Hello you,
Here is my first one-word prompt coming out of San Francisco. I hope you enjoy!
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Prompt: Curiosity
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“Oh my goodness,” my mistress said. “They do taste like gold!”
“Hm?” I said, looking away from the window.
“Mmm!” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Tybalt, these are so wonderful!”
I looked to the object in her delicate hand. The thing was dull-gold and blooming like a metal flower. She put it to her mouth and made eyes over it, like it was the best thing she had ever tasted.
“Oh darling,” she said. “I wish I could give you a nibble. Oh how I wish!” She put her chocolate down on the dresser and floated over to me. I sat by the rear window, the way I always did, watching the robins pull off impossible feats of speed and agility in the air above the garden below, wondering what it would take to catch one.
“Here darling,” my mistress said, offering a long white finger to my nose. It was besmirched with brown and smelled rotten. “Just a taste,” she insisted.
I batted her hand and its long painted nails away. She gave me a horrible face and whimpered. “Don’t be like that darling,” she said. “I bet you just need some new toys. Why doesn’t mama go down to the store and bring you back some nice treats?” She smiled her white smile and poked at my nose. I didn’t like that. Then she stroked my neck, gently and with the back of her hand, the way she knew I liked to be touched.
“Hm.” I said. But I turned back to the window, to the robins, to my prize. Oh, yes. The robin, that illustrious robin, with all of its wonder and finesse. If I were to capture one, what kind of a creature might I be?
Just then, I saw a new robin come into the garden, and I could see it clearly. It wasn’t as fast as its fellows, but it was a robin all the same. A robin that moved like that, slow enough for me to make him out right, gave me an advantage.
The robin swooped up and landed on a perch just below my window, only a good jumps length away. After that point, my body was not my own. My blood ran hot and I could feel the hairs on my back stiffening. Before I knew what I was doing, I lunged.
“Tybalt no, you silly cat!” My mistress said, laughing through the dull buzzing in my head.
The window’s glass had stopped me short. The way it always did. Because cats were never allowed outside. No. My mistress would not risk losing her prized possession.
