Friendship and hardship - Luna and the sun chapter 4
Chris wakes up with a startle. He looks around in the room. His entire body is shivering with fear, and his breath is shallow and quick. He had a terrible nightmare; he dreamt he had been chased by wildlings who were trying to finish him off. He would stumble on a twig and fall to the ground. The wildlings lunging themselves towards him; and at that moment, he would wake up. He has been having this nightmare a couple of times now, but this was the first time Luna was in it. She had been running alongside him, as they ran for their lives. Chris lifts the bed sheet to see Luna. Luna was curled up into a ball right next to him, sleeping deeply. Chris looks at the clock; 3:00AM. He yawns. It is way too early to wake up, and his got a long day ahead of him today, even though it is a Friday and weekend is coming. So, he inches closer to Luna, and curls up around her; his head resting next to hers, and his tail providing him with a kind of pillow. He closes his eyes, and it does not take a long time for his mind to wander back into the realms of dreams... But elsewhere, sleep is not a priority.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the North Sea...
<<I am warning the three of you!!! Fix this goddamn mess, or I will skin you alive and use your hides as bedding! Do you hear me?! DO YOU?!!!>> Mrs. Catwiks were screaming at the triplets in front of her. The three black cats were cowering in fear in front of her; they had been working for over 14hours now at the oil rig, trying to fix the blockage preventing the rig from extracting oil from the oil fields below them. The tabby cat in front of them towers above them, her eyes looking as they are shooting lighting at the three of them. <<But Mrs. Catwiks, they have been going at this for 14hours now.>> the only other mammal in the room, a sturdy looking male lynx, Thor, speaks up. The only mammal on the whole rig known to dare stand up against Mrs. Catwiks, he finds her behavior truly disgusting. Not to mention it would be illegal back on the mainland, threatening her engineers like that. <<these three are among the company's best engineers. If they cannot fix this problem, it is not their fault, and threatening them like you do now, will do nothing to help us solve this situation.>>. <<Excuse me?>> Mrs. Catwiks asks, walking towards the lynx, <<I AM THE BOSS HERE! Not you, not these damn cats, and no-one else! ME! Do I have to write in your face for you learn your place in the ranks here?>>. <<You may outrank me back at the mainland Mrs. Catwiks, but this rig is my responsibility. While you are out here, I am above you. And if I hear you threaten anyone here again, I swear to God; I will personally throw you over the railing to the supply boats, and have you hauled back to the mainland. Is that clear enough to you?>>. Mrs. Catwiks' rage is boiling under her skin, her entire body shivering with it. Thor looks at her with a stern look. <<You know what, fuck you guys! I will fix this mess myself!>>. She walks to the triplets, and takes a hold of their tools, before she leaves the mess hall, they had taken shelter in. The storm outside is howling, the winds easily reach hurricane speeds. Mrs. Catwiks swears and curses the triplets as she walks; they all had master's degrees in petroleum tech, yet they cannot do shit on the platform. Why did she hire these idiots? Why? She reaches the drill rig, where the blockage has occurred. Parts lay scattered all around her; the workers had tried to dismantle the drilling bits in a vain attempt at clearing the blockage, but nothing had seemed to work. Mrs. Catwiks gets down to work. Hours slides by, and yet she keeps on working, hammering away with her tools, and drilling her way into the drill pipe in attempts at clearing the blockage...
Back on the mainland
The morning sun shines through the curtains in the guest room and onto Chris' face, waking him from his slumber. He stretches his legs, and yawns loudly. Luna is still sleeping, and Chris decides to wake up early; he had for once woken up before his alarm clock would ring, so he might as well make good use of the time and prepare a proper breakfast. He rummages through the refrigerator, to find a bowl of pancake mixture, which he figures he might as well put to good use before it spoils. It takes him little time to get the pancakes rolling, and the smell of the pancakes makes short work of waking Luna up and lure her down to the kitchen. <<Good morning Luna.>>. Luna gives no response, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. They had gone to bed early the previous evening, but apparently Luna still found it difficult to get up, even as she sits down on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Her fur a complete mess. Chris checks the cupboards for honey, and judging by how sleepy Luna is, decides to give her extra honey on her pancakes; perhaps a little sugar will get the girl up and running in no time. Chris prefers his pancakes without honey. The two sits at the table eating their pancakes in silence. <<So, did you sleep well?>> Chris asks after finishing his last pancake. Luna looks at him, her face showing she is still drowsy. <<Yeah, I guess.>> she replies, yawning as she speaks. <<Well, hopefully you can find more energy for later when school starts, the weekend is not here just yet you know.>>. <<Tell me about it...>> Luna rubs her eyes again, trying to get the last bits of sleep out of her body. <<I know what will get you going, a good, long, morning shower.>> Chris speaks as he clears the table of the plates and grabs a hold of her paw.
By the time Luna has finished her shower, it is time to leave for school. Luna leaves for her school bus, while Chris is picked up by a friend who has a driver's license. Luna is in for a shock when she arrives at the school. Frederic was not on the school bus today, which is weird considering he is usually always on time. Instead, his father, a firefighter, has driven his son to school. Luna is shocked when she sees her friend. Frederic's right face has been covered in white band-aid from his right eye and up, covering his ear. <<What... What has happened to you?>> Luna asks her friend in shock. Frederic does not answer her, instead he looks down in shame. His father does not hesitate to tell her what has happened. Apparently, Frederic had taken his stuff together and approached Jessica, the hottest otter girl. He had tried to ask her if she would like to come over to his place for a playdate, but instead of politely saying no, the girl had literally thrown herself upon him. She bit his right ear and used her sharp claws to cut his right face up badly, right across the eye socket. Frederic's father was told by the vet that it was only sheer luck that had made it so that Frederic's eye was left without injury; had Jessica clawed him just a little bit to the side, she could have blinded his eye. What is worse; Frederic had been forbidden from swimming while wearing the eye patch, and his slipstream-pass had been revoked. A slipstream-pass is a paid service that gives otters and other mammals the right to use an extensive network of canals and slipstreams that has been built all over the country, and the world. They provide a fast and efficient method of transportation for travelling, as it allows otters to swim three times quicker than they would have done under normal circumstances. It is essentially as important as driving a car, only that for these mammals, it is part of their very soul; their body; their backbone. An otter being banned from swimming, must literally feel like a fish out of water. Luna cannot help but feel bad for her friend, considering that he loves to swim, even so much more than otters normally do. His usual attire consisting of just a pair of sky-blue swimming trunks and a pair of protective goggles, had now been replaced with a pair of red shorts, and a green t-shirt. The boy's eyes still looking down in shame. <<By the way Luna, do you happen to know if Chris is available as a babysitter by any chance?>> Frederic's father asks after having finished telling her about what had happened to Frederic. <<His babysitting me right now, you should try to call him.>> Luna responds, the thought of getting to spend the weekend with Frederic filling her with joy. The fire fighter tells her that he will do that, before he is forced to leave as he receives a call on his radio, notifying him of a fire nearby. As he enters his car, he shouts back at Luna to look out for his son, which she nods her head in affirmation to.
The school day slides by slowly for the two. Frederic was instantly noticed the minute he stepped his paws into the school building; the eye patch did not help his already strained position within the provisional hierarchy. If anything, it only made it easier for the school bullies to pick on him and pick they did. Frederic managed to evade them for most of the day, until the lunch break. As per usual, his mother had sent with him the type of trout he likes. She had caught them herself; her bitemarks still visible in the fish. Which was unfortunately picked up by the bullies. Halfway through eating his fish, he heard something. Luna heard it too, and her ears instantly dropped, her tail touching the ground. She had heard it before and know very well what it is. One of their classmates had began making a hissing sound. It was a poor imitation but being an otter Frederic knew what it was; they were mimicking the hissing sound that wildling and savage otters make, especially when they are in distress. To start with, only one or two pupils were making the hissing sound, but it quickly spread around the cafeteria, until more than 100pupils were all hissing at him. The only pupils who refused to participate in the humiliating chanting, were otters themselves. Them, and Luna, who desperate tried to convince her classmates not to make a mockery of her friend. This was unfortunately not the first time Frederic had been made fun of like this, and he had long since learned not to take to heart when others mocked his kind like this. He finished his first trout, and was about to start on a new one, when suddenly, out of no-where, one of the other pupils throws tomato soup right in his face. Luna jumps up at this, and yells at the pupil for this, telling him to piss off. The pupil, a young bunny, merely looks back at her with a mockery expression in his face and makes a comment. Something down the lines of how Luna should go take care of business, like the rest of her kind. And do not think ``business'' in this context means anything nice. Luna responds by swinging her paw at the boy; she does not touch him, but she does make him scared enough to back off. Frederic by now has tried to wipe the soup from his face, but in doing so had smeared it all over his clothes and chest. Which only meant things were about to get so much worse for the poor otter. <<Hey, look it, the wilding has caught his prey!>> one of the youngsters yelled out; with the tomato soup all over his face and upper body, Frederic indeed looked like he had killed a prey. The mocking hissing from the pupils stopped. In it's place, they began to chant; <<Wildliii-iii-iii-iiing! Wild! Wild! Wildl-iii-iii-iii-iii-ng!>>. This finally broke Frederic, and the poor otter began to cry. Suddenly, he was grabbed from behind, and thrown onto the floor. The fish he had been eating was torn from his paws, and one kid held it up as high as he could, pointing to the bitemarks that were too big for the boy: <<Lookit! They hunt like the wildlings do it!>>. Frederic tried to speak, to beg for mercy, but his fear had grown so large by now, that when he tried to speak, he was only able to mutter out a couple of squeaks that no-one could understand, which only fueled the crowd around him. A couple of the pupils broke into the kitchen area, where a huge cauldron filled to the brim with tomato soup were located. They brought the thing out into the cafeteria, and before poor Frederic had any chance to react, he was grabbed by the tail, and dropped into the soup. The soup blinded him, and he lost all sense of direction, fighting for his dear life to find a surface to breech, but it was to no avail. Then, he felt a pair of paws take a hold of him and drag him up. He gasped for breath, his paws reaching for his eyes as he desperately tried to clean his eyes from the soup, but it was so much by now, and it had soaked into his fur, that he could not clear his one good eye out. He felt around his injured eye and realized that his eye patch had been torn away. The paws that had helped him to the surface guided his own paws to the brim of the cauldron, and he managed to climb out of the cauldron and landed on the hard, tiled floor below. Luna had had enough; she stood in front of Frederic, and yelled at the kids around her, threatening to bite the face off anyone who dared to touch her friend. One poor little lynx did not take her threat seriously, and Luna snapped her fingers; the girl ran off screaming. Luna had made sure not to break her skin, but it still would have hurt. She took a hold of her friend and helped him back on his feet; his feet were too slippery to get a hold, so she had to support him as they left the cafeteria. Luna considered helping Frederic to the boy's bathroom, but the fact that no teachers or staff had intervened, despite how loudly the other pupils had been chanting, made her so angry she just wanted to get out. Which she did; she walked out the main entrance, not caring to get her school gear, and began the walk back home. Luckily, she did not live all that far away from school, and she knows that Chris usually has short school days on Fridays, which means he will be home around the same time that they will be there. Luna does her best to comfort her friend as they walk, and by the time they arrive at her house, Frederic has finally stopped crying. <<Hey Luna, you are home early->> Chris starts. Then, he gets to look at Frederic; <<What in the- What has happened here?>>. Luna tells Chris everything that happened back at school, as Chris finds a washing cloth that he dunks in warm water, to wash the otter's face. Even though Chris has babysat the boy on numerous occasions and know him well, it is not until Frederic begins to speak that he recognizes him; that is how much tomato soup had soaked into his fur. Chris tries his best to clean the otter's face and upper body with the cloth, but soon realizes there are just too much, so he carries the otter down the stairs to the downstairs shower rooms, where he strips the boy of his clothing, leaving him in his underwear. He had difficulties getting the shirt over Frederic's head, the otter's fur sticking to the shirt and refusing to let go. It took Chris over an hour of careful scrubbing and rinsing, and over a bottle of soap, but he finally got all the tomato soup out of the fur. Amazingly, the timer for the showers was not triggered. Frederic spoke of nothing, not even answering Chris when he asked questions about what had transpired at the school cafeteria, though Luna would fill in the gaps as best as she could. Frederic's clothes were too soaked with the soup to be usable in any circumstance, so Chris made the short walk back to his own home, where he borrowed a change of clothes from his younger brother. The clothes were intended for a young fox, and thus they were baggy and loose when worn by the otter, but the otter is simply happy to have clean clothes on his body again, so he does not complain about it. Chris began to get a clearer and clearer picture of what had happened at the school, and it did not take him long to call the school, telling him his very honest opinion on the matters, and had it not been for him having kids around, he would probably have been swearing like a drunk sailor. Next, he made a call to Frederic's parents, notifying them of the situation; at the same time, Frederic's father was able to ask him if he could watch over the boy for the weekend, which Chris agreed to do. Frederic's father had to be held back by his fellow firefighters that day when he arrived at the school to speak with the staff; if they had not been there, there is a good chance he would have had to be arrested for assaulting the staff.
Frederic in the meantime was left shaking and quivering over the incident; this was not the first time he had been bullied like this, but this was by far the worst he has experienced so far. Luna tried to distract him by inviting him to play with her, but the boy refused her invitations. Finally, Frederic snapped while they were eating dinner later that day; <<What is the point, I will always be a wildling in the eyes of those idiots.>> he reasoned. <<Frederic, that is not->>. <<Listen Luna! I know you try to help me! But you saw them! You heard what they were chanting! You saw what they DID TO ME!>> he looks his friend in the eyes; <<Grow up Luna! Regardless of how much of an angel you try to portray yourself as; evil will persist in this world regardless of what we try to do, and some mammals, are doomed to be different from others.>>. Frederic had his face planted in his paws by now; <<I will always be different...>>. Luna reached out for him, and gave him a hug, refusing to let go. <<You are right Frederic. You are different.>> Chris speaks up as he looks at the two kids now hugging one another; Frederic returning the hug to Luna; <<You will always be different. Today. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. Next week. Next year. You will always be different Frederic. Just as I am different, and just as Luna is different. Mammals will always look down on you, mammals will always speak behind your back. But listen to me when I say this Frederic.>> Chris had walked over to Frederic and looked him the eyes; <<No matter what they say, Luna will always be your friend. Your mother and father, they will always love you more than anything else in this world. High above you, our ancestors will forever look down upon you, and protect and guide you through your life. And no matter what they say, you will always remain a mammal, just like everyone else.>>. The three of them looked at one another; neither of them speaking a word. They just sit there, enjoying their time together, eventually moving to the living room, where they sat down in the couch, and began to watch the TV...
Meanwhile, out in the North Sea...
Mrs. Cawiks were exhausted. She had been going at it for more than 16hours by now since she arrived with the helicopter yesterday, and she had not been able to clear the blockage preventing the rig from pumping oil. The triplets had bailed on her; after she had threatened them on their life, they had left the oil rig on the first supply vessel that had disembarked and were probably halfway to the mainland by now. Mrs. Catwik had to call it a quits; if she were to work even an hour more, there is a real risk she may fall over the railing and to her death in the seas below. Reluctantly, she decided to call it a night, and get some much-needed sleep. The blockage would have to wait until tomorrow to be cleared out she reasoned. The clock was just 8pm, but she swiftly fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, her mind quickly being carried away into the lands of the dreams...
Back at the mainland...
Chris looked over the two young mammals as they curled up and went to sleep. He had brought out an old mattress from the attic and set it down on the floor in Luna's bedroom so that Frederic could sleep on it, while Luna slept in her own bed. The two mammals had kept close to one another after their little conversation earlier, where Frederic had his little outburst. It hurts Chris' heart to think about such an innocent little boy being exposed to such pains as being branded as a wildling. It is not something any civilized mammal would accuse another of being, it carries much stigma and is surrounded by a veil of shame and hatred. Wildlings are mammals who are conscious of the world around them, yet still they actively choose to live the life of their feral ancestors. It is not to be confused with savages and rogues; savages are mammals who are either born feral, or who at some point revert to their feral state. Savagery cannot be treated and is feared above everything else by any mammal who has their senses in order. Rogues on the other hand, are mammals who are thrown back to being feral for medical reasons, and rogues can be treated of their condition, meaning they can return to being a civilized mammal. It is because of the wild and uncontrolled nature of savages and rogues that wildlings are looked so much down upon in society, and why being called out as a wildling is as insulting as it is. That, and the fact that many wildlings frequently attack unsuspecting mammals. Chris has been called a wildling many times in his short life; foxes and otters are among the mammals who are called out the most frequently for being wildlings, but otters have to endure it much more than any others, because they still practice many of the behaviors seen in savages and rogues. While mammals like foxes have long since ended their practice of hunting their prey, otters do not have to eat other mammals; they instead sustain themselves primarily on fish and marine creatures. So, they have maintained their feral need to hunt their fish prey. And even though otters these days are carefully trained on how to put their prey down the most efficiently, by biting the fish directly over the head with a characteristic snap-bite, they are still looked down upon by many mammals. So as Chris looks over the young otter, now curled tightly up and breathing lightly as he drifts off to sleep, it only pains the teenager to know that Frederic could have been any more right about what he said; he will always be different. And that difference will cause him more pain in the future. Chris lets his eyes sneak their way over to Luna, and he can see that she is not truly asleep; she keeps one eye open to keep a watch on Frederic. Chris tells her to go to sleep as it is getting late, and after giving him a disappointed look, she closes her eyes and Chris can see that she begins to drift off to sleep. Chris decides he might as well just go to sleep too, as there is no point in staying awake any longer...
