The Three-Eyed Cat
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Surely cursed, they carried him, tiny, yowling, still wet from birth, and left him near the time-rift, the death-sentence destiny for all misshapen things. Who could love a three-eyed cat? The hungry time-rift void, that’s who. Hunched against the cold, they didn’t look back, lest his helpless, wriggling form defile their eyes.
On the other side of the time-rift, one of the priestesses awoke, yawned and rubbed her eyes, slipped on her mechanical foot, and set out to retrieve him. (She had seen him in a dream, of course.) “Oh, you poor thing,” she said, as she knelt on the coarse black stone. He was silent now, scarcely breathing, and so very small. Cupped in her hands, she offered him the warmth of her heartbeat.
“Look,” she said, girlish joy in her voice, waking the others. There was a collective outburst of soft delighted sighs. There were many jeweled and gentle outstretched hands, and more than one exclamation of praise to the deity of the ones who were maimed, cursed, called unholy.
From that day on, he was to be a cat of the temple and so the first thing he saw when he blinked open his three starlit eyes was their shimmering violet giggles, their scintillating silver haloes, and the kindness which dripped, glittering, from their hands.
He could never tell them–reclined toothy-yawn and twitch-of-tail–that while they danced to their drums, the music was all scarlet and dotted with metallic turquoise, that the scents of fruit and sandalwood in their hair broke like prism light over their heads, that on the day of his own celebration, the sound of his purr was gold.