The Fox and The Cardinal
Silver fur gone to white with only slivers of red in his poufy tail. His eyes will always be molten gold. The fox curls on the Wrodian rug. A ghostly man moves in quick, silent steps to the windowsill; he peers out and sees the picturesque greenery, but his green eyes look down to see the bird nest in his flower box. Two eggs like always. He plucks the speckled blue egg.
Rama kneels and puts the egg on the rug. The fox crunches the tip and laps up the yellow yolk with his pink tongue. He consumes the eggshell in one bite. The fox looks up at him with greedy eyes.
Rama smiles gently and reaches over to retrieve the second egg, a green one. But then he notices a dot of red blemishing the background. The red becomes a bird, a cardinal limping through the grass with its wings bound tightly by thorns. The cardinal lifts its head and has the bluest eyes.
The fox rubs against his legs, and Rama grabs the second egg. He tosses it on the floor, expecting a crack, but then hears the snapping of the fox's jaws. Two eyes are on the cardinal struggling to hold its head up.
"Don't move anymore, dear cardinal, I will help you." He says and feels silly since he knows that birds can't understand him. Only his fox can.
"It's not worthy of your attention." The fox says.
"He's alone and hurt." From the third eye, he sees the fox rolls his eyes.
"It's the way of nature. The weak die, and we thrive."
"It wasn't always like this." Rama shivers as he remembers his childhood being contained in an ice box and then adolescence being tossed into a spice mine. His innocence being held down and torn by another mutant with three eyes.
"I won't let anyone harm you." The fox's tail bristles.
"It's too late for that I'm afraid. But you already knew that."
The cardinal drops to the ground. The cardinal wiggles like a worm surrounded only by ferrocrete. The thorns dig deeper into the cardinal's already weakened body, but it struggles on and on until its wings are freed.
"Oh, it looks like someone clipped those wings." The fox grins.
The cardinal flaps its wings, and Rama's heart aches at the futile sight. It flaps, flaps, and flaps but it still remains grounded.
"He's a fool. He can't change his nature." The fox cackles, and Rama wonders what the cardinal did to earn his enmity.
"I believe in you." The cardinal stops and looks at him. He looks at him as though he were a god deserving of worship, deserving of such sacrifice. The cardinal flaps harder than before, blood and feathers splatter the green, but, finally, he soars. Rama leans forward and presses against the green egg. The fox bites on his leg and tries to pull him back, but Rama pushes on until he's nearly hanging out of the windowsill.
He meets the cardinal halfway, and the cardinal lands in his cupped hands. He kisses the abused bird and falls out of the dream.
Rama wakes up to his Bren breathing heavily. Red stains the green sheets, and Rama pulls them back and finds numerous gashes across his lover's naked body. Rama grimaces and hurries to fetch the medkit.
"R-Rama, I-I was a bird." Bren rasps when he returns.
"A cardinal, my dear." Rama dresses his lover's wounds and then attends to his own. The back of his right leg throbs from the fox's bite. He wonders if he'll need a rabies shot.
"Your father hates me."
"I know, but I love you."
They kiss.
Author's Comments- Here is the link:
Here is the link to the scene in Princess Tutu that inspired this entire story. The anime is streaming on Hulu: a href=" watch?v=FYZrdnsdBMI"Link/a
The Sheev Discord knows why Palpatine is a fox in this. And considering how in New Canon Brendol named Cardinal and gave him his red armor, I think it's fair to assume that cardinals are his favorite birds, but cardinals also represent devotion, monogamy, loving relationships, hope, and joy from what I found through a quick Google search.
The fox eating egg scene is inspired by The Tod, a sly-talking fox, from The Plague Dogs (1982). The movie is based upon the Richard Adams's 1977 book and it's animated by the same people who did Watership Down, also based on the Richard Adams's book of the same name, and I will argue that it's better than Watership Down. Both are about animal cruelty, but The Plague Dogs goes for intimacy between our two main leads, and eventually with The Tod, affected me more than the bunny massacre scene. I cried during the last ten minutes of the film.
Happy Mother's Day!