Once upon a time at a bakery next to a park, a lone opossum and a raccoon father of five lived their own separate lives in parallel to each other.
-
Every evening Harold the raccoon would saunter around the front of the bakery, knowingly strutting his stuff to the humans who would sing him praises and feed him handsomely. Marissa the opossum would always take the back way around the building to get to the plentiful trash cans in the side alley, in an area dirty enough to be safe from the threat of human interaction, if she played her cards right, that is, and she always did. A large part of her daily routine, other than fishing what food she needed from the rubbish, was her daily mental Harold-coping routine. As soon as she caught sight of him, she’d catch an urge to retch so powerful that only cursing his frivolous, self-righteous prancy dance of fools with as much venom she had in that moment could quell it, and, well… as a human hating-opossum in a human-ruled world, she certainly always had enough venom. She couldn’t count on her toes the amount of times she had wished those humans would snatch him up and take both his nonsense and theirs as far away from her as possible.
Until one day they did.

-
Oh how wonderful it was. She had been manifesting it from the moment she had first seen Harold set his prissy little paws in front of a human and do his little food-summoning embarrassment dance. With him out of the way, his human admirers would likely follow suit and she’d finally have her long yearned-for peace.
Because of the newfound absence of Harold and his parade of fools, Marissa decided that it was finally safe enough to take the front way around the bakery back to the park where she lived. She knew they had food in there and figured that the sweet scent of it, closer to the source than she ever had gone, would make her day that much more magnificent. This new absence of hatred in her heart made room for a little more self-indulgence than she had ever before allowed herself.
Because of that, her route back to her burrow was different than usual, taking her past a beautiful stretch of stream that smelled of the wildflowers surrounding the clear, running water glistening in the light of the sunset. Now this certainly beats the trash-adjacent puddles she had grown used to drinking from. Who knew her burrow was just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from this paradise? After she had her fill of the clean, crisp stream water, she began to make her way back to her burrow. Until she heard a cacophony of loud, panicked chittering.
For a moment, Marissa was completely frozen to the spot, glued to the ground with memories of the last time she heard those sounds. That glue crept its way into her throat, increasingly constricting her breathing as her heart continued beating faster and faster.
“Dad! Dad!” She heard their cries.
She was still glued to the spot, but confusion at the unexpected cry for a father startled her enough to move her head out of her own memories. Underneath a tree with a wide trunk to her right, she saw them appear amongst the roots one at a time until there were five. Raccoon babies. And at an age this young, still blind and unable to realize that the footsteps they heard did not belong to their father.
Of course he had children, she thought, angry at Harold for not only being a fool, but for daring to be foolish when he had so many depending on him.
She forced herself to lift one foot at a time, slowly and stiffly in the direction of the kits, weighed down not only by her own mind but by the fact that she would have to break life-shattering news to these children. Not only the fact that their father couldn’t be there for them anymore, but that this stranger was the only person left in this world that could protect them. And she had failed before. She couldn’t imagine how she was going to deliver a reality so unfit for children onto their tiny, fragile shoulders.
So she didn’t.
“Hey kiddos,” she said, trying to muster a soothing voice long foreign to her. The chittering had stopped, and she had their attention. “Your dad went to the city for a bit to try and find some… a surprise… for you all.”
Real convincing, Marissa. It’s a good thing they were still blind, or the ruse would have been up when they saw her cringing at her own poor attempt of comfort. Now that Harold had been taken to be some sort of live-in performance clown, it was up to her to take care of these kids.
“While he’s away, I’m going to take care of you; I bet you kids are hungry right?”
”Yes mama!” The kit that answered her bounded forward excitedly, likely hoping she had some food on her.
Marissa choked down her reaction to that unintentionally painful phrase and told the kits to wait there quietly for a bit while she goes back into town for food.
Once she returned and the kits were well and fed, she allowed them all to climb on her back, and she carried them down to the stream to make sure they stayed hydrated before bringing them back up underneath the tree to go to bed.
As she watched them drift off, a feeling somewhere between pity and protectiveness overtook her and she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let them end up like their dad. Once they grew old enough to have their sight and didn’t need Marissa to carry them on her back anymore, she would bring them into town with her and teach them how to navigate life safely. She would finally succeed where both she, and their dad, had failed before.

-
The nights turned into days, and the days turned into weeks, and the longer Marissa spent with these kits, the more her love for them grew. They were her own, and she cared for them as such. Carrying them to the stream was her favorite part of the day; they considered it a fun game, and would cheer the whole way there. And though her old memories hadn’t left her, and likely never will, the pain she had once felt when they called her their mother had been replaced by a warm and fuzzy sense of purpose.
Finally, the kits grew old enough and large enough to be unable to fit onto Marissa’s back anymore, and they had already had their eyesight for a good while as well. Luckily, she had been able to keep up the charade that their dad had gone on a trip into the city for this long, but even though the kits’ questions had thinned out over time, she knew she needed to tell them the truth. Harold was a fool, but it seemed cruel to allow the kits to forget their father, and perhaps his story could help them learn a valuable lesson about staying safe as well.
She took the kits into town, around to the side of the bakery to get to her usual trash cans, and began to find her courage. Her love for the kits had changed her and she was determined to not treat his story with as much bitterness as she had him. She would focus on the humans’ involvement in the story, as she knew that a child’s idolization of their parent was too precious a thing to break, and it didn’t need to happen to get to the moral of the story anyway.
As she watched them swim through the trash with glee, she stood up and opened her mouth to call them over.
“AHHHHH LOOK AT THE BABY RACCOONS!!!”
Panic overtook Marissa as she whipped around to land eyes on a pair of humans dashing toward her and her young. She had seconds. Launching herself in front of the kits in a protective manner, she opened her mouth as wide as it would go, putting her viciously sharp teeth on full display as she growled with a ferocity so guttural that she made it clear to anyone who heard her that the only way to her young was through her.
I’m not playing possum this time!
The humans had stopped in their tracks, but they didn’t leave. What could she do that could drive them away? She wanted to chase them away, but she couldn’t put space between her and her young in case more humans showed up. The stalemate had lasted long enough that the humans decided it was time to slowly creep closer.
This is it, Marissa thought, steeling her nerves, snarling with everything she had, tensed and prepared to safeguard the kits’ future.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
After the squeal left the smaller of the humans, they both dashed away in fear, and with her panic waning, it became clear that another growl had mixed in with hers at some point, and she turned around to see none other than the flamboyant king Harold himself, lips curled back in a snarl with his claws out and swiping through the air.
Her anger fully replaced with shock that Harold would dare take a swipe at his beloved humans, Marissa watched, dumbfounded, as Harold bounded out even further from the alley than they already were, snarling and lashing at anyone in sight. Once the last person had rounded the corner away from them was when Harold finally calmed down and turned around, locking eyes with Marissa. Still glued to the floor with a mixture of shock and confusion, Marissa had yet to say anything, so Harold took it upon himself to provide a response to the flurry of questions swarming around Marissa’s mind.
“I, uh, I think I’ve learned my lesson. About the humans.”
And indeed he had. From that day forward, Harold and Marissa both raised the five kits together. And though he used his knowledge of humans to help their family survive, he never once succumbed to his vice of human entertainment or left his family hanging again.