Woodcat

Drizzle soaked through her skirts and trickled down her neck. She hated outdoors.

"What am I doing out here anyway?" she mumbled under her breath as she trudged. A miasma of lonliness surrounded her, a tangible weight pulling her head and shoulders down until she was visibly stooped. Her mood was as gray as the afternoon she walked through.

Her thoughts drifted back over the last year. Disaster after disaster had hounded her at every turn. House lost, husband run off, family too far away for comfort, too new in the village to grow close to anyone. "What am I doing here?" Tears dripped down her face to combine with the misty rain. She kept walking. Even the trees seemed to weep with her.

She was too shy to reach out and make friends. The few the people she did meet took her innate shyness for unfeeling coldness and turned their noses up at her. Most afternoons she sat staring out her tiny window, waiting for night to fall so she could retreat to her bed and the oblivion of sleep. This afternoon was different. A strange restlessness had badgered her until she could no longer sit still. It drove her into a cloak and out into the woods on a dreary, wet, miserable afternoon.

Twice she'd started to turn back thinking she was crazy to be out in this mess. But each time she started to turn back it was as if the air itself was pushing her onward.

"Oh well!" She kept walking. A half formed thought at the back of her mind saw this as a possible end to her suffering. I’ll just walk and walk until I drop over and fall asleep. Maybe in the night something will eat me.

She wandered not caring that she was probably lost, simply driven to keep going. She was so deep in her despair that she didn't realize that she wasn't wandering aimlessly but in a definite direction. Hours passed and still she walked, head down, eyes unseeing, until she stumbled over a root in the path and splatted face first in the mud.

She just lay there, eyes closed, unmoving, barely shifting her head to breathe. She knew it was dark and that she should get up, and go home, but she didn't care. Perhaps her empty soul had finally given up and led her out here to die. The dark was complete. She slipped in and out of consciousness for hours.

Then strangely, as she drifted to the surface of wakefulness, a warm glow teased at her eyelids, begging them to open just the tiniest bit. She was cold to the bone and every muscle ached, but somehow the despair was gone. The glow stayed. Slowly she cracked one eye.

She jerked up with a gasp! Then she bent low and looked again. It hadn't moved. She looked closer. Huge gold eyes stared into hers.

"I am not an it!" The voice reverberated in her skull.

"What?"

"I am not an it." It was quieter this time as if learning control. "I am here for you. You need me."

She reached down gingerly, not quite believing he was real. A furry head bumped under her hand demanding caresses. Laughter bubbled up from deep in her chest. She leaned over and scooped up the bundle of fur and claws and was rewarded by a vibrating purr. "You're a woodcat!"

He snuggled under her chin pushing his way under her cloak. "I hate rain. Take me home!" He demanded.

Her laughter rippled now. She strode home, head up cuddling the cat, knowing she'd never be lonely again. Woodcats never left a bond mate until death.