My mother keeps me well fed and walks with me. Whenever she goes away, she always comes back. Until one day, she leaves me beside a tree.
“Sit. Good girl.”
Then she’s gone. Why won’t she return? All at once, the differences between my mother and me become clear:
I don’t talk like her. Unlike me, she never wears a rope around her neck. She stands on two legs, I stand on four.
So I rear up to stand on two legs, bracing against the tree. Darkness, silence - the tether still tight around my throat.