Chapter 39: Night Walking

From beyond the silken totality of slumber came dreams. Violet thought at first that she was back home, for she felt safe…but all around her was still the forest. And another person, seated upon a cushion of soft green grass.

It was Maud, Violet realized, with her plastic bucket of chalk, yet no pavement before her, for now her canvas was the world.

Slowly, Violet sat down and found that she was already holding a stick of chalk, though not her own. This new instrument shimmered in her grip and felt like how she’d imagine birdsong would feel if made manifest. A crystalline tremor rolled beneath her fingers, benevolent energy eager for release. The color was beyond description, more a potential than anything definite.

Violet tried to speak, to say something that was perhaps a greeting or an admission of homesickness, but the words failed to achieve form and Maud only smiled at her, eyes magnified behind their mismatched lenses. She leaned down to draw an arc upon the floor of the world and suddenly there was color, fractals spiraling down and down beyond all comprehension of distance, brightening eternity with their presence.

She did the same, adding to Maud’s first stroke, and all kinds of light flew forth in beams and fluttering strokes like the paths of startled birds. There were patterns forming as well, familiar things that she had seen since crossing the river. Distantly, Violet knew that she had done something like this before, showing Maud some crude semblance of the sights that could be seen beyond her picket fence, yet those had been done in regular chalk and were nothing compared to this.

And there was so much more. Arcs of flowers and houses slowly decaying, the sweep of nature slowly falling across the old form of the world. Violet could see that she had made the jewel bright shimmer of hummingbirds and butterflies and bees, the dark tremor of demons along the outskirts somehow not frightening at all, for they were banished to a band of shadow that could never be escaped.

A yearning had risen to the top of Violet’s chest now and she found that her mouth had fallen open, for she wanted so badly to describe all of this and yet somehow there lingered a strange sensation that for all of the strange beauty she now beheld it meant nothing for Maud was not truly there.

At last words came, or some ghostly semblance of them, but it was Maud speaking now, and Violet knew somehow that these were words she had heard her friend say before.

“I wish I could see all of this for myself.”

“You will.” Violet answered, but there was an absence to the color now as though a promise had been lost, and the clarity was beginning to fade.

Gradually, there filtered a sensation physical and real, and it snapped the dream to pieces in an instant.

Violet opened her eyes to find the cat running the very tip of its tail across her nose. For a drowsy moment she could only blink, for her companion was lit with an azure beam of Glow that seemed nearly righteous. Then she was fully awake and straightened up. She tried to grab for the cat’s tail but it slipped effortlessly through her fingers like a length of greased silk.

“Welcome back.” Said the cat. The tips of its teeth flashed blue as it spoke.

“Why’d…you wake me up?” Violet asked blearily. It was strangely quiet inside of the church, the drum of rain upon the half broken roof had ceased and the bees were all retired to their hive but for a low hum of activity around its periphery.

All the same, there was a new stiffness running the length of her back, where she’d been leaning up against the pew. When Violet turned her head to see the cat better there came an alarmingly grisly chorus of crackles.

“A witch happened by when you dozed off,” the cat said, voice filled with mock drama. “Alas, I was powerless to keep her from cursing you. You’ve been asleep for forty days and forty nights, and I’ve been running tirelessly back and forth, feeding you honeycomb and rainwater…and tickling you incessantly so that you might not miss out on a spell of night walking.”

Violet could only stare for a long moment, entirely befuddled. At long last the nuances trickled in past the remnants of her drowsiness and she grimaced.

“Cat….” She sighed, rubbing her temples with the very tips of her fingers, as though any further pressure would only embolden her headache.

“Also,” her companion added, more seriously. “The position you were sleeping in was beginning to look uncomfortable.”

“I was dreaming.” Violet mumbled, feeling quite discomforted.

“I almost never dream,” the cat remarked. “What was yours about?”

Violet shuffled her legs until they were crossed and looked away.

“I don’t want to tell you.” She said.

The cat was silent for a moment, then padded in front of her and sat primly upon the stone, turned to a perfectly black silhouette by the light pouring in off the street. Violet could only catch hints of its eyes, which were fixed upon her. Her companion seemed to be steeling itself.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” the cat managed at last, sounding very formal and serious. “It was cruel of me to remark on your friend like that. I won’t do it again.”

A part of Violet wanted to simply accept her companion’s apology and move on, for focusing on complexities still made her feel muddled, but there was something bothering her about what the cat had said, a hint that its words were long on formality and lacking in substance.

“You know I didn’t like it,” she said. “But I don’t think you know why.”

The cat blinked, caught momentarily off guard. It said nothing. An old saying flashed nonsensically across the breadth of Violet’s mind, something to do with cats and tongues. Her mother said it on occasion, though it had always sounded faintly sinister.

“You don’t think anyone who’s born like Maud should get to live.” Violet continued, not bothering to alloy the unhappiness in her voice.

“I believe that our circumstances are very different,” the cat replied, and there was a definite carefulness to its tone that Violet had only rarely heard before. “…Out here, any animal unable to survive will surely be eaten.”

“That’s not how the whole world works.” Violet said.

“Isn’t it?” The cat asked, but there was no rising challenge, only a gentle assurance that this was the truth. “Places like your village are an aberration. They will not exist forever. Your friend will not always have a safe place that shields her from everything that’s out here.”

Violet slowly shook her head.

“You sound like the influence,” she muttered. “Like everything is gonna be chewed up and broken and ground to dust, so why bother changing anything? I don’t think you’d know what to do if you didn’t have to run and hide and hunt all the time.”

“That’s not how the world works.” The cat said quietly.

“You don’t know that! You’re surrounded by all these different things, everything’s changing all the time, you keep saying that but you won’t consider that maybe it’s happening to you too.”

Off to her left Violet could see the beast beginning to swirl anxiously in place, empty eyes turning from her to the cat and back again. It clearly didn’t know how to process the argument.

For a long moment the cat was silent, then it deflated slightly and shook its head, the motion tired and vague.

“Maybe I’ve been too…absolutist,” it said at last. “In order to truly prepare and adapt, you need to learn lessons. And perhaps I’ve been avoiding the vectors that would lead to those lessons….holding my views a little too close to my chest.”

The cat’s words didn’t quite sound like an apology, indeed it seemed more like her companion was talking to itself, but there was a quiet contemplation in its voice that made Violet feel strangely calm. From its place across the room, the beast stilled, cautiously observing.

“You said you wanted to take me night walking.” Violet said after a moment, and supposed that her words held the form of an olive branch.

The cat looked up, a quiet relief warming its eyes.

“Yes,” it said, and sprang up, tail aloft. “Gather your sigil and a piece of chalk. We’ll only go a short distance.”

Violet did so, choosing the red stick of chalk, which she figured was a brighter color. As she rolled it between her fingers she couldn’t help but think of Maud. If she truly couldn’t show her friend the full extent of what lay out in the world, at least she’d have a great many new pictures to draw.

Looking to the church door and the Glow tinged darkness beyond, Violet felt a brief but powerful urge to fetch her lantern. Given what the cat had told her the last time she’d attempted such a thing, she managed to keep her hands still and pretended that she was just fine leaving it behind.

They wouldn’t be going far.

As she stood and worked the stiffness from her neck and shoulders, Violet saw the beast drift closer, visibly uncertain as it glanced from her to the open expanse of the night.

“You can come with us if you want, but don’t cling. She needs to know how to protect herself.” The cat said, fixing the beast with a firm gaze. Its tone was diplomatic but lurking just underneath was a hint of annoyance.

The beast stirred slightly and looked to Violet. She nodded.

“It’s okay.” She said, and though that didn’t seem to reassure her new companion, the beast did slide back a few yards.

“Okay,” said the cat, satisfied that its lesson wasn’t about to be interfered with. “Follow me. We’ll be going around the right side of the church building, away from the Glow.”

Violet didn’t particularly like the special attention her companion had paid to the last part of its instructions but nodded nonetheless, watching as the cat padded through the church door and slipped neatly down the rain slicked front steps. They gleamed blue, as though a fragment of Glow had become absorbed by the stone. Yet though Violet could see the arrangement of some things very clearly, the places where the light did not fall were drenched in purest black, no gradient to the shadows.

Distance seemed compromised as well, for the Glow was not so powerful that it could pick out fine details, and that left the world feeling strangely flat.

Violet moved carefully down the steps and hurried after the cat, which had already begun tracing its promised path. There was a certain lightness to its step and when her companion glanced back to track her progress, Violet could see that its eyes were bright with more than just Glow.

“The first step of night walking is to determine your local geography,” said the cat. “You must always know where to go and what areas to avoid if you passing through a place at night.”

“What if I’ve never seen it before?” Violet asked, and though the cat’s volume had been entirely normal she could not help but whisper.

“How do you determine if an area is safe to travel through during the day?” The cat asked, slowing down just a bit, enough to let Violet comfortably catch up.

“I guess I look and…um…listen?” She asked uncertainly, notebook hugged tightly to her chest.

“Exactly. You take note of your surroundings. If one path forward is littered with bones and great big paw prints made in blood, and you can hear something moving just out of sight, then…” The cat trailed off, looking expectantly over.

“I avoid it.” Violet finished, feeling a little better.

The cat nodded.

“And the same applies for traveling at night,” it continued. “You just need to be a bit more perceptive than usual, since you won’t be able to pick up nearly as many details while it’s dark out. And, whether it’s day or night out, never get yourself into narrow, dark corridors if you can avoid it.”

Violet looked around herself, processing the cat’s advice, attempting to put it into action. The geography was all the same, half ruined buildings lined in silent rows, woven through with vines and bushes, their flowers neatly tucked into themselves for the night. The only motion Violet could see was that of a few flights of silvery moths and…

She nearly jumped, for there was a sudden formless flutter occupying the center of the sky, but her brain put together what it was before any other part of her could react and Violet cocked her head as she stared up to where the beast had risen a few meters into the air, silently patrolling the space overhead.

The cat flashed it a look, then rolled its eyes.

“The second step is to never get distracted.” It said, twitching its tail against the side of Violet’s knee.

Quickly, she looked away and back down to her companion. Now that she’d spent some time out in the night there were small noises beginning to make themselves apparent. Crickets chirped and from far overhead Violet could hear tiny squeals and popping squeaks, almost too faint to be picked up by the human ear.

It took her a moment to realize that she was hearing bats in the act of hunting, calling out to locate moths and mosquitoes. Though the cat’s gaze was earthbound, Violet could see its ears twitching from place to place, keeping careful track of the more low flying bats.

For later, she supposed.

“…How do I know if something is hunting me?” She asked after a moment.

The cat opened its mouth to say something, then hesitated, giving her a judicious but sidelong glance.

“Hmm.” It said at last, then vanished.

Violet came to a sudden stop, blinking hard, then turned a quick circle in place.

“Cat?” She asked, though she knew her companion wouldn’t answer.

Above her, the beast had gone entirely still and stared down, its posture tense. Having it right above her did make Violet feel a little better, but—

A black furry mass landed right between her shoulders and though Violet knew near instantly that it was only her companion, she still jolted and shrieked.

The cat nipped her smartly on the side of the neck and then slipped down her left shoulder and was on the ground in an instant, caught between amusement and annoyance.

“What did I just tell you?” It scolded. “Never get distracted. I might actually eat you next time.”

Violet touched the lstinging spot where the cat’s teeth had prickled the spot nearby to what she suspected was probably a major artery. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but when she brought her fingers down there were two smeary pinpricks of blood, dyed nearly black by the Glow.

“You didn’t have to bite me.” She said and was surprised to find herself feeling more irritated than anything.

The beast descended like a car falling down an elevator shaft and was suddenly next to her amidst a small puff of icy wind. It hunched down, mimicking her height, the azure tinted enormity of its skull swallowing everything to her immediate left.

w h a t -- h a p p e n e d ? ? ---- It asked.

“The cat’s being mean.” Violet grumbled, rolling her eyes.

The beast turned its gaze to the cat, rising quite suddenly to its full height, but if this was meant to cow the cat, it did not work.

“A wolf or a lynx would do a lot worse to you than that,” her companion said, ignoring the beast entirely. “I’m going to do it again now. Stay where you are and see if you can pick me out as I’m coming up upon you.”

Violet opened her mouth to protest, to ask that the cat perhaps explain the steps of stalking prey, but again her companion melted into the night. The beast stammered in its movements, crestfallen.

d o -- y o u -- n e e d -- h e l p ? ---- It asked after a moment.

Violet, who’d been trying to listen for the cat, shook her head irritably, like she was scaring a fly.

“No…” She sighed. “I have to—” The cat sprang upon her from the side before she could manage a syllable more and again she yelped, though the cat kept its teeth to itself this time.

Violet capered back, heart in her throat. The beast surged protectively forward as the cat shook its head, huffing quietly. But whatever pique it had was directed at the beast, Violet saw. Not her.

“You might be mildly amusing when you’re showing off vending machines and meaningless numbers, but you aren’t helping here,” the cat said, voice flat and bordering on the edge of willful cruelty. “Go away.”

The beast stared, a tiny shiver running the length of its form. Violet shook her head, not caring that doing so aggravated her headache.

“Cat,” she sighed. “The beast helped us when we were being chased by the dog. It didn’t have to, it could have let us fend for ourselves, but….” Violet blew out an aggravated, breath, unsure what else she could say. The fact that she apparently needed to say it at all was frustrating.

The cat opened its mouth to say something sharp but clearly thought better of it. When it spoke next Violet could tell that her companion was working hard to keep its response level and calm.

“Your friend wants to keep you safe, that’s true,” the cat allowed. “However, if a person does not truly learn how to fend for themselves, then they will be at a disadvantage when danger next comes their way. Consider the dog. I’m not saying that your friend’s intervention was bad, but it removed a choice that I think was important, one that you were already prepared to correctly decide for yourself. At every opportunity your friend’s first inclination is to directly intervene in order to protect you, no matter the threat. If it thinks that the noise from a broken machine is dangerous then it spirits the machine away…if I attempt to teach you a lesson in not being eaten by creatures of the night, your friend tries to shield you physically so that you don’t have to learn. I don’t like this, because you’ve shown me over and over that you’re capable and determined. Your friend means well, but by doing what they’re doing, it’s only holding you back.”

Violet glanced back at the beast, which was quietly floating in place, perfectly expressionless once more. Its gaze had drifted away from the cat. It seemed to be thinking.

When she spoke it was to the cat.

“The beast shouldn’t be trying to help me with this,” Violet said at last. “But you need to figure out how to get along with people, and how not to be so afraid of me learning lessons that aren’t just the ones you want me to learn. If you really think that I’m capable then let me figure out what’s right for myself. If I’m wrong then tell me so, don’t keep me from learning that lesson in the first place.”

The cat’s ears had folded slightly back, but not in anger or even the slightest consternation. Rather, it seemed to be genuinely considering her words. As her companion did that, Violet turned back to the beast.

“And…and you need to do the same thing too,” she said, keeping her voice firm and as authoritative as possible. “It’s good that you want to keep me safe, but if you try to protect me all of the time then I’ll never learn how to do it myself.”

The beast hesitated, jaws falling slightly open. When it next spoke there was a faintly plaintive quality to its words.

w h a t -- i f -- y o u -- c a n ’ t -- p r o t e c t -- y o u r s e l f ?

“You won’t know if I truly can’t,” Violet said. “Not unless you let me figure it out for myself.”

A shiver of worry rolled along the edges of the beast’s fabric, but after a moment it slid slowly back, allowing her a space in which to learn her lesson unimpeded.

The cat made a small, resigned noise that wasn’t quite a sigh.

“If you’re about to request that I be kinder to your friend in the future, that will depend entirely on its behavior.” It said.

“Cat?” Violet asked. “If you ever met another you, do you think that you would like yourself?”

The cat began to smirk but the motion stuttered and failed. Suddenly, her companion looked quite troubled.

“Would it be considered suicide if I was forced to hunt and kill this other me?” It asked after a moment.

Violet sighed and then looked away.

“Promise,” she said. “You’ll be civil.”

“Very well,” the cat agreed, then locked upon her with a silvery, unabashedly fierce gaze. “Are you ready to try again now?”

Violet took a breath and slowly exhaled, glancing to where the beast hung pale and silent, a skeletal interruption against the face of the night.

“Okay.” She said, and suddenly the cat was gone again, very quickly, as though a blade of shadow had scrubbed its placement from the world.

Where before Violet had not been able to concentrate fully on the task at hand, now the beast stood apart. It was only her now, cocooned by the whispery silence of the night.

There were still crickets and bats and the silken seep of owls passing across the face of the stars, but amidst even those tiny noises there came nothing that could betray the cat.

And nothing would come, Violet realized, for the cat was an accomplished hunter, its prowess extending beyond mere words now. Nor would she be able to see it until the shocking moment at which her companion was already at her throat.

To hold out any hope of picking a black cat from the midst of an even blacker night would be naive.

For a shivery moment Violet felt helpless.

How could she possibly pull this off?

Yet beyond the fear lingered a stubborn refusal to give up, an insistence that there remained a solution, for there were always solutions to problems like these. So the cat had just told her and so Violet knew she had to believe if she wished to get along in the world.

If she gave up then the cat would see that despairing droop in her posture and lunge…and probably nip her again too.

Violet didn’t like the idea of giving her companion a free victory.

Then something occurred to her. Though she did not know where the cat was, exactly, it had to be close. Certainly within range enough that it could run up and pounce on her all within a moment or two.

Again she looked, but her eyes only skated off the skin of the surrounding darkness. So, without much in the way of conscious thought or anything beyond the push of instinct, Violet let herself look at the world with something more than just her surface level senses.

She sank past sound and to a place where living routines small and individual thrummed and perpetuated in their ordeals. Like this, Violet found that she was suddenly aware of quite a lot, her eyes and ears and mind picking up on minuscule bits and shreds of sensory input so small as to be individually unrecognizable. This was the source of those myriad irregularities and pieces of disconnected reaction that sometimes occurred; what made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and that which shook patterns free from even the most absolute darkness.

And amidst the curling spirals and tense bursts of living energy that speckled the nighttime world, Violet could feel a preens cool and focused, patient and familiar.

It was the cat, she knew, for she’d felt the signature of her companion’s being before, however briefly. And though it had been alien then, she felt no fear now, for fear as a concept seemed abstract to the point of incomprehensibility.

On some distant level Violet could place the cat as being in front of her, but physical geography was secondary now to the intoxicating omnipotence that came with such perception.

Even the coiling tenseness gathering at the cat’s center, like a spring about to slip its seating, did not spark much worry, for Violet knew that as close as the cat was to her, she was closer still to it, filling in those gaps that existed.

It felt very nice to have such control and perception, and so when the cat began to rise and the stakes of its motion became clear, Violet reached out and took it behind the ears, for she knew that her companion needed to be stopped before it could pounce upon her and—

The cat jolted into a fizzing snarl of startled energy and Violet recoiled, for even though she knew on some level what to expect, the the intensity of emotion felt like a burst of sun-bright flame, like what had happened the one time she’d lit a whole box’s worth of match heads all at once…much to her mother’s chagrin.

Her companion was spilled from the air before her, the physicality of all things slamming down like the jaws of a steel trap.

Violet jerked away, mouth opening, though not for any purpose as her sound was shivery and null. The whole of her place in the world felt suddenly small and hemmed in, for she was still aware of all the great spaces surrounding her, but had no means by which to access them.

The beast raced forward to steady her and Violet felt not only the coolness of its touch but also the edges of its worry and had to wrestle back an uncomfortable lurching pull from the center of her mind as the bounds of conventional reality reasserted themselves. In a moment the great empty spaces were gone, so completely erased it was hard to believe that she’d ever tapped into them at all.

The cat, which had only barely landed on its feet, took a half staggery step to one side and then sat down in a puddle of Glow, fur puffed in jagged, uneven patches.

“I’m so sorry.” Violet blurted, the apology coming automatically.

The cat stared owlishly at her, ears unevenly perked. Its tail was attempting to twitch but had not established a regular sequence just yet.

“Whatever for?” It asked, but though Violet could tell that her companion was trying its best to sound casually unaffected, the attempt was less than convincing.

“I scared you.” Violet said, and though this wasn’t antithetical to what she’d been hoping to do, seeing her companion in such a state still made her feel rather guilty…even if the cat most definitely would have done worse to her had their positions been reversed.

“Hardly!” The cat insisted, its attempt at breeziness falling short of total authenticity. “What you see is purely a physical response…which is good, because you stopped me in a fairly ingenious way. Excellent work.”

Violet nodded slowly. Though her companion was trying to save face, there still existed a very real thread of admiration that ran the length of its words.

“What I did to you…that’s what you did to the demon in the drainpipe, and the fox too,” Violet said, looking down at the cat. “That’s why they were so scared of you.”

The cat nodded proudly, still recovering itself. Most of its fur had settled but there was still a definite jitter to the edges of its movement when it set to walking again, turning an experimental circle in place.

“That was part of it, yes,” said the cat. “The rest being that I’m not even slightly afraid of them. Demons and other creatures of their ilk take advantage of terror and unawareness. To come across something that knows what they are but doesn’t see them as a threat must be highly disconcerting.”

Violet considered this for a moment, then cocked her head.

“Why didn’t you use it on the dog?” She asked.

The cat’s ears fluttered slightly.

“There’s a peril in attacking larger scattered creatures,” it said at last. “Sometimes that which works on some elements will only frenzy others, and push them past the point where physical confrontation can reliably work…especially if they’re occupying a host. There’s also a peril in riling an occupying demon so badly that it rushes at you without any coherent motivation beyond rage and fear. When that happens, the only thing left to do is to destroy the host physically. Remove the demon’s ability to shield itself. Then you have your sigil, which is rather more reliable.”

“The sigil always works?” Violet asked.

“Always,” her companion confirmed. “Now, shall we continue?”

Violet blinked, slightly surprised to find that there was still more left to night walking; but of course they were barely twenty meters removed from the church’s front door.

She nodded and the cat trotted ahead, right up to the far corner of the church building. There it made a sly, almost conspiratorial nod, indicating the new direction they’d be going.

Violet hesitated as she pulled alongside her companion. The church itself was tall enough to block most of the northernly Glow and its shadow fell heavy across the street, tarry and impenetrable.

“This isn’t so bad,” the cat said, and stepped forward, lost all but for its eyes. “You’ve walked through darker.”

“That was back home….” Violet said uneasily, but knew she had to proceed.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped next to the cat, letting herself be enveloped by the night. For a long moment the world felt both small and immeasurably, intimidatingly large around her, the scope of its whole expanse hidden to her by the totality of a true darkness.

But the cat remained unflappably steady and Violet resolved to imitate her companion’s stance as she let her eyes adjust, details pulling free from the night.

This new street was narrow, barely more than an alleyway, and clotted with fallen saplings and a great tumble of rubble that had sloughed free from the upper stories of an adjacent building. Framed against the azure hued sky, the half ruined construction looked strangely incomplete, still deeply saturated with sheets of jealously clinging shadow.

The rubble did not block the street entirely, Violet didn’t think, but the open spaces remaining would have to be traversed in single file.

“Didn’t you say I was supposed to avoid places like this?” Violet asked.

The cat smiled at her, eyes glittering with a nearly sadistic mirth.

“Sometimes you simply have no choice.” Her companion said cheerfully, then was moving on ahead, casual as anything.

Violet stroked the worn canvas cover of her notebook with one thumb, then bit back a small sigh and followed. Her steps were small and shuffling, tangled coils of dead bramble tugging at the ankles of her pants.

The vegetation along this new street was low and stunted, the whole area starved of light. Even the hardy little aspens had entirely bowed over.

Mounds of rubble rose unevenly ahead of her, steel beams and the severed ends of wires protruding from amidst heaps of shattered concrete. Atop one pile Violet could see a metal framed office desk sitting perfectly upright, silhouetted against the sky. It was lined with bulbous growths of faintly luminescent fungi; the same type she’d seen earlier, just before the beast had unveiled its panoply of glowing tadpoles.

The fungi’s light was very distinctly unlike that of the Glow, for it did not seem interested in spreading or illuminating that which lay beyond the immediate limits of its domain.

Violet slowed as she neared the edges of the rubble, and carefully examined the space ahead, so far as she could see it.

There were two or three small avenues left open, but the ones furthest to her left were so drenched in shadow that Violet could not be certain where they went or what they held within their inky embrace. The easiest way forward was also the narrowest, a tiny alley that would require her to press up against the side of the church building and edge sideways between it and a waist high heap of moss streaked concrete.

It wouldn’t be especially quick or graceful to get through, but—

The disconnected edge of a crackle tugged at a space somewhere in the centre of Violet’s mind and she whirled around, stinging her ankle against a chunk of debris. The street yawned out before her, its dimensions seeming to have suddenly swelled, the darkness now much more solid.

The beast watched this, momentarily perplexed, then raced to mimic her movements, staring dutifully out into the night, body language appropriately tense.

“Well?” The cat asked from where it had stepped onto a flat place atop the nearest hump of rubble.

Violet risked a quick glance back at her companion.

“There’s a demon.” She said.

The cat offered no reaction and Violet took a deep breath, uncomfortably aware of just how hemmed in she was, her back to a nearly impassable wall of jagged concrete and rusty metal.

“I can’t see it.” She added, raising her voice just a little.

At this the cat nodded vaguely to itself, the motion nearly lost amidst the blackness.

“I’d think not. It’s very dark out.”

Her companion’s sudden laconic indifference nearly pulled Violet’s attention over completely, but she fought down a surge of frightened pique and made herself focus as best she could on the problem at hand.

The demon’s noise had become more consistent now, a rising chitter riming the edges of her mind. It sat uneasily within her perception, at such a distance that the words were not yet evident.

Her thoughts turned, unbidden, to the dog and then the one eyed fox. Was this new demon wearing some unfortunate creature’s skin as well?

A new tightness had begun to gather in her chest and Violet shuffled back a step, catching her shoulder on the church’s rough stone wall. Even that little bump didn’t halt her eyes, which scoured the lightless spaces ahead, to no avail. For a vivid moment Violet wished that she had elected to stay out in the Glow drenched half dim of the previous street, but even as the thought came she knew it wouldn’t have done any good in helping her spot the encroaching demon.

A demon, more than anything else, was an absence, a place where light and matter simply weren’t. Even back home it had been nearly impossible for her to lay eyes on the drainpipe demon, and this one would be no different.

If she could not hope to see the demon, then other methods would need to be pursued. The thought of looking out and potentially exposing herself to the demon put a cold shiver of dread through the whole of Violet’s being, but if it worked at all similarly to her pursuit of the cat then she’d be able to determine where exactly the demon was before it drew too much closer.

Clenching her fists, Violet made herself focus once more, but this time the effort felt shaky and incomplete. This wasn’t like the cat or even the bees. Now she was deliberately lowering herself into the path of something dangerous; a seething void over which she held no understanding.

At last she shook her head. She’d begun to tremble, prickles of sweat rolling down the back of her neck, hot and cold all at once.

Noticing her hesitation, the cat slipped down from its perch atop the rubble and reappeared a moment later between Violet’s ankles, turning a tickly circuit around her legs before looking up, eyes glowing a silvery blue from out of the night.

“What’s the matter?” It asked, but Violet could hear a genuine trace of concern in her companion’s voice now, the sanctity of its lesson set momentarily aside.

Violet took a deep breath, then shook her head briskly. Again the motion hurt, but once more Violet felt slightly able to remove herself ever so slightly from the fear that threatened to root her in place.

The demon was closer now, near enough that its noise had begun to acquire texture. Violet forced herself to ignore that for the moment.

“I don’t want it to….” She stammered to a halt, unsure how to proceed.

“It won’t get inside of your head,” the cat said reassuringly. “Trust me, you’d know if it was in a position to harm you.”

“But if I look, if I open a connection…” Violet found her words hushed by the sudden firm softness of her companion’s tail, the cat having zipped up onto her shoulders.

“Remember what we talked about earlier, vis-à-vis doors and windows?” It asked.

Violet hooked her fingers around the cat’s tail.

“It…there’s already a connection.” She said at last.

“Yes. The rules do not change, no matter the danger of what you’re facing. Remember, no matter what you see coming out of the dark at you, your potential for defense remains the same. Repeat that.”

“The….” Violet took a bracing breath. “The rules don’t change. I can always defend myself.”

“Are you ready?” Her companion asked, quietly satisfied, and Violet glanced quickly to the beast as she nodded. It hadn’t moved from its original spot, and though its gaze was laser focused on her, Violet knew that it was honoring her request, not stepping in until it knew that she needed help.

“Yes.” She said, and the cat evaporated into the dark.

This time it was easier to let go of herself, though Violet had to once again wrestle down a spike of paranoid fear. What if the cat was wrong?

But it wasn’t, and so again Violet could feel more than see, for vision had become secondary, the realities of her flesh and blood an absolute, though only one that rested upon an interior horizon.

There were words coming now, demonic and twisted. They guttered like chunks of lit sulfur, raising from the sky.

∆ - g i r l

v i i o l e † t

¶ l e a s e

-º-

And while hearing her own name spill forth from whatever maw a demon possessed had altered the gravity of the situation, Violet could not be wholly aware of the distant tensing of muscles that possessed her, nor the prickles of instinctive fear that registered.

She knew the demon was somewhere in front of her, but its presence was not singular, not like the cat’s or even that of the queen bee inside of her hive. Rather, Violet could sense a great swarming multitude before her, incomplete and frightened, a webwork of fragments held in unreal orbit around a greater conjoined center that possessed space both on and slightly behind the veil that gave things shape.

Distantly, Violet remembered staring directly into the center of the drainpipe demon and seeing color there, in those flat, lightless pits that the demonic absence had been curling towards.

Was that what a soul looked like when broken?

It was difficult to order her thoughts, splinters and sparkling bits of nonsense poured off of the demon in all directions. It could not bear to focus in on itself.

And it could not truly see her either, for the perspective of every swirling fragment was different and their information could not be collated. Some saw only the cat, and others glanced across the glossy immenseness of the beast could not process that there existed something very much like them, but definitively not.

Yet most had seen her in some fashion, or sensed what presence she held, and beneath the jealousy the demon felt over her own completeness, and a rising desire to possess and rip and chew, Violet could feel a yearning of such gross intensity that it fizzed the quieter noise away and filled the gaps itself.

Despite herself, despite everything she knew about demons and the way they worked, Violet felt a sudden and powerful urge to try and say something, an explanation of who she was, or even just a simple request to be left alone. But just as quickly as that desire arose she knew it would not work, for any speech produced would only be comprehended by a portion of the demonic constituency before her, and perhaps not even the center would understand, wherever that center truly was.

There rose such a sorrow at the simple truth of this that Violet felt nearly frozen, caught within the singularity of what she knew must come, for the demon had begun a lurching advance and was seething anew.

Distantly, her actions registering on only the remotest of levels, Violet raised her notebook, its cover brightly fortified by the span of her sigil, and aimed it true, to where the demon noise frothed most abominably. And when that noise went to splinters and tiny unreal shrieks shocked against her mind like bomb blasts, Violet rode out the transitionary jolt, for she knew what to expect now and swallowed her instinctive surprise at the immediacy of the world and what was suddenly missing from it, for she could still ‘see’ the demon where it was attempting to slide around the gaze of her sigil. So she caught it again and forced terror upon the abominable thing, and when its mismatched fragmentary parts shrieked all in unison she thought that there came forth a great spray of white hot sparks, yet could not be certain whether or not they were real.

Deeper still, where she had such a view of the innermost pits of the demon’s being, Violet saw the colors there become interrupted, like a fracture disrupting the gloss of a pearl. Then she saw, or felt, the demon crumple inwards as though submitting to the proper application of reality, and it skated back in pieces, a howl of unbelieving despair crackling to nonsense at the furthest reaches of her perception.

Then the demon had gone and the night was still once more.

The last uncertain edges of what lay past all things flickered away and Violet slowly puddled into a sitting position, her back up against the church wall.

“Marvelous!” The cat enthused, turning a delighted circle at Violet’s feet.

Violet nodded vaguely but couldn’t focus on the praise. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

“I don’t want to do that again.” She mumbled.

Hearing the quiet, almost despairing flatness in her voice, the beast dropped low and settled close to Violet’s lefthand side.

The cat cocked its head.

“But you….” It began to say, then caught itself. “What’s wrong?”

“Looking so close at the demon, it felt…sad, and broken. And I couldn’t do anything but fight it.”

The cat made a little noise that wasn’t quite a sigh, lost for words.

“Is there any way to talk to a demon, or something similar to one?” Violet asked after a moment.

“You have talked to demons,” the cat said. “Or been talked at, I suppose. They’re not great conversationalists.”

Violet gave her companion a plaintive look and the cat’s shoulders slumped.

“Alright,” it continued. “If you wanted to talk to a demon, you’d do the same thing as when you fight it. Go for the center hard enough and it just might listen to you. But keep your sigil ready all the same.”

“Okay,” Violet agreed. “Um…can we take a moment before we keep going?”

The cat glanced around itself and then nodded, clearly pleased with how well she was adapting to the dark.

It felt rather nice for things to be calm and quiet for once.

d o -- y o u -- h a v e -- a -- f l a s k -- o f -- b r a n d y

b y -- a n y -- c h a n c e ?

The beast asked suddenly.

Violet glanced over, startled by the question.

“No…sorry.” She managed.

i -- t h o u g h t -- i t -- m i g h t -- b e -- n i c e ---- The beast said, but seemed more perplexed than anything else.

“Perhaps you were an alcoholic in your past life.” The cat said lightly, and only chuckled when Violet gave it a disapproving look.

The beast cocked its head thoughtfully but said nothing more.

The rest of the night walk proved uneventful and almost before she knew it Violet found herself back in front of the church, amidst the lazy hum of drowsing bees.

Before heading inside she looked to the northern horizon, where the Glow sat like a lake of liquid fire. It seemed nearly close enough to touch and Violet had to stop herself from reaching out beyond herself, remembering the results of past attempts. As painful as it was to stand before such splendor and not be received, all she could do was endeavor to march ever onwards, until she could embrace the font of the Glow itself, in whatever form it chose to take.

From there she thought of what lay ahead. They weren’t so far from the river now, only a sliver of city remaining. Once they reached the riverbank they’d cross a bridge, pass the foreboding hulk of the oil refinery, and then….

Then they’d be so near to the Glow that nothing else could possibly matter.

Back inside of the church, Violet arranged her blankets and bedding into a little nest and perched at the forward edge, looking over what was left of the honeycomb. It sat in a golden heap at the edge of the lily pad and, after a moment, the cat gently cleared its throat.

“This should all be eaten before the ants find it.” Her companion said.

“I’m not sure I can finish all of this.” Violet said.

“Don’t worry,” the cat assured her. “I’ll help.”

With that it leaned in, teeth flashing, and did just that.

The beast took a polite mouthful as well, though only a small one as it did not want to make itself sticky again. From there the task became quite manageable.

“I’ve been considering a story,” the cat said once the honeycomb was all gone, pausing in the middle of cleaning one front paw. “…Since I know you like those.”

Violet, who was feeling full and very sleepy, smiled faintly as she snuggled down into her blankets.

“What’s it about?”

“Well….” The cat dragged the honey streaked lily pad out of the way and sat where it had been, adopting a prim, rigid posture that Violet supposed was meant to lend weight to its story. “Once upon a time there was a young girl and…hmm, not a cat, I suppose. That would just be you and me.”

“It’s okay if you haven’t thought it through,” Violet said, stifling a sleepy yawn. “A story can be anything.”

The cat was silent for a few moments, tail thoughtfully twitching, then it cleared its throat, ready to begin once more.

“Once upon a time there was a young girl and her friend. The girl was very ordinary, but her friend was quite unique in some…undefinable sort of way. They went on to have many adventures all across the length of space and time, and they even found a way to beat that silly number relating to speed and quickness that the skull beast brought up earlier.”

Violet smiled and the beast stirred, though not with anything resembling pique.

t h e n -- w h a t ? ---- It asked.

“And then the brave and intelligent narrator unceremoniously ran out of ideas,” the cat shrugged faintly. “So, alas, our heroine and her friend were left stranded amidst the glow of a glorious triumph over…mathematics, I suppose.”

“I never was very good at numbers.” Violet said, and couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit sad, for that reminded her of home and her mother, the nights they had spent learning the times tables in front of the fireplace.

m a t h -- i s n ’ t -- s o -- h a r d ---- The beast said encouragingly.

s o m e -- v e c t o r s -- a r e -- s i m p l y -- i n -- d i s g u i s e

f o r -- e x a m p l e : -- B q = H z = s −1

The equation skipped cleanly off the surface of Violet’s mind, so completely baffling that she couldn’t even begin to guess what each component meant. But before the beast could offer to explain, the cat sighed and trotted over to where Violet lay, settling protectively atop her chest.

“Take pity on the poor girl,” it said. “She’s trying to sleep.”

Violet shrugged as best she could, pinned by the cat and her blankets.

“Maybe tomorrow.” She said.

o k a y ---- The beast agreed, slightly deflated. ---- t o m o r r o w

With that it drifted in amongst the pews and settled there, looking very much like a person in prayer.

The cat slipped off of Violet and turned an indecisive circle before choosing to perch in the mouth of her rucksack, like a storybook beast guarding the entrance to some fantastical fabric lair.

“I have this very persistent feeling that we’re nearly finished with our journey,” it said after a silent moment had passed. “…Or this chapter of it at least.”

“This chapter?” Violet asked.

“We still have to return you to your island. You can hardly shout the happy news from across the river.”

“I was thinking the Glow could just….” Violet hesitated, suddenly embarrassed. “You don’t think it would be too much, asking for it to zip me home, right?”

The cat made a small, ambivalent motion with the tip of its tail.

“If the Glow is half as powerful as you think, then probably not. Either that, or—” The cat cut itself off and quickly scrubbed the beginnings of a cruel gleam from its eyes.

“…Or what?” Violet asked.

“You know what I was about to say,” the cat looked away, suddenly sheepish. “And I definitely shouldn’t.”

“Yeah.” Violet quietly agreed, then snuggled deeper into her blankets.

“Goodnight, Violet.” The cat said after a moment.

“Goodnight, cat,” Violet echoed, then wormed slightly around to get a better view of her other companion. “And goodnight, beast.”

g o o d n i g h t -- v i o l e t ---- The beast said with a formal dip of its bony chin, then settled back into stillness, observing the hive in the midst of its nocturnal motions.

Violet shut her eyes, and was quietly relieved by how quickly sleep came to swirl everything away.