The Chosen One

It was cold, it was freezing; he'd been there for so long, he'd lost track of the time after the third day. He'd been so excited when his mother told him that he and his 11 brothers and sisters were going on a trip, that he'd not caught on to the fact that they were being abandoned until she'd walked off, supposedly to get some grain.

8 hours later and he'd realized that they'd been abandoned. And as 11 pale faces turned up towards him, hunger, fear, questions, clear in their round faces, he also came to the conclusion that he couldn't blame his mother. She'd had so many children in her time, worked hard to keep them safe, and now she was old, and tired, so very tired.

He remembered watching her move her brown body around the fields, as she struggled to pick grain, the only line of work suitable for 'her kind' the others had snickered. So when she'd said they were going on a trip away from this place, with its derisive neighbors, huts that smelled constantly of urine, no matter how hard their poor mother tried to scrub it clean, and endless loud mowing of tractors, he'd been ecstatic. Now, as he shivered with his siblings in the cold, white compartment, he wondered if this was it, the real end.

Just then, the door opened and a figure moved towards them; a hand reached out towards him, deftly picked him up and stared at him with a smile, the first smile he'd seen in a long time. "Congratulations, you have been chosen to be my breakfast today you lucky egg", and soon he was warm and for the first time in his life, happy.