Yesterday, 3:29 AM
It was such a simple thing, yet hardly simple at all.
The small girl had gone to sleep in one place, nestled warm with her parents and siblings like she would every other night since the day she’d been born. Routine, especially as young as she was.
But, when she awoke, it had been amongst a nest of tall grasses in the underbrush of a forest completely foreign to her.
Everything was so fuzzy. Her head hurt, stuffy.
The home she’d known and the lands around it had a unique smell that permeated no matter how far one wandered. The whole area held a distinctness that she had memorized, learned its comforts and familiarities.
Where she was now held none of that, no spark of recognition in anything around her.
”Mamma? Papino?” Little ears lay flat against her head as she stood from the soft bed of grass, posture huddled. ”Uccellino?” Her bird, also nowhere to be seen.
Fear clenched her heart as little paws took her scrambling backwards, nestling her between a couple of small trees. They created a meager alcove for her to wedge herself, hiding the pup with very little efficiency. Della hardly cared or even noticed, her instinct to cover herself quelled regardless of it was really working.
She wasn’t sure how long she was there before she heard the sounds of voices. Unfamiliar, just as everything else. It made her tremble, disturbing the leaves with her shaking.
The boy, when he broke through her sightline, couldn’t have been much older than her, if he even was. Around her age, regardless, which made her feel a pang of something she couldn’t quite distinct. Perhaps yearning, the missing of the parents and kin she wasn’t even aware that she’d never see again. Yet.
Things kept getting more and more confusing.
Her face scrunched with a quiet snarl, watching the movements until she caught sight of the larger of the two. The boy’s father, from their words, and she pressed ever closer to the forest floor. Her pelt in the dirt gave her a modicum of camouflage, though as a whole she surely stuck out. She was noisy, not particularly hidden even with the trees.
”Go away!” Eyes scrunched shut, she’d bark out a loud warning, showing her little teeth in a display of her anger. For she was surely angry on top of everything else. Where was her family?
That multicolored gaze opened again a short moment later to look at the boy and his butterfly prey, and with another bite of sound, she’d yell, ”And leave that butterfly alone!”
The small girl had gone to sleep in one place, nestled warm with her parents and siblings like she would every other night since the day she’d been born. Routine, especially as young as she was.
But, when she awoke, it had been amongst a nest of tall grasses in the underbrush of a forest completely foreign to her.
Everything was so fuzzy. Her head hurt, stuffy.
The home she’d known and the lands around it had a unique smell that permeated no matter how far one wandered. The whole area held a distinctness that she had memorized, learned its comforts and familiarities.
Where she was now held none of that, no spark of recognition in anything around her.
”Mamma? Papino?” Little ears lay flat against her head as she stood from the soft bed of grass, posture huddled. ”Uccellino?” Her bird, also nowhere to be seen.
Fear clenched her heart as little paws took her scrambling backwards, nestling her between a couple of small trees. They created a meager alcove for her to wedge herself, hiding the pup with very little efficiency. Della hardly cared or even noticed, her instinct to cover herself quelled regardless of it was really working.
She wasn’t sure how long she was there before she heard the sounds of voices. Unfamiliar, just as everything else. It made her tremble, disturbing the leaves with her shaking.
The boy, when he broke through her sightline, couldn’t have been much older than her, if he even was. Around her age, regardless, which made her feel a pang of something she couldn’t quite distinct. Perhaps yearning, the missing of the parents and kin she wasn’t even aware that she’d never see again. Yet.
Things kept getting more and more confusing.
Her face scrunched with a quiet snarl, watching the movements until she caught sight of the larger of the two. The boy’s father, from their words, and she pressed ever closer to the forest floor. Her pelt in the dirt gave her a modicum of camouflage, though as a whole she surely stuck out. She was noisy, not particularly hidden even with the trees.
”Go away!” Eyes scrunched shut, she’d bark out a loud warning, showing her little teeth in a display of her anger. For she was surely angry on top of everything else. Where was her family?
That multicolored gaze opened again a short moment later to look at the boy and his butterfly prey, and with another bite of sound, she’d yell, ”And leave that butterfly alone!”