Author's Note: No ownership claimed or implied, no infringement intended, no money made.

This story has not been beta-read.

Cats do not believe in gods.

It was there waiting when he came in. Neither of them felt any necessity to comment on each other's presence. He noticed it because he noticed everything, and it noticed him because the jewelled eyes in the onyx mask opened at the soft sound of the door closing.

Gods are an invention of men, who require something to believe in. Cats, on the other hand, already have something to believe in (themselves), and therein lies their air of cool superiority. They remember the royal stare of Bast in the temples of Egypt, the protective power of Li Shou in China and of Ovinnick in Poland; the favour of Hecate, Ceridwen and Freyja. Men have worshipped and feared them, and never vice versa.

Still, sheer brute force counts for something in an uneven world, and so cats take a passing and often wary interest in these hulking and unworthy brutes. Maybe it was boredom that made this royal visitor stare so hard in the dusk, and maybe it was ... maybe it was something else.

Who knows? The small mouth kept its silence on whatever opinions may have been formed. But the cat watched as the human walked to the table and deposited a folder on it. The pause afterwards was long, and telling.

The stiff shoulders were not quite as stiff as usual. Alone in the dusk, they drooped just slightly. The neat head bowed.

It is a human folly to make gods. Mycroft Holmes was the last man to fall into that folly, and had he done so in some moment of arrant lunacy, the last person whom he would have placed upon such a dizzy pedestal was his younger brother. But others were less wise, less ... measured in their judgement. Others were dazzled by that wayward genius, that enchanting élan, that instinctive flair for the dramatic which Sherlock Holmes affected to despise.

Others...

Who, being wise, does not hope to have the eyes of lesser men opened to their folly? Who, being surpassed in the eyes of the world, does not long to see the idol fall from its high place and crash in ignominy?

Who, having their wish granted, does not sometimes see too late that after all the cost is too high, and wish in vain for all to be as it was, and will never be again?

There was a long and heavy silence.

Then, at last, the human walked to the accustomed armchair and sat down. No lamps were lit. No butler intruded. The faint sound of the traffic from outside was an irrelevance.

Then (who is to account for the ways of cats?), a surprising thing happened.

A single neat and black-velvet-stockinged paw came to rest on Mycroft's knee. It was followed by three others.

Permission was not requested or given. There was no unseemly curling, no purring, no kneading; no concomitants of cats of lesser descent. Only a soft settling of weight, the bestowal of silent and dignified sympathy. And in return, a hand came to rest lightly on the narrow, muscular back, and stayed there.

The End.