High above the call of the crows there came another bird’s sound—its long, high, warbled note implied a sweeping, swooping seabird. It was several days before she glimpsed them through the window, their smooth skyward sweep taking them high above the crows. They were disdainful of the courtyard and its window-cages; they circled the sky above the building-tops, and settled only on high roofs where they would have a view across the sea.
A cat, with white forepaws and a piebald behind, slunk across the top of a wall, paused, silent and still, to gaze into the garden below, continued, slipped under the barbed wire ringing the yard, and slipped precipitously down a tree to the ground. Later she saw him settled to his purpose, head down and ears pricked, crouched with latent spring in every muscle. He sat sentry over a corner of the dusty trodden-earth yard, eyes fixed on a shadowy border-planting of deep green growth. It seemed, for a long moment, that the only movement in the yard came from the slowly shifting shadows of the thick old drop tree at its heart.
Magical: Day One 