Hello Everyone!
This is a new Zootopia fanfiction I'm trying out. Let me know if you want to see more - I've got a lot of ideas!
"Avey, whattime isit?"
I peered down at the ball of tan and black fur in my lap. The little black-footed ferret clung my shirt in one hand and the paw of her flour-sack doll in the other.
"I don't know, Ellie," I told my sibling in my heavy midwestern accent. At barely four years old, Ellie was a full twelve years younger than me. "I think it's around seven or eight. The sky's awful dark."
"Do you know when mama and papa's gonna get home?"
"I don't, darlin."
I peered out the window at the wispy clouds that slid over the white moon. It was the only light that I could see. The Blacks' two room shack was nearly a mile from the nearest main road, and neighbors were nonexistent.
I leaned back in her spindly rocking chair, careful not to damage the already broken armrest, and rubbed Ellie's tiny head. My three other siblings were sprawled out on the floor, using piles of flour sacks as mattresses. A single cloth blanket was pulled in every direction by the three ferrets as they tried to sleep in peace.
I held Ellie close as her worries turned to soft snores. I was thankful for my four siblings. They forced me to be brave. I had to hide her anxiety, as I waited for that old wooden door to burst open. For Ellie. And Jack, and Taylor, and Leah. For all of them. I was the oldest, and I was the closest to a real parent that they'd ever had.
The flimsy door burst open, swinging slowly on its hinges as two wiry figures stood in the doorway. These were not the two nighthowler-addicted pinheads that posed as my parents. As they stepped into the dim light of the shack, I noticed the silver badges glinting on their chests.
"Hayfield county police," one of the coyotes boomed in a deep voice. "You'll be coming with us."
If I had known that I would have never seen them again, I would have fought harder.
I would have reacted as soon as I saw Jack, and Taylor, and Leah, and Ellie herded toward separate police cars. It had not occurred to me that that separation would be permanent. So I let it happen.
I let the rusty grey coyote, who towered over my tiny ferret body, usher me into the backseat of his flashing car. Behind a black metal grate, I felt like a criminal. I wondered how many hours it had been since my addict parents had been behind one too.
They're just following behind, I told myself as my flimsy home disappeared through the back window. There isn't enough room for all five of us in one car.
As one of the two other cop cars sped past with a motorous roar, I saw a flash of a face that I would never forget. It was Ellie, my frail four-year-old sister, crying with her black paws planted on the window. Her teary screams fogged in the window of the police car.
Ten-year-old Leah pulled Ellie away from the window and into an embrace, as they disappeared from view and the car sped down the wooded road.
They were gone. I had not realized it yet, in the back of that police car with the oblivious coyote cop singing along to the radio, but I had just lost my siblings.
I do not know where they ended up. It took several hours of waiting rooms at the tiny local police station for me to figure out my own fate.
"What's your name, dear?" a red-furred squirrel with a calming, motherly demeanor asked. I was seated across from her in an empty room as she scribbled notes onto a form in bright blue ink.
"Avery Black."
"How old are you?"
"I'm sixteen."
"How long has it been since you last saw your parents?"
"I dunno… last night maybe?"
"Hmm," the squirrel tutted as she continued filling out the form.
"Ma'am?"
The squirrel stopped writing and looked up, adjusting her glasses.
"They've been arrested, haven't they?"
The squirrel froze for a moment, before lowering her eyes back down to the form.
"I can't say, hon," she lamented as she continued writing. "All I know is that you are now a ward of the state. You'll be placed in an orphanage until we can find you a suitable foster home."
"I don't need a foster home. I can take care of myself and my siblings. All of them."
"You're sixteen, sweetheart. You're still a minor. And your siblings need stable loving homes with real parents. You want that for them, don't you?"
I nervously tapped my black-dipped foot on the ground.
"Can I see them?"
The squirrel didn't answer.
"You're being sent to the Children's Services Center in Zootopia," she noted after several seconds of silently scrawling down notes.
"Zootopia!?" "They'll take good care of you there."
"But... but..."
I was a ferret. A dirty, smelly animal that the other hillbillies of Hayfield thought of as thieving weasels. Why I was I being sent to the largest city in Animalica? If I could barely survive in Hayfield, I certainly never would there.
"Officer Graysen will show you to your room for the night. Get plenty of sleep; you have a long train ride tomorrow," the squirrel closed my case file and stood up. She was quite old, but barely taller than me.
"And, remember dear, everything happens for a reason."
As the door closed behind her, the grey coyote cop returned to escort me away.
I hate that saying.