Work Text:
Your heart pounds, hammering hard against the brittle bones of your ribs, enough to shake each laboured, sharp breath from your lungs as dark, desperate eyes dart around back and forth trying to take in your surroundings.
It’s warm in here, yet you feel the chill of uncertainty and your unwavering terror cling to your skin, something even the thick of your fur cannot shake.
It’s bright. Overhead bulbs screaming, buzzing, are harsh on you, and you only look up once before you’re blinking away, shuffling in the bed of hay that tries to comfort you.
And it’s loud. Strange, in a muffled kind of way you never remembered from before, and your ears flop forward and back again, like you’re trying to adjust them and get a better signal.
You’re scared, that’s all you really know in absolute full. You can feel it in your tiny, constricting chest, and in your tightening veins. You are nothing more than one scared bunny, too fretful to even move when you hear the stomping of footsteps approach you.
You go still, feeling like your heart might just burst right out of your chest at the fear that is so overwhelming and gripping.
Faces, smudgy behind fingerprint-smeared glass, flash wide, toothy grins at you from where they bend down and peer in. You take a short breath in through twitching nostrils, and make a run for it, darting to the other side of your enclosure, trying to find refuge anywhere that isn’t in the face of one such monster that faces you.
But it isn’t a lengthy journey by all means. It’s small and its cramped and you’re still oh so frightened as you scurry to bury yourself hastily in the thin pile of stray provided.
Muffled voices, something like disappointment — you keep your head low as your pulse continues to thread, faster and faster, and then finally slower and calmer.
It’s warm under this pile, but it’s nothing like the warmth you once knew not so long ago, tucked up under your mothers armpit, squished side by side by clamouring siblings, all desperate for their mothers attention and love.
You shiver, missing it sorely.
You decide to stay put for a little while, even when your stomach grumbles and you catch whiff of something that makes your mouth wet.
You won’t risk it just yet, still as the sound of footfall is too loud and close to allow your frozen body to retreat.
The overhead lights eventually burn out, the temperate drops a degree, and then, finally, after what feels like a lifetime, everything stills and goes quiet.
You give it a little while even then, not daring to trust yourself until you shuffle, and then shuffle again.
When it feels safe, you shake the straw from your head and gingerly hop towards the small bowl left in the corner of the enclosure.
It’s nothing like mothers milk — far less comforting when you nudge the brown and beige pellets with your nose to briefly investigate.
But you’re hungry, and you feel tired from how bone deep it’s starting to become, so you try one, nibble it down, and force yourself to keep going.
You’re about halfway through your meal when you hear a noise that startles you.
It causes the bowl to tip over, pellets go spilling about the barren, plastic floor, and that in turn only frightens you more.
You rush to your one and only safe haven, the bedding askew but welcoming as you dart beneath it, nor caring when harsh blades poke into your face as you try to burrow deeper and further into a false sense of safety.
But this safe place is safe no more, it would appear.
When you open your eyes, you see something from beyond your pane of glass. Something close; neighbouring and near.
A creature stares back at you from their own plastic box.
Something that makes you stare.
It isn’t anything like mother, or your brothers and siblings.
It doesn’t look warm like she did, or how you feel when you tuck in close.
It’s hairless, and a colour you’ve never seen before.
It hasn’t got any floppy ears to hide behind, so when it looks at you, it looks at you.
You stand there, half buried under your pathetic attempt to stay safe, and you wonder for a moment if this is a creature that would kill you and eat you, and you desperately beg that mother or the man with loud footsteps would come back again.
But none of that happens — nobody comes back and this creature doesn’t maim you in terrible ways your brain supplies for you.
It stares, curious and wondering, lifts a clawed foot, slow and deliberate and taps once on the pane.
A hollow thud sounds out, and you dash away to the other side once more.
You don’t see much of the creature in the daytime. When you’re not cowering away in the corner of your box, you’re keeping a watchful eye out for big smiles and for the strange thing you saw before.
The other enclosure seems to not be like yours, without a soft bed of hay, it’s only rocks, and there’s a flickering bulb taped to the inside. And when you cannot find the creature, instead there seems to be a large, lumpy green thing that moves around inside of the box, changing places each day, one time you’re certain you saw it move slightly on its own.
You try not to think nor worry too much about the whole thing, but the box is awfully boring and small, and you’re starting to feel a tad more braver as each day passes and you’ve not been devoured yet.
One day you think you’re getting very bold, and you come out of your nest to investigate further, going right up to the glass and trying to sniff out the strange lump, but footsteps are fast and enthusiastic and there’s a tiny finger tap tap tapping on the pane that scares you so much you fall over your water bowl and end up with damp paws for the rest of the day.
But once night falls over the place once more you decide to stay out and try and watch what happens.
You’re brave and curious but still so frightfully afraid as you poke your head out from the comfort of your straw bed, your own real comfort these days despite the way it pokes into your underbelly and makes the bottoms of your feet itch sometimes.
The rock is there, almost right next door behind your pane of glass from your box, to the next. You stare hard, wondering with such concentrated curiosity as to how it could keep possibly moving around on its own accord, when suddenly…
Something moves, and you fight the overwhelming urge to duck and cover. Your chest thump thumps and you feel every muscle in your body quiver as it ready to dart and hide.
But you remain still, and you force yourself to watch. The rock wiggles, and it wiggles a little more.
And then, strangely, like nothing you’ve ever seen… a foot emerges.
It’s the same foot that tapped in your direction not long ago, and then, three more feet. Then, as you fail to draw your eyes away, a head pops out, its eyes lock onto yours.
And it’s no hideous, unforeseen monster — not when you really look, because this is just the thing that lives just a mere foot away.
It doesn’t take its eyes off of you, and you can only watch back, feeling the pounding in your chest calm to a gentle flutter. This was nothing to be truly afraid of. This wasn’t anything scary.
This thing, whatever it was, hid like you do. It was curious like you were.
It was trapped within its glass walls, just like you were.
It lifts a leg up, and once again, gives a friendly little tap tap tap.
Your nose twitches, and for the first time, you find yourself edging closer, brushing off the straw from your back with a shiver as you make yourself move forwards.
It looks at you, and all you know in that moment, no matter how afraid you may be in this uncertain life, you know that at least there is something looking back at you, behind similar glass walls like yours.