The Girl sat cross-legged in the garden, watching a dust mote perform a very complicated minuet in a stray beam of afternoon sun. Nearby, the Cat—a creature of decidedly strange origins—was tidying a paw with a look of immense, albeit sleepy, concentration.

"It’s quite like a balloon that’s forgotten it’s string, you know," the Girl said suddenly, her eyes following the mote as it drifted upward. "When the string finally snaps at the end, one doesn’t just fall down. One goes up."
She thought quietly, "That is to say, the soul of a human floats after the string snaps... doesn't it?"

The Cat paused his grooming, a wet pink tongue briefly visible before he fixed her with a gaze like a father.
"Up is a relative term, dear One. Quite as relative as 'left' or 'Thursday.' But yes, once the anchor is let go, there is a certain... unburdening and an upwards movement. A rush through the narrow, sighing places from the here to the elsewhere. A movement 'not one’s own'—though if you are clever, you shall realize in the Great Later that it was your own paws doing the walking all along."

"So, after a departed spirit—"

"—It is the soul from Sky that is the Adventurer," interjected the Cat, his voice dropping into a purr that sounded like distant thunder. "The spirit from the clay is drawn up by soul with Earth a-tryst; the Spirit is a reflection of the light from above, which returns to the mud after each dance. Most humans experience from spirit, seeing soul (who they are) as distant. Soul and spirit has distinction."

"Oh, yes, certainly... spirit and soul, I must bear that in mind." She leaned forward, her fingers brushing the grass. "When it goes high enough, what is the actual step from here to there? For the person no longer bound to mortality?"

"A simple movement in state and position," the Cat whispered. "A passing through a veil. Most, of course, allow it to become a blur—a smudge on the memory—once they begin entertaining the new illusion."

"Is there a secret to seeing it now?" she asked. "A password? Open Sesame?"

The Cat’s silver-light outlined body began swirling in the air as if doing a graceful, underwater turn.
"Passwords are for those who have forgotten how to listen," the shimmering outline breathed. "Look not with eyes blinkered by what you expect. To perceive is a twin-act: Choose and Allow."

The Girl took a breath and did exactly that.
She Chose to see, and she Allowed her awareness of the world to be more than what it had been presented to her as.
After a moment stirred by wit, her eyes widened.
The trees, the shrubs, the darting birds—they were glowing radiant Life suspended in or moving through a vast, shimmering sea of Light!

The cat seemed to know what she was experiencing before she did.
“Now consider the transition to become human that you have performed many times, childe. See that pearl-white veil... why, just over there?" The Cat motioned lazily with a paw to nowhere in particular, or perhaps to everywhere at once.

After a moment or two "I can see what seems to be a Veil, only as far away as I feel to it?" she whispered in awe.

"It is the Great Threshold," said the Cat as he vanished somehow to her auric vision, leaving only his smile of very un-cat-like, strange, triangular teeth – as if made of silver light.
"The gate through which we are poured into the vessel of bone, and the crack through which we leak back out again."

Upon looking up and down the length of the pearl-white membranous veil before her, she whispered to the Cat, "When a soul-spirit passes through, can it look back and see this world?"

The Cat’s whole head appeared as a silver silhouette, drifting through the air over the garden.
"The person, a soul fused with spirit in matter, still tethered by the fading scent of Earth, may view the passage of the life just lived from the far side. It is like a picture book left open on the grass," the Cat’s voice purred from the light.

“I have heard tell of a White Light tunnel people go through at passing?”

"That is a ride for those not yet gone, you see," the Cat’s voice drifted. "A ride back up the string you cast to anchor yourself. From inside your own streaming river of Life, unto which each of your cups pour. A passage ride that takes you past all the swirly, neon sights of your own archives to spill out your crown as with the confusing dust of Earth in eyes, back into the cloudy places for a moment.”

The Girl frowned slightly. "I seem to have become quite forgetful upon this return. I do hope they didn’t wipe my head? Like a chalkboard?"

"Certainly not," the Cat said, his form settling back into solid fur on the grass. "That would be a dreadfully untidy way to manage a theatrical production. You keep your wits and start sketching the blueprints for the next go-around on this stage. A series of cascading rehearsals precipitating down until they hit the ground as 'actuality.'"

The Girl leaned back. "But why can't we remember the blueprints once we're here?"

"Because as you climb back down the planes toward the membrane, the air grows thick with forgetting. It is to be understood that each soul enters this game with a most vigorous zeal, " the Cat explained, his whiskers twitching. "Though knowledge of such is akin to a dreaming state. You shed those 'high thoughts' and settle into the heavy, thrumming mindset of a soul crouching low with worn spirit, for to leap."

“That makes perfect sense. I scarcely recall my dreams moments after waking. Do some remember despite the heaviness?"

“Most assuredly. But as the babe dwells in the reality-folds of their kin, they are taught the art of being small. They migrate to those narrow spaces kept under the hats of their elders.”

She thought for a moment. “What if the baby is set apart from them?”

“Ah, a perilous detour! For there is a monitoring spectral goose—a matronly sort of phantom, some might call a hag—who ensures most are quelled, shrunk, and properly tidied so as not to be a bother. ’Tis a tragedy; some refuse the shrinking and cannot remain. They sadly... pass through again.”

“I will remember that," the Girl said fiercely. "I shall make sure my babies are not left so alone when sleeping… nor never so smothered as they grow that they forget themselves!”

The Cat smiled, a slow, knowing expression. “All mean well, and then the game takes its toll. The tale is often told differently than it was written.”

“Don’t we get to decide things and then live them?” she asked.

“Yes and no. There are Editors at work at the final draft of each life to be lived. Some call them the Watchers," the Cat said, his tail giving a sharp, annoyed flick against the ground.

"The Watchers must be understanding of the human condition, then, to be editing things." she remarked.

"They aren't," the Cat replied, his eyes rolling in a circle. "To doubt those stationed beings is the beginning of wisdom. Behold how they snigger! They narrow their eyes when they’ve concocted a particularly jagged destiny. They are the 'nobs' who change naturally fated points to suit the agenda of the An-Hungered Hidden Ones.”

The Girl bit her lip. "And if you don't play along with their ministrations?"

"If the play isn't proceeding to their questionable satisfaction, they shall leave their station, seat themselves in a peering-chair, and perform an active, real-time meddle.”

“Do we not get a say in our fates?” she asked.

“Jellybeans”, the Cat supplied rather curtly.

The Girl laughed at this comment, in the midst of such serious talk. “Is that what some might refer to as a deal sweetener?”

The Cat widened his mouth in a frightful smile, though the Girl was not bothered by knowing him quite well.
“During the usual edit they offer small capsules into your hand—three red, three blue—a last-minute token of choices. You pop them into the surface of the membrane like drops of dye into a tea cup. Will you lift or lower an effect being edited before you, for the about to be lived life?”

“Whoever gave them such means to harry us so?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I know it was not God, as you explained I will find out that God is everything and nothing, not a person on a sturdy chair making edicts and whatnot.”

“An invasion began before it was known, from 15 fallen galactic wheels nearby," the Cat explained. "A creature hidden from nearly all, even those who dwell on lofty thrones… twas borne in the great Void, as Life so strange was known where it was thought to have been left barren."

The Girl tilted her head, trying to imagine a void that wasn't empty.

"Things that hungrily lust after Light like living black holes," the Cat said darkly. "They devour what many wrongly presume is an immortal soul. They then take the divine spark into them to settle within the black walls of their interior.”

The girl sat back, her spine stiff with horror. “That is ever so dreadful a prospect! Why would you frighten me with such talk, my usually ever so thoughtful a friend?”

The Cat moved to her side, rubbing his warm flank against her knee. "Should I wrap your mind in velvet just to keep the moths from eating it? An adventurer who refuses to look at the perils of terrain usually ends up in some struggle. You asked of the waters; I simply showed you the sharks."

Breath catching, she let out a small, trembling sigh and placed her hands to rest in her lap. "And... what do these terrible creatures look like, when they aren't hiding in abstract nouns?"

“A crab dreaming it’s a spider,” he provided. “They flourish an appendage upon the forehead of carapace that is the torso-up of their prey species. This is what is interacted with as souls seek audience with ‘gods’ trying to find egress from this star system. Those terrible maws expected to be met by many at the intended Harvest.”

The girl sat still, imagining a giant spider wearing a human mask. “So, it’s ultimately a trap," she murmured. "A very crowded, hungry trap leading to a dinner of sorts.”

"The Chaos Lords," the Cat purred, his voice dropping into a dry, paper-dry rustle. "Those ravenous Space-Nits. Once upon a time, they were just disorderly hidden predators drifting through the dark between the stars like choking smoke. Now they have set up housekeeping in your cellar …some scholars call the mess they’ve made 'Order out of Chaos." he supplied with a mischievous glance.

She looked nervously around the bright, innocent garden, as if the rosebushes might suddenly part. "Where are those dreadful things?”

“The biggest here are not so large to some but boggling to many. They wear forms grown over time as personality projections, still with home in their shells. Three such leviathans currently anchor their claws.”

He went on “There is one nestled in your Sun, a monstrous lizard of olde who is now be-winged at whim, a most curious feat of which I should not say…” the Cat inspected a cuff he did not have during his pause.

The girl raised an expectant eyebrow, by which the cat continued.
“Those glorious wings bestowed bear an unparalleled glamour, so they appear as if bat - to keep his minions from mockery and becoming an underfoot stain. A magickal boon by a milk-toothed boy with eyes of liquid starlight—a magickal gift of wings with sweet powers as yet understood, bending the monster’s scaly malice toward the shape of a true, goodly dragon! … drawn straight from Saturday morning cartoons. That last, the most frightening of facts.”

“Oh wow, that sounds incredible! I can’t wait to see a terrible dragon turned nice!” she burbled out, oddly not at all surprised by mention of the boy doing such things.

A bell tower rang twice in the village not too far over.

The cat waited a moment before resuming “And yonder, at the frost-bitten knees of Saturn’s dancing satellites, a female of the brood skulks, who has been secretly in the pantry before dinner was ready, gobbling souls without her patient fellow’s consent.”

“Of the last, a male inside Earth’s fake Moon... by this account you may fathom how large these newly ranked ones are. Two more his size and there would be no room in the Moon. It is a hollow space station... it opens like an egg, you know.”

“What, the moon?” She looked up, squinting as if searching for the seams in the sky.

“Oh yes, entirely artificial. Full of lizard-people doing the bidding of their rulers.”

“Are those lizards the sort one would find amenable to living free of all this?” she asked with doubt.

“I’ve never seen them more delighted with their fetters," the Cat purred.

“Do they look like lizards on Earth?”

“The scaly workers do quite a lot. Some few not of this world chance to walk your streets appearing as humans. Moreso their smooth skinned, long-necked lizard colleagues.”

“A lizard upon the high street?” she whispered, glancing back toward the village lane.

"They hide within a simple technological shroud" the Cat replied. "A mental implant allows them to project a mask, a mosaic of geometric light surrounds them that looks like anyone at all. They can vanish from sight if caught on foot, with exude of a shadow-mist of obscurement, a fog of questionable darkness. Or simply project their thoughts unto the enfeebled to give them something else to ponder."

"They sound like a very organized group of sneaky bullies," the Girl remarked.

"The peons are as an army and do their part, but the Space-Nits although in alliances are worse to each other," the Cat added, his whiskers twitching. "They cooperate across these 'Starter Farms' by more efficient reach to treasure they would not otherwise have. Treachery and skullduggery amongst them is applauded. They cannibalize any of their fellows who is not as big as they, like tadpoles might in a shrinking pond - when opportunity presents."

The Girl shook her head. "It all sounds so chaotic for something called 'Order.'"

"The business of reincarnation is organic, truly," the Cat continued, standing up and stretching his back into a high arch. "It is simply that most of the Milky Way has been seemingly subsumed and now crowded with hidden fiends that once roamed thick as maddened fleas now to have settled and farm Souls. Most of existence is quite normal, my dear... but some of the actors on this stage? They are not normal at all."

He stood up, stretching his back into a high arch as a butterfly with shimmering wings landed on his tail, by his leave.

The Girl noticed the butterfly’s beautiful wings then looked back at the dust mote, still dancing in its beam. "I wonder if someone shall do something about them, other than just make one grow wings. They sound rather unpleasant to be left to their own devices."

The mysterious Cat simply yawned, a wide display of his peculiar teeth. "Indeed. Someone is always doing something. Usually, their actions are simply waiting for you to notice them."