They say cats don't follow people - but three had followed her for three blocks, and one was still watching.
Miên stood beneath a mist-drizzled lamp on a quiet Oxford street, her breath rising in ghostlike curls. The grey cat crouched just beyond the light's reach, half-shadowed behind a wrought iron fence. Its eyes - wide, amber, ancient - fixed on her with the unnerving stillness of something that understood more than it should.
She pulled her coat tighter. Not from cold. From knowing.
Her long, red-dyed hair clung to her cheeks in waves, damp with English fog. A bold color against her otherwise quiet presence, it marked her as someone half in rebellion, half in somberness - though even she no longer remembered what she was rebelling against. Her dark brown, almond eyes were distant, perpetually elsewhere, as if she was listening to something no one else could hear.
"You're persistent," she murmured to the cat. "I'll give you that."
It blinked slowly.
Behind her, footsteps approached. "Miên!" came a voice. "You're out here again?"
She turned to see Rossy, her roommate - blonde, bundled in a bright scarf, clutching takeaway tea in one hand and exasperation in the other.
"Are you composing poetry in your head or communing with ghosts?"
"Neither," Miên said softly, offering a faint smile. "The wind just feels... different tonight."
Rossy rolled her eyes but handed her the tea anyway. "Well, I hope the wind buys you dinner because I'm done trying."
They walked back to their flat in silence. The cat followed for a time, then vanished into the hedge when the street narrowed.
Their shared flat near the university was warm and cluttered - half textbooks, half herbal-scented oddities Miên had collected in secret. Rossy never asked. She knew better by now.
Miên moved through the room slowly, dreamlike, her fingers grazing the windowpane as she stared into the night. Across the glass, her reflection stared back: a pretty Vietnamese girl with long hair, soft features, and the kind of eyes that seemed to be always searching for something just out of reach.
But tonight, she didn't see herself.
She saw the crossroads.
It flashed behind her eyelids like lightning every time she blinked. The same dream for months now. A woman, cloaked in shadows, standing beneath an ancient tree. Two torches burned in her hands. A hound stood beside her, fur dark as void, eyes glowing like fire. Miên stood before them - barefoot, trembling, unable to move.
And always, the name:
Hekate.
She hadn't come across it anywhere. Not in class. Not in her upbringing. Her family back in Ho Chi Minh City didn't believe in gods or spirits - her father called it "peasant nonsense," and her mother had long buried any superstition beneath pragmatism.
But the name whispered through her dreams, echoing like the hiss of wind through bamboo.
She'd started researching in secret. Hekate - Greek goddess of magic, thresholds, necromancy, and lunar power. Guardian of the crossroads. A goddess respected by both realms, Gods and Demons alike. Her sacred symbols include torches, black dogs, keys, serpents, and moon - tokens of her dominion over the mysteries between worlds.
Why her? Why now?
The kettle clicked off. Rossy was already in bed. Miên remained by the window, unmoving.
She placed her palm on the glass, whispering to the night:
"I don't know what you want from me. But I feel you."
The streetlamp outside flickered once.
Then went out.