Then we were above the trees, drifting carefully out over the water, on a night of stray wispy clouds in a sky of stars; thin scattered cirrus, visibility unlimited, wind from the south at two knots. There was no temperature.
If this is life, I thought, it is infinitely beautifuller than anything I have ever . . .
-Yes-I heard Leslie thinking.-Yes.-
-Lock this in that awesome memory of yours, I told her.-You are not going to forget this when we wake!-
-You, either . . .-
Like student pilots on our first solo, we moved slowly together, no quick motions. We had not the smallest fear of height, no more fear than two clouds of falling, two fish of drowning. Whatever bodies these were, they had
no weight, no mass. We could glide through iron, through the center of the sun, if we felt like it.
-Do you see? The cord?-
When she said it, I remembered and looked. Two gleaming cobwebs stretched away from us toward the house.
-We're spirit-kites, on strings,-I thought.-Ready to go back?-
-Nice and slow.-
-We don't have to go back . . .-
-But we want to, Richie!-
Nice and slow, we floated back over the water to the house, through the west wall of the bedroom. We stopped by the bookshelf.
-There!-she thought.-See? It's Amber!- A fluffy light-form floated toward Leslie.
-Hi, Amber! Hi, little Amber!-
There was a hi-feeling, love-feeling from the light. I left them slowly, moved across the room. What if we wanted to talk with someone? If Leslie wanted to see her brother who had died when she was nineteen, if I wanted to talk with my mother, with my father just died, what would happen?
In whatever state this is, out of body, questions come with answers. If we want to talk with them, we can. We can be with anyone to whom we have some bond, and who wishes to be with us.
I turned and looked back at the two, the woman and the cat, and noticed for the first time a silver thread from the cat. It led down through the dark to a basket on the floor, and a sleeping white fluff. Had I a heart, it would have skipped a beat.
-Leslie! Amber . . . Amber is Angel T. Cat!- As if on cue for a play we didn't know, at that moment our other cat Dolly burst down the hall at maximum wide-open top speed and leaped, a four-legged motorcycle, onto the bed.
The next instant we were cat-stomped, bashed awake, forgetting all.
"DOLLY!" I shouted, but she had caromed from bed to wall and was long gone down the hall again. Just her way of having fun.
"Sorry, wook," I said. "Sorry to wake you."
She switched the light on.
"How did you know it was Dolly?" she asked sleepily.
"It was Dolly. I saw her."
"In the dark? You saw Dolly who is a brown-and-black cat, running top-speed, in the dark?"
We both remembered, the same second.
"We were out, weren't we?" she said. "Oh, wookie, we were together, and we were up in the clouds!"
I grabbed my notebook, fumbled for a pen. "Quick, right now. Tell me everything you remember."