The day you slipped away [o]

and that’s enough for now

[/size][/color]What was it with precipitation and this old farmhouse? The last time Andie was out here, in the countryside, it had been snowing. The last time… The last time, she had been alone. Today, she was not. It made the gray sky and falling rain just a bit easier to bear, almost pleasant, nothing to complain about. The sun would be out again. It was spring and everything was green. The grass was long and itchy, with no humans left to mow and trim it down. The weeds flourished, sending their seeds every which way in the fields with no one to tame them. The trees were budding with pale green leaves curled into themselves tightly. The last time Andie had been here… She looked past the house to the old barn. She had met Lark. She still did not know what to think of the crossbreed male dog. Even as she pondered the thought of him, weighing him in her mind, she remembered seeing him sitting in the snow. So black against the clean white, a striking contrast, a sharp image seared into the backs of her eyelids. Andie did not know what to think of him. She filed the not-so-distant memory away, pushing it behind other thoughts in her brain. Beside her, Tawni zipped and dodged through the foliage, kicking up a little mud with her paws.

The other day, the little pit bull mix had turned up with a new friend. It was a rat, of all things to befriend, and it seemed quite content to perch on the puppy’s shoulder and go where ever she might go. Andie had never seen anything like it. She had stammered out an incoherent string of sounds that didn’t quite make it to words when Tawni had asked to keep the thing… Snip, she called it. The pup had taken Andie’s words as the go ahead to pronounce the rat as her personal pet. I mean, she had named it, so clearly there was no going back. The collie wasn’t a squeamish dog. She wasn’t scared of or grossed out by the rodent. But she had come to associate rats with filth and well, quite frankly, with food. They might run into some problems there. She wanted to advise Tawni and get her to rethink her choice of the pet, but she did not know how to even begin broaching the subject. Andie had the sinking feeling that it might already be too late for that. Deep in thought about Snip, she had unconsciously slowed her pace. The tan and black pup pulled ahead and went around the farmhouse to the barn out back.

The Smooth Collie leapt up the few stairs at the front of the house and shook herself off. The rain sounded louder on the tin roof. Andie had been trying to repress the over-protective nature inside of her that had been trying to get out whenever she thought about her pup. She knew full well that Tawni would never learn anything about life if she did not let her go and let her experience it. It was hard. No one had ever told Andie how hard it would be. But then again, no one had ever thought that Andie would have a pup. It was impossible. Impossible, they said. So she let the puppy be and sat herself on the front porch. Allowing the puppy space and room to grow didn’t mean that she couldn’t be smart about things. All the canine scents around the house and on the property were stale, only reminders of who had tread in and about the man-made structure. The rain began to ease off, the water in the dilapidated gutters turning into a mere trickle and then even less than that. The air was still. Andie stood, the hair along her spine prickling with unease. The lack of birdsong was unusual. She hopped down off the porch and pointed her ears towards the barn and other outbuildings. She had just decided to go and check on Tawni when a terrible scream came from inside of the barn. The scream was followed by a howl and had Andie bolting in, her toenails scrabbling for traction on the smooth wooden floorboards.

She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Who would be? Andie wanted to sigh a sigh of relief, relieved that Tawni wasn’t being brutalized by a Xarthen pack member or something equally morbid and horrible. But this, this was a different kind of tragedy. The collie quickly took in the scene and accessed it. She swooped in, setting herself in front of the pup, blocking most of her view of the body, letting the pup hide her face in her shoulder, letting her wet her fur with hot tears. “I’m here, I’m here,”[/color] she soothed, licking slow strokes over the pup’s head as if she were only hours old, nestled against her warm flank. “Tawni, I’m here.”[/color] She allowed her own eyes to linger on the dead pup. He was similar in build and size to Tawni, but heartbreakingly emaciated. There were no wounds, no signs of a struggle or fight, no blood. Andie was glad that there was no blood. She knew immediately that it was Jet, Tawni’s brother. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Andie had, unconsciously, been preparing a happy ending for her daughter. She had hoped for, no, more than hoped for- She had anticipated finding Jet and reuniting him with his sister. There had never been a second thought in her mind that she would take him under her wing as she had Tawni and raise them both to be fine, respectable adult dogs in society. Reality was harsh. A slap to the face. Andie’s face stung, half a million needlepoints pricking through skin.

“Come ‘ere. C’mon,”[/color] she urged, gentle but persistent, nudging at Tawni’s neck. She ushered the girl outside, to the base of an old tree, its complex of roots stretching out to the edge of the cliff were the land dropped off to the sea. She started the beginning of a hole, swiping her front feet through the dirt. The ground was soft after the rain and the sun was peeking through the clouds, shining through. She scooped through the dirt, rounded out the shape of it into an oval. Andie stopped and beckoned to Tawni. “Dig with me?”[/color] The smile never made it onto her face, but it was there in her words, encouraging, empathetic. It took a while. Andie had never dug a grave before, but apparently it was one of those things that took time. It was long enough for one to run out of tears, if you cried while doing it. It felt good. The burn of her muscles. The pain and effort was distracting, made her feel useful. She left Tawni long enough to go back into the barn and pick up the limp body, a mere shell of who it used to be. It was light, even though she wasn’t expecting a heavy load, it was light. Andie made her way back outside where the birds were singing and the sun shone bright. She looked at her daughter. Tawni seemed small and lost. Smaller and just as lost if not more so than the day that they found each other at the pier. Andie’s forelegs were streaked with mud. She lowered the dead pup into the hole they had dug and paused for a moment, head lowered and tail tucked somberly. She didn’t know what to say. Words couldn’t make Tawni feel any better. Words wouldn’t make it okay.[/size]

he never wanted to leave you broken*

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could anything good

[/size][/color]Andie was familiar with death. Often times, she thought that she was too familiar with it. She wished that she and death were more like acquaintances, but it seemed lately that they were becoming more than just friends. As a pup, death had been a natural occurrence. Her breeders kept their retired dogs, caring for them until the day came for that fated vet visit. They would return home with a blanket wrapped around the dog, dig a hole in the back yard, and place it beside the other dogs that they had bred, trained and loved over the years. A few weeks later, there would be a small brick marker placed on the dirt where little blades of grass were beginning to spring up again. The bricks were lined up in a neat row. The marks drawn on the brick meant something to the humans, but nothing to Andie. She only noticed that the adult dogs were particularly somber on the day that the grave was dug. It was a solemnness that hung in the air like smoke, made it harder to breathe and move about. By the next morning, it was like a night breeze had swiftly carried the smoke away and a ban had been lifted. They were free to run again. They could see clearly again.

Her mother, Cleo, had been just as or possibly even more sensitive than Andie. They both felt the atmosphere and mood instantly. Andie had counted it as a curse from a very young age. It always took Cleo more than a day to spring back to herself. She was like the grass that sprouted on the grave, turning yellow right away before reestablishing their roots. Cleo was close with the other dogs, got along with everyone, was hated by none. Andie saw how her mother’s performance was affected by things like this. The only show she did not place in was when another dog was deathly ill. Andie of course had not gone to the show, but she heard all about it when the van pulled into the drive and the dogs traded new stories, whispered through the walls of their kennels. She was told that her mother refused to leave her crate and had to be forcibly removed and dragged to the ring. Once there she moved like a sluggard, her mind only on her suffering friend. The dog was brought to the vet while the show dogs were gone. Cleo searched the house and property for a month before accepting the change.

Hearing Tawni’s tearful words put the lump right back in Andie’s throat. The lump was securely lodged there as she pushed the dirt over the body, filling the hole that they had just dug. A few more tears escaped from her eyes and fell down into the fresh dirt. “Rest easy, Jet,”[/color] she murmured, smoothing her paw over the small grave. Andie couldn’t help but wonder, in that moment, if her family were dead by now. She was one of seven in her litter and had numerous half-siblings all across the country. A couple had even crossed international borders for showing and breeding purposes. Surely her mother and father were gone by now. Surely. It wasn’t a thought that Andie liked to entertain, let alone think. She and Tawni sat and stared up at the sky. The clouds overhead darkened and the rain started up again. It was fitting for the moment. Very fitting. Andie blinked through the raindrops. It was a nice rain. Warm, big drops that fell steadily and straight down. The rain soaked Andie through both of her coats, right down to her skin. It washed the mud off her legs and paws, the tears from her eyes. She couldn’t hear anything, not even the sound of her own breathing.

She could only hear the rain.

Andie father had jumped out of the show van that day. They had a ramp for the dogs so that they wouldn’t put excessive strain on their joints making the leap. Although he had been trained to use it, Andie father never did. He had let his eyes rest on the mourning collies and noted the deep mood of their humans. He had eaten his dinner and stretched out on his bed in front of the television set where their humans sat after dinner and pretended to watch shows instead of thinking about the animal that had just passed. He had no friends and did not want any. And so, it was between these two extremes that Andie had been placed. Being young and impressionable, Andie swayed between her mother and father, unsure of which direction to go to when staring death in the face. In the end, she choose her father, an unconscious choice, but a choice all the same. One might say and point out that she chose him because she felt like she could never live up to the goodness of her mother. Cleo was a good dog, everyone said so. But her father… No one ever said much about her father except for “He is what he is and you’re not going to change that. Don't try.” It was what the alpha human always told each person who wanted to show him. At first glance, he was perfect. His body fit the breed standards to a T. But his stubbornness made him difficult to train and even on his good days he was barely manageable in the ring. His way of coping with death seemed easier and less stressful. Andie mimicked him, even years down the road when one of her humans passed and again, much more recently, when she found Henry’s body.

The second that Henry’s name popped into her mind, Andie shut it down. It was more than just his name. It was his memory and the way his hands always smelled like the blue bar of Irish Spring soap. She shut her mind down to black. She thought of nothing. Blank. She refused to go there. No, not now, not ever. She opened her eyes before she even remembered closing them. She opened them because the rain had stopped. Andie got to her feet and looked down at her daughter. She tried to read her and got back a lot of sorrow. It still felt heavy. Andie took a few steps away and shook herself off. She didn’t want to get Tawni any more wet than she already was. The sun kept trying to peek through the clouds, but the clouds weren’t having any of it. “Tawni,”[/color] Andie started. She tried for another smile and this one actually made it onto her face, the brightness of it still turned way down low. Dim. “Where do you want to go? …Or what do you want to do?”[/color] Andie wanted to go home. She didn’t want to stay. But she would do whatever the puppy wanted and needed. “We can go anywhere you want to. Or we can go nowhere at all.”[/color][/size]

come of these feelings that I have*

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