Hidden Straw
I hid my final straw among the flowers, and the cat looked for it relentlessly.
He tore up each box, regardless of the magical objects they might hold. He crashed into stacks of books until they fell over and blew out spells, ghosts, potential doom. He opened the oven and crumbled my bakes, shredded my boots, slashed through my broom’s brakes. He hopped onto a bench where I’d placed the beaker in which I’d brewed myself a boost, and beat it so it tipped onto the carpet. He batted at flowers floating in a test tube, an experiment that had yet to reveal its goal and now never would. The cat knew he was getting close to the end of his quest, and he crashed and burst and boomed into every plate that I had kept spinning.
I wasn’t angry with him, even if I stayed close to the last straw throughout all of this—but my patience kept stretching, no matter how thin. The boxes, the books, the bakes, the boots, the broom, the brew, and the blooms were all out there because I hadn’t finished the tasks they represented. Once I did, the cat would no longer be able to get to these objects, and peace would return to my brain.
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[Image description: The photo looks down on a small, brown side table with a transparent glass vase of white flowers, a tealight in a round wooden holder, a small framed flower painting, a small transparent glass bottle with purple flowers, a gold-coloured dish in the shape of a ginkgo leaf, a black cylindrical candleholder with a circular pattern of holes letting out the light from the sides, a piece of cross-stitch embroidery standing up in an embroidery ring and depicting an orange cat reaching out to a steaming purple cup on top of a stack of books, and a transparent cat out of metal wire that holds a test tube filled with daffodils, so that they form a flower crown for the cat.]
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Embroidery by @tanouska!