There was fire everywhere…
It choked the trees, crumbling them to ash. It sucked away the air, leaving it hot and poisoning. It seared away the ground until it was black and barren. It dried up and parched the earth, and left it thirsty and seconds to death. It was infinite; it burned as far as the eye could see, smoldering and charring and leaving the whole world ablaze.
But among these burning flames stood a cat, whose pelt was completely concealed by the fire with just a faint outline of his head and body; only his emerald eyes stood out against the blazing inferno, radiating orange as the reflection of the flames flickered in the green depths. It was almost as if his fur was the fire, but the scorching flames consumed his entire body, eating away at him, smoldering him, burning him into cinders. Yet his ignited eyes revealed not a single scrap of fear and they stayed calm and reassuring as he kept burning and burning…
Burning and burning…
"Rusty!" Nutmeg cried, as she gasped awake.
Her eyes were wide and brimmed with fear. She whipped her head around frantically, her breath coming in short puffs as she took in the quiet and still environment around her; she knew she was back in her housefolks' den, that she had always been here, and that she was safe. The peaceful atmosphere slowly soothed her until she was able to breathe normally again. Her legs still trembled slightly from the dream as she pushed herself up in a sitting position.
It was only a dream… she thought with relief as she gave her pelt a thorough wash to smooth down all the ruffled fur. A dream…
Filled with fire. And my son was burning in that fire.
Nutmeg fought to push down the panic that once again threatened to conquer her mind. Her pelt tingled with a sense of foreboding and she shook her head in an attempt to free it from her being. She padded through the dark corridors and slipped through the cat door, hoping that a walk would clear her mind.
The night air was cool and crisp, and she breathed it in deeply with a sigh. The grass felt refreshing as her pads brushed against it while she was making her way to the white, peeling picket fence that was a memorable landmark in her small, secure territory.
She leaped with as much strength as her frail bones could handle onto the top of the fence. It swayed slightly; whether it be from her weight or the number of times this chipped fence was used as a point for observation and viewing of the world beyond rather than a boundary marker. By the time she regained her balance, she was already huffing with the effort.
I must be getting old, she mused to herself.
It had been so long – years, perhaps – since the last time she saw her kits. An image of a tiny, curious kit with a flame-colored pelt and glowing emerald eyes filled her vision, and then it quickly melted into the image of the powerful young tom with the blazing pelt and forest eyes that glowing orange with the reflection of the fire.
Two seemingly different cats; however, there was no doubt – in the way his ginger pelt burned orange, in the shape of his shoulders and his muzzle, in the roundness of his head, in the familiar gleam in his eager eyes – that these cats were the same.
"Rusty…." she murmured softly, raising her head to the stars. "Oh, Rusty…"
What has happened since we last parted?
"I want to know my son is safe," she whispered to the stars. "Please, I just want to know if he is safe…"
She knew it right when the words had escaped from her mouth that it was ridiculous to ask the stars for answers. They were just glowing, white dots that speckled the dark sky, twinkling and flickering as they stood out against the blackness. They weren't spiritual beings that would give her the answer she needed in order to know where her son was, a vision of some sort that will show what he truly was doing at the moment, and not some confusing or disorienting nightmare that left her broken and empty. They weren't going to give her advice to cope with the growing anxiety that burned in her belly.
Yet somehow, it calmed her.
It was like the stars had answered her prayer by sprinkling a bit of hope and giving off an aura of comfort that soaked into her soul and eased her pain. She could even swear that she had almost heard a voice inside her head that whispered, Do not fear for your son.
But she told herself that she was only going mousebrained. Of course she did not hear any voice that wasn't her own, or believe that the stars were the cause of her sudden relief. She was just getting old.
Even so, she closed her eyes and gave out a rumbling purr, imagining her son racing through the trees of the forest, muscles bunching as he leaped over a fallen log that dared block his path.
Why had she imagined him in a forest, and not inside his own den, with his own housefolk, as she should've? She didn't know, but for some reason, the forest just seemed to fit.
She imagined him stopping in a batch of sunlight, and his flame pelt glowed like fire; it lit the same way like it had in Nutmeg's dream, and she realized now that her son's pelt had not been burning from the fire, rather, it had been burning with the fire.
Like he was fire himself…
And then she finally realized that she didn't have to worry anymore.
Fire can destroy, but it can also protect. And the fire she saw in her dream, the fire that was clutching her fearless son in its fiery paws, was not one that destroyed, but one of the latter. And she now knew without a doubt that he was safe within those paws.
Because it was a fire that could protect. And he was that fire.