Summer Lilies
“Good night, sweet prince prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” I quoted Hamlet with a bitter heart as I placed the tiny body into its final resting place. My words were followed by clouded silence. The sunny, vibrant May afternoon couldn’t have contrasted more with the mood of the moment. The blissful melodies of ecstatic birds, the breeze that gently blew a wave of heat around where my sister and I stood in melancholy vigil, the whole cheer of that spring day made me feel more depressed than ever. Days like this were the ones that Vogan would have loved.
On evenings past like this one, we would bring him outside so he could feel the wind in his whiskers and feel the freshly recovering grass underneath his tiny …show more content…
It began with the subtle, delicate budding of flora, and then it sucker-punched me in my sneezing face with the reminder that I am allergic to everything that grows. Outside, the weather was growing warmer by the day. A pleasant, brisk spring melted into an insufferably sticky mess. If at anytime anyone were to look outside, it was possible to make out heat waves radiating off paved roads, even if they were a few mere yards away. It was the sort of summer where people could smell other's misery; it reeked of sweat, dying grass, and car exhaust. On this one day in particular, it was exceptionally scorching. To make matters worse, my mom and I were residing inside of a stuffy car that had just previously spent an hour baking under the stupid sun. The so-called “air-conditioning” inside the vehicle just seemed to blow around a stale, tepid draft, and if I tried to open the window, I was met with a heat wave full of humidity. I ultimately gave up trying to cool off and surrendered to the fact I was bound to die of heat stroke at any given second. My mom, on the other hand, was somehow oblivious to the fact that Michigan had turned into Mordor and her daughter was on the verge of death. “Oh look honey, a shelter!” she remarked in a cheery tone as we drove. “Didn’t you say the other day that you wanted to get in some volunteering …show more content…
She was probably talking to me too, but my attention had left her and resided upon a familiar-looking cage on the far end. In it, I recognized a long, pink tail dangling from a tiny hammock at the top. “... although most people usually come for the dogs or cats. Anyways, was there anything in particular you wanted to look at?”
I pointed at the cage, “um, could I see that one? P-please.” The woman nodded and she led us toward it, picking up a file of paper resting on the top. “This is Lily,” she explained, sorting through the piles of paper with one hand and picking up the sleeping bundle with another. “She’s a year-old fancy rat.” She passed Lily into my hands.
For a moment, Lily just sat there, blinking sleepily at me as if to ask why I had disturbed her nap. Then, in a complete 180-degree shift of mood, she darted up my arms and resided on my shoulders, burying herself in my hair. I giggled uncontrollably while she moved, and any last bit of sourness that was clinging to me with the heat melted away. I was positively