Card
Legacy Name: Card

Hi there, stranger! The name's Jet, but a lot of people call me Card. Nice to meet 'cha!

I don't know how you ended up on Navigator's flying ship, but it's no biggie to me, as I love visitors. Feel free to explore below deck, or just stand out here with me and watch the stars go by. Whatever you do though, don't bother Navigator, and definitely don't go in his study. Granted, he's all bark and no bite, but no one likes getting yelled at, so I'm just giving you the warning, haha.

Oh, and while you're here, would you like to hear a story?

***

It all started back on Earth. I was born in a barn way out in the middle of nowhere to a cat who looked a lot like my Earthling self. I could have been her twin, with my sleek black fur and bright green eyes. The bit about my eyes is kinda funny, 'cause people always said they constantly looked sad, but I honestly can't remember a single day when I wasn't happy!

Anyway, I looked just like my mum and for the first few months of my life she took care of me and my siblings. She taught us how to groom ourselves and where to sleep, how to jump and run and climb, and -- my personal favorite thing -- how to catch the mice hiding in the barn's tall bales of hay. Sometimes the nice human lady who owned the barn would let us into her house, and I'd walk all over her kitchen counter. She thought I was a very silly kitty, and she'd always laugh at me.

This was a nice life, as you might expect, but there was always something missing. Didn't know what it was at the time, but it was definitely there. I felt like I was a puzzle missing its final piece. Thankfully, it wasn't too long before I finally found that missing something, which actually happened to be a missing someone.

One day a boy showed up at the nice lady's door asking if he could have a kitten. I bounded out as she opened the door, and he pointed at me excitedly, begging the lady to worship me up, because more than anything, he desperately hoped to get a black kitten.

The nice lady laughed, told the boy that I was quite the clown, and then let him take me.

I rode home with him, asleep in his lap the entire time. And that was how my boy and I first became friends.

***

For years after that, my boy and I became the best of friends. We would laugh and play together until the sun went down. At night I would sleep against his neck, and in the morning I'd shower his face with my rough kitten kisses until he'd wake up.

But good times never last forever.

I would soon be torn away from him by a flash of searing pain that left two mes in its wake; the corporeal me, sprawled upon the ground as if asleep, and the ethereal me, staring down at my empty shell.

When he found me and picked me up, cradling me in his arms as he sobbed over my broken vessel, I tried my best to comfort him. "It's okay, I'm right here!" I called, but to no avail. He could not hear me, nor could he see me. He had only my body, which he buried in the earth and built a garden around.

Without me, however, he was so sad. And without him, I was sad too, doomed to wander aimlessly in search of a means to contact him. Life -- er, the afterlife -- was quite harsh.

As with good times, bad times never last forever either.

I stumbled upon a peculiar man one day, a man made of starlight, whose face was half obscured by a mask of churning silver gears. There was something sad about him, a loneliness that stretched into the darkest reaches of the cosmos. So I did what any fellow in my position might do.

I asked him why he was sad.

"I'm not sad," came his reply, although I knew he was lying, "I am simply troubled."

"Well, then," I said, "why are you troubled?"

He paused for a moment, scrutinizing me with his singular gold eye, deciding whether or not he should open up about his troubling issue to a strange starlit cat like myself. I must have passed his silent test, because he soon said to me: "I am in desperate need of an apprentice. Especially one who would be willing to ride shooting stars so to deliver messages for me."

I saw a window of opportunity here. I might never be able to speak to my boy again, for we now existed on totally separate plains of the universe, but I might be able to make him smile. If I could orchestrate even one moment of brightness for him from beyond the realm of the living, then that would be enough for me.

"I'd be willing to ride a shooting star," I said.

The man scoffed at me. "You? But you're a cat. Cats can't ride stars."

I refused to be deterred. "Then I shall cease to be a cat."

"And how do you expect to do that?" asked the man.

"You certainly seem more magic than I." I remember brightening at this observation, curling my ethereal tail like a question mark. "I bet you could make me cease to be a cat."

"Even if I could, what makes you think you are worthy of being my apprentice?" He spoke with an ominous tone that filled me with sudden apprehension. "I am a rather important force in this world. I can't let just anyone perform tasks for me."

I didn't know what to do at this point. I feared the truth might not be good enough, and that a lie would be too thin. I toyed with this for what felt like an eternity, weighing the pros and cons, never knowing which was worse: truth or lie, lie or truth. Realizing the man was growing impatient, evident from his tapping starlit foot, I took the plunge; I told the truth.

"My best friend is alive, while I am dead," I said, feeling the sting of tears welling up in my eyes. "He's so sad without me, and I'm sad without him. I want to make him smile again, even if he doesn't know the reason he's smiling is because of me. If the shooting stars were mine, and if he so much as smiled at just one of them, then that would be the best thing in the world to me."

A silence fell upon us then, heavy as lead and thick as fog. The man stared at me, his gold gaze calculating and unreadable. I'd blown it, I just knew I had.

To my alarm the man sighed, a sound more relieved than annoyed. "Very well. From this moment onward, you shall be my messenger."

In that moment, I suddenly ceased to be a cat and began my new life as the messenger of Father Time.

***

Art by Seayari and overlay by ZombieToes. Cursor from cursors-4u. Everything else by Death.

The character, Card, is loosely based on my real-life feline companion, Jet.

Jet passed away unexpectedly on October 23, 2008. He was one of the sweetest, silliest, and best cats I have ever owned, and I was devastated by his untimely death. When he died, I always felt like there was a little hole in my heart that would never close, and my way of coping with it was to create Card.

Jet was a very silly and playful kitty, and his crazy antics never failed to make me laugh. Many people who met him called him a "goof" or a "clown", hence why I chose to give Card an appearance reminiscent of a clown or jester. My reason for having Card become Navigator's (aka Father Time) assistant is because Navigator is a rather stuffy individual who would benefit from having a happy trickster around to liven the place up. And, although Jet has passed away, his younger sister, a fluffy grey-blue kitty named Blue, is still alive and well, hence Card's minion, Blue the Blukiti.