With my every visit she is a little more brittle. She's almost weightless, like ancient paper-thin china. Seemingly birdlike, as if with pneumatized bones holding a charcoal mantle of silky fur over them. And yet she meows her opinions, purrs assents and hisses protests unfailingly and her slit-pupiled gaze is as arresting as ever. Verdant irises like pools of ineffable wisdom. Claws still needle sharp. I dread the day the light will blink out of those eyes.

So at some point yesterday I was dancing to Scooter's Fire set to a fireworks display. A deafening staccato of thunderings around me and my gaze transfixed on a myriad of exploding lights shattering the cool June evening with their afterimages, and it was something I needed and longed for, and I had realized how badly I needed it only after the fact.

Good night, sweet prince.

What 'bout my star?

Solstice. There've been better years.

A mug of English breakfast and a plateful of homemade tamagoyaki.

Tonight the stars are hard and distant. Faint, against the cold and unwelcoming glow of the Hunter's Moon flooding the sky.