3. Phoebe: Winter
I was fascinated. A disease that changed your eye color? I was hooked. I asked Ellen, but she wouldn’t tell me anymore. So I took to asking travelers, and people who had come to buy kats fur.
Slowly, I compiled information. For the sake of memory, I wrote it all down.
Being near the crust causes infection or contamination, always. If you already had it, it sped the process, and made it worse. If you where contaminated, you where not infected, and visa versa.
Contaminated people had neon green eyes, and where contagious, even though they were not ill themselves. Those who were infected, by the crust or by contaminated people, had one eye turn violet. They also gained incredible abilities, both physical and otherwise. At a prince. They had about a year to live after growing sick. But for that year they where unstoppable, unfindable, and unharmable. They where super beings. They were feared, though, as few people knew the distinction between contamination and infection. When an infected person reached the end, there eye that was not purple would change color, and they would drop dead of any number of things; heart failure, suffocation with no source. The point is, they would die.
I learned that the infected could hide from anyone, except the contaminated, who were drawn to them.
This was all I could find out.
I learned it, though, and kept an eye out for travelers who could be ether infected or contaminated. Life was mostly peaceful, though. The kittens grew, and the older kats died. I liked sleeping with the kittens that winter, the one after I’d lost my parents, even though it was cold. I loved there soft, sleepy purring, and the way they’d sleep almost upside down.
I was so happy then, kept warm by my soft kittens fur coat, cuddling with the babies. The only mar on the happy picture was that I missed the city, and as much as I loved the garden, I did not truly think of it as my home.
