Faraway Night is a small cat who lives on the streets of a future city. She has lived there all her short life so she knows nothing different. Still, there is a quest in her, an imbalance that makes her edgy and tense.

One day she sees something she doesn’t understand shimmering in the ever-present rain. It is her reflection, but not. Not her small camouflaged form but large and bright and leonine. It speaks to her from mind to mind.

Hark, it says with thoughts like thunder. You are the future of our people.

“How?” asks Faraway Night. “Why?”

Because we all are, the lion replies, mending their souls into one.