Elias was halfway through making coffee when his phone began buzzing across the kitchen counter. At first, he ignored it. His shift at Northbridge Wildlife Park didn’t start for another hour, and he had promised himself one quiet morning without radios, feeding charts, or visitors tapping on glass. Then his sister’s message appeared on the screen. It was just a link, followed by a question and a tongue-out smiley: You sure this isn’t one of yours? Elias almost smiled.
People sent him animal videos all the time—raccoons stealing sandwiches, deer wandering through supermarkets, escaped goats standing on police cars. But when he opened the video, the sound of the coffee machine seemed to fade behind him. A bear was perched high in a sycamore tree in the middle of the city, its claws dug deep into the bark, traffic frozen below. The clip was shaky and zoomed in too far, but Elias knew that shoulder. He knew the pale crescent of fur behind the left ear. He knew the nervous way she shifted whenever too many people stared. “Mara?” he whispered.
The mug slipped from his hand and shattered against the tile. In the video, people were shouting. Someone laughed. Someone yelled for the police. A drone buzzed dangerously close to the branches, and Mara turned her head sharply, frightened and cornered. Elias didn’t need to see anything else. If that crowd kept growing, Mara would panic. And if Mara panicked, the city would stop seeing a scared animal and start seeing a threat. He grabbed his jacket and ran.