Beating hearts

Chapter 4

What defines something? Is it beauty, popularity, or size, if they have skin, fur, or scales? A soul within a form is all we are. We live and survive life, just like every other thing that walks, flies, or swims on this earth. If you take away all the things that supposedly define us, we are left with our true selves, the soul within the flesh we did not choose to live in, but no matter what disguise, we all share the same nature, the same purpose, to live and survive life, to love, crave, and fear.

They say the portal to a person's soul is through their eyes, you can see pain, hate, or love in one look, and if you look deep enough, they might even tell you a story.

Leawood Kansas, zoo.
2 years ago.

Yellow eyes glowed bright, they looked sad and confused, like they were trying to tell her something, she got lost in them, they were pulling her deeper and deeper away.
The tall and Broad white wolf, stared at Ara through the thick black bars of its cage, as Ara stared back, losing herself within those piercing dreary eyes.

"Ara?" She heard her name echo in the distance.

"Ara!?" She heard again, this time snapping her out of her trance.

"Yes, mother?" Ara said taking her eyes off of the caged animal.

"Do you like the zoo?"

Ara looked back over at the soul behind the bars, she didn't see an animal, she saw a prisoner that was unable to live its life because its decided purpose was for human enjoyment.
She smiled and looked back at her mother.

"I like the art."

Her mother wasn't sure what she meant by that, but she didn't question the response.

"I have something for you," she said handing Ara a pink little box with a perfectly tied bow around it.

Ara quickly opened the box with excitement, revealing a gold locket with a ruby diamond in the middle, Aras's birthstone.

"It's beautiful." She said wrapping her arms around her mother.

"Happy birthday Ara."

~

So many thoughts lingered through her head as she lay on a gurney in the back of the ambulance. She tried to shut her mind off, but every little bump or turn sent a wave of pain to the wound in her side. She had an awful burn in her throat, it felt dry and raw, her head pounded and ached with every second, taking her mind off of things was not an option.

She kept returning to a memory, one she'd rather forget.

It's the day of the accident, the one that ripped her mother away and tore her whole world apart. Ara and Lilly are sitting in the back of the ambulance, waiting to be taken to the hospital. Their mom had been pulled from the car and placed on a Gurney, a single sheet covering her gored body, blood seeping through, drenching it red.
Her arm dangled out of the sheet, blood sliding down the side, dripping off her long pink fingernails, and onto the glass-covered concrete.
Ara remembered watching, being unable to remove her eyes. That image was so clear in her head. It was the last time she ever saw her mother.
Every time she revisits that unforgettable memory, she gets the same nauseating feeling as the day it happened.

~

Once they arrived at the hospital and were treated, the police took their statements. Their father told them he had fallen asleep upstairs and forgot about the food on the stove, and that Ara and Lilly were at a friend's house at the time of the fire. When they returned home, they ran inside on a rescue mission and got trapped under the debrief.