I did it! Safety at last and a place to sleep whenever that finally happens. It’s been three years, but I’m sure I’ll get tired eventually. The keepers here say that I’ll have to be housed with the other beasts. Something about their great bubbly lord not wanting me to think I’m important.
The other animals won’t stop talking, they make my ears hurt, but maybe it’s better than with the talking creatures. Can you imagine what they say?
Hmm. Maybe I should go figure that out on my own. After I finish this book.
* * *
What’s this? It’s unfinished. Possibly the author wanted to let the reader fill in the rest of the words. Write their own ending. There’s not much here. Maybe I’ll have to write the whole book myself. I’ve done that before.
* * *
There hasn’t been a new book in too long. Too much time with my own thoughts and the bird calls. I try to call back —both to the thoughts and the birds— but neither will mimic me in return. I’ll have to try hard to learn the language of the birds. They can fly between the enclosures, they can see the routes out of here.
* * *
It’s talking to me again. The voice in my mind. It has a name that isn’t my own and a voice that sounds like rocks at the bottom of a river. I don’t like it. It keeps begging me to return. To come back but I don’t want to go. It’s safe here. Safe with the books and new knowledge to fill in the gaps where my mind forgets. I can’t leave. Not with all these holes in my head and the eyes on my arms.
* * *.
My feet are cold.
* * *
Dig. Must be a way out under the surface. Dirt refills where it’s missing. Use hands and scrape with feet. Eat the ground, teeth and nails and claws to scour.
Frielvi’s looking for Morian but she won’t find him. He’ll be eaten by the ground and missing forever. A mystery. More special than she hoped for.”
