Jellie gasps awake, trembling slightly, eyes wide. The world is bright. The world was--so dark a moment ago, dark and gold and gone, and now--now it's here again. She flattens her fur.
Stars dance at her paws.
She gets to her feet slowly, swaying slightly, and takes a moment to recuperate. Around her is pollen and stardust, intermingling like brothers. A butterfly lands on her nose, its wings glittering orange. No, she doesn't need to breathe, she realizes, not anymore.
Her first step is tentative, and then the next is confident, and then she walks through this wonderland. The grass is a healthy green below her paws. The sky is bright but filled with stars, and purples--pinks--blues bleed into the horizon before her. She bats at a bug, and it buzzes off.
She's walking for a long time, never tiring, and her mind wanders to her owner--Scar. He was--she loved him, is the thing. She loves him, and now he's--no, she's gone. Not him. Never him. A wail rises from her throat, mourning and hollow, and it tears through the pleasantness of the deserted meadow and takes it over.
She's never going to see him again.
Never.
Jellie crouches low to the ground, and begins to howl her woes into the damp soil, when she hears pawsteps.
She freezes, and turns around.
Three cats - a ginger tabby, a pure white, and a brown tabby with a white chest - stand before her, expressions sympathetic.
"Who are you?" she asks, voice breaking.
"I'm Jake," the ginger meows. "These are Tiger--" he flicks his tail to the brown, "and Angel." He flicks his tail to the white. "You're dead."
"I can tell," she snarls. "I'm never going to see Scar again!"
"That was your owner, yes?" Angel asks, tilting his head.
"Yes."
"Then come with me." Angel whisks his tail. "I watch over my owner too, many a day--you'll be able to see them again too."
Despite her better judgement, she follows them. It seems barely a minute before the grass gives way to translucent mist, which gives way to wind. She can feel the chill of it, hear its whistle below her.
"Look down," Tiger says, dipping his head. "You know where you died; that's how we'll find him."
Jellie flicks her gaze down to her paws, then to the wind. The wind parts, and then she's staring at Scar's room--at her corpse--at her corpse, at her corpse, at her corpse--at Scar. At wonderful, joyful Scar.
Without thinking, she reaches a paw out to him, and suddenly she's down on earth with him, floating just above his head, combing her paw through his hair.
She yanks back, and then she's back in the stars, Tiger staring at her expectantly. "Go on," he meows, tilting his head. "Come back when you're ready."
"What if I'm never ready?"
"You will be." Jake pads forward and noses her shoulder. "Go on down there, and give him a proper send-off. Let him know you're still here."
She nods, brisk and sharp, and goes back down with an outstretched paw.
Scar shivers at her touch--he's still here with his brother, and the nurse. She talks, and Scar occasionally interjects something in a wobbly voice, and Scar's brother is quiet.
She circles her own body, and it's so limp and lifeless that it makes her shudder. She doesn't know how to possess herself, though she wishes she did.
After a few moments of that, she turns back to Scar. Something flutters in her chest--a heartbeat, almost--and for a half-second she and Scar lock eyes and she breathes and she is almost corporeal, almost, almost, and she begins to purr, a rich and deep thing that comes like an engine's hum.
And the moment passes, and Scar's gaze wavers, and he begins to sob, loud and genuine (like he always is). Jellie's purr turns to a caterwaul, and she knows no one can hear it, it's not of the same fullness as her purr, too unreal, too high.
She swims through the air and lands on his lap. She rubs up against him and nearly falls through, but she jerks back with a startled mew. She tentatively leans into his chest, and when she thinks his chest is an obstacle it becomes one, and she mourns in a long meeeeow to the world while Scar leans into her ghostly pelt unknowingly.
She wants to become real again, if only to lick a tear from his chin and taste its salty sweetness.
A flutter in her chest--
She reaches up and licks his chin, and while she's still invisible, Scar cracks open an eye to look at her. His breath is short and quick.
I love you so much, Jellie thinks, turning back into starlight. I hope you never forget me. Please don't ever forget me. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Reluctantly, she lets go of mortality, and joins death in its eternal harmony.
RIP Jellie. You will be missed.
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