Tenth Daughter of Memory: A First Time Post

This is my first attempt at a Tenth Daughter of Memory Post.  The subject is "A Cat May Look at a King."  For other posts and for the blog itself, click here

Well, here goes:

A Cat May Look at a King  

Cold, clammy night yanks the coarse grey blanket over him as rosy fingered dawn tries to draw it back

Through streets bubble wrapped in cobble stones, a skinny, sure-footed cat skirts half-dead drunks and slips by hags who sweep out the night’s remains.

Slowly, a city awakes, rising unsteadily to its feet like a newborn calf.

“It’ll be busy for sure today.”
“You won’t see nothin’, there’d be too many”
“Still, I wouldn’t miss it.”
“I can’t go it’s not right.”

The symphony of day begins its first movement.

The mangy pile of bones and fur makes its way north and then east pushing through smells as thick as molasses of day old fish and beer mixed with feces and perfumed with the stench of blood

Yellow sunlight finds a group of men standing outside a prison, anxiously waiting for someone else to take over their task.   The cat ignores them and continues on finding an immense stone structure across town.

Soon the streets fill with men, women, children…there are too many, too many.  A carriage rattles over the cobblestones pushing its way through, parting the crowd like the red sea.

As the cat climbs staircase, the faint sound of drums wafts through the building.  The woman, not sure that she had heard it, looks up from her morning prayers. 

The drum beats increase in volume and now the woman is sure.  She looks down at her hands, now wrinkled and old.  They used to be so smooth and pretty, she thinks.  The envy of all… Her thoughts drop as the knowledge that her past is dead sinks deep into her soul.  Looking up, she notices the cat staring at her son, already showing the disease of his older brother, another dauphin.

The woman falls to her knees, “The king is dead, long live the king.”