His sensitive feline nose suddenly picked up the fragrant odor of bacon and eggs, and his stomach rumbled hungrily. He sighed and swung his legs out of the bed, slipping his feet into his slippers. For a moment, he remained slumped on his bed, gathering the will to rise, before finally lifting his body from the mattress and standing upright.
‘Mom’s making breakfast, it’s a beautiful summer day… Life is good,’ he thought to himself. ‘Who cares about a dream? It’s just that, anyway – a dream. Odds are that I’ll have forgotten all about it by tonight.’ Still, he couldn’t shake off the strange feeling of foreboding that was hovering over his mind.
His stomach growled once more, and he shook his head to clear away the worrying thoughts before walking across his room. He ran a hand fondly through the gentle flow of water running down a floor-to-ceiling stone fountain panel. Giving another yawn as he left his room, he turned and made his way to the bathroom he shared with his sister. Inside, he turned on the cold water and let the white porcelain sink fill a ways before splashing it on his face, shocking the after-sleep daze from his mind. Feeling awakened and refreshed, he grabbed a hand-towel from the rack and dried his face.
After replacing the towel, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, only to begin chuckling at what he saw. His chestnut fur was ruffled and mussed in a few places, while his shock of brown hair was a complete mess, standing out at random angles in some places and dangling over his yellow-green eyes in others. He quickly grabbed a comb and ran it through his tangled mop, pulling out the knots and flattening the strands. When he had finished his hair was still a bit untidy, but at least he didn’t look like a poorly-shaven porcupine. He would make finer adjustments later.
Satisfied with his appearance, Matakh let the water out of the sink, watching it flow down the drain before returning to his room to change. A forest-green tee and neo-khaki shorts quickly replaced his woolen bathrobe, while his slippers were traded in for a pair of sandals. Now ready for the day ahead, he shut off his lights and slipped down the stairs, the thoughts of his dream slowly slipping away.
His sister was already awake, and was talking with their father, Kotaho, in between bites of bacon. Matakh inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of his mother’s breakfast, before turning to his family. “Morning,” he said cheerfully, smiling at the two.
They returned his grin and nodded. “Morning, Mat,” Meea chirped, before picking up another piece of bacon. She smiled, her chartreuse eyes sparkling at him from beneath her blonde bangs. “Finally got out of bed, huh?”
“Hey, it’s Saturday,” he countered. “I can sleep in a little.”
“And how did you sleep?” Kotaho asked, peering over his newspaper at his son.
Matakh shrugged. “Pretty good, I guess.” He paused, memories of the night starting to rise up again. “I just had a weird dream.”
“A nightmare?”
Matakh shook his head. “I don’t get those a lot. It wasn’t frightening or sad. It was just strange.”
“Define strange,” Meea queried, her curiosity now piqued. She hadn’t seen her brother think so deeply on his dreams before.
“Well,” Matakh began, “it started out pretty normal, for a dream. I guess you could say I was flying, but there wasn’t any clear landscape around me. It was all just swirling colors, and I was chasing something through it. I didn’t know what it was, but somehow I just felt like it was really, really important. Like I couldn’t afford to lose it, even if it was something I had never seen.”
He removed a plate from the cupboard and walked over to the stove. A plate of bacon and a skillet full of scrambled eggs met his eyes, steam still rising from them. “So, I chased it. Sometimes it was like I could almost touch it, I was so close. Other times, I thought for sure I was going to lose it. It just went on and on, repeating itself.”
“Doesn’t sound too weird,” Meea remarked.
Matakh turned to her. “It didn’t stay like that, though. The colors all started to darken, like night was falling, until all I could see was black streaked with blood-red. And soon even the red had completely faded. The thing I was chasing started to glow, becoming the only light I could see. I felt… cold. Not just chilly, but scared too. I caught up to the light, and suddenly it changed shape until it looked something like a man, but with wings.” He shook his head. “And that’s when I woke up.”
Meea gazed at him thoughtfully. “Well, do you think it means something? Like something is going to happen?”
Matakh looked at her again, marveling at how alert she was. He had half-expected her to stop paying attention shortly after he started talking, but it looked like she had absorbed every word he had said. “I really don’t know, sis. I know it was just a dream, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Kotaho took a sip of his coffee and looked at his son. “Don’t worry about it, Matakh. It was just a dream, a fantasy. Everything is going to be just fine. Now come on and get some breakfast.”
Matakh nodded and finished scooping the hot eggs onto his plate, but as he was walking to the table he happened to look out the window. As he did so, his keen vision caught a flutter of movement beneath the hedges lining the yard. Intrigued, he pressed his nose against the glass, squinting at the shadows. His feline eyes amplified the light, making the shaded areas brighter, and it wasn’t hard to make out the bunch of golden fur and tattered clothing beneath the bushes. Looking harder, he could make out a head with a pointed muzzle and large ears, as well as a long, bushy tail. He realized that it was a young fox, fast asleep under the hedge.
Needless to say, he was surprised. Their planet, Filius, was a cat world, and the sight of any sort of canid was rare. But it didn’t look like this fox was having an easy life here. He wasn’t just small; he was also unusually thin, as if he was barely getting enough food to get by. “Hey Mom,” he called out. “Come over here for a second.”
Linalia walked over to stand beside him, brushing her hands on her laundry apron. “What is it?”
“Under the hedge.” He pointed through the window. “See? It’s a fox!”
His mother strained her eyes for a few moments, following his finger. It wasn’t until the fox twitched in his sleep that she finally noticed. Her eyes grew wide, and her face filled with pity. “You’re right! Aw, the poor thing. He looks half-starved.” She picked up two pieces of toast and a few slices of bacon and placed them on a paper plate, a napkin nestled beside them. “Why don’t you take this out to him? He looks like he could use a good, warm breakfast. And get a juice container for him, too.”
Matakh nodded and took the food from his mother, before opening the refrigerator and removing a clear synth-glass container of imported orange juice. “I’ll bet he’ll like this,” he said to his mother.
She nodded. “Just try not to wake him. It might frighten the little dear.”
Matakh gave her a thumbs-up and headed for the door, which opened soundlessly to let him through before closing again after him. The slight rush of air as the panels moved and the soft click of them shutting once more made him nervous at first, but it seemed that they weren’t enough to disturb the sleeping fox. Aside from a faint twitch of his ears, he didn’t stir. Quietly, using every ounce of stealth he possessed, Matakh crept across the lawn, treading lightly on the balls of his feet.
He fully intended to simply deposit the toast, bacon, and juice by the sleeping vulpine and creep back to the house without waking him. But he failed to notice a ring of dried twigs laid out a few feet from the fox. His foot came down directly on top of one of them, the snapping of brittle wood painfully loud to his ears.
In an instant the fox was wide awake, swinging his head frantically towards the sharp sound and his rust-red hair