The otter opened his eyes and looked around: the room was dark, lit only by the ghostly glow of the TV on the other side of the room. Confused, he sat up and stretched, to feel an arm drop from his shoulder’ to his right sat a black-furred fox, softly sleeping with his head on his paw, that arm supported by the armrest of the couch. That’s right – the otter was watching a movie with his friend Karter, and they both must have fallen asleep. The TV was glowing a gentle, empty black – if the movie was over, what time was it? How long had they been asleep?
Feeling a hunger in his stomach, the otter lifted Karter’s arm off of him and stood. Then, he realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt: he just dismissed that as he walked to the kitchen, knowing that he was always disoriented whenever he first woke up.
The kitchen was dark as well, with no lights on. It was too dark to see without the half-light of a sleeping screen, so he fumbled his way around and managed to get his paw on an apple. Good enough. It was a nice apple, fresh and crisp – not at all one of those apples you bite into then instantly consider throwing away – and he crunched it while leaning against the threshold between the two rooms, watching Karter. The fox slept peacefully, his chest almost imperceptibly rising and falling; the straight eminence of the television made his normally white chestfur instead appear a gentle tone of grey; the outline of his ebony fur was invisible in the shadows. The otter had seen Karter in the sun before: the darker regions of his fur would appear a deep violet or midnight blue, and the milk-white of his chest and belly, of the insides of his arms and thighs, of his neck and beneath his muzzle, would sparkle in all different colors. He somehow kept his fur unbelievably soft as well, which led the otter to often seek hugs and such from him.
The time really didn’t matter. Here were two very close friends, one asleep on the couch, the other watching him, eating an...