In a forest where memories drift like mist and time forgets itself, a Cat moved silently beneath the trees.
Each night, as the world slept, she walked through dreams.
Her glowing tail collected the dust of sorrow that clung to children too frightened to cry and adults too tired to remember how.
When she returned to her tree at dawn, she would shake her feathers and let those sorrows fall like seeds into the stream, where they turned into fireflies that danced until morning.
Seasons passed. Sorrows were lifted. The stream sparkled with fireflies.
And one morning, she awoke with only a single feather left.
That was when a child appeared. She walked alone through the forest, the shadow of her mother’s illness clinging to her like winter. The Cat watched. She felt the ache in the child's heart, deep and still and full of quiet hope.
The last feather pulsed with light.
And for the first time, the Cat hesitated...