It was dawn, yet not quite. It was the instant— the eternity— in which the world lost the night but was not yet given day; it was a pause, a breath, a sigh. Two figures, silver in the strange nether-glow of the sky, were slipping through the trees of a frozen forest. Their paws left circles in the crisp upon the ground. Their breath was smoke. Their eyes were flames.
The figures were cats. Lean as forefather-lions, fur thickening against the coming cold, they wove between ferns that brittled and broke at the touch of a paw. Leaves above were frosted fire, caught in the act of preparing to fall. Even dead things— a stick, a stone— took on otherworldly auras in this moment touched with hoar and locked in time.
"You never forgot me," came the voice of the first cat. He was the gray of the sky above, his flanks speckled with what looked like the remnants of a fire, his whiskers trembling as he blinked at his companion. "You never betrayed me. You never left me."
"She was cruel, Ashfur," said the second cat, an angel, a white-coated fela who looked as if she belonged in this faerie-time, this half-awakened dream. "She wronged you. I promise, I will never do what she did."
"Oh, I know..." His eyes burned brighter. He pressed closer to the other's side, curling his tail over her haunches. The she-cat did not back away, but rubbed her muzzle along Ashfur's chin.
"You are the only one I have ever loved," she murmured.
They had stopped walking by this time, and stood, warm in the chill, both suddenly desperate for time to truly have stopped turning.
And so they remained, until the sun rose.