Silence

She pads along a well-trodden path in a cold forest. Every twig and pebble glitters brilliantly in the frosty moonlight. Her breath forms a trail of smoke behind her- smoke from a cat the color of ashes.

The air is cold enough to bite and turn breath to steam, but her mottled gray fur is smooth and sleek, not ruffled up to catch heat. She exudes a sense of drifting, of Not Being From Around Here. Of just passing through.

She makes a small nest out of frosted bracken fronds and wet moss, bearing the damp chill quietly. This hollow under the bone-white roots of an ancient beech tree is not her home. Her home is in the hearts of the desolate, the despairing, those who do not matter and to whom nothing matters.

She is the spirit of empty places and loss. She is the sense of distance in the eyes of a cat who has seen things too horrible to be said. She is the scent of wet ashes on the wind and the faint flicker of fireflies through the window of a Twoleg nest. She is the last breath of the cat you love. She is the spirit of silence.