Sheridan

“You want me to go into the forest?” Morgan whispered to the black cat on the path in front of her. Its golden eyes shone like mirrors, reflecting Morgan’s phone flashlight, as the cat looked back at the gangly teenager.

“Mrrrrrrrt,” the cat replied before bounding into the trees.

“It’s going to be so hard to see you in there! And I’m not really dressed for this…” Morgan protested, but the cat just chirped again in reply and paused atop a tree stump just inside the darkness of the woods behind their parents’ house, waiting for Morgan to make up their mind.

Morgan sighed and followed the cat after only a moment’s pause, praying to whatever gods might be listening in the dark hours of the chilly, rainy November morning that the cat will stay in the feeble beam of their flashlight. It was their own fault for not dressing to tramp through the damp forest, after all. Their panic upon seeing that Donald Trump had won the 2024 U.S. presidential election had made packing a flurry. All they knew was that they couldn’t stay in Middletown. As a non-binary teenager living in a small town in rural America, Morgan had felt like an outsider for a long time. The election results just confirmed something they already felt: that they didn’t belong and they weren’t wanted in a community that voted overwhelmingly for someone who had spoken against people like Morgan being treated as fully human and full citizens.

Morgan hadn’t had–and didn’t have–a plan for where to go or what to do. They just knew that they had to escape and that their parents, who they felt barely tolerated them anyway, would be no help. So they packed a bag and snuck out of the house into the November rain before sunrise. The cat had bounded out of the darkness to greet them as they reached the end of the driveway. Morgan had always been an animal lover, so they stopped to pet the cat. But after just a few ear scritches, the cat made a noise that sounded an awful lot like “follow me” and trotted towards the woods. Morgan pulled out their phone, turned on the flashlight and ignored the notifications from their friends, and shone the light where the cat had gone. It sat looking back at them, as if to ask, “Are you coming?”

So Morgan had followed, and they kept following through the trees, despite the darkness and the lack of a clear path. The cell phone flashlight barely provided enough light to allow Morgan to avoid tripping on fallen branches. They didn’t worry about being too loud or leaving a trail. They doubted anyone would miss them enough to look for them, anyway. Rain spattered through the branches overhead, making Morgan grateful that they’d at least had the sense to grab their raincoat. The few remaining leaves on the deciduous trees provided little protection against the weather.

The cat mewed periodically, helping Morgan keep track of it as they continued to navigate through the forest. Cold was settling into Morgan’s limbs, but they plodded steadily onward. All the while, their phone kept buzzing with notifications–friends freaking out, Morgan assumed, but they couldn’t stop to text, or else they might lose their guide. And without the cat, Morgan wasn’t sure how long they might survive in the cold and wet, even though they weren’t sure where they were going. How far would they have to walk to reach a city large enough to have Greyhound buses or an accepting queer community? Morgan didn’t know. Middletown wasn’t really close to anywhere worth going, in their estimation, and they hadn’t spent enough time in outdoor pursuits to have any sort of reasonable guess which direction they were traveling, even as the cloudy sky overhead started to lighten.

Morgan’s legs were aching and their pants and shoes were soaked by the time the cat paused again, a silhouette barely visible in a space between two trees that looked remarkably like a doorway, at least in the teen’s sleep-deprived estimation.

“Miaarrrrrrou?” the cat said.

“I’m coming,” Morgan assured, then cursed under their breath as they almost lost their footing on wet leaves. “I hope you haven’t been taking me through poison ivy patches or anything like that.”

“No,” the cat answered. Morgan shook their head and blinked several times.

“Did you just…talk?”

“Mrrrrrt.”

Morgan eyed the cat suspiciously, but after a few moments decided that it was their own mind playing tricks on them and continued after the cat.

On the other side of the tree-framed doorway, the rain stopped. As Morgan continued after the cat, the clouds overhead started to break up, giving way to the beginnings of a sunrise that streaked the sky with gold and pink, purple and orange. Morgan stopped to gape at it, but the cat meowed at them in a way that could only be heard as a scolding and so Morgan continued after it. They wondered why they bothered taking directions from a cat, but it didn’t seem to matter much. The black-furred feline had shown more care and concern for Morgan than they’d gotten from most people in Middletown since they came out as non-binary. Wherever the cat was taking them had to be better than the place they were leaving behind.

The trees started to thin out, and then Morgan found themself in a clearing illuminated by the sunrise. A few cottage-like structures made of wood and animal hides were clustered amongst long grasses and autumn wildflowers. Trees surrounded the clearing on every side, with thick foliage and underbrush around their trunks. Looking back, Morgan couldn’t discern any path that they and the cat might have taken to get there.

As Morgan marveled at their new surroundings, a tall woman in sooty deerhide clothes emerged from the nearest dwelling. The black cat bounded over to her with a chirrup of joy. The woman knelt and petted the cat, scratching around its ears and rubbing its belly as it rolled in the grass. Morgan watched, enjoying the moment but also on edge. They wanted to announce their presence, introduce themself, but something was holding them back. Then the woman looked at Morgan. Her face was ageless, her eyes dark and penetrating, but something about her felt safe to the teen.

“Welcome, Morgan,” she said, rising back to her feet and approaching.

A twinge of panic knotted in Morgan’s belly, but their feet stayed rooted to the ground. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“Call me Esperanza. My friend here told me about you.” She petted the cat again, who was winding between her legs and purring loudly. “Sheridan has an eye for people in need of a safe place to go.”

“Meaning…here? What is this place?” A million other questions were racing through Morgan’s mind, but asking all of them at once wasn’t likely to be helpful, so they tried their best to be patient and get one answer at a time.

“Shelter. A way of life apart from a society that has rejected you. Sheridan tells me you might be interested in something like that.”

Sheridan purred in agreement.

Morgan considered for a moment. What Esperanza was saying sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch somewhere, but the most diplomatic way to handle this was… “People might come looking for me–”

“The path opens only to those with eyes to see, those with true need for a place such as this. Whoever might be looking for you cannot find you here, not without my blessing.” Esperanza waved a hand at the sky. Morgan’s gaze followed the gesture to see a shimmer across the sky overhead. Between that and the black cat, Morgan was suddenly certain that they were in the company of a witch. They hadn’t believed in witches before, but the idea was thrilling rather than frightening. “We are separate from the world you once knew.”

“We?”

As if cued by Morgan’s question, other people started to come out from the primitive buildings nearby. Some were women, some amputees, some children; many were people of color; many carried themselves in a way that suggested to Morgan that they were not straight. All of them smiled and waved at Morgan, making them feel welcome. Their heart started to pound with excitement, and warmth spread through their body, making them forget their wet clothes and aching feet.

“We work together. We care for each other. We live in harmony with nature and work to right what the places we left have done wrong,” Esperanza told Morgan, pulling their attention back to the tall woman with the long dark braid and the black cat at her feet. “Is this a place you would like to call home?”

“Yes,” Morgan agreed instantly. They’d never felt more certain of anything in their life. “Yes, I would like that more than anything.”