Make Your Name

Prologue

I slipped under the bush, glancing up behind me through the dark at the tiny, blinking red light in the corner of the zoo wall. Casting my gaze back down, I ducked my head and slipped into my tunnel. The earth pressed in on me, coating my white pelt in brown. When my whiskers brushed a wall of dirt in front of me, I halted, raising a paw to scrape at the surface. This would be my escape.

Digging late into the night, my paws grew sore and my legs weary. How far I had left to go, I didn't know. This was the longest of my attempts. At this point, the tunnel was black even to my eyes, usually so keen at seeing in the dark. Long ago I left the moonlight at the entrance, bathing myself in the unlit promise of freedom instead.

What felt like hours later, and probably was, voices at the entrance tugged my attention away. "Nex? Are you down there?"

"She's always down there. What are you yapping about?"

"Whatever. Nex, it's almost time to eat! Come out!"

"Coming!" I yipped, backing out of the cramped space until I had enough room to turn around and head out. The sunlight nearly blinded me, and my eyes snapped closed against its brightness. Once they'd adjusted, I blinked a couple times, raising my head to watch the pups scamper over to the hole in the wall. They slipped inside, bickering and jumping over each other, as siblings did.

Following them, my head lowered as I stepped into the all-white interior of the furless' cave. The smooth, flat walls and floor loomed around us, unnatural as the creatures that built them. I could see one of them now, standing behind a swinging door and tossing scraps of meat into the basin where the six of us stood. Finn was already eating, the other two males gathered around him. I padded over to the pups, nudging them apart as they wrestled over a hunk of meat nearly the size of their bodies. "Be like the wildpacks- don't fight over your food."

I waited until they'd settled down, then made my way over to the others and snagged a bit of meat for myself, yanking a chunk off with my teeth.

"You know, for all you spew about the 'wildpacks' and how civilized they are, you don't really make an effort to look the part," one of them teased, looking up from his meal to brush his head against my shoulder. "Your pretty white pelt is all mucky."

"Put a stick in it, Jasper. Yours always looks like you've been rolling in the dirt."

"Ouch, rude," he whined, swatting at me with his tail as he lowered his reddened maw back to the meat.

When we had eaten all that the furless gave us, our pack made our way back out into our cage. The others called it a home, but I'd heard too much of the wildpacks and their endless territory. They had enough space to run until their paws wanted to fall off, and still not have even scratched the surface. Running around the perimeter of our enclosure fifty times could barely get me tired. Pathetic.

The alpha and his second settled under the shade of a rock, prepared to sleep the day away once again. My paws itched to get back to digging, but they were heavy with exhaustion, and so, with my belly warm and heavy with food, I retreated to rest amongst the roots of a tree. I laid down with my head resting on my paws, golden eyes searching the cloudless sky.

"Nex! Nex!" chorused the pups, ruining the quiet. Spark pounced onto me and rolled off to flop into the curve of my stomach. I huffed in surprise, looking down at her and her sister. "Don't go to sleep yet!" She pleaded. "Tell us more about the wild!"

"Can't it wait? Everyone's going to sleep," I muttered.

"No, we wanna hear now! Tell us about how they hunt out there!" Spark protested, her sister nodding along.

"Later. If you really want to know, then ask Kuzgun the next time he comes by. He's the one who tells me about them, anyways."

"The stinky bird?? Eww, no!"