Back to the Start
Almost of their own volition, your wings start to twitch and work behind you. You don't know how the muscles work, but somehow your body seems to know for you. It ripples, and the muscles in your back around the base of the wings twitch and work... and they give a great flap that almost lifts you from the ground.
It isn't time right now -- you know there's no point in you attempting to learn to fly right this second... but it's a promising start to know that it seems to be something that you can do, if you want to. If you need to. You might need to, if only to get away from the males that are still stalking around in here somewhere.
There's a large cave-type structure in the middle of the enclosure. It looks like the dens that you have seen the lions laying around in lazily when you've been to the zoo.
Where were the males? Were they always nestled up in there while the females stalked the enclosure? You've watched enough documentaries to know that it was the lionesses who hunt... but who is to say that sphynx biology is even the same as that of lions... just because there's a den. There might be a giant nest in there, with the wings on your back.
You have no answers.
You have no one who you can pose the questions to.
Instead, you keep walking.
You'd like to think that your pacing would bring you somewhere... but eventually, and it takes you quite some time, you realize that the only place that it's bringing you to is right back where you started from. The crowd is a different one, but it's much the same. You've walked a massive circle, and there wasn't one damn thing that you noticed that would be of any help to you whatsoever.
No openings.
No doors.
Nothing that you could use your human level of intelligence with in order to gain any type of advantage over what is happening to you.
You feel your body cave in on itself, and you curl up on the ground in front of the bars. It takes you a few moments, but your shift yourself into a position so that you can't see the people at your back, but you can keep your eye on the den in the middle of the arena. That way... at least you'll know if the males approach.
It's the best that you can do.
There aren't any answers around you, so you're going to just have to wait for them to come to you... you don't know if anyone will show up to try to speak to you, to try to explain what's happening... but you're making yourself a promise right now that you aren't moving from this spot until something happens.
It's a bold promise, when you don't have any information or reassurances to back it up... but in that moment, it's the only thing that brings you any measure of comfort, and you know for a fact that you need all of the comfort that you can get.
You settle in.
You close your eyes.
You try to rest, try to sleep, try to pray to whatever higher power there is that when you wake up, this will have all been a dream.
Written by Karlyene on 10 October 2020