Parallels

Chapter Nine: Cold and Hard

"I can't blame you," Tony says from his place in the cell across from me. "I'm glad you're okay there. How long do you think it's going to be before we get our trials, eh?"

"I have no idea," I say, feeling a flash of worry take hold of my heart. "But I know that I'm probably going to freeze first."

"Don't jinx it," I say, teeth chattering faster and faster as time goes on. "Does anyone have any idea when we're going to get out of here, because I don't really want to wait...," I grumble. " I'm freezing my tail off here and I really just want to get out of here, you know?"

"I know the feeling," Tony says, giving me a half-frozen smile. "But I think we're going to have a visitor soon," he says. "Listen."

I do as I'm told, perking my ears up so that they catch any sound that passes by, and yep, sure enough, I hear three voices outside our cells- Mama's, Papa's, and Mrs. Neve's, each of them equally worried about us, and probably even more scared.

"When they come in, could someone ask them for some water, please?" Isaac says, having already taken his shirt off to get rid of the stench, and then used it as a rag to clean the rest of the vomit off as best as he could.

Unfortunately for him, there are no towels anywhere, and even after Mama looks for towels everywhere, even looking to the guards and asking them if they could find some, they have no luck, and it takes them two more hours to find anything to clean him off, two hours of Mama and Papa both griping at the guards and telling them to hurry up and do something, two hours of Isaac slowly whimpering as we all sit here, wondering how long it's going to be before this world decides to get its act together and treat us like decent people for once instead of trolling us and chewing us up and then spitting us out in bloody, messy, rather gravely wounded heaps.

That's an awful metaphor, I know, but I think that it's just about the truest one that I could ever come up with.

I hate this planet, I really do, and yet... and yet, I really can't ever see myself leaving this place, this planet, really, because I don't want to be here any more. Not here on Earth 'here,' more here in jail for fighting back when a flocking cop decided to taze my mate. That was the final straw, which, like me, has probably snapped by now.

What to do, what to do, really, what should I do? I have no idea, and I'm kinda sick of sitting here in the cold, freezing my tail off.

Of course, what option do I have? I attacked an officer, that's a punishable offense both here on Earth and Terra, and that's something that I don't even have to worry about, I know it is.

Now just to figure out how long they're going to send me away for, I can only guess that it's going to be a very long time, and a very long wait here in this ol' cell, freezing and hoping that everything will turn out alright, even though I know that I'm probably screwed.

Not ten seconds later, I hear the metallic clank that means that someone's coming. The only ones that have keys are the officers, but I hear more feet coming. Hopefully, it's either Mama or Papa, or maybe even both of them together. That would be nice, and hopefully it means that they've brought towels with them, I can tell that Isaac is getting a little sick of still being covered in his own vomit.

"Here you are, Isaac," Mama says, handing him two towels, which he takes eagerly, using them to clean himself off as best as he can. Thankfully for all of us (and even more so for him), most of the mess comes off, and then Mama kneels down to clean the rest off of the floor and off of his face, giving him the saddest look that I've ever seen on a human, the lines in her forehead creasing together in the middle as she frowns.

"I wish you didn't have to be here," she says, wiping the rest of the mess of of his ears, because somehow some of the mess got all the way back there.