His velveteen coat was the only loveliness Mole ever had. It was extremely soft and supple and Mouse could not resist running her fingers through the warm denseness of it. Otherwise, he was an unhappy collection of strangeness. He had no face to speak of, only small, useless eyes that saw nothing but the changes from light to dark, a hairless nose, and a mouth now distorted by a talon slash that opened his cheek and bisected his lips into a permanent grimace that showed the small, yellow points if his teeth. He was extremely thin for his species, making Mouse wonder why the raptor had even gone for such a sickly looking tidbit. The bird had somehow got hold of him and ripped his chest into parallel slanting bands before he escaped to where she'd found him, his short fingers tipped with long, wicked looking claws seeking her out.
Mouse let his bloody wounds dry to ugly crusts as he lay on a bed of dried grass in her little house. She knew that if he were meant to live, nature had its own methods of healing even the most grievous hurts. There was still much life in him yet as was evident in the fact that his whole body flinched at a sound louder than a rustling stir and his face turning to seek out the shadow of her form whenever she moved about.
Winter set in within a few days and Mouse woke one morning to snow outside her door and the painful discovery that Mole seemed to have died in the night. He was curled in upon himself, arms and legs drawn close, back bowed and face hidden in the curve of his arms. She sat beside him and touched him lightly, relieved beyond her own understanding to feel the warmth of life still emanating from the dark brown fur.
During the night, he had slipped into the dark sleep of hibernation - a state more healing than anything she could have done.
Now she could comb the dried blood and deeply embedded dirt from his coat without fear of him lashing out with those fearsome claws. Mouse knew he used them to dig deep into the earth, but they could do as much damage in his own defense as had been visited upon him by the raptor's talons. She soon lost her fear, though, as during the deep cold of winter he would sometimes surface from the depths of sleep and stretch luxuriously under her ministrations. Then, the newly formed scar tissue on his wounds would crack and bleed and Mole would curl upon himself again and seek the comfort of painless sleep.
Mouse took to laying at his back during the cold nights, absorbing the warmth of his body into the grey, wiry fur of her own. So in early spring, when she suddenly awoke shivering, it was more than a physical cold that came over her to find him gone. She found only a deep, dark hole where he had been.
Mole had heard the call of the deep earth and followed.
Mouse, in her small existence, hadn't known loneliness before. It was a concept that required being surrounded by life that was more than predators and insects and tall grass. Mole had filled that gap and then left it a raw wound when he'd gone. She fought against the ache of it for a time, it found she couldn't seem breath without looking for his scent in the air. She dropped down into the deep hole so she wouldn't suffocate.
Bio-luminescence, which she had discovered long ago, was her light in the dark, slanting tunnel. Mouse thought to just follow this simple trail the end of which would surely lead her to Mole.
It was he who found Mouse several hours later after she had run out of light and become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of tunnels he had dug. Mole took her back through the hole into her little house but did not stay. Neither did he block up the entrance to keep her out and that was concession enough for Mouse. She soon learned how to find him in the rambling dark - she also learned that he was than the simply "different" Mole she had sheltered through the winter.