“There is loneliness in darkness, and in darkness a longing for the familiar, the safe and the known. In darkness there is nothing and nowhere, no light, no hope, no love.
Yet still She created all things from the Great Nothingness, growing like tiny seeds that begin their long, silent journey upwards through the cloying blackness of the Earth.
I stood on the threshold of the night, looking with my weak, mortal eyes towards that which I could not see, but I could sense.
In darkness I stood, but then I saw you,
and suddenly there was light.”
Errifinn Aengus of the Golden Branch
Clowder Bard 1103-1187
"Dance of the Fire Cat" is a creation myth of how cats came into being according to cats. It is set in the magical world of the Far Pavilions and tells the story of how the fire cat created the race of Grimalkins in the First Days. It is the first of the fire cat stories and an introduction to the most magical Clowder of Grimalhame, the home of the Grimalkins (or cat-folk). It is a prophetic tale - many things foretold in the story of the fire cat's creation that come to pass many years into the future. The story is "narrated" by Imeldra Moonpaw, the Clowder Historian.
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"From the heart of a star he came, born from the chaos of creation. He came with the Spark of Divine Light in his fiery paws and danced across the surface of the sun at the beginning of the world.
He danced far and wide across the plains of Tharsis and the Great Harara Desert, planting the seeds of life in the barren ground in his wake. He sang his joyful song beneath the Stars of the Great Divide:
"Awake, my friends, for I am the First! Arise and join me in the Dance of Life. Be not sorrowful for there is no longer death and darkness."
And so, the first cats appeared from the womb of the sleeping earth to rejoice and sing in the First Days of the New Dawn."
"Go back to the mortal world, Earth Child, and tell your kin about this place.
Tell them that just because they cannot see us we are not there.
We are but a pawstep, a whisker, a thought away and tell them to grieve no longer.
Tell them of the place that waits for them when they leave the mortal world and we will be there to meet them on the threshold.
The Great Mother has made it so."
Dance of the Fire Cat is available at lulu.com or any online retailer
ISBN: 978-1-9999523-8-9
