by Kazin » Tue May 02, 2023 2:53 am
"I've always had this dream..."
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It was hard not to feel like the world had abandoned them. For so long, it seemed there was so much taken from them, and nothing to show in return. No matter how hard they kept trying, they were always pushed away. As they grew older, they learned to live with the reality that maybe they weren't meant to be with others, that they were meant to go from place to place, never settling, always alone. It wasn't like they had given up - no, instead just accepted it was out of their paws. What they could control was how they reacted to the world around them, and they knew that they had one thing in the world that was theirs, even if the world took away everything else they could claim. They didn't have a name, they didn't have a family, they didn't have a place in the world... but they did have a color.
It seemed it was a fleeting color, one that they could only catch glimpses of here and there. But it existed. In the breaks between the dense tree branches during the warmest days, in the bright flowers that caught their eye, and in fleeting glances of something else... Feathers, it seemed, the word given to them by a passing cat who didn't seem to have time for young ones. Perhaps a couple cats would give the young cat a fleeting glance, though ultimately cat after cat decided a young cat with three legs was too much of a burden to take on. The cat learned to live with this - they weren't sure they cared to live with others that didn't really want them anyway - and they kept moving. Towards the feathers. Towards their color.
The cat had always felt drawn to the feathers. They found themselves chasing after the swift flashes of blue every time they saw it. Not that they could get very far, at least not at first. The blue would always escape. Three legs would run as fast as they could carry the cat through the undergrowth, through beaches, through Twoleg alleys, but the color was too fast. Still, it gave the cat something to seek. An adventure.
As they grew older, they met other cats. Still, none seemed keen to take this particular cat in, so they learned to keep going, vowing to themself that they were going to see the blue feathers up close. As they grew older, they grew bolder, finally working up enough courage to use their voice and ask another what the blue feathers were exactly. The other cat barely cast them a glance, and with a roll of eyes the cat had their answer.
A bird. Nothing specific, not yet, but they knew it was a bird. As the cat wandered, grew stronger, become faster, they could see more and more glimpses of these blue birds. It was all they wanted, forever seeking the color, feeling there was some purpose driving them towards these birds.
When they finally caught up to the blue birds, they realized they had something else after all their journeying.
A name.
