Muzzle (Soulmate Story)
“Get him!”
“Woo!”
“Who’s winning?”
“My money’s on Jessie.”
“No way! Jonah’s got this.”
Lou wonders why fights are even more common now than before they had the dampening cuffs. And humans think animals need to be trained.
She really doesn’t understand humans.
From where she is walking by, she sees a glimpse of the action and grimaces and turns her head away. Violence isn’t her thing. Neither is blood.
Soon a teacher will come out and break them up. They are probably tired of this too. Not being able to use their abilities either.
She misses Greg’s commentary of her school day from her shoulders. It’s been a slow transition for her. She’s still not used to it.
Every time she puts on this muzzle, she feels suffocated, like all the air is sucked out of her lungs. All that is natural to her is gone. With just one click of the stupid cuff, her world goes silent. If not for her friends, she would have for sure gone feral by now.
Speaking of friends (the human ones), she sees Jones. In her haste to get away from the fight, she finds herself at the secret stairwell.
It’s a set of stairs that only goes up one floor instead of a continuous stairway to the top floor. _Secret_ comes from the fact that it is in the far corner of the school. Most people don’t use to since it spits you out in an inconvenient place, not near most rooms.
Jones is sitting on the second step with his head in his hands, hunched over. He looks like a kicked puppy.
“Jones? Are you ok?” She asks, slowly approaching him so she doesn’t spook him.
“Yep. Fine,” he mumbles into his hands, almost noncoherently, never looking up.
“You don’t sound fine,” she retorts flatly.
Why do humans lie? Why not just say how you really feel?
What confuses her more is the fact that Jones is the one not being honest. She thought they got each other.
“Please just leave, Lou,” he almost pleas with her. His neck cranes a bit and he faces her for a second before he squeezes his eyes shut and puts his head back down. The glimpse she got of his face told her enough. He looked as pale as a polar bear.
Doing the very opposite of what he asked, she sits down next to him. “Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. So we don’t have to talk, but I’m not leaving.”
They sit in silence. Lou doesn’t mind.
She’s used to the chaos at home with all her animal friends. While she doesn’t normally love the quiet, she’s ok if it’s with her human friends, especially Jones.
With their animal connection, him a shapeshifter and her an animal whisperer, it bonded them. He may try to bare his teeth (metaphorically) and push her away, but she won’t let him.
As she’s lost in thought, Jones finally speaks. “I’m sorry for being rude.”
She shrugs. “You weren’t. Just dishonest.”
Leaning back against the next step, he rolls his shoulders and tilts his head up, eyes still closed. Not as pale anymore. “Well I know how much you hate that.”
“Then why did you?” Lou questions.
She’s always been a straightforward person. Her parents used to say it was because she adopted the instinctual nature of animals. That’s probably true.
Animals don’t deceive. They may try to camouflage or hide, but they don’t play mind games. They don’t lie.
When they’re happy, you know it. A dog’s tail wagging. A triumphant jump from a dolphin. When their sad, you can tell. A bunny’s laid back ears. A cat’s cry.
When they feel sick, they try their best to communicate that.
“I don’t feel well. Like physically. Everytime I put this on,” he waves his arm up, the bracelet blinking an orange color. “I feel like my skin is crawling. My stomach hurts and I get a huge headache. Even when school is done and I take it off, the feeling doesn’t go away. It takes hours to feel normal again,” he explains.
Immediately she relates. When she first put the muzzle on, she hated it. She wanted to stampede it into pieces. But after three weeks; the feeling became toleratable.
Not normal. No, not being connected to animals would never feel normal.
It became a constant buzz. Always there but faded into the background when she was concentrated on something else.
But she’s never not aware of the cuff.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Jones attempts a smile but it is sort of wobbly. “I appreciate that, but I don’t think so. You just being here helps though.”
So she stays.
But something weighs heavy on her mind like an elephant on a tightrope.
The cuffs hurt her when she put it on for the first time. She thought it was the unnatural severing of her connection that was painful. Her wild spirit hurting.
But what if it physically caused her pain.
The muzzle is hurting Jones.
And it could hurt the rest of them.
———
(I love how Lou is always so authentically herself. She’s one of my favs to write!
Off topic, has anyone watched Cobra Kai? Specifically up to season 6 part 2? If you have, what are your thoughts???? 🥋)