"Clara? Clara?"
"Mmm... Vix? Are... are we still in India?"
"Come... The elevator is waiting for us again. We don't have much time left."
Tired and confused, I could feel Vix pulling on my arms, trying to get me off the bed. The room was all dark again, and Asha and Savannah weren't around anymore. The two hot catgirls had mysteriously vanished after our fun activity.
Still impersonating Oreo, I followed my fiery red fox friend to the magical box that would carry us to another strange bedroom.
The golden elevator's doors closed, Vix clung to my arm, and we were on our way to our next destination. It was blurry in my mind, but since we began visiting this unusual hotel, we've met Meeka, Asha, and Savannah. Because this was a weird dream, I was under the impression that I knew them, but it wasn't clear to me who they were exactly. For some reason, I couldn't help but think these rubbery creatures were part of my life, part of who I was. Maybe the next room we would visit would make it easier for me to understand what this dream was about.
My lazy eyes turned to the lights flashing at the top of the doors. It took a moment, but it finally stopped on a cute rabbit picture. The bell rang, and the doors separated once more, opening over a new location.
"Woah... Vix. Are we still at the hotel?"
"I don't know, Clara. I think so. But I like this. Come!"
Grass... A green grass field, extending for as far as the eyes could see. Vix pulled on my arm, forcing me to step out of the elevator. How could this be? The ground was soft and comfortable, the air smelled amazing, and the sun was just warm enough to heat our latex skin nicely. When I turned around to look at the elevator, it mystically turned to dust, like flour, and the light wind blew it away. I was pretty sure that wasn't normal, but this whole dream had no normality so far.
"Vix. There is nothing here. Just grass."
"I like it. Come!"
"Where to?"
"I don't know. This is a nice bedroom."
"It's not a bedroom. It's a grass field."
"We are in a hotel, remember? So this must be a bedroom. Look, I can lie down in the grass. It's springy like a mattress."
"Silly... It's not..."
Vix opened her arms and let herself fall backward. She oddly bounced on the grass, which I was pretty sure wasn't supposed to happen. I bent at my waist level and placed my two hands on the ground. It was indeed very squishy.
"Lie down with me, Clara. Look at the sky. It's so nice."
"The sky?"
I let myself fall on my side and moved next to Vix until my shoulder touched hers. With our hands resting on top of our bellies, we looked at the clouds populating the blue sky. Of course, doing so resulted in an unavoidable imagination trip.
"Oh, look Clara... That cloud over there. It looks like Lucy's Café."
"Ah, yes. The Cakes and Pets. I remember going there for the first time."
"I was the first pet you chose to spend time with."
"Haha. I remember, yes. I was very scared and thought you were the cutest."
"Yes. And you had a lot of trouble talking to us."
"..."
I sighed.
Vix was right. As the café shaped cloud slowly floated away, my eyes hooked to another fox-shaped one. I couldn't do anything other than think about the moment I went to the animal café for the first time.
My life back then was very sad. I was a little Clara working in a warehouse, packaging random items on behalf of a giant online company. Money was not something I had, and with the cost of living skyrocketing in the city, my life was going in a very wrong direction. I didn't have what it took to survive in this world...
Would I have survived?
Perhaps it was the reason why I did it, after all. On that morning, when I decided to go to the Cakes & Pets to see the animal girls, what had triggered this move? It wasn't like me to go on an adventure like this. I knew better... I thought I knew better. Better was to stay away from people as much as possible as they would only bring me suffering. If there was one thing that my parents had taught me, it was that there was no room for a failure like me in this society. So why did I do it? Did I instinctually react to my potential death? Probably not physical death, but certainly a mental death at the very least. All my doors were closed, no opportunities were offered to me, and I was running out of support. My destiny looked like a life of commuting over an hour each morning and night so that I had barely enough to feed myself. How long would it have lasted if my life hadn't taken a new direction?
So I did it. On that morning, a few days after I found that special café, I put on my only nice clothes, which were lower quality than what other people were wearing, and headed toward it with no intentions. My goal was to go to a café but not walk inside. I knew it would have been too hard. With my inability to communicate, there was no way I could walk in and even consider having fun. This was not a place for me.
Yet, something had pushed me to go there.
As I predicted, I wasn't strong enough to walk into it. I stood there on the walkway, in front of the door, paralyzed by fear and unable to change my life the slightest.
And then, Lucy. She opened the door and immediately captured me. At that specific moment, she took over my brain. I couldn't do anything on my own outside sleep and eat; even that was laborious. But Lucy, she didn't care about that. She took me under her wing and did all the work for me, at least until she forced me to enter the lounge where all the animal girls were.
There was no going back.
When they all approached me, overwhelmed me, touched me, something had changed. The pets understood me right away. They knew I couldn't talk and that their presence overpowered me. They understood I wasn't like them and something was very wrong with me. They understood everything right off the bat.
Back then, I didn't know why they were so good at understanding me, but it was a bit clearer today. Each of the pets went through difficult times or had been forced to support others. They knew what pain and joy were, what happiness and sadness were. They knew the emotions I carried inside my heart even though they didn't know about how violent they were.
And then, when I chose my first pet, the first person I've ever touched that way, it was Vix. The small fox girl was the most adorable person I had ever met, someone who wasn't a threat to me. Again, back then, I didn't know why, but it all made sense after I learned about her challenging past. Vix knew about suffering and had recognized it in me, and she knew that words were not what I needed; her hugs were.
Time had restarted to run differently after that day. I couldn't be more grateful for it. Here in the grass field, next to her, I really felt like she was one of my best friends.
"Vix, I love you so much."
"I love you very much too, Clara."
"Hey, what about me?"
Suddenly, a cute white rubber rabbit appeared just above our face, blocking our view of the clouds. The long springy ears mounted on top of a smiling face, a friendly face, were somewhat amusing.
"I'm Trixie. Can I lie down with you, Clara?"
"Yes... You can lie down Between Vix and me."
"Okay."
Pushing her way in, Trixie forced us apart and lay down between us. Because this was a dream, she came out of nowhere. With her back on the grass, she looked at the clouds with us, quickly identifying one of interest.
"Oh, guys. Look at that one. It's me! It's shaped like a white rabbit! That's the best cloud ever!"
"White rabbits are nice. Right, Clara?"
White rabbits. I remembered that after my first day with Vix at the café, I had spent some time with another pet, a white rabbit named Trixie. That one was something else.
Trixie was very different from Vix but was equally important to me, if not more. The reason was probably that she was the absolute opposite of who I was. Outgoing, bold, sexual, and very talkative. That last item on the list wasn't present when she was in costume, though. Trixie was also the first girl I brought home. Sure, Lucy had tricked me into this, but it had allowed me to see past my nose for once.
I could remember it very well. When we arrived home, I was terrified. I was convinced all Trixie wanted was to have sex, but it turned out that she was as capable of listening as she was capable of being excited. She taught me a big lesson about how not everybody wanted to hurt me. That night, she had let me read a book to her and helped me practice my speech without pressure and with some comforting hugs.
In the grass field, the white rabbit next to me... That was probably her, then.
