Littered pages

If you’re just joining us, here are the first two eps:

And now, today’s episode …

Pem and I go down one of the hundreds of paths, and the wooded canopy forms quick. A wind whips through, and there’s something stuck to my shin. It’s paper.

“What’s this?”

Pem smells it, then rubs her face against it. “It’s paper.”

I smile. “Yes, I can see that …”

The wind brings several more sheets, each sticking to me on various parts of my body. I grab at them, collect them. I sort them and try to read them. “It’s like my eyes can’t focus.”

“Let me try,” Pem says.

“But you’re a cat …”

“So?”

“Okay.” I lower one of the pages and hold it in front of Pem’s enormous eyes.

Pem reads: “Even though we loved each other—and it was that love that sustained us like food during our lean years—that love was not enough to heal the wounds we inflicted on each other.”

Pem looks up at me.

“Go on.” I say it almost without thinking.

“So when the day came when she told me she couldn’t take it anymore, that she was leaving in the morning, I wasn’t surprised. Heartbroken, but not at all surprised.”

Pem looks at me again, then rubs my hand with her cheek, twice. “I’m sorry, William.”

“Why?” I ask.

Another wind blows and hundreds of pages flutter all around us.

Pem’s eyes get busy, and her head rapidly shifts around as she tracks all the pages. She leaps after one of them, mouth open and paw outstretched. She brings it down, then strikes it several times with short, quick clamping paws.

“Hey!” I say. “Don’t tear them up!”

“Oh, right!” Pem says. “Sorry.”

I pick up some of them, then feel a surge of hopelessness. “I’ll never be able to put this back together.”

Pem sits on her back feet, with front feet between. She turns her head sideways and looks at me.

“What?” I ask.

“Don’t give up.”

I look at the mass of pages in my two hands. “What is all this, anyway?”

“It’s your book.”

“I have a book?”

Pem tilts her head again. “I guess. I watched you typing for a long time. Then you threw it away.” Pem looks at the pages. “I think this is it.”

I feel some urgency to go get the other pages.

It’s like Pem feels it from me. “I’ll help.”

So we run around, getting the pages back.

I look over and see Pem pawing at one of them, then turn and crouch over it.

“Pem, no!”

Pem goes on it.

I feel disappointed. “Oh, Pem, why’d you do that?”

She looks behind her, smells, then paws at it, smells again, then walks away.

“This one’s about me,” she says.

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