[SSS] Staring at Sunsets

Two sets of pawsteps pattered against the hard stone of each rooftop. Swallowtail sped behind the yellow spotted sire in front, feeling the sharp crunch of gravel and rubble dig into her pads with every heavy step.

Ahead, Sunnywink ran like the terrain didn’t bother him at all; which was probably true, he had grown up in this towering stone forest–a “city” he had called it. Herself feels a sting of anxiety –otherness– without this sire to naturalize it. Claws should not scrape against stone with every step, the tallest objects should be trees swaying in the wind, and water should run with the ground instead of from dripping chutes. 

No cat has told Sunnywink this, apparently; the one-eyed sire yowls in bright excitement as he leaps across the gap between the next building. 

“Swallowtail! Look at this!” 

The sapphire dam’s leap is far less graceful. She nearly misses the building entirely and scrapes at the rooftop’s edge to pull herself up. Her pads sting from the heavy battering they’ve since endured. 

“What’s so exciting? Is it more buildings?” her tone was heavy with bile, “I’m so exhausted, I think I’m going to lose my lunch…” 

She sits near the edge to tend to her cracked paw, though her eyes linger with hunger when spotting a far-off pigeon pecking at something scrabbly and green in the cracked stone.

The sire huffs at her inattention. “Just look.”

She obliges him and follows his eye across the cold, unnatural landscape. Tall, sharp-edged stone buildings sprout from the identically hard ground. Nearly as far as she can see moss and ivy creep across brick and concrete surfaces, grasping for hold in stone and brick in the absence of bark and branch. Every crack and pebble home to only the most stubborn of plants.

Yet the sky was the same. On the rooftop, there was no foliage to filter the warm light of the setting sun. Deep, opalescent swirls of violet and rose settled over the horizon. The last filtered beams of warm sunlight struck the front faces of every building and street, leaving deep, cool shadows in their wake. Below, the towering buildings cast lengthy shadows which engulfed the ground, but the rooftop was still awash with light. 

Her breath catches in her chest. Starstruck, she barely feels his breath by her side. 

His words nearly don’t register in her mind.

“Lately… I think the city was waiting for you,” the sire inched ever slightly closer. “Everything is more beautiful since you’ve stayed.”

His yellow eye flickers to her. “For me… waiting?”

Sunnywink is out of words now, settles a small measure beside her to look at the sunset. Swallowtail closes the gap but for a hair’s span, prickling all over from the view–and the sire who led her to it.