A/N Another submission to TPE's Seven Days of Midwinter! This has some Mastiff material, but no spoilers for the events of the book as it takes place approximately 3000 years prior. Or so we think; the Cat isn't too sure of human time.
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star, dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite,
With a tail as big as a kite.
The Cat liked Midwinter in the Divine Realms the best out of any other time. It wasn't for the feasting; he could catch what he wanted to eat just perfectly on his own, when it suited him. It wasn't for the dedications made to Mithros, either... The Cat may feel some affection for the Great Mother Goddess, but it should be made clear that he didn't bow to any gods, and if he listened to her requests it was because it suited him.
No, what the Cat liked most about Midwinter was that he was never bored. The Tricksters together in one place was always an abysmally poor decision for any deity to make, and as long as they didn't get it into their twisty heads to include him in any of their games, the Cat was perfectly pleased to watch them attempt to out-trick each other while keeping Mythros – who was notoriously jealous of his equinoxes– out of it.
This year, though, there was something... missing.
The Northern Gods had brought their lights to decorate and the greens and reds and violets danced across the sky in waves over the court The Great Mother Goddess had conjured. All the animal gods were in attendance, adding their own splendour in ways of jewelled feathers and scales, pattern coats and beautiful calls. It was fit for the gods, of course, but it was silent without the music and that is what the Cat missed most of all.
The war with the Ysandir had been costly and long and painful to all those involved, but they had won and the race was all but destroyed, except for a small clan hiding in a dark city in one of the mortal world's deserts. Except there was nothing that could compare to the music they played and the Cat missed it. Turning his back on the gods' gathering, the Cat escaped into the stars. The silence here was thicker, but more honest and he skipped from star to star trying to hum one of the ethereal tunes in his head and not quite managing it.
He twirled around his constellation and caught sight of the mortal realm. Something caught his attention. He sat.
He had never paid much attention to humans before, as a whole. They seemed to just be lesser gods, and the Cat didn't particularly like the gods, except for the Goddess. But he was bored and so he settled down to watch.
As he watched, he saw many things in the humans that he disliked about the gods; there was arrogance, and power struggles and the pomp and ceremony he found so tedious... But these little ones were mortal and they lived like they knew they would end. They struggled and they grew. There were terrible battles (they had gotten the idea of fighting 'for' their gods under their skin, the Cat was sad to see) and some wasted the short allotment of time they were given but some...
As the Cat watched, a young woman struggled to fight for her people. She would face a long, hard road ahead. The Cat could see that the road she travelled on would be full of loss and pain and war... but if she persevered, so much could change.
This was interesting. This life... this was important.
The Cat stood and stretched. Then he tilted his head, closed his eyes and swayed to the little tune he could barely remember.
And then he was gone. There was darkness in the sky where once there had been a constellation of stars.
A girl sitting alone outside her small house cried because the war would go on and her brothers would die like their father would die. She was just a girl. Even though she could almost see the way out of this mess for all of them, who would listen to her?
A cat with glossy black fur – fur as dark as the night sky between the stars –brushed up against her leg. He purred.