“I don’t care about the sky because I’m not a coward.” Misty had once told Brinkley, back when the sun hit the roof alongside their alley so a soft haze evaporated from the morning frost. “But at least I have enough reverence to know when it’s appropriate to speak the formal language.”

“And when’s that?” He sniffed, crinkling his nose with his smile.

She answered in a series of subtle body language ticks and clicks, a nearly imperceptible language that contained blinks and glances.

“Well, you don’t have to be rude about it.” Brinkley laughed. “Listen, I have something that I need to tell you and I don’t really know how to say it.”

He said all of this in clear English. She turned to stop him but he continued.

“It’s not like I’m a native speaker. Can I just...talk normally for a second?”

“This isn’t normal.” She said, fully acknowledging they were both cats, talking in the human tongue in the middle of an alley where they could easily be overheard. Misty lowered her voice to a whisper, hiding it under the hum of car exhaust coming from the street.

“What pack were you born in, Brinkley, where talking like this was normal? I’m not about to get cursed by the taboo.”

“I think you’re fine.” Brinkley responded, squinting at a passing cloud with disdain. “There’s worse things out there.”

“You’re going to get cursed.” She answered, sharpening a nail on the gritty clay between bricks along the wall. He watched her actions slowly, contemplating something heavier than she had seen him carry before.

It was almost as if he was looking at someone completely different, and she did not appreciate how it changed his face. Instead of with the eyes of a friend, they were the eyes of a stranger, who was scared of her entirely.

“Hurry up and make your point, Brinkley.” Misty hissed.

“Your Mother wanted you to have this.” He said, pulling a cat’s collar from behind his back. It dangled from his white tipped paws, glimmering in the sunlight that made it to the alley’s floor.

“Where did that come from?” she asked him levelly.

They were cats. They wore no pockets. Where had that collar come from?

“It’s yours.” He answered bluntly, his voice always deep and soft in a way that made her heart melt. But laden with words like this, she started to feel her trust waver slightly. “You shouldn’t be in an alley. Promise me you’ll find yourself a life without the sky.”

“No.”

“Promise me.” He said quietly. “You’ll get older, you’ll get sick, you won’t be Fang forever. Eventually...you’ll just be Misty.” 

His eyes were wet, and she couldn’t understand why. Was it pollen? Something in his eyes?

To cry was a sensation her alleyway had never felt. But in front of her, a cat was sobbing like a human child. The tears streamed from his face, and neither of them could look away.

And now, in a claustrophobic container of a train, Misty looked down at the collar in a different light.

Misty.

What he said, it had come true in a way, but she didn’t feel like Misty. She felt like nothing. As if she could meld into the plastic and metal of the train she was on, and just let it carry her on it’s destination like a discarded napkin.

She barely felt Ahzila brush her to the side and pick up Brinkley in one swoop, keeping him wrapped up in his bloody overcoat.

“No sur-name on this kid, huh?” Ahzila wondered, noticing that he wore no collar. The windowshades hummed as they lifted in unison, Misty finally snapped from her gaze with the floor and looked up toward the windows.

From the other side of the window she could see the urban brickwork and electric lights of a subway tunnel. The smell had also changed with their surroundings, from a sharp odor like a toxic plant, to a softer scent of mold and dust.

Occasionally, posters with shopping advertisements would hang on the wall, signs that she could not read, but they were signs of civilization. This gave her some hope, because if they were advanced enough to have trains and posters, maybe they really could save Brinkley?

“Are we almost there?” Misty asked her, feeling a bit disconnected from her own body from both the shaking of the train, and the overwhelming grief she was still trying to process.

“Yep. I’m not carrying you both, so keep up, alley cat. We’re racing out of here as soon as the doors open.” Ahzila said, cradling Brinkley like a human would hold a baby on her hip.

After the sway of the brakes, the sliding doors opened to a vaulted ceiling comprised of different textures and tiles. They reflected globes of light suspended from the ceiling like a glittering dress. Chandelier lights illuminated old red tapestries stitched with golden threads.

Like a museum, ancient and new artwork stood in tandem. Complicated sculptures were stacked around brickwork written with unfamiliar languages, some with glyphs, others with swerving curls.

The air was thin and hoarse, and Misty felt that she had entered a tomb.

Lifeless.

Everything was just clinging to existence and she could feel it tremor along her whiskers, a cold chill that every potted plant and every living creature was only on the edge of annihilation. Misty did her best to ignore the dread building from beneath her paws.

Ahzila was true to her word, and shot out of the train, barrelling through the crowd on the platform. With an assortment of curses and spats, the other passengers jumped to get out of her way. Misty trailed behind, surprised to feel the flutter of wings at her ear.

Not everyone here was a cat. 

Falcons larger than Misty circled up near the ceiling, chittering at each other. She swore one of them was perched on the chandelier and reading a newspaper. Misty caught herself staring at the beasts as she sprinted, who in turn looked down at her with eyes that seemed to glow back at her like a box of gemstones: emeralds, amethysts, and rubies set in blinking pairs and staring at her from the ceiling.

It was an overwhelming amount of information that hung on every wall. Statues that must have had purpose and culture. Murals of old heroes that died before Misty was born. A whole civilization of people that were cousin to herself, one that she had never remotely heard of before.

Her mind was so bogged by the fear and fatigue of losing her family, that an intrusive thought crossed her mind. That all of the cats in the paintings, every single one, was at this point dead, and everyone else living was slowly dying with each shallow breath, much like Brinkley in Ahzila’s arms.

She gasped for air as they darted around corners. The air was so thin, and she was not acclimated to it.

By the lack of windows and the darkness of the shadows, they must have been dozens of floors underground. Misty had been to the sewers a few times in her life, but this was deeper, a deepness that clung to her lungs.

From the station area, they swept through a maze of hallways. This fortress of winding spaces continued without any natural skylight, just more and more rooms, each a strange look into a different time and a different designer. Some were even abandoned, decomposing like a condemned mall.

“Why, Ahzila!” A bird squawked at them loudly in perfect English, causing Misty to freeze in her tracks.

Misty had seen a parrot before, who can copy language but not really speak. And while cats could communicate with each other, she had assumed all other animals that weren’t human lived strictly by instinct and basic body language.

But this large bird talked. The bird that was 2 times her size and clearly too smart for her to ever eat.

This hallway seemed developed just for birds. It was filled with supports and perches, birds jumping from hoops, to rods, to ropes which stretched across the ceiling for their acrobatics. 

The bird that addressed Ahzila was poised next to a door as if that were his job. The brown falcon-like patterning on his wings did not match his long beak and brilliant red eyes which were calculating the two alley cats. He seemed truly curious how one cat came to him on fours and the other was bleeding through a jacket.

“What a pleasure! Is this one of your victims? I don’t do that work, you know.” The bird smiled with his eyes, his beak shaped into a permanent grin as he clownishly flipped upside down on his perch.

Ahzila answered by barging into his door and placing Brinkley delicately on a doctor’s bed. The bird sailed after her, closing the door after Misty with a few coordinated flaps of his wings.

Misty had expected a real doctor, and was now coming to terms that their doctor was covered in feathers. It was a horrible realization when she had been hunting birds just that morning.

“Right to the point, aren’t we? Well, Vlumanes aren’t known for their hospitality.” The bird cooed.

From her spot on the floor, Misty could not make out what was happening on the doctor’s bed. Instead she looked up at Ahzila’s chin and at the wings of the bird, which seemed to illuminate a red glow.

Of course the bird would be just as magical as the large standing cat standing next to it, although Misty did not want to admit that any such magic should ever exist. But this entire kingdom had forced her to suspend her disbelief, at least until she knew that Brinkley would be OK.

“Well, Farly?” Ahzila asked the bird tersely.

“Can’t imagine what happened to him.” Said Farly frankly.

“If you want to stay a healer in this neighborhood…” Ahzila sighed, pulling a shimmering knife from behind her, “...no imagining.” As if to resonate with her words, the knife pulsed a fuscia glow in the dark light.

“Miss Vlumane, there really isn’t anything I could…”

Ahzila cut him short, snapping with her other hand as a bag of change fell into her hands, she pulled from the sack several gold coins that each fell to her other palm with a satisfying clink.

“How does he look now?” she asked him, with a smile showing one full incisor.

“Miss Vlumane. I was serious. It would take a miracle to bring him back, and I’m not that kind of bird…”

The warm glow from beneath his wings faded, and the bird looked down at Misty for the first time, seeing that tears were welling in her eyes. His large eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“An Earth cat, hm?” Farly asked. “Must be a shock.”

Misty did not know how to respond.

“Give her a moment, you ass.” Said Ahzila.

“It’ll take more than a moment. Look. She hasn’t cried before.”

A tear fell to the ground, and Misty looked at it as if she had never seen anything wet.

She felt so strange, as if a horrible tension had been sucked through her body like it were dragged by a thread. A hot tension that pelted towards the floor through her eyes.

More fell, like rain. She felt so small. So weak. So nothing.

She could do nothing but watch the water fall, powerless under this invisible thread that pulled it from within her and out of her face.

“Everyone cries, that’s not true.” Said Ahzila.

“Earth cats don’t cry.” Farly answered. “They don’t cry. They don’t live. They don’t speak.”

“Mrrow Fft.” Ahzila hummed. “She’s just a little girl!”

“I’m not a little girl.” Misty hissed

“See? She thinks she’s an adult.” Said Farly. “But she can’t be more than 4 years old.”

“Oh damn it.” Ahzila hissed, “Not another one of these kids...”

“I am Fang.” Misty stammered, finding it hard to speak clearly. “...the First Bite…”

The tears continued to fall, and with each drop, she felt her old life pass through her. The tears were washing her clean of the warrior and queen she used to be. 

The stranger now left standing in her place was a lost girl with a counterfeit collar that no longer knew at all what she was and what she had left to live for.