A/N: Everything recognizably canon is owned by Sir Terry Pratchett and etc. Everything else is real. No copyright infringement or making of profit intended, in accordance with the rules and customs of fanfiction.

The Thin Blue Edge

Narrative causality, much like physics, can have certain stressful effects on living beings when the limits to which the beings are used become strained. Just as a centrifuge or a laboratory rocket sled with the approximation knob turned up to 'Airplane Crash' will leave a physicist wobbly at the legs, bleeding from the eyes and somewhat heavier at the wallet as he collects the five-to-one against bets on his survival, so too can narrative causality warp and injure a living being when the tolerances are set too high. When your own life story's knob gets turned to a setting you can't handle, you take damage for it, and anyone who claims otherwise can be reasonably suspected to have either A. never had their knob played with, B. had their knob twisted off, recovered and glued back on, or C. no bloody tact whatsoever.

Innuendo, too, can cause damage to living, or for that matter, differently alive beings, but that is a matter for another story.

Some beings handle narrative stress by means of a waxen coat of denial, which invariably wears off and leaves a sharp edge of anger, nicely polished. When it becomes clear that there is either nobody to be angry with (sometimes with an 'anymore' oozing blood into the nearest gutter or money into the nearest class-action court-ordered damages fund,) the only option is bargaining. And since bargaining doesn't typically work very well, depression sets in and is followed, sometimes at extreme length, by a grudging, reluctant acceptance of what narrative causality's done to you.

But some people can't manage that. Either they don't have the $5US needed for a can of decent denial wax or there's nothing left for them to rub it on. So they make do with something found around the house. In the same way that a sword can, in a pinch, be polished with leftover mineral oil from the Do-It-Yourself haircutting set with the clippers that worked really well until that time with the bubblegum and the really fluffy cat, so too can a paperback book be made to fill in for a can of denial wax.

However, as anyone who's ever actually tried to use mineral oil or some other wax substitute, the stuff tends to spread out and cover way more than the bit you're actually trying to polish. You try to shine up the car's chrome with a bit of nonstick cooking spray and two seconds later your whole Toyota is slippery enough to repel slow-moving pedestrians, to say nothing of ribbed for the road's pleasure. Making do with a paperback book or two –or thirty-two, when what you really need is a little bit of store-brand denial to get yourself through a time of narrative causal stress in your life…well, you might wind up getting denial all over your whole existence.

Strangely, in at least one very large, if not necessarily respected community, this is considered an acceptable operating procedure.

Kittens have a high fatality rate. Every veterinarian knows this, especially the ones who work in a just-past-rural area of the poorest state in the union, where the splendid Hemingway thumb-cats were no longer special due to a saturated market and bars were to be avoided, in case some fool in a car-racing hat dared mention shooting cats and wind up with a bottle to the face for his trouble.

The doctor knew that kittens just happened to die sometimes. Why else would queens turn out five or six at a go, if there weren't an awful mortality rate? This one was the youngest he had ever seen with a urethral blockage, which almost certainly meant a genetic defect. But he was used to kittens dying amid the ambiguity of owners who would have been hard pressed to find homes for them all anyway, and mother cats who would still purr afterward if he stroked them about the ears.

This kitten was different. His parents were humans, and none-too-rich, none-too-old ones at that.

The doctor saw all kinds, really, in his practice. There was often a man who pretended he didn't care, right until the moment the dog he pretended not to like needed surgery, and then his girlfriend would have to drive the car home because tears make it so hard to see. There were also many older ladies, disappointed by life and usually by grown children, who dedicated themselves so fully to rescuing stray or unloved cats that you wouldn't be shocked to find graduation announcements from Boots and Shadow sent with their handwriting.

And then there was this couple.

She was the cat-rescuing type, definitely, but among the younger examples he'd ever seen. Twenty-four, taller than the average, pudgy like an Ogg or a Nitt but without the good cheer or the passable taste in clothes. No children, except, very obviously, the furry one on the table, and a wedding ring that looked just out-of-place enough to be new.

He was the rare sort who cared about his pets and didn't mind who knew it. Twenty-eight, very tall indeed, but with a diminishing leanness that can only mean good cooking and someone to darn his socks. The men who marry animal-rescuing women are either utterly aloof or rather worse than their distaff counterparts when it came to cosseting and cuddling the balls of fluff, and while his clothes didn't look it, the fellow was clearly a cuddler. The tiny black-and-white kitten was not well, ergo neither was the man, and Gods help the veterinarian who didn't have good news for his tacitly suffering wife.

Two days since they had brought the little fellow in, and every effort had been made. Now they were back, but to say goodbye.

It was a damnable job sometimes.

HELLO, TWO-TONE.

"Mm-mew?"

YOU CANNOT STAY, YOU KNOW.

"Mmrr."

I AGREE. IT IS HARDEST WHEN THEY LOVE YOU. IF IT HELPS, YOUR TWO BROTHERS WHO HAVE FOUND HOMES WILL BE WELL, AND I DOUBT THE REMAINING TWO WILL EVER LACK A HOME WITH THESE PEOPLE.

There was a soft 'mew' sound, and the purring slowed to a stop. There was a soft sound like a 'swish,' and a flash of a bright blue edge, but neither of the two young people, cuddling their dying kitten, heard it. The doctor checked the tiny body in the couple's shared arms with his stethoscope, and nodded, then tactfully left the room. He was used to that 'swish' by now.

IF YOU WISH, THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF STRING AT MY HOUSE. ALBERT HAS INFORMED ME THAT YOUR KIND LIKE TO PLAY WITH IT, AND I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FOND OF CATS.

Narrative strain is hard enough to bear when something small, that you've fed from a bottle and kept warm and cuddled still has to die, just when you thought the whole litter of five was going to make it and grow up in spite the foolish hillbilly shooting their pregnant mum. But when you have to hold the tiny black-and-white body that has gone still, never to purr or lick at your hand again, and try desperately to stay strong for the only other person in the world who knows exactly what you're going through, because they're suffering it themselves…

Well, there simply isn't a coat of denial that'd stick to that.

And so it was, on the Roundworld of all places, that two young people glanced up through their tears and saw a flash of black and the thin blue edge of the scythe.

I'M SO SORRY, a voice whispered.