Chapter IX: Just play along
It felt good to have his paws touch the floor again. Additionally, the wolf now had the opportunity to look around a bit more. The highchair was situated at one of the short ends of the table, but it faced the kitchen and he his back was turned to the living room the entire time.
At first sight, the living room did not feature anything out of the ordinary. A comfortable chair or two, a couch that was placed against a wall. There was a brightly colored clock above said couch and all of it more or less faced towards the mantel and the fireplace.
As the wolf looked closer, he noticed that there was a door in the side of the living room, close to the back wall. Next to the door, a part of the wall was omitted and replaced by a sturdy glass pane. However, there was about a foot of open space near the ceiling.
"Are you curious about what's behind that door?" Jennifer asked.
"How can you tell?"
She smiled, offering her hand. "I've been a caregiver long enough read the body language of a puppy."
"I'm not a puppy," he denied.
"Besides the fact that you look like one, part of you sure acts like one, don't you think?"
Another point for Jennifer. The wolf decided that it would be better for his self-esteem to not keep count. He took the hand of his caregiver and she led him to the door at the other end of the living room.
"This is our playroom," Jennifer said, after she opened the door. "You can play with anything in there, but I expect to you tidy up any toy you pick up, all right?"
Aran looked around and saw a bright red cabinet and various lidless toy boxes that contained different kinds of toys. Some of them were clearly for boys, while others seemed to be more suitable for girls. He wondered why there were toys for girls, since both he and Jennifer's first charge were boys.
"Wait, you expect me to actually..." he started, but he had troubles finishing his sentence.
"Play with toys? Of course, dear, that's what they're here for."
"No, I mean, these toys, they're for little kids, and-" he started, but with the same result as before.
"Aran, look at me. A playroom is to play in, and toys are to play with. Can you do the math?"
He sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the voice of rebellion was shouting so loud that it overruled all other thoughts.
"Oh, for crying out loud! I already dealt with wearing a diaper, being bathed and being fed with a spoon! Aren't you asking a bit too much of me?"
"How is playing with toys worse than any of the other things you mentioned?" Jennifer dodged.
"You don't understand! You're treating me as if I'm a toddler, but I'm twenty years old! Just tell me what you want from me and skip this nonsense."
He wanted to walk off, but the collie still held his hand and she showed no intentions of loosening her grip.
"Little one, between the two of us, you are the one that does not understand. I get that you're confused, maybe even angry, but I'm not doing this to embarrass you."
"Then what is this all about?"
"I'm not allowed to say, not yet."
"Right, we're going to play that card again. Why can't you just tell me what you want from me, so I can give it to you and we can be done with this whole 'treatment' thing of yours," he said with ever growing annoyance.
"Aran, it doesn't work that way. If I would do that, you'd play pretend and do whatever I ask just to please me. No, you'll have to go through all of this, so you'll give us what we want to see out of free will."
"Free will? Whatever can I give you in this situation that fits my idea of free will?"
"Change," the collie replied matter-of-factly.
"A change in what?"
"I already said too much. Now be good and go have some fun. Don't worry, you can take Damian with you and if you need anything, just call me."
The collie nudged her charge into the playroom shut the door behind him. Aran heard the sound of something being shoved or latched and turned around to the door. He then noticed that it could not be opened from the inside. With his shoulders against the painted wood, he applied pressure in a vain attempt to open the door, but it would not budge.
'Great,' he thought. 'Now I'm stuck in some playroom with toys I'm at least fifteen years too old for.'
Aran sat down on the padded foam floor and tried to think. The door would not give way and there was no workable method to open it. The only other way out was through the gap between ceiling and the top of the glass pane, but that would be impossible to reach. Besides, even if he would manage to reach it, there was no way he could return to the floor without hurting himself - or alarming Jennifer, for that matter.
The wolf sighed. His situation was both familiar and contradictory at the same time. On the one hand, he had stared at the door of his own bedroom many times. However, instead of waiting for someone to let him out, he had watched the door in order to be ready to defend himself.
When he was younger, Aran had tried a lot of different things to keep his father out of his room. Usually, it meant trouble when that silver-grey wolf would bash into the only few square feet of private space Aran had. Now that he thought about it, even his own bedroom could not provide privacy.
Oh, how he wished to have had a lock on his bedroom door. It would have solved a lot of problems. On the other paw, his father could still beat him up in anywhere else in the house. Aran shook his head in an attempt to shake off the bad memories. He was a strong, independent wolf, and his father would be the last person he ever needed for anything.
Still, nothing of this changed his current situation. He was in a place that was obviously designed for children, with no power outlets, hard surfaces or sharp corners to be found. Jennifer had said that he was her third charge, which meant that two other people had preceded him. How had they spent their time in there?
Aran finally gave up on devising an exit strategy. Since he was going to be stuck in the playroom until Jennifer would release him, he decided to make the most of it. The first thing he noticed when he inspected the room was that it lacked a clock, or any other concrete indication of time, for that matter.
Additionally, the glass pane allowed him to see into the living room, but the clock was on the same wall as the glass pane, so there was no way he could keep track of time. He figured that this was intentional, to make the charges forget about time and focus on playing instead.
The playroom did have windows on two walls, but none of them could be opened. Furthermore, they started at the ceiling and reached down to five, maybe six feet above the floor. Even when standing on his toes, Aran could not look outside.
He then turned to the cabinet. However, to his surprise, it had no drawers and only two front doors, but they were locked. This left him with the toy boxes. One of the boxes would certainly never draw his attention, let alone never would he play with its contents.
It contained dolls, dress-up clothes and pony plushies in various colors ranging from purple to pink. The word "girly" would be an understatement to describe it in one term. Aran shook his head; he would not even play with such things if people paid him for it.
The second box was a bit smaller and contained toys he figured were gender neutral. There were coloring books, crayons, wooden puzzles with fairly large pieces and other toys one could find in a room for a child of either gender.
The last box sparked something inside Aran when he waded through the contents. It contained pieces for a wooden modeled railway, some train wagons to go with it and a couple of cars. Additionally, he found figurines of dinosaurs and other animals.
Even though the rebellious voice had verbally lashed at Jennifer only minutes ago, Aran's calm side appeared to resurface and take control of the wheel again. The modeled railway reminded him of a simpler time, when he and Damian were still friends. Together, they had spent many hours playing with the jackal's railway, making up all kinds of stories and events as they did.
Still, that was more than ten years ago. The wolf still felt too old to relive such memories, but from experience, he knew that building a railway model from scratch could take hours. Aran did not know whether that was to blame on the perfectionism of their infantile minds or they just lacked the ability to oversee the possibilities, but neither did he care.
He dug up every part of wooden rail he could find and started putting them together in a fairly random way. After all, he had no idea what he was going to do just yet, but hoped that he would find that out on the fly.
Even better, not having a plan would ultimately result in rebuilding the railway, which would only take more time. Estimating that Jennifer could keep him in the playroom until dark, anything that would prolong his self-made plan would speed up his sense of time.