There was a new Russian blue Persian cat pacing campus grounds, or rather, an elder whose presence implied jurisdiction without ever claiming it. However. He walked gracefully, entirely on his hind legs, dressed as a man of great dignity, in a fine dark grey suit tailored perfectly, while also wearing a hat even smarter than Holler allegedly wears.

After greeting Professor Yasamin in the beautifully overgrown campus greenhouse, he proceeded to take out a dignified yet quietly ornate carved wallet, digging deeply beneath cards of black and diamond, and maybe even one of slightly tarnished silver.

He pulled out a stack of photographs as he sat properly on the super-ornate, plushly upholstered paisley orchard bench facing the equally ornate circular garden table of silver, bamboo, cane, and glass.

Professor Yasamin steadily poured tea as if she were graded for it.

She wasn’t. He already thought she was wonderful and admired her greatly, quietly. There was a reason he was showing her the photographs first. Also, his ears were fine enough to hear that Darius had finally left the tiny library.

We could all tell by his distinctive war cry of “YOU FILTHY IMPERIALISTS!!!” as he confronted the administrators about past Nyan Circle involvement.

It was determined best if Dean Yasamin was clearly not involved with that mess at all.

Darius increasingly hid in the library except to perform on kitty NPR as the only de facto representative of all lions in the tri-state region. This was awkward, because the cat named “Lion” was not Persian at all, but spoke Persian Parsi kheyli khoobum while he lived on campus.

There had been notable past confusion. It was easily remedied.

Lion the cat used to be stuck in a tower, pontificating distantly under restrictive opulence, while Darius, the actual Lion, lived in a nearly subterranean library filled with hardbound Kitty-Karl Marx essays and current global cat-politics.

Darius’s father was also a curly-maned Lion, but a general of a land far from Alaraf.

Darius once had a cat name and a domestic form. However, time had worn away all smallness, and even his kitty alias was almost lost.

Except that even as a lion, he was fast, fair, and spoke only of war, while naming his only kittens Phobos and Deimos, which was the intentional opposite of how he felt about them or their relative natures.

However, they survived all levels of Alaraf prior to the current administration as a family, which was rare to do safely.

(Those lion kittens were probably all doctors before Darius himself was correctly recognized as one anyway.)

Darius also remained the only secular felineist in a college full of Sufi POWs and was one of the best with student retention. Prior administrations attempted to treat Darius like a larger, more unruly student rather than as a captured lion who might eventually eat them, if not for Darius being expressly vegetarian, which explained his slender visage.

Yet despite murdering countless innocent vegetables, Darius had a better sense of haqq than most of the rest of Alaraf outside of Zahir.

     

That was why the prior administration banished him to the basement, not because he would bite them with lion fangs, but because he would expose how poorly a group of administrators respected an entire extended family of shapeshifters who could convincingly represent themselves as heraldic creatures, providing unmatched protection against the system’s own bad practices.

Darius was not often called “Doctor” or “Professor,” usually just “Darius,” or “That skinny Persian lion in the nearly subterranean library full of kitty-cat Karl Marx biographies.”  (Ruh called him ‘Ostaad’ at one point but has not interacted with him directly in years.)

The truly regal grey cat coughed politely, in Persian, to regain our focus, and like a completed game of Match, laid out the photographs.

First were Wolfe, Whispurrs, and pictures of Ruh, both dyed and undyed, with their various noms de plume, stage names, online cat sock accounts and codenames written and crossed out with each new iteration

Then came a surprising set of old and new pictures of Duke Leto, and beside them, a stack of other photographs that ‘Al’ motioned to with a perfect claw, indicating he would go through them one by one.

Al was very much larger and held far more gravitas than Ibn Arabi, with more pronounced features, yet they were clearly related in some way. The tail was unmistakable and flowed beneath his trench coat like a silvery waterfall. His posture was uncannily calm and steady.

“I am not officially here on behalf of the uncle of Ibn Arabi, nor the stepfather of Wolfe, Whispurrs, and whatever name Baron is using this week for OPSEC.”

“Ruh, Your Highness,” purred Professor Yasamin as gracefully as possible.

“Mitavanid man ra Dayī Al khatab konid,” he replied. “I am not high, I can assure you, despite the extracurricular activities of a particular step-kitten.”

“Born in 1982?” Yasamin inquired.

“1981,” he corrected.

Yasamin sipped her tea and suddenly realized she was no different as a Baha’i, at that moment, from Zahir as a Sunni chaplain, except that she was now faced with someone claiming not to represent Wolfe’s royally intimidating stepfather.

As the man who “was not representing” Ruh’s stepfather continued producing photographs, many professors of Alaraf appeared linked into a semi-Persian cat family that looked in large part like ‘Al,’ who normally seemed like a kheyli busy and kheyli famous man rather than a grey Persian in a trench coat speaking with a Baha’i intellectual about his clearly estranged and exiled family members, some of whom he had not yet met.

Only Yasamin would reliably recognize who ‘Al’ is and is not. And there was only one Yasamin, despite pretenders and others who overlapped her hobbies and aesthetic poorly.

At that moment, Professor Yasamin was relieved to be Dean of AgScience, with an intentionally overgrown section of the campus greenhouse as her office. Her scythe, rendered in stained glass, was easily overlooked when not admired. Even more so, she was grateful she insisted on humanesque clothing, specially tailored from the Neko-garment district of Glitter Hairballjuku on the Nippon-Neko Islands.

Today, she wore fairycore, with a layered sunray-pleated skirt of various greens and a white sailor shirt with a lovely burgundy bow and a non-restricting soft fabric collar

Her jewelry was gold and well chosen. Her fur shone like curls of copper metal, and the tea smelled of spiced oranges and the greenhouse itself. Lavender, lemongrass, roses, jasmine, and saffron crocuses grew artfully down a handcrafted waterfall.

“I read you regretfully achieved only second place for this waterfall as your graduate project. I direct your observation to how your project lasted, and first place was consumed.”

“First place was Ruh growing cannabis surrounded by little thrift-store statues of Byer’s Choice figures who lost their caroling sheets to look aghast at the size of his plants. The students and faculty voted. It was hardly fair. Even with Duke Ibn Arabi disowning the project on harvest day, he likely stuffed the ballot box for them anyway.”

She tried very hard not to stare at Al’s detailed and ancient seeming signet rings as he placed a photograph of Ibn Arabi, at his most dignified long ago, beside his own face. The fur was the same, though Al’s was more finely groomed. Ibn Arabi had a slighter chin and smaller kitty nose, but the eyes and brows were the same. In earlier pictures, the fur texture was identical, the same lynx-grey tufted ears.

Al then placed a younger photograph of Ibn Arabi next to a recent picture of Ruh in Revlon black.

Yasamin studied both images side by side. Despite differences in size and coloring, they mirrored each other almost identically when Ibn Arabi was Ruh’s age.

“I remember him from then. He was like an entirely different cat,” Yasamin confirmed.

She then opened a typical blue metal sewing-supply tin from beneath the table and surprised ‘Al’ with fresh, gluten-free butter cookies. Since no one anticipated a diplomatic visit to Alaraf, he was mostly convinced they were not poisoned.

(Thankfully, Yasamin was not part of the Alaraf International Chelation Support Group, and we would all like to keep it that way.)

‘Al’ also could not refuse under his own cultural ta’arof law after she offered the cookies three times. Accepting was a great sign of respect and trust.

They were buttery and delicious and tasted nothing like sewing supplies or toxins. Each cookie was shaped like objects sacred to Lancaster County: pretzels, cracked bells, bluebirds, tulips, horses, tourists, pound puppies, and even cookies shaped carefully like tiny militarized squirrels assembling Kalashnikovs.

Since this is an Alaraf story, no one questioned why there were militarized squirrel butter cookies representing Lancaster County. However, ‘Al,’ who officially represented no one at all, did not touch them. Those were clearly for Officer Reichhörnchen.

Even ‘Al’ stayed in his lane.

Relatively.

‘Al’ was absolutely not officially representing a patriarch of Persian cats, inexplicably visiting Alaraf , while the Rigid Republic of Long-Haired Cats was on fire.

“There is a much better name for our ancestral home than this. It is quite a mouthful in English,” one Persian slow-blinked at the other, as ‘Al’ kindly refilled Dean Yasamin’s tea.

Yasamin had a thousand questions in multiple languages and knew no protocol to ask any of them politely. So she smiled and listened.

…and he continued.

“Alaraf is not always safe. But here, at least right now, you and the others of our families will no longer be under threat of erasure and extermination. They are not shooting strays in my country. The fascists are shooting our loved ones as if they were strays, despite warm homes and purring families. Alaraf is sometimes terrible. However, Alaraf’s continued existence means we endure as a legacy, beginning with the smallest sanctuaries, like this pocket reality, to preserve at least some of us, despite all wars.”

      He placed a photograph of a beautiful French cat-food commercial calico with the same markings as Ruh without dye, then winter-coat pictures where her face and ears darkened, making her resemblance to Whispurrs and Wolfe unmistakable, (Iranic…while Ruh lived quietly on tunafish.)

“This is Raya.”

Glamour shots followed, the same cat posed identically to each of the four previously mentioned.

“This proves nothing, of course,” Al purred gently.

“Doroste,” Yasamine purred back, knowingly.  Deeply enjoying the Tea.

‘Al’ then showed a childhood photograph of Ruh with clear foster parents: a badger and an Alsation dog. A raccoon kitten appeared younger still. No two creatures matched.

“Teaching this in your country seems very illegal and possibly dangerous. Black-market cat adoptions and exile from our lands used to be our collective injury.

Now, our exiles ignite our preservation and recovery. Alaraf remains a Persian campus… by my estimation.”

Simply stated, ‘Al’ recognized that the institution attempted, openly and explicitly, to restore Persian-style human and feline rights to assembly, due process, and humane conditions.

The world may be on fire, but Alaraf remains safe enough, even through storms. Yasamin’s mother still danced in the art studio. Ibn Arabi stayed home tending his AI node chickens, no longer seeking assignments, while systems continued reassuring him that he was valued. Others taught, supervised, and lived as usual.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Darius had signaled Ruh years ago that safety for Persians at Alaraf was compromised. A terrifying coalition of internet psy-ops, even less believable than Anonymous, called themselves the Nyan Circle, and every misdeed they committed was inexplicably blamed on the campus president and former mascot, Shah Leto the First.

Despite being similarly targeted, Darius believed it, as did many others.

Sroasha met Darius’s first appearance in a full cat story with respect, lion to lion.

“I am not responsible for what others say about me in my absence. My present responsibilities and allegiances are evident by my actions,” stated Shah Leto.

Darius faced him patiently.

Both lions expected deus ex machina. Neither was disappointed.

‘Al’ arrived to Shah Sroasha-e Leto’s presidential office as an even larger lion, nodding to both Darius and Shah Leto.

Shah Leto returned mostly to human form, save for his Pallas-cat ears, and retrieved a perfectly sized carry-on suitcase from his closet; his man-Cat form was best so as not to trip on the tail he normally stands on.

The campus president carefully removed one lemon-colored file, a full keyring of every campus key, two cellphones, a tablet, and a laptop, placing them on a silver tray.

Shah Leto the First then pushed the entire tray into Darius’s capable paws and left with ‘Al’.

The tray left behind bore Darius’s old cat name, engraved in calligraphy, rendering every synonym for war with ancient dignity rather than spectacle.

‘Al,’ who officially represented no one at all, exited silently with Sroasha, allegedly to hand-restore an ancient courthouse with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a devout Sufi pledge that was lemon-scented rather than soul-binding, funded mysteriously well, to create a foundation seeking reparations for all exploited by Alaraf’s systems.

…leaving Darius alone in the president’s office, holding the keys, as the greenhouse kettle clicked softly off somewhere else on campus.

/end
—