Cat's eye

She was traveling with two other sisters to a festival of convent songs. The warm spring weather didn't bother her as much as her glasses, which hadn't allowed her to see very well for some time and which diligently concealed her cat-like green eyes. She was supposed to pick up her new ones the next day, as soon as she had time to visit the ophthalmologist again, who had most likely already made them, and they were waiting, framed in her favorite dark burgundy.

She remembered buying her first pair twenty years ago. They had been very expensive back then, but thanks to the money she'd saved up for them, she'd met a priest who also wanted to buy glasses. It was then that she fell in love for the second and last time in her life.

The result of this love was a child who, at that time, was not allowed to be born. Yet, two years after they met, the child was born in secret and placed in an orphanage on the other side of the big city where she lived.

Today, at exactly eighteen years old, he was in a hurry for the first time in his life. He believed it wasn't worth saving time by running a red light, because trying to save a few seconds could cost him a life that could last for years to come.

This time, he was rushing to a birthday party, which was to be given to him by his friends, who had been his only close friends since he was born.

He was riding his bike. He enjoyed it. Especially when he had the MP3 player he'd bought with his hard-earned money, which allowed him to soberly detach himself from reality.

She was interrupted from her reverie about the past by a cyclist who pulled out into the crosswalk so suddenly that she had no chance to fully stop. She knew she would remember that feeling for the rest of her life. The moment when her blood suddenly began to pump, the moment of honking, braking, and wondering how to maneuver, and whether she was really driving on a green light—perhaps he had the green light and she had been distracted?

He felt the impact against the windshield, and before he hit the ground, he saw a "spiderweb" covering almost the entire surface of the car's windshield. For a moment he was still conscious enough to see the approaching cat-like gaze, identical to the one he saw every morning when washing his own face.