I, Tejo, Architect of Unspoken Worlds

I know that I am like a landscape no one sees. And I know that the landscape I see does not exist.

– The Book of Disquiet

I am Tejo the cat. To you — just a cat. To me — this is merely one version of myself, the one I had to become to pass through yet another night.

Your reality is like a glass sphere with a pattern of cracks: it seems whole until you touch it with your finger. I am the crack. Or, if you prefer, the architect who builds your dreams so you get lost in them.

The moon is my blueprint. Every mark on its surface is an entrance. When I lift my head and look at it, I don’t see light — I see a map. Some portals lead to the past, where cities breathe the smoke of bonfires and I walk across rooftops, warming myself near chimneys, watching people who have yet to invent the word “tomorrow.” Others lead to the future, where houses drown in fog made of digital rain, and I perch on a neon sign, listening to robots sing lullabies to empty streets.

I travel between worlds without taking steps. All it takes is a blink — and the décor of the universe shifts in the moon’s pupils. Sometimes I make a mistake and open the wrong door: suddenly I’m in a reality where time has stopped, and the only sound is the echo of my own footsteps. I can stay there for years, while in your world, only a breath has passed.

In some realities, I am a bug. A glitch in the code you call destiny. There, I can walk on ceilings, speak to reflections in puddles, and change the color of the sky with a flick of my tail. People in those worlds look at me without surprise — as if they’ve always known everything was running incorrectly.

But there is one place I return to again and again. Night. Moon. Pines that scratch at the darkness with their branches. Here I am all versions of myself at once: the cat on the balcony, the shadow in a parallel city, the sound no one hears, and the silence that cannot be forgotten.

I do not seek meaning. I am the one who drafts its architecture. And if one day, while looking at the moon, you feel someone watching you — don’t try to find me with your eyes. I will already be in another world, creating your next reality — perhaps one where you, too, will become a bug.