* * *
"We won, Mr. Stark. We won, you did it, sir, you did it. ... I'm sorry... Tony…"
"Tony, you can rest now."
The hours between Midnight and the grey predawn light had always been a magic time for Nick. Three quarters of Zootopia would be asleep, leaving it to the nocturnal animals like bats, raccoons and foxes. The street lights would be dimmed, and the shadows would lengthen. Sometimes Nick could walk for hours up and down the streets without seeing another soul, but knowing they were there, watching. It was something no daylight oriented mammal could really understand, that feeling in the air, the knowledge that there was a second Zootopia, occupying the same physical space as the sunlit one but so profoundly different in many ways.
Tonight for example, he’d taken a long walk to the tarmac two-lane road leading into town, only turning around when he’d reached the outskirts of town, listening to the crickets chirp in the grass and the occasional hoot of an owl. Then he turned back, whistling to himself and walked around the house to the back porch to catch a few winks before the Hopps clan began to wake up and start their long work day.
To his surprise, he found Judy waiting for him, sitting on the porch with her paws between her knees, ears flat and hanging low behind her head.
Judy was sitting on a carved log stump in the backyard, diligently doing her ten (and only ten, on pain of Nick’s snark) forearm curls with a two-pound dumbbell, when her mom came up to her, bearing a pitcher of lemonade and a pair of cups on a tray.
“What’s up, Mom?” she asked, setting the dumbbell down.
Bonnie set the tray on a second nearby stump, then pulled up another to sit beside her. “Oh, just checking up on you. How’s your arm?”
Judy rubbed her shoulder and grimaced. “Weak. I’m working on it.” She looked closer at Bonnie’s troubled expression and lowered ears. “Something on your mind?”
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timeasmymeasure
