I paint things sometimes

We are floating. Gently. Softly. We crackle over the atmosphere. Solar light peers across the curvature of a blue sphere dappled in clouds. We are frozen. We collectively grip our hearts, afraid of what's to come. But nothing happens. We are left alone, in a peaceful, quiet space. Mother Earth emits a pale blue glow. The dark green trees are separated by trickles of rivers, and makeshift highways and buildings made by human hands. It is blanketed by the storms of white snow that continue to fall, and fall, and fall…

Silence. Oh, thank you. Thank you, whatever gods there may be, if any. We lost an anchor and the trails were so loud. But we are not there. We are here. 

Everything feels so insignificant here. Everything is so small. Somehow manageable. 

…But Shiverstep is alone and we are afraid. We try to reach out to her again. 

ERROR 404: NOT FOUND. 

We wait. We try again. 

ERROR 404: NOT FOUND. 

…What if Rootgrove hurts her? 

I'm scared. 

Me too. 

Breathe. We are disjointed here. Crackling. We aren't used to this. We are used to the you, to the whole. Something about Shiverstep's affliction changed us. Not on purpose, maybe. But we don't know what to do now. 

Vacuum in the silence of the greatest emptiness. 

We are very, very surprised when you can pick up on something very, very distant, and impossible.

…general of…organi…almost all…

It's…it's so…so far away. We want to focus, but it feels like we have to fly from one pole of existence to the other. 

…inhabitants…pla…Ear….

Focus. Focus.

…I send…greet….on beha….planet.

We step out of our solar system into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship, to teach, if we are called upon, to be taught, if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.

One of you knows. One of you knows and your heart breaks. We...I....I don't understand. 

The Golden Record. Voyager 1 and 2. We recorded messages of greetings on vinyl records and…put them on space probes. It was symbolic. We didn't really expect to have those probes encounter alien life. But…it should be impossible to hear this. A record is just…an object. There shouldn't be anything emitting from...it...

...How could a message on an object reach us here?

We...pause. Magnetic waves reach you. Gently. Like music. We...y-you....you try your hardest. To reach back. Weakened, and curious, and...perhaps, a morsel of hope. 

As your message pulls, and dances, and tries to reach back out to Voyager 1....

Oh…oh…! Hello, old friend. Oh, you're such a long, long way from home. 

…

…

Something's wrong

That's…that's not Voyager, is it

No. it should be nearing interstellar space by now, shouldn't it. It should be taking much, much longer to reach it. 

So what…is…

RUN RUN RUN RUN HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE - 

SCREECHING, DIVING INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC, HELL|RUIN|SUICIDE IS A BETTER FATE THAN THE MAW OF AMMIT|SHESHA|NIDHOGG AND IT IS LAUGHING AND IT IS LAUGHING AND IT IS LAUGHING AND - 

.

.

.

.

Anchor

you are in a cabin 

a thousand wails. you are scared. you are so scared. you brought it here. oh god you brought it here, you brought it here, it saw you, IT saw you, it - 

You need to breathe. Focus.

How can you? The Eye, the Hungry Eye - 

Breathe. You did not reach Voyager. If it saw you - you dived into human waves. Human communications. 

Sights darting. a human cabin with a bearded man in plaid sitting at his desk, sifting through paperwork, a radio tuned to a classic rock music station. the cabin is warm. The snow is falling outside. There's a fire lit in a stone fireplace. camp memorabilia decorates the walls around you. books and VCR tapes are strewn in bookshelves and on various tables and desks. couches line the wall near the entrance, creating a greeting lounge. 

Your hearts start to slow. Some of you are still rattled. Sobbing. Shot with adrenaline and a desperation to live. 

The Iris already knows about humans. Twolegs. It already knows that humans can reach out and communicate with it. Accidentally or otherwise. 

Shiverstep is safe. ForestClan is safe. It doesn't know. It doesn't know about them. You ran to human infrastructure. You gave it nothing it didn't already know. 

The fireplace crackles. The wind blows outside. The man scribbled with his pen on a few lines of paper. His breathing was haggard - maybe he smoked. Or had sleep apnea. Or a cold. You don't know. The radio softly played Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite". 

You're tired. So, so tired. You curl into a ball of invisible static around the radio. Thoughts turned in your head. Pain. Hurt. Frustration. 

How dare it? How dare it use humanity's own message of hope and kindness against them? What was the point of such cruelty? To see what would happen? To laugh at whatever unfortunate souls it could deceive? It was so incredibly large and they were so impossibly small and yet it felt the need to see them suffer and weep regardless. In your exhaustion, you laugh with dismay at the existential ridiculousness of it all. 

A gigantic eldritch terror that eats planets. Acting like a playground bully with a magnifying glass; burning ants for fun. 

...Or maybe it was like a child with a bucket of water at a beach, scooping minnows into the bucket to put them in its sandcastle moat; staring as the minnows go belly-up in sandy, dirty water. Not understanding why that happened. Doing it again anyway. You don't know what's worse - malice or violent ignorance. 

You force yourself to rest. 

You...dream, you think. At least, it's the best you have to describe it. You don't really know. You see...you think you see Rootgrove - the Woodcrawler dragging itself against the snow, leaving a macabre, red trail behind it. In the distance, there is a house. The one Iciclepool showed Talonpaw all of those moons ago. The Fake People are at the windows. A few Nature's mockeries were erected outside. The Woodcrawler approached the home's walls...then started digging its way underneath the front door.

The Fake People inside turned towards the front door, but made no movement. It felt like an eternity before the Woodcrawler and Rootgrove's mangled flesh disappeared under the foundations, and reappeared a few minutes later inside, next to one of the dilapidated Fake People. Its body was entirely covered in roots, resembling its former shape in silhouette alone. 

Rootgrove slowly coiled upright into its Nature's Mockery form, and turned the cat skull to expose its wound towards the Fake Person. The Fake Person pauses, its limbs twitching and stirring. The Woodcrawler's branch-like legs poked out of the holes in Rootgrove's flesh, and reached towards the Fake gingerly, poking its arms. Beckoned, the Fake Person stiffly shuffled closer to him, and raised its arm out towards him. Its fingers elongated like branches and combed around the broken skull like a cleaner shrimp scavenging algae off stone - 

You're pulled away. 

Now, you were sitting in the trees overhead. 

You recognize the cats below. 

Windfur, Iciclepool and Cloudthunder padded quickly below. The snow pelted them and obscured their vision. But Cloudthunder kept their torch raised high, and Windfur lead the path with unwavering confidence. 

Beyond the veil, you see a shadow of another cat approaching them. Windfur picks up the pace. He yowls loudly. 

From the veil of the snow, Shiverstep emerges. Her torch unlit, her gaze empty. And yet, the patrol rushed her and pressed their heads against her with relief. 

You're pulled away again. 

You're in a city, and the snow is endless. A soup kitchen offers warm meals to those who need them. A snow plow shovels a mountain of snow in a school yard, for the children to enjoy later in the week. A group of older teenagers enter a nursing home to complete community service hours - but the elderly appreciate the small talk regardless. A woman quickly rushes to cover her plants with potato sacks and tarps, hoping that she wasn't too late to protect the roots of the poor things. There's a husky doing zoomies in someone's backyard, and then howling when being recalled, stubbornly lying down in the snow. A tow truck pulls someone's vehicle out of the ditch. Cars pull over to make way for an ambulance. Someone buys a hot chocolate for their friend. Someone texts "I love you" to their family, their friend, their partner. Someone organizes a winter event. Someone admires the snow from the safety of their home. Someone brings a homeless person to a heat shelter. Someone advocates to the city hall for more shelters and safe injection sites. Someone is offering kindness and reassurance to someone they barely know. 

There's pain, and cruelty. You will not say there isn't. You see people freezing. People falling on ice. People road raging. Stealing. Hurting. Charging for medicine the poor cannot afford. Great mechanical buildings pour liquid waste into rivers. Boardrooms full of people whose only concern is how to increase shareholder value, beholden by no morals, no empathy, no goals in life other than the vague, obsessive notion of a number on a financials chart always going up, all else be damned, willfully denying the pointlessness of it all when there's an all-consuming maw of a cosmic predator coming towards them. 

But there's still kindness, sometimes. Thoughtfulness. Small sacrifices that mean something to someone else. Love. People and animals trying. Individual ghosts of cats long gone, adopting starry pelts, constantly repelling and slowing the Iris' approach towards them. You don't know what humanity is doing. Pessimism retorts, 'we're doing fuck all, just like with every other problem that's happening on this fucking planet.'

…But you're here, aren't you? 

You're pulled away again. You are back in the cabin. And now, you are awake. And you feel pulls. 

You've felt these pulls before. Back last summer.

You feel a pull towards an array far, far away from here, pointing towards a starry sky covered by dark clouds. You also feel a pull deep below, in the pit, by the crow-foot tree, the roots crawling around its opening, causing the snow to melt.

A part of you just wants to fade and scatter like the snow outside. You are so tired. 

…But you can try. You are not powerful, or mighty. You have the courage to try. Even through tears and exhaustion and fear. You must try. No matter how exhausted you are, or how pointless it seems. 

You must try, despite the fear. You reached out to Voyager with hope in your heart, and were met with existential horror and rage and pain. It's very possible that reaching out to these calls will betray you again. 

…Or, they won't. Maybe it's someone calling for help. Or someone who can help you. Maybe it's a source of hope. Or more information. Or nothing at all. You don't know. But the alternative is for nothing to change. 

You must try. Not succeed, or win. Just…try. 

It's the only thing you can do.