Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The eyes can finally see and our roots may finally touch

It is a ‘house’.

 

I know this, because she whispered the name of the construction to me as we approached it.

 

Now, my fox-friend digs and rummages through the guts of the house. If I have understood correctly, this thing is a nest of sorts, created by her ilk.

 

That would explain the gray-place, which was the remnants of many houses, burnt to ashes. It would explain the cart-cave, in which the old, gray, male lived inside of - before we ate him. It was also a house.

 

- This house, nobody seems to live inside of, however.

 

It is empty.

 

She fusses and stresses as she roots around with curious eyes, her paws digging into everything that is soft and movable, as she searches for mice to eat.

 

I assume she is, at least. After all, is that not what foxes do?

 

There are no mice here, however.

 

- Thankfully.

 

The bones of the inside of the house are made out of wood.

 

I do not like being in here. The sun can not find me in this place. It is like being in a cave, but stranger.

 

Why is it square?

 

I do not understand.

 

Looking around, I examine the place that we are inside of. It is unusual. It looks nothing like the nest of a bird or the cave of a not-bird or the burrow of a rabbit. Those are all predictable in their disuniformity. In those places, there are round things and tufts of fluff and sharp things and odd corners and so on.

 

The house is just… plain and square.

 

I do not think that I care much for it.

 

Do all foxes live this way?

 

How strange.

 

“Hey, there’s something here,” says my friend and I look her way, but only because the sun isn’t here to stare at instead.

 

- She is the next best thing, I suppose.

 

I watch as she rips off the unusually square and slender piece of wood from the ground, pulling it free and reaching down into the hole.

 

Another rabbit?

 

- No.

 

She pulls out a thing from beneath the boards. Another square thing.

 

How boring.

 

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She holds it in both of her stumps and then, grimly, tears it open with just her bare claws, as if it were nothing at all.

 

Wow.

 

I did not know that my fox-friend had such killer-instincts. What a beast.

 

She tilts her head, looking at the sleek, white insides of the square-thing. There are smears all over it. On the surface of each flat piece, it appears as if a family of mice had a get-together, their dirty, soil-stained feet leaving marks on them, on both sides.

 

“It’s a book.”

 

A ‘book’?

 

Hmm. Indifferent, I turn towards the entrance. I would prefer the sun to whatever this is.

 

However -

 

Looking over behind myself one last time, I watch as she flips through its insides.

 

My friend seems happy.

 

I suppose that that is good enough for me.

 

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A ‘rucksack’.

 

I am inside of a rucksack.

 

This is most unusual for a sunflower.

 

“This is going to be a lifesaver,” she says, wiping her forehead.

 

She says as much, but I do not know for whom? We are both still alive, friend. There is no danger that I can see.

 

We have left the house, inside of which she had found the book and this new thing, the rucksack.

 

It is soft. She has filled it with damp, rich soil and then has placed me inside of it. My roots are now contained inside of the odd womb. I suppose it is better than her carrying me with her upper-legs.

 

My stem, my leaves, my petals, my head, they rise out of the rucksack and I too rise, moving higher and higher towards the sun.

 

Amazing.

 

I turn downward to look at my industrious fox-friend. She seems to have slipped the other side of the pouch around her upper-legs and rises to her feet, hoisting me up into the air.

 

She turns her gaze behind herself, wobbling a little as she adjusts her stance and we look at each other for a time.

 

Perhaps she is measuring if I am experiencing discomfort?

 

- How kind.

 

I turn away, facing myself back towards the sun, which is now a full fox-friend’s height closer to myself.

 

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