Kat's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Kat followed the flower's smell for hours. Wet earth and cut petals pulled them forward. Then the trail broke. The scent split into three threads. Each one wound off in a different direction. Rot, smoke, and pollen all crowded in and blurred the flower's true path. Kat stood still and breathed the air through the gaps in their skull. They could not tell which thread was right. Pick wrong, and the garden would be lost. Kat pressed the flower to their ribs and closed their empty eye sockets. The three smells tangled worse. Panic climbed up their spine bone by bone. They tried the left thread, then stopped. They tried the right, then stopped again. Every step felt like a guess. And a guess could cost them the only path back to their family. A cat sat watching from a low rock. Sleek and black, with white paws and a clean white chin. It had not made a sound. It simply stared at Kat with steady eyes, the way something stares when it already knows the answer. Kat froze. The cat rose, stretched, and stepped onto the middle thread. Then it looked back over its shoulder. "You know the way," Kat said. Their voice scraped. The cat blinked slowly, turned, and walked. It kept to the middle scent, ignoring the rot and the smoke. Kat had no better plan. They followed. The cat moved without doubt. When the trail split again, it never paused. It chose, and Kat trusted it. Twice Kat's own nose screamed that a side thread smelled stronger. Both times the cat kept straight, and both times the wrong threads died out behind them. Kat began to believe. This animal had walked this path before. The smells thinned. The rot fell away. The smoke faded. Only wet earth and petals remained, sharp and clean now, growing stronger with each step. Kat's ribs almost hummed. The flower in their chest seemed to lean forward, toward home. The cat stopped at the edge of a clearing and sat. Ahead, rows of flowers spread across dark soil. Pink blooms, layered and fresh, exactly like the one lodged in Kat's chest. This was the garden. The place the voice had screamed. The place the family was taken. Kat stepped past the cat and into the rows. Their bones shook. They looked for the vine turtle, the witness that had watched that night. But the garden was empty of any turtle. The soil near the far edge held a wide, round dent, pressed deep, as if something heavy had rested there and left. Kat knelt and touched the dent. The witness was gone. Kat had found the garden. But whoever took their family had also moved the one thing that remembered their faces. The trail did not end here. It started again.