Becoming the Story by L. E. Henderson

Author:L. E. Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: short story collection, science fiction collection, fantasy and science fiction, fantasy contemporary, fantasy collection, anthology collection, anthology and sampler

The Eternal Twine

Once every thousand years, a cat asks itself a human question. In the case of Muffins, who was cleaning between her toes with her tongue, the question was, “What is the meaning of it all?”

She had cleaned her front toes the day before, working hard, and they had somehow gotten dingy again. How many times was it going to take to get them clean for good?

Once every thousand times a cat asks a human question, the universe answers. It had been a while since the universe had responded to a cat, so maybe that is why Muffins became human that day.

It was January and dark outside. She had was stretched out before the fireplace to ease the chill coming in from a crack in the broken window pane. As she was licking the gaps between her toes clean, she had a new thought: Ow! At first she felt the burning scratch of her tongue, and she looked to see a stretch of raw pink skin where her fur used to be.

She stopped licking. Her front paw was a paw no longer. She had an expansive, flat palm with fleshy fingers instead of claws. She held them up to her eyes and flexed them, and stared at them in disbelief.

Meanwhile, the air was pressing down on her like lead, but she tried to stand anyway because she felt she needed to do something. She swooned and clung to the brick mantle for support. It was a different kind of standing, anchoring herself with her hind legs and stretching herself tall and vertical, but for some reason it felt natural, like she had been doing it all her life.

Desperate for reassurance and possibly a scratch on the head, she made her way into the room where Evie, her servant, usually slept.

Evie was not there and Muffins remembered that she had gone out. Muffins caught a glimpse of something silver on the wall. She leaned toward it for a better look. Inside the guilt-framed “window,” a strange creature emerged, a girl with golden hair and a delicate nose, large green eyes, and long eyelashes.

When Muffins stared at the girl, the girl stared back curiously. When in surprise Muffins pulled away, so did the girl. Muffins had no real concept of the word “reflection,” but it was not hard to recognize that the girl in the mirror was somehow Muffins, or at least her mocking twin.

In either case, the sight alarmed Muffins and she stepped back. After recovering she continued her self-examination. She glimpsed the upper curve of her breasts and the blush on the apples of her soft, firm cheeks. She pulled her lip down and examined her bottom teeth, a white and even row of them. Even as a cat, she had never seen her teeth before, although biting was something she did every day.

She recognized the form of the girl in the window. Evie, her feeding servant, resembled the golden haired creature, but only roughly. Evie was plumper, with

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