The cat’s eyes opened, awoken by a breeze. She sat up and stared through slightly blurred vision out into the room.
“Boy?” she said, noticing a figure sitting on the ledge of the window.
“What’s up, why aren’t you sleeping?”
Tsuru shrugged his shoulders and without turning around replied in a quiet voice:
“I can’t sleep cat, the dreams keep coming back and so I wake up crying.”
The cat picked herself up and padded over to the window ledge.
“Boy…” she said softly, “You can usually sleep the sleep of a newborn, what is it that is troubling you?”
Tsuru turned and looked toward the cat, his eyes large and blue but elsewhere and said:
“I’m homesick cat, here much longer than I realised I would be… Time is a funny old thing it seems. It’s far down here too, things are I mean; sometimes the distance between 2 things seems so much I could scream… And the play of it all, the twist and turn…”
The cat hopped up onto the ledge with Tsuru and nuzzled into his feathers, sat back against the frame and looked at him with a slight smile but open eyes.
“I know…” she sighed, “But what shall we do, there are no exits here and you know as well as I the rules of such things; if one is in then all are in until…” she stopped and looked down.
“Cat?” asked Tsuru.
“You are right,” she said, now looking out the window, “It’s long down here and I too will wake with tears in my eyes if I sleep tonight.”
She turned and looked at the boy, a long and wanton look.
“We aren’t ever leaving, are we boy…” she whispered.
“Never.” said Tsuru, “How would one get out of one’s self when simply being one’s self is enough to never let us go?”
“True…” said the cat, “But we have love boy and we have grace… Perhaps there is nothing else.”
“Bastet…” said Tsuru, “I think we should go to sleep, take human form and stay asleep this time. It will be like a game within this game, we should be in love like the stories of man describe.”
“With children??” asked Bastet, pricking up her ears.
“With children.” replied the crane, “With warm skin and kisses to wake up to each morning, with no more tears and quiet majicks.”
Bastet nuzzled into Tsuru’s feathers again.
“I think that is what I have wanted all along.” she said, “I don’t feel now I should want for anything more.”
“Me too girl.” replied the boy, “I think it’s why I have been waking with tears, I have been crying for our children, for pieces of home.”
The cat and the crane sat in the window and looked out into the night, across the old city and toward the moon hanging in the great western sky…
The moon looked down on them, smiling as always.
“Hush now, hush now.” whispered the stars, “Sleep our children and dream a life for yourselves, home will find you in time.”