What Happens When No One Is Watching

I. The Chase

Before there were two people, there were two cats.

I want to tell you this the way it deserves to be told, which is to say: without explaining it. Some things in this account bend toward metaphor so naturally that explaining them would only flatten what they are. So I am not going to tell you why a golden meadow briefly forgets its own architecture and becomes, instead, a place where two small quick animals run through flowers taller than their own heads, through forests that were never planted, along shorelines that border no ocean this world has ever properly named. I am only going to show you what happened, and let the showing be the whole of the meaning.

One was dark, the color of a forest at the exact hour it stops being green and starts being something closer to black — a deep, unbroken shade that swallowed the meadow's gold light rather than reflecting it, except at the very edges, where the sun caught the fur along its spine and turned it, for one flickering instant at a time, the color of new leaves not yet finished opening. The other was pale, near-silver, her coat catching the light the way frost catches morning — indigo at the roots, the way the sky looks in the last held breath before dawn actually arrives, fading gradually toward her paws and the very tip of her tail into something closer to moonlight than fur, threaded here and there with the faintest warm gold, as though someone had dipped her once, briefly, in the same light the meadow itself was made of.

She ran first. I want you to understand that detail plainly, because it matters more than it might seem to, watching only the surface of the chase: she was never simply fleeing. She looked back, more than once, over one silver shoulder, her tail lifted high and insolent, daring him to close the distance she had only just opened between them. There was nothing frightened in the way she ran. There was, instead, the particular unmistakable delight of something that has decided, entirely on its own terms, to be chased — a game whose rules she alone had written, and whose only real purpose was the pleasure of being wanted badly enough to be followed.

They ran through the flowers first, the tall ones, the ones that rose chest-high and swayed in colors that did not exist anywhere in the ordinary living world — violet shading into a blue no sky has ever worn, gold deepening at each petal's center into something closer to fire than to color at all. The flowers did not part for them so much as forgive them, bending gently aside at the last possible instant and then straightening again behind their passing, so that from any distance greater than a few careful steps, you would have seen nothing at all — only the flowers themselves, moving in patterns too deliberate to be wind, tracing the invisible shape of a pursuit taking place entirely beneath the surface of the bloom.

I want to walk you through the whole of it, slowly, because I think this particular chase deserves more patience than most of what I have shown you across this account. There is no danger in it. There is no grief waiting at the end of it, no wound to be tended, no soul in need of rescue. For once — for this one uninterrupted stretch of golden, flower-drowned time — there is only play, offered freely, by two creatures who have earned, across the long accumulated weight of everything else in this story, the simple right to be foolish together.

They passed a small wooden table, set incongruously in the middle of the meadow, the way objects sometimes appear in dreams without any explanation for their presence except that the dream required something for the dreamers to knock over. A pencil lay across its surface, worn soft at the tip from long use, and the dark shape — faster now, closing the gap she had allowed him — caught the table's edge with one shoulder as he passed, sending the pencil rolling and then tumbling off the far side, disappearing silently into the grass below. Neither of them slowed. The pale one only laughed, if a cat's particular species of triumph can be called laughter — a small, delighted arch of her spine, a flick of her tail that seemed, more than anything, like punctuation on a joke only she was currently in on.

Further on, a house rose briefly out of the flowers, small and half-finished, the way structures sometimes appear in this particular meadow when memory needs somewhere temporary to rest — I will not tell you whose memory, or why, because I do not think the house itself matters half so much as what happened to it. Glasses stood on an open windowsill, catching the gold light in ways that scattered small fractured rainbows across the surrounding petals. She went through the window first, low and fast and utterly without hesitation, and one glass toppled in the wake of her passing, rolling to the sill's edge and tipping, at last, over into the flowers below, where it landed without breaking, cushioned by petals soft enough to catch even glass without harm. He followed a half-breath later, close enough now that she felt, or imagined she felt, the warmth of his passage against her own trailing fur, and the second glass went the same way as the first, and neither of them looked back to see where it landed, because looking back would have cost precious ground in a race that, by now, both of them understood was rapidly nearing its own conclusion.

The meadow kept unfolding new geography for them to run through, the way dreams do, generous and inexhaustible, offering fresh obstacles the instant the last ones had been properly demolished. There was a stretch of orchard, briefly, trees heavy with fruit that glowed faintly from within, the particular warm red-gold of things that have never once needed sunlight to ripen because they carry their own light instead. She wove between the trunks with the particular boneless, unhurried grace that had always, in whatever form she wore, marked her as someone who had never once needed to hurry for anything, and he followed, close enough now to see the fine gold threading through her silver fur catch and scatter the orchard's own soft inner light every time she moved beneath a low-hanging branch. Fruit fell as they passed — not struck deliberately, simply dislodged by the particular quality of speed and mischief moving through the orchard's hush, thudding softly into grass that had grown thick and unhurried beneath the trees, releasing, as they fell, a smell like something between honey and rain.

There was a stream, too, appearing suddenly where no stream had been a moment before, narrow and quick and singing over stones the color of old amber. She cleared it in a single easy leap, barely touching the far bank before continuing on, and he cleared it a half-breath behind her, close enough now that the spray kicked up by her landing caught faint rainbow light against his own dark fur, and for just an instant, watching him land, glistening and gold-lit and unmistakably closing the last of the distance between them, she felt something in her chest that had nothing at all to do with the game and everything to do with the particular ancient satisfaction of being pursued, finally, by exactly the person she had always wanted pursuing her.

The meadow gave way, without warning or apology, to a forest — not the orchard's tame and generous rows, but something older, denser, the kind of woodland that seems to have grown in on itself over centuries rather than seasons. The trees here stood close enough that the gold light had to work for every gap it found between their branches, falling instead in scattered coins across a forest floor still dark and heavy from a rain that had fallen, by whatever logic this particular dream obeyed, sometime the day before and had never quite finished draining away. Puddles lay scattered among the roots, black-mirrored and still, and she ran straight through the center of the first one without the smallest hesitation, sending up a bright fan of droplets that caught the thin light and scattered it like scattered glass, and for one flickering instant, in the puddle's disturbed surface, her own reflection ran alongside her — silver and indigo and pale gold, doubled, broken apart by her own passing before the water even had time to properly show it back to her.

He followed through the same puddle a half-breath later, and where her reflection had shattered into brightness, his simply darkened the water further, a deep green-black shape sliding beneath the surface for the single heartbeat it took him to cross it, so that for that one shared instant, looking down, you might have seen both of them held together in the same disturbed water — her light scattering across the top of it, his darkness moving beneath — before his own stride broke the image apart entirely and carried them both further into the wet, close-grown trees.

She led him through the deepest part of that forest with the particular confidence of a creature who somehow already knew, without ever having walked it before, exactly where the ground would hold and exactly where it wouldn't. Ferns brushed against her flanks, heavy with the last of the rain, leaving faint silver tracks along her fur that caught what little light reached this deep among the trunks. He kept close behind her now, closer than he had managed anywhere else in the chase so far, and once, ducking beneath a low branch she had cleared with an easy, unbothered leap, he lost sight of her entirely for the length of two full heartbeats — long enough that something in his chest tightened with an urgency that had nothing to do with the game and everything to do with simply wanting to see her again — before he broke through the last of the undergrowth and found her waiting, not fleeing at all in that moment, perched instead on a fallen log with her tail curled neatly around her paws, watching him arrive with an expression of such deliberate, unbothered patience that he understood at once she had chosen to be found exactly there, in exactly that light, for exactly the effect it produced in him.

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She let him get close — close enough that he believed, for one full stride, that the chase had ended early — before she was gone again, a silver-gold blur vanishing back into the trees with a flick of her tail that felt, unmistakably, like a taunt.

The forest thinned as abruptly as it had begun, giving way, the way dreams give way to whatever comes next without ever troubling themselves over the geography connecting one thing to another, to a stretch of pale sand and a sea that did not belong to any coastline either of them could have named. The water was too calm to be entirely real, glassy and silver-blue, catching the same impossible gold light the meadow itself had always carried and scattering it across the surface in long unbroken lines that trembled faintly with each small, unhurried wave. She hit the sand at a dead run and did not slow for it, her paws throwing up small bright sprays with every stride, and when the surf finally caught her — one low, lazy wave curling in further than the others and catching her feet — she startled sideways with a sound that was half indignation and half delight, shaking one paw with theatrical disgust before darting on, close along the very edge where wet sand met dry, daring the sea to try that trick on her again.

He was not so lucky. A second wave, larger than the first, caught him fully across all four paws as he cut the same line she had cut a moment before, and he stopped dead for one full breath, staring down at the retreating water with an expression of such wounded, dignified betrayal that she actually paused in her own flight to watch him recover from it — tail lashing once, ears flattening, before he shook the whole of himself dry in a single practical motion and resumed the chase as though the indignity had never happened at all. She was laughing again by then, that same silent feline laugh, and I think, watching the two of them cross that impossible shoreline together, that this was as close as either of them had come in a very long while to simply being foolish, unguarded, entirely themselves, with no one else in the whole of existence watching to see it happen.

They left the sea behind them the way the sea always seems to get left behind in dreams — not by any deliberate turning, but simply because the next thing arrived, insistent, and asked for their attention instead. A museum rose out of the sand ahead of them, vast and pale-stoned and entirely out of place, its wide doors standing open onto a hall lined with statues that seemed, watching the two small shapes streak between their pedestals, to lean very slightly forward, as though even marble could not help but take an interest in a chase this thoroughly delighted with itself. She wove between the plinths with total disregard for whatever solemn dignity the space was meant to hold, and a low velvet rope, strung between two brass posts to keep some more careful visitor at a respectful distance from an urn no one in that gold-lit dream would ever properly explain, came loose beneath her passing and swung, once, gently, marking the whole hall with the memory of her having been there at all. He followed her past busts of faces neither of them recognized, past a single suit of ceremonial armor that rattled faintly in the wake of his passing, and out through a tall arched doorway on the museum's far side, back out into open air before either of them had paused long enough to properly consider the strangeness of having been inside a museum in a meadow at all.

There was a market, briefly, stalls hung with cloth in every color the meadow itself favored, gold and violet and deep impossible blue, and she darted beneath the low-hanging edge of one awning with barely a break in her stride, sending a scatter of loose fruit rolling from an unattended stand into the grass — the twin, almost, of the orchard fruit fallen so much earlier in the chase, as though the whole dream had decided, somewhere along its own private logic, to rhyme gently with itself. He followed close behind, and a length of ribbon, caught loose from somewhere among the stalls, snagged for one brief instant around his tail before slipping free again, trailing after him for three full strides like a small, absurd flag of surrender that belonged to no battle either of them had actually lost.

There was an arbor woven through with something that looked, at a distance, like climbing roses, except that the blooms themselves were the wrong shape entirely — small closed things, folded tight like sleeping eyes, the color of the deepest violet the meadow's light could produce. Neither of them slowed to consider the strangeness of it. The arbor simply arrived, the way everything in this particular unfolding dream arrived, offered without explanation, existing only long enough to be run through and left behind, its shadow falling briefly and coolly across both their racing shapes before the gold light of the open meadow claimed them again on the other side.

Beyond the arbor, the ground itself began to change — not dramatically, not in any way that would have alarmed a more careful traveler, but enough that the grass grew softer underfoot, deeper, threaded through with something that looked almost like moss where the light fell thinnest. A low stone wall appeared, half-swallowed by climbing ivy, and she took it at a run, four paws finding the narrow crown of it with an ease that belonged more to instinct than to any calculation, walking its length for three full strides before leaping down the other side in a single fluid arc, her whole body curling mid-air the way only the smallest and most confident creatures ever quite manage. He did not follow her onto the wall. He went around it instead, cutting the corner tighter, gaining back in the shortcut what he had lost in the detour, and for one brief stretch the gap between them closed enough that she felt the warmth of him at her very heels before she poured on speed again and opened it once more, laughing that same silent feline laugh, tail flagged high, daring him onward.

There was a garden, next, or the memory of one — beds of something that might once have been vegetables, now overtaken entirely by the same impossible flowers that ruled the rest of the meadow, a scarecrow standing sentinel at its center with a face made of woven straw and two black buttons for eyes, watching the whole chase pass beneath it with an expression that managed, somehow, to look faintly amused. She brushed past its leg without slowing, and the scarecrow's sleeve, loose and empty, swayed gently in the wind of her passing, as though it too had decided to join the game in whatever small way a fixed and rooted thing was able to. He passed it a heartbeat later, close enough that his shoulder caught the hem of the scarecrow's ragged coat, sending a single loosened button rolling away into the flowerbed, glinting once in the light before vanishing beneath a fold of violet petals.

They ran through a stretch where the flowers grew so tall they arched overhead entirely, forming a low, swaying tunnel of color that turned the gold light filtering through it into something closer to stained glass — violet and blue and deep burning gold, falling in moving patches across both their racing shapes as they passed beneath, so that for a few strides they seemed less like two ordinary creatures and more like something out of an old and half-forgotten tapestry, chasing each other endlessly across a scene that had never been meant to end.

I want to tell you about the trees now — the real ones, tall and old and rooted deep in whatever soil this particular fantasy required to sustain them, scattered here and there across the meadow's furthest edges, their lower branches hanging low enough to catch and to climb. She reached the first of them well ahead of him and launched herself upward without pausing, claws finding purchase in bark the color of dark honey, scrambling up through branches that bent and swayed beneath her weight without ever once threatening to break, until she balanced, at last, on a limb high enough to survey the whole golden sprawl of the chase behind her — the crushed grass marking their earlier passage, the toppled table, the two glasses lying unbroken among the flowers, the orchard's fallen fruit scattered like small dropped suns across the grass, the stone wall she had walked and he had gone around, the scarecrow's single lost button still glinting faintly somewhere below, and, further still, the pale unlikely gleam of a sea and the white stone shoulder of a museum that neither of them would ever be able to properly explain to anyone who hadn't been there to see it.

He climbed after her, slower, more deliberate, the particular quality of someone who has never once needed to rush toward anything he already knows, deep down, he is eventually going to catch. She watched him climb with her tail curled elegantly around her own paws, her golden eyes half-lidded in an expression that managed, somehow, to convey both boredom and delight in the very same glance — the specific art, long practiced, of appearing entirely unbothered by an outcome she had, in truth, been orchestrating from the very first moment she chose to run.

When he reached the branch just below hers, she leapt again — down, this time, rather than further up, a long graceful arc that carried her clear across an entire stretch of open meadow and back into the deep, chest-high flowers she had first run through, and the chase, which had briefly climbed into the trees, dropped back down into the gold-lit grass and violet blooms with the particular renewed urgency of a game that both participants understood, without needing to say so, was approaching its final act.

The flowers here grew thicker than they had anywhere else in the meadow, tangled and soft, the particular texture of silk left out too long in warm sun — not rough, never rough, simply heavy with its own accumulated weight of scent and color, the kind of bloom that seems built less for growing and more for lying in. She slowed here, finally, for the first time since the chase had begun, not from exhaustion but from some older, more deliberate instinct, the particular ancient calculation of a creature who understands exactly when a game has served its purpose and ought, gracefully, to be allowed its conclusion.

He found the opening she had left him. He had, I suspect, been watching for it the entire chase — the small, telling hesitation in her stride, the way her tail, always so proudly lifted before, dropped now to trail low and slow through the flowers behind her, an invitation dressed carefully in the last remaining language of a game about to end. He closed the final distance in a single unhurried leap, and where there had been two cats running through an endless golden meadow — through forests and along shorelines and beneath the marble arches of a museum that belonged to neither of their memories — there was now only one dark shape, settled with total and deliberate weight over a smaller pale one, both of them sinking together into flowers soft enough to hold them the way silk holds whatever falls into its folds — gently, completely, without any resistance at all.