Swiftcurrent Creek The Not-So-Great Escape

The world was changing.

It had taken her a little while to notice it, this time. At first, it had been darkness and warmth, safety and predictability surrounding her in as close an embrace as the physical walls of the womb. But very suddenly it had grown less predictable—her little planet became much, much bigger all at once, and she had found herself sharing it both with bigger presences that appeared and disappeared (occasionally and most inconveniently rearranging or sometimes—horror of horrors!—washing her before they vanished) and smaller, squirmier creatures who stayed constant—and constantly battled with her at the milk bar, every time it came time to eat, the little beasts. She showed them what was what, though. With the sudden addition of differing patches of warmth and cold, the strange sensations of coarse earth and stone beneath her paws at some times and tantalizingly soft fur and skin at others...someone had been screwing with the thermostat and switching out some stage props who really shouldn't have been, obviously! Talos didn't know why things needed to be changed up in so uncooperatively dramatic a fashion. She was going to have some Words with The Management, just as soon as she figured out who they were and why they insisted on upending things again and again, not to mention taking away the world's only and best food source before she was done sucking it all down, every last time. This was a stupid way of them to run things, indeed.

This time around, though, the changes were a faint and gradual dawning, a slow and misty changing that took awhile to process. The alien sensation she could only just barely begin to make out, the bright mist off to one side serving as a distinct contrast to the other much darker gloom off in the other direction... they hadn't been here the week before, and now suddenly, it clicked in her tiny brain that these things now were. The first and tiniest of cracks had appeared at one corner of her deep black eyelids, with the first glimmer of an eye peeping out from underneath. Talos raised her coal puffball of a head and wobbled it back and forth, experimenting. Someplace off toward the darker end of the world were the three warm lumps of her brothers. Off toward that brightness, though... there was a weaker but far more fascinating warmth that seemed to be increasing along with the light. What was this?

It took a minute and several grunts of effort to get herself turned toward it. She stuck her wrinkled black nose curiously up into the bright source, fascinated by the way its heat played across her fur even if the blinding, all-consuming light caused that tiny crevasse of eyeball to water in response. Talos paddled her legs in determination, and began to wallow her way out, up, and away, resolving to leave the more-familiar concentrated warmth and dark behind and chase down this strange new source of heat and light. Neither of the big ones were here to stop her, after all, so maybe, just maybe she could claim it for her own—and not have to share it with any of her greedy little brothers, so there.