Daniel Jackson heard his childhood friend’s soft, otherworldly voice coming from the shadows:
“Hello, Daniel. Father and I were discussing you the other day. We still haven’t decided how to explain your….’sabbatical’ to the children.”
“How did you explain my absence when I relocated to Abydos?,” asked Daniel, facing the blue-eyed lion, the real Puss-In-Boots.
“We told them that you had fallen in love with a soul and a place and that you had followed your heart to stay,” answered Vincent. “That’s how we interpreted the vagaries within the letter that you forwarded through Diana.”
“Now, the vagaries are easier for you to put into words than the certainties,” concluded Daniel.
“Yes,” affirmed Vincent, “for it was easier to accept reports that the children gave us of your ghost than it will be for many to absorb the living man.”
An elderly woman in a hand-made shawl interrupted them: “The children won’t care about logistics and semantics, Vincent. They’ll just want Daniel to give them lots of hugs.”
“Hello, Mary.” The woman that Daniel thought of as Mr. Rogers’ secret step-sister looked as vibrant as ever, despite or maybe because of her years. “I have good news. If things go as planned, Cassandra will be relocating to New York in a few years.”
Mary’s face lit up as if it were the day of a naming ceremony: “That’s wonderful! Is she here with you?”
“No,” said Daniel. “She’s meeting with an advisor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts about their Master’s in Art Conservation. But, she’ll be here later.”
“It makes sense that she would focus on conservation,” Mary commented wistfully, “after losing so much.”
“I’m still sorry that Cassandra couldn’t report on the tapestries in the Great Hall for her Art History course,” added Vincent, “but it would have meant revealing ourselves.”
Daniel laughed out loud at the irony – the possibility of an alien girl, who lives in a universe populated by false gods and evil robots, accidentally revealing the existence of an urban Narnia. Daniel realized for the first time that the irony allowed him to speak of the Stargate Program within the Tunnels. Who were these people going to tell; they were as literally underground as the complex below Cheyenne Mountain. Daniel was glad that the now Goa’uld-invested remnants of the N.I.D. were distracted. If they had found Vincent during their human heyday, no one would have been able to convince them that he was native to this planet….as far as anyone knew.
“Speaking of tapestries,” resumed Daniel, glancing at the parcels on the ground, “I come bearing gifts.”
“Just like your parents,” remembered Mary. “Melburn and Claire always brought things back with them. Mouse broke that canopic jar they gave Father, unfortunately.”
Within Vincent’s chamber, Daniel watched the being, who could have been Bastet’s consort in a reality where the gods were real, unwrap his presents. Daniel’s first gift was, indeed, a tapestry, large enough to cover the one wall not obscured by books. The cloth depicted several cats chasing sunbeams. Their bodies were outlined in dark thread; their fur rendered in cat’s eye stones.
“Bastet’s former First Prime took it from a wall in her palace on Bubastis before he fled,” revealed Daniel. “He gave me the tapestry after he realized that he had no room for relics of his service as a free Jaffa.”
Daniel’s second gift was an elegant brooch – a large oval-shaped cat’s eye set in gold. Vincent pinned it at the neck of the cloak which lay on his bed.
“I got the brooch from an administrator on the planet Mau,” explained Daniel, “where the late Bastet’s cats are still kept. He said it belonged to Bastet herself.”
“She named the planet ‘Cat’,” translated Vincent. “That’s unoriginal, even by the usual standards of ancient nomenclature.”
“I know.” Daniel chuckled, promising himself he would try to visit his childhood friend more often.
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