I have never felt such a mixture of things before--I could not call it any one thing. Like a wave, it was memory. It was fear. It was irritation and bits of anger smoldering at the edges. It was pain and sympathy and fear at sympathy and anger at empathy and the death of five other emotions caught in the crossfire.
My heart was dead silent, but every sensation was still there, pushed up into my cramped skull, connected by the barest blood thread to my heart and my feet, where I was aware of five pulses beating calmly. I did not know what to do to be rid of it. If the sensation had been in my heart, I would have beat something; if it had burned in my paws, I would have run. But these places, as I have said, were calm. I did not know what to do. I did not know what to do. So I whirled about and bit the leg of my little girl, right above the knee.
There was judgment in this action, one which I did not regret. For days, I licked at my teeth and tried to pull the feeling of her soft flesh from it, tried to pull out whatever was stuck in my gums, stopping up my ability to regret. The first faded in time, but the second would not. I felt cruelty, but no remorse. What right had I, a cur, a bitch, to judge her? But I had. And what is worse, I thought my judgement a fair one.
If her hand had been resting on her knee, I would have snapped two of those pretty little fingers right off. I..I am in horror of myself, still. But the judgment stands unforgiving upon my neck.
Snuffling and sniffling
An understanding was reached
And then unreached
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