In the dream , the kitten wanted to play and began following a string I was dangling in front of her. After a few minutes of playing with her, I realized that I needed to voyage on and told her goodbye, but she latched onto me with sharp, pointed claws.
“Let go,” I told her, attempting to disentangle my flesh from her barbed points.
With my words, the kitten mewed plaintively, then licked the spot where she had tackled me. I knew that she was apologizing. The meaning was so clear, it was almost like I could hear the words in my mind.
Still inside the wrappings of the dream, I mounted up on Frey, but the kitten followed me. She ran up a tree trump partway and then jumped onto my horse, landing right on my lap.
“I can’t take you with me,” I said. “You probably belong to someone. Besides, I don’t know where I’m going, and I have no food for a cat. Sorry.”
The kitten’s claws made me wince with pain, but what happened next was a prick in my mind far sharper than her tiny nail hooks. I cried out and almost fell off Frey, the surprise of it hit me so hard. But the sting was already gone, and I was left with the knowledge that the kitten’s thoughts were as open to me as if she were a person conversing.
“My name is Willow, and I am yours,” the kitten said as she curled up in my lap and began to purr loudly enough that Frey’s ears rotated backwards, as if he were listening.