The wild dog padded through the grasses, his fur striped with shadows until he reached the small boulder he’d been aiming for. It remained not too far from the den, a leftover from Sethunya’s redecorating efforts. Haunches bunched beneath him for a moment, the large gray dog bounded up to sit atop the stone, his dark eyes glittering in the fading light. Sethunya and Makena, he knew, were already inside. The two of them would be settling down for the night, he could just catch the low undercurrent of murmured voices, spattered with the gleeful laughter that often accompanied the pair when they were together. Tendaji smiled. They would be looking for him soon, he knew. Wanting him to come and curl up to sleep with them.
Well, Sethunya would be. Makena was as jealous of the beautiful white girl’s affections as Tendaji was. The splotchy blue male would have been more than happy to keep her to himself given the opportunity. Tendaji could hardly blame him for that though. If anything, he could sympathize utterly. He knew he would do the same if he could get away with it without hurting his beloved. But she was happy as things were. He would not upset that, and certainly not for something so trivial as his own personal gain. Her happiness meant more than the world to him, her smile a precious treasure to be cherished and protected.
A soft breath sighed from his chest as he lifted his dark eyes to the sky. The further the sun slid below the horizon the more stars he could see starting to peek from behind the sunset painted clouds. He liked the stars. They glittered there, in the endless expanse of the sky, tiny distant points of light. There was a story tumbling about somewhere in the back of his mind. He could not clearly remember it any longer, it was one of those that had slipped away from him before he was old enough to keep it close forever. But he always felt as though someone or something was looking down on the world from among those twinkling glimmers in the night. Watching over them. It might have been the gods and goddesses that the other stories told of, or perhaps it was the spirits of their ancestors… and all the others that had been lost.
It only made sense that lives which had slipped into the darkness become points of light within the night. Didn’t it?
Well, it didn’t matter who it was. The purpose of the story was that they were never alone, that they were never forgotten. Always cared for. Always watched over. Distant light shining down to guide them through the dark. It was part of the reason why Tendaji always preferred to sleep outdoors. He would rather lie beneath the watchful stars, under the open sky, then curl up in a dark place beneath the earth. It prickled in his fur, the fear of being trapped below ground. Makena and Sethunya too, they did not remember it. They had been too young to hold the memories, though Tendaji sometimes wondered if Sethunya’s frequent nightmares might not be the brush of her own memories. They were hard to hold, hard to carry, a heavy weight locked within his chest. He was the eldest, the only one to survive with the knowledge, however broken and vague, of the place that they had come from, that would have shaped them.
No more though. All the world had shaped them, hunger and fear and the struggle for those too young to be without parents surviving on their own. They had done it. Somehow they had. Tendaji was never really sure how. He’d seen other youngsters, he could remember how very small he’d been when he’d become the protector of his young companions. How had he done it? How had they not gone hungry more often than they had? How had they never been carried off by an enterprising predator, or fallen prey to any of hundreds of simple disasters in nature?
Perhaps they truly had been under the watchful eyes of the stars. Or whomever it was that watched from behind the stars.
The cooling air brushed through his dark fur, the laughing voices behind him growing softer. They would be calling him soon, calling him to sleep. He wasn’t entirely sure he wished to go. He just… he wasn’t comfortable below the earth like that. It was probably foolish. He was not a child any longer, he was not a lost little pup to cry at bad dreams. He had not been a pup in many many more nights than most his age. But it still made him want to whimper and cry when he woke up without the sky stretched comfortingly overhead. Rock and stone, rubble and dirt. He remembered that alright. Sometimes he thought he’d be better off if he could not remember. If he didn’t recall how he’d torn his claws from digging, or where the scars on the pads of his paws had come from. If the thick scent of blood and death were one he were still unfamiliar with.
But if he’d forgotten that, what else would he have forgotten? What memories would he trade, however bitter the sweetness could be? His mother, the soft dark furred female whose voice was soft and sweet and whose stories had fascinated him endlessly? His father, the powerful stripy old dog who’d taught him how to hunt and the ways they might find their way in a strange wide world? His brothers? His sisters? The other members of the pack? Or would he give up the lessons he’d been taught, the ones that had saved their young lives? The stories that had soothed nightmares and eventually led them to where they were now?
No, no he would not give them up. But was it worth it? Tendaji wasn’t sure…
His ears pricked and then swiveled back even as he turned his head towards the den. Sethunya was asking where he was. Time for bed then. Rising carefully, the boulder wasn’t exactly secure after all, he bounded to the earth. It wasn’t so bad really… The cave might make his fur prickle but at least his loved ones waited for him inside. Still, he cast one last uneasy glance at the stars before slipping in to take his place beside he mate. With his chin on his paws, he could still make out a sliver of sky beyond the mouth of the small cave. It was something at least. Perhaps the few tiny stars there were watching them still…
(1159 words counted)
