Custom Cream Feli
"You must not cry now."
On the day that we met
I awoke
From a total sleep
You said
Keep your eyes open wide
And keep your arms open wide
You brought me courage
You bring me courage
To keep my eyes open wide
And keep my arms open wide
You brought me courage
You show
A kind of delight
Dancing 'round
Like a dragonfly
Like a coverlet in the summer's air.
When Solène feels down, she writes. Poems most of the time, short stories when she feels brave. But sometimes her brain follows pre-existing paths, song lyrics she thought she had forgotten. She smiles faintly. No need for higher education studies to know why this song came to her mind. It's called Dragon Fly, her cat's name, albeit in a different language. As she writes, Libellule is on her back, agitating her paws at the curtain flapping in the afternoon wind. Now, she looks at her with round eyes until Solène takes Libellule on her lap. The cat climbs to her favourite place to sleep : on the top of the armchair, and settles there, her tail prickling the neck of the human.
When Solène awoke, she was in the hospital. She had climbed on the roof for a little walk, admiring the view from Montmartre, had inopportunely slipped and fallen. Or at least that's what she told the doctor. She was only alive thanks to her neighbour's awning which had miraculously caught her instead of breaking under her weight, the doctor explained. That's when she saw her for the first time. A cat with wings like a dragon fly. The cat was built like any European stray, but with a siamese coat. The wings were semi transparent indigo, with little gold iridescent flecks, the same colour as the eyes. The strange creature left before Solène had the time to blink. Not that she would have said anything to the doctor who was still talking. She knew she was subject to hallucinations, and she didn't want any other people to know, and certainly not a doctor...
Her face's so delicate and bright
in alabaster...
"No, it's a song again ! This won't do", she thinks while chewing her pen. She starts humming as her hand strokes Libellule, who purrs at the touch.
As soon as she was able to get up and walk, she roamed in the hospital gardens. The doctor had encouraged her, saying it was a sign of improvement and she had been dispatched to a different ward. Maybe he hadn't believed her story after all. She finally caught a glimpse of the cat. She was as beautiful as when she had first appeared, even wingless. It seemed Solène had not hallucinated the cat, only the wings. She spent more and more time there, observing and feeding the hospital stray cats with a nurse. She smiled for the first time since her accident when the cat she was inwardly calling "dragon fly" came by herself to her and let Solène handle her. She didn't seem very wild, maybe she had been abandoned only recently.
When it was time to leave the hospital, she saw protesters at the entrance. There had been complaints at the ever increasing number of strays at the hospital and its surroundings, so a decision had been made : all cats were to be put to sleep. Animal lovers and patients joined some members of the hospital crew to protest against such a barbaric decision and to advocate sterilization instead. Solène panicked, which felt strange in the dull goo her feelings had been buried the past weeks. On an impulse she ran to the place where she spotted her "dragon fly" most of the time, and left the hospital with the cat under her arm. Nobody paid attention in the tumult caused by protesters and the forces of law and order who were trying to disband them.
Solène shivers at the memory. At a time when she thought she had lost all ability to care, the cat arose something within her and the thought of losing her became unbearable. She had read about animal therapy, but never thought she would experience it one day. She didn't think she would come back willingly to see the doctor from the hospital either, but she did. Eventually she is slowly getting herself back together. After looking at her watch, she reads her curriculum vitae one last time. She is applying for a florist job and will have an interview the day after. Suddenly struck by an idea, she writes her last text for the day and closes her notebook.
All has changed from here
I will come in
All has changed
No I can't explain
The path is newly paved
And sorrow hides its face
I've found someone to live for
To all the Libellules I had the honour to treat at the clinic and whose gentleness made me feel like I was the one in therapy.
Credits:
Beautiful graphics by the sweet
Buttercream.Amazing art and overlay by the no less amazing
Chen.Proofreading by
mousy.Story, mistakes and coding by me.
Huge thanks to User not found: treesapbraids,
grouse, Jane and Lyric credits:
Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - Dragon Fly
Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - Pale White
Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - Someone to live for
(I recommend this album to anybody who likes beautiful sad things)
Story inspiration:
There are several hospitals unwillingly sheltering cats in France. They can be seen roaming outside, sometimes reaching the patients' windows when food is left out. One hospital administration wanting to put them to sleep is a true story. After gathering 20,000 signatures in a petition, animals lovers and associations convinced the hospital administration to have them seen by a vet and sterilized instead of being killed. The least wild cats have been adopted. The polemic happened 5 years after the tragedy of another hospital administration deciding to close crawl spaces, in which cats were living, for "sanitary reasons", without ensuring they were empty. It caused an uproar as several cats including a female cat with her litter went missing and local volunteers could only assume they had been buried alive... (the crawl spaces got eventually reopened and the cats and the litter were all found and adopted).
