Black and orange stray cat sittin' on a fence Who: Bast (closed narrative) What: Transformation and return. When: Ranges from February to after this thread. Where: In a corn field in Ohio. Warnings: None
The darkness is a light-weight thing, a fluttering veil through which her eyes pierce easily. Wide, shining, reflective in the dark and piercing green, she sees the details of faint shadows caressing every corner and detail around her. Distantly, she can imagine the spinning wheels, fast streets and forests whipping away into memory, kelly-green signs announcing exits, junctions, and miles to go.
It was sunny out the day she left, the day she darted like blink-and-you-missed-it lightning out that door. Down, down, dusty stairs through a faded door and then she was free- massive people and raging-death cars everywhere, a riot of color and brightest lights. Among steel and grey and peachy-pale faces it had stood out: violent orange and offensively square, so she had investigated. Nobody noticed the small animal, pointed ears perked with interest, vanishing into the mess of a moving van. She herself didn’t realize what had happened until the segmented door was being pulled down and she was trapped, all light sucked from the world (again).
It is February, and Bastet sees everything.
The family finds her soon, a scrawny thing lapping musty-smelling rainwater filtered through a hole in the truck. A teenage boy who reeks of puberty reaches enormous hands and they release her in a field. Exhaust lingers in her nose long after they have gone, a clinging reminder of humanity and machinery.
But soon even that has gone, and there is only a hungry cat in a cornfield. A nearby rustle startles her, knocks her into her surroundings. She takes in a great breath, and the air carries a thousand smells and stories, a million bits of information. Proclamations about dog piss, notes of old fertilizer, and distant wood stoves push the final whispers of sand and pyramids from her fading mind.
Night is falling, and life is simple.
Two months on -- but for all anyone knows it has been ten centuries -- the cat is crouching in wait. Its prey, a young rabbit, is close enough to reach an arm out, but the feline watches through tall grass. On the hairy edge of the defining moment, when all her muscles are tensed to pounce, a string pulls. She falls back, legs flailing, the hunt ruined.
She’s only just getting to her feet again when the world implodes. Searing, life-affirming fire chases the air down her throat when she inhales, filling her from within and erupting outward. Fur rends apart, dark skin pushing through like sandpaper. The startled meow twists into a scream torn from her throat, peaking before dropping into silence.
The woman lies naked in a field, wild-eyed with flushed skin. Looks down- fingers, legs. Thumbs. She flexes and moves experimentally, memory returning. An impression comes to her of family- cub. Protecting and hunting. What was he hunting? It all seems so distant now, meaningless. She dismisses it as irrelevant and raises her arms to the skies in triumph.
In mid-April, Bastet finally feels alive.
There is a rank taste in her mouth that refuses to leave. She thought clothing might help, but after stealing from the one family on Earth that still uses a clothesline, it lingers. Maybe it has to do with the fog in her brain, the animal stupor still lying thickly over her. It clouds her but still she pushes on, and after almost a day of walking she gets there. A town. People, flowers, chirping birds -- and a bank clock informing her sourly that she has been out for three months.
It’s strangely orienting, a grounding realization of time and sense. Slowly they return, trickles of loose energy and power finally finding her: she savors her name, her memories, the bitter tang of Set and sweetness of Ma’ahes. Her mind returns to her slowly, as a bear emerging from hibernation, or hair growing slowly.
It almost tastes like Bubastis.
On the side of another highway, Bast has her thumb out. Cars and massive trucks scream past at a thousand miles an hour, bringing raging wind and sore ear drums. A car with a sputtering muffler pulls over, a dusty green thing covered with college liberal bumper stickers. The girl who sticks her head out of the window has dreadlocks, and shouts over the road noise and bad folk music, “You need a ride?”
They are nice people despite the bad music, college dropouts who pass a joint around the car amid cacophonous coughing and giggling. Bast answers few questions about herself but laughs with them, marveling that they are both going to New York. After a few hours, they pull off the highway, and the driver stops too abruptly at a light. Something clatters off the dash and falls by Bast’s feet, a plastic thing that is heavy in her hands. A small bobble-head lion with a googly eye missing, and it screeches into Bast’s consciousness.
The world goes silent, drowned out by the ringing in her ears as she stares. Distantly she can hear a growling, a threat from a voice that she knows and the answering hiss from one she doesn't. It’s the latter that pains- a serpentine voice that impresses into her skull and beats insistently against her mind. She pulls, frantically- seeking herself on a thread to nowhere, but the thread doesn’t give. Something, somewhere is still tied to her, and as she pulls she can feel the madness and fog on her mind tighten.
“Hey, lady...” The mortal’s voice is uncertain. “You okay?”