I barely had time to get the hoarse yowl past my aching, closed-up throat before there were claws pressed up against it. Choking for breath, I soon realized that my struggles were merely depleting my energy, and I tried going limp. Wheezing from pain and lack of oxygen, I looked up to the face above me.

She was pure black, but probably only with dirt and soot, like me. Her eyes glared with a fierceness that surprised me. I had not even seen this in the dogs that had tried to kill me. It was the face of someone who had lost, again and again, and was only stronger because of it. The face of someone convinced the world was against her, and preferred it that way.

I slashed at her face.

Snarling, she leaped back. I scrambled to right myself, gasping for air, only to have it knocked out of me again as she barreled into me headfirst. She blindly slashed me, again and again, knowing I could not get up, knowing that I would never get up. I could not call out, I could not even scream as her claws cut into me. As my vision clouded, as my eyes closed, I chose to use my remaining breath for one last thing before I departed this world.

"Mother…"

And as I whispered to the she-cat I would never know, the claws stopped. Or I had ceased to feel them. I opened my eyes. Maybe I would see my mother after all. Had she been killed by the dogs? I hadn't seen.

But what I saw now was very confusing.

The black she-cat stared at me with horror. She backed away, whispering under her breath, "No, no, no, no…"

I wondered why she didn't kill me. She'd already gotten go far. Was I to suffer, bleeding slowly to death?

The cat spoke up, and her voice was a different one than the one that had snarled at me. "A kit… I've harmed a kit… I'm not fit to live…"

Carefully, painfully, I spoke. "Didn't you… want to?"

She yowled in anguish. "No, no, no! I mean, I did, but no! Not a kit, not you!" She hastily ran over to me and licked my wounds.

I was still confused, but her licks soothed me, and I spoke to her. "Who are you? Where are you from?"

She paused. "I… have no name." So we were alike. "I am from a place I can not return to. A forest of lies."

Forest.

Fireworks exploded in my head as I jerked it upwards. With a yowl of pain, I sat it back down again. "Take… me… I have to… go there…"

"The… the forest? You are a kit, you have horrible injuries, it's no place for you! Why would anyone in their right mind…" She was angry again, and I found I liked her much more when she was fearsome rather than motherly. "Please… I… I need to go! It's my path! I need to be there!"

She looked slowly at me. "You will not survive on your own. I can not stay there. And would you trust a complete stranger to bring you there safely?"

"I would trust you. And I won't be alone there."

Somehow I knew. This strange cat would take me there. And the tom from my dream, he knew. He would be with me. I would not be alone.