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When the sun goes down in the desert, the temperature drops with it.
Judy would wager it’s a good forty to fifty degrees cooler now. This wasn’t a problem when they first arrived— the adrenaline coursing through her veins, as well as the campfire they’d lit, shielding her from the cold. Now, though, she finds herself unable to ignore the chill that bites through the air.
That has to be why she can’t sleep. No other reasons, surely.
Gary snores softly from his makeshift nest across the tent. Without actually asking if he could do so, he’d found a cozy nook in an oversized cat tower and curled up inside. He’d wanted ample time to rest, he’d said, so he could be in tip-top shape for their early morning journey to the weather wall.
Judy had initially protested, believing there was no time to be wasted, but conceded when Pawbert sided with the snake. Neither of them would get far without their motorcycle driver, after all. Stealing the bike had crossed her mind, but she ultimately found that remaining sensitive to Gary was a variable of utmost importance. This was her case, yes, but his mission.
And she was, y’know… kind of exhausted. Kind of still recovering from a tranq-dart. Not that she would ever say that out loud.
Pawbert himself left the tent forty-five minutes or so ago. When she’d asked where he was going, he’d replied that they needed food— they being the rabbit and reptile who didn’t find much value in cat treats, even if they “were gourmet.”
Before he’d gone, he’d set her up in a plush, circular bed and piled a few thick blankets on top. Now, despite the warmth they bring, Judy feels suffocated. She finds herself wriggling out of that cat-made cocoon to drape her legs over the side of the bed. Even then, her feet barely touch the ground.
When she was a young kit, falling asleep was often a struggle. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. Her schedule was rigid and she maintained it with diligence, in bed by 8:00pm every night. That being said, she would usually spend an hour or two tossing and turning after that, fighting the urge to reach for a book or do some floor exercises rather than just laying there. It felt unproductive— staring at the ceiling or at the peaceful faces of the siblings she shared a room with.
Her parents, ever-caring in their own clunky way, said it was a sign that she should take it slower during the day. If she traded her daily jogs around their land for a more slow-paced activity, like sitting in the passenger seat of her dad’s tractor as he tilled the dirt, she would “stay at rest.”
Nick, in his own snarky way, said it was just “nervous bun-bun energy.” And she resents that. And she misses him.
Cheese and crackers, she misses him. Her body, heavy with fatigue, is unable to fight back against her mind— wide awake and hopping mad with thoughts of where he could be now.
Best case scenario, he’s in a cell somewhere appealing to their coworkers. Successfully. Worst case scenario… They aren't just going to arrest us, the lynxes want us dead!
Her nose twitches. She reaches up to rub her eyes and pull at her ears, anything to redirect the direction her brain is going in. There’s an abundance of trinkets and impressive-looking keepsakes littered throughout the tent. It’s a less-than seamless blend of tacky, fuzzy toys and gorgeously woven dromedary tapestries. They all beg for her attention, and she obliges, standing up to slowly walk around.
There’s a citrusy, lemony smell to the place. Everything looks warm in a way that makes Tundratown feel a million miles from here. Even as chilled winds blow in from a gap in the tent’s entrance, the lights shine softly and decorate the walls with carefully-punched patterns.
Judy approaches the lantern that Gary nearly spun off its table earlier. Up on the tips of her feet, she gets a closer look at the art. Etched onto the side are a series of sketches. Four figures walk across the bronze; a camel, a leopard, a dog and a lizard.
She spins it gently even though she knows she isn’t supposed to. Camel, leopard, dog, lizard, repeat. All the way around; camel, leopard, dog, lizard.
“Lizard…” she muses under her breath.
Judy’s ears fly into the air. The sudden sound of polyester flapping in the wind alerts her. She hops back a foot or two from the lamp, eyes fixed on the tent’s entrance as Pawbert bumbles through. His arms are loaded with various jars, pouches, and paper-wrapped food items that he struggles to keep a solid grip on.
Frustration is evident on his face. However, when he looks up to see her, his eyes blow a little wider. He smiles, crookedly exposing rows of sharp teeth.
“Oh, wow, hey! I wasn’t expecting you to be up!”
Judy has to remind herself to stop thumping her foot against the floor. “Yeah, I just couldn’t wind down.”
It’s then that he seems to notice her proximity to the lantern. Yellow eyes flick back and forth between it and her.
“Were you touching that?” he sounds slightly strained, like he’s suppressing a chuckle.
“I… I was, I was looking at it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he waves a casual paw in her direction, which sends a few of the items he’s holding spilling to the floor. “You’re probably gentler with it than Ga— oh, shoot! Gah!”
“I got it—”
“I’m such a klutz, I’ll get it—”
Both of them go sinking to the ground. Judy, faster, has already laid a paw on a jar of spiced apples by the time Pawbert lunges for it. As he does so, more of his groceries hit the ground. He shakes his head, letting them stay there.
With a small smile, Judy holds the jar out to him.
“You’re my hero,” he replies sheepishly. Then, he groups the jar together with a few others. “Hopefully there’s something here that you like. I would’ve asked if you had any favorites, but it’s kind of slim pickings out here. Real nice, quality stuff, but we are pretty far off the grid.”
“That’s alright. My appetite is still kind of… off from the tranquilizer, but I’ll make sure to eat before we head out in the morning.”
“No problemo. I’ll get this stuff off the floor and onto a shelf for the time being.”
“Let me help,” she presses.
A few of the items are too large for her to comfortably lift, so she goes for the smaller ones, following Pawbert’s lead as he swipes what looks like a bushel of catnip and associated paraphernalia off a shelf and into a bag. She doesn’t even consider nagging him about it.
She takes the lower levels while he takes the taller ones. Aside from the apples, a packet of pita bread and jar of assorted nuts get her attention. Judy makes a mental note to peruse them once her appetite recovers.
Once things are settled, Pawbert wastes little time reaching to the side and flicking the dial on one of his treat dispensers. A small avalanche of colorful kibble pieces fall into his palm, and he starts munching on them. Judy looks from him, to the quaint packaging on the non-perishables he brought back. They have a charm to them that only things from small, local vendors possess.
“Thank you for running out.” She says while his mouth is still full. “You seem like you know the area pretty well.”
He swallows and leans one arm against the shelf. There’s a stiffness to it that makes him look uneasy. Awkward. Not effortlessly cool and charismatic like—
“I’ve been coming here for a really long time. Most of the vendors know me. Or, well, they think they do.”
“They think they do?”
“I haven’t told anyone that I’m a Lynxley,” he admits. “Not that my last name would really mean anything around here. It’s just… I can’t take that chance.” One large paw comes up to bat at a nearby feather toy suspended from the ceiling. His eyes follow it, away from her. “The last thing I need is my family finding out that I’m here.”
Judy cocks her head to the side. “And no one asks what in the world a lynx is doing out in the middle of the desert?”
“Oh, they used to. When I first started coming around, there were a lot of comments about how my fur coat fared in the daytime heat. But eventually I just… wedged my way in. Now, barely anyone bats an eye. Especially not when I’m so good for business! Most everything you see here was bought locally.”
Her gaze returns to the lantern with the reptile silhouettes running across it. Pawbert must notice, because he nods in its direction and adds: “That, though, is one of the things I brought from home. Just didn’t really fit the whole Tundratown vibe decor-wise.”
“Huh…” As if she’s just discovered it, Judy walks back over and props herself up on her tiptoes. “You said a lot of your stuff was vintage. Do you know where your family got this from?”
“Well, vintage generally refers to items that are… I wanna say, twenty to forty years old. Anything older than one-hundred, which this is, would be considered an antique.”
“There’s lizards engraved on it.”
“Yeah… my guess is that my great-grandfather probably pilfered a lot of the more valuable items left behind in the reptile district before blanketing it entirely.” The tip of Pawbert’s left ear twitches. He points a claw in the air. “But… once we’re able to find the reptile district, we can return it to its rightful place! Right?”
“Right…” Judy glances towards a peaceful Gary, a small smile worming its way onto her face. “I can’t imagine how long he’s been waiting for this.”
Pawbert looks back and forth between them. Then, he steps up beside Judy and places a heavy paw on her shoulder, gently guiding her back towards the center of the tent.
“Yeah. He's great, but… how are you holding up?”
“Me? I… I’m fine. Better than fine, actually.”
Internally, she knows her voice is much too flat to accurately portray that kind of enthusiasm. He picks up on that fast and drops to a knee beside her.
“You don’t have to save face here, Judy, really. I’m a pretty… touchy-feely kind of cat. Whenever I can’t sleep, it’s because something is keeping me up.”
“Really?” she cocks her head to the side. “What’s keeping you up now?”
As if she’s pressed a hidden button, Pawbert lurches to the side and begins scratching at one of the fuzzy posts nearby. His claws grind against the sisal rope, punctuating every word he says.
“Oh, y’know, just the whole evil family thing. Just because they’re jerks doesn’t mean I want their approval any less. This is just… what I have to do. For myself. Whether they like it or not.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Pawbert.”
He turns to face her, claws gradually unsticking from the post. “I know.” A beat. His ears flatten slightly, and he moves to grab and twist open the jar of spiced apples. “Here. Even if you said you wanted to wait, I really think some food will make you feel better.”
Judy carefully grabs one slice from within the jar. The last time she had apples, she had them with peanut butter. She’d never eaten them like that before— preferring them with honey, until Nick came along. There were days when he’d bring an entire container of the stuff and nothing else for lunch. The apples dunked in them had become something of a compromise to make sure he actually had some food in his stomach.
She sniffs it, the spices instilled within the fruit dancing across her senses. She wonders if Nick, wherever he is, is being fed. Even prison food would be a mercy at the paws of the Lynxleys.
“I can’t stop thinking about Nick.” she admits.
Pawbert’s eyes bore into her. She can feel his gaze even if hers is fixed on the lone apple slice in her grip.
“I’m sorry, Judy. If we could have waited for him…”
She looks up. “Do you think… Do you think your family would kill him?”
Pawbert looks down. “Uh, as much as I want to say no, that is kind of their modus operandi, so to speak. But the good news is, if you’re still kicking, they’re probably keeping him alive so that they can use him to find you.”
“Great. He would never tell them, even if he did know.” Her ears flatten against the back of her head. “It wasn’t fair of me to ask you that. I wouldn’t have been happy with any answer you gave me, I just— I can’t have that be the last time I ever see him. I can’t have that be the note that we end on.”
“C’mon, Judy,” he reaches over to give her shoulder a light punch. His tone is so carefully jovial that she doesn’t know whether to scream or cry. “Try not to think like that. You guys are partners! I’m sure you’re on the same page, even when this far apart.”
She finally takes a bite of the apple, if only to keep her mouth occupied for a moment. It’s delicious. It’s utterly nauseating. She chokes it down and immediately reaches a paw out for another slice. Pawbert passes her the entire jar this time.
“I’m not sure if we are on the same page anymore. Or… if we ever were.”
Pawbert’s paw freezes in midair. “Oh no, did something happen between you guys…?” A beat. “That’s a stupid question. Of course something happened. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want—”
“We– we had an argument. A disagreement. We had a disagreement in the lodge, right before you and Gary found us. The entire time we’ve been on the run, he’s been trying to convince me that it would be better to lay low and go into hiding. When the ZPD arrived, he was pleading with me to ditch the evidence and get out of there.”
It feels wrong, airing out what she now internalizes as intimate partner business. But Nick’s absence makes the urge to talk about him that much harder to quell. Judy attempts to frankenstein him into existence with her words. He’s crooked and one-sided, unable to speak for himself— but captivating regardless. There’s a space between her and Pawbert. It’s small, the lynx having gradually closed the gap; but the thought of Nick ultimately keeps them separate.
“He has to know that you wouldn’t ever agree to that,” Pawbert interrupts. Her ears perk up. “I mean, you’re thee Judy Hopps. You didn’t back down on the missing mammals, why would you back down on this? Why would he?”
Judy stares past the lynx. “Because we… Nick and I are different. I didn’t want to think we were, but I– I was lying to myself. I wanted to believe that everyone was wrong about us, but… I have to believe that I can make a difference, that doing the right thing can be a difference, even if no one else does.”
Her eyelids groan with the weight of un-had sleep. She doesn’t dare close them. If she succumbs, she knows she’ll see the deep green of his silently pleading with her to follow after him for once. He’d hung off that collapsed beam of the lodge like a ship unmoored, one paw outstretched as if to compel her limp one back to him. Judy wishes she could tell him that even though she hadn’t reached for him, she had looked back across the dunes of the desert for him, wherever he was.
She thinks even if they can’t be partners anymore, they could still be something else. Something unidentifiable. Something different.
After letting her stew in silence for a moment, Pawbert, with his eyes locked on every slight slouch in her spine, returns his heavy paw to her shoulder. It envelopes her entire back, though he can’t help the fact. He’s so much bigger than she is— something she only realizes now that she feels unbearably small.
“I believe that too, Judy. I wouldn’t be here risking absolutely everything I have if I didn’t. Maybe you and Nick weren’t on the same page about that, but we are. And we can do this.”
“I know we can.” she says a bit too quickly. That alone has never been something in doubt. At that, her voice softens. “I just thought he’d be here too.”
Pawbert’s hold on her turns into a grip, just for a moment. Then, he drops his paw, ears flicking like the dark tips of his fur are searching for something in the air that may or may not be there.
“You should really try and get some sleep,” he says. “Gary had the right idea. We’re going to need all of our energy for whatever the weather wall has in store for us.”
Instead of protesting, Judy grabs another apple slice and begins nibbling on it.
“You don’t have any peanut butter, do you?”
“Uhh… no. I can’t stand the stuff, actually.”
She nods, twisting the lid on the jar shut. Then, she stands and offers it to him. When he shakes his head, she moves to put it back on the shelf in what she assumes is its new assigned spot. Moments later, Pawbert is beside her again, grabbing another cat treat from a nearby feeder.
“I’m gonna…” Judy points towards the bed—her bed— outfitted with blankets.
“Oh, yeah, of course. That’s good! Get some rest, Judy. Really. You’ve earned it.”
“Thank you again for the food. And for… listening to me hash some of that out.”
He gives her a sad smile. “Of course. Like I said, we’re on the same page. I get it.”
Judy offers one last lingering look as a goodnight before walking a short distance away. Instinct takes over, and she burrows deep into the blankets until they completely surround her. Only slivers of soft lamplight peek through, and she finds herself grateful for them. Total darkness would give the impression of closed eyes.
For a minute, there’s only the sound of soft crunching as Pawbert finishes his food. Then, she hears him pad over to a bed of his own, sharp teeth briefly clacking in a yawn. His slumber leaves only the wind against the tent. It sounds different here than it did billowing against the cliffside abutting Copenhoofen.
It must be a trick of the desert, or a trick of her own regret— because every time the tent flap blows upward, she swears she hears it: I really am just a dumb bunny!
Dumb bunny!
D-D-D-D-Dumb bunny!