The Tide Beyond Time

 The Tide Beyond Time

Freedom did not change Katya.

It simply removed
the collar.

She was still the cat
who paused
for lonely people.

Still the traveler
who noticed
small sorrows
before great disasters.

Still the one

who would trade
an afternoon
to spare someone
a lifetime
of regret.

The difference was choice.

No summons.

No invisible ledger.

No voice
claiming

it knew
what history required.

If she answered a call,

it was because
she wished to.

The universe,
it turned out,
asked more politely
than people ever had.

She was not alone.

Waiting on a weathered pier
where no map
could quite remember
the shoreline,

sat Tiki.

Carved from ironwood.

Salt-worn.

Patient.

An old Indonesian fishing master
whose eyes
had watched tides
long before clocks

learned to count.

His little boat
floated
on impossible water.

Some days
it crossed oceans.

Some days
it crossed centuries.

Neither journey
required explanation.

"You are late,"
Tiki would say,
without looking up

"I arrived tomorrow,"
Katya replied.

"I know."

He always knew.

Together
they accepted
only the quiet assignments.

Not kings.

Not wars.

Not fortunes.

Those things
made too much noise.

Instead—

a child
who almost gave up
drawing.

A widow
who needed
one last dream
of her husband.

A sailor
who chose kindness

instead of revenge
because a silver cat
sat beside him
through the night.

A scientist
who looked up
at exactly
the right second
and asked
a better question.

A librarian
who found
the misplaced page
that changed
a single sentence—

which changed
a single life—

which quietly
changed
the century.

They repaired
frayed threads.

Never the whole tapestry.

Only enough
to keep it
from unraveling.

"Big heroes,"
Tiki liked to say,
mending a net
that somehow

caught memories,

"always want
to save the world."

He tied another knot.

"The world
is too large.

Save breakfast.

Save a promise.

Save one frightened heart.

The world
usually follows."

Katya listened.

Cats,
despite the rumors,

are excellent listeners.

When the work
was finished,

they returned
to the tide beyond time.

Sometimes they fished.

Not for food.

For forgotten songs.

For misplaced courage.

For the names
of people
history had thanked
without ever remembering.

On calm evenings,
they released them all
back into the current.

Nothing,

Tiki insisted,

should remain lost
forever.

Katya would watch
the ripples widen
across impossible water.

She no longer wondered
whether the universe
was ruled
by secrets
or by love.

Perhaps,

she thought,

both existed.

But only one
was worth
helping.

So she followed
the kinder current.

It had never once
failed
to find
the sea.

 

The Keeper of Memory

 The Keeper of Memory

Katya stopped trying to solve Tiki.

She stopped asking why he was angry.

Instead, she asked, "May I sit with you?"

Some afternoons they talked.

Most afternoons they didn't.

The fishing line drifted wherever the current carried it.

"I've been thinking," Katya said one evening.

"Dangerous habit."

"It is."

The corner of his mouth almost lifted.

"You always say everyone leaves."

"They do."

"I didn't."

He looked at her then—not with surprise, but with the quiet realization of someone noticing a star that had been there all along.

"No," he said softly. "You didn't."

The last light faded across the water.

"You know," Katya said, "I can't give you Bali back."

"I know."

"I can't bring back the fishermen."

"I know."

"I can't bring back the people you've loved."

"I know."

She leaned gently against his weathered ironwood shoulder.

"But I can come fishing tomorrow."

Silence settled between them.

Then Tiki reached for his rod.

"Tomorrow," he said, "the fish won't stand a chance."

Katya laughed.

"They never do."

It wasn't happiness.

Not yet.

But beneath the cracked ironwood, beneath the salt and the years, something loosened.

Not the past.

Only the future.

For now, that was enough.

After a while, Katya spoke again.

"Tell me about Bali."

So Tiki did.

He told her about dawn breaking over the sea, about fishermen who sang to the tide, about temples fragrant with incense, about laughter carried on warm island winds.

The stories didn't lessen his grief.

They didn't return what had been lost.

But for the first time in a very long while, someone was listening.

And for an old fisherman carved from ironwood, that was its own kind of home.

Perhaps that is the deepest kind of love.

…

 

Anger Management

 Anger Management

It came so slowly that Katya almost mistook it for weather.

A passing mood.

A season.

But seasons end.

This did not.

Perhaps it had always been there.

Or perhaps ironwood remembers what flesh forgets.

Tiki had come from Bali long before Katya was born. Once he had watched fishermen push their boats into the sea before dawn. He remembered the scent of salt and incense mingling in the morning air, small woven offerings laid carefully on the sand before the day's work began. He remembered hands polished smooth by nets, laughter carried over water, and children who believed the ocean listened.

He remembered being needed.

Now he spent most days watching another horizon.

"They've changed the birds," he muttered one morning.

Katya looked up.

"They're the same birds."

"They're not the ones I knew."

Everything disappointed him lately.

The rain arrived incorrectly.

The fish had lost their manners.

People no longer listened.

Yesterday was always more generous than today.

His complaints gathered around him until they seemed to speak before he did.

Katya found herself measuring every sentence.

Walking on eggshells.

An unfortunate skill for a cat.

One afternoon she found him beside the water, his fishing line drifting without conviction.

"Tiki," she asked, "do you have a kill list?"

For an instant, something bright crossed his face.

"I did."

"What happened to it?"

"I outlived it."

The smile disappeared as quietly as it had come.

"How's the fishing?"

"I'm not fishing."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm remembering."

The wind moved across the water.

His body creaked—not like old bones, but like old timber that had crossed too many oceans.

"I think it's just old age, Katya."

She wanted to believe him.

Old age explained the cracks in the ironwood.

It explained the slow movements.

It explained why he needed longer silences.

But it did not explain why every story began with a name no one else remembered.

Or why every ending was a goodbye.

Then Katya understood.

No one person had broken Tiki's heart.

Time had.

Distance had.

The sea between Bali and here had grown wider with every year, 

though the map insisted it had not moved at all.

His anger was only the shell.

Inside it was a fisherman still waiting for dawn on a beach that existed now only in memory, still listening for voices that had long since become waves.

Deja Vu

 Déjà Vu

Once again, Katya pads softly through the cracks in destiny.

She has done this before for Gina, and now another trail of sorrow catches her keen green eyes. This time, it winds its way to Darrin and Julia.

Waiting beside the gleaming time machine is her oldest companion, Tiki, the Indonesian Fishing Master. Though carved from ancient ironwood, Tiki walks with surprising grace, speaks with the calm wisdom of the sea, and laughs like bamboo chimes in a tropical breeze. Long ago, the spirits of the islands breathed life into the weathered fisherman, and ever since he has navigated not only oceans but the currents of time itself.

"Every river finds the sea," Tiki often says. "Time is simply the longest river of them all."

With hands as steady as a seasoned helmsman, the wooden fisherman guides the time machine through invisible tides, 

avoiding whirlpools of paradox and reefs where history might splinter.

Cats have a gift for discovering what others hide.

Katya finds the hidden truth—a pharmaceutical executive who buried promising clinical trial results beneath mountains of greed, locking hope in a vault where profits spoke louder than conscience. The cure wasn't lost.

It was imprisoned.

With a quiet nod from Tiki, the time machine slips silently into the perfect moment.

Like moonlight flowing through a forest, Katya glides unnoticed into history, placing the forgotten research into the hands of a rival laboratory years before anyone realizes it belongs there. Truth awakens like a seed after the first monsoon rain, breaking through 

the hardest stone.

The scientists follow its promise.

The treatment reaches the world in time.

A child destined for suffering instead greets each sunrise with laughter.

One tiny heartbeat becomes the first ripple that transforms an entire river.

Without impossible medical bills crushing him, Darrin never wanders into desperation. The temptation of insider trading never crosses his path. There is no investigation, no disgrace, no courtroom.

Julia never has to wonder whether the man she loves has become someone else.

Instead, Darrin remains the honorable young stockbroker he was always meant to be, facing only the ordinary challenges that honest people overcome every day.

Their home fills with laughter instead of worry.

Their baby grows strong and healthy, a living blossom nourished by truth instead of shadow.

Katya never tears apart the tapestry of the universe.

She simply finds the loose thread and gently weaves it back where it belongs.

Tiki never forces the river of time.

He merely keeps the boat true to its course.

The universe needs no rewriting.

Only an occasional course correction.

A gentle paw.

A steady wooden hand upon the helm.

Justice purrs.

Hope blossoms.

As the first light of dawn spills across eternity, Tiki turns the shining vessel toward home. His carved face, worn smooth by centuries of wind and wisdom, bears the quiet smile of one who knows that even the smallest change can rescue generations.

Beside him, Katya curls comfortably on the polished deck, her emerald eyes reflecting stars that have witnessed every story ever told.

Tomorrow another underdog will need a champion.

Tomorrow another wrong will ask to be made right.

And together—the clever cat and the wooden fisherman—they will once again sail the endless river of time, leaving behind no footprints except lives quietly restored to the way they were always meant to be.

Rewinding Fate--Take One

 Rewinding Fate—Take One

 

Only it wasn’t Anthony

Anthony was dead.

This guy was somebody else.

 

Katya's calculations
were elegant.

Almost.

If Gina
never met Anthony,

there would be
no falling in love.

No impossible future.

No time machine.

No cat
with opinions
about quantum mechanics.

Simple.

Except...

Gina and Anthony
didn't meet
by accident.

They met
through friends.

Which meant
there wasn't
one moment to stop.

There were dozens.

A picnic.

A concert.

A borrowed canoe.

Somebody's birthday.

Somebody else's barbecue.

An invitation
nobody remembered sending.

History,
it turned out,
had excellent networking skills.

Katya kept crossing out
one rendezvous after another,

while Fate,
without even looking up,
wrote in another.

Tiki watched
the list getting longer.

"So..."

he said.

"We're not changing history."

Katya flattened her ears.

"We're editing."

"Looks more like
history's editing us."

The Time Machine
kept circling the Gunks,

patient as a vulture,

waiting
for somebody
to admit

that destiny

had mutual friends.

The A/C was O-U-T

 The A/C was O-U-T

Katya narrowed her eyes.

This was not a minor inconvenience.
This was a full-scale feline emergency.

A cat, after all, was never meant to be slow-roasted at 102°F.

Something had to be done.
And F-A-S-T.

Her current kingdom—temporarily known as Rosendale—had become a convection oven with windows.

Honestly.

Why was the Creator always testing her?

Did she have some strange hobby involving lightly toasted house cats?

Was this another cosmic experiment?
"Let's see what happens when we remove the air conditioning and observe the tiny furry empress."

Rude.

People underestimated her.

They assumed cats were dramatic, aloof, incapable of communicating anything beyond the occasional judgmental blink.

A tragic misunderstanding.

Oh, she could communicate.

With precision.

With poetry.
With strategic levels of chaos.

Well...

We shall see about that, won't we?

Katya had more than one ace tucked beneath her velvet paw.

She had simply been quiet for far too long.

And every great heroine knows the moment before she saves the day is often the hottest.

Literally.

A faint hum rippled through the shimmering air.

Then came a familiar whir.

Out of nowhere, zigzagging through time itself, came Tiki at the controls of the time machine—grinning like a raccoon who'd just stolen the moon.

Right on schedule.

Exactly as Katya had planned.

Of course she'd planned it.

Heroes always have a backup plan.

Cats have at least nine.

The Creator thought she was writing the story.

Katya merely smiled.

Sometimes the author forgets...

...the heroine has already read the next chapter.

 

Purpose Driven

 Purpose Driven

In the bicentennial year,
when flags bloomed like bright weeds
from porches, windows, courthouse lawns,
Katya moved through the city
like a small question with whiskers,
listening.

She met a man whose thirty years on Wall Street
had folded shut like a ledger at dusk;
his good shoes still shone,
but accusation followed him
like rainwater in the seams.

She met a young woman carrying degrees
as carefully as glass bowls,
only to find the cupboards bare,
the jobs gone thin as soup,
the food-stamp office lit with tired fluorescent mercy.

She met a mother of five
with three jobs knotted to her back,
her children turning keys in empty kitchens,
learning too young
how silence can sound like supper.

Rich or poor, guilty or only tired,
they carried trouble in different pockets.
Some hid it under laughter,
some under lies,
some under the hard bread of habit.

And then there was Gina—
wealthy Gina,
who lived behind gates polished bright as silver,
where roses climbed the walls
and silence learned to keep secrets.

She wore pearls at dinner
like small moons at her throat,
smiled when the room expected smiling,
and lifted crystal glasses
with hands that had learned to steady themselves.
Her house held marble floors,
fresh flowers,
locked doors,
and words sharp enough
to leave bruises no mirror could prove.
But somewhere inside her,
a window had not closed.

It was Gina who made Katya stop,
who taught her that suffering could wear perfume,
ride in black cars,
and sit beneath chandeliers without being seen.
Pity became purpose,
not like thunder,
but like a match struck in a dark room
small at first,
then certain enough
to show the way out.
No one would think to ask a cat for help;
cats belonged on windowsills,
in alleys,
in stories told to children.

What could a cat do
against fear dressed as marriage,
against a voice that closed doors,
against a mansion that felt smaller than a cage?
Perhaps not break the lock.
Perhaps not silence the voice.
But perhaps she could sit at Gina’s feet
until Gina remembered
she was not alone.

And perhaps, one morning,
Gina would open the smallest door first
a phone call,
a packed bag,
a name trusted enough to say aloud
and the house that had kept her
would become only a house,
while the road beyond it
opened like sunrise.

But Katya was brilliant
in the quiet way moonlight is brilliant
on a kitchen floor at midnight.
And Tiki, tall enough for foot pedals,
drove the Time Machine
while she planned beside him,
her paws folded like prayers.

He gave her more than motion,
more than miles bending backward.
He gave her friendship,
that small, steady lantern
money cannot buy,
and loneliness cannot blow out.

Writing A New Book

 Writing a New Book

The process can feel like a rewrite—
a better-edited version of the past.
But who would read it?

Time is precious and fleeting, especially lately.
They say memory is unreliable.
How many people will forget these last several years?

Some say to start with an outline.
Others say to write immediately, while it’s fresh, while the anger still burns.
And over the years, I have been very angry.

But now it is late spring, and I have a remarkable story to tell—one filled with strange adventures and unforgettable characters: Katya M. Cartouche, a black cat; Tiki, an eight-foot wooden yet mobile Indonesian tiki; Gina, beautiful and innocent despite adulthood; and Anthony—the Roman with the hooded beak—from Naples. There is also a dead ex-husband and a time machine.

Tony used to tell Gina that no one is truly good.
He said it often.

What he meant was that no one is entirely bad, and no one is entirely good.
People are complicated, unpredictable creatures.

For Gina, letting go of the safety net felt like jumping from a perfectly reliable airplane. The first step was the hardest. After that, she simply had to trust that the parachute strapped to her back would open and carry her safely down.

It did.

And the book clamoring to be written could become a bestseller in some universe willing to accept the truth as Katya and Gina understand it.

Right now, though, they are knee-deep in the swamp, while the ticks cling on for dear life.

…

And soon, all the masks will come off.