From the Nya World

They say we’re more like humans than cats, but I never believed it for a second.

Not that I’d ever met a human. Never met a cat either, but I knew their reputation. Sure, at first glance, we look like humans, only with cat ears and tails, but our differences run much deeper. We’re territorial, violent, easily distracted, and sleep most of the day—just like cats.

Take Apollo, for instance. The big lug was in the prime of his life. He had more muscles than any one person could ever need, and his biceps were bigger than my head, but what did he do with all that? Nothing. He spent most afternoons napping in the sunny fields, sleeping his life away.

I couldn’t stand him, and the feeling appeared mutual. Whenever we crossed paths, he always tossed a nasty remark my way. On my last day in the village, he was acting like a complete sourpuss. It was late afternoon, and I was making my way to the guard post, like usual, when he lumbered onto the dirt in front of me.

“You really gonna pass through my territory without sayin’ hello?” His voice rumbled from the back of his throat. Not quite a growl, but laced with equal parts anger and disappointment, though I had done nothing to deserve either.

“It’s a public road,” I pointed out, annoyed that he was wasting my time with nonsense.

“And it’s my territory.” His orange tail poked out from behind his considerable bulk as he swung it back and forth in irritation.

“What, did you piss all over it?” It was intended as an insult. I hadn’t actually suspected he’d marked the ground like an animal, but he just guffawed and hurled an insult right back.

“You mean you can’t tell? Is yer nose as useless as yer brain?”

“My brain didn’t just wake up this morning and decide to claim this bit of road as my ‘territory.’”

“This spot’s been my territory since before you were born.”

He really was unbelievable. I had no clue how this idea had gotten into his head. “Then how come I’ve never seen you harass anyone before?”

“Everyone shows the proper respect. Everyone ‘sept you.”

“And yet you’ve never blocked my path like this.”

His voice softened. “Yer all grown up now. Means ya should know how the adult world works. Just show me some respect, and I’ll let ya pass.”

In retrospect, that probably would have been the easiest way to handle things, but I had no patience for his silly games. Moreover, I was surprised he had acknowledged me as an adult. I had turned sixteen, the age at which villagers are considered fully grown, just one day prior, and I hadn’t expected Apollo of all people to mark the occasion.

A sheathed dagger hung from my hip. I grabbed its hilt and leaned forward, my tail sticking straight up into the air. “If this is your territory, you must be ready to fight for it. That’s how things work in the adult world, right?”

“Careful,” he warned, crouching down. “You could kill someone with that thing. Matters o’ territory should be settled with tooth ‘n claw.”

His entire body tensed, signaling he was about to make a grab for my arm. Quickly as I could, I whipped out the dagger. The sight of it triggered his survival instinct. Rising up, he arched his back and let out a loud hiss. His mouth opened wide and his lips retracted in a gruesome display, revealing his needle-like teeth. His imposing stance and exaggerated expression would have been right at home on an ukiyo-e print.

Angling the dagger just so, I reflected the bright afternoon sunlight directly into his eyes. This caught him off guard, and as he brought up his hands to shield his face, I ran off into the field. Despite his size, Apollo was a fast runner, and I needed to take advantage of the confusion to get a head start.

It didn’t take him long to catch up. He didn’t need his eyes to track me, but his vision had already returned by the time I was forced to pivot and swing the dagger at him. I trusted his fast reflexes, and sure enough, he jumped aside to avoid my strike. Once again, I angled the dagger to reflect the sunlight. This time, he was quick to cover his eyes, but I was even quicker to run away.

This pattern repeated itself two more times. I would run until he nearly caught me, threaten him with the dagger, and then sprint away. He may have been a fast runner, but due to his laziness, he had no stamina. I could run for kilometers without slowing down. He barely made it a hundred meters before doubling over to catch his breath.

“Go on, get out of here!” he shouted after me. “Don’t let me catch ya slinkin’ ‘round my territory again.”

Sheathing my blade, I enjoyed the rest of my walk to the guard post undisturbed. I doubt any of the other villagers ever considered claiming territory in public spaces. Not much point to it.

Aside from the watchtower at the center, there wasn’t much to the village. The glass dome that protected us from the miasma was one of the largest in the world, but inside, the village was just small huts dotting large, open fields. Half of the buildings housed families, and the other half housed the machines that kept the air cool, the soil fertile, and, most importantly, turned our crops into food and clothing.

All in all, the village was an ideal place to live a slow life. There was plenty of space for children to run and play, and the adults could spend most of their time relaxing, as long as they chipped in and worked on occasion. The only thing it lacked was excitement, and that was a problem for me, because I craved it.

The dome’s gate was open when I arrived. That would have been a rare sight just a few years prior, but nowadays, it was open more often than not. The genetically-enhanced trees we planted outside the dome had reached maturity and were able to absorb the miasma for about twenty meters around the dome. Every year, that distance increased. Only on the worst days were we forced to keep the gate shut.

Not that there had ever been anything worth guarding against.

Stepping outside the dome, I spotted my two favorite people in the village guarding it: Oliver and Lea.

Oliver was a few years older than me and had moved from the city seeking a simpler life. I loved hearing his stories about life in the city and pestered him every chance I got. In many ways he resembled a shorter version of Apollo with his bodybuilder physique, but he kept his jet-black hair immaculately groomed.

Lea was like a second mother to me. After my mother kicked me out of the house for being too rebellious, she had shown me how to get food from the machines. When I got sick, she cared for me, and when the time came, she showed me how to take medicine to control my heat cycle. Her naturally gray hair made it easy to mistake her for a senior citizen from afar, but up close, you couldn’t mistake her youthful exuberance.

The two of them were happily chatting away, not taking their guard duty seriously at all. I couldn’t blame them. There was no one around for hundreds of kilometers. It wasn’t really a problem that they were slacking off.

What was a problem, however, was the look on Lea’s face. I’d seen that look on her twice before, and both times, she’d given birth to kittens nine months after. Oliver wasn’t oblivious to the signals she was giving off. He had a big, dumb grin on his face, and the two of them didn’t even notice when I walked right up to them. They were both off in their own world.

“Ahem.” I coughed to get their attention, and they both started. Oliver blushed bright red and looked away, but Lea just grinned.

“Heya, Sprout,” she said, patting the top of my head, right between my ears. “My shift over already?”

“In about fifteen minutes,” I answered, “but I don’t mind taking over now. It’d give me something to do.”

“Yer a lifesaver. It’s so tirin’ standin’ all day when you got these babies to carry around.” Handing me her powerspear, she stretched her arms above her head and arched her back, practically shoving her chest in Oliver’s face.

“Yeah, yeah.” I elbowed her playfully in the side. “Stop bragging so much. Mine’ll grow just as big someday.”

We both knew it was unlikely, but she humored me anyway. “I’m sure they will. It’s still early, but maybe I’ll turn in for the night.” As she walked back towards the village, she swung her gray tail back and forth in a low, slow arc. Oliver watched her as she left.

“Hey.” I gestured my head toward her. “Go on. I’ll cover for you.”

“Thanks, but I’m not going to abandon my post.”

“No one’s going to check on us.”

“Doesn’t mean I can shirk my responsibility. Besides, I heard some noises from the wastes earlier. Something’s out there.”

“Not this again,” I groaned. “Remember the last time you heard ‘noises’ from the outside? Remind me again what that turned out to be.”

“Dead tree trunks splitting open from the heat of the sun. But these noises were different.”

His voice was softer now, lacking the confidence it had before. It was time to deploy my ultimate rhetorical weapon. “You’re just too chicken to go after her.”

“Am not. I just… I wouldn’t want to take advantage of her while she’s in heat. She might regret it later.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Lea’s not dumb enough to get herself in a situation like that. She’s thought about this ahead of time. She wants a third kitten, and right now, she wants yours, but she’s fickle. If you don’t go soon, someone else will.”

Once again, his cheeks flushed and he rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. “This is all going too fast for me. I don’t even know if I like her like that.”

“Look, dude, if you moved out here looking for love, you might as well go back to the city. Country folk aren’t any different than city folk. Only difference is that they follow their instincts more openly, and that doesn’t leave much room for love.”

“You don’t let your instincts control you,” he pointed out. It pissed me off enough to growl at him. How could he be such a coward, trying to change the subject like that?

“And that’s why I’m going to move to the city,” I growled, “but if you want to fit in ‘round here, ya need ta start listenin’ ta yer instincts.” To emphasize the point, I had drifted into talking with the local accent.

“Right now, my instincts tell me that you’re pushing this too hard. Why do you care if we get together?”

“I just don’t want her to shack up with Apollo again. If it has to be anyone, I’d rather it be you, so go on, go fondle some big fat cat tats, or we’ll both regret it later.”

“Where the hell did you learn that phrase?” He chuckled. “You sound like an incel.”

“Better an incel than a chicken. Least I know what I want. I didn’t leave the city and wander out to the middle of nowhere just to pretend that city morals still apply out here. When are you gonna get it into your head that if you want to fit in, you gotta start actin’ like the rest of them? Me an’ Lea are the only ones who even talk to you anymore. I’m leaving soon, and if you keep pushin’ her away, you’ll be all alone out here.”

That got to him. He slammed the butt of his powerspear into the dirt and roared. “You have no idea what it’s like in the city. You’ll be back, just like the rest.”

I wasn’t the first to ever get fed up with this place. Hadn’t happened since I was a kitten, but occasionally, others left for the city. Most came back bitter and dispirited. They built huts on the outskirts of the village and mostly kept to themselves. Most, but not all. I’d done my research on city life, and I was confident it wouldn’t happen to me.

Oliver’s outburst had completely soured the mood. We both turned away from each other and retreated to the sides of the road, stewing in our separate misgivings. Though we were separated by only a few meters, it felt like an impregnable wall had been built between us. Most other villagers would have squabbled until one of them stormed off, but the two of us were too stubborn to give in, so we said nothing.

Hours passed in silence. As the sun reached the horizon, the air cooled, and so did our emotions. Little by little, the wall between us crumbled and we relaxed.

“You hear that?” Oliver whispered.

I rolled my eyes. “The music? Yeah, I hear it.” The watchtower had begun blaring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 throughout the village, as it did every evening at sundown. No one was sure why. Story I heard was that one of the founders insisted on it, and by the time he died, it had become a tradition. It was a tradition that had lost all meaning—if it had ever had meaning to begin with—but no one besides me wanted to change it. We’d all grown up hearing it every night. Felt like if it ever stopped, we’d be living in a different world. We’d be different people, and that was too scary for most folk.

“No, not the music. Eyes and ears forward.” He gripped his powerspear in both hands and crouched down. I followed suit. Straining my ears, I could hear twigs snapping in the forest, and the sound was getting louder as something approached.

Fifty meters from the gate, a lone figure emerged onto the dirt road, covered from head to toe in a protective suit and holding a rifle. My sight was best at twilight, so I had no trouble making them out, but they had not yet seen us. They shined a flashlight into the forest on the opposite side of the road, and I realized whoever was in the suit must be human—the first human I had ever seen in real life.

My breath caught in my chest, and I was unable to move. A real human. Were they friend or foe? What should I do? What should I say? The fact that their gun made them dangerous hadn’t yet registered in my mind, but Oliver was quicker on the uptake.

“Go warn the others.” He crept forward along the side of the road, toward the human, ready to dash into the forest for cover at a moment’s notice, but I was still rooted in indecision.

I stood, frozen in panic, my tail sticking high into the air, as the human turned their flashlight in my direction. I’m sure my eyes reflected the light back at them, because they jumped in surprise and leveled their rifle right at me.