Chapter 22

I'm in the woods again, but this time things look… different, I feel younger for my vision is lower and closer to the ground, making everything around me look big and threatening, and yet they smell of adventure and unexplored new grounds that prompt me to explore forward.

I move quietly about, knowing just how dangerous it can be if anyone finds me out, especially when I get closer and closer to the borders of the woods as the tree trunks grow scarcer and apart as the smell of smoke and metal is carried by the wind in my direction, so vivid that I can almost taste it.

Once I can feel the path change from the root filled earth to the once smooth pavement of the city I'm truly on guard, looking around the stretching out buildings that long ago were used in some way, but now only added to the picturesque view, some with traces of having been burn, crooking to the side and even blocking the once straight paths, most with open space for windows as the glass was one of the first things to go once nature took over, easily breakable in the chaos that unfolded.

And still, even if as broken and precarious as is, that is still where I'm going, the eerie silence dragging and making me almost jump at any sound, but I knew if they found me I would not even notice before having my neck pierced.

So I'm lucky to see them first when a line of lanterns light the way up above, a low voice sounding high enough to bring myself into hiding, but low enough to masquerade the words spoken.

And yet from where I am I can still see enough to tell some things apart, like the ones at the front and the back that held the high lanterns with them, making it look like a ghost parade, and how the individuals in the middle would wear ragged clothes and have heavy feet, dragging their bodies along with the rattle of chains to keep they company, bound to each other by their necks as they bow their heads not only to see the unstable path in the dark, but to keep their heads over their necks as to not invite trouble, more trouble that is.

I wait for them to pass, not once thinking of saving these people and only focusing on surviving for if a group of people like that could not deal with those two, much less I alone.

Plus it has not been the first time I've seen such a thing… and it probably would not be the last.

Once they are gone and I've waited enough for them to put some distance between us I jump over a yellow full of weeds car to reach a half broken metal stair, and as it creaks under my weight it holds on poorly against the brick wall, pending and complaining with each step I give upwards, and pacing over shattered glass I enter one of the broken windows, twisting my nose at the smell of something citric mixing with a rotting odor, and moving up inside the abandoned building I mark the dusty floor path with my footsteps.

The halls grow darker the deeper I go in, but still I persist and guide myself with the spare moonlight that gets past the open windows, their broken glass entries letting the wind in to blow a ghostly life inside those rooms, but barely reaching the still dusty halls that I'm at.

And yet, even at such desolating looking place I still go deeper and deeper into it, until the corridors are crooked by the mysterious force that once pushed the buildings and streets apart and cracked the floors and walls all around, enough so to have made a hole on the ceiling that not only let some moonlight in, but let plants grown bellow around the pond of water made by the rain that still sometimes threatens to fall with some looming thunder from time to time.

But, beyond my expectations, that is where I see the most shocking part of this dream, for I approach that side of the room and pass by that small clean pool of water, and as the silver lightning hits the surface I'm able to see my own reflection on it… and realize just why I had been so small, on how I could move the way I did thus far without breaking all my bones my falling on the ground.

Because looking back at me was a pair of green cat eyes framed by a strapped red fur coated body.

The figure stares back at me, and blinks when I blink, and as my mind is slow to realize that that image is of the body that I am, and that somewhat I'm in a cat form in this dream, the vision does not stop and wait for my mind to catch up as the creature moves pass the water puddle, but still the shock is enough for my mind to start waking up, and as the trance slips away from me the last vision I see is from outstretched hands that pull me closer, and a face blurred by the morning sun that comes from my window.

Then I wake up, but soon after half close my eyes for there is a straight line of sunlight on my face, not as strong because of the ever so present clouds up above, but bright enough to wake me and make the day in this place look a little brighter and more orange than the true nighttime.

Still it is strangely dark enough to mess with my sleep schedule as is, just one more problem to add to many others, but nothing I would have myself worrying about right now though.

I stay there for a few moments, just staring at the ceiling and absorbing the strange dream I had, for it has not been the first time I've seen my past life, the dystopian world I used to live in, but is the first to see it from the perspective of a cat, which makes me wonder if, this time around, it had been truly a dream mixing up my past memories, or if there was something else in it entirely.

Or perhaps I had always believed in these memories, thinking that I'm not that creative to image such complex things while asleep, but it all may have been just something in my head from the beginning.

Still… it would not explain how I knew so much about the supernatural, and accurate things at that.

I sigh, forget about it, I think, is just a dream, and the reality right now asks much of me as is, no need to add fuel to the fire.

I look outside the window once more, and only after a few lazy minutes I get up to face the day ahead of me.

And perhaps stop running from reality and start facing it for once.