Royce's Random Thoughts

 Nick blinked, raising his sunglasses to peer owlishly at the clock on cruiser’s dash. “Five more minutes,” he replied.

 “ Yaaaaay… ” she muttered wearily. They’d been working almost twenty-four hours, having volunteered for back to back twelve hour duty shifts, due to a bad dockyard fire diverting several other police officers from their usual patrols to handle crowd control and coordination with the fire department. “What are you going to do when we clock out?”

 “Sleep,” Nick replied flatly. “You?”

 “Ditto. I was going to soak in the tub first, but I think I’d fall asleep and drown myself.”

 “Chief Bogo would kill you if you died and left the department short pawed,” Nick noted. He pulled into the left paw turn lane at the intersection, waiting for the light to change so they could head back to Savannah Central.

 A baby blue hatchback with a wolf at the wheel pulled up to the light, in the lane to the right of their cruiser. The driver spotted a break in the traffic, then peeled out, making an illegal leftpaw turn from the middle lane and just missing their cruiser’s bumper.

“What’s up?” she asked, starting to slow down.

“Giraffe with the sign, on my right.” Nick pointed to an elderly looking giraffe standing on the sidewalk, maybe in his sixties, dressed in ragged looking, faded green fatigue pants and jacket. In his hoof he held up a sign that was about six feet on a side, filled with a dense screed in block printed letters, detailing what appeared to be a conspiracy between banker lemmings, intelligent reptiles on the moon, and “mind eaters”, whatever those were supposed to be.

 “Central, this is Zoo Adam-12. Investigating protester in front of the Lemming Brothers Building, Financial District,” Judy reported into their cruiser’s radio. She clicked off and asked Nick, “Somebody you know?”

“Acknowledged, Grand Pangolin Arms,” Judy called back.

“Aw, shit,” Nick muttered. “I hate, hate, hate these kind of calls.”

“Tell me about it,” Judy agreed sadly. Domestic felonies were one of the worst part of policing, the bunny knew. She was willing to put that up next to being shot at, because at least being shot at didn’t happen anywhere near as often.

Nick looked up from his own slice of apple pie, mouth already full with a bite, and mumbled around it, “Y’ gonna inshult t’ chef like ‘at?” He nodded towards Gideon Grey, who was whistling happily as he filled a cherry pie with filling behind the counter of his bakery. Judy was sitting with Nick at one of the small tables set near the front window of the shop, for customers coming in for a quick snack. He swallowed and continued, “Besides, you earned this reward.”

She had actually. Judy had jogged the six miles or so from the farm to the edge of town, huffing and sucking on a water bottle as Nick kept pace with her. It had been her furthest sustained run since she’d come back home four months ago. Better still, she’d finished it feeling exhilarated rather than exhausted like when she’d first begun her rehabilitation.

“I know I did,” Judy admitted. “I’m just not sure I want to run back home on a full stomach.”

“Walk back, we’re walking back,” Nick corrected with a grin. “Try not to run your old partner into the ground.”

“Thirty-two isn’t old,” she teased.

“Try telling me that again when you’re thirty-two.” He curled his lips over his fangs, like they were missing, and waved an imaginary cane, muttering feebly, “You gosh durned kids with your fancy computer phones and weird music. Back in my day we had to use CD players to annoy our parents!”

“All right, all right!” she said, laughing. “I’ll finish my pie.” She dug in and started chewing, Nick joining in, and conversation was put on hold for a while. You just did not waste time talking when eating one of Gideon’s creations.

Her right ear flicked back towards the front door as the bell above the sill chimed. Behind the counter, Gideon wiped his paws on the front of his apron and said, “Hey there, what can I do for… Oh, hello Travis.” She turned her head, to see Gideon looking dismayed as his former weasel friend approached the counter.

 “Hey, Gid,” Travis said, his grin too sharp to be friendly. “Gimme one of those cherry pies I know you’re baking today.”

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.