My human dragged the wheeled box out of the closet at an hour when even the birds have the decency to stay quiet, and now we are somewhere I did not agree to.
Or rather, it is here. I remain, correctly, at home on the good blanket. But I know this place. I smell it on the box when it returns: a vast, cold cavern where thousands of humans sit in rows of unpadded chairs, all facing the same direction, all staring at the same overhead boards as though waiting to be fed.
They are waiting to be fed. Nothing comes. A voice speaks from the ceiling, and they flinch, and check their glowing rectangles, and settle again. My human does this. It buys a paper cup of something too hot to drink, holds it with both hands for the warmth, and does not drink it. I understand the impulse. I do not understand doing it standing up, in a coat, at the feet of strangers.
The whole herd of them, hunched and gray-faced, guarding little wheeled boxes exactly like mine. Sitting. Rising when the ceiling tells them to. Trusting a room this cold to carry them somewhere warm.
My human calls this "an early flight." It packs, it panics, it leaves, it comes back three days later smelling of other people's floors and expecting a warm greeting.
It will not get one right away.
It will get a long stare from the top of the bookshelf, and then, once it has said my name in that hopeful little voice enough times, I will descend. Slowly. And walk past it, to the box, and lie down on it, so it cannot leave again.