Intro
In between the realms, of life and death, good and evil and the veils of light and dark, lives a creature. A cat, a cat the size of a clouded leopard. She has no real name, when they talk of her, they call her Dream, or the Cat of the Catcher, she makes no sound, for who is to hear her in the nothing? She has fur that is so sleek and soft but is such a dark grey it is black, blending into the darkness of the nothing in which she sits, she has stripes and spots, in lighter greys, a light grey face and a light grey tail.
Her back is scarred and her ears are torn.
This beautiful, but strange, cat sits on a floating island of black rock, underneath an equally stunning dream catcher, floating above her head. With one big circle for the center, and three smaller ones hanging off it, feathers, claws, teeth and marked with silver paint. The center web of each circle was constructed of thin material, much like a spider's web. It was strong, impossible to break. No god, no mortal, no other could tear it apart.
The cat sits there, under her dream catcher, with her eyes closed as silver wisps of stunning brightness are channelled through the center circle. She keeps her eyes closed, for the sheer glow of the dreams are so bright that one glance could blind her, one glance could cause her to never see again.
Dreams move so quickly, never stopping their endless travel through a being's subconscious and through time and space, until they reach the dream catcher and they move through that webbed wall. Out of the other side... they stop.
They stop there and they hover. As the cat, with her large paws but dainty claws, reaches up, to pluck the dream and lead it into one of the smaller circles.
The one on the left is where the bad dreams go. Stories are told of the horses made of shadows, pain and loss, that race in the darkness and when they pass through inhabited areas the residents, child and adult, monster or human alike, feel the horror, fear and hate seep into their dreams. These dreams are cast away and while one can access them if they try hard enough, it is not easy to re-see a bad dream in exact detail.
The center circle is an important one indeed. Into this, are sent the prophetic dreams. When they are sent here, no one else can see, or even hear them, for only the original seer, or the writer, may access them. No one should know the future, after all.
Finally, is the right circle. This one contains the good dreams. No one is sure how they come about, perhaps it is a natural thing, all dreams start off good, and only get turned bad. No one knows, yet they stay there, open to the dreamer should they choose to replay it.
Dream does her job carefully and precisely, she takes her time but is not too slow. So when you are tucked away in bed, or perhaps you are asleep in less comfortable quarters, then remember, that out there, a cat protects and guards your deepest wishes and fears. With her eyes always closed and her paws always ready.
A kind heart and a soft pelt.
Chapter 1
By Earth time, it was five o’clock in the morning, to Dream, it was simply endless time, with no start, no finish. No day, no night. Simple. She did not work in hours, or minutes, or seconds. Not years, or weeks, or days. She worked in endless, swirling time, which could not be summed up in something so simplistic. How could one hope to capture time with words? It was different everywhere, in every world, every dimension, every reality.
No, time could not be captured. The Guardians found it most offensive when someone suggested such a primeval thing. To those who worked in and out of the Veil, in and out of what beings might call ‘life’, time was not something they ran their lives on, not like mortals, who had so little of it, or the gods, who believed they owned it.
