There was once a star, or so the old stories said, though nobody could quite remember its name. It wasn’t a brilliant thing, like the ones that dotted the constellations or ignited the imaginations of dreamers.
This one was different. It hung in the sky, unnoticed, tucked between shapes and constellations that were known to the world but forgotten by time. There it sat, still and silent, hardly ever remembered, and yet never truly gone.
At first, people noticed it—some, anyway. There were whispers of a star that didn’t quite fit. It didn’t shine the way the others did; its light was faint, fragile, like the memory of something lost.
They called it “The Forgotten Light,” but the name never quite captured it. They searched for it, but it was never quite where they thought it should be, and eventually, they gave up, as people tend to do when something doesn’t quite belong.
And so the Forgotten Light was forgotten. Not by the sky, of course. The sky never forgets. It waited.
The truth was, the star had never really been lost. It had just been waiting for something—or someone. The kind of person who would understand its riddle, the one who could see beyond the surface of things.
But it didn’t want a hero or a great discovery.
It just wanted to be remembered.
But you wouldn’t find the star through a telescope or a dream. It was more than that. No one knew this, not even the most experienced astronomers.
Then, one night, a strange thing happened.
The star, that forgotten thing, flickered—not like a dying flame, but like a secret just about to spill out. And from somewhere, a cat appeared. Not an extraordinary cat—just a black one with a tail that curled in three neat stripes. It had been around for a while, probably, but nobody had paid it much attention.
It sat, unremarkable, staring into the sky with eyes that glittered in the moonlight. For a long time, it had gazed at the stars, the constellations that people knew by heart. But tonight, its eyes caught something else.
Something faint. A glow. The star.
For a moment, the cat blinked. And then, something happened. A small shiver rippled across the world—an odd twist in time, barely noticeable to anyone else. The cat’s fur bristled, and its gaze hardened.
For just a moment, it wasn’t a cat at all. It was something else, something ancient. And as it meowed, soft and low, the star—The Forgotten Light—shifted.
The world didn’t end, and the heavens didn’t crack open. But something strange happened.
Something changed.
The star didn’t fade away. Threads of light began to snap and drift into the air, not fading, but scattering, breaking into pieces that seemed to stretch across the edges of time. It wasn’t the end of the star; it was its beginning—again, and again, and again.
The cat’s task was complete. It turned, its three-striped tail flicking in the quiet night. And in the distance, the star was gone, shattered into a million fragments of light and shadow, splintering across time in ways no human could understand.
The cat walked away into the darkness, leaving no trace. But somewhere, if you listened closely enough, you could hear the whisper of a memory.
A forgotten light. A secret star.
A cat who had seen it all.
And it would never be remembered again.
Not until it was needed, for there are things that wait. And sometimes, when you least expect it, you’re part of something that’s already been.