Character Stories

     The wind did a foxtrot through his unkept fur, cooling him from the heat of the afternoon sun. He looked out from his place nestled between a large log and boulder, the sky a blaze of pinks and purples seeping into one another. He laid his heavy head on the makeshift bed he'd made himself earlier in that day, the last of the warm sun's rays fading away. The cold started to creep him, the wind now chilling his bones. He fluffed his feathers to try to conserve what little heat he had. He thoughts drifted to his mother, she would always curl up with him on cold winter nights, chirping a sweet song to him. He found himself chirping the same tune now, he would be home soon. He finally felt the warm feeling of sleep slowly creep in on him, his eyes fluttered shut and he slipped into a pleasant sleep.

   The song of a bird woke him, he bobbed his head to the mating call of what sounded to be a cardinal. He stretched feeling his back let out many little pops as he twisted himself around. He padded down to the small creek he has passed the other day hoping to fill his belly with fish or perhaps a toad if he could find one. He's only eating a toad once, he'd found a big one in a swamp during the first few months of his journey; hunger had sunk its claws into him and he would eat just about anything to escape its clutches. The toad had hopped right into him in that moment, he remembers snatching the toad up, expecting it to taste terrible, but was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. Perhaps it was simply his hungry mind that made it taste good. He clamped his jaws around a small sliver fish, he brought it over to a small clearing and started slowly eating it, savoring each bite. 

  He was halfway finished with the fish when a crack sounded behind him. He perked his ears up, looking around wildly for whatever had made it. Gobbling up the rest of the fish, he headed in the opposite direction of whatever had made the noise, alarm picked its way through his feathers. He made it about three steps before something large blundered through the bushes ahead of him, he franticly bypassed the black figure, it rolled by him as another thing popped out in front of him. He turned on his feet only to be blocked by another figure, they surrounded him as he felt his chest constrict with panic, he hardly felt the rope roughly being lassoed around his small neck. He barked and growled at what he now recognized as men. The three men herded him towards a small cage, the rope tightening around his neck. He fussed with each step, trying desperately to escape. The man threw him into the small wired cage, the terror overtaking his chest blossomed fully into hysteria, he clawed, bit, whined and pushed at the bars. One of the men slammed his fist into the side of the wire, Mistletoe was caught off by the loud sound, he stopped his pursuits and instead focus on what was going on around him. The men had tossed his cage into an empty white van, he could smell other velos had been here, but no sign of them anywhere. The biggest man, the one who had roped him, closed the door to the van. He heard a door open and a dip in the van as one of the men got into the drivers seat, Mistletoe laid his head down, curling in on himself. Shivering as he thought about his home. 

   Light flooded his vision, blinding him. He hastily blinked his eyes as he got used to the light. He felt the man from before climb into the back of the van and knock his cage around as he dragged him out. A strong potent odor smacked him across the face as he harshly landed on the cold stone. Accompanying the smell was a concert of barks, chirps, screeches, and whines. He caught a few snippets of words from the chaos, as he was being carried through the building dread sprouted like the mushrooms he would see in the forest, clumps all clustered together and overtaking everything else. The howling got louder the deeper into the building they went, he kept still as the man turned the knob into one of the rooms, they entered into a small white space, there was a steel table sitting in the middle of it, the man set his cage down on the table. It was as cold and stinging. The man turned his back from him, Mistletoe had a hard time staying focused on just one thing in the room. There was large containers filled with, something. Moving on there were cables and wires and screens covering the back wall of the room. 

  A loud CLANK echoed around the room, the man dropped something