Dark, Obsidian wings spread themselves out in the air, straightening into a line as the Eagle soared, out into the circle of the big, glowing sun. To-mas and I sat there, watching the Eagle fly away into the distance.
We stood there, the both of us, genuinely confused. For a moment we forgot that we were foes, pushing the chase and retreat of our cat versus mouse to the back of our minds. In comparison to the Eagle, our fight seemed to be nothing more than a game.
To-mas and I were both silent. I swallowed, my eyes widened, daring not to move at all. The Cat was a statue; the furs on his body straighter than a line, the curvature on his back reminding me of the arch to the door of our peephole.
There was nothing but quietness that existed at that moment. The Eagle had left, but yet there was this heaviness that still hung in the air. This intensifying heat, this rigidity in the breeze, as if someone had taken it by the throat and strangled it of life.
Steadily, I rose up from my cower, but something stopped me.
I realized my claws were firmly hooked into the wood, that I could not move. I really anchored them in there. Easing away from the wood, I began pushing on my feet and pulling myself back; My claws gradually rose out of the wood, inch by inch, blood dripping from the innards of my finger.
After that ordeal I placed my paws up to my face.
They were trembling, bruised, and red.
I was gripping onto the wood for dear life, afraid that the Eagle perched would have picked me up and trampled my body with its huge, iron clamped beaks. Sighing, I gazed out into the morning sky.
The bird was nothing but a black, far away dot now. Looking back and replaying everything in my head, I still could not understand why she flew away so suddenly.
Even when I rolled it over from her point of view, nothing made sense.
I'm a Mother that just gave birth to her wonderful babies. I love my babies. I nourish them, sacrifice for them, I get up early in the morning to get food for them.
Then, one day whilst I'm out to gather food for my babies, a greedy, measly cat comes, taking my child away from me. Forever.
The hatred. The demise that I would wish for that Feline...I would take any and every opportunity to make him suffer. Nothing would bring me peace, except his torture. That would be my only solace.
It was painful having someone that you loved taken away from you. Especially when it was right in front of your face, like my brothers and my mother was. I was so depressed afterward that I tried to take my own life....So I could only imagine the pain that she felt.
That Eagle had the perfect opportunity to exact revenge on To-mas' life. He was right on the edge of a limb, an inch away from having a great, death certifying, fall. At his position there was no backing, no running. She could have grabbed him with those sharp, crusty talons and carried him away to her den, picked him apart and fed him to her kids. She could have pushed him off the branch, watch him fall to his death, and then eat his squirming, wrangling body as the blood floated around it on the ground. There were so many things she could have done.
But yet, she did nothing.
She wasted the chance to get her revenge. Or...she just didn't want it anymore?
Well, if you didn't want it...why come on the tree and threaten him in the first place?? Why go through all that???
Why?
I went through so much guilt. So much pain, physiologically, mentally and physically.
I watched the people I love die around me in drones. I watched them die, and I decided to die myself.
Mother Sharp and Cheesy visiting me from the other side was a God sent hope. It was my faith renewed and restored in myself.
Once again, I believed in the power I had. I knew there was power within me, I was certain of it.
But I guess it wasn't supposed to be that way.
Every time that I had the faith to believe, Life gave me more and more reasons why I shouldn't. It gave me more reasons to fear, put me in more dire situations, tripled my pain.
A few days ago I was holding Sharp's head in my lap and begging him to stay with me while he bleed out and died.
Weeks before that I watched the cat gobble up my mother like she was a feast to be had.
And I still had nightmare of Chessy's body floating around in the water...
Now I was stuck on top of a ledge that was a million feet up in the sky, stuck between a greater evil, and a lesser evil, both of them fully capable of taking my life without blinking an eye. One of them choosing not to and flying away, confusing me, and the other evil that I was so profusely afraid of. I looked over to To-mas.
The Cat stood there; his body stiffened in fear.
His back was rounded still, fierce, furrowed eyes that seemed not to blink, every inch of his fur still spikey.
To-mas was in a frenzied state, and that, shocked me.
He sensed that I was watching him and changed his demeanor, quickly placing his paw down, straightening his back and pushing his chest out. The tension in his eyebrows released, his eyes cool and steady.
Placing his paw to his mouth, he licked it casually, as if nothing happened. He breathed, sighing like a heavy weight had just been lifted off of his chest.
To-mas. The blood sucking, flesh eating, greedy malignant cat that tortured me and my Family at any opportunity.
His sharp fangs. Those even sharper claws, his size that towered over me. His menacing, manipulative ways...From the very first day that he stepped foot into the Giant's holdings, I considered To-mas to be the Devil himself. He was the predator, hunting rodents down and mauling them, only to satisfy his hunger.
I was the prey. I figured that giving the size and structure of my species, I'd spend my whole life dealing with fear from being hunted by those bigger and stronger than I was. This feeling and I became so acquainted, that I mistook it as a part of myself.
"That's just how life works" was what I chucked it up to. "It can't be helped, there's nothing I can do about it"
On this very day, I saw that those things weren't true.
To see To-mas in that position of being lesser than. To see him being so painfully aware that his mortality could be swapped away from him, in an instant.
The Eagle placed him in the same position he placed me in so many times, and that, has made me very conscious of something. Something that had been in front of me this whole time. Something I ignored. Something that was so so simple.
I realized that To-mas wasn't any different than I was. In fact, we were the same.
No. We were not the same species. He's a Cat and I am a rodent. That much was clear. In logical terms, It would be foolish to state otherwise.
The point was that we had the same life. We are both alive. We both have energy. We both can run, jump, hide, reason think. We both had the capacity to feel fear, to feel emotion. We both can get sick; we both can die.
The whole time living in the Giant's holdings, I thought of him as some evil, supernatural being that was out to kill us. He's so much bigger than me, so much stronger and faster, so he must be better than me. That was what I always thought.
Today that Eagle humiliated To-mas. He minimized him, humbled him.
Which meant that apart from To-mas structure and how he looked physically, there was nothing that set me and him apart. He was not some magical, mystical imp that was sent by The Devil to taunt us. He was just a Cat.
And I'd be damned if I was afraid of a Cat.
Reflecting on that my anxiety left, it getting up and flying away into the distance along with the bird. There was a lightness that settled on me. Like a cloud or just, warm droplets of rainwater. A bounciness, a feeling of joy and presence.
I bowed my head to the branch, exhaling.
The corners of my face began to rise progressively. Soon, sounds of sniggered chuckles escaped my lips. I covered my mouth, trying to hold them back, the cackles came through the space of my fingers.
To-mas halted amidst grooming himself, his eyes laser focused on me.
By this time, I was having a blast. My head buckled back, tears dropped onto my shoulder from the corners of my eye, trying to hold my breaths in between.
I was experiencing laughter for the very first time. It was so pure, so unfiltered. It was beautiful. The type that wrenched your gut, contracting the muscles in your stomach because you weren't able to catch yourself. My Jaw even started to hurt.
Too long it had been since I laughed like this. Feeling something else other than fear, depression or sadness was so...exhilarating. I forgot how good it felt to be happy..
A range of thoughts went through To-mas' head. He looked at the scoundrel with judgmental, scrutinizing eyes. He lowered his gaze and twisted his head to the side, trying to grasp what exactly was going on.
The rat is laughing. Why??? How??? After such an intense situation, was he not aware how close that thing was to killing him? That damned Eagle could've dipped his measly rodent body into his beak and sucked all the flesh off of his bones, swallowing him with one pull, without a second thought.
The Eagle could've eaten me too. He obviously was there for me, and if he could defeat me...
What was a measly, squeaky, sack of shit, bones and flesh going to do?
Nothing. Those rats had the power to do nothing but quell over and die. They were nothing but food sources...or parasitic, germ spreading worms, like the Humans viewed them. And here one is, laughing away as if The Eagle and him were friends behind the scenes deciding to get back on that "greedy" cat.
"And just what in hell's name are you gawking at, rat? The Eagle was about to swallow you whole and you find that funny??? You lousy low life's really have no self-respect. " He got up, tipping on his toes and striding towards me. The light from the sun glowed on the rims of his eyes, lines of pitch-black slots that went from one extreme to the next; seeded in a sinister sea of yellow green. He hissed aggressively, baring his fangs.
He was so close to me, I could smell the rusty, metalic stench of blood on his breath.
Our eyes meet.
I stood there, motionless.
There was no part of me that was afraid of him. I felt nothing looking at him. Devoid of any emotion or feeling.
Confusion started to mirror itself through scrunched up flaps of skin above his eyebrows, around the corners of his whiskers, under his nose. He noticed that I wasn't flinching as much as he wanted me to. I wasn't jumpy or skippy. My breath didn't lose itself and try to escape through my lungs.
I was free. Free from the internal torment.
And that, freed me from my fear of him.
The Feline rose his head up, his eyes probing me even more. He rushed over to my face, peeling back his sharp, curved fangs, growling.
I sat there, blinking slowly at him.
To-mas had to be the most arrogant, idiotic, Feline I had ever seen. Instead of taking his losses and getting to a place of safety, he still insisted that I became afraid of him. He still wanted me to bow to him, to submit.
Why would I submit to something that was the same as me?
Scoffing, I turned away from him, limping my way back to the trunk to climb down and head out. To-mas pulled his head back, his eye narrowing at the insolence.
A wave of rage engulfed the cat and he sprung up, running behind me.
I unsheathed my claws.
When he came close enough, I spun around, swiping my claws against his pink, soft nose. digging into his flesh.
"Rawwaarrarar!!!!" To-mas reared back at the pain. Holding his nose, he paused. He stopped, focusing on me intently.
''You insolent, miniscule, scum eating parasitic fleabag!!! Do you know who your messing with?? You better remember your place rat, before i-"
"Before you what??? Hmm??? What are you going to do To-mas???" I asked.
With a raised eyebrow he hissed begrudgingly, opening up his mouth to speak again.
"I-ll bite your-"
"Ohhh can it. What??You'll chew me up and spit me out, you'll claw me to death, you'lll this, you'll that. Just now that Eagle was about to destroy you and he flew off. Instead of getting away from here and considering yourself lucky, your still bent on getting at me because I'm a rat and I'm supposed to be afraid of you???" My voice was to the top of its notch while I beamed To-mas directly into his eyes.
"And here I was thinking cats are clever. Look, you've made your point okay?" To-mas sat there with his mouth open, wordlessly trying to get his speech together but being unable to.
"You killed my Mother. You coerced my idiot brother into thinking that Mom's death was his fault, to draw him to you. Your bigger, your stronger, your...not smart. I'd more say manipulative. the point is you've proven yourself nothing To-mas.'" I paused, walking up closer to him.
" You think your so much better than me. You think that you, being a Cat, you're the most while I, the mouse, was nothing. You assumed that all I would ever be in my life was prey, and you reminded me of that every day." As I walked closer to To-mas, he inched back, his mouth parted, eyes opened wide.
I lowered my head.
"Ohhh but today. You weren't the rat gobbling, fang baring, vicious cat that towered over me. No." I came close, whispering in his ear.
"Today that Eagle showed me exactly who you are. A weak, fearful, insecure, greedy puss that enjoys seeing others suffer, only because he enjoys seeing himself suffer. Without those fangs and cat reflexes, what are you? Nothing. Your just like me. Your hunted preyed upon for your flesh. Your nothing To-mas. Nothing, but prey".
I spun on my heels and headed for the tree trunk, steadily limping toward it.
To-mas stood there, his mouth opened, speaking nothing but wordless air.
Tho-mas was..speechless. In his wounded, hurt ego; not comprehending what just happened. He bowed hid head, not fully coming to terms with what was happening.
A rat...a rat??? An unintelligent, inferior, rat???? Telling him what to do?? Of all things???
"No no no no..." He got up and bounced behind the mouse, refusing to accept a telling from something that could not in any dimension of space and time, compare to him. He got right behind the rodent and jumped over him, landing in front of him.
Burrow looked up to the cat.
The rodent knew he should have known better than to think To-mas would leave him alone. His pride would never let him just walk away. Burrow closed his eyes and sighed, knowing full well what he had to do.
"You'll never let this go won't you" he said.
"I'll let go when your dead!!!"
To-mas lunged forward and lashed at me; I rose on my hindlegs and dodged the strike; Up on my two he saw that my stomach was open for attack. He jabbed his claw into my stomach, I yelped, my body going loose at the hot, sweltering pain.
I staggered back, my feet slipping over the edge of the limb, my body going off the branch and into midair.
Quickly I pushed my arms out, clawing into the wood vainly. I felt the horror coming up in my stomach as I watched my nails slid over the wood like water across a duck's back, completely missing the hook and falling off the ledge.
I was going down, further and further away from To-mas, pushing my arms out, grabbing nothing but air, hopelessly.
As my body descended through the air, I closed my eyes and thought about them.
There was a movie playing out in my head. I was reliving everything. Sharp's loud mouthed, rough explicative language. Mother and her morning rants of near-death adventures. Sharp and I running behind Cheesy with the stick, going about the Kitchen Island. How disgusted I felt when I sat by the table and watched Cheesy shove every marcel of food on his plate into his mouth. The fights Sharp and I used to get into. How annoyed I got at him calling me ''Mother's Only begotten Son" all the time. Mother, hugging me and telling me how proud she is that I became so responsible. All the times. All the times I had with them, came rushing back.
It was just the three of them. Sharp, Cheesy, Mother Mince. I could see them all on that calm, peaceful bridge in the dream they visited me in. They were on that bridge, nodding their heads in approval, smiling at me as if they were welcoming me home. I felt at ease. They had no idea how much I loved seeing those smiles. This was what I wanted to see. The tears welled up in my eyes, flying up into the air as I zipped down the plunge.
I didn't feel anything. For some reason, I couldn't feel the sores and bruises that covered me anymore. I thought falling to my Death would have been terrifying. Panicking.
Sailing through the air I felt nothing but peace. This felt more like flying, not falling; and as I flew, I could hear her saying it. I could hear my Mother..
"Burrow. The most important thing in this life is courage, and faith. With these two things you will get through the worst of times. No matter how hard the situation gets, have faith! Don't worry about the circumstances. Just have faith in the now, and faith, will show you the way. Always."
"I'm sorry I didn't have enough faith Mother. I failed you" I whispered.
The rodent's mangled body descended further and further into the distance, approaching the hard, unwelcoming surface of the ground.
*******************************************************************************
To-mas gently licked the blood and meat stuck between his claws; sitting comfortably on the branch of the tree. The cat was content in his victory. He got to watch that loathsome rat suffer for his insolence, thoroughly, and he enjoyed every moment of the pain he endured to watch that stinky rat fall to his death. He deserved it for the embarrassment him and his parasitic put him through. Cats weren't supposed to be almost blinded, or even fought by those weak, fragile flesh bags. His mind wondered to his family, knowing that they would have disowned him had they known the amount pf nonsense those rodents put him through. Nevertheless, he still won the fight, being the stronger, quicker species. He aligned the pecking order, and as he watched the limp, lifeless body descend thousands of feet to its death, he felt nothing, but utter and complete pride.
Burrow was just a rat. A meal to be had, a thing to play with. Convenient little appetizers that weren't even the top of the food chain.
They weren't supposed to feel superior to anyone. Cats eat rats. Birds and dogs as well. To-mas simply concluded that their purpose was to be eaten. He grew up around his Family eating rats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They were nice delicacies. It was just the order and nature of things, how things are supposed to go. To-mas realized that Mr. Burrow had taken things way too personally when he saw his reaction to seeing his family being devoured. It was life! As a kitten To-mas watched his Mother get flattened by a 60 ton truck and he didn't feel bitter about that. It was just the way of things. Nature was a cruel teacher, and he considered himself its student...The cat shook his head, snapping himself out of his intrusive thoughts.
"Well, he was dead before he hit the ground anyway. That drop will certainly ensure that he's double dead. Damned stubborn rat" To-mas said to himself. He swore that rodent was the most difficult catch that he had ever had. He fully intended to eat him when he hit the ground if his body wasn't too cold. Apart of him didn't want to even indulge in anymore appetite when it came on to that rat. He despised Burrow for how bold he thought he was, he despised all vermin, but Burrow wasn't any ordinary rat. He had given the cat a fight, which was something he hadn't gotten in a long time.
"Hmmmm. Perhaps I've put him through enough. I'll just let him die in peace. The ants or some bird or mongoose can tear his body apart anyway" The cat decided to grant him that mercy, swinging his tail blissfully from side to side as he sat in the most composed stance, on the limb.
"Where did that Eagle come from? Sheesh! Better get out of this damned tree. Yup! I better get out of this godforsaken tree" The cat pounced off the limb and climbed down the tree, jumping from branch to branch, descending lower and lower to the ground. He was only ten feet away now and had never been happier to the grass jutting out of the soft soil. From now on, he would think twice before climbing a tree anytime soon. A glacial shiver creeped up his back as he thought about how terrified he was out on that ledge, with that giant, venomous winged freak. That Eagle could've ended him right there and then, but the power of superiority had stepped in. To-mas knew that even if that bird had attacked him on that ledge, he wasn't going down without a fight. He was ready to drag both of them to hell.
"That bird brain knew not to miss with me" He snickered, giving a smug look and hoping off of one branch, to the next.