"If...if this is the end...I just want to say...that I...I lo..." The fox gasped, wincing from the pain as he clutched his bunny's paw. His eyes fluttered closed and his head fell back, tongue dangling from his open muzzle.
The grey bunny - whose paw he held so dearly - rolled her eyes and reached over to flick the tip of his ear. "Quit being such a kit, Nick. It's just a splinter."
~o~o~o~
Opening his eyes, he fixed her with a mock-glare. "Oh, is that right? Well if it gets infected and I die, that'll be on you."
"I'll take my chances." The bunny agreed, turning his paw over and locating the splinter embedded in one of his pads. Using the tweezers from the small first aid kit, she deftly plucked the offending piece of wood out and flicked it to one side. "There. All better."
He smiled affectionately. "You're an angel."
"Oh, you two!" Bonnie laughed, setting the teapot on the kitchen table alongside a plate of cookies. "Do you always have to be so adorable?"
"What can I say?" Nick shrugged, adding several spoons of sugar to his mug. "It's a curse. I'm just too sweet for this world."
"More like you just forgot to grow up one day." Judy laughed, turning to smile at her husband. "Sometimes I can't believe you survived the academy."
"Nothing wrong with being young at heart, Jude." Her father chuckled as he helped himself to one of the cookies. "It's probably why Nick gets along with the little ones so well."
"I like to think they appreciate my refined charm."
"And the fox-back rides." Judy added.
"Those, too."
"That actually reminds me," Glancing at this wife, Stu tapped the tabletop thoughtfully. "We've been meaning to ask you two about...er...that is, when were you planning to..."
Judy gave her father a curious look. "Planning to...?"
With a long-suffering sigh, Bonnie came to her husband's rescue. "We're curious about when you're planning to start a family."
"Oh, I...uh..." Taken off guard, Judy floundered a minute before answering. "I don't know? I mean, we haven't really put much thought into it?"
She looked over to Nick for support; he jumped in smoothly. "Right. For instance, we'd want to be sure we were ready before considering that kind of decision."
"Ready?" Bonnie seemed genuinely surprised at the idea. "Judy spent the better part of her teens taking care of her youngest siblings. Changing diapers and cleaning up after them. I'd have thought you'd be more than ready."
"That's not what I meant, exactly." Nick cleared his throat, sitting up a little straighter. "The thing is, Zootopia is a pretty expensive place to live, and raising kits isn't cheap..."
"The ZPD pays well enough for that, don't they?" Stu countered. "And their parental benefits are first rate."
"Wha...how do you know about the ZPD benefits package?"
"I looked it up." Her father responded, a little defensively. "I wanted to be sure they were taking good care of you."
"That's sweet, dad." Judy smiled. "But what brought this up all of a sudden?"
"Well, you two have been married for almost a year now, and we realized that we'd never actually heard you say anything about it." He shrugged. "After your sisters got married, it felt like having children was all they could talk about. Seemed like we ought to ask before other mammals started asking for us."
"Too late for that." Judy laughed. "I swear, if I had a dollar for every time someone at work has made one assumption or another. I can't even get an upset stomach without a dozen mammals at the precinct wondering if I'm actually pregnant."
"It's true. She turned down a glass of champagne at someone's retirement party last month and the rumor mill practically went into overdrive." Nick chuckled. "It makes me wonder how they think we'd accomplish that, though."
"Right?" Judy rolled her eyes. "I mean, we obviously couldn't have children the old-fashioned way."
"Not for lack of trying." Nick laughed, then froze as his brain caught up with his mouth. The silence that followed was practically deafening. "I...er...what I meant was..."
To her credit, Bonnie managed to hold her stern expression for another few seconds before a small smile broke through. "We've been married for over thirty years, Nick. We're both perfectly aware of what you meant. Maybe not at the dinner table, though?"
"Heh...right."
"In any case, maybe your co-workers were assuming something like in vitro fertilization?"
"Or you could just skip the whole thing and adopt, right?" Stu added.
"I... That's not really the point." Judy sighed. "It's frustrating to have everyone assume that it's only a matter of time before we...well..."
"Sweetheart?"
Judy hesitated. She hadn't exactly been honest when she said that they hadn't thought about it. Between the precinct rumor mill and the veritable flood of emails from her sisters, it would have been impossible not to. It seemed to come up everywhere, and rather than giving an answer they'd just gotten really good at dodging the question. Her family deserved the truth, though.
She loved her life, she loved her job, and she loved Nick. Having children would mean having less time to themselves, and less time with each other. It would mean busier schedules and far more expenses, ironically made even worse by the fact that one of them would have to stay home and raise them. That last point bothered her the most. She'd worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get where she was. They both had. The idea of giving it all up to do something they weren't particularly enthusiastic about in the first place seemed crazy.
She'd realized that when she thought about becoming a parent, there was none of the maternal yearning her mother and sisters had described to her. No sense of warm anticipation for bringing new life into the world. All that came to mind were the downsides. The thought of being pregnant didn't bring her joy; it filled her with utter physical dread.
"Well, if I'm being honest..." She paused, idly picking at a loose thread on the tablecloth. "We kind of...aren't."
"Aren't what?"
"Planning to have children." She admitted.
Stu's mouth fell open in surprise. "You mean, never?"
Judy shook her head.
"I see." Bonnie responded slowly. "Do you...not like children?"
"Of course we do, mom." She insisted.
"In small, well-behaved doses." Nick added with a familiar smirk.
"That's not very nice, Nick." Bonnie scolded. "After all, you were a child once."
"I like to think I've grown a lot since then."
"But isn't it a natural for a mammal to want children?" Stu blurted out; he knew it was the wrong thing to say the second the words left his mouth.
"Really, dad?" Judy deadpanned.
"I didn't...that came out wrong." Stu's ears drooped a little in embarrassment. "What I meant to say was, isn't it natural to want to leave a part of yourself in the world after you're gone?"
Nick loudly cleared his throat before she could respond, turning toward the kitchen window and gazing out at the night sky. "When we die, our molecules shall return to the Universe. Who are we to steal from the stars?"
Bonnie let out a snort of laughter, shaking her head. "Oh for heaven's sake, Nicholas!"
Grinning, he turned back to the now tension-free table. "I'm just saying, we've got that part covered."
Smiling fondly, Bonnie looked back to her daughter. "Sweetheart, I think you know what your father is getting at. We want to make sure you two don't make a choice that you end up regretting. What if you change your mind later?"
"We might." Judy admitted. "Or we might not. We can cross that bridge if we come to it."
Bonnie nodded, regarding her daughter thoughtfully for a moment. "You know, my own mother said something to me when I was younger. I wasn't much older than twelve, and I'd spent a whole morning changing the diapers of all my youngest brothers & sisters. I went stomping into the kitchen, told her that babies were disgusting, and insisted that I was never going to have any of my own."
"Mom, you might have changed your mind, but that doesn't necessarily mean..."
"Judy, let me finish." She interrupted. "After she'd let me cool off, your grandmother gave me one of the best pieces of advice a young doe could receive. She told me that when the time came to start a family, if I felt the slightest doubt, I shouldn't."
"Gran said that?"
"She certainly did. She believed that a bunny should only make that kind of commitment with absolute conviction, and we happen to agree with her."
"You do?"
"Of course we do, sweetheart." Stu nodded seriously. "Being a parent is an all-in, both-eyes-open kind of job."
"Too many mammals act like their children are just like flashy cars. Nice to show off to people and fun to play with. They put lots of pictures on the internet and somehow insert them into every conversation. But when it comes time to actually get their hands dirty?" A shadow flitted across Bonnie's face. "The car goes off to the mechanic and the owner goes off in search of the next toy."
"Though to be fair," Stu added. "I wouldn't want a car to come barreling into our bedroom at six am on a Saturday."
"Stuart..."
He grinned at his wife's slightly exasperated expression. "I'm just saying."
As quickly as it had appeared, the gloom cleared from Bonnie's features as she smiled at her daughter fondly. "My point is that you have to be ready, willing, and able to give it your all. That's how I know, if you ever chose to become a mother, you'd be amazing at it. But that doesn't mean it's the only path you have to follow. No matter what you do, we'll be proud of you."
"And if that path included grandchildren, we'd be proud of them too."
"Stuart..."
"I'm just saying!"
~o~o~o~
LEGITIMATELY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE!
SERIOUSLY, YOU SHOULD READ THIS! IF YOU DON'T, YOU'LL HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON.
Alright, so here's the thing...
When I wrote the original 2,300-word version of Forty Glimpses back in September 2016, it was nothing more than an attempt to clear up a little writer's block. Now, over 140,000 words later, Forty Glimpses is poised to be longer than anything I've written before...and the ride ain't over yet.
One of the first things you read in this series - right at the top of the original 40-Prompt chapter - is that the glimpses are all stand-alone stories: none of them are connected to any of the others. Well, the reason for this brief interruption in our regularly scheduled programming is so I can confess that that's not entirely true.
I realize that this probably doesn't come as a surprise to many of you. Plenty of readers have noticed the occasional reference to one glimpse inside another and some have even begun to notice distinct storylines. Although half of the chapters (Mortal, Expert, or Complex, to name a few) really ARE stand-alone stories, the other half (20 glimpses and one separately posted story called What It Takes) actually link up to form a single timeline that I've privately dubbed the Guarding-Verse.
That's right, folks. It all comes down to the next and final glimpse, Guarding. Clocking in at nearly 40,000 words and written in ten chapters, Guarding will be the culmination of my hidden storyline and (by far) the single largest story in this anthology.
As you might have guessed, the Guarding-Verse stories weren't published in chronological order. That's why, for the sake of getting everyone on the same page, I'm providing a list of the relevant glimpses here. If you want to do a recap before going any further – and I strongly recommend you do - here they are in their timeline-appropriate order.
(Remember, any glimpse that isn't on this list is a genuine one-shot and shouldn't be considered canon.)
Air
What It Takes (story posted separately)
Goodness
Tied
Upsetting
Ideology
Pressure
Assault
Code
Gut
Luck
Remark
Analysis Part I, II, and III
Degree
Schedule
Highlight
Rhythm
Cheer
GUARDING
Excitement
Footnote
In closing, I can't express how excited I am to have reached this point. I hope you all feel the same, and here's hoping I've written something worthy of the number 40.