"Would you like some peanuts, sir?"

~This is all a mistake, I know it is.. ~

"No thank you"

~Why do I let myself be goaded into these mad schemes by her?~

His ears still clogged by the height, the young cat sighed softly to himself. Scout, up in the first rows, would certainly recognize him once it was time to leave the plane, did she just have to choose the same plane they were on?

He had to admit, though, he hadn't noticed... Scout was a handsome young man...

~Stop it~ He virtually hissed to himself ~stop it this instant~

He leaned back on the padded seat, forehead against the window. Sleep, yes, sleep was good, it was welcomed. Sleep wouldn't be so bad...

Instead of sleep, however, and the well-received reward of unconciousness, a ribbon of sparkling laughter boomed in his ear.

He sat up, eyes greeted with the rounded contours of the inside of the air vehicle... a quick glance revealed the adjacent seats to be empty... but... who could have caused such a laugh?

Intrigued, he leaned back again on the seat. That sound.... Argentinian, similar to the florituras of a colorattura soprano... undisputable good cheer and merryment rode on every note. Who could laugh like that?

For a long while he let the hum of the engines bore into his conciousness again, its low frequency sound acting like a sonic bubble bath as the entire structure of the plane vibrated along with it. His mind dwelt on the laughter... laughter, what an alien concept! Ever since his arrival to Salmon Hat, he had known very little of it... yet... yet...

~I have crossed two continents, an ocean, and two languages, to find myself where I started~

The abyss filled his pupils, making his eyelids heavier and heavier until he finally succumbed to the soft sounds of the music that had started playing inside his mind.

_~.~=^O_O^=~.~_

It was as if half a dozen lutes played in unison, a rippling arpeggiated melody that evoked watery passages and fountains, it spoke of sunlight decomposed into a myriad of colors as it passed through the translucid body, and the muzzle of many a mucisian singing lilting melodies to appease some exotic leader at repose.

He wandered through these strange halls, marvelling at the beauty and complexity of its arabesque doors, stunned by the singsong trill of the water. His mother firmly grasped his paw, leading him around the place that had been called the Alhambra. In his sixteen years of short life there had been very rare occasions where he felt aghast by something, and now was one of those times. The dormant poet inside of him stirred but a little, conjured by the Undine songs of waters and sands.

The gardens of the abandoned palace wove such sights that for a moment he thought himself in some fairy story, where devic figures of water and crystal cavorted around the trees at the sound of some forgotten music of intriguing beauty. He had come all the way from Greezaria with his mother to see the sights that the continent could offer.

"This" she said, switching to her native Greecian "Is where the Khalifa sat during the warm days of the summer to listen to his mucisians play" she brushed one long strand of hair away from her face "Through here our ancestors came, the Gypsy people were never intimidated by the invaders, moreso they challenged them on many an occassion. In the end the foreigners were driven out by the Royal Troops, but they left behind this beautiful vision" she made a wide arch with her ams to include the Alhambra.

Fascinated as he was with his mother's discourse his juvenile eyes posed themselves on another vision - of slightly different character, but vision nonetheless.

He had noticed him when walking past the first rooms, a young man about his age dressed in jeans and a sleeveless shirt. At first he thought he'd blush when the young cougar laid his own golden eyes upon Keith... but then he felt entranced by those orbs so much that he had to will himself back to his mother's speech, which was advancing now towards the wider sections of the Alhambra. On sveral occassions he caught a glimpse of the cougar , who in turn was looking at him. That day he left the Alhambra with a strange feeling in his chest, which he kept very close to his heart.

The music Stopped, suddenly the vision was torn into a place and time quite different....

Water flowed! Water! The thundering, roaring water!

"Hold on!" A furry paw shot into his line of sight, he reached out but there was no way...the water... the twisting, rumbling water....

"No!"

he reached out, but no avail.... the water was taking him away
 
 

"NO!"

Keith sat up in one spring. Sweat perlated his forehead and his eyes were wide. He could not remember very well but he thought he had cried as Kassandra rushed down the aisle to where he was gasping like a madman. It took him several minutes to calm him down, but in the end he was fine, though bearing an incredible amount of embarrasment from the curious glances of the other passengers.

His muzzle was shut, no answer he gave to Kassandra's concerned inquiries, he just wanted to be left alone. His burden did not grow any lighter when he spotted the worried face of Scout McIntyger peering over Kassandra's shoulder.

"Excuse me"

With a brusque manner all too unlike him, Keith rushed past them and down the corridor until he reached the washroom. There he locked himself and sat on the floor.

There he finally allowed his tears to flow again until no more would come out, in silence.

~I Should have never come...~

Time passed...

Many minutes went, and then an hour reared its head from the depths of time, pouring into its respective turn. Eventually Keith came out of the bathroom, his nostrils became excited with the promising scent lingering in the air... dinner was being served! Upon sitting down his disenchantment shone through when confronted by a steak whose only excuse for salvation would have been the unbelievable amount of protein that the Stewardess -in reply to Keith's emphatic objections- claimed it possessed...

He knew said qualities could NOT have possibly been responsible for the Lovecraftian vision that sat atop a mountain of vegetables and french fries. To be perfectly honest, most of the alternatives that were provided would have been, in Keith's opinion, posing as Muses for Edgar Afgan Poe under different circumstances.

His mind, faced with the difficult task of distracting him from his otherwise insipid meal, gravitated towards his most disturbing dream....

The Alhambra? Alhambra! ... A fantastic looking place, that.... he was certain no such place had ever existed, yet he had visited in his dream. Much to the increase of his uneasiness his brain was not lazy in pointing out who -apart from his mother- had also been in that dream.

But the strange thing was that he * knew * that place. Now that he recalled, there * had * been something perturbing about the other palace dwellers in his dream... what was it?..

He brought up a paw to caress his chin, the finger pads were greeted by soft, silky....

FUR!

yes!, they had no tails at all! He could just picture them... no fur, defintively no fur except for a sorry excuse of a mane, and the total lack of tails. For a moment his mind rose over the morass of depression that had threatened to set in, piqued by this interesting bit... had his mind created, under unkown circumstances, a false sense of familiarity in a dream that deformed reality, or had he stumbled, such as the writer Borges had once, upon the notion of multidimensional exitencies?

He was in the middle of looking for his tome of "The Aleph" in his duffel bag when a shadow obscured his sight.

"Keith?"

his fingerpads pressed tightly over the cover of the book in a subconcious response to the voice. Slowly he lifted his face to greet his unseen adresser.

Scout McinTyger was standing in the aisle, food tray in his hands. "I got it right? That's you rname , isn't it? I've seen you at the University sometimes"

He looked somewhat uncomfortable, Keith was even more so but managed to conceal it masterfully "Um, yes, that's my name..." alright, maybe not masterfully...

"Do you mind?" he pointed to the empty seat next to the cat

"Not at all" Keith sat back against the chair, a part of him winced when an inner defense system went up almost involuntarily.

Scout didn't waste any time once he had settled himself and his tray down "your cousin... I'm friends with her..." he staggered somewhat until he found the right start "Kassandra's pretty worried about you" he said, "She thought I should check on you to see if you were ok". On another person that statement would have had the same effect as a bucket of cold, uninviting water on Keith. With Scout, however, it didn't seem to bother at all. Keith tried very hard not to look at the pleasant face, but found himself admiring it on the reflection that shone on the plastic window. "There's no reason to worry, it was just a nightmare"

"I've seen my share of nightmares, but rarely one like that... I mean, you were practically screaming back here so I thought if there was a problem..."

Keith cringed, an angry surge of his public embarrasment flashed across his mind, "... I shall deal with it accordingly". The answer was chillier than he had wanted it to, realizing only too late that the verbal barometer had been half a dozen degrees lower than what Scout could take. Years of being introspective yet observant told Keith , in the brief readjustment of facial muscles, that his answer had not been well recieved and in fact had managed to upset the recipient.

He wanted to apologize to him, erase the unpleasant taste in the other's muzzle, but it was apparently too late... his answer had given the impression of being addressed to someone who was stepping way out of line, and Scout acted as anyone would have. Rising his sleek frame from the chair, though still smiling politely at the youth, he said "I'm glad to know... I will tell Kassandra". Keith was closing his eyes as Scout turned around, cursing his own thorny words when he heard the McinTyger youth add: "If you need anything you'll know where I'll be".

Keith heaved a sigh. ~Congratulations, Mister Charm, you did it again!~

Still, there was nothing he dared to do... the best thing was to wait until the plain touched ground and, upon reaching the Resort -where else?-, apologize to Scout, and maybe, just maybe, he might get to know him a little bit more.
 
 

~You're playing with fire again, lad~.

To distract his rather impertinent inner voice, he opened his tome of "The Aleph" in a particularly difficult part, and within the hour he was already lax on the chair, snoring peacefully.

**************************************

**************************************

A lazy ribbon of red silk was resting on Kassandra's arm while her hands laboriously moved across her work.  One hand danced towards the other carrying a shiny silver needle with a tail of thread trailing after it, in a flowing movement the needle changed hands and it sank in the rich crimson cloth, glittering in the weak light.

From the looks of it, the inflight movie was not a big success. From her occassional glances at the screen it seemed to be your usual police story flick, except that the setting was all the same: Snow, snow, snow and more snow. The name did not have much appeal, either.... who in his right mind would waste his money watching a movie named "Cargo"?

"I take it didn't go too well?" she said without looking up, Scout blinked and nodded "He... he's a little strange", he cleared the empty seat and made himself comfortable

a sigh burst from her lips and she shook her head sadly "I am not certain about this, Scout... what if it doesn't work?"

"It will, Kassandra, but I have to know what happened to him"

the hands stopped in mid flight, to be folded over her lap. She turned two expressive eyes towards him "Scout, if it was my job to do so... wouldn't a psychologist suffice?"

"Has he seen one?"

"Many" again the head shook, sending a dark rain of ebony on her shoulders "but useless, he does not want to come out... not that way.  never told them anything, and he did not respond to them after I told them myself" she put her needlework away "No dear,  I am not the one that has to speak".

"He did not want to speak to - me - , Kassandra. What makes you think something in this journey is going to break that shell?"

The young woman smiled a little. Despite always having known her in her apparent frivolty, to Scout Kassandra seemed to possess some unkown knowledge that brought some serenity to her worries.  "A promise"

"A promise? What kind of promise?"

"A promise " she answered "of healing."

"And who made this promise?"

"Keith did... he just does not know it yet"

She must have seen his puzzled look, because she burst into a happy giggle. One hand affectionately pat his "let Old Country crazywomen speak in riddles!" her voice hushed a little "Keith likes you, Scout. Be his friend, what he does is not always what he thinks of, remember that" she brought the blankets to her neck "Healing can take many interesting shapes... a friend, a lover, or a lake. What is ahead can only be guessed, hence the excitement."

"It may not be that exciting to Keith, Kass" Scout added, thinking slowly on what she was trying to say.

"It will be. I have a promise, remember?" she turned her face to the window, as if to sleep "I trust in promises"

"Kassandra..."

He could hear her smile in the voice "Don't you believe in magic, Scout?"

"I.."

"Let it flow"

Then there was no more from her.

Scout sighed and rubbed his forehead, uncertain of what course of action to take... promises... a promise now bound him to Kassandra, to help Keith, but he did not know how to. How?

"Let if flow" came the sleepy voice next to him, in a few seconds Kassandra was breathing slowly, in the depths of sleep.

outside, the plane was a few hours from its destination....