No one knew her. They thought they did. The Jellicle Junkyard knew a sensible, smart queen, wise for her age. Simple. A queen that could handle responsibility. In seeing this, they took away her kittenhood. They didn't try to see if she had any ideas or imaginings that a normal kitten would have. Instead, they treated her as an equal, one that they could talk to of Junkyard matters.

They didn't see that she didn't want it.

They thought that she liked being treated as an equal. They didn't know she imagined things, just as the other kittens did.

They thought she was different, because of her lovely voice, and her understanding of what Old Deuteronomy said the last Jellicle Ball.

But she hadn't. It was Old Deuteronomy who had told her what it meant.

And he didn't even tell her. He started with Coricopat, who telepathically told Tantomile, who grabbed Jemima's paw and told her to sing the words.

She couldn't live up to what they thought of her. She was forced into her mind, where she lived in a world of her own. In her world, everything was different, and it was a land where she could be who she was, not who she had been made.

Once, feeling courageous, she had said to her mother,

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't."

Her mother had looked at her like she was a mutant, and told her that she shouldn't think like that. She was too old, and knew too much, to think like that.

The queen hadn't said anything like that again.

She still thought, but she hurried away from her imagination for the fear of upsetting her mother.

Her kitten life was over quickly. As she became an adult, her thoughts became jumbled.

Jellicles began to worry about her.

The once-stable queen began to loose her mind. Bottled up in her head were thoughts from kittenhood that had never made it out of her mouth. They started slamming against the walls of her brain, and began to come out of her mouth. She couldn't focus.

The Jellicles were shamed. They had rushed the poor queen into adulthood, and rebuked her whenever the kitten had tried to do something a kitten does. They had driven her mad.

Now, she lived in a den right next to her mother's.

And on a quiet night, you can hear her say,

"And contrary wise, what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. Do you see?"