There Will Be No Flowers
by AstroGirl
The cage is so small. A few scuttling hops in any direction and his body slams up against cold, hard bars. Every time it hurts him, and every time the pain is a surprise: the way it won't go away when he wants it to, the way it never melts and changes into pleasure no matter how long he waits. It simply hurts, and then it fades, and he is still inside the cage. And that is wrong.
He can remember bigger spaces with no barriers anywhere, and himself bigger too, looking down over everything. He remembers moving about as he liked, anywhere he liked, in a world filled with all kinds of interesting things, all of them his to play with, or to eat, or... Or whatever he did with them. He doesn't remember it well, only flashes of images and colors and feelings, and the constant, keening sense that once things were better and now everything is wrong.
This feeling that things should be better, that he should be better... He knows that it's important. It writhes and aches inside him like all his other frustrated desires: for escape, for richer food, for females of his kind. But those are things he understands, things that can be tasted and touched, things to do. This perfection that he somehow craves isn't a thing at all, and if it's something his body is supposed to do, he no longer has any idea how to go about it.
But sometimes when the strange memories are especially strong, when all is quiet and his mind is fresh and rested from sleep, he curls his empty paw as if a thought were something he could reach out and grasp, and for a moment he can almost understand what it is he's lost. Then another of the caged animals howls, or Kornata arrives with food, and it's gone again, vanished in the sensations of here and now.
Kornata! He hates Kornata. He doesn't understand how she hurt him, but he knows that she has; however blurred and incomprehensible the memory, the emotion is simple and sharp. So every time she feeds him, he attacks her, biting, scratching, clawing... None of it accomplishes anything. She is bigger than him, stronger. Better. She is better than him, and each time she withdraws unhurt, and he is left alone with a bowl full of unpalatable food, screeching for help from clan-mates who will not come.
Clan-mates, snug burrows, hunting and digging and fighting and mating... These are old memories, dimmer than the bright, colorful confusion of the large time, but warmer and more real. Too often, half-awake in the sudden, harsh light that serves this place as a substitute sun, he reaches out anticipating soft dirt or skin beneath his paw. The loss he feels when he encounters only coldness is, briefly, worse than all his other pains combined.
He does not know where these comforts that he remembers have gone. He does not understand where he is or what has happened to him. All he knows is that he desperately wants to find his home.