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It was always so cold there. It was always so heartless. At times, the silence that surrounded and flooded my cage felt as though it would crush me, smothering the very breath from my lungs and the very life from my soul. However, these were things I had grown accustomed to. They were what all Layhr were used to. The humans were not hired to love us. They were not hired to care. But somehow I felt as though one did. He would arrive just as the others would, but he was the one who would stop at my door and looked down at me with a fleeting smile addressing his lips, his eyes cast immediately away as if hiding his true feelings. I longed to catch his gaze with mine, lock my glowing glance with his dull brown one. I never achieved it, until that day. I never realized what terror could be immersed in the eyes of one so calm. I was glad I had never before looked so deeply into the eyes of a human.

I stood to allow my soft white paws the grace of feeling the hard concrete beneath them, stretching each leg in turn, before leaning downwards to caress my forelegs and their markings with the warmth of my long pink tongue. As each muscle in my body rippled with awakening, I flared the wings that had matured so swiftly. These pinions I had quickly grown so proud of, and each new morning with the click of the hallway�s light switch, I watched the dim lighting of my cell be tossed in playful dances and striations across the featureless floor as I spread them. Each primary tip swept gingerly both bland walls at my sides. I had never dreamt of flying, nor did I find such a use necessary in the life that I had been created into. To pleasure him, to excite him, to make him proud of me was all I had ever wanted. I wanted to see that smile last just a hint longer, and have the reason be me.

The thundering sound of rubber soled footsteps echoed down the hallway, reverberating off of each iron bar in a chorus of tormenting promises. Each crevasse in the rock-hard walls seemed to hold that threat like a foul lingering scent that simply would not disperse fast enough. My ears fell to settle back against my skull, pressing down my well-kept mane. I lowered my head, though kept it tilted just enough with my snout pressed lightly against my cage�s barred door. These footsteps I knew well, and always so eagerly did I look up to watch my own human come ever closer to me once more, but something was different about them this particular morning. Bolder, harsher they fell in each step that grated on my nerves. I did not understand. How could I have? When he arrived, another stood next to him, and both looked down upon my cowering form. I allowed the feathered furs of my underbelly to brush the floor beneath me, my tail curled gently at my side and across my bent haunches, and my wings furled only enough to display what I had easily assumed to be their beauty. It was not that I thought he would strike me. I wanted to give him satisfaction, calming his nerves when looking down at me, the one to be done with at his whim.

I stayed down as I was, my claws clicking on the ground as quietly as possible as I anchored my submissive posture. He would not stop glaring at me. I felt smaller each moment his glazed brown eyes remained static on my form, sending needles of anguish and confusion into my system. No brief smile tickled his expression, and the scent which drifted across my nostrils was one which I had never had the displeasure of smelling before. The odor hinted of cleaning solution, of the antiseptic which flooded and nearly closed down the senses in a freshly washed laboratory, but it was much stronger, and hung from every thread he wore. When he opened his mouth, the scent drowned my mind with a concern I could not fully grasp. It was alcohol.

"You. You failure."

Each of the few words he shared with me was snarled through yellow-stained teeth, his lips curled back to flash his moistened gums. He lacked his white coat, his shirt and tie in full disarray, and his posture crooked and wobbling. One of his hands fell hard on bars, pulling back viciously to rattle them, as well as keep his own balance. A droplet of drool dangled from his lips as his rough breath continued to pour down over my face, forcing my blue-touched eyes to blink against each burning exhale, each flaming word. The darkness which welled within him fluttered against my own soul, forcing my cringe to shift into a trembling. He loved me. I knew he did. He cared for me like no other. He would never harm me.

The man beside him shared that horrid odor, his lab coat hanging by only one arm with the other dragging on the ground, with dirty brown footprints imprinted along the sleeve as if he had been stepping on it during his morning travels. In his grubby hand that displayed nails as dirty and dark as deep earthen soil, he held a chain, raising it in a shaking, clanking motion to offer it to his colleague. Their exchange missed, the metal leash falling hard onto the tiled passageway floor, the consequential sound ringing down the hallway with such a haunting howl that every Layhr's voice went silent. They were all listening, all waiting. The silence permitted the passage of every remaining vibration of the chain�s fall to shock my ears. I was stunned. Movement was no longer an option. Perhaps, I thought, if I just stayed still enough, he would come brush me or feed me my morning's meal. As the door was flung open, and the chain dragged noisily from its crumpled position on the ground, he threw it hard across my head, the kinks in the loop impacting between my eyes, stunning me further. My whimper escaped my stressed lungs at the short, sharp flick of pain that struck me, though I had never meant to emit it. Such a sound was unspeakable towards my own human. He loved me.. He did love me. Everything would be alright. The pain would not last.

As the chain tightened, my ability to breathe lessened. Forced to gasp for the ill-attained air, I choked openly, my tongue lolling heavily from my mouth to free my throat of space. I did not want to move. I wanted to stay here, where he could return to me later and grant me that smile and the attention he so often did. I looked forward to it. It had to come. A desperate yank on the chain forced my head to move towards him, my reluctant body in tow. I allowed it, my tail swaying low to brush across the floor beside my hind paws. I tripped over the ridge which separated my kennel from the hallway, stumbling until an accidental bump against him.

"You wretched creature."

I simply could not accept that he was speaking to me, and ever so lightly I turned that bump into a flurry of gentle nuzzling, rubbing my white cheek fluff against his pant leg with closing, patient eyes. He began to walk, leading me roughly onwards. The light above winked on and off, flickering hatefully as it watched down on us. His friend had remained at my cage, leaning against the partition between it and the next one, watching our departure down the hallway with a vacant gaze. I had only briefly turned my head to see him, my attention pulled away quickly as we rounded a corner, the end of the shackles� chain thumping against my side in rhythm to our gait. My wings, I kept furled and poised above my back, raised out of the way of the threatening chain. Such appendages I wanted to be admired, but this scent on his body, this alcohol, had occurred only after the distress he displayed yesterday. Could they be the cause of this madness?

I kept close to him, keeping pace for want to be as obedient as I always had to him, my human. The one I loved. When we stopped, it was in an equipment room, one with instruments that glittered in angry steels and bronzes. Everything seemed different in that instant as his clouded eyes were laid on me once more. The world seemed to flatten under the weight of his hatred, all of which was rooted in me. In my wings. In my appendages which seemed to be the very nest of all of my problems. They were apart of me, and yet they were wretched and treated as poison, as something to be done away with. This was his plan. In that instant, that moment, that failure of love and bond, I realized his intentions, and my life crashed beneath my claws.

His end of the chain remained clutched firmly in his tightening grip, his sneer unending, yet wavering in-between madness and possessed fury. He emitted a laugh which shook me, from flesh to bone. I tucked my wings into my sides, protectively, and now fully wracked with fear. Time became hazed, the room misted over. I could see nothing but his drunken hand fall upon my back, rounding the base of my wing to pull it outwards towards him, spreading full the bone to his mercy. But he showed none. In his other hand, he held an instrument whose serrated edge was plunged beneath the feathery coating of my pinion�s base structure, tearing into flesh to grip tight what he wanted gone. He wrenched it forwards, twisted, and waited with full pleasure to hear the cracking shatter of bone and the warmth of crimson blood spill across his bracing hand.

The pain, it was not there. My senses had been crusted with disbelief and the intensity which had thrown my mind away from my physical body. I could do none but watch, the weakness having overtaken my muscles, dragging me to the ground despite the helpless thrashing I instinctually gave. I turned, my claws and teeth seeking a mark of human flesh, my eyes ablaze with blue insanity. This couldn't be a reality. This wasn't my human. My love. My dream.

My own blood coated me, turning my snow-white exterior into a bath of dark red horror. Pain tore through the right side of my form, driving my muscles into fits and spasms to regroup, to not fall into shock. I was dragged suddenly to my left, finding only too late that he had driven his toothed clamp down into my other wing's base, stuck deeply into the skin, hungry for the taste of marrow in its jaws. A sickening crunch followed this realization, as well as a twisted feeling that would drive any to the brink of sanity and beyond. I could stand it no longer, falling onto my side with the yank it took for him to remove that last miserable appendage from my traumatized form.

Labored breathing shook my chest, my dimly glowing eyes wide in terror and shock as I laid there, trembling in what had happened to my fantasy. I was betrayed. My life, my desires had been based on my human, the one who I could have given no more than I already had. But he could not accept me. He had to change me. He had to get rid of me. I could find no strength to move my legs, even as a scream of repulsion broke out across the room. Another scientist had found us, but I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. Nothing mattered any longer. I could die, and I felt it would only be for the better.