The great brown buffalo beneath him walked against the current of the mighty river. The river was long and wide and it was a fossil in the memory of a great tremor. It was younger than the calico, but angrier with many more responsibilities. He was sleeping peacefully, having a dream of a distant time, a time where the collar and small bell around his small neck had meaning. He stretched and yawned, forgetting the dream, and looked ahead.

He went from buffalo to buffalo closer to the edge. With each jump, the bell around his neck chimed but the small sound was drowned out by the noises of the herd, the rushing of water, and peace of the forest.

The calico slipped on the sleek hair of a buffalo and fell into the current. The calico's vision blurred, disoriented by the passing bubbles. His small body tumbled wildly in the rage of the river. A salmon brushed against him, its dark body and metallic scales glowing in what sunlight perforated the white foamy surface. Another passed, and another, and another, and many more toward the direction of the falling water. He watched as their fast bodies cut through the darkness and disappeared.

He laid in the sun to dry, in a path of wild purple and blue and pink flowers in the company of honeybees as they worked incessantly. In the strong breeze, a bouquet of dandelion seeds passed. The setting sun glowed through and between the white wisps, softly diffusing the golden light. The calico sneezed, and the pods flew higher and higher, and farther away, and higher away. He laid with his stomach exposed, his paws reaching above his head, and rubbed his face onto the grass, softly purring. The stroke of his small voice uninterrupted, his speech dampened and smoothed from an illness and a science he would never understand.

There was a loud roar and the breaking of wood. The calico watched with his icy blue eyes as a honeybee landed on his paw and rubbed its fractal iridescent grey eyes free of golden pollen. The honeybee buzzed with its perfect wings, and the calico meowed in return with his damaged voice. When the honeybee left so did he.

He followed the loud footsteps on the dirt floor. Crawling through the bush, staying close to the shadows, he watched a huge and black and brown bear scratch its back against an even larger tree. The bear roared in its satisfaction, his nose pointing at the blue and clear and planeless sky above. The bears black eyes looked in the direction of the calico and the calico laid on its paws. It walked away from the tree towards the river, towards the sound of the falling water. Once the large bear was out of sight, once all that was left were the sounds of pounding feet and slow steps and shallow perfunctory grunts, the calico followed.

The bear dug his face into the cold stream, biting at the open water, roaring each time it emerged. Every time the bear caught a fish it would lay its heavy fat body by the trees and eat, biting off the head, enjoying the intestines, and delighting at the fullness and fat of the dense muscles in the late summer salmon. Small orange bubbles spilled from the female fish and the bear licked them from the leaves and grass with its long tongue. The calico came down from the canopy of the trees to eat what the bear missed. The bear would look at the calico, with a small translucent orange bead in its small mouth, curiously, and return to the waterfall to hunt.

He was not deemed a threat. He never was. He was only ever considered food or something new and small to be looked at through a wondering lens.

The bear couldn't eat enough and spent much of the day hunting salmon and scratching its back and taking small naps between meals. The calico was a vulture for scraps the bear missed and they were friends until they weren't. Soon the bear moved slowly. Fulled and sated from its many meals, its steps now languished and lazy and satisfied; satisfied movements from the weight of a good afternoon. The bear dropped a small salmon to the ground on a small stack of other dying salmon the bear had hoarded, and the calico, running fully and quickly, took the fish, speeding into the setting sun.

The calico's small ears perked at the echos of a great yell. The roar rumbled the leaves, shattering the peace of the forest even at its periphery.

The calico looked back into the thick of the trees, ensuring his safety, and exited the dense and softly whispering wilderness and crossed into the overgrown city. With the salmon in his mouth, he trotted at the edge of the sidewalk. He jumped onto the roof of the skeleton of a car and gauged his way. A passing group of deer looked at him curiously, a lone and skinny coyote attempted to catch him but he knew the land and he wasn't afraid, and a crow watched him from the roof of a tall building with black telescope eyes.

The crow flew from roofline to roofline, cawing and humming as the calico crossed from street to street the soft pink blood dripping from the salmon in his mouth, tracing lightly his winding path.

Even this small salmon was half the size of the small calico. He set his fish down in the safe center of a plaza and rested, licking his paws clean of dried blood. The crow circled overhead, cautiously cawing. He looked up at the silent and dimming sky. He watched the ellipsis of the crow, he listened to its song, his eyes blinked softly longer and longer with each close. In the plaza squirrels and raccoons rummaged through the empty buildings and a armored possum rolled itself into a brown ball and the calico had no name for it. Not too far away two other cats fought while a small herd of zebras and antelopes and deer grazed on a patch of grass that sprouted through deeply cracked cement. It was always like this in the city, peace within the violence. The crow cawed once more, differently. The calico looked up. The bear roared on hind legs, its arms spread wide toward the calico. The calico mounted himself on his paws with the salmon in his trembling mouth. His attempt at a hiss was feeble and he felt it. He dashed away but the bear, despite its great size, was quick. It swiped its huge paw and the calico jumped but was caught by the legs.

He flipped in the air, landing with multiplied gravity in the dried fountain at the center. The salmon flew from his mouth landing in some random and dark place. The bear sniffed around grunting in an instinctual rage. The crow flew down, its sharp and dark beak cutting through the sky. It pecked at the bears eye, gouging it fully. The titan screamed, blood gushing from an empty socket. The crow flapped overhead, the black eye dangling in a ball of pale yellow nerves. The calico limped slowly to the edge of the square, the small bell around its neck hopelessly chiming. The bear heard, and with all its charged fury, lunged at the calico. Running fully, with its huge mouth it bared oranged fangs and large globules of saliva scattered. The crow cawed again, something different.

An orange canid with a pointed snout and ears and hot eyes rushed out, large for its genus, large for its youth, angry for its friend. Following the fox were other canids. Mixed in breed and height, similar only in their brotherhood. The fox nabbed at the leg of the bear, pulling backwards. The rust of its fur drained of life from an adolescence of battle, its blackened paws gripped against the concrete as the bear shifted its huge weight. It was thrown far with a strong kick, but was not harmed enough to stop fighting. A great and large shadowy wolf slashed with razors at the bear's stomach, a tiny white and very fluffy pup bit at one of its toes, a sleek racing dog orbited the titan quickly barking incessantly, and a velvety black fighting breed locked its strong jaws around the bear's tail relinquishing its impossible grip only as the tail detached. The black corvid was on the bears crown, pecking at its ears while a murder of crows overhead blocked out what small sun was left in the tired day. The bear, overwhelmed and crying, spun wildly swinging its massive arms at the pack of dogs and flock of black birds and at whatever blur moved and at all colors as its vision blackened. It screamed still for the calico who limped to the safety of a shadow. Its leg was badly damaged and there was a cut that bled terribly and the bear craved for its blood.

The wolf bit and bit again at the stomach of the bear, the fox and racing dog ran around biting staccatically and randomly, the small white pup rushed to the calico licking his small face while the calico squinted in pain. The crow and its flock snipped at the bear's ears, its remaining eye and eyelid, its snout. The black note of the dark bear was bleeding badly, the pink of its soft tissue exposed and chipped like the edge of an old sword. The fighting dog had a hold on the bears upper arm and despite the wild thrashing wouldn't release.

It was very painful for the bear as the ligaments in its legs were turned into small strings, and the muscles of its huge chest were ribboned, and as it fell to the ground its skull cracked and leaked of gentle gyri. Somewhere, in the dark forest, three cubs huddled in a damp nest of leaves.

The pack sat together, breathing heavily, excited from the battle. The crow perched itself atop the fox, and the fox at the lip of the fountain. The calico walked to the bear and felt its hot and dying breath. The calico's head was not much bigger than the bears nose, and as they looked at each other face to face, icy blue eyes to clouding black eye, the bear gave him one last angry expression and gifted him the life of its final breath. The calico walked to the bears stomach and climbed into a gash made by the wolf. He crawled through crawling intestines and fast fascia and tough tissue and past dense walls of muscle.

The calico emerged from the carcass with a liver; dark and dense and filled with blood and flavor. As he bit into the chunk of meat, he tasted the fat and iron and copper. It was primed from many months of preparing for winter; it was perfect.

The wild dogs and crows next took their prizes. Soon, the body of the mother would be swarmed by all the life in the plaza and all that would remain was a huge monument of bone and defeat and death and life.

They rested in an empty store. The night was cold, they huddled together, the calico in the middle so as to heal.

In the morning the calico ate a small portion of the liver, not for sustenance but for utility. It would be too heavy to carry otherwise. The faithful dogs watched as the small white calico walked away, limping less, bleeding less, and ran off following their noses guided by new instincts. For awhile the crow followed overhead, but once the calico crossed the bridge it flew away. The calico no longer saw the crow's shadow next to his and looked up at the noon sun and cloudy sky. It was very warm, and the cool breeze here was familiar and welcoming.

There was a dark cave, a ramp downwards into a cavern that knew no light. The old parking garage, barricaded and abandoned, was empty and as the calico stepped inside even its small and very light steps echoed softly through the expanse. The bell around its neck shimmered constantly, sounding of stars. These were happy steps, albeit small. A pair of glowing yellow eyes emerged from a dark corner. Much, much larger than the calico's, much sharper, made for violence. The eyes pried, walked between the shadows and stalked the calico from the moment he stepped into the den, and each half limp towards its center. The calico held the liver in his mouth. From a bed of dried and yellowed grass, the eyes rose, the silhouette standing very tall as the calico approached. The calico sent out his broken voice.

Shades of gold emerged from the shadow.

Golden fur housing golden eyes.

Its muscles bulging, soft shadows emphasizing their definition and size, as it studied the calico watching his easy pace. The lioness walked towards him, moving slowly, her sturdy paws and sure steps heavy with confidence. The calico limped, his neck tense from the weight of the liver.

She lowered her large nose to his small head, they were the same in size, and she smelled him. He smelled nice. He smelled of three days adventure. She licked the adventure off of his dirty fur, wondering where he had been, how far he had gone. Her sharp hunting eyes dilated into great black mirrors as he sat. In the dark vignette he blinked at her, dropping the liver. She blinked back, her eyelids heavy and slow. She smelled at the dried blood on his leg, the golden pollen on his tiny belly. She cleaned his dirty side, then his tiny mouth and tiny ears and he closed his big eyes meowing softly. He licked her pink nose and they pressed their foreheads together, their purrs reverberating in the secluded space. She looked at the liver, smelled it, and laid down, holding the meat between her front paws. Her teeth and lips were made bloody as she gorged. She tore through the tough meat easily, thick fat and blood and tissue she swallowed whole. He licked her lips and her paws between bites, and rested himself beside her stomach, beside her heaving breath, and could hear her huge heart working.

She left for him a small portion. He ate it.

A herd of giraffes and gazelles and oxen passed the opening of the home. The calico looked outwards toward the dying summer, and felt her tongue on his back and head.

He followed her into to the deep and colorless corner of the cavern. Subdued in their own shadow, blanketed in silence, they rested. She surrounded his tiny body with her large paws and nuzzled her jaw against his frame.

The cats fell asleep.

In peace, they slept long and hard.

It was very warm.