Phoebe's Story

Fee awoke for the first time, dimly aware of the smells and wriggling of her siblings and parents. The world was dark and cold, but through some ancient memory, she knew she would be safe with her parents— and they introduced her to the Shapes.

The shapes, she first assumed, were more sibling kits. They were shaped similar, long and wiggly, but she quickly learned they were something far stranger— The dozenish of them were resplendent with warmth, and moved in unison with terrific strength; the first time she climbed among them to cozy up they flew her high into the air and held her with all the guarding caution of her parents.

When Fee opened her eyes and learned to climb, she didn't quite figure out what they were, but got more of the picture. They were attached in two clusters to a creature so enormous it faded into the distance, built like her own paws on a grand scale. The thought that such a creature might be terrifying didn't cross her mind, it never did anything but play chase with her and her parents, bring food to gradually replace milk, and sometimes clean them or their home.

A month or so later, when they were starting to really get used to their place in life, exploring the labyrinth of chambers and bridges and walkways and staging battles with their siblings in most of them, the others started to leave. The shapes took them, three or four at a time, and they didn't come back. Small-But-Very-Bitey, Big-Spots, and Smells-Like-Soap-Somehow were the first to go, and her parents didn't seem too disturbed, but when the Shapes came for her later she only went along with it because she thought they'd be reunited.

They weren't, and worse, the familiar Shapes vanished. She ended up in a strange new home, with strange new shapes, but at least a few of her brothers were there. She whined her grief as best she could express and, she was heartened to see, the New Shapes hurried to comfort her with holding and petting and new toys. She never forgot, but halcyon years of playing and snuggling smoothed the edges of the pain.

The new home was a strange place. Much bigger than the old home— rather than an enclosure within a vast mystery, she was free to roam, all around a mostly-metal space that rattled and moved from time to time. Sometimes her paws even mysteriously left the ground and she drifted weightlessly; the New Shapes usually tried to stow her and her siblings somewhere safe before then but flying was very fun and they often managed to get out. She liked this home, even though its shiny floor was less reliable.

There was a fourth kind of thing here too, not a parent or a sibling or a big Shapes. She only surmised its existence at first— when she waddled and bounded around the rooms to get to the Shapes' beds or her bed or the litterbox or food, the shining doors slid open whenever they approached, without a Shape behind them like she thought necessary. And it quite diligently kept her out of exactly two places. At one end of the rooms, there was a dark chamber full of whirring and redness and strange smells that the Shapes often returned to, and at the other, a myriad landscape that changed whenever the rooms shook and moved.

She didn't want to escape, exactly, but did want to see everything, so her and every one of her siblings did their best to follow the Shapes into both rooms, without much success. Even if the door stood open, some invisible force held them back even when the Shapes walked through. The fourth thing remained an enigma.

On her twentieth year in this world of large friends and larger mysteries, though she didn't understand it at the time, the Shapes took her in for a customary augmentative surgery. A natural ferret only lived five or six years, and evolution didn't equip her nervous system for the ferocity with which the Shapes beat back death, so lifetimes of memories eventually wouldn't fit in her head. The Shapes weren't even sure what memories a pet ferret might cherish but it only seemed right to afford them the comforts they'd want themselves. So, she ate a particularly strange-smelling treat, slept dark and deep, and awoke with a slightly sore bald spot at the back of her skull.

Fee and her siblings lived with the tall shapes in their travelling home for centuries, completely uncomprehending of most of the strange things they did but glad for the companionship. The Shapes, they learned, would change shape and smell, wear strange second skins, go outside and sometimes come back rambling with stress, but they found it easy to comfort them. They brought funny new foods, fancy toys, visitors, their alien troubles, and a lifetime of petting and scratching. Even the rooms itself, the Fourth Thing, cared for them— On one terrifying day, a wall was ripped open into an endless blackness and Fee and one of her brothers went spinning out into searing infinity, and the invisible force hauled them back inside with strength greater than even the Shapes. The Shapes were more disturbed than the ferrets, who sat at the missing wall staring into white-flecked nothing until they were taken outside and the hole was patched.

One day, they were taken somewhere new. New, crowded, loud, and strange-smelling, a great glow in a darkness, full of chattering machinery that reminded Fee of the forbidden room. The Shapes put her and her brothers in little harnesses on long tethers, and they scampered through enormous emptinesses, nosing at other, stranger shapes who mostly seemed just as friendly. There were so many of them! And they smelled so strange! Some of them were bigger or smaller than all the furless Shapes they knew, or even only Fee's size, and chattered with the same complicated calls the Shapes did.

All of them were brought through a canyon full of complicated towers and hills and curly things they found they could climb on, occupied by a few other ferrets who watched her with a calmness that reminded Fee of her ancient parents. Then inside again, to... Fee wasn't sure what they were. They were fuzzy, and smelled more or less like Fee and her siblings, but were huge and tall like the Shapes, and moved with the sort of tectonic, careful grace that she only ever saw in that Fourth Thing that lived in the walls. She could tell her familiar Shapes were distressed, and this new thing was comforting them; when it scooped her and her kin up she tried to climb up to investigate its face, prompting tittering laughter that reminded her of pretty metal things clattering over.

It brought them all somewhere clean and bright, where a wave of warmth and darkness made Fee sleep.

When she awoke again, the new ferret-ish thing said something— SAID something! Fee yelped with pure surprise; with sudden realization like a bolt of lightning, it occurred to her that all those complicated birdsong-like calls meant things! All this time, the Shapes were communicating thoughts of their own, more involved than anything she'd thought before. She spent the next few days in a daze, a whirlwind of memories cast in a new light, centuries of life lived with strange, loving giants.

Over the next few months, the vast Shapes — humans, her old owners — left her mostly in the care of the other ferrets and the bigger fuzzy creature who taught her to speak and understand and play new complicated games, and when she shakily called the humans "friends" for the first time, they scooped her up close, sobbing with delight.

In her own later words, that was when she went from belonging to to belonging with.