Prickly’s avoidance of others was natural, instinctive. Who wouldn’t behave likewise under the circumstances? Each time she met with another, she could expect to be needled, sometimes more than once. Though the stickings did vary in these engagements, the results were always the same: Prickly would depart with one or more new pins in her, while the other, smooth, was back on his merry way. Eventually she had come to bristle like a porcupine.
Prickly wasn’t the only one like this, who bristled. But these others she avoided too as a matter of course. They frightened her even more than the smooth ones. She scarcely had room for a few pins more. What if they were to try and stick her with all of their pins and make off like a smooth one?
In her isolation Prickly could manage to slough off a few, but invariably these were replaced when she ventured from her burrow for food or some other essential. The situation was hopeless, and so she hatched a new plan.
Resigning herself to her fate, fully expecting to be impaled to death on the spot, Prickly stopped avoiding those others who bristled like her. Soon enough, she found one.
And then it happened.
Nothing. Nothing at all. The other poor creature—as afraid of her as she was of it—did nothing but eventually smile at her. And when she smiled back, they stood there like two happy hedgehogs.
They met again the following day, and again the day after. Over time their happiness together became so complete that even a shared word between them seemed superfluous. Theirs was a quiet love—so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
And then one did.
And then another, and another still.
This went on until the two of them were as smooth as the smooth ones—the ones that always shared their pins. Yet, unlike them, Prickly and her newly bare friend had shiny surfaces. They shined as if they had never been stuck in the first place—and colorful too, not that sickly pallor that usually came with being smooth.
Newly emboldened, Prickly and her friend set out into the world. As expected, they soon encountered a smooth one with an even more pained expression than usual, for he had not one but two pins to distribute and looked eager to be free of them. He considered the pair warily, sizing them up, and a moment later was upon them, wielding his first pin like a sword!
Prickly thrust herself in front of her friend just as the pin came.
In.
Through.
Out.
Yet it found no purchase.
Drawing his second pin, the smooth one tried again to the same end. Nothing of Prickly could be stuck, and so, ducking under, he attacked her companion instead. The result was the same: there simply wasn’t anything of them to skewer.
The assailant became desperate, until Prickly asked of him, “Why don’t you just drop your pins?”
“I can’t,” he replied. And then he was off, pins still in hand, presumably in search of easier prey.
They saw him again the next day, but this time he looked like a porcupine and avoided their approach.
[Copyright © 2019 D.W. Goates All rights reserved. First Publication.]