In the dirty, grease-coated alleyway between New York City apartment buildings and a sandwich shop, curled into a ball on a stack of old papers, was a flash of fiery orange. This small ball of fur, purring away on old articles and advertisements, was our story's hero. His name was Whiskers, or at least that was the name the local stoop sitters, window watchers, and poor panhandlers had given him.
Whiskers was your average orange tabby, proud to be uncollared and free, roaming the streets of New York City on his own terms and at his own pace. Many had tried to put a collar around his neck, and many had left a window cracked, a door ajar, or their new kitty outside, their irresponsibility to his benefit.
The cat uncurled on the papers and stretched out, paws before him and digits spread as he lifted his rear end and let out a wide yawn. It had been a good nap, with the high-noon sun coating him in warmth for an hour before tucking behind a building, but now it was time to do something else.
Whiskers padded off, tail flagging high in the air as he made his way through the alley, almost bouncing on his pink pads toward the open dumpster behind the sandwich shop. He had a good deal going on with the large Italian man who worked there on weekdays. Whiskers would bring him a dead rat, and he would get a bowl of the tuna salad they used for their tuna melts instead.
This deal was especially good. The owner of the apartment building had a bad rat problem and had laid out a lot of strange black boxes that the rats would enter and exit with green gunk on their faces. A week later, Whiskers would find these same rats lying in the alley, bruised and bleeding from their mouths, noses, and other holes. He would take these rodents and pass them off as his own kills, getting much tastier food from the sandwich man.
Sure enough, under the dumpster was another dead rat, poisoned from eating the green stuff in the black boxes. Whiskers had learned the hard way that picking them up in his mouth would make him horribly sick, so he batted it with his paws until it sat in front of the shop's back door. He stretched up, digging his claws into the metal screen door and dragging them down, making a rolling snare of a racket.
Clearly he was heard, as the heavyset Italian peeked out the door, his face lighting up when he saw Whiskers sitting politely in front of his sham rat. The tabby gave a proud meow in greeting.
"Whiskers! You little devil, putting in the hard work, huh? One second, little guy," boomed the man, his bald head glistening in the shop lights as he wiped mustard and mayonnaise off on a grease-stained waist apron. He disappeared back into the shop and reappeared a few minutes later, setting down a small plastic bowl of tuna salad before quickly returning to his work.
The meal was small. The sandwich man couldn't give him much, and it was assumed Whiskers would eat the rat too—he wouldn't. Whiskers didn't know much, but he did know better than that.
Whiskers stashed the dead rat for later. He might get one more use out of it before it became too obvious that it wasn't a proper kill. With a tummy full of tuna, Whiskers felt it was time to find a new place to nap. He set out, weaving between the moving legs of pedestrians before hopping up onto the hood of a police car that had good access to sunlight. He made his way to the windshield, stretching across the cowl panel and shutting his eyes as he basked.
His sleep was cut short when one of the cops got out of the cruiser to give Whiskers a few scratches to wake him up. He stretched, letting out a whining yawn as he rolled onto his other side. The officer wasn't having any of it and picked him up, letting the cat hang limply from his grasp before setting Whiskers down on all fours.
Whiskers flicked his tail and sauntered back to the alleys as the police cruiser departed, taking off to do whatever it was the cops were supposed to be doing besides providing Whiskers a sun-bathed napping place.
It didn't take long for the tabby to find a new distraction. A glimmer of light, perched delicately on the rusty remains of a stolen bike, had caught his eye. The handlebar poked out of a pile of old garbage bags filled with rotting refuse. On its end sat a glimmering, sparkling bug.
The light filled Whiskers's eyes, and his pupils grew wide with wonder. He had to kill it. Dropping low, he crept across the concrete, ears back and eyes locked on his prey. It wasn't until he got two feet away that he could see what the light was.
The bug's body shimmered and produced—not reflected—so many different colors, shapes, and lights that it seemed made of light itself.
To Whiskers, however, it was just a sparkly bug. Whiskers liked bugs; they were fun to catch. He gave names to all his favorite bugs: the Sky Raisins that flew around garbage piles, the Leggy Boys that scared humans and made sticky webs, and the Speedos that also scared humans but were much faster and didn't make webs.
Whiskers pounced, diving for the shiny bug, paws outstretched to snatch the shimmering critter between them. He had already decided what he would call this one. Special bugs deserved special names, after all. He would call it a Shimmer Wing.
The Shimmer Wing revealed its speed, darting to the ground with a flick of its wings before starting to run off. The chase was on.
Whiskers darted after it, paws striking the ground as he put pedal to the metal, only barely exceeding the bug's speed, which surprised him, as he usually had no issue outpacing even the fastest insects.
The Shimmer Wing sped under a dumpster, followed closely by Whiskers, who hissed as the low crouch stole his speed, giving the bug a wider lead. It capitalized on that lead by darting around the corner out of sight.
Whiskers banked hard and drifted on loose pizza boxes before regaining traction and surging forward again. The widening gap was frustrating, but Whiskers lived for the chase.
With a dime-turn left, the bug wrapped around another building out of sight. Whiskers narrowly cut the corner, buying mere centimeters. As he cleared the corner, he felt the sting of a white cane and ran hard into a local he knew all too well.
Just as surprised as he was, the young girl he collided with squealed in shock. She was maybe eight years old. She had been a long-term resident of this city block. She was blind, something Whiskers had learned after seeing a boy steal her white cane to hit him, earning the brat a thorough clawing. Because of her condition, she couldn't leave her building often.
When Whiskers ran into her, she screamed. The sudden sound startled him as much as the collision had startled her. She began stomping her feet in panic; she couldn't tell that it was only a cat. When she didn't squish anything underfoot, she crouched down, tucking into herself as she whimpered on the verge of tears.
When the shock wore off, Whiskers's ears fell, and he let out an apologetic meow, revealing himself to her.
"Kitty?" whimpered the sightless child, squatting down in that awkward way young children did to examine things on the ground.
Whiskers hesitated, watching the Shimmer Wing disappear while he was distracted by the human child. He sighed and meowed again, approaching her and earning a cautious pet, which quickly became one of those too-rough pets children gave once they knew he was safe.
The one benefit of this girl was that she wouldn't try to pick him up like other kids did. Without her cane, she was lost in the world, and that was a terrifying prospect for an eight-year-old. She kept one hand on her cane and remained satisfied with petting and stroking the fuzzy feline.
"Emma?" called a woman—the blind girl's mother—who walked around the corner into the alleyway. A man followed her, echoing her calls.
The petting stopped, and the young girl no longer seemed on the verge of tears. "Mommy? Daddy?"
Her parents rushed in and hugged her close. She must have tried braving the world on her own again, something that was becoming more frequent. Whiskers shared Emma's desire for freedom; he would have hated being locked up in some cramped apartment his whole life.
The two adults finished gently admonishing their daughter for leaving without an adult, then reached down to give Whiskers proper petting—not so rough as to pull out his fur, and not so soft as to tickle him with it.
Before long, the parents carried Emma back to the safety of their apartment. Emma waved, albeit in the wrong direction, as she called out, "Bye, kitty!"
Whiskers huffed, looking around the empty alleyway before moving again. His chase was ruined, but he'd be damned if he was going to scare a kid and just leave her crying in a dirty alley.
As he turned the corner, he saw it. Sitting on the side of a large green dumpster was Whiskers's reward for doing the right thing—the Shimmer Wing.
He got low again and crept forward, step by careful step. If he did this right, the bug would have no idea it was in danger until it was too late.
The Shimmer Wing sat still as stone, glimmering in its own self-produced light that dotted the space around it in shimmering shapes. Like a brilliant star burning in the void, it almost hurt to look at. He had earned this, thought Whiskers. He was a very good boy and had earned the right to squish the Shimmer Wing.
After a minute that felt like hours, Whiskers was in range, chest to the ground and haunches coiled like springs ready to release on a hair trigger. The world faded around him until it was just him and the bug.
Whiskers pounced.
The moment Whiskers's hind paws left the ground, the world slowed to a crawl, the adrenaline of the hunt putting his mind on overdrive. He reached out with both paws, mere inches from catching his prey.
Then the Shimmer Wing unfurled its namesake wings. They were huge—so grand that they met along their spines and edges, forming not a pair of gliding planes but a single flat disk of concentric, aligned shapes and colorful patterns. The pattern burned itself into Whiskers's eyes, heart, and mind, and for one lonely moment, there was magic on Earth.
The wall of the dumpster opened into a brilliant blue sea. Unlike the Atlantic, the water shimmered with an effervescent glow, like liquid sky.
Beneath its rolling waves was a network of currents and streams, made visible to the naked eye by glittering silver dust—dust made of hard, clear shapes and forms Whiskers had never seen before.
Above this brilliant blue hung a massive glowing light, like a white star churning with raw, infinite power. Its radiance carried the warmth of a summer sun and the bite of a winter storm against his fur. It did not burn like the sun or a policeman's flashlight, yet it was impossibly bright. As Whiskers and the bug fell into this opening in the world, they tumbled through air so alive that merely inhaling it filled Whiskers with energy that crackled across his tabby pelt.
The adrenaline could only last so long. As Whiskers fell forward into the infinite blue, he took one deep gulp of air and promptly blacked out.