Hedgehog's Sanctuary

Everyone knows “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma” popularized through Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hard to recall if there’s a specific dialogue reference or it’s merely a title of an episode. But you get the gist: a certain distance between hedgehogs is best for surviving winter. Anything closer and you skewer by the the quills. A metaphor for the challenges of intimacy.

But lately I’ve been wondering, due to the detrition of social norms in our modernity, if the hedgehog can huddle much longer. Whatever warmth promised seems rarer by the hour, doesn’t it? As one forgets how to say hello, God bless and shared language, history, myth, winter onset demands new strategies.

The first strategy is warmth-by-proxy. It seems the new winter landscape has dots of hedgehogs humming alone with the pixel glow. Though a consequence is where, even in the summer, the meadow remains dotted by the same patrons. All seem to have lost function of limbs, effectively relinquished living---frostbite, but it doesn’t matter. The pixels keep dancing.

Of the hedgehogs remaining so the second strategy is intentional grouping. Since you can no longer easily waltz into formation, one can look toward hedgehog archery, or hedgehog finger painting, and other excuses and official ordinations to meet. The trouble is that the groups keep waning, as the steps toward warmth seem too opaque and walled in, and some mistakenly thought that the pixels could help them coordinate. They soon joined the device betrothed.

Hedgehogs begin debating on the crisis, but a few sit in the back so assured of their inner warmth. Each winter they manage to sustain themselves from their coat and quill alone. Though by each winter they realize their fur sheds in patches. Upon some study so it was discovered: there’s radioactive particles that permeate each bitter wind. It attacks the roots of those furs, the roots of their beliefs, their certainties, perceived infinities, until driven insane.

So stands a single straggler looking over the massacre. A blizzard howls in the distance. Why not scamper toward the grass edge? Beyond the mound, and by the ridge of mangled root one shall cocoon. The only strategy remaining must be some metamorphosis, after all.

Staring at the paws until the frostbite pushes one to inch further. Toward the interior of muddled dirt the hedgehog scrapes at wall, until in crumble stands a door. A little push more to slide down some cobble, and with a ten meter drop you can look up and see the door crafted of dark marble. Some glitter of wind and the frostbite chips and crackles. To unveil flowing stone.

That stone shimmer starts crawling down the limbs, clasping the neck, draped down the chest.

It knows not to scream; after all, plenty of statues stand as harbinger. They even chiseled the few tears, of the ones that failed. Intuitively one knows to stand still and let the alchemy conclude serenely.

Minutes as days, until the hedgehog feels the heart beat into stillness. A pile of fur discarded surrounds our contender. With a bit of back-rocking the flipped stone creature and paw stands rigid on frozen rivulet, scantly registered by how it distorts the ground around.

There is no cold, nor inner warmth. The heart soon stops, but our stone friend keeps waddling up toward the circular room of bookshelves and scrolls. There’s a little computer to click around, too.

However much the blizzard rages, and some arctic winds dissipate through the few airflow cavities, our hedgehog pays no mind. Modernity and its pressure cooker, magic, silent recruitment, has rendered such sensing unneeded.

Our stone hedgehog surely survives.