Feline
Legacy Name: Feline

This is the tale of a cat
who fell in love.

The first face he remembers seeing was a kind face, a man's face as the youth leaned into the box and plucked the skinny black feline from the rumpled papers and held him close. They, man and kitten, rested nose to nose, the feline's green eyes peering into the deep brown sights of the gentle soul. It was truly love at first sight for kitten and man, whose name was Haru, and tucked safely into his kimono pressed against his smooth chest the kitten traveled to what would become his home. The first few years were blissful, just the two of them, Haru and the kitten. Haru was never without the feline, and feline was never to be parted from Haru, who even when he left took the feline with him into town or when he went to work the fields.

These years passed quickly, and eventually with hard work, Haru earned himself enough to move into a bigger house... and to gain himself a wife. At first, the feline was hesitant about the addition to the family, there was something about the woman the feline did not care for, and there was a strong jealousy to watch as Haru was slowly taken from him, spending more time with his wife who refused to let the feline sleep in their bed. He began to prefer the days when Haru would leave for business for as always he would take his pet with him and they could be together without the woman as the feline liked. Some years later, on a fluke after the feline had taken off to do some of his own mouse hunting, he returned to find Haru had departed on a surprise trip and he was left alone at the house with the woman. He sat on the window watching her for a day before something terrible was witnessed. While Haru was away, the woman would take into her home, and into her bed, a man that was not her husband. When Haru returned, though the feline cried out to him desperately, the man could not understand him.

Months, and years passed, the feline forced to watch as the woman mistreated his beloved master and took love from not only him but from strangers until he could bare it no more. While Haru was gone.. the feline remained and in his love inherited a new form, a terrible form, large enough that during the night he could devour the treacherous woman and rid his beloved master of her terrible deeds. After a few weeks with no sign of his wife, Haru accepted that she had run off, for secretly he had begun to fall out of love with her and he and feline returned to their blissful life. But during the night, despite the feline's small body against him the man cried into his bedding and his arm reached across an empty area where a body should have laid to love him.

The feline was torn, he had saved them from the monstrous woman... but had caused a brokenness in the heart of the one he loved most. One evening... as his master wept the feline changed again. In place of the feline, laying against the sheets was a thin, pale but beautiful man, his slender fingers reaching to brush the dark hair from the tear-stained face of his master. "Please.... do not cry Master, I am here... I love you.." And with no question as to how, or why.. they accepted their blessing and the feline and Haru moved back to the small quiet house of their earlier years to live and love each other.

While the feline in guise of a man remained young and lovely.. Haru suffered from mortally and he aged, weakening and dying and he lay a frail man in his bed with the beautiful young neko sitting at his side, his frail old hand clasped in the others. "Let go... do not suffer any longer Master, find your peace, know that I love you always..." A soft and tear filled whisper and with a last dying breath the master returned his love and departed the land of the living into peaceful eternity. The man would become feline again, and would sit at the foot of his master's death bed until his body was discovered and the townsfolk buried him. Though some tried to house the feline, he would escape and return to the grave where during the night many claimed to hear a man's grieving. How long he returned to Haru's grave he could not remember, he knew only that one night, as he slumbered upon the grassy earth something told him it was time to leave... so he did.