Her Name (7)

Iris exited the litter box and looked around. Kyro wasn't around, so she dragged out a shirt from his washbasin and cleaned her paws on it. She wasn't going to walk around dirty, with white granules stuck to her feet.

When she was about to walk out of the bathroom, she noticed Kyro rushing around the bedroom like mad. He was half-crawling, half-sliding through the floor, looking under everything, opening every cabinet.

'What is he looking for?' she wondered, but didn't approach him. He might not notice her small frame in his mad search and hit her with the back of his hand and foot.

Instead, Iris waited in the bathroom. It seemed like the safest place to be right now. Kyro was growing more and more desperate, clearly unable to accept that he'd lost something.

Could it be something she could swallow accidentally? Or damage by playing with it? That was the most likely answer. Iris smiled to herself and waited till he moved on to search through the living room before sauntering into the bedroom.

On her way, she found the colorful mouse and picked it up. She was starting to understand why pets played with such silly things. As an animal, she was limited to the space of the apartment and could do nothing besides running around, sleeping, and eating. And she'd already done all of those during the last two days.

The bed wasn't tall in human standards, but for Iris, it was like a small mountain. Still, she wanted to lie more comfortably than on the hard ground. It took her a dozen tries, but she finally managed to jump up. Kyro was luckily making enough noise that he didn't hear her falls or how she brought half the blanket down while trying to climb it.

But who cared about that, she was now on the bed. It was soft and smelled nice, so she rolled around a bit before settling down with the mouse between her teeth. While chewing on it, she imagined herself as one of those old men in movies with a pipe in their mouth. Then, in her head, she replaced the pipe in their mouths with her toy mouse and fell back laughing. That image was certainly unforgettable.

Kyro closed the last cabinet in the kitchen—he had no idea how the fennec might have opened it and gotten in, but he had to look everywhere—and cursed. The fox wasn't in the house. He'd looked everywhere, in every single corner and every empty space, but none of them contained a sandy-colored fox.

His fist landed on the counter with enough force to startle Lucy, who ventured in to see what's wrong, but Kyro couldn't be bothered to calm him. The fox could already be dead by now.

His heart clenched at the thought, and he pushed it away. There was still time. Maybe it hadn't run too far. He ran to the bedroom to grab his phone when the mess on the bed caught his eye. He hadn't slept there, so why was it this—

The fox lay on the bed, happily tearing at the mouse. Upon noticing him staring, the fennec looked up and cooed at him, then returned to munching on the mouse. It was clearly unaware of the shock Kyro had suffered.

He could only stand in the middle of the room, staring at the little creature. His mind was blank, not a single thought in it. Or even a fragment of one.