#sorry celery

So, my take away from this is that I suck at writing dog POV and should not attempt it. But thank you for the prompt despite my total failure with it!

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Water falls from the sky, and inside the tent, more water runs down her face. It smells of salt and the tang of pain, and he lays his head on her chest and huffs softly. He doesn’t know all of her words, but he knows, “Stay with me,” has known that with her was where he belonged since he woke without the fog of pain and noise that had smothered him for days before she came and held his head in her lap. Of course with her. Always with her. He understands that the rest of their pack is gone. But not him. Never him. He presses closer. The water from her eyes stops. The water from the sky continues.

First is the woman who smells like metal and polish and soap scrubbed in too hard. She smells fastidious. He is reserving judgement until he finds out if she responds to his most pathetic and baleful stares at food time with the same rigid sternness or if she slips him a choice bite of meat. He thinks that if no one is looking, his chances are good. He doesn’t know then that she won’t live long enough to be a part of their pack.

Next there’s the man pouring fire out of himself the way she pours out ice, and the flames leave everything smelling singed, but it’s the good kind of singed, like logs burning merrily in a fire to curl up warm and sleep beside. When he rubs his head against the man’s thigh in greeting as they continue on, he doesn’t know the words, “Blech! That thing just slobbered on me!” but he’s quite (willfully) certain that they must be an expression of affectionate delight.

The short, rotund one from their old pack, the one who tried to put a saddle on him once, shows up again, smelling slightly less of dirty socks and slightly more of the astringent burn of alcohol than usual. She is pleased, strange creature that she is, so he is pleased too. As long as there are no saddles.

Later, there’s a man in a pen who smells of desperation, and when she opens up his pen, he only smells more desperate. He stays close to her when the man passes. Desperation can be a dangerous thing. When the man shows up again days later, though, he lets him approach her. The desperation is still there, but it doesn’t smell like danger anymore. It smells like supplication. And when she takes him into their pack, he smells like gratitude.

There’s a woman hardly taller than him who smells like dirt—like the unadulterated joy of rolling of his back in the dirt. She doesn’t try to put a saddle on him like the other short one. She doesn’t even shove him away when he licks her face (it’s just so very… reachable with his tongue that he can’t help himself). He likes this one very much.

Finally there’s a woman who smells like trees and ozone and anger and resentment, but when he stares at her pitifully during food time, she absolutely does give the choicest bits to him when no one is looking, even if she does snippily insist that she just doesn’t like fat. In time, the resentment fades in an out. Sometimes she even smells like peace.

His human takes him with her, and they travel far and wide to meet the ones who smell like her. Like her but softer and quieter, but louder and more unabashed, but full of wonder and delight, but rougher and reluctant.

Later, much later, the little one who smells like wonder and delight comes to stay. She smells like her, but with all the enthusiasm she has never been able to show, and none of the hurt she hauls around with her everywhere she goes. She wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his fur, and it makes his tail wag so hard his back feet wobble with it.