She couldn’t help it, she had to feed it. It looked so lost, stuck standing in the corner. It’d been shoved aside, but clearly wasn’t going anywhere. Everyone else tiptoed around it, pushing themselves against chairs, against walls, against other people, to be able to move around it, but never acknowledging it. She gave it the scraps off her plate, and named it Peanut.
She never wanted an elephant, though she supposed they were kind of cute. She was more likely to think of Hannibal’s elephants dying in the Alps than Dumbo, but she found his ears amusing and didn’t mind peanut shells scattered across the floor.
The tattooed lady walks by it softly, the kind of soft that only comes with being comfortable in your own skin. She looks at the lady’s tattoos, wondering how it would feel to scream your story without speaking. Some day she’d ask the lady to tell them to her, but for now she studies the images as the lady slides past the elephant, all pin pricks of ink.
The fire breather has heavy steps, angry steps. She expected him to put his shoulder right into Peanut but, as fearless as he is in the face of flames, even he curls his shoulder. She liked talking to him, even if he is flammable. His words are hot, smoke snorting out of his nose but he is only ever a danger to himself.
Peanut is covering the showgirl’s mark. She watches the girl falter slightly, shake a little in her stiletto heels, but she’s a consummate professional and recovers gracefully. She speaks in winks and giggles, in grand hand gestures. But she never touches Peanut — she never touches anyone.
She expects him to lean in and talk to Peanut, to whisper into his big ears. He’s all feline grace and puppy love from years of speaking to animals, but elephants must not be on the list and he walks by, distracted by whatever it was the lion was saying with its roar. He is so often listening, and so rarely speaking in words that people understand.
There is no crystal ball in her hand, and she refuses to tell them their fate. She doesn’t know it all, but she knows enough. She is not the bearer of bad news — she prefers to not be the bearer of any news. Peanut’s trunk sniffs out the apple she kept in her pocket, and she smiles as he eats it, scratching behind his ears.