I wake up from another weird dream of mine, and the first thing I notice is the darkness. The surroundings are much darker then they were when I dozed off. The second thing is the cat. It's taken advantage of my sleep and cut the distance between us in half. It's now the size of a normal Maine Coon, which is probably why it's so dark; the excess darkness seeped into the surroundings so the cat could be smaller. Probably not to scare me. Well guess what? It's not going to work.

I get up and quietly back away from the cat, which notices the movement but lets out another sad barely-meow at the realisation that I'm not coming closer.

It puts its head back on it's paws and stares at me sadly. At least its posture says so, since I'm still not sure it even has eyes. My explorer instincts kick in and I wish for a notebook so I could write down its behaviour.

(Explorer in life, always wrote down stuff in notebooks, found 10 new species of birds, one new snake, 5 fish and three insects. No I did not check the statistics while making this list. Maybe just a bad explorer who still loves the job. Or the best explorer in the world given that she worked solo idk)

To my suprise, both appear floating mid-air, and they're mine. My latest notebook and favourite pencil. I jab at the notebook to see if it's real and it falls to the 'ground' if you could call it that. I take the pencil in my hand and stare at it. I debate with myself on whether I should open the notebook. I've met some really strange animals with even stranger hunting tactics, but this currently-cat is the strangest, and since it's basically a mythological creature, this whole thing might just be a vivid hallucination of some sort. Finally in decide to risk it and open the notebook. It's full of my research, the last thing I wrote down (arabian sand boas - don't ask) and even has the wrinkled page from when I spilled my water on it. I underline something I forgot to and the line stays there. I wonder if this is an exact replica or the real deal - did my notebook somehow find its way into this place between life and death, whatever it is, or am I just hallucinating?

I decide not to question it and start writing down all it's done in my short time here and draw a couple quick sketches of it. The whole time I keep glancing up to see if the cat does anything but it stays where it is. After some time I get a bit bored and start reading my old notes, fixing mistakes and underlineing things as I go.

I get so absorbed in my work that I don't notice the dark cat approaching me until it's right next to my leg, seemingly reading my notes.

It takes me some time to notice it even then and when I do I twitch in a mixture of surprise and fear. The cat doesn't seem to notice or care and remains facing my notes. I take advantage of the situation and quickly draw one of its ears. It follows my hand's movement with its head, tilting it slightly. I draw it in its horse, greyhound, ostrich, whale and harpy forms from memory, refering to the other sketches in my notebook, since I draw animals as a hobby as well as a job.

Eventually the cat's unmoving silnce starts to creep me out and I move further away into the greyness, much to the creature's disappointment and another one of its . I flip to a new page and write down my thoughts and suspicions about this place. The cat tries to approach me again but I notice it this time and move further away. It looks disappointed in its sneaking skills and lies down again, still facing me.

Suddenly a new idea rolls into my mind: maybe the creature is nice because it only wants a friend? I've seen no one here besides myself and the cat. It might just be lonely.

The experiences of the day are joined by the questionable passing of time in this place. How long has it been? A day? A week? An hour? I haven't seen the Reaper or any souls around here, nor have I seen the patch. It might move around, always appearing in a different place with each new death. But the Reaper said that the Abyss (which is the cat in front of me, I'm guessing) is always after souls. I wish I could've asked him more questions about this place. He certainly knows more about it than I can conclude from observation alone. Maybe souls stuck here eventually fade due to not being in the afterliefe. The thought of fading without a trace is not of the most comfortable sort, but is still the one I fall asleep with.

-

Ok this is approximately 400 words shorter than the last one, sorry
But it's something so idk
Word count: 843

Since this is pretty short I'm gonna share a short dream

A Croatian channel on my friend's TV, and then suddenly BOOM

The 33rd Anniversary of Doctor Who

With (of course) David Tennant (bro is all over my dreams fr)

And he spoke some weird cross between English and Croatian that I couldn't understand

Idk just something

Bai

~Em
27.8.24