Cats in the Air
By Matthew Wagman
Part One
The hellcats swooped low in unison over the placid and waterlogged rice paddies. They soared up into the bright azure and endless horizon, like the birds they imitated. They performed daring feats- now low over the rice paddie only five feet up, now piercing the cottony clouds! They shone in the sun as they flashed by, growling. They had bright and unique emblems on the side of their fuselages, each showing the pilot’s fancies.
Le-gō marveled at their almost impeccable dives and daring swoops.
“I’ll never be as good as that!” Le-gō thought. “No-I must not think of that now. I have work to do. And if I accidentally told anyone what I did at night-”
Le-gō shivered and turned back to her work.
The sun was shedding its last fading rays and sinking from sight when the small transport plane came to pick up Le-gō. Her muscles and joints were so sore when she saw the transport coming over the terraces that she knew a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure them. If she even got a good night’s sleep with what she was planning to do tonight.
“I should go over to the landing strip now. It would be nice to get some rest in the plane’s cabin on the way back to the dens.” Le-gō thought.
She nudged the plow-dog with her muzzle, and they started towards the landing strip. They walked past the flooded fields they had planted rice in that day, not as much as Le-gō had hoped. She sighed. This was certain to mean more work in the fields over the next month than she was comfortable with.
“Greetings, Le-gō.” a soft voice said.
“Oh! Greetings Ri-ru. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you coming.”
No matter. It seems that the long-muzzled twins still have plenty of energy despite pulling the plows since sunup. I wish I could be like that.”
They had finally come to the small airstrip, padding behind the identical frolicking plow-dog twins.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Ri-ru. Even in your 13th year, your fitness is the envy of everyone on the farm except Kiato. Come on, we don’t want Za-mu to take off with the dogs and not us.”
The two females padded up to the small fork tailed and round nosed transport in a companionable silence. The dogs had already gone into the cabin when the cats jumped inside.
“You two are pretty slow,” Za-mu said from atop his booster seat at the controls of the brightly painted plane.
Le-gō’s gut twisted in envy.
“It should be me on that high seat! I should be experiencing the joys of being a pilot!” She thought.
“I bet if you had known that Mra-ti was making her salmon noodle soup tonight, we would already be halfway back to the dens!” Za-mu exclaimed.
“Alright, Za-mu. Let's head back.” Ri-ru gently suggested.
🙀 🙀 🙀
Le-gō silently (she hoped) crept on her stomach past the sleeping and curled forms of her den-mates. She finally slipped past them and got to the mouth of the cave with no sign that anyone had noticed she was absent from her pile of bedding. She slowly leapt her way from boulder to boulder, a silent army of solemn stone sentinels. She finally alighted on the grassy slope at the bottom of the boulders, and gazed at the view that spread out before her. Her gaze swept past the distant mountains, the rice paddies that sparkled in the moonlight, the other dens, and finally to the hangar inset in the dark granite of the cliff.
She glided on her belly across the silently waving grass towards the shadowed maws of the hangars. This was the most important part: she was in full view of all the dens, and would be for the whole agonizing walk to the hangar. She saw a flicker of movement at the dens, and her head whipped around. She perked her ears and strained her eyes, but there was nothing. She was also up wind of that den, so she wouldn’t be able to smell if anything was there. Her heart almost escaping from her chest, she finally decide that nothing was there.
After her last few seconds of terror, she made extra pains to stay low in the waving grass. Only a watcher with extremely sharp eyes would be able to see the moon glinting off of her green eyes. When she made it to the shadow of the cliffs, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“No one can see me here!” she thought, and started walking normally.
She was heading for the farthest hangar and landing strip, inset in a side of the bleak and imposing cliffs that couldn’t be seen from the dens. As she was just getting to the silent hangar and its sleeping airplane, she looked behind her. She thought she saw something flitting down from the rock just as she was bringing her head back around, and her head flipped back around. Her ears pricked and she strained her eyes past the point which she thought she could strain them.
“Nothing’s there. At least I hope nothing’s there. I’m pretty sure nothing’s there. Yeah, pretty sure.” she thought to herself. “Now I’m going crazy. This is just great.”
She finally tore her eyes away from the grass near the dens and hurried towards the hangar. At this point she was so frazzled by the past few minutes that she just wanted to get in the air.
“Oh, to be free!” she thought. “To feel no constraints of the cruel earth!”
She gave a small sigh, and padded up to the hangar. Her first stop was the equipment locker, where she clasped one of the older and more beat up leather helmets, and shoved it onto her head. She approached the plane, and as always, was in awe of its graceful lines and sturdy frame. She did not care for the paint job, though. She thought that so beautiful a bird should be painted in black and white like herself, not garish red and yellows.
“No matter. Everything will be fine when I get in the air.” she thought.
Le-gō took a deep breath, and opened the door to the plane's cabin. She leaped inside, and sat up at the controls. She sighed contentedly, and turned on the plane's engine. It came to life with splutter and then a purr, and Le-Gō checked the instrument panel to make sure everything was okay with the plane. The propeller was just beginning to speed up, going so fast it no longer partially blocked Le-Gō’s forward view.
She didn’t notice any issues, so she guided the plane’s nose out of the hangar. The propeller,s spin got ever faster as she guided the plane down the runway, slowly pushing on the throttle. She picked up speed, and turned up the throttle. She was quickly running out of runway, so she decided it was time to take off.
She gently pulled on the controls- and she was free! Free of the Earth and flying like a bird! She was now about 10 meters into the air, and climbing. She brought the plane into a graceful turn to avoid hitting the boulders a couple meters off of the runway, and glanced down at the dark world lit by stars she was leaving behind.
There was another cat below her, watching her.
