Time Lion

A cosmic entity with a story to tell lands unexpectedly in someone’s bedroom.

It must have been three in the morning. After downing a glass of milk and scuffling back from the kitchen, my eyes adjusting back from the light in the fridge—embracing that inky darkness again, blinking, trying to see the outline of my doorframe—

I stopped dead at the threshold of my door. I blinked harder. Was I dreaming again?

On my bed was a bright, giant cat. When I say bright I mean molten, glowing bronze… and when I say cat—well, I’m not sure what it was. It was curled up like a house cat would be, but it took up the whole of my twin bed. More, because its tail hung off the side and curled around the bedpost, and its legs—well, the legs looked how you’d think a lion’s would, except for the feet. Must’ve had anywhere from six to eight toes. I guess it had claws, but they didn’t seem to be sharp talons so much as hardened fur that flowed off with the rest of its body.

I think I gasped; when it lifted its head, it looked right at me. It didn’t really have a head—it was just light rays, and the light lit up my whole room. And the light rays had eyes, and a mouth in the center, with teeth from those ancient mammals you’d see in museums and think: “those couldn’t have possibly been real.”

But it was real. And the mouth moved at me, asking me with cherry-red lips and eyeliner to match:

“What would you like me to tell?”

As if I’d just stumbled into the middle of a conversation between it and myself. So naturally, I asked, fumbling:

“Who are you?”

Maybe not so naturally, because I first thought about asking “what are you?” But it had a presence that made it seem to me like a who rather than a what—even though it was still an eight-toed molten lion in my bed with a sun for a head. And it was asking me what I’d like to hear it tell. At three in the morning. After I’d had my glass of milk. My mouth went dry and I got that sour chalk aftertaste.

“I can tell you my name, but you can’t pronounce it.”

So instead it zapped an image straight into my head. It wasn’t like a picture I could paint for you. I saw it—but the colors were iridescent, like a moving hologram, and it had tastes and smells, like honey-coated pears and caramelized onions.

“Why are you in my bed?”

“By accident,” it said. “But I’m curious about the rug on your floor. I like the patterns it makes, so I wanted to see it for myself.”

The lion licked its ruby-stained lips and pointed a furry digit at the carpet on the floor. It was my favorite one, one of mice dashing in circles around a five-pointed star.

Of course—a cosmic lion chasing mice on the floor.

“Why do you exist?” I asked. The question sounded too obvious, too existential to my own ears once I asked it… but I was at a loss, dumbfounded.

“I’m the last thing,” the lion said. “One of your peoples gave me a letter in their alphabet. After everything is done, and everything is written, I’m what comes out. After all the futures collide, I’m the result. I suppose it won’t make sense to you, but that’s what I am. I could try explaining it to you, if you wish.”

It blinked its red-lined eyes at me, and they reminded me of Greek pottery, or maybe Horus’s eye. I nodded at it, blinking back tears as mine burned, as if I wasn’t just smelling caramelized onions, but cutting a mound of fresh ones right beneath my nose. It narrated:

“When ink-night collapsed in on itself, the orange pinprick gave birth to me so I could remember it after it winked out, but it said before going: ‘in order to remember all of me you must dive into what happened, and narrate it, wherever you go, to whomever you see, so that it can be remembered also by the people and things that made me and you.’

“So I found someone in the pinprick-against-ink-night along my journey. Sitting in a bed, I narrated my history to them. A piece of me was made in a spaceship; another one, a planet, another a black hole, and another a particle that barely existed, always coming and going, made of foam, so small it wasn’t sure whether it did or didn’t. But this someone helped me by asking me a question and listening to my story.”

As it narrated, I realized that it was recounting the history of all time but backward, starting from the end and going to the beginning.

“The times out of step were discordant, like pianos out of tune, and it took a long time for the lion-swan to be understood. In my trouble, I fell deeper in, across planets I can’t tell you about, because if I did it’d be uncomfortable for you. But I can at least tell you that there are worlds in words, as many reflections as there are stars in dewdrops, and while candied Cains bounced in children’s dreams I watched wars unfold, begging for forgetting, letting those beholden be forgotten because they wished to be lost, while lying, saying they wanted memories for forever. Denial. Upended, a hinge on a boor, meddlesome tires, and rivers of pain, but progress made all the same, just to find a rug on a floor.”

The lion gestured its paw at me, then at the star in the circle of mice:

“When the ink-night said a thought, it made matter from Mater, and all the mice chasing light found themselves woven together, warped and woofed, thinking their dance was conflict, not tapestry. But the illusion they danced to was needed, or else they wouldn’t’ve moved. They sprang from reptilian swamps, and them from a rock that bled ooze, congealed by the ink-night’s attraction. Dust mates dust, ash churning ash, until what was as cold and silent as your bedroom compared to me was hotter still, and denser too, bursting at the seams, a resounding clash, confused, brash, and waiting to bloom.”