"Isn't the world tumultuous enough without you adding further harm to it?"
The mournful voice rang out in an crescendoing effect, reverberating in a tandem of waves off the walls of his mind before coalescing in volume and then dispersing throughout his body and sending a tremor of shakes rippling across him. A dense, thick, and impenetrable fog surrounded the cat. It seemed to permeate endlessly from the mere air itself, shrouding the entire area in a near suffocating embrace of pallidness that eliminated visibility in every possible direction. The cat could barely make out his own body in it.
He exhaled deeply, silently observing the white tendril of smoke seep from out of his mouth and curl into the chilled air, swirling away to become one with the fog. Closing his eyes, he settled himself and then began counting the rhythmic thudding of his heartbeat, focusing on the ever constant repetition and allowing it to anchor him in place. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Good. He could think easier now. Already he was testing the stability of his limps, flexing each one of his toe at a time and rolling his large shoulders, checking to see if anything felt loose or out of place.
He explored further, lowering the full extent of his weight down onto his haunches in an experiment to see if they would maintain his mass and balance. A whooshing noise swept the air as he practiced whipping his tail back and forth. There was no sort of soreness or aches that he could detect, finding everything to still be in working condition.
The taste of the sea was still faint on his breath-vast, fathomless, and bitter. Running his tongue along the bottom of his lip, he discovered blood residue clinging to the corners of his mouth. The metallic taste intermixed with the saltiness of the sea created quite a peculiar aftertaste in his mouth. For a brief moment, the cat wondered to whom the blood had belonged to. Was it his or someone else's? An instant later he had already discarded the thought.
Get moving, he told himself. It wasn't the time to linger on anything else.
The cat craned his eyes in an attempt to see past the fog. Panning his gaze skyward, he came into his first contact with the blotched horizon. Appearing muddy and vile, as though it'd been heavily saturated in grime and filth, the putrid disease seemed to have coated and then seeped its way into every nook and cranny of the sky with its foulness. Scouring ahead for more, some sort of sign or landmark, he caught a stray sight of something bare and pointy, which he assumed to be the tips of treetops, and immediately set off in that general direction.
Bland, cracked, and dry, the deprived soil was as hard as stone beneath his paws. Dust shot out like a frenzied herd of antagonized ants every time he would lift a paw or moderately shift his stance. Within seconds he could already tell his paws were caked in it.
A wintry chill from the frigid atmosphere had settled across his body, shooting shivers running rampant up and down his spine, his sparse and short coat not intended for such severe temperature. It seemed a Leaf-bare like cold was also another aspect of this place he'd have to acclimate to. He traversed the seemingly infinite stretch of fog, constantly keeping his eyes on lookout for the tips of the treetops. It was his only guide through this blank landscape, and he didn't want to lose sight of the one thing keeping him moving with a goal in mind.
Not entirely surprised by the scene he'd arrived upon, the cat came to a halt at the foot of the gnarled skeletal remains of the trees he'd sought. Dispassionately, he viewed the malnourished and withered trunks, how they crinkled and seemed to sink into themselves, scarcely looking stable enough to hold the weight of a crow without instantly crumbling into dust in the process. They were just as dead as everything else around him.
"In-tuh-res-ting!" a gleeful voice announced. "New blood! My, it certainly has been awhile."
A sharp, bone white smile materialized out of the fog next to him. He stared blankly back at the new arrival, completely unmoved. A long gangly leg stepped into focus. What caught his attention immediately about it was the fact that its middle toe was missing. The one toe short leg pulled the rest of its body into view, revealing the full form of a dark furred and brown spotted tom, who strutted in front of him, grinning toothily like a skull.
"Welcome to the Dark Forest, scrapling!" he proclaimed in an exaggeratedly extravagant manner, shooting his tail and ears up rigidly, "where worthless bags of fur like you and I are left to rot away in peace." He didn't get what part of existing in a scarce patch of barren land could quantify as peaceful living, but the spotted tom seemed quite ecstatic about the prospect. "I know that look," he said smugly, eyes glinting and whiskers twitching with mirth, as he looked him over inquisitively. "You think you deserve better than this, but really, you're just like the rest of us. In your time alive you did something to make the other side mad, and now your punishment is to reside here forevermore."
The spotted tom looked at him expectantly, as though waiting on a response. He merely stared back blankly, meeting the spotted cat's glittering gaze with his stoic one.
"Why the long face, scrapling? Cheer up!" the spotted tom encouraged, appearing unperturbed by the lack of a reaction. "It won't be all doom and gloom. Who knows? Maybe you'll find something to occupy your time with for the next eon of moons."
This cat was...odd. That was what he had decided. He didn't behave in any manner supporting the image he'd long held in his mind about how cats in the Dark Forest acted. For one he seemed too overjoyed, much too upbeat for such a morose predicament. Every movement on his behalf was like one big performance. Even alive, he couldn't say he'd ever met such an animated individual.
"You're the silent type, eh? Good, good," the spotted tom nodded, as though pleased with a promising outcome. "You're sure to fit right in here, I reckon. Oh, and by the by," he suddenly whispered, dropping his voice down a octave lower, and wiggling his romp in the air. "I suggest anyone you recognize here, you don't refer to by their Clan name. Cats round here don't too much fancy reminders of their old lives. Unearths buried memories, reignites long-held grudges, reopens closed wounds, you get the idea. Nor, under any circumstances, should you ever ask anyone what they did in order to end up here. It's only common courtesy," he finished with a wink.
The cat nodded once in compliance. "I'll be sure to keep it in mind."
So cats here didn't go by their Clan names? He was more than fine with it. The last thing he wanted to be associated with, especially here, was his old life.
"So you can speak!" the spotted tom exclaimed. "Well a cat of very few words surely needs a name to match, right? Let's see," he mused out loud, scrunching up his nose in a mock display of concentration. "What would be the best name to suit you? Mute? Nah, too literal. Maybe, Scarce? Mmm, no, no, it has to roll off the tongue. How about-"
"It's fine," he responded. "I don't need a name."
The spotted tom clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Where's the fun in that?" He looked back at the tom as though he'd reconsidered, but he stood expressionless and resolute on his position. He didn't want it. In the apparent face of defeat, the spotted tom sighed, shaking his head. "Fine, fine, for future reference though, you can call me Patches."
He didn't call the spotted tom anything. Instead, the cat turned and began to walk away, leaving Patches to watch after his retreating form. As he drew further and further into the mist, his ears caught the unmistakable laughter of the spotted tom.
"Uncompromising even now, huh?" His voice seemed to echoed from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "I like it. You're right to be wary around cats like me. You'd be mousebrained not to be otherwise, but we both know, we both know, that this little facade of yours won't hold up much longer. The shock will sink in soon." Just when the cat thought that the spotted tom had gone away, one last parting message managed to find its way into earshot. "Ah, and how could I almost forget? Enjoy your stay."
It was the last he heard from the tom, and the last piece of sound that he would hear for the rest of his trek through the misty forest, not that this place really could be called one. He continued to check his surroundings, even after he was sure the spotted cat had long since left him be. He may have approached him in a non-threatening manner, but that didn't mean he still didn't wish harm upon him. This was the Dark Forest after all. They were expected to succumb to their lowliest desires.
After what seemed to include a timeless amount of searching, he found an enclosed space to lie in, within the hollowed remains of a fallen log. That night, for the first time since arriving, his mask broke just like Patches said it would and he devolved into an uncontrollable mess of silent shudders and muted yowls, the gravity of the moment having finally overtook him. For the first time, in a very long time, the cat cried himself to sleep.