Don't Go Outside
"Don't go outside."
It was the mantra to Blanco's life since the moment he was born. His earliest memories were of the inside of this room, looking up at his mother's grim countenance as she relayed the sombre warning. Outside was dangerous, he would die out there, she said, it was better for him to stay here and let her provide for him. He had nodded gravely in response, agreeing to stay within these four walls for as long as she told him to. He was still young, growing in his downy baby feathering and learning how his long legs worked, but the most important lesson had already been drilled into his mind.
"Don't go outside."
The walls of the room became familiar to him by the third day of his sentience. They were faded and scratched blue wallpaper, covered in repeating patterns of soft and rounded depictions of various animals. Blanco could recognise a few from the meals his mother brought him, but the mice were familiar as his only company during the day. They avoided him, knowing they were nothing more than a morsel to the hungry hatchling, but he tried to habituate them to his presence nonetheless. Mother would come back at least twice a day, once with something to eat and the second time to check he was still there. The first was predictable, nearly always around the time where the sunlight slid over to the eastern wall, the one with the door. The sun would illuminate her shimmering pale feathers as she pushed the door open and stuck her head inside. She could barely fit her whole body but she crawled inside every time, kicking the door shut behind her. The second visit of the day was unpredictable, never the same time every day, like she was intentionally stopping him from predicting her arrival. Aside from the light that spilled in when mother opened the door, his only source of light came through a thin horizontal slot between wooden boards that covered the only window. He began to use it to tell time, knowing night was falling as the edges grew weaker , or that the sun was being weakened by poor weather. He didn't know what it was exactly, but he knew the sky grew dark before water started to fall. He could hear it pitter pattering on the roof above him and it often lulled him to sleep at night.
Mother was his only companion and he began to wait eagerly for her arrival each day. Her warnings came less frequently as the days passed by, like she knew he was accepting the rule as law and wouldn't make an attempt to break them. She would come in, drop his meal on the ground and watch him eat in silence, intently like she was afraid to miss something. When he finished, Blanco would try to talk with her and she would humour him as long as he didn't get too invasive in his questions about the outdoors. The moment he sounded too curious or wistful she would shut the conversation down and leave, so he tried to only chance riskier inquiries when it was the first visit of the day, for fear of being left alone for even longer.
"Don't go outside."
Mother seemed to care a great deal for him, watching his every move and keeping him well fed with a fresh kill every day. The food varied, but it often had chunks missing, like mother had fed herself before bringing it to Blanco. He felt that was only fair, she had caught it after all and from what he had learned so far you needed energy to hunt and food was what gave you energy. It was a bit of an enigma to him at first, wasting energy only to restore it, but mother had patiently explained that all living creatures needed the energy eventually, even if they did nothing. This made sense to him too, his stomach would gnaw and grumble if mother was ever late and he knew well that he never exerted himself to the level of chasing prey. Mother was wise, and everything she said had explanations attached that made Blanco nod along, satisfied by the logic laid out before him. Food was needed for energy, it took energy to hunt food, the sun sinking below their line of sight made it dark at night, the noises outside his room were not to be trusted. His curiosity burned at those noises, sometimes just the chittering of lesser creatures but sometimes fully articulate conversations like he and mother had. He would never leave, but he pressed his head to the door and strained his ears to try and understand what was being said. The lack of context made most of their meaning incomprehensible but he absorbed the words all the same, sometimes dropping them into conversation with mother to see if she would notice. She often did and asked where he had learned some of the more complex words and he would tell her honestly, he sat in his room and overheard them outside. Mother's face would grow grim at being told this but she never scolded him for it the way she scolded his more insistent questions about outside.
As Blanco grew more habituated to his life and mother continued to sate his curiosity, he grew less and less interested in whatever went on beyond the door. He tuned out the noises, waited patiently for mother's visits and pried very little into her life. He knew she was in immense danger outside, but she had told him it was necessary to keep him safe, to keep the monsters from his door. She said that if they even caught scent of him they could break inside and tear him apart, that was why she was gone all day, to distract those monsters and provide them with a bigger target. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, knowing she was putting herself in harm's way for him, but it only strengthened his resolve to stay indoors. If he tried to leave he would be rendering his mother's sacrifices useless and spitting in the face of all the hard work she had done to keep him alive. He no longer needed to be told any more, he was perfectly content within his room and the desire to see beyond the door was rapidly leaving him now he had learned of the horrors that waited out there.
"Don't go outside."
"I won't, not ever. I promise, mother, I'll never ever go outside, not for as long as I live."
