Night lay upon the forest. There was no moon, but the stars of Silverpelt shed their frosty glitter over the trees. At the bottom of a rocky hollow, a pool reflected the starshine. The air was heavy with the scents of late greenleaf.
Wind sighed softly through the trees and ruffled the quiet surface of the pool. At the top of the hollow, the fronds of bracken parted to reveal a cat; her bluish gray fur glimmered as she stepped delicately from rock to rock, down to the water’s edge.
Sitting on a flat stone that jutted out over the pool, she raised her head to look around. As if at a signal, more cats began to appear, slipping into the hollow from every direction. They padded down to sit as close to the water as they could, until the lower slopes were filled with lithe shapes gazing down into the pool.
The cat who had appeared first rose to her paws. “A new prophecy has come!” she meowed. “A doom that will change everything has been foretold in the stars.”
On the opposite side of the pool, another cat bowed his tawny, bracken-colored head. “I have seen this too. There will be doubt, and a great challenge,” he agreed.
“Darkness, air, water, and sky will come together, and shake the forest to its roots,” the first cat went on. “Nothing will be as it is now, nor as it has been before.”
