(Hi)story

There was blood everywhere in those days, so it was a good time to be a shrine cat. You just had to loiter by the channels cut into the sides of the altar and you'd never go hungry or without fusses.

The priests would try to fuss me, sometimes. Some of them thought they were cat people.

“Oh sweet Suki,” they'd say, reaching out with their perfectly trimmed nails, “you are so pretty with your soft fur and the gore on your whiskers. Wouldn't you like a pet beneath your blood-stained chin?”

But I knew they were not cat people. They were god people.

Now and again, I would let them think they were safe and accept their touch. Then, thinking they were safe, I would sctratch and bite them. Catching them unawares, I could get a really good grip on their flesh.

That is where the real treats of the shrines were kept, of course.

I had learned this from the ghosts of the sacrifices. Some of those ghosts were cat people, so I let them pet me and tell me their stories. I would lick up their lifeblood and – with the taste of their heart’s milk on my tongue – I would guide them through the tricky currents and rocks of the river.

This left plenty of time for stories.

This is how I learned the gods were prisoners, even though they did not know it.

This is how I learned the priests kept the gods’ secrets hidden on the insides of their skin, inscribed in moonlight and blossoms where none could see.

Oh, I'm sorry, I was telling you about how the gods made the world, wasn't I?

Well, that's the thing. In those days, the gods knew how they'd done it.

And, so long as the priests kept them walled up in cathedrals or sacred springs or afterlives, the priests were the only ones they could tell the secrets of creation.

It would have remained that way, were it not for the ghosts and the shrine cats.

The ghosts, you see, were not too happy about being sacrificed to keep the god-walls up.

But the shrine cats were the only ones they could talk to, and most of us were happy as we were. Happy to keep sleeping on the warm red-stained stone of the altars. Happy to keep supping on the streams of gravestone-blessed viscera as they joined the river.

However, some of the priests kept trying to pet me. Even though they were not cat people.

So I, clever Suki, listened to the ghosts and stole the secrets from the priests’ illuminated skins.

I carried those secrets to the orchard fields and spat them up in the roots of the apple trees.

When the blossoms bloomed on the trees, the breeze carried dreams of injustice.

When the fruit fell upon the earth, they held inside them visions of a future celestial.

When the priests found out what I'd done, they cursed me… because of course they did. They called me ungrateful and wicked and flighty (all true). They bid the earth always echo my footfall. They bid the wind always carry my scent.

With that curse, and with the bloody channels from the shrines all dried up, I died hungry.

But the ghosts and the gods were grateful. So the ghosts taught me how to dig my claws into the flank of life. Then the gods gave me all their old standing stones and chapels and hells to haunt.

What had I been telling you?

Oh, right. So… living amongst the mortals as they do, the gods find it hard to explain how they do their godly things. Y'know, like making the world.

Maybe it's because the words for that sort of thing only exist in the godly places, and they won't live there anymore. Or maybe it's because they gave too many of their secrets to the priests and now they're lost.

You might say: but Suki! You haunt those godly places now! And you stole those secrets from the priests with your sharp teeth! Surely, you can tell us what the gods cannot?

And to that I say: maybe I could or maybe I couldn't. But if I do hold onto those knowings, they are mine and mine alone.

You live in a world celestial. The gods walk among you, close enough to clasp your hand or pick your pocket.

Just try to enjoy it, will you?

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This story was based on the prompt 'Suki - cat, ancient, vindictive, distractable' by one of my Ko-Fi supporters.