One Moment at Night

Writing Prompt: Night Vision

It is night.

Is that too cheesy to start out? It is night. It is a statement of a fact. It is not day or dusk or mid-afternoon. It is night. It is not dark, nor stormy, not even overly humid and breezy. It is just night. Nothing particularly strange about that as really night tends to occur on a regular basis and for several hours of the regular 24 hour rotation of this little ball of dust we travel about on through the universe.

I can't tell you what time it is because I don't wear a watch. Nor do I think I could see it if I did. Unless it was one of those new fangled back light watches. If I did wear a watch, I don't think that would be the sort I would wear- but you never know. I am a cheap ass bastard after all. Gadgets tend to be cheaper than class.

It is night and I am sitting outside on my porch watching the trees across the way. No particular reason, but if there was something to watch, I may as well watch the trees across the way instead of the pavement at my feet or the front of my house. The trees are dark- not really foreboding, but dark. Shadows cast in the dark are always the strangest- just a few shades darker than everything else, like ghosts.

In the trees across the way there are stray cats. I know they are there, I have seen them during the day and now, I sense them. I can hear them moving and playing and doing whatever it is that cats do at night. Every now and again I can just catch a glint of their eyes in the dark. Reflecting the small amount of light around them in a yellow, glassy glare.

I sip my tea- it is luke warm. Not really iced tea nor hot tea, just a glass of tea. In the trees across the way I can see one of the smaller stray cats edging its way toward the edge of the tree line. I follow the glare of its eyes and make out the dark shadow in the night as it moves toward me. After a time, it gets to the edge.

We stare at each other. He (or maybe she) looks at me and I look at him. Neither of us move. It is a moment of exploration. Not really curiosity, but a simple understanding that we share as we look at each other. He knows I am not a cat and I know he is not a human. Neither one of us seems to have anything better to do that to sit and stare at each other across the way that separates us. I sip my tea and he twitches his tail. We're not really still or intense.

We just are.

It is not an overly special moment, but it is something that is happening. Here and now.

Then, it is over.

The cat dashes back into the trees and I am left on my porch staring into the darkness and into the night watching the shadows play and move and sipping luke warm tea.