The Survivor

I was raised better than most. I wasn’t poor, hungry or orphaned, and that made me better off than most of the population, I knew this for sure. My mother was a kind soul, and my brothers and sisters got along well, never fought over food, and were never too mad with each other to huddle together for warmth when the house got too drafty.

I guess you could say I was lucky. Most of my life has been determined by sheer luck alone. When I was first born, I was so small that Mother was afraid I wouldn’t survive and took extra care when it came to raising me. Even my brothers and sisters would look out for me, protect me from any threat and make sure I got enough to eat every day.

But one day, mother didn’t come home. Some strange people came into our room; my siblings and I were all cowering together as they talked near us, yet almost as if we weren’t there.

I must have gone to sleep, drowsiness from the stress and the warmth of my brothers and sisters huddling around me lulling me away, because I don’t remember anything after that for, I suppose, several hours.

When I awoke it was only because I was surrounded by numbing cold. I opened my eyes; yet I could see nothing. My ears perked up to the sounds around me, the distressed callings of my siblings. I tried to move my limbs, trying to get up, only to find that any solid surface had left me and I was bobbing freely in freezing cold water. The taste of salt filled my mouth as I attempted to answer the others’ cries, and whatever had been covering my face suddenly moved away. We all swam as best we could toward each other, the darkness around us so complete that we could make nothing out of our surroundings but the water and the empty sky.

Every bone in my body started to feel tired and numb. It didn’t take long. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and all I could watch as I did manage was my siblings, one after the other, starting to sink as they felt the same woozy feelings as I.

---

Thank goodness. Solid surface under me. I still couldn’t move, but to feel something underneath me to rest on, whatever it was, was nice.

I could see my breath making barely visible tiny clouds in the air whenever I exhaled. But I couldn’t see my siblings. I was the only one that had made it to shore. All over my body I felt the water, wherever it clung to me, starting to harden and freeze. I may have made it to shore, I thought, but what’s the point. I’m just going to die here anyway... at least it won’t be choking on saltwater.

When I opened my eyes again I would have startled, if I could have. At first I thought it was one of those angel creatures that my mother had once told me about, a messenger from the sky that took you to paradise when you died. But my blurry vision soon cleared up to make the figure more apparent to me.

A slender, almost unidentifiably masculine form was hovering over me, a light-toned coat around his body and a look of concern on his face. He muttered something, shaking his head in a grievous way, and bringing his warm hand onto my head. I gave a weak call, just to make sure this man knew I was alive. I was saved!

At my call, he jumped, seeming to have thought I was long gone already. More speaking from my savior, and I felt myself scooped up into a warm hold as he rushed me away from where I had lain. My thoughts wandered back to the angel legend when I felt our altitude increasing, and ever increasing, and before I knew it I was in a warm, golden sort of place. Paradise?

No, I reasoned. Just a house. The man set me on a soft couch, scampering off almost immediately to a different room. A warm herbal smell filled my nostrils, and I was just starting to lull to sleep when I felt more intense warmth around me, namely some warmed towels.

He wrapped my entire tiny body in the towels, scooping me into his arms again. He was speaking, but not to me, talking rapidly into a telephone he awkwardly held on his shoulder, both of his hands occupied with fragile me.

At length, awareness came to me a little more, and I began perking my dark gray ears up to everything he said. When he put down the telephone, he began to rock me gently as the humans do with their infants, whispering to me in a reassuring voice.

Quite a while later, there was another human tending to me as well, but this one more masculine and with deeper-colored hair. There was only word I heard clear from my savior as his fingers stroked my drying fur.

“Aluin.”