It wasn't like they hadn't disappeared before.
Lying in tall field grass tipped with flowers, beneath the anxious drone of bees who sensed a hard winter coming, Tizzah rested at the edge of the long road to RhyDin. She contemplated her dirty paws and turned over her scraps of dog memory, as clear and as separate as last year's buried bones.
Puppyhood on a wool rug before a cedar fire.
The clean, sweet sweat of children jumping on a feather bed, the old tick delicious with goosedown and chickenfluff.
A worm on the garden path, three days dead.
A bowl of milk with a dog biscuit in it.
The secret, rain-scented press of husband and wife in a storm-battered barn, the warm young hay there bruised from haste.
The cottage that smelt of small beer in summer and wood smoke in winter and roast port-apples in late spring at the edge of the deep woods two leagues from RhyDin.
A cottage that one day, when Tizzah returned to it after a long nap beneath a nearby tree, was gone.
Such had been Tizzah's checkered life with a spell-slinging family of unreliable mages. Long on ambition but short on actual skill, they'd obviously skipped a page in the Big Book of Conjures: one wrong newt in the pot stirred anti-clockwise and poof, they were gone. Again.
What was a little dog to do with such a family?
Moreover, what was a little dog to do without one?
Tizzah stood up and stretched, disturbing the brush and confusing the bees who'd grown drowzy at their work, complacent on this windless afternoon. Several of them thought to sting her, but before the idea could lead the group to vainglorious suicide, a new wind blew a little, rippling honeysuckle on a low wall fifty yards away. Flowers, flowers oh! -- electric recognition quickly altered bee motive, transposing bee song, and as quickly as they'd angered, the bees too were gone.
She had traded one small threat for another greater one. Tizzah lifted her head, scenting thoughtfully. The wind meant night was coming. She still had a fair way to go, and these fields were no place for a small dog in darkness. The long way by road or the short way through woods? It was a dangerous, delicate decision.
# # #
Lying in tall field grass tipped with flowers, beneath the anxious drone of bees who sensed a hard winter coming, Tizzah rested at the edge of the long road to RhyDin. She contemplated her dirty paws and turned over her scraps of dog memory, as clear and as separate as last year's buried bones.
Puppyhood on a wool rug before a cedar fire.
The clean, sweet sweat of children jumping on a feather bed, the old tick delicious with goosedown and chickenfluff.
A worm on the garden path, three days dead.
A bowl of milk with a dog biscuit in it.
The secret, rain-scented press of husband and wife in a storm-battered barn, the warm young hay there bruised from haste.
The cottage that smelt of small beer in summer and wood smoke in winter and roast port-apples in late spring at the edge of the deep woods two leagues from RhyDin.
A cottage that one day, when Tizzah returned to it after a long nap beneath a nearby tree, was gone.
Such had been Tizzah's checkered life with a spell-slinging family of unreliable mages. Long on ambition but short on actual skill, they'd obviously skipped a page in the Big Book of Conjures: one wrong newt in the pot stirred anti-clockwise and poof, they were gone. Again.
What was a little dog to do with such a family?
Moreover, what was a little dog to do without one?
Tizzah stood up and stretched, disturbing the brush and confusing the bees who'd grown drowzy at their work, complacent on this windless afternoon. Several of them thought to sting her, but before the idea could lead the group to vainglorious suicide, a new wind blew a little, rippling honeysuckle on a low wall fifty yards away. Flowers, flowers oh! -- electric recognition quickly altered bee motive, transposing bee song, and as quickly as they'd angered, the bees too were gone.
She had traded one small threat for another greater one. Tizzah lifted her head, scenting thoughtfully. The wind meant night was coming. She still had a fair way to go, and these fields were no place for a small dog in darkness. The long way by road or the short way through woods? It was a dangerous, delicate decision.
# # #