Pluto

As the morning sun gleams from the horizon, casting a golden glow through the dense canopy of tall, oaky trees, an oxcart squeakily rolls its way along a narrow path. A scrawny figure inside is rattled awake. They rub their eyes and swat away a mosquito from the red outlines of their neck tattoo. Yawning loudly, they haul their body to sit upright with folded legs. The wind races by, rumpling their soft, purple hair. They wash away the fallen leaves from their black cloak, and with nothing much to do till they arrive at their destination, they admire the spots of blue on their jacket. Adds flamboyance, they think.

They have many names. They have many forms. They are what the moment requires them to be. Some call them Death. Some say Fate. Others shout Devil. Yet, when they are alone, in their own body, riding through forests like this one, they call themselves Pluto.

“What a lovely day,” Pluto says, turning to their scythe. “Must feel nice to die on a day like this.”

The scythe wiggles in rare agreement.

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The oxcart slows down as Pluto arrives at their destination – a barren hilltop flanked by wild shrubs.

“There used to be a farm here,” Pluto tells the scythe. “Right in the middle, over there, was a shed.”

I remember, the scythe grunts. He is here.

Pluto watches a blue, glowing shadow in the distance. The blue blob coalesces into the shape of a cat running towards them. There are still traces of the ginger fur on that skeletal frame inside the blue aura. It is a soul - the soul of a cat.

“You can go have a nap,” Pluto whispers to the scythe, watching it gallop away. Pluto turns their attention to the cat.

“Hello, Whiskers,” Pluto greets warmly as their body changes form. The pink hair subsides to brown, and a hat is summoned out of thin hair. The coat dissolves into a brown, oversized shirt, and Pluto finds themselves in khaki shorts. They have just lost four inches in height, too, and their skin has darkened. Their body definitely has more hair everywhere except the head. Pluto’s body changes into the form of George, Whisker’s friend.

“Pluto!” the cat purrs.

“How many lives?”

“Eighth one. One more and I will be with George forever,” the cat says, jubilantly jumping around in circles around Pluto, humming to a folk song he once sang with the real George.

Pluto had first met Whiskers on September 7th, 1951, on a parched afternoon amid a torrid, dry season. Pluto had found Whisker’s carcass at the bottom of a river close to the hilltop, covered in seaweed and missing half its limbs. Whisker’s soul, however, was nowhere to be found. Strange, Pluto had thought then. Most souls remained next to their bodies. Pluto had nervously looked around for half a day until they stumbled upon the hilltop and found a bunch of hays stacked, with little regard for geometry, into the shape of a den. A home, Pluto had remarked, cautiously entering the shed. Pluto had found the soul of a timid cat solemnly tucked under a filthy, unwashed blanket that was spread out like a shroud over a rotting human corpse.

I remember this one, Pluto’s scythe had said, recognizing the human.

“George!” Whiskers had yelled when they saw Pluto enter the barn in George’s form. “I thought you were dead.” Whiskers had hopped over the real George’s corpse and straight into Pluto’s arms.

“Hello, Whiskers,” Pluto had said.

“I missed you so much!” Whiskers had hollered. “I waited for two entire weeks by your side. I thought you were not coming back. That’s why I drowned in the-”

“-Listen, Whiskers,” Pluto had interrupted, sighing. This was always the most challenging part, especially with cats. “I’m not really George,” they had said. Whiskers incessantly sobbed as Pluto tried to explain the situation – that George was dead, but Whiskers was not. Not yet. Whiskers had nine lives. He had to go back to the real world.

And so, Whisker’s soul would inevitably be pulled back into the real world. Pluto would apprehensively watch Whiskers grow up as another cat devoid of his original memories. Whiskers would always know that a part of him was missing. It would always be when he turned seven that the memories of his past lives hit him. As the memories would return, so would the deep agony of knowing that George was not here. Whiskers would always drown himself and return to the barn when his memories with George overhauled him. He would do it again and again. All of eight times. A glimpse of George was enough, even if it was just Death in disguise.

“What is the point of you?” Whiskers asks Pluto. “Are you a curse or a gift?”

“I am a storyteller,” Pluto replies, bending down to pet Whiskers. “Eight lives you’ve ended and eight lives I’ve written stories about.”

“A storyteller?” Whiskers asks. “What kind of stories do you write?”

“Stories about endings, obviously,” Pluto says, laughing.

“Your stories don’t make sense,” Whiskers whines, wishing for a world without endings.

“Does it have to? Who said stories have to make sense? Stories just…exist,” Pluto says, wildly gesticulating like a prophet. “Perhaps they are written even after death.”

“Do you know what comes once I die for certain?” Whiskers asks. “Do I meet the real George then?”

“I do not know. I only guide people to the Door. What comes after that, I do not know. I’d like to find out, actually. One day, of course, even I must go. And there will be another me,” Pluto says.

“You use too many riddles. It’s a little odd. It doesn’t make you look cooler, you know that, right?” Whiskers smirks.

“Oh, I think I’m cool,” Pluto says, searching for a zany, mysterious phrase that describes them as such. “To be cool is a state of mind.” Pluto wishes they could do better than that.

“This is goodbye, then,” Whiskers says as he watches his body flicker. Whiskers is being pulled back into the land of the living.

“Perhaps this time you do not see Death as a way to stop living but living as a way to stop dying.”

“I thought you said life, like all stories, is pointless.”

“I did not. I said that it doesn’t have to make sense. I think the point of life is to defy the pointlessness of everything around us,” Pluto explains with a sickle-shaped smile. "It's like telling a story that defies conventions. It is probably why I am a storyteller in the first place."

“Alright, storyteller, tell me a story, then,” Whiskers says, smiling fondly, almost gone now.

Pluto cracks their neck, searching for a story. They begin, “There was once a storyteller in the mountains far away from here. The storyteller loved his stories. They put so much life into their stories that these stories came to life. The frog that fell in love with the princess was now real. So was the dog that crossed the seven seas of sins to find a dragon. Or the bedsheet that rolled away to infinity. Everything they had written, from the characters to the plots, came alive.

And as these stories became more and more real…the stories started changing. The stories blended into each other, and the storyteller no longer had control. The dog no longer looked for dragons. It looked for bedsheets. The frog fell in love with the dragon, and the princess voyaged the seven seas on grand adventures of her own. The storyteller became angry. The storyteller loved their stories and despised change. So, they rebelled. When different characters from different stories fell in love, the storyteller found a way to end them.

What the storyteller did not expect was to fall in love with one of the characters. However, since the storyteller had taken a vow not to change their stories, and because the storyteller knew they couldn’t live without this character, the storyteller ended their own story. They ended themselves.”

“What happened to them after that?” Whiskers asks.

“Oh, nothing in particular. Once the storyteller ended their life, they realized they were merely a character in someone else’s story. Someone else who wrote a story about Life and Death; Pain and Joy. A story of contradictions! They realized that at some point, we all have to let go of the stories we write because we, too, are stories being written.”

“Are you implying that I let go of you?”

“I am just telling you a story,” Pluto says coyly.

“If I do let go of you, won’t you return anyway? We are all meant to die at the end.”

“George told you stories, right? You cannot rush a good story to end at the wrong moment, can you?” Pluto answers back.

Whiskers remains silent, mulling. “Thank you,” he murmurs before disappearing, leaving behind the fragments of one last question. “What was the storyteller’s name?”

Death grins warmly. They save their answer for the next time.