Author's Notes:

For Honeycloud of RiverClan as a show of my thanks. Hopefully, this comes out alright. . . This came to mind after having a very brief discussion of cats, and crack pairings.

Something strange happened to me today.

I was walking back home from a friend's house, slightly inebriated, a bit light-headed, when I passed right below a large oak tree. Normally, there would be nothing strange about this. I mean, people walk under trees all the time, right? Nothing unusual about that.

But tonight, as I happened to pass under the dew-covered canopy of leaves, I tripped over one of the tree's roots. Which was quite understandable, given my current woozy state and just overall general clumsiness. I tumbled to the ground, grazing my knee on the hard dirt ground. My knees numb from my fall, I happened to glance up to curse at my klutziness, and this was when I started to notice something very different.

Leaning against the base of the oak tree was a rickety wooden ladder; one which I was sure hadn't been there the last time I'd passed under the tree, and that had only been just this morning. My eyes still fixed on the wooden structure, I slowly got up, my hands automatically reaching down to brush dirt and leaves off my clothes. As far as I could see, the ladder stretched almost to the topmost branches of the oak.

But that wasn't what I found so strange. Sitting above the top rungs of the ladder, perched precariously on a rather thin and unstable-looking branch, was a girl in a white dress, her hair colored white-blonde with faint traces of pink at the tips in the silvery moonlight. Her hands clutched what looked to be a large orange tabby cat.

All in all, the sight was rather eerie. The girl, sitting perfectly still, reminded me of a corpse.

As I continue to stare up at her in disbelief, I noticed her peering curiously down at me - she had obviously heard my noisy fall. We continued to stare at each other for a few moments, before I found my voice. I spoke to her, my tone incredulous:

"What on earth are you doing up there?"

The girl answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"My cat got stuck up this tree. I climbed up to rescue it, but then I couldn't climb down with her in my arms."

The sound of her voice surprised me. It had a beautiful, lilting tone, but at the same time it was cold, and completely devoid of any emotion.

As I continued gazing at her and her cat, I had another thought. Why not just leave the cat up the tree and call the fire brigade the next morning? I couldn't believe her stupidity. I didn't tell her this, of course.

Instead, I said "Well. Jump down, then. I'll catch you."

The girl didn't wait to be asked twice, immediately pushing herself off her branch with the cat tightly clutched to her chest. My eyes widened slightly; I hadn't been expecting her to make her descent towards the ground so soon. I stretched my arms out, a fraction of a second before she came in contact with the earth beneath my feet, and I caught her around the waist, the startled cat pressed in-between our bodies.

For a second, time stilled and I locked eyes with the girl in my arms, noting that her eyes were cold and expressionless, much like her voice. But they were also a beautiful shade of inky, midnight blue.

Then, gravity caught up with us, and the force of her fall, combined with her weight caused me to stagger slightly, and I felt her hands reach out and grip tightly onto my shoulders, nails digging into my skin through the thin material of my t-shirt.

I quickly regained my balance, setting her gently down on the ground, and we both stood there, unmoving and breathing slightly harder than usual. Our eyes locked together once again, my hands still firmly on her waist and her hands still clutching my shoulders.

A good minute or two passed before I snapped out of my slight trance, my head still feeling slightly woozy from my drinking earlier tonight. A soft glow in the sky drew my attention, and I raised my head to glance at the glowing full moon above the girl's head – it was well past midnight. I needed to get home, but first I had to see that this girl got home safely.

Removing my hands from her waist and instead choosing to place one hand on her arm, I muttered, "Come on, I'll walk you home."

She nodded once her consent, and as we started towards her house, she said to me in her lilting, cold tone:

"My name is IA. What's yours?"

The next morning, I opened the front door to leave for my usual early morning jog before Neru could bite my ear off for breaking my curfew, but stopped short when I saw a large cardboard box sitting on the doorstep.

Peering inside, I found myself looking into the midnight blue eyes of a small grey tabby kitten. A slip of paper attached to its collar caught my eye, and bending down slowly as not to startle the kitten, I gently pulled it off, my eyes flying to the neatly scribed numbers etched upon it.

There was no name to identify who had written those numbers, but I already knew who's phone number it was.