In a forest where memories drift like mist and time forgets itself, a Cat moved silently beneath the trees.
The villagers had never truly seen her. Some said she had eyes like moonlight and fur that caught starlight. Others only remembered a shimmer, like a breath of color vanishing between tree trunks. No one knew where she came from. She moved through the world like a secret - soft-pawed and silent, with a long, flowing tail of iridescent feathers that shimmered like starlight caught in wind.
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.
If she gave away her last feather, she would lose her magic. She would become an ordinary cat - chasing mice, hiding from dogs, and growing old beneath thorny bushes. No more moonlight walks. No more dreams.
But what good is power, it wondered, if it cannot be used when it matters most?
And so, the Cat let the feather go.
The feather drifted into the child's hands, warm as spring. The sorrow in her heart lifted like morning fog. Somewhere, far away, her mother opened her eyes and smiled.
The cat sighed and padded back into the forest. She was ready to be ordinary.
But something stirred.
The forest whispered. The stream glowed.
From the place where all her feathers had fallen, from all the wishes and kindness she had released into the world - there rose a new tail, more radiant than before. It shimmered with colors never seen before, each plume a symbol of hope returned.
For the forest knows:
When you give your magic to help others, it never truly leaves you.
It grows. It becomes something more.
And so, the Cat walked on, her new tail lighting the path for anyone who had forgotten how to dream.
