" THERE ARE ALSO bodiless mummies, shaped mostly like cats. Empty spaces, preserved forever. They wish to thank their mothers, though they have none. Instead, the nothing mummies would like to thank the priests who made them, carefully as they did, as if what was inside was sacred. As if to wish for a cat is to create one. Before these priests, they were just cat-shaped gusts of air, invisible. Now, they can almost remember what it might have been like to be alive as such a beast. The voles they would have caught. The golden collars they would have worn. The real cat mummies are filled with bones and a heart. The nothing mummies are filled with prayers written on slips of papyrus, organs of faith. If scientists came and cut them open, the nothing mummies wonder: Would the little piece of hieroglyphed papyrus rolling out be any less beautiful than the dried raisin of a heart? Aren’t they not only the container but the prayer itself? "

― Ramona Ausubel , Awayland