it's hard to be a kid in containment

It’s hard to be a kid in containment.

Your earliest memories were of waking up in a box of scratchy feeling grass to distant, but often repeating bird sounds. These far off animal calls played in your head as you learned to walk on your two, hooved feet, and you imagined if these noises also belonged to creatures that looked like you. Your many visitors, who would often wake you in your sleep to poke you with needles or place a cold disks on your chest, did not acknowledge you. Attempts at communication using the few, small noises you could bleat out were futile, and once they left, you were completely alone. As you grew, as some flowers do in the dark, you found that your world shrunk significantly.

So like any creature trapped uncomfortably in an unfamiliar and uncaring space, you took it upon yourself to make it your own.

First, you set out to fill the space with a softer light, one that didn’t cause your eyes to strain at every hour, nor ones that caused your ears to ring with their discordant buzzing. So within yourself you called out to nature, and nature answered. The fluorescent bulbs contorted and shattered, transforming into a swarm of fireflies that cast a dim, but comfortable glow over your domain. From the visitors you picked up the words ‘day’ and ‘night’, as well as their associations with light and the dark.

At your juvenile command you controlled the sky, and you fell asleep content at the end of the first day.

You awoke well before your newly-made sky with parched lips. Its meager beams woven with bioluminescent abdomens guided you as you stumbled towards the metallic tap that provided you with water. It had a gross, bitter taste, and the spout itself was too tight for your small hands to open. Frustrated, you curled yourself into a ball and laid down on the floor. Amongst begging whispers you once again called out to nature, and nature answered. You watched as the tap and pipe around it morphed into a small geyser, with water that tasted both pure and sweet. From the visitors you picked up the words ‘ground’ and ‘sea’, as well as their associations with the grass and water that flooded into your enclosure.

At your juvenile command you controlled the waves, and you fell asleep content at the end of the second day.

Although your thirst was sufficiently sated, your tiny stomach began to rumble. The visitors would bring stuff to combat that on their visits, small-brown circles that smelled like droppings and tasted almost as bad, you heard them talk about ‘food’ while observing you; words like ‘salad’ and ‘sandwich’ and ‘fruit’, all things you could only imagine in dreams. With one final rumble of your stomach, you focused your mind to make those dreams a reality. You called out to nature, and nature answered. Roots, both big and small, interweaved the blades of the faux grass. Plants started to sprout, first grass and berry bushes, before a small tree appeared in the center of your space.

You feasted on the bounty of the land, and found yourself looking up at the ceiling. For once you felt happy, and as you giggled on the ground, color stains covering your fingers and mouth, you could see small rodents and insects begin to share your space-friends. You observed these creatures for hours, almost being spurred to chase them and—

The deafening clarion of an alarm cuts across the idyllic scene. The fireflies, your light, your sun, dissipate and reform to now darkened bulbs. You try to call upon nature, but find it doesn’t answer you. The plants, the water, the creatures that you hoped to call your friends, they all disappear in front of you. In panic, you try to find something, anything you can place yourself behind or under to hide from the world around you.

Then, silence.

The alarms stop but the lights don’t turn back on. What seems like days pass, and the only thing you can hear is your own breathing, something you try to stifle by planting your face in the grass. You’re alone, but your imagination runs wild. You look up momentarily, your eyes adjusting to the low light, and you swear you see something staring back, something that looks just like you.

Its crimson glare stares back at you, and you close your eyes as hard as you can, hoping for it to go away. You quietly sob as you slowly drift to sleep.

♫♫♫

The visitors finally find you curled up against one of the room’s corners. They motion for you to come out, but no matter what you do you can’t stop shaking. You push yourself deeper into the corner, close your eyes, and try to forget that thing you saw in the dark. The visitors leave, and you once again try to control your breathing under the harsh fluorescents.

After an hour you hear someone new; a lady who regards you with comforting countenance. You can’t see her face, something you’ve grown accustomed to, but her gentle eyes through the thick material are enough to ease your nerves just for a little while. Beneath her arms she holds a strange rectangle imprinted with shapes and colors you’ve never seen before.

She sits down on the ground next to you, opens the shape, and begins speaking. Although you can’t understand what she’s saying, she turns the shape towards you and points at forms of fruits and small animals and the weird symbols that sit beneath them. You decide to let your guard down slightly, uncurling yourself and moving closer to the woman. She says the word 'deer' and you try to mimic it, releasing a collection of noises instead. The two of you sit for hours, and you fall comfortably asleep to the feeling of her hands brushing the top of your head.

She visits you almost every week for months during a time she refers to as ‘lunch’. You begin to learn how to read, how to speak, you even learn about what it means to have a favorite color (it’s green, by the way). In time she moves on from picture books to simple stories with fewer pictures. She tells you stories about princesses and knights, castles and dragons, of creatures that fly above the sea and live deep within it, while another visitor, much broader in stature, brings fairytales of a Garden far away. You ask her to see these places and, given the state of your environment with your now burgeoning imagination, she agrees.

One morning, just before dawn, you groggily wake atop a soft bed of moss. The lights make different colors here; bold oranges fade up to purples and blues. When you stand, your hooves dig into the softness of dirt. It’s cool but not cold, and you can’t help but curiously circle your immediate surroundings to take in the texture of your new land. You walk down to the water, taking some within your hand before bringing it up to your mouth for a sip. Fresh. You giddily begin to explore, encountering creatures and plants you could only imagine from the woman’s kind words of another world. You hoped this would be your castle, your world, an escape from the terrors of the small room you were previously contained in.

As you sit on the beach, fresh berries in hand, you think you can almost hear the winds whispering to you, singing a melody from long ago. You watch as the sun rises, and as evening turns to morning, you begin your first day.