the caverns of their teeth | Gilda [hyena]

[WT]

They're not in the den.

For lack of better ideas you crawl inside again anyway, pitching a low groan into the darkness. Yesterday that would have brought your cubs tumbling out to see you in an instant; today, not even an echo answers, your voice sinking heavy as your heart into the soft sides of the den. Three times you circle it, whining and scratching over the corners that still smell like your twins, until you have to admit defeat and drift back out to the main enclosure.

They aren't there, either, but that hasn't stopped you from searching yet. It won't for a while.

What does, for the moment, is Murtaza calling your name from the fence.

"You gotta stop, Gilda," he says as you reach the fence without a murmur of your usual greeting cackle. "You're breaking hearts out here." His hand, raised to cue you for sit, shakes; you do it anyway, but groan at him as you do, and his hand drops entirely. Quieter than you've ever heard him, he whispers, "I know, Gil. I'm sorry."

None of those, your name aside, are words you've been taught. What little anxiety was quelled by seeing a trusted face, confusion stokes; you break the sit and pace up and down the fence, whining, until he takes a heavy breath and gives you a yawn cue. Then you keep whining, but halt, looking between him and the enclosure, wondering when he'll do something important like bring your cubs out of hiding.

"Gilda," he says, a shade of his usual calm confidence back in his voice. "Lunch is still important. Come on." He gives you the yawn cue again. You shuffle, then face him and open your mouth wide. "Atta girl." Four seconds, five, and he gives the short, sharp whistle that lets you drop a pose, then drops a meatball into the fence feeder.

It plops out on your side. You look at it, look at him, look over your shoulder at the lonely enclosure.

"We can't afford for you to waste that right now," Murtaza says, voice strained again. "I can't get them back for you, okay? I wouldn't, they weren't going to make it here, we—fuck, this would be easier if you understood me." He pauses, his shoulders falling. "Maybe. Maybe it would be worse."

You know some of the symptoms of war: The evenings when every light in the zoo goes dark for a time while you flatten your ears against distant but disquieting blasts. The way you have less food now—enough, always, but barely. The missing crowds. The strained keepers. The silences where you once heard morning braying, noontime hoots, evening howls, one missing voice following another as neighbors vanish. That doesn't mean you know what war means, and he can't explain that to you. Not the basic facts like what would happen if one of those blasts sounded on top of you, and certainly not the kinds of things that have been keeping your keepers up at night—supply chain disruptions, rumors of a draft, energy rationing.

Hours and hours and hours of meetings, for months now, as people argue over which animals to move underground, which to smuggle out of the country, which the zoo can support if things get this bad, or that bad, or this bad.

You whine.

"Let's go, Gilda," he says—familiar words again, exhausted but determined. Your heart still isn't in it, but your ears perk up out of habit; and despite yourself, the next time he whistles, you accept the meatball.



title song is "The Spine Song" by Cake Bake Betty.

[WT]

Murtaza wanted to get you out early. The zoo has a long-standing relationship with the sanctuary in Tanzania where your mother was born, and colleagues there offered an emergency intake agreement as soon as they understood the situation. The problem was devoting resources to getting you there; half the zoo staff thought things wouldn't get as bad as all that—that the quaint little rebellion would be quashed soon enough, no lasting harm done—and the rest couldn't crunch numbers fast enough or hard enough to make every competing claim on funding work.

Then things did get that bad, and Panem's borders closed, and the numbers got worse.

It's not all hopeless. Small animals, easily sedated and easily tucked into corners, can be smuggled more cheaply than large ones. No one wanted to send the cubs into the void, but weighed against watching them dwindle and die when you couldn't feed them anymore, there was no question. Crossed fingers and scattered prayers and ugly, furious tears, but no question.

And for Rehema, at least, the gamble will pay off. In a stroke of tragic serendipity, she will arrive in Tanzania days after one of the sanctuary's females loses her only cub. The conservation team will rush to introduce them with bated breath, but they needn't worry; they'll take to each other within the afternoon, and from there Rehema's place in the clan will be assured. By the time she's an adult she will hunt as well as any of them, and by the time old age kills her by way of liver failure some twenty-odd years down the line, she will have lived as contented a life on the plains as any spotted hyena could wish for—not a life without struggle or scars, but a life lived under open sun, surrounded by extended family.

Sifa, less lucky, will find himself in bribable hands, then hands with more money than sense. Ultimately he will grow up a mere hour's drive from you—doted on as a hand-fed cub, then boxed in as he outgrows the confines of the family home, then killed a year later when the humans who claim him decide the cute, soft cub they treasured has become a scraggly, frightening thing, no longer worth wasting money to keep.

Maybe that's still a better life than he would have had with you. You'll never know to wonder.

For your part, you will move on in time, but never entirely let go. Long after you've stopped thinking about it—after the hard times turn hard enough to stop you thinking of anything but your next meal; after your little clan has been moved underground and back up, turning skeletal and patchy then sleek and glossy again in the process; after you've all lived comfortably again for long enough that the keepers deem it safe to return to feeding you together—the memory of waking up alone will cling fast. The staff who weathered the war with you, swamped with traumatized animals and traumatized themselves, will be too used to such things to worry much, but they'll see it in the way you become faintly but permanently needle-shy, shuffling anxiously where you once presented your throat or shoulder without hesitation.

Given your moment to be nervous, you still follow the cue almost every time. Your humans have always, after all, kept you safe.

[WT]

"—thought I knew you better than this, I really did," Murtaza says as he comes into view alongside two other humans—Adi, another of the old keepers, and one you've never seen. They're striding fast, Adi and the stranger with purpose and Murtaza with an awkward path as though he's trying and failing to cut them off. "Everything we said about ethics during the war, what was that to you, bullshit?"

"That was marketing," Adi says. "So is this."

"Marke—" Murtaza sputters. "If you won't stop this for the animals and you won't stop it for the kids, think about the press, you really think this is going to go over well?"

"The public isn't really the audience I'm thinking about, here."

Caught between the usual happiness to see your favorite keepers and alarm at hearing them argue, you giggle at the fence. None of the humans spares you even a glance; Murtaza grabs Adi's arm, and the whole group wrenches to a stop. "Don't do this."

She doesn't have time to answer before the stranger pulls Murtaza away from her and nods. "Go ahead, Adi."

Murtaza keeps shouting up a storm in the stranger's hold, but Adi is as serene as she's ever been at training as she draws up to the other side of the fence. "Hi, Gilda," she says brightly, popping open the bucket slung over her arm. "How's my best girl, huh? Want to help us with something? Let's go."

The smell from the bucket doesn't entirely distract you from Murtaza or from the needle looming in Adi's hand, but it catches enough of your attention that you don't think to question what's going on as she runs you through a couple basic cues and pops meatballs through the feeder. You're used to demonstrating in front of loud humans, after all, even if they're usually cubs you've never met; you don't start to worry—properly worry—until Adi holds her palm flat and curls every finger but one. Poke.

Old fright buzzes under your skin for a moment; you prance in place, glancing at Murtaza in the background, then back at Adi. He's still arguing furiously with the stranger holding him back, but she's still smiling, holding the cue steady, everything about her demeanor perfectly normal.

You step forward, front paws shuffled up against the fence, and offer her your throat.