A soft, rhythmic sound disturbs your slumber. A restless drumming, the tap of claws against the cold stone floor. When your eyes open they are drawn to the source of this strange noise, your ears begin to adjust until the dripping of the stalactites overhead are nothing more than a distant disturbance. There are more pressing matters to attend to.

You find yourself in a sealed cave, the walls press in close around you. It is large enough not to feel restrictive, but small enough to feel imposing. You can move freely and stand up straight but there is nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. Above you, the ceiling is impossibly black. You do not know how high this stone prison extends, but you suspect that it isn’t far. You are able to make out a few low hanging rock formations, and nothing more. There is light in the cave, although you cannot determine the source. It is low and tinged a chilly blue. Nevertheless, you are grateful to find yourself with some means to help make out the world around you.

It is only after taking in your new surroundings that you realise that you are not alone. There are two other cats on the ground around you who have recently awoken from their own slumber. You may have crossed paths with them before in The White Space, or perhaps they are strangers to you.

 

Before there is time to say anything or formally address one another your eyes are drawn to the very end of the cave where a small pool of water lies in wait. It appears to be the source of this ethereal blue light. The hairs along the back of your neck rise, warning you to be wary, and a rush to your stomach implies that you are standing near the edge of a steep descent into the unknown. The surface of the pool, however, appears no larger than a puddle.

 

Before you can pull yourself upright, something between you and the pool shifts. At first glance you had mistaken the dark outline for a rock, but now that you see the shape beginning to move... you recognise the tiny shapes as bodies. Three bodies. One moves, pulling itself loose from the others with some difficulty: a dark, half-formed butterfly shedding its cocoon. The creatures to his left and right fall limp to the floor, unmoving, their mouths partially open. You are only vaguely familiar with the concept of your own identity, but you find the word now. You are a cat and these are the young of your kind, they are kittens, fresh and soft. The one in the centre blinks very slowly, his head canted to the side. He is watching you and the other two cats you have awoken with. There is a pale film covering what you suspect must have once been vibrant amber eyes; now they are bloodshot and bulging. His ears and parts of the bare flesh you can make out are black and rotten, and when he opens his mouth water dribbles from the corner of his jaw.

 

The Kitten blinks once more and then begins to speak.

 

“Papa didn’t want me to get up. Everything was black, and all I heard were echoes. I pushed back, I tried, but papa was stronger. Papa held me down. Papa said it was the only way.” 

 

He says nothing more, but the sound of trickling water gets louder. For a moment you dismiss it as another drip from overhead, but then you see that there is more water flowing from the mouths of the dead kittens to either side of the tom-kit that addressed you. The water does not stop, it continues, meandering away from their brother as if he repels it from his shaking form. A small pool is already beginning to form.

The riddle you heard while you were sleeping echoes through your mind again. Within hours the cave will be submerged in water, if you do not find a way to escape by then, you will drown.