Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
2
My period wipes me out for the better part of a week, or, on this planet, about three days. I keep my activities to the bare minimum, keeping Strumpet’s hay and water topped up and watching reruns of ancient human television shows about a group of friends who like to drink coffee and are average, at best, at pursuing romantic relationships. It’s a timeless epic, one that has stayed with us over many hundreds of years. I watch it from beginning to end while lying cramped around a hot stone that’s supposed to help, and certainly makes things worse when it is removed.
Strumpet checks in on me from time to time, sticking her head in the dome door. Her pen adjoins the dome, so she’s part of my indoor/outdoor flow. The idea is I am able to keep an eye on her and vice versa. She does not seem concerned by my lack of activity. She’s too busy screaming her face off day and night, which does not help my mood at all. I resort to ear plugs in order to get some peace and quiet. That proves to be a mistake, and when the long Capricorn night ends, I make a horrible discovery.
Everything is quiet. Too quiet.
“Strumpet?”
She’s usually hungry for her grain treaties. Every morning she bangs her little hoof against the door frame and demands I feed her. It is our tradition. At first light, the world is silent.
I get up and look out the door. Strumpet is gone. The pen is just as it has always been, but she is not there as she always has been. It’s like she’s simply disappeared, evaporated into the great beyond.
I didn’t know how attached I was to her until this very moment. Her absence is a crushing blow. I feel a kind of aloneness that is not enjoyable, a big sucking void at the core of my being opening up. Am I still hormonal and slightly dramatic? Maybe? But they told us we would bond to our animal companions deeply, and they were right.
“STRUMPET!” I scream her name and fall silent, waiting to hear some mad answering shriek. There’s no shriek. No cry. There’s no sound at all besides the wind gently toying with blades of grass.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I swear to myself over and over again as I clamber into clothes for the reconnaissance mission. She can’t have disappeared. She must have jumped the fence.
I have to find her. Fortunately, the wet weather has provided some clues in the forms of little goat hoof prints that go off through the grass and back in the direction of the scary river that ate my birth control. I pack a second bag quickly, this time sure to take only what I might need, or rather, what I am prepared to lose.
I fed her last night, but with these long nights she could have been gone for almost an entire earth day. A goat can travel a long way in that time, or I could find her butchered remains consumed by some predatory animal. It’s a chilling possibility, but I can’t pretend it isn’t one.
Plunging into the forest, I have to look for different kinds of clues. The ground isn’t as wet here, but this is prime forage territory for her. Sure enough, within a few feet of the point of entry, I find a tuft of white fluff caught on a branch. I’m going the right way. I’d know Strumpet’s fur anywhere, and when I pluck it from the tree and put it to my nose, I draw in her scent. It feels familiar, like home.
“Strumpet!” I call her name, hoping to hear one of her dramatic bleats coming from the forest nearby. I hear nothing. I just have to keep moving. I have to keep hoping I’ll find her intact and alive. I tell myself that Strumpet is strong and smart. She’s a little tank, capable of taking down a legendary instructor. She’s not going to let herself be consumed by the wilderness. Strumpet is the one who consumes.
I encounter a series of bushy shrubs she must have found particularly tasty, as her fur is caught among their thorns. Strumpet doesn’t care if a plant really wants to be eaten or not. She’ll brave any kind of obstacle to get what she wants. She’s motivated, driven, an independent female who won’t let anything stop her. She’s a goddamn inspiration, that’s what she is. I brush a little tear away from my eye. I feel so guilty now for ever thinking she was a joke companion. The instructors might have thought they were playing a prank on me, but I wouldn’t change Strumpet for all the lions and wolves in the world.
“Strumpet!”
I keep calling intermittently, hoping for a response. I don’t hear anything, but I do continue to encounter little clues here and there. Bits of bark removed with goat-like precision. Bushes freshly stripped of leaves. It’s possible that I am seeing the signs of the presence of other creatures, but I feel as though I am on her trail. Also, there are Strumpet nuggets to track, little dark round spherical balls deposited at fairly equal intervals. She has left me a trail of, well, not quite breadcrumbs to follow but something almost as good.