Animals We Made

Ash Land | Part 2

Chickpea huddled against Nico, and the feline had a warmth to him. It was absolute, providing solace for a dog who knew nothing of tragedy. A rabbit crouched in the leaves with the other animals. Her whiskers danced as boots thudded by just outside the shrub.

"Do you mind my presence?" She kept her volume low. "I will not intrude if I am a bother."

"You looking different from me is worrisome," Chickpea replied, "but our refuge may be yours, since you have fur like us and not feathers or metals."

Her long gray ears perked up. "Thank you!"

"Shhhh!" hissed the dog and the cat as one.

The rabbit covered her mouth with her paws.

"Jop our ubble in the hanslet ubble wanna fit non zock," blabbered a man outside the shrub.

A woman punched him in the gut. "Lelk ubble cranch on ubble food adlap ubble drod you!"

The man coughed and grasped his throat, then pushed her into a tree. "Nilt rass starve ubble clom gonna fwip in nothing afglog ubble catagogue olives!"

"Parbup!" argued the woman, locks of blonde hair fluttering through the straps of her mask. "Yarbop in two months! Liglug grapes umpnud fit ubble blep! Zogglio pock ubble roaches!"

The other men and women intervened, holding their bickering comrades apart.

Chickpea, Nico, and the rabbit exchanged glances.

Living had begun.

And living was a nightmare.

Kraa shrieked above the forest. "Dangerous age! Peril! Various oafs!"

A hunter lifted his gun and mumbled, "Ep ubble trock?"

"Warriors! Bullet buddies! Ruse!" The shouts multiplied and could not have just belonged to Kraa. "Non sequitur! Malicious guys and malevolent gals! Pop noises! Some plinks! Flocks needed! Cause for migration! Hatch! Peck the graves! Wheat riot! Fellas!"

At least nine crows echoed one another from diverse parts of the valley. The hunters scattered as if fearing the arrival of a monster larger than them. Chickpea stared at their boots—drumming, drumming, drumming away—and he wondered if these humans might know where his were.

Nico, a leader in most ventures, crept out of the shrub first. He gazed up at the birds reeling above and meowed, hypnotized by a tempest of beaks, talons, and inky feathers glittering in the sky. Prowling across vines and roots, he explored the forest. Timid daylight shafted through oaks and maples, and the ash, oppressive, persistent, flitted about as well, invading the woods and dimming the air and turning everything white as milk.

"Have you died?" A squirrel peeked out from the undergrowth, his cheeks bulging with nuts he revealed only when he talked. "I have not died!"

"I obviously have not died either," Nico said, "or this conversation would not occur."

The squirrel darted up an oak and lingered on a branch. "My uncle—" A nut escaped his mouth and plipped down the tree. "My uncle wants us to move east."

Nico gagged. "Oh no."

"You were about to spill your fluids?"

"Hush, before I come up there and devour you and your nuts."

"Must you be rude?"

"Yes."

Back in the shrub, Chickpea quaked like jelly.

The rabbit nuzzled against him. "Are you freezing?"

"Just scared," he said.

"It is normal," she encouraged the dog.