()Taken Verbatim from my Livejournal... if anyone thinks the actual story is any good, I can submit it as a part of my gallery on here, too()

This is based off of a dream that I had last night (Saturday night), which I remembered very vividly, and was thinking about at work on Sunday. I decided I wanted to blog the ideas of the dream, but couldn't really adequately describe it, since the dialogue would be illogically constructed and make no sense, consistanting of meowing (neko) and roaring (mononoke).

Some background, for all of you who don't know what the words means. Neko means cat in Japanese, and I am in many respects, a cat walking around in a human's body. The number of similarities sometimes even surprises me... (cats are aloof, but affectionate when they wish to be, vengeful, cunning, enjoy being petted when they want to, and are reserved when they want to be. They are immaculately clean. When hunting prey or fighting, they are often more concerned with injuring or maiming, then toying with their target. Take what you will, but these can all be used to describe me some of the time.)

A Mononoke is also a Japanese term, it is a vengeful spirit, a monster in many respects, entirely devoted to that one thing. That doesn't mean they are necessarily unintelligent, but they often appear as such. The "Mononoke" in my story is not really a mononoke, and never was a mononoke, it's just a good term for something that I can not under any circumstance, really actually DESCRIBE as being anything other than an embodiment of the Devil's Advocate as a maleficient swirling mass which descends upon the neko's position, without ever actually encroaching on the neko's space. The dream really begins after that occurs.

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The setting is best described as a hilltop, soaked in sunlight, sparse vegetation sprawling out in all directions, except for three paths, a main path and two forks leading away from the crest of the hill. The neko is sitting in the center of the crossroads, considering the two forks in front of himself pensively. Both paths are shadowed, as is all the land in front of the hill, once the hill ends, totally incongruent with the hill itself.

The Mononoke descends if that is the best term for it, from above, and encircles the neko, without blocking the view in any direction.

Mononoke: "What do you sit here and consider, neko?"
Neko: "Which path I must walk down from where I sit now. Neither is certain to lead where I want it to, and neither truly appeals to me."
Mononoke: "Where did you come from?"
Neko: "From the path which lies behind me."
Mononoke: "Why do you not return in that direction?"

The Neko turns and looks behind itself, and meows piteously to itself, pained by the view of the path behind... the path itself is brightly lit, and appears to be the most desirable path the Neko can see.

Neko: "I can not walk that way, for the one who holds the key to that path denies it to me. She prefers instead to give it to another, one inferior to I in every respect but one, for he while he is not more cunning than I, I promised to the keyholder that I would never do unto her what he has done, for he has tricked her into giving him the key. Now I have lost the right to that path, and will never tread upon it again, as sad as that makes me. If I were to return, I fear that the added weight of my small form upon that ground would make it crumble away, and in the end, everyone would lose, even me. So I must go forward, instead.
Mononoke: "But why must you walk one of the paths presented you? Why can you not stay here? Why can you not walk in the meadows around the hill, where all is brightly lit and certain?"
Neko: "Because life is a journey, one with no definite endings other than death. When you reach death, and what has occurred before are the most important parts. If I were to stay here, in the meadows, Death will come for me, instead of me meeting him, and I will have gone nowhere, done nothing, and been no one. If I do not move forward, then I will surely die all the sadder because of it."
Mononoke: "Oh, but Neko, do you not see, it was moving forward that got you here in the first place. For you see Neko, if you had only stayed where you where, when you were on the path behind you, you could have been happy there, with her."
Neko: "Oh, Mononoke, I know you speak truly, if I had devoted my life to being on that path, with her, then I could have kept her as truly as it is that I can keep her no longer. But Mononoke, would I have been worthy? I would have been doing nothing with my life, my life would not have been a journey, just a place to rest, a place to wait while Death moved closer to me. My philosophy may have lost me the love of my life, but I wonder what it is that she lost by not coming with me. What will she accomplish on her Journey? Where will her path lead? And where can the one who tricked her truly take her? I fear that her path leads into equal darkness, and maybe one day our paths will cross in the darkness, and we shall each see how miserable we were in not staying in that place. But at the same time, it could not have lasted as it was. I will not say this was for the best, I made mistakes as did she. We lost each other, surely as he took her from me. But in the end, life must progress, must it not? For without progression, I would have no evidence of my life or my worth, and I would have been no better than he that stole her from me."

At this, the mononoke laughed at the neko.

Mononoke: "Neko, you are truly wise as you are foolish. Your own curiosity for your future is your undoing. For look before you, all paths are now the same, all paths are shadowed and miserable. Choose either path, Neko, or choose no path at all, the darkness is inside of you, now. And forever shall you have to live without her that could have burned it out, sad creature that you are. The darkness lives in her, too, and never shall she burn it out, though hide it she must from herself and others. The darkness you share is not a bond, though, remember that. It is the negation of a bond, it is a force driving you away from each other, ever further. This darkness is your fault, and her fault, and no one's fault at all. I am that darkness, Neko, and you will never be rid of me. The words you shared, both you and her, the actions you committed against each other. That is what bore me. And no more than you can take back a sharp word, or a wrong action, can you take back my birth. Confronted together, you could have destroyed me, but now I grow larger, and you shall never confront me together. I shall spread my darkness throughout your life, until nothing is left but the shadow."
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If you enjoyed this, I hate you. It wasn't meant to be enjoyed, it was meant to tell a story, because this dream was not something I accidentally remembered. This dream scared the life out of me, because it makes me wonder exactly what I think about what happened with Kat, and what has been hidden from me.