Silvery, almost-transparent mist veiled the land and what sunlight managed to trickle through the thick, grey clouds was thin and faint, hardly managing to illuminate the strange scene which played out atop the hill.
The woman, dressed in rags but holding herself like a queen; the boy with the big blue eyes but skin as dark as ebony, staring in wonder at the woman; the man, middle-aged, holding his rasping blond daughter to his chest and whispering unintelligibly in her ear as her lips turned blue; and finally the cat, jet-black with eyes like jade, lying immobile in the center of the triangle formed by the watchers, dark fur matted and singed.
Whether the cat was dead or asleep wasn’t clear, but none of the three humans gathered around it seemed to care one way or the other. The boy had eyes only for the woman, who seemed to staring at the air between her face and a nearby bush, the only other living thing for miles around, and the man paid heed to nothing but his dying daughter.