Growing up in a dysfunctional, unloving household for 70% of your childhood wasn’t fun. Your parents only needed you for chores, whatever kids your age you could even consider siblings treated you like the middle child, and no one really cared about anything you did.

You excelled in school. Sure, a little distracted sometimes, but you had talent, and a passion for whatever the hell you liked back then. But pursuing it was a bad idea.

It became a mess pretty quickly. Struggling with college, trying to get personal projects done, dealing with fake friend drama, and it just…

Collapsed.

Life was really bad at the moment.

You lost your job. You’re partner dumped you. And it was almost Christmas. This was the worst time to be alive. You were barely clinging on to your apartment, any late rent and you’d lose it instantly.

You were struggling, to put it lightly. You’d planned today to turn it around. Force luck onto your side. New job interview, fancy suit, careful crafting of your application and interview answers.

This was gonna be great! You were ready. This was such a low-level job, there was literally no way you could actively flunk this.

…

Anyway long story short you flunked it.

It wasn’t that bad, just a few wrong answers and some self-deprecating jokes. But you felt like shit. Reasonably so. Who wouldn’t feel like shit? Your life was actively crumbling around you.

Oh, and it was starting to rain.

———————————————

Having to hide in an alleyway from the freezing hail, yes it genuinely worsened into hail, wasn’t that fun. Sometimes it’d go back to rain. But it was too risky and your apartment was too far. Getting an Uber or a taxi would cost too much. You were stranded in NYC.

Curling up in the box you’d hidden in, a small sob escaped you. It was painful. Nothing was going to get better. Why not just walk out in the rain right now and let the hail beat you to death? You were considering it.

That was, until you spotted a small box. On the other side of the alleyway, holes poked into the side and a lid placed neatly on top. Now, that wasn’t the intriguing thing. The intriguing thing was the fact that the lid kept moving.

Waiting for a break in the hail, you quickly crawled over and grabbed the box, darting back to your own, larger cardboard box to investigate the mysterious item. With a deep breath, you opened the lid.

…Turtles.

Not normal turtles. No. Baby turtles, with cute little arms and legs and actual facial features and… what the fuck.

The four turtles stared up at you. A snapping turtle, which was a little bit bigger than the rest of them, a soft shell turtle (with a big dumb forehead), a red-eared slider, and a box turtle. They were so cute.

Immediately, the red eared slider squeaked at you and moved in front of the other turtles, but it appeared to be a tight fit in the box. They all stared up at you, the slider glaring while the rest observing curiously.

…Who knows how this would end.