Seven Days of Spooky: day 4
Oct. 28th, 2006 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
illwyndCat’s Eye
Author: illwynd
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: A decade ago Berúthiel was sent away from Gondor, but she has not yet been forgotten by Men... or beasts.
x-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lotr_fanfiction
The moon was a yellow slit in the darkness, a shining cat’s-eye that shone reflected in the River. The people were all shut up safely in their houses, and the streets were mine. I held my tail high and out of the dirt of the gutter as I wandered. My whiskers twitched at a scent—someone had dropped an apple-core, still sticky on the ends with bits of crushed nuts and a thick sweet coating. I hunched over it, eating, my fur puffed out in contentment. There was no reason to drag this delicacy back to my burrow just yet; there was nothing to fear tonight. I had heard the yearly commotion hours before. It had startled me from sleep for long enough to peer out and see people rushing past with brooms in their hands, and a coal-black cat dashing madly before them.
I remember the story told to me and my siblings by our grandfather. He was an old rat by then, so tired and worn that he barely bothered to groom his matted fur anymore, but he was also old enough to remember a day in his youth when, for the first time, the cats—awful vicious beasts who killed our kind—were driven from the city. There had been an air of festivity to the day, he said, though people spoke in hushed tones of some woman who had been sent away at last. Only a handful of cats were allowed to remain, “useful” ones with striped or mottled coats, and even those were kept indoors that day. And every year since, on that same day, the people would frighten away the cats. They wouldn’t harm them (though I would not mind if they did) but at least it meant that for one night, the city was safe for us. We relished the opportunity, so near to winter, to fill up on all the food we could reach.
I sat back on my haunches to lick the sweetness from my paws, and glanced skyward, towards the moon. But something blocked my view. I blinked to clear my vision.
Two cat’s-eyes towered over me, gleaming yellowly against the darkness. I didn’t even have time to scream.
Author: illwynd
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: A decade ago Berúthiel was sent away from Gondor, but she has not yet been forgotten by Men... or beasts.
x-posted to
lotr_fanfictionThe moon was a yellow slit in the darkness, a shining cat’s-eye that shone reflected in the River. The people were all shut up safely in their houses, and the streets were mine. I held my tail high and out of the dirt of the gutter as I wandered. My whiskers twitched at a scent—someone had dropped an apple-core, still sticky on the ends with bits of crushed nuts and a thick sweet coating. I hunched over it, eating, my fur puffed out in contentment. There was no reason to drag this delicacy back to my burrow just yet; there was nothing to fear tonight. I had heard the yearly commotion hours before. It had startled me from sleep for long enough to peer out and see people rushing past with brooms in their hands, and a coal-black cat dashing madly before them.
I remember the story told to me and my siblings by our grandfather. He was an old rat by then, so tired and worn that he barely bothered to groom his matted fur anymore, but he was also old enough to remember a day in his youth when, for the first time, the cats—awful vicious beasts who killed our kind—were driven from the city. There had been an air of festivity to the day, he said, though people spoke in hushed tones of some woman who had been sent away at last. Only a handful of cats were allowed to remain, “useful” ones with striped or mottled coats, and even those were kept indoors that day. And every year since, on that same day, the people would frighten away the cats. They wouldn’t harm them (though I would not mind if they did) but at least it meant that for one night, the city was safe for us. We relished the opportunity, so near to winter, to fill up on all the food we could reach.
I sat back on my haunches to lick the sweetness from my paws, and glanced skyward, towards the moon. But something blocked my view. I blinked to clear my vision.
Two cat’s-eyes towered over me, gleaming yellowly against the darkness. I didn’t even have time to scream.