La Salle de Bain

The tiles of the drawing floor are slick with moonrise. She is a cloud floating through a room of steaming air, and the golden tea pitcher to her left, untouched on the breakfast tray, is the sun. Yes, the pitcher, with its delicately molded handle, the small, perfect flowers etched into its sides, the slender spout curved just right for that gentle sprinkle of water. It is the reflection of the pitcher then, that she sees out of the corner of her eye...or no, just a limp curl of golden hair.

They are still watching her as she stands by the window. They are always watching.

Her sigh under the splashing of the fountains in the garden outside is just the mew of the kitten from the corner of the room next to the great bed. She pays it no mind and it mews again, scratches the floor with one sharp claw. A reflection, furry and white, in the side of the yellow tea pitcher, darting in and out of the action frame, stretching and distorting in slow motion like droplets of time itself. White fur. A white dress.

And she thinks to herself, in the end, what is the difference?

She is alone in the room, but that does not mean a thing, because they are always watching. The cat regards her with its unblinking stare, and she watches as it freezes like the most perfect of statues, except for the fur on its back that ripples up and down in living waves like tiny needles. There is the sound of water. What would it be like, she wonders, to be a fish?

When she closes her eyes she can see her world through bubbles as transparent as mirrors, blades of seaweed like the tails of mermaids, and through them, a pair of slitted, yellow eyes. The cat is watching.

Pale blue eyes widen and rosy lips pucker just enough for a tiny gasp of air. The reflection in the side of the golden pitcher mimics reality, and she whirls with a sudden ferocity, her white hand, that alabaster skin, smacking into the metal with a sickening clunk, the pitcher hitting the tile with a hollow clang, skittering off to the side of the room and smashing into the wall. A thin trail of water, like weak spittle, dribbles from the slender spout.

The cat makes a low growling noise in the back of its throat and she puts a trembling hand to the side of her face. No scales after all, nor fur. Just clammy human skin. The sound of running footsteps, raised voices on the other side of the door, because a pitcher falling from a stand in her apartments is, naturally, the most urgent of concerns…

But they cannot enter, she realizes with startling clarity, and almost laughs. They cannot enter, because they will drown.

They stare at each other, the cat and she, hard stares through the wall of sound of fists on the door, and in the animal's eyes she sees something neither feral nor tame, something not of this world and something in between. They are not so alien after all, those eyes. The bubbles are still rising against the moon, and the blades of knife-sharp seaweed grass so cool against her fish's skin, and the tide is high tonight.