the caverns of their teeth | Gilda [hyena]

They're not in the den.

For lack of better ideas you crawl inside again anyway, pitching a low groan into the darkness. Yesterday that would have brought your cubs tumbling out to see you in an instant; today, not even an echo answers, your voice sinking heavy as your heart into the soft sides of the den. Three times you circle it, whining and scratching over the corners that still smell like your twins, until you have to admit defeat and drift back out to the main enclosure.

They aren't there, either, but that hasn't stopped you from searching yet. It won't for a while.

What does, for the moment, is Murtaza calling your name from the fence.

"You gotta stop, Gilda," he says as you reach the fence without a murmur of your usual greeting cackle. "You're breaking hearts out here." His hand, raised to cue you for sit, shakes; you do it anyway, but groan at him as you do, and his hand drops entirely. Quieter than you've ever heard him, he whispers, "I know, Gil. I'm sorry."

None of those, your name aside, are words you've been taught. What little anxiety was quelled by seeing a trusted face, confusion stokes; you break the sit and pace up and down the fence, whining, until he takes a heavy breath and gives you a yawn cue. Then you keep whining, but halt, looking between him and the enclosure, wondering when he'll do something important like bring your cubs out of hiding.

"Gilda," he says, a shade of his usual calm confidence back in his voice. "Lunch is still important. Come on." He gives you the yawn cue again. You shuffle, then face him and open your mouth wide. "Atta girl." Four seconds, five, and he gives the short, sharp whistle that lets you drop a pose, then drops a meatball into the fence feeder.

It plops out on your side. You look at it, look at him, look over your shoulder at the lonely enclosure.

"We can't afford for you to waste that right now," Murtaza says, voice strained again. "I can't get them back for you, okay? I wouldn't, they weren't going to make it here, we—fuck, this would be easier if you understood me." He pauses, his shoulders falling. "Maybe. Maybe it would be worse."

You know some of the symptoms of war: The evenings when every light in the zoo goes dark for a time while you flatten your ears against distant but disquieting blasts. The way you have less food now—enough, always, but barely. The missing crowds. The strained keepers. The silences where you once heard morning braying, noontime hoots, evening howls, one missing voice following another as neighbors vanish. That doesn't mean you know what war means, and he can't explain that to you. Not the basic facts like what would happen if one of those blasts sounded on top of you, and certainly not the kinds of things that have been keeping your keepers up at night—supply chain disruptions, rumors of a draft, energy rationing.

Hours and hours and hours of meetings, for months now, as people argue over which animals to move underground, which to smuggle out of the country, which the zoo can support if things get this bad, or that bad, or this bad.

You whine.

"Let's go, Gilda," he says—familiar words again, exhausted but determined. Your heart still isn't in it, but your ears perk up out of habit; and despite yourself, the next time he whistles, you accept the meatball.



title song is "The Spine Song" by Cake Bake Betty.