A Year Among the Stars – Allegory

I’m attending a writer’s retreat this weekend and one of the exercises for overcoming writer’s block was to look at a picture and put an element from the picture into your story – you don’t need to include it – but I think I’ll keep it… 

My picture prompt was a kitten… and this was the result (in 6 minutes or less)

13.4 billion light-years from earth -no way to get home, no human beings other than those we brought with us and here, exploring some supposedly uninhabited planet, I find the ruins of a city that could have easily been New York, or Chicago and what do I find inhabiting this ruined city? If you guessed ‘kitten’ well, first I’d check to see if you’d been watching my feeds, but you’d be right.

I knew something was up when I reported the little tortoiseshell, and command said, uh… marmalade kitten. Control went silent and when they came back on-line they reported that each person they’d shown the feed saw something different.

And when I gave the kitten a dubious look he kind of morphed into a Manx. Oddly I could accept a lot of weirdness if a Manx was involved. Those cats are just too smart for normal cat things, smart and mischievous. I sighed, giving him a side-long glance.

“You aren’t a cat, and those aren’t the ruins of a human city,” I told him. “You’re telling my mind what to see.”

The cat looked at me and then licked its paw. “Actually I project, your brain interprets but — you aren’t wrong.”

I am so naming this planet Allegory.

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