“Why don’t you ever take me with you to the Square,” Ginger Jack asked his mother as she set herself to leave the den.
Mother Fox stopped in her tracks. Clutching tight the hands of her younger daughter, she whirled to him. “I’ve told you before, Ginger Jack. You’re more useful to me at home.”
“But I want to go out with you. You never let me go outside with the rest. Last week, you went with Ruby,” he said, referring to his eldest sister. “And the other day, you went with Emerald,” he continued, referring to his elder brother. And I got so excited because I sensed you were taking us in the order of our birth. And that I would be next .” Ginger Jack’s voice dropped as he uttered his next words. “But today, you go with Sapphire who is younger than I am and now I wonder, why don’t you ever go out with me, Mother.”
Mother Fox gritted her teeth in annoyance. This was not the time for this conversation, she thought. With a resolute stance, she uttered not a word and clutching Sapphire even tighter, walked briskly out of the den.
“Why wouldn’t she take me?” Ginger Jack sobbed quietly to himself. “Did I do something wrong? Why wouldn’t Mother take me?” he muttered again and again.
A dark chuckle from behind had him looking back in fright. But it was only his brother, Emerald, who leaned by the wall and munched quietly on nuts.
“You really don’t know when to stop, do you, Ginger Jack?” Emerald started.
“I wish to be left alone, Emerald, please,” Ginger Jack said, eyeing his brother warily.
Emerald let out a long, bitter laughter. Throwing the last bits of nuts into his mouth, he made his way towards his brother, and for a moment, Ginger Jack was transfixed as he admired his brother. All sparkling white of him. The morning sun seeped through the crack in the den, casting an almost ethereal glow on Emerald as he stalked towards him. Fur so white, he put the purest of snow to shame. Eyes so icy blue, he could freeze the arctic. Incomparably beautiful.
Suddenly struck with a feeling of despair of just how different he was from his brother, Ginger Jack lowered his gaze, just as Emerald nudged him.
“Are you really that dumb, or you’re just pretending to be?”
“What do you mean?” Ginger Jack asked.
“The way you hound mother each time she goes out with us and never you. Can you really not see?”
“See what?”
“See that you’re different!” Emerald yelled in his face. “I saw the way you looked at me. It’s the same way you look at Mom, Ruby, Sapphire and even Diamond,” he said referring to their last brother. “You see that you’re different from us in everything, yet you ask why mother doesn’t take you out with her.”
If Ginger Jack’s heart wasn’t already broken, maybe this would have done the trick. “But...but what’s wrong with the way I look?”
Emerald snickered. “The question should be, what isn’t wrong with the way you look?”
Ginger Jack’s heart broke a little more as he heard this, but his elder brother whose formerly irritated grin had somehow shifted to a malicious sneer, was nowhere done with him.
“And then we move over to your name.”
“That’s alright. I think I get the point —”
“Be quiet!” Emerald hissed. “Mother named us all after precious stones, and you never wondered why you’re the only one named Ginger?” He made a bewildered face at him. “Ginger Jack?”
“I said I get the point!” Ginger Jack yelled and pushed his brother down, wrestling him to the floor. Even in his blinding rage, he knew he was no match for his elder brother who was just as tough as he was beautiful. With a sudden swipe of his brother’s sharp claws on his ginger fur, Ginger Jack howled and scampered to the other side of the room, Emerald’s mocking tsk following him.
“Even in rage, you’re different. Uselessly different,” Emerald spat. Overcome by fury and hurt, Ginger Jack ran past his brother and out of the den, not looking back once.
He ran and didn’t stop. He ran through thickets, thorns and muddied grass. After a while he paused to catch his breath. His paw hurt and his ginger fur looked even dirtier than usual. Glancing around, he discovered that he no longer knew where he was and that’s when he saw it, what looked like a deserted greenhouse hidden among the trees.
He sniffed about him and nudging the termite-eaten wooden door with his nose, stepped inside. The greenhouse was bright but stank of rotting pumpkins and deadening plants. It looked like it whoever owned the place had long since given up on it, Ginger Jack thought. He saw a giant pumpkin and daintily nestled himself atop it, taking his mind back to his brother’s last words as he ran.
“If you had any remorse for the shame your existence brings mother, you’ll never return!”
Am I really that much of a disappointment? He lamented quietly. Maybe if he stayed here long enough, they’ll come looking for him. After all, he was still family, wasn’t he? Weary from his exertions, Ginger Jack closed his eyes to sleep. They were going to come find him soon enough. He was sure of it.
An abandoned greenhouse with decaying pumpkins and a fox stop one of them.
Gloominess. Desertion. Abandonment.
My entry to Pic1000.
