She remembers being held a lot when she was young. Curled up in her mothers arms, swathed in blankets. She remembers awful bathtimes, crying and whining for it to be over after she played in the mud and rain or ran around outside for too long.
She remembers being gently sung to sleep, sometimes even rocked, but always curled up in her mother’s arms at night. She remembers careful hands brushing through her flowing golden hair and the small kisses she would speckle all over her nose and head. Her mother would always laugh when she clumsily tried to reciprocate, wiping excess saliva off the corners of her mouth and cheeks in great disgust but also pure adoration. She cleaned up all of the messes she would make (whether that be on the floor, her placemat when eating, or just by running around and knocking things over) and played with her from a whole chest full of various toys her mother had bought for her.
She remembers all of that. They’re not particularly strong memories, just wisps that she catches glimpses of from the corner of her eye on good days, but she always knows that her mother loves her, and that she loves her mother.
When another came along that her mother took care of just the same, she was excited. Another girl, they could play so much together! Sure, they were a bit different (she was all smooth skin and messy emotions), but they were just alike in almost every other way. She was ecstatic to have a sister added into their little family, and baby Laura was just as excited to have her around as well, given her giggles when she would stroke her fur and her tail would wag.
They grew up together, her and Laura. Laura and her. Her mother still made tons of time for her, but there was someone new she also took care of now. She didn’t get any less love, there was just more to go around. Her mother was now their mother and she couldn’t be more happy about it. Sure, they fought, like all sisters do (Laura pulls a bit too hard on her fur, so she gave her the silent treatment for that), but they were a family, the three of them.
Nearly ten years later, they had still been going strong, with just as much love.
Until they were gone.
–
She doesn’t know why it happened, or exactly when it happened either. All she knows is that one morning, Laura and their mother had left for “school” and “work,” but by night, they had not returned.
She had sat, waiting at the bed at the front for them to come back (they almost always had come back before dark, why had they not?), only walking away once briefly to go out the tiny door made for her (and for Laura, when she was young and small enough to fit in it) into the growing green to use the bathroom when she couldn’t hold it anymore, but otherwise, she stayed put until the sun rose all over again and they still had not returned. No matter how much she whined and scratched at the door, ears pressed back and the fur around her eyes darkened from wetness, nothing brought them back through the door.
Her stomach grew ravenous by mid-day, but she stayed. Her hunger grew and her pain grew; she whined at each of the pangs, from both heart and stomach, missing them with every one. She eventually made the decision to go out back again to find some nice grass to eat, since her food was locked away out of reach. Her paws shook as she pushed herself off of the ground and trotted over to the backdoor gingerly, slipping through into the outside.
She had not expected the dark, rolling clouds made not of water, or the way the air from the outside seemed to claw into the center of her chest and burn her from the inside. Particles of ash floated from the unending fog settling in, and there was not a single person in sight as there usually was. There was kin, lying on back patios and neighboring yards, lying, legs strewn out and relaxed, chests unmoving. There were things strewn across the roads in disarray, wisps of curling fog coming from their fronts. A burning inferno.
Her chest burned more with every breath she took in, so she quickly ran back through the little door and back to the front of the house.
She hadn’t realized she had been hoping to go back in the house and everything be normal again until a whine erupted from her throat and neither her mother nor her sister was there to soothe it away. She curled up in her bed at the door as before, holding a toy from her young years in her mouth and the blanket baby Laura had always been wrapped in underneath her, and she never moved again.