Dream Journal Notes (Day 5) 

They came again tonight. I’m starting to not just dread them, but straight up hate them. I have a pleasant dream coming across a nice reflective untouched spring in a cozy clearing with my kin…only for it all to melt away.

Today, it was a ‘city’. Big, metal trees that stretched up into the sky were everywhere, covered in glass. Buildings, like the other times I’d remembered them, just…a lot lot lot lot bigger. Smaller metal boxes that rumbled across painted black trails. They were loud, and I remembered their smells as bitter and poisonous. There were so many.

This time I got to look at myself in one of those glass ‘windows’. My ears were weird and round and at the sides of my head. No fur, except for the top of my head, where it was wirey and coarse. A humyn. …No, human. It was me, but as a human. Humyn…I don’t even know which way I should spell it anymore. I’m kind of glad nobody else can read the words I write…

I remembered being unhappy. Feeling unhappy. It wasn’t on my face, though, it was so hard to read. No flat ears, no tail…just a bland, flat expression staring off into the distance through a window.

I was heading home, when some rude man holding a small black ‘thing’...cell…phone…ran into me. I fell over, and all of my food spilled everywhere. Wrapped cowmeat, fruits, strange wavy bricks in pouches…he didn’t stop to help me pick it up. I didn’t expect him to, but it still hurt. I felt unnoticed. It was…so strange. I felt so flat, so grey. I didn’t want to be grey, but if I were any other color, someone might notice me in a bad way.

I remember getting to that home…’apartment’. A boxy room in a bigger boxy building. Smaller than the smallest den my kin had ever lived in. A bed. A big plastic box with whirring metal bits that made lights and contained…everything. A computer. That was where I didn’t have to be grey. I sat in front it, and suddenly…”I” was back. Black fur. Red eyes. A smile. A tear. That was me.

And then the computer’s screen turned bright blue, and the box screeched, and I woke up screaming again.

Lin helped get me awake. Rubbed my ears, reassured me. She didn’t have to…but I’m glad she did.

I hate it. I hate these nightmares. These…memories. Are they memories? I’ve never seen anything like them anywhere we’ve traveled…but they feel so real. I know them and I don’t like it. If they’re true…did I used to be humyn? I don’t like thinking about it. But if I don’t write it down, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to think about anything else. Until those are my only thoughts.

If that happened…would…I still be Mei?

~*~

As she wrote the final question, the small, anthropomorphic black cat sighed with relief, feeling her heartbeat settle, that headache stop pounding in her head. She folded her journal around her hand, setting the small jar of finely blended berryjuice she was using for ink on the ground. She wanted, deeply, to go find a spring like the one from her original dream, it didn’t even have to be that pretty, and just wash her face to clear her head. Unfortunately, she’d already been gone from the den past morning meal; if she stayed out any longer, the other felyn would start asking questions.

Mei…had been honest. She hated having to do this. Waking up from a terrible nightmare, having a compulsion to get every detail down into a book lest they consume her. Writing in this weird, unusual script only she could read, which she knew to be ‘English’, and hiding the book practically on her person every moment of every day.

It terrified her. Her kin’d been lucky enough to find loose parchment pages while scavenging a wrecked caravan…but what if she hadn’t had anything to write with? What if she was just…suddenly ‘different’? Suddenly ‘humyn’? Worse yet, what if…somebody learned how to read her writing? Like, what if Lin-...?

“What’cha writin’, Mei Mei?” asked Lin, leaning over her shoulder. The small, anthropomorphic black cat that was Mei mewled in shock and practically doubled over to hide her journal. She groaned, quietly, before sighing and standing up, hugging the leatherbound pages tightly against herself, turning to face her assailant.

“Liiiiin…” Mei sighed, her neck craned to meet her sister’s gaze, her fluffy, black ears folded to some dense, wild headfur, “It’s nothing! P-promise! I’m just…writin’ down my private thoughts…”

“Most just think their private thoughts,” Lin said, slinking around to Mei’s side and taking a seat on the same log she was propped up on. “What’s the point of writin’ them? You’ll just remember them later if they were important.”

Just like the other felyn in the kin, Lin’s figure was covered in soft, gray and white fur, black spots splotched throughout in patterns. Also like the other felyn, Mei included, she wore simple woven, leathery skins that covered her shoulders and fell down her waist like a knee-length dress. 

With Mei’s new influx of memories, ‘snow leopard’ had quietly entered her vocabulary when thinking about Lin. She was a few years older, a head or two taller, and infinitely more talented at everything felyn. ‘Sister’ came to mind, too, but that wasn’t quite the way families were structured here, at least not for them.

Mei clutched her book closer, ears bashfully flattened back.

“They’re just so I can remember stuff when I grow up,” she mumbled, defensively. If she so much as took her hand off her journal, she knew Lin would be deep in the pages within minutes. She could only hope the other felyn simply lost interest. Maybe if she made it sound boring… “Like, what this part of the forest is like if we ever come back! What sortsa berries and beasts are out here. T-things like that.”

Lin narrowed her eyes, circling around to face Mei with disbelief. “You’re…spending morningtimes…writin’ about food?” 

The small black cat nodded, bashfully. “Y-yeah? …E-exactly.”

Lin was silent for far too many seconds, before rolling her eyes and beginning a little stretching routine, stretching out. “That sounds like boring humyn stuff, if you ask me. If we come back to this place, we come back to it, y’know? And just hope it doesn’t become one big humyn grounds.” 

Mei’s heart sank to her stomach, a flash of her dreams, that fleshy, furless face in her reflection staring back at her… “Y-yeah,” she agreed quietly, hugging the book to her chest. “Can this…be our lil’ secret?”

The spotted felyn raised an eyebrow, peering upside-down through her own legs. “Huh? Of course,” she replied, unfolding, smiling, and returning to Mei’s side to encircle her in a warm, fuzzy hug, cheek to fluffy cheek. “Even if you’re kinda weird and a runt, you’re still kin,” she purred.

The smaller cat sighed, and lapsed into gentle purrs, tucking deeper into the hug for a few moments. She hadn’t untensed since waking up. She rarely did, since the strange dreams had started. Having Lin’s supportive arms around her anyway was more than enough comfort.

…There was a rustle, and both felyn’s gaze immediately flickered to a grouping of bushes across the clearing. It was just enough distraction that Mei didn’t realize her journal had left her lap until she saw the spotted, cheetah-pelted figure of Din blur past her vision, the confident, taller, mischievous felyn grinning wildly. He was all lanky and athletic, already built like a little athlete…or hunter. And his sharp, toothy grin couldn’t be wider.

Mei whirled to her feet faster than she’d ever stood upright. Her fur stood on end with immediate, desperate anger. “D-Din! Give that back!” she growled, her black-furred hands bunching up into little fists.

“Sorry Mei Mei! Humyn things belong with humyns!” Din shrugged, casually, holding the journal aloft.

“Din,” Lin growled as well, slipping alongside Mei, “that journal thing is hers. Give it back.” 

The cheetah glanced more wearily as Lin approached, but maintained his smile all the same. “Nuh uh! Rules are rules. …But I cooooould be nice ‘n give it back if you catch me.”

“Din! This isn’t a game!”

“Buuuuut I have the book…” Din murmured idly, holding the pages aloft, “so it kinda sounds like I can make it a game if I want…”

Mei quivered with…impotent rage. Din was taller, and faster, and loved these dumb little displays of athleticism. She had no idea whether he was serious about getting rid of her journal, but she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t do something dumb and get it lost or muddy or wet or something.

Din caught her narrowed red eyes and quivering, tensing little body, and connected the dots a little too quickly. His eyes widened. “Oop, Cio, distract!”

The bush the two cats had been looking at moments before erupted as another grinning, spotted cat bound out of it, roughly the size and shape of Din if not a bit bulkier. It pounced and tackled Lin to the ground, and the two immediately began to tousle. “Cio, this is not the time!” Lin growled, tumbling end over end in a playfight.

With the distraction successful, Din took off, and Mei, refocusing, speeding off along with him deep into the forest. “Come back! Don’t ruin my-...book!” she shouted, and the two disappeared under the canopy.

~*~

Mei chased the cheetah, laser-focused on his every movement, her wide, red eyes looking borderline fierce as the small cat fell in pursuit. Din was an exceptional sprinter; if it were a clearing they were racing through, Mei would’ve long been left behind. But even as her lungs started to ache, her breaths became more labored, and her mouth started to taste of copper, she kept pace, mostly by ducking beneath low branches, flexibly swerving around trees, and ducking under the small gaps under fallen logs. One of the benefits of being a runt, she supposed!

Still, the little black cat was getting tired. Her intense focus fell on the smattering of bound pages tucked under Din’s arm. Bit by bit, it was pulling a little further ahead. Even as she tried to keep pace, the little black cat felt her whole body screaming. They’d been at this for…what, minutes? An hour? Days? That, and she could feel her stomach growl in protest for skipping ‘breakfast’. At this rate, she wouldn’t last…

It was slightly out of desperation and exhaustion that Mei, out of the corner of her eye as she swerved around a patch of prickly plants, caught sight of a potential shortcut…

~*~

Din slowed down, the spotted cat doubling over to catch his breath, grinning and holding the journal aloft. He glanced behind him. It had been minutes since he’d stopped hearing Mei’s frantic paws scrabbling through leaves and sticks. His legs were longer, his stamina was greater, and it came as no surprise that he’d left the smaller feline in the dust behind him.

Slowly, his muzzle curled into a grin, and he raised the book, idly flicking open the pages. “Okay, MeiMei, let’s see what’s got you in such a tizzy…” he murmured, only to frown seconds later. His eyes simply…slid across the pages. The symbols on the pages didn’t make any sort of sense. What the heck was a ‘G’? Why was everything written so small and scratchy? Where were the fingerpad strokes of felscript? It almost looked like…

Din’s ear twitched as something rustled above. His gaze raised just in time to see the furious, red-eyed glare of Mei speeding quickly towards him from the high-up branches. “W-ha?”

THUMP!

Den was knocked right off his feet. Mei didn’t weigh a lot, but the teen felyn wasn’t quite ready to catch her negligible weight. The two immediately began to tousle, Mei huffing as her paws and claws grabbed frantically for her journal, and Din laughing and trying to tug it away as the two tumbled this way and that, rolling across the forest floor.

“Din! I-I’m serious! G-give. It. Back!” Mei hissed amid the scramble. If she could just hook her claws into the leather, she could tug and dislodge it but putting her full weight into it. She might wreck the binding, but she could replace that if she had to. As long as she didn’t hurt the pages…

“You kidding me? This is fun!” Din laughed, gladly continuing the mutual tumble across the ground. “You’ve been all distant ‘n gloomy ever since you started writing in this thing! You even got the jump on me! How’d you do it? Vines? Did you jump off a roc or something?”

Mei’s ears flattened. She’d been…gloomy? “N-no! I just…trees. High branches. The ones I can stand on that you can’t. They’re easier to jump across,” she sighed. Ah, her fingers were on it. She gave the book a small tug. “I’m…sorry if I’ve been acting differently. Just, it’s important to me. …If you give it back, I’ll try ‘n go on more hunts with you or something, w-whatever you want, just…please.”

Din’s laughter died down as he studied Mei’s expression. “Uh…oh,” he frowned, “you’re serious-serious ‘bout all of this, aren’t ya?”

“Y-yes! Of course I am!”

“This ‘journal’ thing…I heard what you were tellin’ Lin. It’s full of stuff you wanna…remember? When you’re grown? But it’s stuff that makes you obviously sad.”

“Well, I mean…kind of…”

Din glanced down between them, staring at the bound pages with a furrowed brow. His mind slowly processed all of that information, steadily, and he pensively laid there on his back.

When he gave a strong, sharp tug, Mei wasn’t prepared to grasp and hold tight, and her journal tore from her fingers. The taller cat shook her free and stood up to his full height, winding his book-arm back.

“As your older kin, I’m makin’ the decision for your own good. This bad book needs to go-!” Din shouted, before tossing the journal off into the woods.

Both Mei and Din had been so distracted by the scuffle that they both realized the implications of their actions a second too late. The forest dipped down into a steep hill that went into some deep foliage far below. The journal sailed through the air straight over the decent, where it’d eventually tumble and disappear down into the forest below. Din hadn’t meant to throw it down there per say.

Likewise, Mei hadn’t seen the gorge descent until she’d dashed and leapt after her journal, already in mid-air once she spotted how steep the drop was. Her outstretched, fuzzy, black hand didn’t come close to the journal, but she did manage to twist her body just in time to watch Din’s horrified expression as she dove after it.

Thumpthumpthump thump…

Mei hit the ground hard, feeling something ‘crack’ in her arm, before she tumbled down the hill in a free roll, suddenly feeling the pain of branches scratch and bite at her as she rolled through prickly brush. And somewhere along the lines of her fourth or fifth revolution, her thoughts went hazy as the pain surged, and she blacked out.