Word Count: 731

There came a day when Lucasta was captured by one of the city's natives.

They forced her into a cage, and then loaded the cage into one of the foul smelling vehicles. She went to her fate scratching and hissing, and managed to draw blood when she latched onto the human's arm. She did not let go until they grabbed her by the scruff at the back of her neck. Inside the cage within the vehicle, she growled in displeasure, and hissed again when they came to a stop and the human returned to take her, cage and all.

She was brought into a building where the fight began anew. She let them know violence and drew more blood, until one of the building's inhabitants injected her with something that made her drowsy. Sedated, she was checked for injuries and other ailments. Then she was bathed, dried, brushed, and had her overlong nails clipped. They examined the star patch along her forehead, but determined that she must have simply lost some of her fur in a fight with another animal.

When they were done, they placed her in another cage. This one was larger and contained a litter box, a bowl of food, and a bowl of water. Around her were other cages filled with other cats, but none of them were like her.

Lucasta was morose, her mission brought to a pause of an indeterminate length.

She rebelled when she could. She took to meowing loudly when the room was otherwise quiet, screeching to be set free, and whenever someone attempted to remove her from the cage she hissed and growled and writhed to be released. She was always eyeing the door. These people were cautious with her. They talked between themselves as if she could not understand them, referring to her by some ridiculous name of their own making that did not suit her at all.

One day, when she had quieted down to nap, a man entered the room and began making his rounds through the cages one by one. He hasda low, kind voice, and treated each feline with gentleness. Lucasta opened one eye and watched his back drift from cage to cage. These humans did not normally interest her, but this one piqued at her consciousness and made her think of the girl with the golden hair.

When the man stopped at her cage, Lucasta thought he looked familiar somehow, though there was a vague sense of wrongness about him, too. Something about his eyes seemed off, golden and warm as they are, and his bearing was more at ease, his behavior more gentle than Lucasta thought it should be.

“You've been giving everyone a hard time, huh?” he said.

It was not a rebuke, simply a stated fact. His smile was wide, his eyes staring into hers before rising to the star upon her head.

“I think I know why,” he told her.

She looked at him in disbelief even as her senses told her, “Yes, he would know why, wouldn't he?”

Still, Lucasta did not speak to him, and she gave him a look that must appear disinterested. She did not know yet if she could truly trust him. She couldn’t take the chance that her gut may be wrong.

He chuckled at her, leaned close to the cage, and whispered, “My name's Valhalla. What's yours?”

Valhalla. Valhalla. The name touched something within her. It was familiar. It reminded her of home, though she had no idea why. As far as she knew, she had no home. It had been lost like all the rest of her life, buried somewhere in a past she couldn’t be sure she even had.

“You don't want to tell me?” Valhalla asked her. He did not look disappointed. Rather, he seemed to have expected as much. “That's okay. We'll work on the trust thing. At least until I can get you out of here.”

Lucasta's ears twitched at that, but she had no other visible reaction.

Valhalla smiled at her once more and reached a hand toward the cage to let her sniff at it. Once she'd had her fill of his scent, Lucasta turned her head to the side and lowered it onto her paws.

Rebellion was tiring.

As long as Valhalla was there, she thought she might actually sleep peacefully.