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To those who didn’t spend all their days in the desert, it was easy to believe that the most dangerous part of living there was the near-endless heat, courtesy of the ever-present sun and its rays constantly baking the sand beneath its horizon, with only those knowing where to find water or shade being able to avoid total heatstroke.
But Wile E. Coyote, a life-long desert dweller, knew better.
He could handle 100+ degree days and scorching sand and a bare sky that refused to offer any sort of passing relief. No, the real dangers came whenever there were clouds in the sky - heavy and slow-moving enough to swallow the sun whole before setting their sights on the ground below.
The desert didn’t get much rain on average, only seeing about several inches per year, typically spread out enough to where they only saw rain once every other month, and that was in a wet year. Showers in the desert were brief, and full-on thunderstorms were an outright rarity.
After several decades, however, Wile E. knew never to count any sort of improbable or impossible thing out fully - though, in this case, he’d rather deal with something like a whole cliff suddenly falling out from under his feet or gravity only working when it felt like laughing at him in particular over what had, so far, proven to be one of largest storm systems both him AND his desert home had ever seen.
Another rumble of thunder made his ear twitch in agitation as he continued to watch buckets upon buckets of rain pour down from the dark clouds above, causing the entrance of his cave to look more like the back of a jungle waterfall. Out in the distance, a stray bolt of lightning lit up the rest of the desert, revealing the waters - once thin ravines, now growing rivers - that had already filled the bottoms of canyons.
With how soaked the rest of the desert was, Wile E. expected to see other bodies of water soon form around the now-muddy dunes, the intruding rains continuing to steal whatever space it could for itself while it had the opportunity.
And of course, once the desert had taken all it could, the rains would no doubt flow onto the roads, effortlessly turning the winding concrete paths into yet another temporary river as it swept away whatever natural or man-made obstacle futilely tried to stop it.
It was only natural, Wile E. knew this, but it was also frustrating - infuriating, even!
It made him want to snarl and scream at the rain for intruding on HIS territory, but as egotistical as he could be, even Wile E. knew he had no real power over the weather. (Not yet, at least. Maybe after he finally caught the Roadrunner, he’d focus his efforts towards building some sort of weather machine.)
Knowing that doing anything else would be pointless, Wile E. forced himself to turn away from the water-logged sight and trudged back into his desert home, passed the couch he usually slept on and his work bench, his file cabinets full of failed plans, and the TV he hadn’t bothered to turn off yet.
The weatherman’s report was halfway over, but Wile E. had already seen enough to know that it hadn’t drastically changed from the one initially delivered only four nights ago, mere hours before the storm officially started.
A rare tropical storm from the coast of California and a storm system originally formed around the Washington and Oregon area, mixing as they crossed into New Mexico and combining into a supercell that would last the entire week (if they were lucky, which Wile E. knew he typically wasn’t). It was the type of huge storm that, according to the weatherman, likely only came around once a century.
Following that first forecast, flood watches and warnings had become hourly occurrences, though it wasn’t like Wile E. had needed them; both his and his prey’s base instincts had interrupted their last chase. Even before the sky had completely filled with clouds, a single strike of internal panic was all it took for their evolved brains to push all other thoughts and goals aside in favor of immediately getting to high ground.
…At least, the coyote had assumed that was what his bird was doing when he suddenly shifted into maximum overdrive, effortlessly leaving Wile E. in the dust without even offering an apologetic “Beep beep!”
But that was fine. He knew the Roadrunner would be fine. He would outrun the floods and the lightning and thunder just as he outran everything else Wile E. and the world at large threw at him. They’d both survived this long, after all. There was no way something as random and insignificant as a thunderstorm would catch the Roadrunner before Wile E. could.
Wile E. wouldn’t even allow those thoughts to take root in his genius mind. The bird - his bird - was fine. Everything was fine.
Better than fine actually, the canine thought to himself as he turned on his heel, heading back towards his desk. If he couldn’t go outside and hunt, then he could at least work on new strategies and traps he could then implement once the storm did finally let up. You’ve already wasted enough time, so get to it!
Except, just as it had the days prior, his brain refused to actually cooperate once he was at his desk, deciding to metaphorically clock out for lunch despite the pencil in his hand and a blank sheet of blueprint paper in front of him - and again, he found himself wishing he could scream.
No matter how hard Wile E. tried, he just couldn’t manage to bring any ideas forth, with any attempt at brainstorming seeming impossible so long as he was trapped inside by an actual storm, the sheets of rain pelting the outside of his home’s entrance now feeling more like the bars of an unbreakable cage.
More thunder rumbled, and Wile E. yanked his ears down, trying and failing to muffle it. Only one sound was able to be louder than it, and that was the rumbling of his own stomach.
Wile E. couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such hunger - felt like he was truly starving to the point where it was nearly the only thing he could feel. He had no other distractions; He couldn’t think or build, couldn’t run, couldn’t hunt - how was he supposed to stand it?! Coyotes weren’t meant to stay stagnant, yet here he was.
But maybe he was just being overdramatic. After all, nearly a year ago, he’d voluntarily stepped away from their daily chase for almost two months. But Wile E. knew that had been a completely different situation. Choosing to take a few days off from his eternal hunt wasn’t the same as being forced into it.
He was at the storm’s mercy, and as far as the Albuquerque weather stations were concerned, the storm would likely make him wait a few days more.
A few more days of starving, of not knowing where exactly his prey was or when he’d get to see, smell, hear, feel, taste him again. It was enough to make Wile E. feel like he was already underwater.
At some point during his internal monologue (Wile E. couldn’t remember when), he’d allowed himself to get up from his desk, taking the hint his body was giving him and settling for pacing the floor of his cave as an alternative way to try and unleash all the anxious and restless energy that was quickly building within him. The smooth and cool-feeling rock underneath his feet helped him feel grounded somewhat, but his stomach still felt unbearably empty.
He missed his chase. He missed the sun. He missed his Roadrunner… But those weren’t the only things he missed.
The weather report had long-since ended, being replaced with local news featuring stories that Wile E. couldn’t care less about before, and was in-turn eventually replaced with commercials, with the first being for a certain toon-focused law agency.
The moment Wile E. heard Kevin’s voice, he immediately pulled a remote out of his hammerspace and shut the TV off, plunging his home into near-silence once more, though efforts weren’t enough to stop his stomach from aching with emptiness and misery.
It may have only been days since he’d last seen the Roadrunner, but it had been a whole month since Wile E. had seen his human friends. Their group dinner-date had been scheduled for earlier that week - emphasis on had.
Last he’d heard, Kevin, Paige and the rest of the team had been less worried about the storm itself and more on patching up the leaks they’d discovered at the firm’s office the last time it rained, and if the humans weren’t concerned about getting flooded, Wile E. chose to not be concerned about it either.
Still, whenever his thoughts did drift back towards the pair of lawyers, Wile E. (much to his growing distress) found himself feeling like he was craving something - craving them. Hungering for… them?
Wile E. shook his head, hands still gripping the ends of his ears as he continued pacing. He wasn’t hungry for his friends! He was a proud carnivore, sure, but he wasn’t a monster, for goodness sake!
He didn’t want to eat humans - granted part of that was simply due to knowing their meat couldn’t hold a candle to the desert fowl and other wild game he typically went after, BUT the moral reason he had for not eating humans was just as prevalent in his mind!
Yet, whenever his thoughts betrayed him and reminded him of all he was missing because of this damned storm - Kevin’s dry and sarcastic comments that failed to fully hide his true protective nature, Paige’s kind smiles and eagerness to take on whatever the day had for her, the Roadrunner’s loud chirps and ridiculously silly face whenever he stuck out his tongue - Wile E. just couldn’t think of any other way to describe what he was feeling.
Maybe he’d gone past simply stir-crazy and was starting to go mad. Maybe he just needed to leave.
Why not, Wile E. silently asked himself, no longer able to think of any counter arguments. He was still a daring genius, wasn’t he? Geniuses were smart enough to outwit a bit of bad weather.
With that, his body and mind suddenly began to work in tandem towards their new goal as a desperately reckless and ingenious plan rapidly formed in his mind.
So what if his territory was flooded? That’s what floatation devices were for! He was certain he had an old air pump around somewhere, and finding materials that could help him float in a worse case scenario. Nevermind the fact that he’d discarded a lot of those materials for a reason.
Nevermind the knowledge that it only took about a foot of water and a rushing current for someone to be swept off their feet, or that Wile E. himself only barely knew how to swim in the best of circumstances. Nevermind that his prey wasn’t even out running (Where is he, where is he, where is he-) or that even toons were susceptible to drowning in the right circumstances.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting to the people he craved. He’d build a boat - hell, a whole ark if he had to! He needed to leave, to feed. He needed them! He needed-!
A sharp ringing sound ran through him like electricity, forcing Wile E. to freeze just as his claws began digging into the wood of an empty ACME crate, already sharpened and ready to break it apart.
Blinking, the coyote slowly withdrew his hands and stepped back as his phone let out a second ring. Two more rings passed before Wile E. was finally able to answer it.
“Oh, good!” a masculine voice said. “Sorry, I know you don’t really like talking on the phone but, well, I wasn’t sure what you were doing but I wanted to make sure I actually checked in on you, and with how loud YOU work, I just figured you were more likely to hear a ringtone over a text alert.”
Check in on me, Wile E. silently repeated to himself as Kevin continued to talk, his voice coming in only a bit fuzzy in spite of all the weather interference.
“But, yeah, I just-” There was a loud crash that made Kevin yelp, and Wile E. tightly gripped his flip phone. Thankfully, the lawyer didn’t keep him in the dark for too long. “SORRY! Sorry, thunder’s getting pretty bad around here. Sheesh, that was a loud one… Anyway, I was just saying that, well, I was just kinda thinking of you and wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”
Kevin had been thinking about him? Wile E. blinked again, and was surprised when he realized just how wet his eyes had become in such a short amount of time.
“And I know, I know, a ‘genius’ like you probably doesn’t have much to worry about when it comes to big storms like these. You’ve probably got a whole book’s worth of plans on how to deal with bad weather - that or you’ve got that thing where dogs can just sense when the weather’s changing... Either way, I know you probably don’t NEED me worrying about you but, hey, I still wanted to check in, y’know? Oh, and Paige says hi too.”
As Kevin proceeded to ramble on about how they were handling the new leaks in the office’s ceiling and how he “practically had to swim across the parking lot” whenever he’d gone to or from work that week, Wile E.’s thoughts were still playing in a loop. Kevin was worried about him? He and Paige had been thinking of him, just as he’d been thinking of them?
Maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised, but that didn’t change the fact that he was - and as Wile E. stood there, his cheap flip-phone still in-hand, his other paw drifted towards his stomach, eventually settling on it.
It was still empty, of course, as he still couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten more than the occasional stray bug that he pulled out of his fur, but the hunger he’d been feeling mere moments ago no longer felt as unbearable, even if a slight ache was still there.
“-le E.? …Hey bud, you still there?” he heard Kevin ask, his voice now loud enough to break through the coyote’s train of thought. Wile E. nodded before remembering they were still on the phone. Thankfully, they already had a system for that. Stepping towards the nearest hard surface, he knocked on it twice, making sure the phone was angled towards his fist.
“Ah, good. Thought I lost ya… Hey, if you’re busy, I can just call back la-” Kevin didn’t even get to finish, being interrupted by Wile E.’s now-frantic knocking. “Whoa! Okay, it’s okay! I’m not hanging up, don’t worry!”
The canine silently sighed, pulling his fist back. Good, he thought.
“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure… But, hey, if you wanna talk, we can talk. Not that I mind, I’ve missed you too… And I’m still sad that we missed out on our dinner, but at least with that we can reschedule it once the storm is gone.”
Wile E. gave two more knocks, agreeing whole-heartedly with that idea.
“Heh, yeah. But, in the meantime, we can just talk for a while. How have you actually been doing, anyway? Are you alright?” Wile E. didn’t answer right away, and when he did, he only gave a single knock at first before pushing himself to give another one only two seconds later.
Judging by the pause on the other end of the line though, the hesitation was still noticeable. “...Is the Roadrunner in your cave with you?” Kevin then asked, getting a single knock in response. “Okay, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Still, I imagine it’s been a pretty lonely week for you then if you’ve been stuck in your cave all by yourself. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.”
Another bolt of lightning came down from the sky, with this latest one managing to strike the center of a mesa only a half mile away from Wile E.’s cave, being close enough to illuminate his entire cave with its brief yet mighty light.
At the same time, Wile E.’s mind was illuminated by its own realization. Loneliness… Yes. That’s what it had been all along, hadn’t it?
“Wile E.?” Kevin asked, raising his voice a bit. “You didn’t just get hit with lightning, did you?” Wile E. replied with another singular knock. “Okay, good… Was there anything you wanted to talk- er, text me about?” One knock. “Alright. Did you want me to just keep talking then?” Two knocks that time, each being perhaps a bit firmer than they needed to be. Thankfully, Kevin didn’t seem to mind.
“Okay, well… Things overall have been a bit slow this week, for obvious reasons. But I’ve still got a couple cases on my plate. You know Porky Pig, right?” Wile E. knocked twice before stepping away, wanting to find his wireless phone charger - which, in a rare stroke of luck, wasn’t TOO buried underneath all the other junk he had.
“Yeah, he’s decided it's finally time to take up his own case against ACME. Thing is, according to him, he stopped using ACME’s products a year or so ago, given that he’d already filed at least a dozen settlement cases with them prior to that, but I guess he just keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time? So, either he’s another specific case of Project: Sisyphus testing, or he’s just as accident prone as you can be. No offense.”
None taken, Wile E. thought with a slight smirk as he settled onto his couch. Without hunger (loneliness) clouding his headspace, it was now incredibly easy to feel all the exhaustion that he’d been accidentally ignoring. Plugging his phone in, Wile E. set both the battery and the flip-phone on the coffee table next to him, making sure to set the call to ‘speaker-mode’.
The rain was still as hard as ever, the thunder and lightning were still rumbling in the distance, but it didn’t seem as loud or overwhelming as it did before, so long as his friend’s voice still remained louder than it. He knew it was only a temporary fix to what he’d been feeling, but he also knew he’d hear ALL of his friends' voices soon enough. Nothing lasted forever, after all, including massive thunderstorms.
And, though he hoped to listen to Kevin talk for as long as possible, Wile E. was also just as willing to let the human’s words of Toon Law legalese and anecdotes from the past week lull him into a deep sleep, his mind and heart both finally at ease.
()()()()()()()()()()
While the forecast predicted at least three or four more days of hard rain, it ended up only taking two days for the storm to finally stop, with the night before seeing the shift from continuous showers to a light sprinkling.
As such, much of the desert was still damp by the time the sun rose over the cleared horizon, beckoning Wile E. to step outside his cave for the first time in nearly a week.
Though much of it was slowly but surely starting to recede, there was still plenty of standing water that could be seen, formed into large puddles that still resembled lakes and rivers. Though he had to squint in order to see them, Wile E. could also spot plenty of flooded small-prey burrows and uprooted desert plants from atop his high peak.
This included an entire cactus, which now floating on its side in a wet-spot near the road, its dark-green color already fading as its soaked arms turned to mush. See that, his mind pointed out, that could have been you, dimwit.
Knowing he had no counter argument for himself (the type of simple hindsight that only came with a completely cleared head), Wile E. just rolled his eyes at what would have easily been his worst and most foolish plan ever, if he had actually gone through with it. Still, given that he WAS still there and not face-down in a flooded ravine somewhere, it was time to-
Wile E.’s ears instantly straightened as they picked up on a rumbling sound in the distance, his eyes widening. Was that-? …No. No, that wasn’t more thunder, nor was it an explosion.
It was the rumbling of powerful, stampeding cartoon-bird feet.
“BEEP BEEP!” In the literal blink of an eye, Roadrunner goes from a single blue speck spotted on the road in the distance to being only a few feet in front of him - though even then, he didn’t stop. With another happy chirp, Roadrunner started running around him in a tight circle, the wind from his speed acting almost like a tornado as it spun Wile E. around and around.
The circling, thankfully, only lasted a few seconds, at which point the Roadrunner decided to dash back down the mountain-side - with Wile E.’s feet following him before the rest of him even regained its balance, his dizzy eyes still managing to lock onto the blue blur speeding away from him.
The road was still wet, to the point he nearly slipped and fell flat on his face more than a few times, but Wile E. wasn’t deterred, being more motivated than frustrated at how easy it was for his prey to keep his footing. He could feel bits of mud and wet sand already sticking to his feet and ankles, but frankly he couldn’t care less.
As the sun shone down on them once more, not a single cloud left in the sky, the wind breezing past them as they ran together without anything in their way, the only word that came to Wile E. that seemed even close to describing what he was feeling was heavenly.
“BEEP BEEP!” Suddenly, the Roadrunner made a U-turn, sprinting back down the road they just came from - and inadvertently causing Wile E. to stumble and fall over himself. Though he could hardly be too annoyed by this, as once he picked himself back up, Wile E. could see exactly why the Roadrunner had decided to change direction - and was more than happy to follow his bird’s lead.
They managed to meet the incoming car half-way, its windows already rolled down enough for Paige to lean out and wave at them. “Hey guys, long time no see! Great day for a run, huh?”
Wile E. and Roadrunner happily agreed, with the former giving an enthusiastic nod while the latter excitedly flapped his wings, giving another “Beep beep!” Although, now that they were standing still, Wile E. could see that the Roadrunner’s feathers looked a bit more unkempt than they usually did.
Had his prey been so eager to run that morning that he skipped his grooming routine, or had he been feeling just as distressed by the storm and the forced break in their chase as Wile E. had? Either way, Roadrunner didn’t seem too focused on it, so Wile E. tried not to focus on it.
Once the car was properly parked, its warning lights kept on just in case, Paige jumped out of the car with Kevin following shortly after. Both lawyers were in casual outfits, indicating that they had the entire day to spend with them without needing to worry about getting back to whatever work was waiting for them at the office. A quick sniff also made Wile E. aware of the fast food bag in Kevin’s hand.
“Figured you guys would be up for some breakfast,” Kevin told them, opening the bag up. “So, burritos for everyone!”
He already knew it wasn’t going to be a roadrunner-filled burrito, but Wile E. still drooled over the idea of it regardless, happily accepting his free chorizo and egg-filled meal. As for Roadrunner, he was offered a burrito filled with breakfast sausage and potatoes - which he easily pecked the wrapper off of before swallowing whole as if it were a freshly-caught critter, licking his beak afterwards.
As mildly shocked as Kevin was by this whole process, Paige just chuckled as she told him, “See, told you he’d like it!” “Beep beep!”
It was all so simple, so right - truly heavenly, Wile E. thought once more, his eyes growing a bit misty as he continued watching his friends, his smile never leaving his face.
It didn’t matter how they spent the rest of their day. All that mattered to Wile E. was that he was with his friends once more - friends who enjoyed his company, who cared about him and still thought about him even when they couldn’t be together, just as he did with them - as what they shared with one another was as present, as warming and nurturing and powerful as the sun itself.
He still had a little more than half his burrito left to eat, but at that moment, as far as he was concerned, Wile E. had never felt more full.
THE END