I dreamed I was raising a boy who was a fox.
He had been rescued from a laboratory, but I was never sure why he had defaulted to me. Other people dropped by occasionally, who knew much more about his past and his physiology than I did, but he paid even less attention to them than he did to me. (When very small, he had curled up against my arm as I read. Half-grown, he roamed around the apartment, inspecting pieces of the household that I could not query him about: the silverware drawer, the peeling radiator in the bathroom, the cords on the Venetian blinds. It was like watching a mythological hero, adolescent by three months, adult in six. Even in the dream, I had no idea if this was normal for a fox.) He behaved like none of the stereotypes: direct, serious, unimpressed. Sandy-haired, small and deep-chested. Everyone wanted him to go into science or espionage; he was interested in forestry and the army. The quickness and openness of his smile was a consistent surprise.
There was also a girl who was a rat. They had been taken from the lab together, but no one would tell me what had become of her after that. We found her in a museum, a slender black rat with a long, whisking tail, a sheen on her fur like a cormorant's; behind glass in some lit-up, driftwoody exhibit, habitats of the world. I don't know how they spoke, but he told me she was conducting an experiment. There was some kind of argument between them, but I never learned what it was about. It's possible neither of them (even if they had cared to) would have been able to explain it to me.
There was rainforest, too, but I can't remember where it fit in. With the occasional visitors, I think, who are vaguer shapes in my memory than in the dream, where they all had names and quirks and day jobs; not officials, but they weren't laypeople, either. Something about France. He was good at mathematics. I thought, in the dream, this half-world, unaffectionate, self-contained child was the only kind I would ever be suitable to raise.
He had been rescued from a laboratory, but I was never sure why he had defaulted to me. Other people dropped by occasionally, who knew much more about his past and his physiology than I did, but he paid even less attention to them than he did to me. (When very small, he had curled up against my arm as I read. Half-grown, he roamed around the apartment, inspecting pieces of the household that I could not query him about: the silverware drawer, the peeling radiator in the bathroom, the cords on the Venetian blinds. It was like watching a mythological hero, adolescent by three months, adult in six. Even in the dream, I had no idea if this was normal for a fox.) He behaved like none of the stereotypes: direct, serious, unimpressed. Sandy-haired, small and deep-chested. Everyone wanted him to go into science or espionage; he was interested in forestry and the army. The quickness and openness of his smile was a consistent surprise.
There was also a girl who was a rat. They had been taken from the lab together, but no one would tell me what had become of her after that. We found her in a museum, a slender black rat with a long, whisking tail, a sheen on her fur like a cormorant's; behind glass in some lit-up, driftwoody exhibit, habitats of the world. I don't know how they spoke, but he told me she was conducting an experiment. There was some kind of argument between them, but I never learned what it was about. It's possible neither of them (even if they had cared to) would have been able to explain it to me.
There was rainforest, too, but I can't remember where it fit in. With the occasional visitors, I think, who are vaguer shapes in my memory than in the dream, where they all had names and quirks and day jobs; not officials, but they weren't laypeople, either. Something about France. He was good at mathematics. I thought, in the dream, this half-world, unaffectionate, self-contained child was the only kind I would ever be suitable to raise.
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