THIRTY-SEVEN: I’m coming to get you, Octavius

This time Octavius came to me. Maybe I was the one watching out for him. Maybe it’s because I don’t sleep.  Sometimes it’s easier to come to someone in the light when they are meditating than it is to navigate the maze and fog of dreams.  You can get lost in someone else’s dream and it can be frightening.

It was Nighting and I was sitting on the front porch meditating which most of the residents of the Bowl did during Nighting.  Before Edlawit came, it was always daylight.  Once Edlawit and Arous came to live with us in the Bowl, the Diofe invited the warmth of Nighting since their mortal bodies couldn’t handle constant daytime.  We called it Nighting and Lighting.  We never saw the sunrise but the Diofe allowed the moon to shine through so Arous would always be able to connect with the home planet of her mother. We are where we’ve been; he didn’t want Arous to forget her mother.

I ran into the house and through the labyrinthine halls until I came to Edlawit’s room. I walked through the door and she shot straing up.

“Miguel!” she yelled. “It’s mid-Nighting!”  She flung herself back down and jerked the covers over her head.

“I know,” I said.  “Octavius is in the light waiting for us.”

“Who’s Octavius?” she said the covers muffling her voice.

“The cat. We have to hold him in the light and we have to hope that Arous is dreaming.  Do you think you can get in?”

She had woken up from a dream that morning by the sound of a cat’s mewing.   She had been with the Diofe in the Jardin de Fluer trying to save some ducklings that were caught in the storm drain.

She went to the ID3-Wall.  She put her palm to the panel on the wall and it chirped awake.

“Abandoned cats?” she asked. “Where would I find them?”

She was sure that was what she had felt in her dreams.

The Tennant-12 stepped out from the wall.

“Good morning,” it said. “There is the Animal Protection Society, Animal Refuge, and Association for the Deterrence of Cruelty. The Animal Refuge is four blocks west of Broad Street on Anne. You were on Broad Street just two weeks ago.”

“I’m coming to get you, Octavius,” she said as she turned from the hologram.

Tennant-12 beamed.

“Allons-y.”