1

Wait, isn't the Moon more of a dog thing? Ah, never mind, it's too big to be just any one of those, clearly.

It wasn't necessarily the case that she had nowhere to go, in that particular sense that young adult books used that phrase in, usually to enhance the melodrama and ensure no inconvenient relatives cropped up during the plot. She was, at the moment, renting a small studio flat, barely furnished and with her stuff still laid out like on the first day in a hotel room. She had a tech support job and a favourite convenience store and a language she was in the process of learning — one of the boring Romance ones, not even a natlang, just because they had it in school as an optional course.

But, yeah, in the grand scheme of things.

Because these things just happen, right? Sometimes you wake up and you're a cat. As suddenly as a spring storm. Like that Kafka story, right? — only wasn't that about how suddenly becoming a bug is actually kind of terrible, and generally about the absurdity of bureacracy and the world. Which, it is absurd, she knew that well.

But even in this absurd world, sometimes you wake up suddenly and you're a cat. Which is, frankly, wonderful.

So, the cats in this part of the city — they gather around one of several places. Houses, mostly, but, most importantly, where food and warm and the usual stuff.

And when they bump into each other during the day, well, they aren't supposed to acknowledge each other's existence, really, unless there's a feud running between them. At night, though, you kind of have to, to stand against the cold and the dark. And at night cats sing and tell stories in secret dialects — nuanced, elaborate — very unlike meowing, which is only for kittens and humans anyway.

She heard them, when she slept in that studio the first several nights. Yeah, the landlord had said you shouldn't keep animals there, part of why the listing was so cheap, really, but she figured she'd be fine so long as she kept out of sight.

But all the meat was going bad, and was probably too spicy anyway, no good for her, so one time she went out and wandered until she was lost in the network of streets and canals and courtyards and underpasses. And the moon was golden-looking in the vivid sappfire-blue sky, and really, really large, and she wasn't sure if that was her size difference or just an astronomy optics thing… And she found someplace everyone was going, (she was used to following where everyone was going, very useful skill,) and just kind of bumped around and never really talked to anyone. Save for some meowing at the old gardeners which were the centre of this particular warm-place. And thank them so much, truly.

She picked up the languages quickly — so quickly, she suspected if there wasn't another cat in this mind before. The back left leg — paw? — had a bit of a limp, utterly unlike anything she herself (her old body?) had, which was evidence too. But forget about the evidence, she was going to dance.

Arrui that lived by the lake had mentioned something about it. Every several weeks, weeks really measured in how many legs walk to work in the morning, so a little staggered from a calendar's point of view, one pair or group or even particularly influential person picked a spot under the unfinished buildings somewhat up the river. She hadn't actually ever learned what humans called the river. Cats, here, didn't call it anything in particular. And people came together, all groomed and ready, and danced in the moonlight at a particularly warm hour. It was always particularly warm. She was curious about that, and ready to listen in to learn more.

Except she came somewhat late, saw the crowds, and didn't go. Next time would be spring already, with the fog and the springs and her fur getting all wet, probably, and she was looking forward to how it might feel. But not… yet, anyway, and how could she, she'd only been a cat for less than a month now. This had to be good for people.

So, before she knew it it was winter again, and she was just as lost as last time, really. Ah, you know what I'm saying. Trapped in that same emptiness meaningless cycle that was consuming so many others, with precisely no influence from the number of legs she had.

At least she chose a new name, finally. Because she had — she barely thought about the before anymore, but she knew for sure she didn't like her old name. Didn't fit her at all, not the context, not anything.

She just had to hope that meant something.

2

It was a bright, cold day. Red ashberries shone like car taillights — or like the tiny neon lamps of the Ekmtarii festival. It was the middle of January, which was probably a bit too late for that, but might not be, depending on how climate change had been doing this year.

This year. Hm. Which year was that?

Around early C21 AD, jan Tasi answered. Of the two of them, she was usually the more well-informed; she always took in all the information she could find — maps, broadcasts, signs, conversations if they were near enough, articles in all the encyclopaedias and other media she knew. ijo Toki typically preferred to dive right in and figure stuff out as they went along; they liked asking jan Tasi because she always knew exactly how much to tell them so it wasn't boring. That, and they just liked talking to her.

At the moment, ijo Toki was itching for stuff to fix. Dangerous litter, structural cracks in buildings; that thing where window glass was angled in such a way that concentrated sunlight melted pavement; dictatorships built on a single point of failure. The other kind, too, but those usually took longer, and you absolutely had to find local resistance networks then. Always a good idea, that, to tell the truth.

They were moving a paving stone into place when they heard singing.

Both of them heard it, really. They talked by thinking, seamlessly, often without words (or words recogniseable to anyone outside of the two, anyway); both of them often saw what the other saw. But jan Tasi had an external presence too, and this body wasn't even her temporary home or reflection; so, both of them viewed this as jan Tasi visiting, or observing, or phoning, or some impossible average of the three. Anyway, she recognised the tune; it was a wedding song, or a divorce song, never could tell the two apart; if it was human it would be sad, if it was prihvvù it would be angry, probably, but it seemed to be cat, and it was happy whernever cats sang. Which usually wasn't here, and in winter too! — but that was detail.

When they turned around, ijo Toki saw a young, clumsy black cat walking along the snow-speckled lawn. While they were sitting down and starting to very — slowly — blink as a sort of friendly gesture (hopefully it would get perceived as a friendly gesture, cats have cultures as like everyone) the singing stopped. The cat meowed something like 'So what do you think?' It wasn't really 'think', there were a half-dozen words for that even in the simplified dialect that was meowing. But, yeah, something like that.

'It's beautiful, that's right,' said ijo Toki with obvious, unmistakeable enthusiasm, in the language in which cats spoke only to each other.

(Together, ijo ni and jan Tasi spoke billions of languages; they never ever counted separately. This one might have been slightly archaic, or futuristic, or to the east. ijo Toki just hoped it was close enough.)

(And there it comes, then.) They caught the cat's bewildered/​possibly a little insulted look and repeated the phrase with the deliberate lack of affect that meant they were actually very interested.

The cat nodded (made whatever gesture was equivalent to nodding) and came close to smell them. (ijo Toki was trying to return the favour. Their conversation partner smelled… like a cat. This nose wasn't the best at those things.) When she was finished, she almost said the phrase she'd readied: 'Well, we're acquainted, then.' (This part was one extraordinarily short word.) 'There you g- wait. Waait. You're not…'

'Ah, that's my favourite bit!' thought jan Tasi, or possibly ijo Toki. 'Not what?' said ijo Toki, or possibly jan Tasi. The transformer unit nearby just hummed, and the (yellow-green, main-sequence, smallish) sun peeked out from over a passing cloud after hiding for a minute, as if amused.

3

Sort this out. Take a minute to sort — this — out. Sometimes you are suddenly a cat, which means more things are possible than you've ever dreamed of. Things you've dreamed of did include suddenly being a cat, choosing a cool special cat name, never ever being perceived as a guy again — nevermind — they didn't necessarily include whatever else this implied to be possible.

And what this implied to be possible was — she didn't know. Okay, let's start over.

The cat was babbling quietly, all her sureness gone in a flash. 'Well, I don't want to say "human", because — you see, I had this theory that — well, it's the principle of equivalent exchange, right? It's just…'

Sometimes there are people that look human but speak cat but don't smell like anything at all you've ever smelled. There you go. Starting point.

'Well, anyway.

'My name's Rroynuir; you can call me Roy when you're talking to people. Humans. Non-cat people. Whatever you are.' Here she made a noise that was the rough equivalent of a curtsey.

'Ah. Hi. Hello.' They nodded. 'You mentioned the principle of equivalent exchange. That's… a principle that applies less often than one'd think, and often with respect to unexpected notions of equivalence when it does apply — but that's detail. Anyway. What's the occasion?'

'Which… occasion? I'm not… celebrating anything? Noticeably, I mean?'

'Ah, no, not occasion, I forgot the word. The word "cause/​reason", probably. You had some theory in mind — what about?'

A cold wind blew through the tops of the trees, howling ever so slightly noticeably. 'Um,' said Rroynuir, 'thing is, I haven't always been in… this… body.' ('Ah, me neither!' ijo Toki nodded.) 'And I've not always been a cat. I mean, I know of a handful of people who are cats in human bodies — say they are, philosophically, in the ways that matter, and I trust them — but that's not my case. Probably.'

'Right. So, something happened, and you want to figure out what it was, probably to undo it,'

'Sort of. Not to undo it,'

they said in overlapping, slightly frayed at the edges unison,

'because I'm actually… probably the happiest I've been in my entire life. A little lonely, maybe.'

'Ah, okay. Sorry. Jumping to conclusions — thought I got rid of that ages back. Because it makes so much more sense, what you've told me.'

'What? Why?' Rroynuir angled her head questioningly.

'Why would people ever be one thing forever? Got somewhat used to it, because most people do, probably, but I've never understood.'

'Hmm… I've always thought it was more about agency.' She paused, thinking. 'Even if you're unhappy as you are, you'd rather choose the direction to go on your own, not let the narrative take you wherever it will. Not everyone is as lucky as I, in that the narrative took me exactly where…' Exactly where she wanted, she supposed. Or sort of. Close enough, but not close enough to say it like it was true.

'A! Makes sense. Thank you.' ijo Toki untangled their limbs and stuck them in a different position, a more open one. 'Trans people know this. There's a whole thing, about shaping your own shape, participating in the act of creation.'

'Oh! I'm a trans people.' Rroynuir smiled — squinched her eyes like in brightwarm sun.

'Ah, neat! I'm sort of adjacent, but not exactly. More like I'm within the field of possibilities that transness opens. Relative to the "mainstream" one in this time and place.' Time and place. Okay. 'And not people, at any rate.'

She was thinking, and wondering about some things. The way you make conversation is you try to continue the narrative of the other person, the one they presented the moment before. And by fitting into each others' narratives people communicate. So she'd went along with the flow of this, but it doesn't quite…

Again, it was a start that she'd formed some concept of that p… the someone that she was talking to. Now she had to form a concept of herself in a world where they exist. Preferably in a way which doesn't betray her own her-ness. She'd had a lot of practice with that, though.

There was a bullfinch that sang and flew along the road, then disappeared somewhere into the concrete jungle. Well, mostly brick jungle, in this particular town's case.

The two/​three conversationalists decided to follow it, because just sitting in one place was too much of a silence. The riverbank smelled of fish after the morning tide receded. It was a tired, musty smell.

'The song,' they were saying. 'Where'd you know the melody from?' They seemingly forgot to not look genuinely enthusiastic by this point. She was never much for this particular point of etiquette, though.

'When I was a child- when I was a girl,' she began, 'my family went to this other city near where we lived. Some legal thing. There was a lot of people sternly talking and waving paper at each other.' Rroynuir swerved a little to avoid a piece of broken glass. 'I spent most of that day walking around that place. And there, in one of the underpasses… A person was playing something on an accordeon. Tall, fem-presenting — well, I remember them being tall, but considering I was a child then… And really kind, it seemed to me then. I've no idea why this stuck with me, but this's been one of my favourite ever songs ever since. Don't even know what it's called.'

She paused and realised she had been rambling on for some time. ijo Toki didn't seem bored, though.

'It doesn't have a name,' they remarked. 'Probably doesn't need one. The melody's identifiable enough, and libraries are mostly content-indexed anyway…'

'Most libraries I knew aren't. Maybe they're starting to be?' She was lost in thought for a moment. 'It's one paradigm, though, nothing objectively better about it, why would it become…'

They walked along the riverbank for a while, ijo Toki somehow finding the exact right volume to speak at so as to not attract the attention of outsiders. And Rroynuir was thinking about how — isolating all this turned out to be. How she missed this absolute sureness that whoever she talked to definitely wanted to speak with her, and didn't feel pressured into that by politeness or somesuch. But, also, how that was still clearly possible, she saw that now; only problem is, where to start?

'Anyway, what else d'you usually like to sing?'

'Mmmr, there's…'

…And so on.

4

'And here's my point,' she said, a long, long time later, reminiscing.

'I've not become less of an introvert — oh, what's that, you say? — oh, it's a human concept. Means… "a person who gets tired from being with others". And I have never understood how this isn't everyone, you're right, Euwi…' Euwi turned zeir head mischievously, but kept listening.

'But it's… easier, now. I think… you were the first people I tried to trust.' The wind blew out the curtains of a nearby house, to punctuate the phrase. 'And it's worth it! So worth it! Hi.'

In the corner, another face was listening in. They cautiously stepped inside. 'I'm Winnie? You've…'

'Come on in. There's fish for everyone.' And Rroynuir guided parts of the close-knit circle to step aside, to allow them in.

It was undefined who, exactly, of the three talked the others into it, and who was talked into it. But Rroynuir came back to her hiding place that night with a strange certainty that, after the last snow, in a few nights' time, there'll be someone at the dance to lead her through it.

(ijo Toki slipped away quietly. Turned a corner, entered a doorway — for a moment, Rroynuir saw an incongruous, shining space within — and was gone. She felt a strange freshness in the air… and got to turning corners of her own.)

The last snow coincided with the first rain. ijo Toki gently pushed open the door jan Tasi made — a long, wooden one today, with a stained glass window at the top they suspected had been pulled from a First Roman cup — and fell forward into a symphony of touch and smell, temperature and sound. Wait, no, a symphony's already of sound. They were laughing and dancing in the storm already, though, and here just now was a wonderful stillness a few days ago, how..? They'd never stopped being amazed at weather.

Rroynuir was waiting under some rusted overhang. jan Tasi left a vague feeling of a path, which they'd followed almost not even noticing themself, just slowly drifting out to a direction. They'd greeted her and settled into a rhythm, it semt, and she was talking about her life again. :D

Just the next day after they talked, she got involved in a dispute. Someone was arguing over a piece of territory near a very profitable home. She'd shivered afterwards from remembering saying that she'd defend with all her might the barely-not-a-kitten newcomer, the tired and glossy tabby cat. Kept an eye out for him regardless, though.

They were passing through a dense block of new buildings, the kind they'd build to be overgrown on purpose, and just painted green where impossible. Rroynuir climbed onto the rooftops, rather deftly, they remarked, and then followed her through, careful not to rattle or creak or be noticed.

'So… what will we do if this fails?' she asked, stepping over some fallen branch or other. 'If what? They're hardly likely to kill us,' they mused. 'If you'd like, we could leave and go somewhere else then…' 'No, no, you're right. I think. I do trust them not to think of me as "not a proper man", for one… I've seen people that humans would describe as trans being, and socialising, and being happy there. It's other things.' 'Mhm. Careful!' A plank was slick with rain, and Rroynuir almost fell, but steadied herself in time.

There was a chime at one edge of jan Tasi's mind, a soft one, like a friend-ly pattern emerging. Cats were streaming across town, she interpreted, with the most flower blooming under the cloud cover. She breathed out.

A group of people were sitting around a puddle near the meeting place, watching frogs sing.

ijo Toki sat down, and waved their head at them. 'Hello!' Leant aside for a little — 'That's Rroynuir, she's wonderful. …What is it you're scribbling?' — peered intently at the work of Miel, someone she'd heard about but never met, not properly — 'Rroynuir, what do you think?'

She found herself being carefully integrated into a conversation at every turn, then, which was new. Before long, she'd had positive interactions with a number of people, and integrated herself into an exploration party to a corner of the town she'd had some passing knowledge of. Yeah, she could live like this. Abso-bloody-lutely she could.

In some years' time, her claws finally grew out.