Inspired by LillianGordonTaylors' suggestion to write a story about a rhino who aspires to get into a prestigious ballet school. Hope you enjoy!
Augustus stared glumly out at the morning's haul of zoo goers. Saturday was his least favourite day of the week. The playful garb of two-leg calves brought back memories of a past that he longed to forget. In his long years, he had seen their calves disguise themselves as lions, elephants- even cheetahs, but never a rhino. No one loved rhinos like she had. Even his food-server-dung-remover had admitted to a fellow worker that he had applied to look after the ostriches over rhino-care. After hearing that, Augustus had retaliated, leaving his dung in the most imaginative, painstaking places he could think of: in the water trough, over the human visitors, on fences: anywhere that required vigorous cleaning. He had kept it up for for weeks, slowly crushing the spirit of the food-server-dung-remover, stopping only when he was replaced. Augustus lumbered over to edge his enclosure, he would give none of these two-leg calves the satisfaction of seeing him today. He settled into his favourite Saturday standing spot: a corner shielded from view by a rock even larger than he was.
Across the fenced-in Savannah, he could see Burma gathering a crowd. What a pretentious git. Augustus scowled. Give an animal a set of flap-able ears, and he'll think himself the overlord of the plains. Augustus' thoughts darkened. He wriggled his ears in frustration. A large picture by Burma's enclosure showed yet another two-leg designed show. The strange picture showed warped versions of the animals around him: a lion and a giraffe, balancing on top of a large reptilian monster. He remembered another that had even featured a hippo, and some strange white-black torpedo birds, alongside a lion and zebra. But no rhino. Never a rhino. Augustus rubbed his horn against a nearby tree. It's not fair. He thought, poking his head out of his rock-sanctuary to glare at the two-legs. I'm the closest thing to a unicorn that you will ever see. Yet you worship the myth. And even then, you would never care for me the way she did. He immediately regretted his decision to glare at the small crowd. Standing by the fence was a two-leg calf with a costume that made Augustus' heart ache. The calf wore a pink disguise that flowed out at her waist. The pink ribbons entwining her legs proved too much for Augustus. He retreated once more, his crushing past threatening to overwhelm him.
Faster than he could block them, his memories resurfaced. Flashes of his calf-hood came to him: travelling with the two-legs; the big, moon shaped house that they carried with them. It was there Augustus had fallen in love with dancing: moving to the entrancing noises that the two-legs blew out of strangely shaped objects. When Augustus danced, he felt free: not weighted down with the world. It no longer mattered if the two-legs loved his kind, because when he was in the ring, they loved him. They would cheer his name, and shower him in sweet smelling flowers. Augustus remembered the costumes: how they disguised his own rough skin, and replaced it with sleek black fabrics that felt smoother than human skin. Stop it. Augustus ordered himself, shaking his head, do you want to think of Emily? Emily. The name froze him to the spot. Emily. The two-legs who had raised him, danced with him. Emily: whose fur was the colour of burning fire, and whose skin blotched in the hot summer sun; who spun, spiralled, as if the wind was urging her on. Emily. Who wore pink ribbons up her long limbs as she danced, free. Emily. The only two-leg he had ever allowed to balance on his back.
"One day, I'll get you some ribbons to lace up your legs, and I'll convince Madame do let you join the ballet company." She'd joked one night, as the sun sunk beneath the ground. As long as he was with Emily, Augustus didn't care whether they were in a circus act, in a ballet company, or travelling the globe. Just as long as they were together. Where does the sun go? Augustus had wondered, as he watched disappear into the ground. The onslaught of memories continued. Instantly, he was transported to that fateful night.
The crowd had called for an encore. It was raining. Thick droplets falling from the darkening sky, creating puddles faster than the ground could drink them up. Emily's removable hooves had been wet, slick with the night's dew. No, no, no, no. Think of something else. Anything else. Augustus screwed his eyes tight, trying to force the memory from his mind. He saw himself prancing backwards to a jazzy, soulful version of Dionne Warwick's 'Walk On By.' The audience had loved it. It was a playful number characterised by Augustus' backwards-walking feats. As any respectable quadruped will tell you, if you choose to walk backwards, it is impossible to see where you are going, or even to see what is happening behind you. It played out in Augustus' mind as it had every time before: In slow motion, with graphic detail. He had been walking backwards, moving his head in time to the beat, when he'd felt something fragile crush beneath his foot. The live music trailed off, and a deathly silence settled over the audience. Augustus had sensed something was wrong. He'd spun around frantically, looking for Emily.
"Daddy, what does that sign say?" Augustus heard the two-leg-calf ask, her voice leading him back to reality.
"Oh, it says-" Augustus heard a man falter as he skimmed over it. "It says that the Rhino's name is Augustus. And that- oh."
"What?"
"It says that he used to dance with a travelling circus, and-" The man quoted the sign: "'On the night of October 27, 1974, Augustus trampled his trainer, Emily Melrose, when she slipped over while performing.' Look, there's a picture of them together."
He had killed her that night. One step backwards had crushed Emily's fragile skull. Augustus had spun around, only to see her head, misshapen and covered in dark blood, leaking over her fiery red hair. Augustus tried to force the memories out, but they kept coming, flooding his consciousness with the tainted flashback he desperately wanted to forget. He hadn't let anyone near Emily's mangled body. They'd had to sedate him. He remembered a drugged blur of two-legs; crying, screaming, kicking at his semi-conscious form. He'd woken up here, wanting to be dead, and wondering why he wasn't.
He heard the two-leg-calf again. "He looks so happy in the picture! He never would've hurt Emily!"
That's what I thought too, calf. Augustus thought darkly.
"It was an accident, honey. He didn't mean to."
Hiding behind a rock lost it's appeal to Augustus. He had no right to share the sun that had blotched Emily's cheeks. All he wanted to do was find a dark hole, crawl into it, and never see the light of day again. His thoughts swayed, as they had several times, to the hyena pit on the edge of the Savannah. He was certain that, if he charged fast enough, he would be able to break through the fence that caged him. Then it would be a simple matter of falling in, and letting gravity and the hyenas do their work. The pit was designed to keep hyenas in, not rhinos out, after all. He wondered if he would see Emily again if he did it.
She had told him of the afterlife once, when her father had stopped living, bleeding water through her eyes, leaning against his side.
"I know I'll see him again, Gus," she'd said. "One day. But that doesn't make it feel any better now. It still hurts, Gus. God, why does it hurt so much?"
Augustus had snorted sympathetically, and leant his head against her body. And she'd wrapped her arms around his snout and cried. Together, they'd watched the sun sink below the ground. He'd snorted, meaning to say: "Your father is below the ground. So maybe the sun is only rising for him now. The sunrise of the afterlife."
Something clicked in Augustus' mind. A realisation dawned on him: If that was true, he and Emily were linked by the sun, which carried life and death on its shoulders every day; the fiery messenger between the worlds. But what gave him the right to stay on this side, when he had sent Emily under the ground? Augustus wanted to cry like Emily had: to lash out at the world at the way things had turned out. He wanted the pain to go away.
"Goodbye Gus," the calf said.
Augustus poked his head around the rock. Only one other person had ever called him that.
The calf waved at him. "I know you loved Emily, and I know she loved you." Then she walked away, pink fabric swishing above her ribboned legs.
Augustus watched her leave. A miniature Emily, leaving him here alone. He lumbered after her- "Emily!" Wanting to dance, just one more time. To have just one more conversation. To nuzzle her body with his face. To feel her warm body against his back, instead of the warmth beneath his right foot that plagued him in every one his nightmares.
The Emily-calf stopped in her tracks, and turned to face him. She approached the fence, awe written on her face. Augustus drew near the fence, something he hadn't done for months.
"Do you want to dance, Gus?" she asked him, her blue eyes sparkling.
Inside his head, music from the past began to play. The Emily-calf spun to her own melody like a leaf in the wind. Gus watched her hair fly out behind her. Free. He looked up to the sky.
"Tell Emily that I love her. This is for her," he said to the sun, trusting it to carry his message under the ground to her. He turned his eyes back to the calf, swaying in time with her. Augustus felt it all coming back to him. The freedom, the elation, the suspension of reality that came with moving to the music. He looked over to Burma and his flap-able ears. Pretentious git, he thought. You can't even jump. With that, Augustus thrust his horn into the air, and began to dance.
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