We sat at the dinner table, each at our designated seats. Cheesy and Sharp spent all day playing Dratsmate, and now the sun was beginning to come down. As usual, they were going at it in the background, Cheesy having accused Sharp of cheating.
"Just how did I cheat Cheester??? Tell me"
"I don't know how, but you did. You did Sharp. And I don't play with liars, therefore, I will never play with you again. " He argued, slurping in between gulps of swallowing his food. I sighed, picking at the chicken in front of me and poking it, tired of hearing Cheesy complain.
Now don't get me wrong, Sharp was no angel. Bad tempered, foul mouthed, brash, and brazen even. But he was no cheater. He had just been playing the game so swiftly and so well strategically, that Cheesy couldn't keep up or even understand what was going on, so he had no choice but to call it all a farse. Which stemmed mostly from his lack of understanding and insecurities.
'I don't even want to sit beside you. I don't eat with cheaters" he huffed, getting up from beside Sharp with his food and marching over to Mother's side by the dinner table, two holes at the top of furry greyline of his forehead, his mouth fixated into a scowl. He sat down and slumped in his seat.
Suddenly, I felt a relief from not having to play against Cheesy and being accused of cheating. I was too deeply engulfed in my thoughts to bother with Cheesy and Sharp's usual quarrels. There were other things on my mind. My brain was still roaming over images of the night sky and how beautiful the white glowing ball in the night sky looked. Speaking of which, I had to ask about that....
Steadily, I rose from my feet, my vision fixated on the golden glow that permeated through the rounded exit of our peephole/doorway.
I strolled over into the passageway of the exit, stopping at the doorway and propping against the side of it, folding my arms and enjoying the warmness of the glimmering sun that shone through. Of course, I couldn't see it from here because of the table outside that shrouded us, hiding the entrance to our little home but also blocking our views. The light from the afternoon still stretched into our room. I peered out through the door, admiring it all.
"Mother?" I asked tentatively.
"Yes Burrow?" she answered.
"If that glowing, yellow thing in the sky is called the sun..what's the name of the other one?" I pondered aloud.
Mince stopped in the midst of sharing out a piece of breaded fish on Cheesy's plate, frozen with the meat in her hand over his share of baked potatoes and boiled veg. She brought her head up, squinting her beady eyes at me standing by the door.
...........................................................................
Mince knew her boys. Even the slightest change in their behaviors, and she would know. She was always noting things, but she had seen it all and thought that she knew it all. Then, she realized that she was always finding out things about Burrow.
His eyes were...old. Not old in the sense of age, like hers were, but old in the sense of perception. Burrow liked to investigate things, examine them. Make theories, questioning the way things were. He wanted to know everything about his surroundings, he observed things, saw things the others didn't. As a mother, that worried her...
"Just what are you talking about Burrow? What other..."thing"?" she inquired.
"You know..that thing Mother. The big, round, mysterious thing that comes up in the sky at night. It glows white...What did you call it again?" The confused mother gave a perplexed stare, twitching her whiskers and slowly resting the piece of fish onto Cheesey's plate.
White??? Glowing thing??? What could this boy possibly be talking about??? Honestly Burrow was always on about something strange. Mince placed her two hands on the table and paused for a moment to rack her brain. Then, it hit her.
"Ohhh!!! My love. You mean the Moon?" She snapped her fingers in recognition of her founded answer, pointing to her son in acknowledgment.
"Yes!! Yes, that's its name. The Moon" he responded.
Mince took a moment to watch her son. She remembered how long he sat on the ledge and stared at the Moon last night. A part of her was happy that he was so conscious of his environment, it was good he took interest into things.
But just how far would that get him? Too much curiosity could lead to trouble for him, for her, and for all of them. She worried about him. What would he ask next? For them to go outside? He knew not of the terrors that were out there.
If curiosity could kill the cat, then what say a mouse?
"Honestly Burrow you ask the strangest things... now come sit at the table. Your foods getting cold. It's time to eat" She sighed, Burrow shaking his head, and going to sit by Mother. Sharp and Cheesy were still persisting in the background over the same silly game.
"Weeeeellll..I bet if it was a piece a cheese you woulda won the game already, right?" Sharp teased in a raspy tone, Cheesy instantly opening his mouth and protesting.
"That's not true!!!! You just shut up and come another round! We'll see who's a loser then!" Cheesy pointed to Sharp and wriggled his finger at him threateningly, the lobe of fat wafting under his arm as he did. He got up from the dining table, gripping the end of it, grunting under his breath while he struggled to rise.
He wobbled back over to the gaming table, moving around to set the wooden pieces back in their positions, Sharp rolling his eyes as he watched the thick, meaty outline of his brothers overlapping backfat rock to and fro, like a slob of grape jelly.
Cheesy was the bulkiest of the four of us, in fact, he was almost the same size as Mother Mince. His love for food, especially his obsession for Cheese, knew no boundaries. Mother often said that ever since we came off the tit, the first mushed up food that she had ever feed us was that. It was rumored that Cheesy has insisted on having that every day, ever since.
"Yeah yeah yeah. Ya done lost Cheesy. I'm not playing no more games with you!" Sharp contested, turning around in his seat to continue eating his food.
"Come gimme a challenge the next game Burrs!! Cheester is boring me to death. I want a real fight let's have at it!" he commanded. I sat there silently, barely chewing a piece of chicken I cogged into my mouth.
"Heyy!!! You wait now. Just one more game. I'll show you this time-" Cheesy contested while he set up the game again, Sharp kissing his teeth and completely ignoring him.
"Ah ah!! None of that. Both of you get your behinds behind the table. Sit down and eat your food. You can worry about playing after." Mother commanded. At the instruction both of them came back to the table, slumping in their seats and eating, Cheesy returning to his side by Mother, and Sharp going by the next end by Burrow.
Burrow was mindlessly eating, taking his time to chew and swallow the food, that he obviously could not enjoy. When Sharp challenged him to play for the next round after they ate, the rodent merely peered up at him, an indifferent expression shrouded his face as he blinked slowly at him and nodded his head in disagreement.
"Awwwww Come on Burrs. You're the only one that can give me a challenge in this game!! You know what? Fine! Suite yourself!". After a while Sharp and Cheesy had finished eating, Sharp bouncing out of his seat just as quickly, marching back to the table to face Cheesy to continue their second half of the game. Burrow sat there, a half plate of food still left in his face, eating at the rate of a snail.
Mince paused from clearing the table, peering up at him. Her eyes were glued to his dismayed expression, and she got the sensation that something wasn't quite right with her son. She had known her children their whole lives, and even though Burrow was typically the quietest of the three, he was never a standoff. He loved spending time with his brothers, they played Dratsmate together, they went out for food together, they all got into trouble collectively; and he would always take the blame for it and attempt to talk her out of punishing them within sound reason. For the past two weeks Burrow had kept to himself, denying yet another game of Dratsmate? Sneaking out at all odd hours of the night just to look out at the clearing eye. He didn't usually do this. Now he is eating by himself, walking around looking spaced out in thought. Mince sighed as the thoughts roamed around in her mind. She sighed, resting her hand on the counter, and peering sadly at her son.
"Oh Burrow. What's gotten into you?" she whispered quietly, but Burrow heard. In a split second she shook her head and turned her attention back to the table she was cleaning.
"What hasn't gotten into me..." Burrow asked himself rhetorically, rummaging about in his thoughts. There was a half of a fish left with some potatoes. He excused himself from the table, and went to his nesting to rest.