Written per a prompt from a friend. Also hey hi hello, yes I am alive, just mentally hibernating.

The mall was busy, typical for a Saturday afternoon, the bustling crowds packing the halls and escalators to a claustrophobic degree. Teens chatted on their phones, thumbs a-blur as they texted and tweeted and reblogged and shared. A pair of adults hurried- bleary eyed and overwrought – after their children as the little ones ran amok between the legs of other shoppers, hyped up on donuts and Jamba Juice. Elderly folk reclined on a set of arm chairs, the sitting area delineated by a collection of potted palms.

There was a flash, then, by the fountain in the central atrium. 

Someone gasped. Another yelped. Someone else laughed, before scurrying away, phones out and angled towards the ground. 

An albino pangolin waddled out of the fountain, water dripping from her scales, her red eyes taking in the scene. 

People stopped and stared, and the man playing the piano a few feet away came to a clanging, discordant stop when the pangolin sidled past his foot, her cold scales brushing against his ankles.

She stood on her hind legs, blinking in the flashes of cameras; a curious device hung from her neck, bounced between her feet as she set off in search of an escalator. 

People made way, commenting and pointing and exclaiming ‘how cute!’ as she passed. A spotty teenage tried to pick her up, but she flicked her tail and chittered her displeasure, sending the boy running after his friends.  

No one got on the escalator until she reached the next level. 

Already the noise of the place had changed, and she knew she was running out of time before animal control was called to deal with her. It had happened before, and would undoubtedly happen again. 

Finding a bench that overlooked the promenade and atrium below, the pangolin clambered atop it. The tide of humanity continued to swirl and swarm below and around her, the chaotic clammed of thousands of  voices deafening in the glass-roofed space. 

She huffed, scratched her claws against the glass in irritation, and sat up on her hind legs, the device on display. 

The president -a honey badger of some renown – had given her this sort of mission before, and she could not, would not fail. Too much hung in the balance.

With another determined huff she pressed a claw to the gleaming, silver green button in the middle of the device. There came a soft beep, a dull swell of light, and then… 

And then blessed silence. 

The humans, previously overwhelming in their numbers, had vanished. To where, the albino pangolin didn’t particularly care. So long as they were gone, she and her comrades could do what they needed to in order to save their Sacred Mother. 

Satisfied with another job well done, the albino pangolin clambered off the bench and went in search of a snack. Reshaping reality always left her feeling a little peckish, regardless of whether she’d eaten recently or not. 

A few minutes later the albino pangolin gave up, realizing there weren’t nearly enough insects in such a sterile human space, and vanished herself to a favorite savanna, there to feast upon one of many termite mounds.