Prologue

Prologue

It was a pleasant summer morning; the air was warm and humid. A little ladybug scuttled to the tip of a blade of grass only to hurry back to prevent being trampled by a young creature’s paw.

“Come on!”

A gray cat-like animal with hints of feathers protruding from its shoulder leaped across the lawn— a cleo.

“Wait up!!”

A second one, with a much darker, almost black fur, followed behind.

Many others, with full-fledged feathered wings, were chatting away in the shade of the open marble corridors surrounding the garden. The two young cleos chased each other around a small fountain at the center of the castle courtyard. Suddenly, the gray one leaped and caught his brother by the scruff and they both tumbled to the ground into a bush.

“Hey! Get your paws off my face, Garnet!” muffled the black cleo.

The gray one, Garnet, sat back up, removing his paws from his brother’s face, and spat some leaves from his mouth.

“Haha, sorry Zircon!” he replied, “It’s your turn to chase me now!”

Zircon got up, swishing his two tiny tails.

“Well, here I come!”

Garnet immediately dashed out of the undergrowth with Zircon at his tails. They ran up and down the pathways and around the fountain. Garnet zoomed away, his little paws speeding. Zircon had almost caught up to his brother when something at the corner of his eye made him screech to a halt.

“What’s that?”

A slight wisp of a shadow edged around the courtyard fountain. It seemed to have its own consciousness and was wriggling quickly around the blades of grass. quite aware of Zircon watching it a few steps away. Curiously, he placed a paw towards it. Averting his dark brown eyes left and right, it seemed that no other cleo had noticed. The black ‘thing’ seemed to grow as Zircon neared cautiously, and before he knew it, it was the size of himself, standing before him. A shadow, but not quite. The figure made a high giggle like the sound of tinkling bells that echoed all around, but only Zircon could hear. It bounded around him as if willing him to play. Then, the shadow started towards the door, which would have led to the forest outside that surrounded the castle. Zircon followed it to the doors. The shadow spoke.

“What’s this?” it asked in the same high tinkly voice.

Amazed, or confused, and maybe a slight uneasiness inside of him, stopped Zircon from replying.

“What is this?” it asked again.

“Yes, it's a door,” he answered.

“It’s a door,” the shadow copied.

“W-would you like to go through?” Zircon asked.

The blank face of the shadow turned to him.

“Yes, want to go through?”

“No, I mean do YOU want to go through,” Zircon clarified.

In the distance, he heard Garnet call his name. The shadow giggled again. This time the sound appeared much closer, as if from Zircon’s own mouth. The shadow was no longer a dark silhouette but possessed even his familiar pelt. It swirled, constantly morphing into clusters mimicking ears on its head, then disappearing again. Only the face remained blank, a void. Zircon’s uneasiness grew. He opened the little wooden door for it. It took a few steps into the hall and turned around as if to wait for him to follow.

“I need to go back to my brother,” he said.

“I-I n-need to go back, I-I need—,” the shadow copied again, its body becoming distorted and its face stretching from its neck, towards Zircon’s own.

He backed away from the corridor as the alien creature neared, his fear rising.

He panicked as he stumbled backward over a ledge. As soon as he was through the doorway, he screamed, “NO!” and slammed the doors shut. Only a slight wisp of darkness filtered through the cracks of the wooden door. He locked the door carefully and looked through a crack, as if afraid the ‘shadow’ might seep through and attack him. But all was silent, and there was not a single movement from the door, nor sound from the other side.

He breathed heavily in a moment of silence as in the far distance, the frantic sounds of other cleos lingered in the background.

“There he is!”

Servants hurried to his side, showering him with questions.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he lied, “It was—It was just a giant tarantula b-behind that door.”

The others clamoured.

“We must get rid of the pests in the castle,” insisted one of the servants, ready to open it.

“Wait, no!” He put both paws up and his back to the door, blocking the cleo, “Maybe some other time…I-I, uh, must calm myself first.”

He didn’t know why he was tempted to lie. He thought that maybe, like in the storybooks, where there were supernatural beings that only the main characters saw, he would be called delusional or a liar , but deep down, his mind said something else…

Garnet pushed through the crowd.

“Argh! Let me through!” he said, his annoyed face poking out between two servants. He dismissed them.

“I thought you were playing! Wah you doin’ here?”

“I got distracted,” Zircon replied, then looked to make sure no one was listening. “Listen, Garnet, there was a shadow ‘bout my height”— he made a gesture with his paws to show the size— “and it looked like me. It’s super scary!! I trapped it on the other side.”

“Wah? Let me see.”

Garnet pushed open the doors before Zircon could stop him. The two stood in silence as wind from the forest on the far side of the hall blew their fur.

Then Garnet spoke.

“I don’t see anything. Are you sick again?” he suggested.

“Ugh, no, I’m pretty sure it was not!” Zircon replied, slightly annoyed that even his own brother wouldn’t believe him. He might as well have been going mad.

“You sure—”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

“Oh, well.” Garnet sighed. His brother sure had some wild imagination sometimes. “Anyway, let’s finish our game! You still haven't caught me yet you know!”

“Sure... On the count of three. THREE, TWO—”

Before Zircon could finish, Garnet had already sped off. He started to run but hesitated. He turned around again, trotting back to the doorway, and placed a paw in the hallway just to reassure himself, then bounded after Garnet.