{SHIFT} In The Late of Night

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

The raven sat on the top branch of the tallest tree of the highest hill. His bright green eyes shone like emeralds through the dark, its black plumage hidden by the shadows of the night, but from her golden eyes he could not hide. She saw him there more often than not, looking down upon the village; a town known as Salem, the home to Vitsui, the silver-blue feline.

It was safe to say that the raven was no different from her, that he, too, was not bounded to the world like others were. A life so long that walked the earth yet was as fragile as any human townsfolk; death could come to them by any wounding weapon, or by any other form not expected.

Because the raven would not come down from his perch and ignored her pleading mews, Vitsui left the town behind, her worries and beliefs with it, and moved to find that which was equivalent to her. A shifter he was and nothing more; a creature long forgotten that to find one brought her to think of omen.

He stayed up there on his branch, much to Vitsui’s plight as she climb the trunk, a snide glint and mischief shining from those bright green eyes. But she kept moving up the bark, her nails digging in as she leaped from one side to the other, and reached his perch no sooner than an hour. And the moon above was witness of this late night’s hour, when the last known shifter met a newly born familiar.

The color of Vitsui’s eyes, as she lay before the raven, an imperial topaz, the gold illusion only visible afar. Her silver-blue fur, different from his own, glowed a ghostly shimmer against the moonlight, but it was the small smile that played on her lips that twisted the inside of his chest. What she had lived in Salem was no laughing matter, yet she smiled without acknowledging the end of her home.

Understanding was something she had from the start of the trials; her mistress would be the first to go. Mori, the name crowed to the feline, had been witness to it all. How Vitsui was hunted by the town, fed with unspeakable things to harm her mistress, and how she kept away from the burial for no misunderstanding on a human with no other worldly connection.

Sharing the others company, silence playing in the trees; he gave no gurgling croak, she made no mewling sound. They watched the skies, lighted by nothing but the stars and the guardian beams of the moon above, and kept to themselves what all their thoughts. The company they shared was pleasant, but it would not last the centuries. Each had their own way of thinking, a way to hide, a way of reacting to actions, and limitation on what, who, they were.

She was young the night they met; he remembered the shine in her eyes, the smile on her lips, yet he lack the understanding of why she would want his company. At the age of a century, she was but a kitten in his eyes, yet to fully comprehend what it meant to be deemed immortal. The desire to dissolve her smile, to dim the light in her eyes, to fill her with the knowledge that she was alone and forever would be played in his head.

Since that night, centuries had gone, years passed in the blink of an eye; the raven and the cat crossed paths once more, but those imperial topaz eyes still held a shine like no other, and his chest tighten.  Her knowledge of his existence, her passed infatuation of him, could be his downfall. But the pull of her lips, the bright light of her eyes, told him he would not have to worry; she only existed as much as he, which was not at all.