The Nightmare of Reality

Let the storm rage on,

The cold never bothered me anyway.

I smile, waving to my parents as they drive away from the entrance to the zoo, driving out toward the Great Highway and then disappearing into the thick fog.  Pulling my history reading packet out from my bag, I go over to one of the large, concrete flowerbeds and sit cross-legged while doing my homework.  I can feel the chilling fog through the fabric of my pullover hoodie, but I couldn’t care less.  It’s a comforting feeling to me, to have the cold hugging my body, nipping at my skin and curling around my hands as I annotate the reading in front of me.  I’ve grown adept to the feeling; the cold feels like home.  Sighing contently, I turn the page of my reading. 

For the next few minutes, I stay like this, surrounded by the blissful wisps of cold air that settled in around me.  A soft tap on my shoulder brings me out of my nirvana.  Turning my head, I see Abbi standing there, her long, blonde braid reaching the middle of her back with some loose hair blowing in the wind around her pale face.  She smiles at me.

“Hey!  You got here early!  How long have you been here?  It’s freezing!  Aren’t you cold?”  Abbi asks, subconsciously pulling at her layered jackets.  I can’t help but send her a toothy grin.

“’Course not, you know me!  So, now we just need to wait for Dash to get here and then we can head in,” I say.  Today, Abbi, Dash, and I are meeting up for a school project.  The three of us had partnered up for an engineering project; ours revolves around animal enclosures in zoos, so we are going to partner up with the San Francisco Zoo and hopefully help to make more and better enclosures for the animals.  Today we are going to survey the animals at the zoo and pick the one kind we want to work with first.

“Sounds good,” she says as she sits next to me on the concrete wall.  We mindlessly chat for a few minutes, bantering back and forth on the weather and which animals we want to work with first. 

The sound of tires on gravel makes both of us look to the parking lot in front of us.  A car pulls up and we both wave as Dash hops out of it.  Turning back to his mom for a second, he says something to her and closes the door, walking toward us.

“Hi.  You guys ready?” he asks, rubbing his hands up and down his arms in a futile attempt add heat to his body.  Abbi and I nod, turning toward the concourse and heading to the gates to pay our entrance fee.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside. Couldn't keep it in, heaven know's I tried.

We had already walked around the majority of the zoo, and it’s only noon.  I decide to send a quick text to my mom, just to tell her that we would probably be done sooner rather than later.

We walk toward the aviary near the back of the property, passing only a few people on the way, since most families are at the park closer to the front.  I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, but it’s probably just Mom saying that she can be here whenever I’m ready, so I don’t look at it.

“You know,” Abbi says, “Birds need a lot of room to fly.  We could work on their enclosures to see if we could make them more spacious...and Ravens are one of the smartest birds, so we could do something special with their enclosure.”  I smile at the idea, that would be cool to watch

“If they’re one of the smartest birds, then what’s the smartest bird?” Dash asks as we lean against the wooden railings.  I give him a quizzical look.

“I don’t know…maybe something that’s like a third cousin to the raven,” I say, my voice laced with laughter.  Abbi and Dash both roll their eyes at my antics, going back to watching the birds fly around their netted home.  The three of us push around some ideas we have for these guys, one of us occasionally pulling out a notebook and jotting down what the others were saying.