Blue Menagerie Interlude

(This will probably not go in the "official" version- but I had a hankering to write a bit from Zeb's perspective...)

It had been a long time since he’s thought of himself as a little boy. Truth be told, he didn’t know that he’d ever really thought of himself as “little boy”. He’d just been Zeb. It wasn’t until after the change that it had occurred to him that “little boy” was part of what Zeb was. And for a while he did think of himself as little boy, in spite of the fact that he had fur, and fangs, and a (admittedly cool) tail. He would repeat it to himself, thinking that surely someone would look at him and recognize him for what he was, take him away from this horrible place and back to his family. But time passed, and no one else saw “little boy” when they looked at him- they saw “lemur”, and treated him as such. Even she tended to call him “creature” rather than “boy”… and in time he just… forgot.

Well, maybe not forgot- but didn’t think about it anymore. It was hard to hold the idea of “little boy” in his head, even harder to hold the name “Zeb”. It was exhausting, and made his head ache. It was a relief to just… give in. He stopped trying to make human-sounds and gave in to the twits, purrs, yaps and trills that came so naturally. He surrendered to what he was, and in time what he had been became a sort of a dream-of-a-memory-of-a-dream. Every once in while he would remember, but it always made him so sad, so angry… better to let it go. Better to stay in the unconcerned waking slumber of an animal’s eternal now.

But then he heard that sound, that sound that had tickled him back to awareness that went beyond the moment.

“…zzz…”

That sound had a special meaning. He knew that sound. And he knew the girl who had made it. Knew she was family-troop, even tho’ she was human. He reached out a hand and tried to tell her, “I’m here!”

The girl had gone away. But she had woken “Zeb” up again- and he did not intend to go back to sleep.