Emery

Of course, a crooked little tail no longer than a forearm would catch the intrigue of a young and empty man. Simply because the weather was much too frigid for anyone, let alone a kitten that could fit in a palm. Much rather than admitting he would love to see the house warm and a little hectic again, the excuse of dropping temperatures could serve enough.

The man, trying to be inconspicuous, knew that if anyone were around to see this he would be avoided, or mocked. But kittens were different, and this special one saw him with only the warmest intentions. hurriedly, and the kitten playfully went around in circles around a lamppost running from the man trying to capture. Coming to a stalemate the man slid down the post, and the kitten came to him instead, purring in a soothing and purposeful way. 

He could only sigh in content and gaze down to what he believed to be his future of parenting. Emery would be a suitable name. This kitten was a girl, so he knew exactly what to name her. A name that can soothe his soul at any point, just like her purring had. Soon the lights turned on, signaling the beginning of dusk. Yet the skies were more grey than anything.

Just like that, the small child had stretched, looked back one more time, and then bolted for the tall reeds that painting the sides of the road. The man froze and panicked, he then trampled through the unkempt greenery after the newly named kitten. Sweating more as time went on, she kept running as if playing a game with him. As the sun began to disappear, he had begun to lose his visibility only chasing after the high-pitched sounds let out by the tiny beast. they used to play when he was a child, strangely familiar to this. One would call out, while the other blind folded player tried to locate them. 

His thighs were surely burning and crying out as they began to ascend a great hill, atop an even greater tree, shown with pride from the landscape below. The top looked over the cove of the same reeds he had trampled over seconds ago. As if they were the baby hairs of a peach, in a fragile system flowing in the wind with the dead leaves. One could say they were the hymns of the temperatures dropping even lower and the cold nipping even harsher. Reaching the top of what felt like a life-or-death stretch, the man looked around hearing no more peeps disturbing the peace.

He called out, his voice hoarse from the chill of jack frosts kiss. Yet he still screamed her name, until he heard the quietest meow. Like a dainty snowflake, the ones that had begun to fall from the godly forbidden clouds that shielded the living from the much-needed warmth. To his surprise the sound came from behind his back and looking upwards he remembered that little crooked tail.

A warm smile was placed on his face as he fell backwards towards the earth the child directly above him now on a thick branch. Many wrinkles adorned this tree to show the wisdom given with its time, and the man couldn’t help but make this point in his own narrative. Recalling one of the happiest moments of his life. Emery had begun to make her way off the place holder, and onto what looked to be her rightful spot. Atop a man’s chest who’s too gone in his own jail of a mind to notice anything else in the moment.

“Time may give some wisdom, but others experience more in ten minutes than what some can in ten years.”

Her words echoed through his head almost like a drumbeat were vibrating his skull. The cat having enough of this stepped on his neck, forcing him to regain what little attention he had left to focus on the now more grown cat. The cat had seemed to grow in the little span of their cat and mouse chase to become a young adduct.

The man shaking off this outwardly occurrence to be his mistaking in the cats age in first place. But it was obvious he decided it mattered to none. Only then he sat up transferring the snuggled and tucked cat to his lap did he realize where he was. The cat peered up at the man to watch his face twist into a sorrowful grimace. The ugly crevices between his brows, carving out his mouth, and wrinkling his chin had seemed to know their place all too well on the man’s skin. 

A man who was dissolving like he had been submerged in acid is the only way to describe the innards of his soul. The sky had become more than just a grey nonconsequential pattern, but a beautiful array of bright colors that even a person who was born without any tastebuds grasp the flavor brought upon by mother nature. But these orange colors did nothing but make the man weep into his own shaking numb palms, the act itself brought him to question if he was indeed real. The cat never once broke its curious stare, even when the droplets of salt made its way to its body.

The cat watched for a long time until the man’s eyes looked more lifeless than a dolls, only then did she stretch and lick the stream from his reddened face. As if she was running on a clock, the sun begun to go down, and the stars had begun to show up one by one, effortlessly. The two stayed there watching them pop out until he had fully calmed down, and the veins that popped out had made their way back to their normalcy. 

Throughout this whole experience he hadn’t made a noise, not a shuffle of movement, he was living as a statue. Getting up slowly Emery had purred and rubbed, twisting and turning, through the pattern of his walk. He approached the back of the tree with the stature of a machine, having no flaws but also no life.

There was a clumsily heart shaved into the tree that held the initial of a woman whose face he couldn’t bear to look at. It’d been months, yet everywhere he goes, every time he breathes, everything he feels is her essence in a whole. He touched the carving, being sent back to the time they made it, and then the time they added to it.

It was their first date, and it seemed to have a hazy orange filter to the sky, the day was too hot, and the wind not enough. But the laughter of the couple were enough to make them forget anything around them. The picnic they had almost been left untouched, both too nervous to eat, and too talkative to find space in between to fill their mouths. When they had realized they stayed out for much too late, they laughed because they knew they would be in trouble regardless. As a goodbye and a promise for another rendezvous, they carved the initials into the old and wise tree, “E+W”.

Then the second promise was made, making the colors from the recent sunset look dull. they were cloud watching and waiting for the spread of hues to appear. Right when they did, she, Emery, let out a small laugh, and ran behind the tree lazily skipped away from the man, Will. He followed in suit laughing after her, and when he finally caught her, he lifted her into the air, twirling until they fell back down onto their dreamlike blanket once more. 

The man became utterly speechless, looking at the woman laying on him, her smile with the dusk appearing behind her, the small frays of her hair wisping about with a mind of their own, her cheeks slightly colored in with rose; and her eyes twinkling without a hint of unease, only love. She sat up on his lap and he followed her lead as well, facing each other she pulled a flower plucked from the field. Some would only consider it to be a weed, but Will knew that to this woman it much more deserving than the title people brandished it with. It was pulled into a circular shape. The petals reaching towards the cotton dancing in the blue ocean above. 

“Will you marry me?”

A simple four words, and his heart stopped. The woman reddening by the second, got off the man and began to stand, when explosively he shot his hand up and pulled her back down with the most joyful smile, “Yes, is there even a chance I would say no?”

Again, the area was littered with the melody of their laughter as they carved a heart around the initials.

Sharp, and short, a pain entered the man’s consciousness as he looked down to find an impatient elderly cat. Will stood confused as this cat clearly had the same markings and voice but lead a completely different stature and grace. Weakly, the cat had begun to trot again down the hill, and towards the woods. Either kitten or elderly, he made his mind to care and love for it, so he followed with no hesitance. What felt to the man to be a mere manner of minutes had been hours of gazing at the tree. Yet when he finally left, whether he consciously knew it or not, had been a feeling of relief.

When he met the reeds resistance, they welcomed him in with tiny little stars lighting the whole pathway that had been made by the crooked tail in front of him, leading towards the forest. The bugs had begun a domino effect, the deeper they walked in the more had begun to awake and alight. He knew where they were going, and every step he made became heavier and heavier. The lead dripped down his legs like poison, he had to stop walking eventually to know the gravity of what was to come about. 

The worsening cat lied down with hurried breathing, trying to be patient for the broken man. Starting to walk again the cat took its final steps around the bend and came to clearing that held a cold protruding stone. The name printed with the only woman will ever truly loved. 

Emery lied down once more underneath the heavy identical name, looking to the man. The man approached slowly and quietly, but he had more life than the cat had ever seen him with in their short time together. His eyes were full of depth, and he finally let the dam break, he bellowed out in the quiet but content forest. Sobbing desperately towards the moon, shaking from the repercussions of such intense emotion.

Only after he lost his voice had the weariness sunk into his bones. He feebly looked down at the once more aged cat. He smiled. Ever since her death he hadn’t smiled, or cried, the only thing he knew was bitter anger. The cat began to purr, but also began to lose the ability to keep her eyes open. Will knew in his heart, she wasn’t his to keep, only to love.

At the end of their farewell, he picked her from her resting spot, and held her in his arms cradling like a mother and her newborn. Soon the little stars that had surrounded us began to land on her, one by one, like how they awoke in the dark abyss led by the moon. Still when the last had landed covering the frail and bony body, his own little star had formed in his arms. A final tear slipped from wills eye, dropping as soon as the weight had faded away at last.