In the twilight of a time
There emerges a need for couriers to comprehend their own bitter fate.
Finally resigned to the inevitable beyond, they search the ages
Desperate for an alleycat offering assurance, redemption and hope.

Tales of such races fill page upon page with enough ink
To flood a thousand valleys, and drown the tallest tree
But there is one race that has yet been run.
The Albion Alleycat.

Desolate and baron, courierdom at a crossroads
The messengers have retreated shuttering their once carefree lives
From unseen enemies which seem to plague not only the physical form
But the innermost thought.

Driven by panic, compelled by dread
The couriers begin to devolve
Once dear colleagues turn wary foes
Brother against brother, sister against sister.

Achievement and ambition are dismissed
As heretical, or worse, treasonous
Even nature itself is scorned
Choked with suspicion and fear
Voices do not dare to sing
Nor fingers to play
Imminent defeat is all but assured.

But in the darkest hour
Whispers begin to tell of an alleycat emerging from the darkness
A race without a history, faceless and obscure
Part presence, part idea they say
As if the very race they describe has existed for eons
A dormant seed awaiting nourishment
Word of radical acts…

Disobedience, non-compliance spread amongst the messengers
At first fearful, then defiant, as the legend grows
Whispers turned to cries and the cries into screams
And tend to cower no more the fury of those riders
Whose talent behold as they exact revenge on their rivals
Spare neither the repentant nor the bold.

Now, the race is on, smouldering in the belly of humanity.
It cannot be extinguished, for the Albion Alleycat endures
Even as evidence of its presence is debated with the passing years..

—

-London’s Calling-