front of her mind and realized that her new companion was trying to say something to her.

“Yes?” She asked.

t h a n k -- y o o u ---- Said the beast

Violet smiled faintly, then considered something.

“How come you helped me earlier?” She asked.

It was difficult to read the beast’s expression, for its face was nothing but immovable bone, but Violet thought that by the way it shifted, her companion might have been surprised.

f a m i l i a r ---- The beast said. ---- r . º r e m i n d e d -- m e

A vagueness lurked at the back of the beast’s voice and it turned its head as though embarrassed to have said such a thing, whatever it was. The beast had helped her because she reminded it of something? Someone?

But what?

Even as the questions came Violet suddenly thought back to the exchange she’d had with the cat, about what lay at the center of the beast. Just as demons were made of splinters of human soul and spirits were animated by the souls of animals, the beast….

It clicked, this piece of knowledge, seating itself firmly for the very first time. This sort of thing had happened to her over and over again, and still occurred even now. Just because she knew something did not mean that she knew it. And what she knew now, firmly and absolutely, was that at the core of the beast was the same unknowable material that was inside of her as well.

The beast, though it was unlike anything she’d ever seen before, was at its center a human, and it found her familiar because she was a human too.

It was a bizarre thing to realize, and for a moment Violet was sure that she would find herself shaking her head, rejecting such a conclusion wholesale, yet when placed next to everything else that had happened since the beginning of her journey, it was no less unusual.

And….

“You must have been around before.” Violet said.

b e f o r r e .. ? ---- The beast had cocked its head. It sounded confused.

“Before all of this,” Violet attempted to clarify, swinging a hand out to encompass the ruined house and the whole of the world beyond it. “When you had a body and everything.”

i .. . d o -- h a v e -- a -- b o d y ---- Said the beast

“A human body. Like mine.”

The beast was silent, considering its own form for a time, expression entirely unreadable. When its jaws did open next they took a few moments to catch up with what it was saying.

i -- c a n n o t -- r e m e m m b e r -- t h o s e -- t h i n g s -- t h a t -- w e r r

        d r e a m s -- a n d -- t h o s -- t h a t t -- w e r -- r e a l l

It was the most that Violet had ever heard the beast say at one time, and upon finishing it drew back against the nearest wall, as though hiding from the firelight, skull tucked deeper into the fabric of its body. She couldn’t tell if the effort of speaking so much had tired the beast, or if instead it was simply troubled by the nature of what had been said. Either way, it seemed withdrawn now, even more so than before.

“But…you must remember something.” Violet said, aware she was prying but hardly caring. It was as though a window of potential had been opened before her, offering a possible view into the vagaries of the past. Questions could be answered, she could find out what had happened to leave the world in such a state.

Yet when the beast raised its head to meet her gaze, Violet could see that its jaws had fallen slightly out of alignment. Now it appeared to be grimacing.

t i m e -- i s -- a -- c h a s m ---- It said, and offered nothing more.

Before Violet could ponder this for long she heard a very distinct sound, a sharp, snapping pop. A small white something flew up from out of the pot, executed a graceful little flip in midair, then disappeared into the flames with a faint hiss. The corn was beginning to pop.

“Oh.” Violet said, suddenly distracted, and scooted closer to observe. The kernels at the bottom of the pot had begun to dance in place, surrounded by a vivid shimmer of boiling oil. As she watched, one of them shot into the side of the pot before rebounding, suddenly transformed into a soft, fluffy puff of popped corn.

“Hmm.” The cat vocalized, then took a few deliberate steps back and settled down to watch the coming spectacle. The beast, in contrast, leaned slightly closer, the corners of its fabric twitching in time with each new pop.

It was a surprisingly sedate experience, Violet thought, the kernels hopping and bursting in turn, haloed by tiny sprays of glittering oil. It looked almost purple, stained by the light of the sunset and the Glow alike.

While she was sure the rest of the kernels would pop just as politely as their predecessors, the oil had grown so hot as to nearly atomize and soon enough the chorus of pops and snaps that grown to a continuous, chaotic chorus, pieces of popped corn arcing over the rim of the pot like howitzer shells. One bounced off the tip of Violet’s nose and she flinched back, a sudden white hot sting expanding. She scooted hurriedly back, nearly running over the cat.

The whole popcorn venture was beginning to spiral out of control. The pot itself had begun to vibrate in place, filled with a rattling cacophony and almost entirely surrounded now by a boiling mist of flying oil. Violet shifted anxiously, suddenly unsure what to do. She felt worried, upset even. Making popcorn was supposed to be something easy and relaxing, yet now it was all spiraling quite rapidly towards disaster.

Next to her, the cat bounded up and executed a flying leap into the air, catching a piece of flying corn between its front paws. Her companion seemed to be having a fine enough time, completely (pointedly?) unconcerned by what was going on. On the other side of the fire a piece of popped corn arced neatly through one of the beast’s eye sockets. It shivered like a person being tickled, then clicked its teeth and was suddenly in motion. The beast rounded the fire, careful to keep its fabric clear of the flames, then leaned gingerly in, gripped the handle of the pot in its jaws and moved the whole thing away from the flames. Slowly, the constant staccato crackle of popping corn slowed and then halted entirely, replaced by a low, sullen sizzle of cooling oil.

Violet took a deep breath, slightly embarrassed by how relieved she felt.

“Thank you.” She said.

The beast shuffled slightly back and nodded quickly, trying and failing to hide a little surge of bashful glee.

A moment later the cat retook its spot next to her, still smiling at the whole affair. There was a piece of popcorn stuck in the fur between its shoulders.

“You didn’t help.” Violet said.

“Of course I didn’t. I have no thumbs, and my fur is also quite flammable. Besides, you could have easily resolved this on your own.” It flashed the beast a look that wasn’t quite hostile but still made Violet roll her eyes.

“I know,” she said, then reached over to retrieve the stray piece of popcorn from its perch upon her companion’s back. “But it’s not like getting help every now and then is bad.”

The cat stared sourly at the errant corn for a moment, then offered a reluctant nod.

“Perhaps,” it allowed. “Yet, you must not assume that help will be present. I will not always be around to assist you, Violet…and neither will your friend.”

Violet decided not to engage. Instead, she cautiously approached the pot, which was still gently steaming.

“Have you ever tried popcorn before?” She asked, looking to the cat and the beast alike.

The beast gently demurred and drifted back. The cat shook its head.

“I prefer my food to be uncooked.” It said, a little haughtily.

Violet leaned in to select a particularly large piece of popcorn and passed it enticingly beneath her companion’s nose, inspiring a lively twitch of whiskers and fur alike.

“Come on. Try it.” She said.

The cat stuck its muzzle into the air, eyes executing an extravagant roll. Still, Violet persisted.

“Please?” She asked. “Just this once?”

For a moment Violet was sure the cat would scoff at her and vanish, or simply trot away, but instead her companion slowly, dramatically caved.

“Just this once.” It agreed.

Violet held out her offering and the cat delicately accepted, crunching the popcorn down. Its brow furrowed and Violet could see a small cascade of feline whisker twitching beginning to intensify.

“Hmm,” the cat opined, settling back to process the experience. “I wasn’t expecting there to be so many shards left over. It was really quite nice aside from that.”

“Shards?” Violet asked, momentarily flummoxed.

“It’s a little like eating an egg without removing the shell. Perhaps the kernels could be peeled next time.” Her companion suggested.

“I don’t think you know how popcorn works.” Violet said, but the cat had already begun fussing with its teeth and offered no reply.

Once the popcorn cooled and most of the steam dissipated, Violet pulled the pot into her lap and sat crosslegged before the fire, feeling quite comfortable as she chewed a mouthful of popcorn.

It was drier than what she’d enjoyed at home, unsalted and bland aside from the occasional pocket of oil, but Violet still felt newly relaxed, removed from the momentary chaos that had come before.

Again she offered the beast some popcorn, but it declined, content to sit back and watch from the other side of the fire ring.

Between the golden orange of the crackling flames and the gathering azure of the Glow, it seemed that the beast and the whole room beside had been drawn starkly in two colors, both shifting ever so gradually, drawing and redrawing a map of shadows.

Sitting and eating more or less in silence wasn’t anything new to Violet, but to be eating such a familiar food in such a foreign place made her feel homesick. Any other time she might have had her mother close by….

Violet sighed and turned her gaze skyward before any other such thoughts could form, letting the cool, pleasant light of the Glow wash away her wistfulness. It looked different now, ribbons of liquid light sandwiching the clouds, shimmering across great stretches of empty sky like waves disturbing the stillness of an aerial ocean.

Dusty falls of darker light tumbled through the vapor of the drifting clouds, and Violet was suddenly reminded of what it was like to observe a faraway storm, rain falling like wisps of frayed silk from thunderheads vast beyond easy comprehension.

If light could cast a shadow, Violet thought this was what it would look like.

“Have you ever been to the Glow?” She asked suddenly, eyes flitting down to rest upon the beast. It had been one of the first questions she’d asked the cat, in that long ago time when they’d been newly acquainted. The cat’s answer had been less than helpful, but perhaps the beast would be different.

Her new companion shifted slowly, broken from its thoughts.

g l o w . ? ---- It asked.

“You know, um…” Violet stared demonstratively up into the aurora dappled sky. “Up there. The Glow.”

The beast followed her gaze and observed the flow of light for an impassive moment. Then it shrugged, or made some motion that looked ambivalent, fabric shifting.

n e v e r -- g o n e -- s o -- h i g h .. ---- It said, and Violet sighed. Perhaps she had worded her question badly, the beast didn’t seem to realize that she was referring to the source.

“No….” She tried again. “Have you ever been to where it all comes from?”

At this the beast grew thoughtful and produced a low, prickly crackling noise that made the insides of Violet’s ears itch. Next to her, the cat had clearly grown tired of the exchange, for it stood and yawned, teeth flashing in the firelight.

“I’m going for a walk,” it announced. “There were some promising skitters in the kitchen area.”

Violet began to nod, then realized that she hadn’t seen the rest of the house beyond the living room. It wasn’t that the unknownness scared her, for the cat had declared the house clear and Violet believed it. Rather, she simply felt restless, wanting badly to do something other than sit until she grew tired enough to fall sleep.

“Can I come with you?” She asked.

“You may frighten the mice,” her companion began to say, then grew suddenly thoughtful, a look of feline shrewdness gathering behind its eyes. “Though that could be an advantage in of itself. Long ago, humans used dogs to flush out hidden prey whenever they hunted.”

“We did?” Violet asked, mystified.

The cat smiled, enjoying her reaction.

“I think it would be fair turnabout,” it said. “Even if I myself am not a dog.”

“I didn’t know we used to be friends with dogs.” Violet said. Her thoughts had turned, inevitably perhaps, to the whole horrible scene at the hospital. Had that really only happened a few hours before?

Violet shook her head and put herself back on track. The hospital had been the first time she’d ever encountered a dog, and to recall even the barest edges of it made her chest go tight and the back of her neck feel prickly.

But…how much of the snarling, rabid thing yearning to smash the door and rip her apart had actually been a dog?

Violet made herself think further back, to the moments just after the demon infested dog had noticed her. There had been alarm in its remaining eye, and a great shiver of horror along the length of its ravaged body.

It had tried to hold itself back, Violet remembered. It had tried as hard as it could not to attack her. Her instinctive, reactive question, why anyone would ever be friends with a dog, died on her lips.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘friends’ exactly,” the cat said. “More like…you said you had a neighbor who kept bees, right?”

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Violet nodded, not quite grasping the connection.

“Yes…my mother trades jam for honey if we ever have an extra jar or two.”

“Right. And this neighbor of yours doesn’t talk to the bees, right?”

“No, of course…” Violet trailed off, suddenly realizing what the cat was trying to steer towards. “Oh.” She murmured.

“Exactly. Your neighbor keeps bees for the honey they produce and doesn’t grasp that they’re be capable of more. The hive and the bees within it might as well be a machine, devoid of life and autonomy. And though there are doubtlessly incentives to treat this ‘machine’ well so it continues to properly function, that’s not nearly the same as a working relationship between living things.”

“Did nobody t…” ‘Talk’ wasn’t the right word. “Did nobody communicate with each other?”

“No.” The cat said, and smiled faintly at the open confusion on Violet’s face.

“Surely someone would have tried.” She insisted.

“Did you ever try talking to anything before I came along?” The cat asked, its words light.

Violet opened her mouth but knew there remained no point in answering. Instead, she sighed.

“Of course not,” the cat said, plucking her response from out of the aether, its tone nearly sympathetic. “And you’re the one who ended up being most willing to talk to me and learn about the woods, so what does that say about the rest of your village?”

“They’re not bad people.” Violet said quietly.

The cat considered for a moment, then offered a great big shrug.

“Perhaps,” it allowed. “You might be singing a different tune if they’d found out about us.”

“They’re afraid of demons.”

The cat smirked and rolled its eyes.

“Yes, that one demon your village has encountered. So fearsome it was soundly beaten by a little girl and a notebook.”

Violet huffed, beginning to grow annoyed, and the cat broke from its sarcasm with some reluctance.

“Alright…” Her companion held up its front paws almost placatingly, falling neatly back onto its crouched hind legs. “The same thing that makes you agreeable to be around is also making it difficult to explain any of this. Most people are not nearly so willing to see beyond the boundaries of their society.”

“I…” Violet hesitated, not sure what she could possibly say.

The cat plowed onward, wearing a smile now.

“A well crafted society is one you hardly ever notice, for it blends seamlessly with the world as a whole and allows no room for anything else. There is no ability for truly alternative thought, not because of any potential punishment, but because in a good society it would never occur to anyone that alternative thought could exist to begin with.”

Violet glanced around herself, feeling weirdly new and helpless once more. It was the sort of feeling she’d had upon first meeting the cat and being taught its mysterious brand of knowledge.

“You’re talking about my village.” She said, but couldn’t quite manage to reel up any offense.

The cat shook its head, the motion slow and deliberate.

“Your village wishes it had the level of implicit control that existed around here not so long ago. But the framework is very different now, so I suppose it can’t be helped. See, your village, your society, has made the mistake of openly showing what you’re not supposed to do.”

“I don’t….”

“The more a society obsesses over some sin or taboo, the more they risk making it attractive to the discontented…like, for instance, little girls who feel a need to break rules and play in ash-pits.”

Violet felt her cheeks color slightly but said nothing. It was all beginning to come together now, in a fashion.

“Do you remember what I said was the key to communicating with animals?” The cat asked.

Violet recalled immediately.

“You have to set a part of yourself aside.” She said.

The cat’s smile had grown very broad. Violet could see nearly all of its teeth.

“Very good,” her companion said. “A matter of self must be discussed in that funny part of the mind that lies beyond immediate comprehension, and you must become different in order to take on an alternate view.”

“Just like you do, when you talk to me.” Violet said.

“Indeed. And, while it might be hard to believe, I am actually much less loquacious when purely a cat.”

Violet began to furrow her brows, then gave up before she could be further confounded by the word.

“You know I don’t know what that means.” She said.

The cat smirked, then was moving on.

“The point is, there’s room for difference in your world, your society. It’s acknowledged that other things exist, not in a good way, of course, but still presented as something real. I expect this is only because humans can no longer dominate the world as you used to.”

“Dominate?”

“Look where we are,” the cat said, faintly surprised. “Think of all the old infrastructure we’ve come across, all of these dead lights and roads and houses flowing together, carving away the forest. Imagine how bright all of this would have been back when it was shiny and new. In the dazzle of civilization, it would have been very easy to accept that there was nothing else to the world.”

The cat’s voice had changed, its tone dropping to something not unlike anger. It wasn’t directed towards her or anyone present, Violet knew. Instead it spiraled out into the air, like a curse leveled at a graveyard.

“Didn’t anyone go into the woods? Into nature?” Violet asked.

The cat nodded.

“I’m sure they did. And I’m also sure they saw nothing at all besides trees and rocks and grass.”

“Were the animals avoiding them?” Violet asked, but knew immediately she’d missed the point her companion was trying to make.

“What do you see when you’re in the woods?” The cat asked.

“Trees and…” Violet hesitated and thought harder. “Um. There are nettles and bugs and ants, lots of lichen on the tree trunks and stones. It depends on where you are. In the more open parts of the woods, where there’s more light, there are flowers too. And bees.”

“And?” The cat asked expectantly.

“Sometimes when I’m passing the bees I can pick up on their routine, what each bee is supposed to be doing. There are a lot of routines, I guess. It’s not just things happening for no reason, everything is interacting. Talking, almost, like you and me.”

This, Violet could see, had been the right answer. The cat’s smile was back and it nodded, satisfied.

“As obvious as it may seem,” her companion said. “This sort of thing never occurred to humans back then. The world was as it could be seen, no deeper considerations required. Trees were trees and grass was grass, the depth of all reality but skin deep.”

“That’s why nobody talked to animals?” Violet asked.

The cat rolled its eyes.

“You make it sound like this was a choice being made. No. The opportunity never arose because their minds were sealed off. It wasn’t even that this was thought of as foolish or taboo. It wasn’t thought of at all.”

A slow, unpleasant sensation of confused unease had begun to curl through Violet’s center as she tried to put together the mindset the cat was describing. It felt familiar, almost like the concept of ignoring something, but how could that work if the thing being ignored didn’t even exist?

She grimaced.

“This is really sad.”

“Sad…” The cat contemplated her word for a moment, then shrugged listlessly. “I suppose, though I don’t feel especially bad for the humans.”

“Why not?” Violet asked, and knew she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“The world was false around them, and thus they assumed it existed only for their exploitation. Where these houses and roads now stand, there was once forest filled with creatures carrying out those same routines you described so eloquently to me. And so the humans came, and those animals were forced either to flee or die. I’m sure the whole thing upended nature quite dramatically.”

“Couldn’t the animals just go somewhere else?” Violet asked.

“Consider the act of throwing a stone into a pool of still water,” the cat said. “There are ripples. Disturbances. And, though the change may appear imperceptible to you, the simple act of that stone remaining there at the bottom of the pool has altered the entire nature of things. It’s all different now, routines shattered, creatures forced to flee…and it’s not like a flood or a fire in that the area will eventually recover. No. This is permanent. The equilibrium has been entirely altered.”

“So, my village….” Violet began to say.

“It’s not the disruption I mind so much,” the cat said, and seemed to be speaking at least partially to itself. “It’s that…there was no communication, and no consideration of the sheer cost beyond that. This was all done out of sheer, blind arrogance. As long as I live, I will never be able to fully comprehend the stupidity of it all.”

Violet let her gaze drop to the floor.

“You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?” She asked.

At this the cat’s entire demeanor changed, cycling abruptly back to an only slightly forced neutrality.

“Not very,” her companion said, and laughed when she shot it a dirty look. “…Moving away from the grimness, how about we go on that walk now?”

Violet tried to roll her eyes, attempting retaliation for the crack the cat had taken at her, but a smile leaked through, spoiling her attempt.

“Okay.” She said, giving up entirely, but when she reached for her lantern the cat leapt forward, stopping her hand with both front paws.

“No lantern,” it insisted. “Tonight, I am going to teach you the fine art of night walking.”

Violet hesitated, eyes lingering on the familiar, comforting form of her lantern.

“Cat…” She began to protest.

Her companion shook its head, having none of it.

“We’re only going to the kitchen,” the cat said. “And besides, with the Glow and everything it might as well be daylight.”

That was most assuredly an exaggeration, and a fairly shameless one at that, but the cat’s mentioning of the azure light pouring in from above was slightly comforting. It occurred to Violet that she could always take her lantern anyway, but she sighed to herself and very deliberately turned away. The cat was right, it was only the kitchen.

“Lead the way.” She said, standing with a muted groan. A little crackle of achey soreness jittered down the back of her neck, but she steadfastly ignored it.

The cat trotted ahead, tail held proudly aloft, and Violet glanced over to the beast as she began to follow, wondering if it might drift after them. It stayed where it was, staring quietly into the flames.

Her companion’s path took them past the splintered remains of the front door and Violet paused by the jamb for a moment, peering out into the azure dappled night. The Glow had dropped rather lower than she’d ever seen it before, no longer a distant, lofty thing to be beheld.

Great shimmering veils of light drifted just above the rooftops of the houses opposite her, like falls of water or luminescent powder blown by a slow, soft wind. It traced the shapes of everything, gathering in formless boluses around crooked weather vanes and along the sagging loops of those power-lines still standing.

The light was bright, but in an indirect way that did not make much of anything on the ground directly visible. Where the shadows had already fallen thickest, now they were black as ink, so dark as to seem solid. The topography of the front garden, already made strange by the tangle of unnatural plants there, had been rendered even more unusual than before.

Violet suddenly felt very glad to be staying inside of the house. She hurried to follow the cat.

Past the front door was a stretch of darkness, the Glow blocked by a stretch of intact roof. Violet edged carefully forward, giving her eyes time to adjust, and nearly tripped over the cat, which had stopped to wait for her. Its eyes, huge with amusement, rolled slightly.

“You should be more observant,” it chided. “I might have been a snake, or a resting wolf.”

“You’re not big enough to be a wolf.” Violet said, and was gratified to see the cat’s ears twitch.

“Our long journey is over, we have discovered the kitchen.” Her companion said, nodding to what looked to be doorway just ahead, then melted into the shadows and was gone. Violet glanced around herself, trying not to look too surprised…just in case the cat was watching.

She straightened up and stepped forward into the next room. It was a surprisingly large space, and more brightly lit than the hallway she’d just come from. Dusty beams of blue light fell through the mottled glass of an old picture window off to her right, illuminating the mossy remains of a sink that still bristled with unwashed dishes.

“How many people do you think lived here?” She asked.

“You mean humans,” the cat said from where it had reappeared atop the rusting bulk of an ancient refrigerator. “Limiting the definition exclusively to them, perhaps one or two. Not many.”

Violet took another step into the center of the kitchen and then turned a small circle in place, resisting a small urge to hold her arms out and whirl.

“You could fit my whole parlor in here.” She said wonderingly.

“If you’re going to ask why these humans needed so much of everything, I’m going to preempt you and say that they didn’t.”

Violet, who hadn’t been about to ask anything of the sort, rolled her eyes and instead began to patrol along the right side of the kitchen, curiously examining those things that had survived in reasonable shape.

The floor was very much dappled with moss and blooms of mercifully normal looking mushrooms, but where it remained intact Violet could see a black and white checkerboard pattern done in linoleum. Many of the higher cabinets had survived as well and Violet opened them with the tips of her fingers, ready to draw back in case she disturbed a resting animal.

On the other side of the room, the cat left its perch atop the refrigerator and ventured towards the stove instead. It was a great big cast-iron machine, softened by rust and corrosion. A stainless steel kettle rested upon one of the burners, delicate loops of a faintly phosphorescent green fungi pouring from its spout.

The cat sidestepped that, its attention focused instead on something lying crookedly upon the back burners. As Violet watched, her companion reached out with one front paw and gently clicked its claws onto a flattish metal something.

“Goodness.” It said lightly, then began to laugh.

“What?” Violet asked, starting forward. She’d gone only a few paces before realizing what the cat had seen. There, sitting at the edge of the stove, was a dusty steel pot lid.

“You might have averted your little eruption back there.” The cat said, clearly amused, then stepped over its find and continued along the countertop, chuckling to itself.

Violet let her hands fall to her hips and sighed. The pot lid was even about the right size. Still…it was much too late to be worrying about such things. She reached out to take the pot lid with her, just in case it might prove useful, but before her fingers had even touched the metal something occurred to her.

If the kitchen, sheltered and still in relatively good shape after years and years of neglect, contained a pot lid, then it stood to reason that it could hold other useful items as well.

“What are you doing?” The cat asked, watching at Violet began to pace, examining the cabinets and drawers.

“There could be all sorts of stuff lying around.” Violet said distractedly.

“The first trick to walking around at night, in the pitch blackness….” The cat began, and though Violet knew it was waiting for her to turn and give it her full attention, she opened a drawer instead. The wood making up the drawer had swollen quite a bit since it had last opened and the runners were more rust than metal. They practically disintegrated as she forced it open.

Behind her, the cat turned and huffed. Its feelings seemed to have been hurt.

Within the drawer were a few shapeless papery pellets that might have once been booklets or boxes of matches, a small spool of metal wire which had become entirely clotted with rust, and an oblong plastic package, its label entirely worn away.

The plastic was cloudy and cracked in places, but Violet could see its contents well enough. Within the package, arranged in neat rows, were a half dozen metal cylinders about the size of a person’s thumb, yellow lightning bolt symbols arranged up and down their sides.

“Oh.” Violet said, and then leapt from foot to foot, battered linoleum squeaking beneath her shoes. The cat glanced over from where it had been sulking, suddenly confused.

“So…?” It asked.

“Batteries.” Violet said, as though the implications of this should have been obvious, then turned and exited the kitchen at an excited trot.

“It’s bad manners to leave a night walk unfinished.” The cat protested even as it scrambled after her, ears pinned back.

Violet hardly heard her companion, only raced back into the warm, yellowy embrace of the fire and began to dig through her rucksack.

She’d buried the strange machine and its hard plastic case at the bottom of her pack and only tugged it free after some struggle and an alarming crunch from the case. The beast watched all of this with some interest, skull cocking as the case came into view. The cat trailed slowly in and sat with a huff, clearly miffed that its lesson had been interrupted.

Opening the case, Violet brought out the machine and set it down before turning to attend to the batteries she’d found. The plastic was brittle with age and she twisted it apart with her hands, sending the batteries spilling in a disorganized skitter across the floor. The cat rescued one, almost grudgingly, then returned it to her without comment.

Despite everything, Violet thought, it had to be at least slightly curious to see what would happen.

Lining the batteries up before her, like a rank of toy soldiers, Violet took a deep breath and turned the machine over in her lap. Across the fire, the beast seemed very much roused, though still just as silent as before. Its gaze was fixed upon the machine, fabric moving in anxious little shivers along the edges of its form.

“I found this in my garden shed.” Violet said, tapping the back of the machine with one fingernail as she felt along the edges of the battery hatch, feeling for a place where it could be opened. “…Do you know what it is?”

The beast stirred restlessly but offered no answer.

Violet at last found a place where the metal gave and pulled. the hatch popped open with a faint puff of whitish powder and Violet wrinkled her nose. The battery compartment held four batteries that looked promisingly similar to the ones she’d recovered from the kitchen, all caked with a concerning amount of sandy dust. It smelled weirdly like citrus, but with a metallic undertone that made Violet feel as though she’d just bit into a pad of tinfoil.

She removed the batteries one by one, careful not to breath in the powder that speckled her knees and shins as she did so, then blew the compartment as clean as it could be. Traces of the stuff still lingered, but the little metal coils where the batteries were meant to sit looked clear enough. Taking up the first fresh battery, Violet slotted it neatly into place, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when it fit. The beast watched this part very carefully, leaning in so close to the fire that Violet though it would surely ignite itself again.

When the compartment was full Violet pocketed the remaining batteries and then pushed the hatch shut with a click and flipped the machine hurriedly over, waiting for something strange and spectacular to come.

Nothing happened. The glass screen remained blank.

Violet waited for another few seconds, and so did the beast, but still the machine offered no reaction. From next to her, the cat shrugged faintly and then clicked its tongue.

“Well…” It said. “They were very old batteries.”

Violet, undeterred, began to press buttons.

“Still, I guess it’s less weight for you to carry in that rucksack of—”

At that moment Violet hit a round, faintly reddish button and the machine’s glass screen lit up, displaying what looked to be an hourglass, slowly tumbling over itself every second or so.

Violet stared, frozen in place. So did the cat. Slowly, they exchanged a look. The beast shivered in place, then rounded the fire and tucked itself low so it could more easily watch the newly awoken machine.

Eventually, coherent thought reasserted itself and Violet found herself thinking back to what Maud had said, her guess as to the machine’s purpose. If it really was a recording device, then perhaps it had been used before, by people long ago. The machine could have recordings stored, pieces of a bygone age. To hear human voices and perhaps even songs drifting to her from across the years….

Then the hourglass blinked green and disappeared. A moment later the machine began to shriek.

Violet jolted back and lost grip on the machine, her startled motion sending it clattering into the nearest wall, its baton bouncing free. The noise it was making, a toneless mechanical howl, had become edged with a rapid, high pitched crackle.

The sliver of the screen she could still see from where she sat was filled with numbers, rapidly shifting and changing in nonsensical sequence. Yet it didn’t seem broken, for there was an order within the awfulness, a bit like how the beehive had been. But if it wasn’t broken, if this was what it was meant to do, then that was infinitely more troubling.

Violet began to edge forward, ready to turn the dreadful thing off, but was preempted by the beast, which swooped ahead of her and scooped the machine into its jaws, the baton dangling from its lead, swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

For a moment Violet though that surely the beast was about to hand the machine over to her, perhaps with some overly polite piece of theater, but instead it slid back, placing itself firmly into the corner of the room.

“That’s mine,” Violet said, voice light with surprise. “Could I have it back, please?”

The beast stared at her from where it had flattened itself against the wall, the machine still squealing in its jaws, screen full of firelight and numbers alike.

“Please?” Violet asked again, but still the beast made no move. It had begun to fold back into itself.

Violet cleared her throat, ready to ask more forcefully for the device’s return, but before she could say so much as a word the beast tilted its head sharply back, jaws falling wide open, and swallowed the machine whole. Immediately the crackling shriek faded into a muffled, almost discomforted buzzing, muted by layers of shifting fabric.

Violet blinked hard and took a step back, caught completely off guard.

“What did you…?” She began to ask, but knew the question held no real use.

The beast slid along the length of the wall, past Violet and off into a different corner, one further from the fire. Slowly, Violet shook her head, a flare of angry annoyance punching through the shock and confusion of it all.

“That was mine!” She cried, but the beast only regarded her cooly from its new corner and then tucked its chin down into its chest. The machine was still crackling from within it, Violet realized, the noise coming in bursts as the beast figured out how to turn it off and on.

The cat, which had sat back to observe, snickered to itself. Violet huffed angrily but lacked the energy to chastise either of her companions. Instead, she sat down and glared into the flames, determined to do some sulking.

“You shouldn’t be surprised,” the cat said after a moment. It was still wearing a wily, sharp toothed grin. “Your friend is a human after all, and we both know what they’re like.”

Violet gave the cat a flat, unamused stare, at which point her companion laughed and slid neatly onto its side, head pointed away from the flames. Stretching its front paws out, claws fully extended, the cat contentedly wiggled its toes.

“In all seriousness,” it said, though to Violet her companion still sounded entirely facetious. “The fewer material possessions you own, the less vulnerable you are to theft. Especially if you can’t do the reasonable thing and gouge the thief’s eyes out in retaliation.”

“It doesn’t even have eyes.” Violet grumbled, then realized what she’d said and began to shake her head.

Too late, for the cat was already grinning.

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” It said, then turned onto its back and melted into the shadows, presumably off to do some hunting.

Violet sighed and hugged her knees to her chest, staring glumly to where the beast had further receded into the far corner of the room. She thought about saying something, perhaps an admonishment, but knew it wasn’t likely to have an effect.

The beast’s posture had become dull, somehow, and its jaws weren’t entirely aligned, as though the deeper force that held its physical body together had begun to lose cohesion. It was still listening to the machine, transfixed.

Then, abruptly, its head lifted. Violet shuffled, suddenly sure that the beast had felt her gaze. It picked itself up, piece by piece, and lifted fully into the air.

i -- w i l l -- b e -- b a c k k -- i n -- t h e -- m o r n i n g

It announced, then slid over the broken edge of one wall and was swallowed by the night.

From the kitchen Violet heard a quick skitter of movement, then something that might have been a pounce. The cat made a sharp, triumphant noise and though Violet could not see or smell it, she knew somehow that the air was full of blood. But whatever great feat the cat had just accomplished, it felt no need to celebrate further and only silence radiated out from the kitchen. Of the beast there was no sign.

Violet added more wood to the fire, until heat and brightness alike stung her eyes, then shuffled back into the mouth of her makeshift tent. Through the thinner, more worn parts of the tarp, Violet could see ribbons of Glow moving like shadows across the sky. Settling back, snuggled into her blankets, she watched this until exhaustion dragged her eyes shut and sleep fell to obliterate the world like a blanket of warm, velvety snow.