A/N: An overlooked character, but I feel his name - and how it changes - is significant nonetheless. And I love cats. Please review, and leave prompts if you have an idea!


His pawsteps are light as he pads through the Divine Realms; his tail swishes softly from side to side; his violet eyes gleam like stars as he stares through the night. With a powerful bound, he leaps from springy grass to a smooth boulder that overlooked a glistening black pond. He is alone here, save for the presence of the other gods that seems to permeate the entirety of the Divine Realms.

He settles himself down on the rock. The stone is cool against his belly, and he relishes the feeling, but even that comfort is not enough to drive away the worries in his mind. As he stares into the black pool below, he sees certain images appearing through the darkness as shades of grey so clear that his heart aches to watch them.

So many humans, so many people, flash before his eyes. Each once had a spark of that special something, that fire, that vibrant hope, which had attracted him to their side. He smiles as he watches a girl with a long braid of hair spin and twist with her weapon of choice held firm in her hand. He recalls the time when she plucked him up by the tail and threw him out of her room because he had accidentally clawed up her Puppy uniform. She'd had to sow all night to fix it up again. To make it up to her, he'd tried the next day to make a fun game out of pouncing on her toes, but she hadn't seemed to enjoy it even when he tried to explain. That was when she started calling him Pounce, he remembers.

He remembers the pain in her gaze when she said "Goodbye, Pounce."

The next person he sees is another girl, but it would have been a bit hard to tell if he hadn't known her so well. Her hair was cropped short around her ears, and she wore boy's clothes and a boy's sword. But as she grew older, her femininity grew more pronounced, and eventually she could no longer hide; yet throughout it all, he remembers being there, beside her. Faithful, she called him. She would rub his ears affectionately and whisper "Thank you, Faithful."

When she said goodbye, she also whispered. She whispered his name, and he has not returned to the Realms of the Living since that fateful word. Faithful.

Soon the images in the black pool disappear and he sees only his own reflection. Two violet eyes stare back at him full of hopelessness and regret.

Is he truly faithful, he wonders? Is he truly a friend, a companion, to the friends he has loved and lost through the millennia? Faithful. No one had ever called him that before her. Faithful. How can he be faithful, when he always leaves, lingering in nothing but eternity of solitude and memory?

He stretches, swishes his tail, and bounds off the rock, padding softly through the night, away from the black pool of his past.