Months
The jaws closed around Judy's neck, and she prayed her death would be quick. Rabbit with a berry appetizer.
She was more than a little surprised when the fox instead hooked her by the scruff of her neck and started dragging her across the musty floor of the display pit to a shallow depression near the opposing wall.
"Nick? Nick, what are you doing?! Ow- Nick, can you hear me?"
The fox didn't reply. The light in its eyes was gone. But it still hadn't killed her, even as the floral poison soaked under its fur. In the process of mauling the mannequin, it had shrugged off Nick's green shirt, tearing a few buttons free, and his tie was in tatters.
Its jaws left her.
"Nick, are you in there?" Judy said, cautious fear still in her voice, rubbing her neck.
The fox growled, a grim and foreign noise, and she recoiled, shielded her face. But it wasn't growling at her. She opened her eyes. The fox was glaring up at Bellwether, who wore the same look of anxious befuddlement she'd worn when Judy had first met her.
"Wh- D-don't just stand there, you nasty predator! Eat her!" Bellwether cried, one diminutive hoof extended in accusation.
The fox obeyed no one. It was beholden to its own whims.
Though her heart was racing faster than it ever had before, which was saying something for a rabbit, Judy felt an odd and deeply conflicted sense of safety as she watched the muscles tense in the fox's bare back. It was preparing to lunge at Bellwether.
Picture an arcade. Lights flashing. Bells ringing. Coins clattering. Put a coin in the pinball machine. Draw the hammer back. Release.
Bellwether screamed as eighty pounds of fire launched out of the pit at her on one of the most powerful springs nature could build.
Judy was taken by the sodium-vapor lights of this display – the focus of her world was cast in luminous orange – and the imaginary sounds of the primeval jungle ringing in her ears. She was so taken that it took a moment to register that Bellwether was going to fucking die. She scrambled and grabbed her fallen radio, calling for help. No one, not even Bellwether, deserved the fury of the fox that had been Nick when it sought to defend its partner.
As little shreds of wool fell into the world from somewhere beyond its rim, the sound of sirens outside overcame the sounds of the jungle. There, there was the sound of the doors of this shuttered museum being broken in. Judy stayed in the pit. She was safe. She was defended here. And she didn't have to watch whatever was going on up there. But the sound of it was clear to her too, and as safe as she felt, she was twice as nauseous. And more deafening than that was when Bellwether stopped screaming. Judy wished her ears weren't so sensitive.
The fox was pulled away from Bellwether by an officer's heavy gray hands. Over the rim of the pit, Judy saw the fox leering back down at its quarry, snarling, flecks of blood on its glistening white triangular teeth. Another officer had a muzzle at the ready.
"No, no, no no no, don't muzzle him! Don't do it!" Judy shouted up, but in the moment they took no notice of her.
The muzzle slid over the fox's snout, restraining its snapping jaws. Its eyes dark but wide, its claws flew up, scratching clumsily at the steel bars. Another officer cuffed it at the wrists, and then at the ankles. The EMTs were arriving, bags of fluid jostling. They found a pulse, thready though it was. Judy wished her ears weren't so sensitive.
Bellwether lived, in the end, and was scheduled to go to trial when she was out of intensive care. Judy had no doubt the conniving ewe would be convicted - though the museum had been closed for repairs, the cameras were always on. Nick was at no fault.
But with the last surviving night howler bullet used up on Nick, it would be months before an antidote could be derived from a fresh crop of those toxic flowers. Long months of visits to the asylum for Judy. Painful months of watching the fox pace neurotically in its cage for Judy. Agonizing months of seeing the fox without the light behind its eyes, without a clever remark in its breath, with a muzzle and a leash on when it was taken for a walk in the courtyard, for Judy. Ever more hopeful months, as the doctors said that Doug's court ordered assistance in growing night howlers was proving useful, and that the fox was making progress on its own as well, for Judy. Heartache for Judy.
Would that she could join it in savagery, some days she knew she'd do it at the drop of a hat. If there was no Nick - and it was so deep a pain to think there might not have been much of him left after so long - why should there be any Judy? Blue was her color, after all. A little splash of pigment on her fur could be the perfect complement to her new uniform.
But some days she felt, she knew, that the fox loved only her, not some feral rabbit. So it was Nick who would have to evolve and join her again. And then she'd see if he felt the same way.