With one dizzying swoosh, I find myself standing on the rooftop of a skyscraper. There are many like that around me, for I am in a big city. Late afternoon, fairly warm but windy. I feel comfortable, somehow knowing that I belong here, at this moment.
Looking around, I see a teenage boy cowering on the roof, fists pressed against his forehead. He is rocking back and forth, back and forth. After a while, he looks up and stares in my direction, but he does not seem to see me. Tears are streaming down his face, he starts banging his back against the concrete wall behind him.
Yelling, whining, moaning. “I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have done it! Oh crap, what did I do! I am so sorry!”
I want to help him, console him, but he cannot see me. So I decide to shape-shift. Before I have decided what shape I want to take on, I am a black cat. Very slowly, on my soft, velvet paws, I approach him. I sit down next to him and start purring. With this sound, he stops rocking and looks at me. Gingerly, I crawl on his lap, settle down and gaze at him, still purring. I know that I have mesmerizing golden-green eyes. I know that I am beautiful and magical, and he will not be able to resist me.
After a while, I start kneading his chest with my soft, velvet paws. By doing that, I pull out strings of energy. Some of it comes out in pictures, some as sound, some as scents. A happy mother counting her baby boy’s piggy toes. A little boy on a swing pushed by his father. The scent of freshly baked rhubarb pie. A bad fall from a bike. A shy kiss on the cheek by a lovely little girl. A teenage boy being bullied for his love of ballet.
A rope dangling from the ceiling, after the boy had been taken down by a police officer.
I lie down on his chest. We are breathing in the same rhythm for a long time. When the sun starts sinking deeper, he finally lifts a hand and starts stroking me very gently, as if afraid of hurting me.
Finally, he jumps on his feet, and, taken by surprise, I shape-shift back.
Now we are standing on the edge of the roof, looking at this marvelous city. There is water in the distance, perhaps a river, or the ocean. The sun is about to set on the water, and a glorious burst of red and orange light sets the sky on fire, engulfing us. I look at the boy, and he is bathed in the golden-orange light, standing very upright, in a trance.
“What do you want?” I ask him, knowing that this is a magical realm where every wish comes true instantly.
“A horse,” he says. And with these words, a gigantic, blazing horse leaps out of the sun towards him. With roaring laughter, he mounts the white horse and starts racing away, jumping from one skyscraper rooftop to the next.
As I am standing there watching him, he lifts his sword, rips a patch out of the sun and throws it towards me. I catch it, and it turns into a golden scarf that I wrap around my neck. CZM