Catwalk

The girl sat upon a large fragment of stone that once belonged to another more mammoth in scope, now lost and eroded against the grains of sand and time. She came upon it in the middle of an isolated beach, far from all and close to nothing. The tide lumbered along the shore, its gentle reach like the shallow breaths of a slumbering ocean.

A full moon hung in the sky, its radiance so absolute it allowed only the brightest of stars to shine alongside it. Its reflection in the waters below it became an outstretched monolith of questionable purpose, a shimmering gateway that would forever go untouched.

She had not planned on finding herself here for the last night of her trip, far from home in lands so serene and abandoned, yet here she was. Although not what she had expected, the scene before her was undoubtedly beautiful and would remain with her in memory until the end of her days.

A spectral wisp escaped her lips with every emanation from her lungs, the ghostly plume initiating a spiral dance before fading into nothing. The chill was tolerable, but still she hugged her knees closer to her chest. Down she burrowed her face to absorb the sounds alone, soft winds divulging secrets of the sea in passing. Sleep was fast taking hold of her, the fatigue a convincing argument to leave and rest properly before her journey home. Curiosity gripped her when raised her head.

Slithering trails of jade had infiltrated the night sky, ebbing soundlessly above the moon. Every so often they'd separate and collide without any hindrance to their integrity, cosmic snakes refusing to falter in their journey through the sky. The girl's green, amber flecked eyes appeared luminous as they mirrored the occurrence, their gaze completely fastened. So transfixed was she that the arrival of an obsidian coloured cat went unnoticed until it called to her.

"Holy fuck!" she said, recoiling in shock, heart pounding.

It called to her again, louder this time. Its icy orbs piercing her own in expectance.

"Hello there," she greeted, her fingers tracing the silky furs of the animal's bowed head. A calming sigh escaped her as the cat purred in satisfaction,

From the rock it leapt, parting the sands below with a delicate landing. It sauntered across the white dunes towards the ocean, going so far it ignored the battalion of foamy waters embracing its fur.

"Oh god. Kitty, no," the girl said to herself, also leaping from the rock. The back end of her thighs had numbed during her restful vigil and threw her balance off while landing. She toppled into the sand without any form of grace, hair haphazardly aflutter across her face.

Through a curtain of hair she watched as the cat walked along the surface of the water. Against the reflection of the moon it tread, not an inch of its body submerged in water despite its distance from the shore. It turned back to look at the girl, now standing and shaking sand from the crevasses of her clothing, and called to her once more before continuing forward.

All manner of sense forbade her from going after the feline creature, but she couldn't resist bringing herself to the very edge of the tide, just at the base of the moon's oceanic walkway. Her eyes found the cat's once more and its third and final call provoked something within her to test the impossible solidity of this white path that lay ahead.

Reality miscalculated as she gained solid footing, the platform so flat it could not have been natural. She drove her toes into the water beside the platform and drew it across to gauge its width, but found she would come into contact with nothing despite passing where her foot had just been. She withdrew, this time simply placing her foot forward. Again she found footing. Another step proved the absurdity of it all as the water refused to take her. The cat sat waiting at least fifteen paces ahead, and to it she went, each step fortifying a confidence that had no business existing. She spotted bioluminescent jellyfish bobbing below her.

"Did I die on that rock back there, kitty?" the girl asked as she reached her companion. "Are you taking me on a detour through kitty heaven? That'd be cool. I'll actually just stay there if that's alright."

She received no response. The creature beside her stalked the edge of the platform and began swatting at the slivers of green being reflected from the lights, above. The ripples faded and from that disturbed surface emerged tendrils of that same green incandescence painting the stars, their flowing form encircling both the girl and cat in a winding dance of interwoven complexity. Her senses absorbed the phenomenon in a trance. With her finger she traced the light and it bent accordingly, its routine unbothered.

In her reverie she failed to notice the crystalline edges forming along the primordial lights before her, their bodies taking the shape of various prisms that fell in and out of one another. They coalesced, bending and warping every which way in an oscillation that mimicked the rhythm of the girl's own heartbeat. Their swirl stilled, but nothing else. The surface of these prisms bloomed with all spectrums of colour, refracting the tensions between time and space. As the girl focused on one primary prism, the orchestra of colour contorted to form the scene of a place she had no knowledge of. Through this portal lay a desert wasteland of golden dunes mountainous in size that lay in the backdrop behind a single stone tower. At its peak rested a creature of ill-gotten shape whose spindling limbs lounged across the outer walls. Something disturbed its slumber and from its abode it crept, each of its eight legs making short work of the tower's impressive length. Once the size of the creature became apparent to the girl she quickly focused on another prism.

Again the colours dissipated to give shape to another location, this time a distant view of a planet in its entirety, one whose colour closely resembled that of Earth's. It held only one outstanding feature, a colossal tree whose roots most assuredly were etched into the planet's core, its surface area covering an impressive amount of ground. It had grown well beyond the constraints of the planet's atmosphere, protruding into the furthest reaches of space. It retained normality along the planet's atmosphere, but as it escaped gravity its shape became sporadic with nodes of vegetation bustling in a community of growth. The prism took her closer, awarding her sights of colonies that thrived amongst the sheltered microcosm offered by the tree, its gargantuan size allotting its own perpetual atmosphere. She looked to another.

Her eyes widened when the next prism took form. The contents within its borders evoked a yearning she had not felt in quite some time, locked heart suddenly unbound by shackles of the past. The fractal tapestry before her so in tune with her spirit she couldn’t help laugh. This was the one she wanted. She raised her hand to it, widening the portal completely. High winds from that other world blasted through, drowning more laughter and drying tear stained eyes as she began to go forth. She disappeared completely and so too did the convergence that had occurred around her. Nothing remained but the cat, aptly attending to its fur with brisk swipes of its tongue before continuing once more along the path of the moon.