FREE STORIES 2012(17)

I’m getting it, slowly. Meb wants me to, and she has the power.

In this case the “arf” meant something nastier than “werewolf” but my dragon didn’t get it. He has, however, been getting better at understanding me since Brocéliande. Look, I admit sometimes up on Fionn’s back I. . .just bark. Just to give the beggars out there a bit of cheek. I’m not afraid of werewolves. I’m not afraid of afancs, trolls, big bulls, or even angry cats... When I’m nice and high on the dragon’s back. I keep hoping one of them will try something, and the dragon will give them a good singe. It would do some cats good.

Cats were something of a surprise to me. I instinctively knew that I chased them, and that they ran away, until one didn’t. It stopped on a window sill and stuck its claws into my nose and hissed at me. So I learned: bark first, and chase only if they run. Avoid chasing them through windows. And they turn much faster than dogs—or at least to climb up trees. I nearly knocked my nose back through my ears running after one that ran up a tree. It ran up and I couldn’t stop.

But this time I did have a reason for barking. Fionn was tired and didn’t pay too much attention to me. He was looking for the odd things he looks for, which don’t mean a lot to me. He says the bark "balance" a lot. If I understand it right it has to do with being able to stand on three legs and lift the fourth. I’ve been practicing it lately myself, unlike Fionn, who just talks about it. Perhaps because he can change shape and stand on two legs, he doesn’t need to do the lifting a leg thing. It’s important to dogs, though. It also lets others know this is our range and they can stay off it or find trouble.

Smells are complex things, a whole language of its own. Humans are good companions, as we dogs have found, and can be truly useful at scratching that spot just above the tail that I always have trouble getting to, but humans also throw off an awful lot of smells. Some of the smells, the humans don’t seem to notice. They’re not very keen of nose, let alone aware of subtleties. In smell-language they have a baby’s vocabulary. It’s why we dogs have to sniff really closely at the smelly bits, and they don’t do so. Even dragons, who have a better sense of smell than humans (although to me they smell worse) just don’t get the level of bouquet that we do. I’m a smell expert: Scent markers are important.

My scent-marks didn’t seem to work too well at putting a fright into others, though—especially not into the cats or on whatever it was that followed us through the forest.

We had been walking through the tall trees of Sylvan. It was the quietest, deadest forest we’d ever been in. Oh, the trees were alive. But animal life... we just didn’t see any. No squirrels. No birdsong. No animal sounds and no animal smells… except insects.

The Dragon seemed to accept this was possible. I didn’t think about it much. We dogs spend a lot of time thinking. But mostly we think about dinner, or about our pack. Meb is mine. I think about her all the time. It doesn’t leave much space for thinking about philosophy and that dragonish-human-dvergar sort of stuff. I go where Meb goes. And now, when she had been taken away, I went towards where she was.

I thought there was something out there in the gloaming, among the tall trees or hidden in the dark mottled shade under them. It was a something with meat on its breath. It didn’t come any closer. Fionn didn’t seem to smell it, and wasn’t aware of it.

I didn’t think about it until later that night when I got up from my bed of leaves next to the dragon to have a good scratch. I had worked out quite fast that waking Fionn by scratching against his chest had all sorts of unpleasant consequences. The first was that he wakes fast and dangerous, and he is a dragon. The second was that he reckons the need to scratch is caused by vermin and that means a bath.

"Bath" was one of the first human barks that I learned. And learned to avoid. I don’t only scratch when I have a flea. I’m a dog. I scratch. I have gas that has to come out. And I lick places humans can’t. I’m also brighter than most dogs and a fair number of humans, and even all dragons besides Fionn, who is much cleverer than other dragons. That means I don’t behave like a proper dog, and just take care of these dog matters in a regular fashion, but actually do them at such a time and place that Meb or Fionn will not make complaining barks, or bath me. I’m a bit like life-mated male humans in that way.

This time it was a flea. The fleabane had helped me. The stuff stinks, and makes me faintly queasy and wanting to eat grass, but the fleas like it less than I do. Thanks to Fionn I had fleabane. Thanks to him I had fleas, too.