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Catra first saw the fallen god loitering at the edges of the city, holding a newspaper in its large pale hands.
The city of Bright Moon lay behind her, proud purple towers rising in endless oblongs towards the pink sky. The streets were full of so many glimmering little creatures, making their way to and from gainful employment of the likes Catra hadn’t the luxury of knowing for too long at a time. In these early hours, with sleep still crowding her eyes, the city was already ambitious with labour and purpose.
“She looks interesting!” Scorpia observed with stars in her eyes. Catra grunted. She was a more churlish sort, prone to raking her claws over those foolish enough to show their bellies. She scratched a match on paper and lit the cigarette in her mouth. The tip bloomed like a capricious volcano. The bright blue smoke smelled like the dregs of the day.
Despite all the years spent in the ruins of the Fright Zone, Scorpia carried herself like she was forever atop a gleaming bubble chariot floating above lesser things such as worry or despair. “Yoo hoo, hallo!” she called to the god. Catra’s cigarette nearly fell out of her mouth.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, her fur standing on end, but Scorpia’s shell was the one thing her claws couldn’t penetrate. Her friend ignored her cheerily, waving her big red claw at the god.
“Hallo! Yes you, stranger to Bright Moon!”
The god spotted them. A bemused expression fell upon its face, growing slowly from the forehead, which crumpled like a tissue, to the nose, which seemed to stiffen in suspicion, to the mouth (a lovely mouth, Catra despaired to think!), and the heavy jut of her chin, as though studying for threats.
Scorpia had none of the self-preservation of most of the rest of the Fright Zone. The god handed the newspaper to a paper boy and made its way to them. Its star bright hair was a halo in the morning light, and it had on a red jacket, as though it was just another person in this place. Its eyes were blue as the searing noon sky. Catra felt the heat of it on her own eyes.
The god stood next to them, still staring. Scorpia’s grin never faded. “New to Bright Moon?” she asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” said the god, her eyes still fixed on Catra. “What is that, please?”
Catra’s fur stood on end and she blew her smoke into the god’s face. “It’s a cigarette.” She took another irritated puff.
The god tilted its head and plucked the cigarette from between Catra’s lips and placed it between her own. Catra yowled in fury, but the god was walking away, and Scorpia was muttering something about buying her a pack but there was little they could do. Even with Catra’s endless rage, she knew better.
Out of all the things in Etheria, a strange and fallen god from another world was the last thing she should touch.
***
A fallen god was what the papers called her. Others said she was a visitor from a place called Eternia, a boundless people who hopped through universes soaking up all the stars and all the dust to fill their boundless minds. Catra overheard these and a hundred other stories over the three months since she’d seen the god at the gates of Bright Moon, as though that thing was the cloak she must now be bound in.
“I saw her levitating stones to entertain the newsboys.”
“Hector swears he heard her roar when he spotted her last week. Like a true beast, he said, and there was almost fire from her throat.”
“She’s spending a lot of time with the Princess.”
“She’s a nuisance, that’s what,” Catra muttered, wiping a spill on a table at the cafe she had started working at. It never ceased to amaze her how quickly she and Scorpia had found work in Bright Moon, blowing Shadow Weaver’s despondent premonitions to the wind. Work, and a little rented room they made into a home. While Scorpia had steady shifts at a factory at the outskirts of the city, Catra became a buoyant thing, bouncing between waitressing at a cafe’ nearby, sweeping a haberdashery after hours, and taking odd jobs at clubs. And it was at one of these clubs, where she was doing a shift as a cigarette girl, that she bumped into the god again.
“Cigarette?” she had to ask, because that was her job. The god was in attendance with two Etherians, those bubbly type of Bright Moon socialites. One was sparkly and pink, the other was tall and bespectacled, the golden rims of his glasses gleaming in the low light.
The god purchased a cigarette and lit it, closing her lovely lips around the tip. When she breathed out, the smoke blew straight into Catra’s face, but she caught her boss’ eye at the end of the room and kept her smile bright. Beyond them, the big band was swinging their set on stage, the fervent marionette of the conductor leading them in the frenzy. The crowd swayed jubilantly, elegant men and women chittering like so many birds underneath the music. When the smoke dissipated, Catra saw the god’s eyes tracing over her legs and she turned around to give her a full view before walking away.
Nights like this were lovely and terrible. Catra liked the noise of the clubs and listening to conversations, learning what she could to pick apart at home later while Scorpia lay next to her with her face turned to the open window. It was in her picking that she understood her place in this world, the foul fate that had been handed to her. Abandoned as a kit in the Fright Zone, picked up by a ghoul in the guise of a mother, and eking out a living in a bright and beautiful place that would close the glass lid on top of her cage every night when she went to sleep.
Bright Moon’s bright lights will dim in your eyes eventually, and you will return home.
To keep the smile on her face through such despondence was something Catra was becoming rather slick at. She cocked her hip out, laughed sweetly, winked with every sale, but it dragged her bones to the very pits of the planet. After a long round, she returned to the god, whose friends appeared to have abandoned her.
The god’s eyes traced over her legs again, and the flick of her lids made Catra shiver.
“You are good at your work,” said the god.
“Thank you?” said Catra. She didn’t know what she wanted here; a part of her wanted to hover by the god, to take her apart and understand her workings and keep her in a box forever. The rest of her, perhaps the more primal, animal part, wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
“Do you have a name?” she found herself asking.
“Adora,” said the god. “I have another name but you’ll have to earn that one.”
“I have one of those,” Catra quipped. “It comes out when you–”
But she couldn’t finish her sentence because her boss was staring her down across the club and she had to make herself scarce. The big band was replaced by a singer whose name Catra couldn’t catch, no matter how many times she asked. She watched couples dancing around the stage, watched the other cigarette girls’ smiles droop with tiredness, watched the big clock at the side of the room eat away into the night. When enough time had passed for her to take a break, she lay her tray down in the back room and discreetly popped a cigarette between her fingers before slipping outside.
It was a cold night. Catra shivered in the stiff breeze, wishing she’d thought to bring a coat. She lit her pilfered cigarette brusquely and took a deep drag, blowing out grey smoke that felt like it was crystallising around her lips. The irony of a cigarette girl smoking, or was that perhaps a good advertisement? Catra didn’t care. She leaned against the alley wall and took another drag. The bricks caught at her thin sleeves, fluffing the fabric.
Shadow Weaver stepped out of the darkness.
Catra dropped her cigarette. It singed her thigh on the way down, burning a hole in her nylons. The embers from the glowing stub skittered across the ground.
“Most people announce themselves instead of behaving like a wraith,” Catra said when she got her breath back.
Shadow Weaver ignored her. Her robes created a shade around her, as though she was a reaper come to take Catra away. “Did you think that running off without a goodbye was going to keep you from being found?”
Her voice made Catra’s stomach plummet. “Well you’ve found me,” she said, even though all her fur was standing up on end. “I’m still on shift. What do you want?”
Shadow Weaver paused. Catra was familiar with her pauses. Whatever followed was never good. Her claws unsheathed and she put her hands behind her back.
“You are needed at home,” said Shadow Weaver.
“I am not needed anywhere,” Catra said, although it took all her courage to say the words. “I’m old enough to leave, and I’m going to make my own way.”
She felt her teeth baring, and a hiss growing at the back of her throat, but more than that, she felt the cold fear of her childhood grip her bones. The wise thing to do would have been to step away and return to her shift, shaking off the remains of what was left of her young and fearful life. Alas, that was the thing about Shadow Weaver. She held you in place without a touch.
“You owe me for all the years I put you up and looked after you,” she continued. “No one wanted you. I took you in out of the goodness of my heart and now you will abandon me in my old age.”
“Your old age didn’t stop you from coming all the way to Bright Moon to find me,” Catra snapped. “Couldn’t find a lackey to do it for you? Everyone else left too?”
She sensed a sardonic smile underneath the hood of Shadow Weaver’s cloak. “You know you were always my favourite. The best of them, the strongest.”
“And you’d have me work myself to death for scraps and misery.”
Shadow Weaver’s claws shot out and grasped Catra’s bicep, and even though Catra knew she was stronger, she couldn’t find it in herself to fight. She was once again a little kitten, yowling with no one to save her. She would be yanked by the scruff and whisked away into the night, and who would miss her? Only Scorpia, who wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
“Hello again,” said the god–Adora.
Catra hadn’t even realised she’d appeared from behind them. Shadow Weaver’s grip remained on her arm, making pinpricks of shame and embarrassment seize her. If there was such a thing as being smote, Catra wished that could happen to her.
“Please release her,” said Adora, placing a calm hand on Shadow Weaver’s fingers.
Catra heard a distinct crack, and Shadow Weaver retreated with a snarl, then dissolved into the night without another word. Catra remained where she had been held, frozen and stiff like a block of never-melting ice.
“Are you alright?” Adora asked, her blue eyes like sapphire lights, even in the dark. Catra’s ears flattened in fury.
“I don’t know how things work from where you come from,” she spat. “But on Etheria where civilisation lives, it’s considered impolite to butt into other people’s affairs.”
The door burst open behind them flooding them with merriment and warmth. The touch of it on her flesh made Catra jump, singing her fur.
“There you are, Wildcat!” Scorpia said, her flushed face breaking into a smile. “The Twelve Moons are just about to start! I know you wouldn’t want to miss their opening number!”
Catra swept past Adora, taking care to bump her as hard as she could, only for her shoulder to meet steel. She grunted in pain and glanced up. Adora was still observing her with those sapphire blue eyes.
A different sort of fear gripped Catra’s bones, something more primal and bloody. She took Scorpia’s extended claw and clutched it tight as they went inside.
***
Catra had nightmares that she was snatched out of her bed from her and Scorpia’s little rented room and dragged back to the Fright Zone. In every nightmare, Adora’s blue eyes shone in the sky like twin moons looking over Etheria. In every nightmare, she screamed and screamed until she ran out of breath and woke up gasping.
Weeks passed without any sight of Shadow Weaver or Adora. Scorpia continued picking up her factory shifts, and Catra continued to bob like an itinerant buoy between different types of jobs. So then, when she got a job for a party that promised to pay in a night thrice what she made in a week, she cajoled Scorpia into coming with her.
“Will they take me with these?” Scorpia said, snapping her claws as Catra buttoned up her dress.
“I’m sure they’ll find something for you,” she said, crossing her fingers.
As luck would have it, the party needed more guards. Scorpia made herself at home, striking up friendly conversation with the others. Catra thought one of the guards looked a bit like Rogelio, but when he turned his head, she could see he was much more angular. Once she was certain that Scorpia would fare well, she left them at the entrance and found her way to the kitchens, where she was due to report.
She was fitted with a costume skimpier than the one she wore as a cigarette girl. Nude nylons and a glittery bodysuit with a golden halo around her head like a crown. Her mane kept trying to puff out from underneath, and she hoped it wouldn’t fall out at an inopportune moment. Catra didn’t know how she was going to balance trays with that on her head but a job was a job and she had to make do.
“These people, eh?” said another waitress, who was struggling to fit her tail through a makeshift hole in her bodysuit. Catra grimaced, and pouted her lips for the rouge being held out by yet another waitress.
The guests had been buzzing like thousands of bright moths around the setting sun, but the moment the night swallowed the light, the party erupted in all sorts of earthly pleasures. Music streamed through leafy gardens in blue and yellow allegrettos, dancing feet picked up on the cobblestones, and ringed and gloved hands snatched food and drink from all trays in the vicinity. Catra found her own trays being emptied sooner than she could have them refilled. Her knees began to ache from the shoes they’d been given, and after several refills, her wrist was beginning to twinge in a funny way. But all across the party, there was only one real topic of conversation.
“Have you met Adora yet?”
“She’s from Eternia.”
“She danced with me at another party the other night.”
“Someone told me that she’s conquered planets before. Led whole armies to decimate populations.”
“Do you think she’s killed anyone in cold blood?”
“She doesn’t look the type.”
“What is the type of a killer then?”
“Oh I don’t know… a killing type…”
“She’s too gentlemanly to have killed anyone,” said someone while pawing at Catra’s emptying tray. “And conquering worlds is all fair business in this universe. The weak and meek exist to be swallowed.”
Catra, who had heard too much of a similar refrain while growing up in Bright Moon, decided to stick a canape on the back of the man’s tuxedo jacket.
She did not know where Adora was, or if she was even here at all, but it was Adora in every crevice and every breeze. Adora blinking down through the many moons in the sky and Adora standing as a giant in the centre of the garden. Catra found herself filling with rage. What was so important about such a creature? What made her more fascinating than any of Etheria’s own people? Better than Scorpia, or Catra herself? She was a curiosity, certainly, but curiosities were meant to be peered and at forgotten about, not raised to the skies like an undeserving deity. Would that Adora would return to the skies from whence she came. Would that she would stop plaguing Catra’s life.
After several trips back and forth from the kitchen to the garden, Catra began to feel lightheaded. The halo was pressing into the back of her head and her breath came tight and short in her chest. The air was vast and fresh outside, even with the purple haze of smoke ascending into the clouds, but her vision began to blur and she knew she needed to sit down. Stumbling back into the kitchen, she narrowly avoided being handed a new tray and rushed into the the main house.
The air was thinner the further she went in, heels thumping unsteadily on hardwood floors. Many large portraits watched with disapproving eyes as they loomed large over her little figure. Catra wondered if these halls had ever seen a magicat before. In and in and in she went, like walking into a large spider’s horrible lair. She took several successive sets of stairs that creaked louder the higher she went, and then reached a little trapdoor to wriggle through. She didn’t know if she was coming or going, running to or running from.
Eventually the ever-winding corridors led her to some sort of library. Skyscraper bookshelves soared from floor to ceiling, casting deep shadows and blocking the light from lamp in the centre of the room. Catra took off her halo, relinquishing the pressure on her mane and sighed in relief. She sunk into the nearest armchair and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers onto them and watching white spots dance behind her lids. There was murmuring in the distance.She hoped no one would find her here.
“Would you really conquer Etheria then?”
“Why do you call it a conquest?” said another voice.
That was Adora.
Catra’s eyes snapped open.
“It’s no conquest,” Adora said.“We are explorers. Learners. Teachers. I am here to understand your culture, your ways, and to take that back to my people so that we can form more harmonious bonds with the rest of the universe.”
There was an odd silence. Then the first person spoke up again.
“Have you travelled beyond Bright Moon? There are other places on Etheria that hold value.”
“I have only had the pleasure of being on Bright Moon thus far,” said Adora. Catra peered through the shelves to see her. Her red suit jacket was hanging loose on one shoulder. Her silken hair lay over it like a golden ribbon. “I have not had someone to show me around.”
“Well, everywhere but the Fright Zone is worth seeing,” said the person. The rest of them laughed. Catra’s mane bristled but then Adora’s blue eyes met her through the gap in the shelves.
Like a lasso, they held her in place.
***
Some weeks after the party, Catra returned home to find a telegram at her door.
SWIFT WIND TELEX
MS CATRA DRILUTH=
28 RUNETREE BRIGHTMOON=
KYLE VERY SICK COME HOME SOON=
SW.
Catra regarded the telegram with some degree of trepidation. She raised the thing to her nose and sniffed it, turning it this way and that in the dim yellow light. She wished to be so thoroughly certain that this was a hoax that she could curl up and sleep with the peace of it if need be, but she could not say for sure that Kyle may not have been ill. He had always been a sickly child. Catra’s memories returned to her that pale little thing that fell down too often, whose soft cries became the lullabies they all slept to in that old dingy bedroom they shared.
So many of Shadow Weaver’s old charges had departed that desolate house. Catra and Scorpia were here now, in Bright Moon, but there were others with loftier dreams, setting course to such distant lands like Salineas and Mystacor. In her little life’s journey, Catra had not spared them much thought, but in the dark spring nights when Scorpia snored on the mattress beside her, and the breeze blew its whoosh-whoosh breaths into her ear through the window, she wondered about them.
As far as she knew, Kyle had eventually departed Shadow Weaver’s home with Lonnie and Rogelio. Catra had not encountered them in Bright Moon, and Etheria held many mysteries that had swallowed much larger creatures. Dwelling had never done her any good, and so she had not, until this telegram.
She unlatched her trunk of things and placed the telegram on the very top and went about her day. The thing remained out of sight for some days, but it stayed front of mind, gnawing at Catra like a persistent caterpillar and wriggling into her head until it made a pupae of her brain. Eventually, unable to bear it, she revealed it to Scorpia.
“It could be real,” Scorpia said slowly, scratching her chin with her claw. It was a late evening in their little room; there was a brawl in the street below, smashing glass and flying fists adding chime and percussion to the orchestra of the fading day. Catra had a half eaten sandwich in front of her, and she toyed idly with the corner of the bread.
“Isn’t Kyle with Rogelio and Lonnie?” she asked.
“Yeah, last I checked,” said Scorpia, still looking pensive. “But some kids go back to her when they get in trouble. You remember.”
Catra did. There had been others.
The notion of returning troubled her deeply. It crept into her waking thoughts and muddled them with many fingers, picking the tendrils apart until the entire sweater of her intellect had been thoroughly frogged. She could take Scorpia with her, and she could guarantee that her friend would not refuse, but one of them needed to stay in Bright Moon in case Shadow Weaver decided to wrap them back in her web. Their rented room needed paying for. And if Catra went alone and got ensnared (given her usual luck, she was quite certain it would happen) Scorpia might have to find other lodgings, or invite a roommate. Catra wasn’t ready to risk losing the first place they had called home for themselves.
It was while worrying over this that Adora returned to the yellowing grass of her life. Like a frightful red flower amongst the dull endless landscape, she popped up at the café near their flat. Catra who was in the midst of serving coffee, couldn’t understand what she was seeing at first. She blinked twice. The red jacket was unmistakeable.
“What are you doing here?” was the first thing that came out of her mouth.
“Good afternoon, what can I get you?” hissed the other waitress that was reluctantly responsible for her.
“I’d like a coffee, please,” Adora said, her large blue eyes holding a world of curiosities. Catra thought about telling her where to put her coffee, but she did what she was paid to and returned with a full mug of black.
“Cream’s extra,” she said.
“You’re worried,” Adora said. “What’s wrong?”
Catra’s fur stood on end. “How about that’s none of your beeswax?”
With that definitive comment, she turned around but a hand curled around her wrist like a shackle. It was loose enough that she could break out, but it made her claws unsheathe. Her ears flattened against her head and she bared her teeth, a hiss brewing in the beginning of her throat. Job be damned. Who did Adora think she was?
When she turned around, the room had stopped. The busy chatter had ceased, as though caught in the centre of a large fist and muted from the world. Mouths were open mid-chew, revealing sloppy mastications, drinks hovered in mid-gulp, the liquid shimmering in the still air. It was like something out of her most terrible dreams. Only she and Adora were still in motion.
The hiss escaped unbidden, slapping Adora in the face. “What have you done?”
“Just take a few breaths,” Adora said, unfazed, looking far too cheerful for the matter at hand. “I’m only here to help, I promise.”
She was calm and steady, not begging, not demanding. Just there, waiting for Catra to catch up.
Catra exhaled furiously. “Whatever is wrong is none of your concern,” she said. “Let me do my job and you get back to yours.”
“Alright,” Adora said, letting the room return to its normal state. Life crashed into the room like a wave. Catra’s breath came easier.
“Don’t do that again,” she muttered.
“Alright,” Adora said genially. “I’m looking for someone to take me to other places outside Bright Moon. I am happy to pay.”
Catra’s ear quirked up. “How much?”
Adora said a number that was obscene, buttressing it with a friendly smile.
Catra raised an eyebrow. “Half upfront,” she said.
“Alright,” said Adora. The smile never budged.
***
Away from the lovely lilac of Bright Moon, the paved motor road stopped abruptly at the mouth of the Whispering Woods and turned into a dirt path that led into the Fright Zone, a desolate mechanical ruin. Eons ago, it was a lush and beautiful place, but a great ship from deep space crashed there and destroyed much of the vegetation, killing all the creatures aboard. Now, the gutted ribs of the ship lay decaying in the centre, and people made their lives around its rusted remains.
Catra had never been ashamed of her home. She had detested it deeply, found it wounding and distressing, but shame about the Fright Zone had never crossed her mind to feel, not when she was so enveloped with her shame, much of which Shadow Weaver had sewn around her like a thick coat. In bringing Adora here, the shame slithered out of her and curled its cold fingers around her neck. She didn’t want to say this is my home, because she didn’t like the look of the person that crawled away from that place.
She motioned for Adora to stop the motor car, and the engine fell to a sputtering stop.
“Welcome to the place where nothing lives,” she said deadpan to Adora, who switched off the car and looked around.
“On the contrary, Catra,” she said. “Many things grow in abundance here.”
Catra didn’t think so. “I have to see to something,” she said. “You can have a look around. We can meet again in a few hours.”
She wanted to leave the car without a look back, but Adora placed her hand over hers. “Will you be alright?” she asked.
Catra raised her eyes to meet Adora’s. The blue was deep and inviting, like a pool Catra was never allowed to dip into. It would not have been good for her besides, even though the coolness pulled her.
She wanted to say it was none of Adora’s business, because frankly, it wasn’t. She’d already been coerced into accompanying her here, even though Adora could have just found her way in with a map and walked around as she pleased.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied, slipping her hand out and walking away from Adora.
This was all she had known for most of her life. Desolation, lifelessness, and misery. Even though her existence in Bright Moon couldn’t be considered joyous by any stretch of the imagination, it felt like luxury compared to this. Catra stepped through the dusty paths, kicking at stray scraps that rolled away clankily, a painfully familiar sound.
The old house was dilapidated, and it looked smaller than she remembered. Was this ramshackle shack truly where she had spent all those years? Metal walls with blood-rusted screws pierced like a decorative edge on a handkerchief, grimy windows that hadn’t seen a cleaning cloth in months… She hadn’t left all that long ago, barely a year and some, but it already seemed like so many years ago.
She knocked on the door and let herself in without waiting for a response.
Inside was much of the same. A dingy fluorescent strip flashed overhead, and Catra stepped carefully through the main room through the matchstick thin corridors that barely accommodated her girth. Her fur brought away dust as she inched along, leaving streaks on the walls.
“Hello?” she called. “Rogelio? Kyle? Lonnie?”
There was no response, as though the house was in an enchanted slumber, but Catra had no desire to wake it up with a kiss or otherwise. She tread lightly, ears pricked for anything, when she came across a half-open door. She nudged it with a finger and it creaked open to reveal Shadow Weaver sitting in the dark, staring out of the window.
A terrified hiss escaped Catra’s mouth before she shut it. Her ears buzzed with fury. She tried to compose herself but her fur was still standing on end from the shock.
“Come, child,” said Shadow Weaver. Catra bit back a snarl and felt for the light switch. It buzzed on pathetically.
“Where’s Kyle?” she said.
“Here and there,” Shadow Weaver said, which incensed Catra so deeply that she felt her vision blur with red-black rage. “His whereabouts are not my concern.”
“Then why are you so obsessed with mine?” Catra snarled, refusing to step any closer. Her feet dug into the gaps in the metal floors.
“It is the company you keep that concerns me,” Shadow Weaver said, and her tendrils seemed to edge closer to where Catra was standing, which naturally made her edge back. “Take heed with whom you associate, Catra.”
Catra scoffed. “I’m not a child anymore,” she said. “You can’t tell me who to hang out with.”
As always, Shadow Weaver ignored her. “She is a being from a different planet,” she said and her voice sounded like a tolling bell. “You do not know her intentions or her desires. She could smite you with a look and you may be erased from this very existence.”
Catra bristled. “It’s my choice if I want to get smote,” she snapped. “Getting erased would be better than this life.”
As she said it, she knew it wasn’t quite a lie. Perhaps it was the return to this place of desolation and despair, the site of her diminished childhood, her miserable existence. Perhaps it was working so many jobs just to scrape enough to keep living in a little room. Or it was that the flimsy veil had been ripped off the truth, and now she saw what she had closed her eyes to when she and Scorpia had packed their things and escaped the Fright Zone.
Truly, what was there for her, even in Bright Moon? Scorpia may have endless hope but Catra understood better, even more so by the places she had been working at. The party had proven enough. What would happen in ten years when she wasn’t sweet enough, when her fur began to loose its lustre and she had to find other work. What work would even be there for her? What life, what hope?
If Adora decided to erase her from existence, it would still be a better thing to happen to her than anything else.
*
Shadow Weaver could not convince Catra to abandon Adora. In fact, she may have simply strengthened Catra’s resolve to hightail towards her at light speed. If Adora was the star that promised her eternal end, why would Catra refuse her embrace?
She found Adora inspecting a dead weapon several miles off from the old house. “That doesn’t work,” Catra said.
“It’s fixable,” Adora said with a bright smile, regarding the weapon like it was a dear friend. “This is fascinating. I’ve been collecting decommissioned Horde technology on my travels, but this one is quite unique!”
Catra glowered at her to disguise her confusion. “Horde technology?”
Adora motioned for her to come closer. Catra edged in and peered at the dead glass of what may have presumably once been some sort of sensor. It was shaped like a narrow diamond. “The Horde sought to colonise the universe,” she said. “We stopped their efforts, but it was a long fight. There are still rumours that they are waiting to re-emerge. They’re self-sustaining, in a way. You can’t quite get rid of them.”
“Oh,” Catra said, berating herself silently for not saying something more intelligent. But what else could she say?
“They wished to make all the universe like them,” Adora said, stroking the edge of the sensor with a narrow finger. Catra watched the movement and found herself yearning to be the glass. “But I find the universe is more interesting when it has its own surprises.”
“There’s more than just that stuff here.”
Catra hadn’t meant to say that, but they were out before she’d realised and there was no way to put them back inside. Adora’s blue eyes turned back to her, making her feel like she was the centre of the universe.
“Care to show me?” she asked. Catra shrugged.
“Come on,” she said, keeping nonchalant, but her twitching tail betrayed her true feelings.
***
Catra hadn’t thought about the Black Garnet in years.
She remembered when Scorpia had first shown it to her, explaining casually, this belonged to my family long ago, but I never really managed to connect to it, he he he… Guess I wasn’t good enough, but that’s alright.
Catra had stared with a hunger that she’d never known before. It gnawed through her bones and into her stomach, but then she’d turned to really look at Scorpia and seen the despair behind her huge smile. The Black Garnet had been moved from its rightful place to this ruin many eons before she was even a thought. But what was there to do? Scorpia’s family had abandoned her, but at least, Catra sometimes thought in her bitterer nights, Scorpia remembered her family. Catra had no one.
She led Adora through the twisting metal roads, into the tower where the Black Garnet rested. Rumour had it that the Black Garnet was one of Etheria’s six mystical Runestones, but Catra had only known this hunk of dead rock in the depths of the Fright Zone. Even with Scorpia’s patchy family history added on, it had little meaning. Bright Moon’s Moonstone hung above the palace of course, but that was practically part of the flora. Nobody really believed in its power–at least no one that Catra knew in Bright Moon.
The metal doors slid up with an ozonic hiss. The room smelled like old rubber and stale air. There wasn’t any light, but Adora had a torch that she switched on, giving them just enough to see by.
“This is the only thing worth seeing around here,” Catra said. The torch reflected a deep, almost purplish-brown red off the surface of the garnet, like a bruise. Catra caught a glimpse of her and Adora’s distorted reflections in one of its gigantic facets.
Adora’s blue eyes seemed to stretch endlessly on into the black, and her gaze was just as hungry as Catra’s had been all those years ago, when she was just a kit and Scorpia’s claws were wee. They’d barely reached the middle of the stone then. Scorpia now could likely reach the top of the thing, while Catra hadn’t grown much since her kittenhood. Adora too, was taller than her, and stronger. She wasn’t sure what sort of strength her arms had.
Adora leaned close. Her large palm hovered over the surface of the Garnet, but her skin did not meet the surface, though it rested a hair’s breadth away. “This holds power,” she said. “But it is not power I can access.”
“Yeah, something about the Runestones and princesses,” Catra shrugged. “Some old fairytale. It never worked.”
Adora cocked her brow and turned her body to face Catra, moving her hand back from the Garnet, making her chest trill. “What sort of princesses?”
Being in her gaze made Catra feel like she was under a spotlight, but instead of the sharp exposure of the stage, it suffused her with a gentle, caressing longing, a desire to stay under the light for as long as she could, just to hear it singing to the dark corners of her heart. “They’re supposed to be the ones who can connect to the Runestones,” she said. “You already know one of them. Sparkles. The Bright Moon princess. She and her mother can connect to the Moonstone.” She paused. Her tail swished once. “Supposedly.”
“Hmm,” Adora said, turning her eyes back to the Garnet and shining the light close. “And who connects to this?”
Catra opened her mouth, but her brain caught her tongue. “Dunno,” she said. “Must’ve been someone who lived here long ago. No one special enough here to do something like that.”
She didn’t know why she didn’t tell Adora what she knew. Maybe self-preservation. Maybe to protect Scorpia. Maybe she wanted to hide some information for herself, keep Adora wanting so she would be wanted.
“Can you tell how long ago it last worked?” she asked instead.
“Not really,” Adora said. “It’s certainly been dormant a while.” She shone the torch lower to the base of the stone and crouched to inspect it, peering at the floor. “Ah.”
Catra raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“As I suspected,” Adora said, beckoning her down. Catra squatted next to her, feeling her warmth as their arms brushed. “See the edges here,” she said, pointing at the base, focusing her light there. “It’s been moved.”
“Moved?” Catra asked, feigning surprise. “Where from?”
Adora shrugged. “Wherever its original home was,” she said.
“Does that mean it won’t work here?” Catra asked.
“I wouldn’t know really,” Adora said. “If you’re right, and if there are other Runestones, I would need to inspect those to understand how they work.”
“So you’re leaving?”
It sounded petulant to her own ears, and she hadn’t meant to sound that way, but the words were out. What could she do?
Adora stepped forward. Her hand was warm and dry as it cupped Catra’s cheek, her thumb stroking under the socket of her right eye. “Pretty,” she said, tapping the bone. “I’ve met very few with heterochromia in my time.”
Catra, who had been made fun of for her different coloured eyes when she was a kit, and was often harassed for it as a grown magicat, felt her skin warm underneath her fur. Adora continued to stroke her cheek, and a purr rumbled through Catra’s chest, unbidden.
Adora’s blue eyes were what Catra thought the ocean must be like. Endless and blue, stretching towards worlds unknown, looking serene but holding a hunger that Catra couldn’t help but be curious about. She wanted to sink her head under the surface to see all the secrets underneath. What was Adora hungry about? What did she want to eat?
Catra wanted it to be her. She wanted it to be her more than she’d ever wanted anything in the world. Would Adora find her palatable? Would she find her satiating? She didn’t know if she could bear it if Adora didn’t like the taste of her. If she spat her out and left her on the plate.
Adora stepped back with a small smile. “Would you like to go somewhere with me next week?” she said. “There is somewhere I’d like to show you.”
Was saying no an option? Catra didn’t know what Adora wanted to show her, but if it was anything more interesting than the sum total of her life, how could she refuse?
Her tail swished. “I might if you pick me up.”
The pink of Adora’s mouth lifted at the corners. “I wouldn’t ask you somewhere without also offering to take you there.”
“What a gentleman,” Catra said. She turned around to walk out of the Black Garnet chamber when she felt a hand around her wrist. The pull she expected didn’t come. Instead, Adora walked closer so her front was barely a hair’s breadth away from Catra’s back.
“Leaving without me?” she whispered. Catra’s fur stood on end, and her tummy felt like it was melting into something warm.
“Of course not,” she said. “You’re my ride out.”
A soft chuckle against her cheek. The hand on her wrist loosened. Catra pulled out and walked away.
***
The week was slow to pass.
Each hour squeezed through like molasses. Catra spent her time in a fog of desire, thinking about Adora’s hand on her wrist and her touch on her face. She mixed up orders, spilled coffee on tables, missed spots when cleaning, and nearly got fired. This tempest of carelessness followed her home, where she tore her sleeve on a jutting nail she’d always known to watch out for. An earring was dropped and lost. Her own tail was stepped on.
The money Adora had promised came in a neat envelope with a strange symbol in the corner. Catra sniffed the crisp cash notes. She had never smelled or touched new money. Always it had been crumpled, creased, passed through the sediment of society before reaching her hands, where it would stay for one twinkling moment. Here was enough to do as she wished for many months. If she was more benevolent, it would be enough to move her and Scorpia out of their little room to a place where their tails wouldn’t smack each other. She had a choice for once.
How dare Adora give her such a thing?
Scorpia noticed her mood. Of course she noticed. She was that kind of person who would always notice when something was wrong with her friends. “What’s up, Wildcat?” she asked with a bright smile one evening after her shift, when she should have been bent over with exhaustion. That was the thing about Scorpia that Catra could never comprehend. How she was preternaturally brimming with good cheer, even when life had its boot on her neck.
Would Catra even notice if Scorpia was being bothered by the proverbial boot? That, more than her friend’s inquiry, made her raise her head from her pillow and take a look at her. Scorpia didn’t look any more tired than she usually did. Her face was streaked with grime, and she dunked her head into the basin to wash it.
Catra lay back down, staring at the watermarks above. The rings grew outwards like tree rings, pale green-grey against the mottled ceiling.
“Alright, now I know something’s wrong, because you didn’t yell at me for dunking my head in the basin.” The mattress creaked in, taking Scorpia’s weight. Little droplets of water fell onto Catra’s calves. She didn’t even want to twitch to shake them off. The water seeped through her fur, sticky and cold.
“I’m fine,” Catra said.
Scorpia nudged Catra over to the edge of the mattress and climbed in next to her, leaving Catra smushed against the wall. Her nose smacked against it and rubbed the whitewash off. She sneezed. “I’m fine,” she said again.
“Alright,” Scorpia said, wiping her face. Catra felt the edge of a worn shirt on her legs, mopping up the drops.
“Scorpia,” Catra said, her eyes unmoving from the ceiling.
“Hmm?”
“Could someone else… not from your family… could they ever activate the Black Garnet?”
She felt Scorpia’s gaze boring through her like a dentist’s drill. “No,” she said with a thousand questions in her voice. “Not that I’ve ever been told. But it doesn’t work for me and I’m the last of us left so… it probably doesn’t work at all.”
Catra’s ear twitched and she continued to stare at the ceiling till her vision blurred. She barely heard Scorpia say, “Might be some good if someone else could get it to work…”
She didn’t know when she fell asleep. Hours later, she woke up with her neck and arms damp from sweat and Scorpia’s snores resonating through the room.
As more days passed, Catra felt the miasma creep in like Shadow Weaver’s fingers around her mouth and nose, suffocating every breath of want and wish. Had Adora’s ask been false? Her faith wavered with every minute, like another grain of sand in the bottom half of the hourglass. This was not a surprise since she possessed very little faith in the first place. Only, it seemed to illuminate the foolish audacity of hope that she had allowed to flicker.
Shadow Weaver had always cautioned them against such fancies. Under her guidance, Catra had learned that life was a miserable mouth that chewed people up like peanuts at the talkies. People, especially those like her and Scorpia and the other hapless denizens of the Fright Zone, were empty food, eaten to satiate an inexhaustible boredom. Catra had accepted that she was empty food. She had complied to the futility of her endless life. It was enraging that Adora had pressed and nipped through her surrender to give her something so false as hope. Here she was, standing, with no stone to step onto.
She kept dreaming of a red jacket in the wind every night. But then when the week curled to its end, its owner returned. Once again she was seated at the café, in the same place she’d sat when she’d made the world stop.
Catra’s world stopped anyway. Adora turned her head. Her ponytail swished with her.
“I’m here,” she said.
*
Adora brought her to a colossal gleaming grey diamond deep in the Whispering Woods. It yawned open an entrance when she waved her hand, a quiet hiss in the even quieter air. A great steel tongue emerged through the evening and swallowed them into its belly.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Catra’s fur stood on end. There was not much in the way of things inside, save for what looked like a large chrome throne in the centre.
Then the lights came on and her world was changed.
The ship was majestic, like a palace of its own. Catra tried not to gawp, but her eyes roamed around the interior, taking in the sleek walls and floors with pulsing lines across the seams. Wherever Adora touched, arcane symbols crawled underneath her fingertips, blinking bright blue for her. Catra couldn’t read any of them. It was like no language she had ever encountered before.
A strange entity fizzled into existence in the middle of the room like a sharp ghost. Catra yelped and leapt behind Adora, immediately kicking herself for doing so. To her great relief, Adora did not make fun of her.
“Welcome Adora and guest,” said the ghost.
“This is Catra,” Adora said. “Catra, this is Light Hope.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Catra of Etheria,” said Light Hope. Catra nodded brusquely.
“So this is your ship then,” she said.
“That it is,” Adora said. “And for all intents and purposes, my home on Etheria until something better comes along.”
“I thought you were staying with the princess,” Catra said. Adora smiled.
“Glimmer was very kind to allow me a room at the palace,” she said. “But this is where I return to when I don’t wish to impose on her hospitality further.”
Her fingertips danced over some of the controls. The lights turned pink, then purple, and back to pink again. The sentinel Light Hope continued to hover.
“Why are you here?” Catra asked. Adora smoothed a hand over her ponytail.
“I’m part of a group that studies the cosmos,” she said. “I’m just a scholar, Catra. Nothing more.”
“Why is only one of you here?” Catra asked. “Why not others?”
“There were others, long before,” Adora said. “You might know them as the First Ones. But they haven’t returned in a long while. There were other worlds to conqu– see.”
Catra raised an eyebrow, watching Adora’s mouth twist. The tiniest of furrows marred her perfect brow. Frustration. Catra hadn’t thought Adora capable of such a feeling. It was something so flawed. Something uniquely Etherian, nothing she would attribute to a god, or whatever Adora really was.
Just a scholar. How flawed was a scholar then?
“Would you like some tea?” Adora asked.
“You keep tea on this ship?”
“It is something I know Etherians like,” Adora said, but her voice pitched a little higher than Catra had heard it before, and she left hurriedly into the back.
Light Hope hovered benevolently. Catra turned her eyes to her instead. She was so many more feet tall than any person she had ever encountered, even Scorpia. She did not smile, nor blink, nor speak.
Catra’s tail swished. Light Hope stared.
“What are you?” Catra asked.
“I am Light Hope,” Light Hope said. “I assist She-Ra in all her endeavours in Etheria.”
Catra cocked her head. “Who’s She-Ra?”
Adora leapt back into the room. “Here’s your tea,” she said. Her cheeks were still flushed like a bitten rose. Catra took it and sniffed it. The liquid was golden and herbal, and it made her ears twitch happily.
She loped to the chrome throne and perched on the edge with her cup. “So…” she said, watching Adora watch her, wondering why she was so nervous. Uncharacteristic, certainly, nothing like the charisma she’d shown in all the time Catra had known her. She had been unknowable and impenetrable then. A well placed claw could unsheathe her now.
“Yes?” Adora said, when Catra let the silence stretch to the very edge of its capacity.
“What do you study here?” Catra said. “Do you walk around the Whispering Woods drawing all the plants? Or do you study your friends in Bright Moon?”
“I study what I need to,” Adora said, sauntering to Catra, but Catra’s eyes caught the way her fingers pressed into her hand. The knuckles whitened like little clouds on peach skies, her nail beds following suit. “I am learning about this planet from the people that are willing to teach me.”
Catra cocked her head. Adora slipped her jacket off and her whitening hands were enfolded in the crimson fabric. Bone dipping into deep marrow, soft bread in rich soup. With the relocation of her jacket, her bare arms were exposed, the lazy curve of muscle drawing Catra’s eyes to trace over them. “And is everyone willing?”
“Some more than others,” Adora said. “You have been most unhelpful.”
Catra snorted, and nearly spilled her tea over her lap. A small smile emerged on Adora’s face, like it was coming from a secret nook or little crevice that no one knew about, a place she was showing just her for the moment.
A thousand words flew into her mind like butterflies, but all of them stalled when Adora turned to turn the screens on. Catra watched her quietly, ears twitching for any sign of danger, one eye on Light Hope as she sipped the tea, which sat comfortably in her stomach. Adora ran through several screens of the unintelligible language without a word.
“Hey don’t take off without taking me back home,” she said. “I didn’t sign up to be kidnapped.”
“I wouldn’t kidnap you,” Adora said. “Not unless you wanted to leave with me. The world beyond is large and dangerous. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
“I’m not faint of heart,” Catra said.
“That you aren’t,” Adora agreed.
As she worked and as Catra watched, her thoughts floated to the wait of the week. The way her worry had crept around her so cruelly, the way it crept back now. It was always there in the shadows, no matter how far she ran.
Was her only recourse to stand in the darkness where there could be no shadow? How could she let herself return to that sort of life? Adora had only been in her orbit for a breath, and even then, she had not truly been a person that Catra had come to know. She did not understand who, or what Adora really was.
“Show me something,” she said.
“Hmm?” Adora said, her back still to Catra.
“Show me something,” Catra repeated. “From another world.”
Adora turned with a contemplative look on her face. Her eyes were somewhere between Catra and the ground, and she tapped her finger on her chin.
“I think I have something you’d like,” she said, turning back to the screen and tapping something on the control panel.
The darkness dropped like velvet, a softer, more pliant lightlessness than Catra had known. Slowly, stars began to break the black, twinkling in front of Catra like she was looking into the night sky from a window. The screen lightened eventually to a rich, foresty green, and she found herself staring at what looked like a spread of colourful mushrooms. The grass was plentiful and there was a smattering of round huts in the distance. A few bipedal creatures Catra didn’t recognise were walking into the huts, one holding a pot on their head.
There was nothing spectacular about the scene. Nothing particularly special, or unrecognisable–it was something she might find somewhere else in Etheria. Yet, Catra found herself filling with a sense of deep contentment, like she had never had a care or cry in her entire life.
She sighed. With the sigh came a smile that crawled up her cheeks, crinkling her eyes, filling her whole head with a sparkly cheer.
She didn’t see Adora watching her face carefully, nor did she notice Light Hope disappear slowly into the shadows.
“How lovely,” she found herself saying.
“This is the sort of thing I like to capture,” Adora said, and her voice was very far away. “How lovely is our universe in all its simplicity?”
Catra nodded serenely. Ahead, at the control panel, Adora’s shoulders seemed to relax.
***
“You’re going where?”
“To show Adora around Etheria,” Catra said, stuffing her clothes into her battered suitcase. One of the handles was coming off. Maybe she’d ask Adora to fix it. Maybe she wouldn’t need a suitcase again. Maybe Adora had some sort of thing she could wear that would mean she’d never need more than one outfit ever again.
“The god?” Scorpia asked with wide eyes. “That sounds exciting. How long will you be gone for?”
This was the bit that Catra wasn’t sure about. She didn’t want to leave Scorpia indefinitely. No matter how much her blood thrummed to be with Adora, her heart tugged her towards her friend in a way it hadn’t done before.
Don’t leave her. Don’t leave her. Don’t leave her.
“Here,” she said, pulling the envelope of money out from under the mattress. “This should keep you well while I’m gone. You don’t have to get another roommate. You can get a better place if you want!”
“Wildcat…” Scorpia held Catra’s wrist gently with her claw.
She was always so gentle.
Don’t leave her. Don’t leave her.
“Where did you get this from?” Scorpia asked, sitting on Catra’s bed. It dipped nearly to the floor with her weight, the frame creaking ominously.
“It’s legit, don’t worry,” Catra said. “It wasn’t stolen. Adora gave it to me for showing her around the Fright Zone.”
“Oh!” Scorpia said. Still she tilted her head and tugged Catra’s arm. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’m wonderful,” Catra grinned, turned to Scorpia and throwing her arms around her. “I’ll be great.”
Don’t leave her.
“You’ll write?” Scorpia asked. Her eyes were round with worry.
“Of course,” Catra said. “Every day.”
*
Night was falling in Bright Moon, the lavender sky purpling like a bruise. Catra wondered if she’d ever miss it. It had been ethereal in the early weeks, so different from the Fright Zone’s rusty nights. Over time, pulled into the drudgery of having to earn a living, Catra had stopped looking up.
Scorpia accompanied her downstairs, helping her with her suitcase. Adora was waiting outside by her motorcar. “Good to meet you again,” she said, nodding at Scorpia when she saw her.
“You remember me?” Scorpia asked with awestruck diamonds in her eyes.
“I don’t forget many faces,” Adora said. Her pink mouth pointed at the corners. Gallantly stepping forward, she reached out for Catra’s suitcase, but Scorpia hesitated to hand it over. “How long do you plan to be gone for?” she asked.
“Only as long as she wants,” Adora said. “I’ll bring her back as soon as she asks.”
Two sets of eyes settled on Catra, blue and brown, both of them pulling like twin moons. Catra, the helpless planet, found it impossible to split herself.
“I told you I’d write,” she said instead, taking her suitcase from Scorpia and hauling it into the car. “I’ll send a postcard from everywhere.”
Scorpia’s eyes filled with tears. Catra swallowed around the lump in her throat and gave her a quick, tight hug.
“You’ll be fine,” she said.
Scorpia sniffed, wiping her cheek with her claw. Catra got in the car, not wanting to look at her trembling bottom lip. Her hands lay in fists over her lap as Adora secured her suitcase and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Ready?” she asked softly.
Catra stared at her feet and nodded. The motorcar sputtered a little and then began to pull away from the curb, leaving Scorpia, and a bit of Catra’s heart behind.
She didn’t look up until they got out of Bright Moon and the paved roads gave way to bumpy dirt, making them wobble in their seats. Catra pressed a claw into her thigh, letting it pierce through the fabric of her dress and make a tiny divot in her skin. She made another, and another, and another, till she had a little circle of five dots.
“Would you like me to drive you back?” Adora asked quietly. Catra looked up. Adora’s hands were steady on the wheel, but her eyes were on Catra.
“No,” Catra said, and meant it. Her fingers curled back into her palms and she closed her eyes.
Something warm covered her knuckles. Adora’s hand, so large and pale, lay over her fist. Her thumb slipped slowly to the side of Catra’s fingers, stroking the edges.
“You can return whenever you want,” she said. “As soon as you say the word, I will have you back.”
“There is nothing for me there,” Catra said, and wasn’t it truly ironic that she’d realised that she’d left a piece of her heart behind only after leaving?
The drive continued in quiet. The night grew bluer as they puttered onwards, and Adora never took her hand off Catra’s, deftly maneuvering the wheel single-handed. At some point, Catra drifted off, and woke up again to Adora squeezing her hand.
“We’re here,” she said.
The ship was a cold shadow in the dark. Catra wasn’t sure how late it was, or how early, since it was that odd time of night where time was no longer something they could hold.
She allowed Adora to help her out of the motorcar and lead her into the ship. Halfway up the gangplank, she remembered. “M-suitcase…” she mumbled.
“I have it,” Adora said, her words kissing the back of Catra’s earlobe.
She was led to a little nook that likely served as a bedroom for Adora. It was utilitarian, with a tightly made bed tucked into one wall and nothing else.
“Here,” Adora said, gently depositing Catra onto the mattress. As she made to leave, Catra clung on.
“Stay,” she murmured.
Adora hesitated. In the dark, her eyes searched for Catra’s, who could see her just fine. Thoughtlessly, Catra’s fingers curled around the back of Adora’s neck, brushing the soft downy hairs at the nape. She felt Adora shiver, and the thump of the suitcase falling to the floor. A tiny tongue darted out across her bottom lip.
Take heed with whom you associate, Catra.
“Come here,” Catra whispered.
Adora’s lips covered hers. Catra closed her eyes, but when she did, she saw Scorpia’s large, sad ones. Her heart wrung itself out and she gasped.
Adora surged in and Catra fell back into the darkness.
*
She woke up alone.
Feeling around for Adora, she ascertained that there was no one else in the nook but her. She wrapped the blankets around herself and edged towards towards the edge of the bed, swinging her legs around and over it. The floor was cold as she padded over them.
She sniffed the air as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The ship smelled like nothing. That was strange. It had smelled like something the first time she’d come on board. She was certain it had. Had it? Had that just been proximity to Adora?
Light Hope was absent. Adora was nowhere else that she could see, so she crept towards the front doors. Was there a latch or a key she needed to leave it? A button to press? A sensor?
As she pondered, the door hissed open.
The Whispering Woods were cool and the sky was still indigo. She let the breeze touch her face as she tiptoed down the gangplank. There was no one in the immediate vicinity, so she kept walking.
The blanket dragged on the grass behind her, leaving a quiet shh-shh as she went. Some mysterious eyes blinked and watched, but she was left alone by the denizens of the Woods. She didn’t know what she was drawn towards, but her desire to search for Adora kept her feet stepping in front of the other. Onwards she walked, until she spotted a little light ahead, and quickened her pace. She stepped through a copse of trees and peered in.
At first, there was only light, but then it dimmed to reveal a god. Not a fallen one, certainly, not like that fallen, red-jacketed sweetheart that had stolen her away and brought her here, but a real god swathed in white with rich golden hair. The god was holding a mighty sword and raised it with a swift and sure curve through the night air.
She stood staring, transfixed at the sight. The god turned. Blue eyes fixed on green and yellow.
Take heed with whom you associate, Catra.
Catra stared at the god that had once been Adora, thinking about the world she’d left behind. Slowly, her future unfolded in front of her, full of mysteries that only time could unlock.