For the writing prompts: What would happen if the cats hadn’t rescued Randolph Carter from the port on the moon? (Could be what you’d want to happen, could be what you think Lovecraft would have written, could be a completely different interpretation entirely.)
There was a man on the moon, and that man was him. A dreamer, he was all too awake, though there were wakenesses still to follow, out of his reach, whole realms of thought and consciousness that stretched away maddeningly into the mind’s eye. The beings around him thrived on those vistas, the moments between sleep and waking where truth resides, and evil as well. They were not-men, not-sleepers, not-dreamers, and they were terrible in their malice. They had sunk their claws into Randolph Carter, the Dreamer, the rightful owner of the Silver Key (or had that happened yet? Hadn’t he always had the key back in the days of his childhood? He couldn’t find it now, couldn’t feel its pull). Randolph Carter merely yearned for his dreams to be as real as sleep could make them; he wanted only for Kadath, that marvelous city that had vanished as utterly as sunken R’lyeh, though into what depths it had sunk, Carter knew not, for there were places worse than these, places beyond nightmare.
Now Carter was on the moon. Now the moon-beasts came, their forms that of frogs gestated in blood ponds, swollen and bloated. The not-men and the moon-beasts hated each other almost as much as they hated Carter, but almost was the central word. The moon-beasts wished to take Carter to the god-resemblant being known as Nyarlathotep (though as he has 1,000 faces you may know him, know him well). The not-men? Well they wanted what they wanted, but what that was doesn’t matter overly.
Carter dreamed of cats. For to think here was to dream, and Carter dreamed as vividly as if he was asleep (which he was, but he was more than sleeping, he was Asleep). Carter dreamed that they came and rescued him, sweeping away the horrors and replacing it with the promise of adventure. He could practically feel their fur under his fingers, hear their sharp ‘mews’ and loud purring. But alas! When in Ulthar, Carter had forgotten to feed a cat. And that cat spread evil words about his good name, slander so vile the other cats thought good riddance to Carter’s bad fortune!
So Carter was not rescued…he found himself in the custody of the moon-beasts. One of them, their leader, shot out a tongue with a texture like taffy and wrapped him up, pulling him into its grotesque maw. It would deliver him now to Nyarlathotep…if it could resist consuming him first.
Carter, enveloped, descended another level of dreaming, growing further still from the waking world. He encountered then his second self, a dreamer too, but one from a different time, a different place. This Carter was much aged. Trouble wrote itself in cursive across his lined brow, and his eyes spoke of horrors never meant to be seen.“You are still young, and your dreams contain light,” said old Carter. “My time is nearing an end, and if I am to pick a reckoning with one of the Old Ones who corrupts our world it must be now. Change places with me, and resume your search for Kadath, which I never found.” Old Carter pressed something into young Carter’s hands.
Carter (the young) found himself falling. He fell faster and faster, the moon growing smaller and smaller behind him. There was a whistling noise, and in those melodies he heard what Zann would come to fear, but in a major key. At the last moment he stopped. His feet hit the ground as naturally as if he had only jumped into the air. He opened his hands. A silver key rested there, warm to the touch. Carter slipped it into his pocket and resumed his journey, starting from where he was at the port of Dylath-Leen.
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