It’s been quite a number of days since siblings No.4 and 5 were prescribed treatments by Sam. I have to admit, I’m glad he did whatever he did since they’re both a lot more perky than before! Sibling No.5 stopped licking her fur due to the strange cone collar on her neck, and after being personally fed every few hours by Sam, she’s gained back the weight she had lost. I mean, practising a no consumption diet is just terrible for your health! You’d just end up being skin and bones by that point, and no one would find that attractive.

As for sibling No.4, he didn’t return to his mini-den for a few days but when he did, he had a strange white thing wrapped around his head – as well as a very hard object attached on top. I noticed when he tried banging his head against the walls and door the first time that a cacophonous clanking sound reverberated around the area. However, he didn’t seem to be injured from it, so…the strange object was protecting him?

Sibling No.1 seemed to be his usual annoying, anarchic self. I swear I saw him biting every human that tried to enter his mini-den – or pen as I vaguely recall Sam calling it, now that I think about it. Watching from my opposite ‘pen’, I often saw the humans start using long not-wood sticks to place my sibling’s food down but even those could not evade the wrath of his malicious maw.

I think it was around two days ago that the humans decided they’d had enough since Sam stood outside the pen and held another strange device to his mouth. It kind of looked like a hollow stick but was clearly made from a much more durable material. Observing Sam’s actions, he appeared to give a huge puff into it before sibling No.1 whimpered a little bit. After a few minutes, he collapsed on the ground and couldn’t move.

Intrigued by what had happened, I poked my head between the see-through parts of my door – as best as I could since they were very narrow – and tried to watch what Sam was going to do next. He tentatively opened the door and, after ensuring sibling No.1 wasn’t moving anymore, he placed a strange mesh over my sibling’s mouth. Once Sam had left, and sibling No.1 had woken up, I realised that the hard mesh stopped him from opening his mouth.

Every night since then I’ve been hearing his whimpering over his exceptionally sorry state. I mean, he’s only himself to blame for having his legs chained together, his neck chained to the wall and his mouth muzzled. I have no sympathy for you!...Well, maybe a little bit, but it’s only because I couldn’t imagine how he could eat properly with such a thing on him all of the time.

As the days passed by, my siblings and I got moved into a larger pen where we could all interact with one another finally! We all immediately began nuzzling one another to reacquaint ourselves with each other’s scents and to establish long lost bodily contact. “Ah, I’ve missed this wonderful sensation! Love me more, my siblings!” After an extended session of reunion, we then practised our most repeated action as a group: play-fighting!

Despite us being together, there was still a sense of loss as Mother, Father and siblings No.2 and 3 weren’t here with us. “Are they all living somewhere else together and having as much fun as us? Why didn’t they take us with them?...Did they abandon us?” Such thoughts passed my mind from time to time, however I was soon brought to more positive ruminations whenever sibling No.5 came over to lick my face. “What is with your obsession with licking?!”

Over the course of a few more days, several groups of humans approached our pen and ogled at our personages. I mean, I know we are the cream of the crop for beautiful beasts of grandeur, but the constant looks of admiration all day can be a little off-putting, you know? Anyway, it seemed that someone really liked how we looked since they kept coming over every few days to stop and smile at us.

Eventually, sibling No.5 was picked by the human, resulting in Sam coming over and separating her from us. My siblings were all confused by what was happening – with sibling No.4 moving to attack poor Sam – but I gave reassuring yips that calmed them down since I kind of understood due to my recent dreams. Saying that, I still wasn’t entirely sure if being ‘bought’ by humans was a good thing, or not, but if I went by how Bastien seemed to turn out then it should be optimistic.

With only the three of us left, and myself being the only girl, I found myself being ganged up on by siblings No.1 and 4. Of course, it was always sibling No.1 who instigated these ‘play-fights’. No doubt he did this as revenge for all of the toys I got to play with when we were in single accommodation. “You’re so petty! Act more mature and get over it, sibling No.1!” Well, it’s not as if he could enact his revenge since even with sibling No.4 acting as his henchpup, I still succeeded several times…Just don’t do a tally for ratios of wins to losses.

Once a few more days had passed by, another family of humans came to browse through the various beasts being kept in this place. Among them were some tiny humans who were walking with their mouths open and looking honestly quite ridiculous. It seemed that the people were only coming for an initial look this time, however I imagined the adults would come later to establish some transactions.

Of the tiny humans, there were around five females and eight males. Eavesdropping on the conversations of the adults, it appeared that these were the village children coming for the yearly crystal beast selection. I didn’t really fully understand what that exactly meant, however after some quiet contemplation I deduced that at least thirteen crystal beasts would be bought from their group.

I excluded us from being chosen by these humans since I knew that none of us had crystals protruding from any parts of our bodies, thus couldn’t possibly be classed as crystal beasts. Still, I was quite curious as to what they’d end up picking since our pen was close to a fair number of other ones – each containing a wide variety of beasts. I even recognised some from my dreams, like the Molnir Panther cubs and Pyro Bear cubs. Some others I wasn’t so sure of…

Anyway, since it didn’t really matter to me, or my siblings, I had another play-fight match with sibling No.1. After a while of expending my extra energy reserves, I eventually slipped into a comfortable slumber. “I wonder if I’ll have another dream again…”