An Interlude
by pyrostinger

The foxes were still staring at her.

Sheila ignored them, but it was hard to not notice them.  Even the rabbits were seeing it.  Then again, it wasn't like the foxes were hiding it.  Every so often, one or more of them would look, trying to figure her out.  Judging her.  They never approached, perhaps put off by the fact that she was a hare, not a vixen.  Or maybe they had predatory ideals of never approaching prey and not appearing weak.  Sheila didn't venture to ask, perfectly content with leaning against a tree and letting the organized chaos mill around her.  

One of the rabbits had told her that she was supposed to be examined by a medic.  It hadn't happened yet.  Said medic was busy patching up injured foxes, leaving not a lot of time for her.  Apparently there had been a backlog.  It probably had to do with the recent alliance the two factions had undertaken, after years of cold war.  They were still circling each other, wary, and vulpine pride had been injured by them going to the snow rabbits in the first place.  At least, that's what Field had told her.  She wondered how long it would last.  

"Sheila!"

All it took was a minute turn of the hare's head to see the mouse gesturing to her.  Standing, she made her way over to Field and Adelaide, the pink bat by his side.  It was harder to disdain them.  They were obviously in love, and he was just so innocent and mousey that she couldn't hate Adelaide either.  They seemed to fit well together.

"We were thinking," Adelaide began, "that since you don't have any home to go to, really, that you could come with us."

"To your ship?" Sheila asked, looking to the bat.

Field nodded.  "The Luminous.  The only non-snow-rabbit vessel in the fleet."

"Why is that?"

"We're ex-Federation."

"Ex?"

"Yes," Adelaide said.  "Our captain defected when he heard of a plan to attack the snow rabbits."  

Sheila's grip on the mug of tea tightened.  "The Federation planned to attack the snow rabbits?  Why?"

"Well, just the predators," Adelaide amended.  "You remember the civil rights marches and protests, right?"

Sheila frowned.  "I remember some of them.  I stopped paying attention to politics when I got into the academy."

"When Captain Wren heard about it, he took Luminous and defected.  My guess is that they wanted to cow the Prey Rights movement by taking over the one example they kept putting up as a prey-ruled sector."

"And he brought it to the snow rabbits."

Adelaide nodded.  "That's how we got here."

"We were thinking that you might be feeling a bit lost right now, having been a prisioner of the wasps for so long," Field said, breaking in.  "We already cleared it with our ship, so if you want, you're welcome."

Sheila finally looked.  Just as she suspected, there was a fox staring in her direction.  As their eyes met, the fox grinned, nodding to her, then gesturing for her to come over.  "When are you leaving for Luminous?"