Last Stories From the Den

Instructions

"When I was really little, my Mama used to tell me the most amazing stories..." TALES OF THE KINGDOM ALIGHT Long before cats like us lived solitary, or even in the groups called 'clans,' we lived all together in one great colony. It was called 'Solsta,' In that time, and you must remember it was very long ago, the stars were not so far. See, there was a young hero her name was, well, perhaps it was Astra. Do you like that name? Good. Astra wanted to touch the stars. She set her path and dug her heels in, and she began to set a plan in motion. First, she tried alone. She piled stone after stone atop each other, until the tower was so high she couldn't see the top, and she began to climb. When she reached the top, she still couldn't reach! So she asked her closest friend. His name was Solstice. Together the two of them began to pile yet more stones on the pile, and it grew, and it grew.... until after the better part of a year they thought they might finally have enough. So they scaled the pile, but even standing on her friend's back, Astra still could not reach the stars. Besides that, their tower was unstable! It kept leaning to one side, and then to the other. Teetering. The wind wanted it to fall, but Solstice did not. He went running into town so fast the ground beneath him came up in clumps, and left a path behind him, calling "Builder! Builder!" First, he passed a renowned fighter, battle-scarred, but sharing a den he had not built. He said, "No, not I!" Next, he passed a hunter, whose own den hardly held the rain off his back. When Solstice asked him he said "No, not I!" Finally, He came across a simple cat, whose ribs showed through his fur. He could run no further, so he begged "Surely you know how to build a sturdy den?" And to his luck "I do nothing better!" The two of them traced the path made by Solstice's desperate run back past the hunter, past the fighter, and finally to the tower. When Astra saw the builder, she asked "Can you fix it?" And he said "Yes." Then he said "But I am hungry, I will not be able to do the work without food." So Solstice returned on his journey to find someone who could feed the three of them while they worked. First, he came across the fighter again. The fighter, like last time, said "No, not I." Then, he came across the hunter, who laughed like a mockingbird, and said "Of course! I am the most skilled hunter in the forest!" The two of them returned to the tower, the hunter counted the cats, and he said "I could feed one hundred more if you needed me to!" So he left to go catch food, and in the meantime, the builder set to work. They worked hard all day long, building up the right when the tower teetered left, and the left when it teetered right. That night all three cats looked forward to nothing more than the warm meal the hunter would bring back, but the hunter had not yet returned. Solstice gathered them around, and they discussed what should be done about the problem. "Perhaps we should yell so loud that our voices echo off the trees, and surely he will hear us." Said Astra, dreaming big. "No, we should build more towers, one after another that lead home so he can find his way!" Offered the builder, whose stomach growled loudly to punctuate his point. "We should go looking for him." Declared Solstice simply, already leading the way. The others grumbled, but they followed after. They searched the forest up and down, back and forth, but they didn't find him! Eventually, as they were turning to leave, they caught a smell. It was the kind of smell any cat knows better than to follow, do you know what that smell is? It was a Heavy. Reeking. Dangerous. smell. The smell of dog. And then smaller and quieter, woven into the air next to it, the fear smell of their dear friend the hunter. This sent Solstice running again, following the very same path he had before, hammered heartily into the ground now. And he found the fighter, who he had met twice already. He said, "My dear friend, your fights are written across your pelt, surely you can take on a dog to save our friend?" The fighter, stoic and short-worded simply said, "Yes. Lead on." The rest of the story goes like this; The fighter defeats the dog, and the hunter shares their meal with everyone, who feast well and become a close-knit group of friends. Day by day they work on the tower, and each day they find they need something else. Another cat joins the team, and the building continues. One day, they realize they need nothing else, and that the tower is complete. The bustling colony of cats, hunting for, protecting, and looking after each other at the tower's base has grown so vast that no cat can see the edges. The crowd that gathers to watch Astra make the climb includes every single member. So she climbs. But first, she collects from the hunter three mice, one for each day she must journey to reach the top.