Rising Among the Stars

I stared at the little thing in my palm. It shivered and blinked, eyes opening and closing rapidly. The little thing's legs curled up around its round body, and I could feel it's rapid heartbeat vibrating the tips of my fingers.

I looked to the tiny creature's mother, who was laying on the floor next to me, staring at me with wide eyes. She lay rigidly, her own heart rate high enough that I could feel it pumping through her body. She had been like this for a while now.

"It's ok," I whispered to her, "I'm not going to hurt you."

Her ears twitched as she listened to my words. After a moment, she relaxed a bit in her rigidity and took a deep breath, lowering her ears back down. Her heartbeat steadied as she did so; when an animal is scared, their heart rate goes up. When they're calm, it goes back down. It's a good way to tell how they're feeling without having to ask them directly - although that's not always necessary. Most animals can tell if you're going to be nice or mean just by looking at your eyes. Animals have more practice with that than humans do these days.

Her relaxed state helped me with my next step: I picked up the baby from my palm and held it between my index and middle finger. The mother reacted to that immediately; she rose onto all fours and began sniffing the air, growling softly deep in her throat. Her tail whipped back and forth behind her furiously as her entire body tensed up again. This was... not ideal. But I had no choice but to keep going if I wanted the baby alive; otherwise it would be dead before sunrise anyway if I just left it here with its mother in this condition - which was what would happen if I didn't try something now *and* didn't get out of here soon myself because someone was probably going to be coming here soon after hearing all this noise we'd been making earlier when we were playing tag-you're-it until they got too exhausted to run anymore and then fell asleep right here where they were standing because that's what babies do. And since nobody had seen them yet (that they knew of), they were probably going to be very angry when they found out what happened here tonight. Some people are like that sometimes when they lose something really important to them. And babies are really important when you don't have any others of your own yet and you're married so you have to make some anyway or else you'll get divorced so you might as well just go ahead and do it because your wife deserves kids just like anybody else does even if her brain doesn't work quite right anymore after being smacked on the head by someone who didn't like what she said about politics once - which is why children are illegal nowadays so nobody gets into a situation like that in the first place even though if everyone just followed the rules we wouldn't need any rules at all plus babies are cute so why would anyone want them not around? It makes sense even if it doesn't quite follow logic sometimes.)

But there wasn't time for logic right now! I needed to get out of here before whoever showed up killed me! But... leaving without the baby wasn't an option either because then it would die before reaching adult hood assuming it lived through birth anyway which was kind of doubtful considering its mother wasn't really healthy right now either despite being older than most moms these days (but still younger than their grandmothers) and yet still young enough that she should be able to survive long enough for her son (or daughter? Or both? All three? Who knows!) to reach adult hood - which meant that he'd only have himself (or herself! Or both!) for company because his father isn't around anymore due to being executed for treason which is kind of sad but he shouldn't have tried that stuff he tried because society needs order or else things fall apart which is bad for everyone including him so maybe life will be better for his mom and him now after all! If he survives long enough, that is... Which means I'm the one who has to save him! So... first things first: get away from mom long enough to put him down somewhere safe then deal with whoever shows up next by running off into one of those dark tunnels where no one can see you usually except for other people who live down there but they don't need light anyway so there's nothing wrong with using their own darkness against them! Alright! Let's go! Now! Go go go go gogo gogogogogo!!!!