They stood.

Like a hawk, they watched, and like a rock, they stood, hunched yet upright, crouched yet yowling on two paws. Every corner was filled by them, the husks. Or whatever they were, because the tiny spot of orange was as sure as anyone else that those weren’t cats. Empty, void-like, endless, no matter how she’d describe them, she never quite said how they truly were. The eyes watched the kit hungrily, starved, yet there were no eyes. But there were eyes at the same time.

Halfkit had just woken up. But it wasn’t from a nightmare. As the last drifts of unconsciousness fled from the kit’s mind, she woke to the nightmare that was to come.

Many ridiculed the kit’s need to always be near someone, but it was for a good reason. Lest the shadows, the husks, the monsters near themselves and steal her. Kithood fears, perhaps?

No.

They were real.

Unhurriedly, sluggishly, deathly slow, her eyes opened. Nothing. Just a blurry view of the dark Nursery. And then the darkness moved, swiftly and weightless. No one else saw them. Why would they? But she did. And, even though the others didn’t want to believe her, she knew what they did as soon as they reached a cat. She saw it first paw.

One blink. Two blinks. Three.

Famished, the husks lolled around, stamping through each other, gurgling their displeasure, their thirst.

And then, she saw them. Cloudy happiness turned to stale, rotten fear. Eyes wide, the kit squeaked as her head turned, her paws stumbling as they reached. There was no one else.

‘Where are they? Where is she?’ cried the kit, her meow loud, pleading. But it reached naught, for her voice was too small and her mouth didn’t open, clamped shut.