“Is there some reason you’re avoiding me?” he asked, after a long hiatus in their conversation.

“No, not you in particular, I’m avoiding all of them,” his old friend said.

“Whoa, ‘all of them‘?  Is it really like that?” he asked, more than a little aghast.  

“I cannot say if it is like that or not, because this is a world of illusion.  Your illusions are not mine and you can’t see what I do.  The questions you ask me are in your mind, a mind that asks itself no questions.”  

“I don’t like where this is going, Mr. Koh-Ann… if that is your name,”  he said.

“Who are you to like where this is going?”  The face on his old friend was like the finely chiseled face on a statue of Sekhmet.  It was the nonchalant face of the eternal cat.

The thought occurred, but remained unspoken, these old friends had not seen each other in several months.    

“I am what I am,” he said, realizing it was probably too late for philosophy or an appeal to his old friend’s sense of friendship.  

It had always been an exceedingly hard world for his cat-faced friend.   Everything made sense, but it was still terrible.