Chapter 3: Mr. FloatyBox and the Mighty War Dog

It was a long night and early morning.

We got the dead horses off the road and I took a few minutes to eat half of one; I was hungry, the humans didn't have any kibble, and the horses were just lying there. People gave me a bit of a sideeye while I did it, so I kept my back to them. Humans never understand that being watched while you're eating is embarrassing—it's not as bad as being stared at while pooping, but it's still bad. Seriously, humans, I get that I'm handsome and cuddly and everything, but a dog likes a little privacy, okay?

Zoola (the first thing I'd learned was everyone's names, based on how they referred to one another) was annoyed with me for popping most of the bandages she'd put on me; she kept trying to get me to lie down and rest, and I kept refusing to understand her increasingly more assertive gestures and louder commands. If she was going to insist on speaking nonsense then I was under no obligation to pay attention.

Hm, I found myself thinking, They're all doing the nonsense-speech thing. I wonder if they're brain damaged? If so, why are they going to the hospital in covered wagons instead of proper ambulances? ...Oh, right, brain damage. Poor things.

Well, I was doing my best here. We had gotten the horse carcasses off the road and the wagons righted; the fourth wagon, the one that had gone off the road and tipped over, was a complete loss. The side had been crushed and one of the rear wheels was snapped in half. Some of the humans pulled everything out of it and distributed the stuff across the other wagons.

This left a problem: Five wagons, only four horses. The answer, of course, was for me and my functional nose to lead the humans and their utterly useless noses into the woods to find the horses that ran away from the fifth wagon. (Honestly, those silly humans; Why do they even have noses if they aren't going to use them? No wonder they partner up with us dogs.)

I escorted a group of two swordsmen and two of the non-metal-coat-wearing humans into the woods and helped them track down the runaway horses from the fifth wagon. The stupid things were tangled up in a thicket half a mile away and were quite happy to be brought back to the caravan and given a nice reassuring rubdown and a bag of oats apiece. Sure, no one paid the slightest attention when the horses ate an entire bag of oats that the humans could have eaten with a little cream and sugar, but the humans were all staring and judgey-eyed when I ate a measly half a horse that they were just going to leave there by the road! Humans were so unfair sometimes. Granted, they got a lot less judgey after Lewis wiped all the blood off my face with a rag. Fine, I'm not the neatest eater.

Oh, right! Lewis!

Mom, Dad, and Cassie were tied for 'first most favorite human', but Lewis was my new second most favorite human. He wasn't a complete dope! Sure, he still insisted on playing the babble game, presumably because he didn't want the others to be mad at him for breaking ranks, but he could kinda-sorta talk properly.

Well, Ravi, Lewis's pet raven, could kinda-sorta talk properly, and Ravi could somehow talk clearly to Lewis. (Naming your pet raven Ravi seems a little on the snoot, if you ask me. No one did, though, so I didn't say anything.) Ravi's accent was terrible and his vocabulary was very limited, but at least he could get across the basics. He was limited in that he didn't have properly mobile ears, but he faked it using his wings. He also only had two legs, meaning that he couldn't really do proper body posture, and his tongue wasn't long enough to lick his nose, but we made it work.

{Me friend,} he said, opening his beak and pushing his tongue out the side.

{I find your company pleasing and would like to get to know you better,} I replied, sniffing him gently (I didn't want to inhale him!) and then offering a proper Downward Dog pose. I even included a slight butt wiggle for extra politeness and friendliness. It was so nice having a tail again! Even if it was shorter than it should have been, it was much better than the little stump I'd had before. For my entire life the other dogs had sympathized over my speech impediment, but now I could be properly eloquent!

He cocked his head in confusion. {You friend?}

I cocked my head to the left, then to the right. {I just said that. Weren't you listening?}

{You friend?} he asked again. He looked at Lewis and cawed. Lewis nodded thoughtfully in response, then babbled something. Ravi cawed again and Lewis sighed, then gestured towards me while looking expectantly at Ravi.

For a third time, the silly raven fake-ear waggled, {You friend?}

Ugh. What a simpleton. Well, it looked like he could talk to Lewis, so presumably he could understand human body language.

{Yes, I'm friendly,} I nodded.

{We nap, then go that way.} A wing stretched out along the road in the direction that the wagons were pointed, which seemed a little obvious since where else were they going to go? {You come?}

I felt that 'Duh' would be impolite, so I settled for nodding again.

By now there were several humans watching us, all wide-eyed, and jabbering back and forth. I looked over and gave them a proper tongue-lolling smile. Some of them looked alarmed, most of them smiled hesitantly, and I took it as a win.

{You do good boy things?} Ravi asked.

What? What was he even...I'd just spent hours clearing the road, and helping get wagons back on it, and helping track down horses! Of course I was doing good boy things! How idiotic was—

Oh, wait. He was asking me if I was intelligent.

{Yes, I am most certainly both very clever and a very good boy.} I got to the end of the sentence (sit, smile, shake, lie down, roll over, stand on two legs and spin, back to normal legs, slurp Lewis, loll tongue, wag tail) and realized that everyone had backed up in alarm when I did the 'stand' part, so maybe that wasn't the best idea. Also, ow. I forgot I had injuries all over my sides and back and showing off had stretched a lot of them in painful ways. I lay down so as to look less scary, then nodded human-style. Yes, I was intelligent.

{We go—} Ravi started waving his wings around, sketching tall rectangles. I had no idea what he was talking about.

{My apologies, but I am confused by your words. Could you please clarify?}

Ravi struggled with that for a moment, then visibly gave up. He turned and cawed at Lewis, who babbled in response. The two of them went back and forth for a minute and then Lewis shrugged, reached out slowly, and rubbed my snoot. I leaned in, tilting my head down to provide a better angle, and bumped him gently. He laughed and used both hands as I'd wanted.

o-o-o-o

It was probably around ten in the morning, but the caravan had been moving and fighting and cleaning up all night. Everyone was exhausted, so they all went back into their wagons and went to sleep. Katya and Dick, the bowwoman and shortest of the swordsmen, stayed awake and on guard atop the third wagon. I couldn't fit into the wagons so there was no nice comfy memory-foam mattress complete with toasty humans to go to bed on. Instead, I curled up on the hard cold ground and felt very sorry for myself until I drifted off...

...only to wake some indeterminate time later to a loud BING! and another floaty box thing.

Status Review Name Athos HP 347/1000 MP 88/1000 Essence 100/100 Attunement Supreme Exemplar (MAX) 1902 Grey Wolf x12 240 General Fund 2142

I yawned and stretched, then sat up to consider this latest floating exposition.

Let's see...I remembered from before that HP and MP were Hit Points and Mana Points. No idea what those—

Derived Attributes Your Hit Points (HP) measure the amount of physical damage your body can sustain before dying. Your Mana Points (MP) measure the amount of mana you have available to power skills, equipment, etc. Mana is the mystic energy that wells up from your spirit; specific Skills can grant you the ability to manipulate your mana in order to produce a wide array of effects. If you overdraw your manapool, a fragment of your spirit will unravel, reducing the current value of your Spirit attribute and refilling your manapool to the newly-reduced level allowed by your weakened spirit. Normal people heal at the rate of (Recovery) HP per day and recover mana at the rate of (Restoration) MP per day. As an embodiment of <Dyadic Unity>, both of those stats are combined into the Recuperation attribute, which restores both HP and MP.

Well, thank you very much Mr. FloatyBox; that was very helpful. So, what was the other part of my status review, the Attu—

Attunement Attunement is a measure of how closely your mind and spirit are aligned with universal truth as modeled by the Skillweb. Using your Skills will provide you with Attunement; the specific amount is calculated every time you wake up. The award is non-linear but is approximately pro-rated to a 24-hour cycle. You may check your available Attunement at any time by viewing your Character Sheet. The amount of Attunement in your General Fund will affect the universe around you in subtle ways. Those with higher Attunement totals may experience better fortune and encounter positive opportunities. Those with low Attunement totals in the General Fund will have the opposite experience. Again, the effects will almost always be subtle.

As Dad liked to shout when he was watching 'the game' on the noisybox: "Swing and a miss!" Most of what Mr. FloatyBox had said here was utter gibberish as far as I was concerned. 'Non-linear?' 'Pro-rated'? Oh, and of course the question that I was sure Mr FloatyBox would help with: What was the Sk—

Skillweb 'Skillweb' is an embarrassingly oversimplified nickname created for the coddling of the barely-sapient humans and their ilk who dwell within this specific Realm, and demeaning to that which exposes the deep structure of the multiverse. Regardless, there is no option but to use it due to the cognitive inadequacies of the inhabitants of this Realm. Note that the so-called 'Skillweb' is accessible only to those within the magicotemperospatial bounds of this current Realm and not to residents of other Realms, including those more deserving. Humans and other so-called sapient species may teach themselves things which, in their enormous arrogance, they refer to as skills—latrine construction, acceptable ways to partially burn the flesh of their fellow vermin, etc—but these are not Skills. The so-called 'Skillweb' contains all possibilities and all truths. Mere canine minds are incapable of comprehending these truths, and thus the Skillweb renders itself into a trivialized pictographic form packaged as so-called 'Skills' and 'Perks' and so forth in order that your kind may derive some value from the immensity of the truth. This pictographic representation takes the form of a hypergraph in which each vertex represents a specified universal Essential, rendered for your limited minds into a trivialized projection that presents as The Skillweb is made up of circles, called 'nodes', and lines that connect the nodes. Each node represents a Skill (or a Perk, etc), with the size of the node representing its rank. (From least to greatest: Common, Uncommon, Advanced, Rare, Legendary, Epic.) Typically, higher ranked nodes are more powerful and have more connections than lower-ranked nodes. By default, nodes are invisible and will not be shown on the Skillweb. A node becomes visible when it is unlocked/attuned, or when a node adjacent to it becomes unlocked/attuned. Visible Nodes will be either locked, unlocked, or attuned. Locked nodes are displayed as black circles with no name, connections, or description. Unlocked nodes are displayed in green white and show their name, description, and connections. Attuned nodes are displayed in silver and show their name, description, and connections. You may unlock a Skill in either of two ways: By spending sufficient Attunement from your General Fund, or by having another being who has already attuned the Skill pay Attunement in order to unlock it for you. In the latter case, that being loses their connection to the Skill and it becomes locked for them. If they unlock and attune to it again they will have lost any progress they had made in mastering the Skill. The amount of Attunement required to unlock a Skill depends on the rank of the Skill and how many Skills you have already unlocked or attuned today. You may attune to a Skill in any of three ways: By spending a sufficient amount of Attunement from your General Fund on an already-unlocked Skill; by being in the vicinity when a sentient being dies, at which time its Skills are released and absorbed by nearby sentient beings; or by being born in an area where a sentient being previously died and released Skills that were not absorbed by other sentient beings, in which case they are absorbed by the earth. The amount of Attunement required to attune to a Skill depends on the rank of the Skill and how many Skills you have already unlocked or attuned today. Your Character Sheet will display a list of all Skills you have attuned and their level of mastery. You may also ask for a visual display of the Skillweb, although only nodes that are visible to you will be displayed.

Well, that was weird.

The first part, the bit with all the crossed-out stuff, sounded like it was written by someone in urgent need of doggy cuddles. And maybe some herbal tea; that always helped Mom when she'd had a hard day in court and was feeling grumpy. I didn't understand half the words in there, either, so whoever the needs-cuddles person was sure wasn't very good at communicating.

Speaking of which, I didn't think it was entirely fair to call humans 'barely-sappy'; Dad got very sappy over Mom sometimes. At least, that's what Dad's friend Eddy always said. Whenever Eddy came over for a barbecue he and Dad and I would go out to the back yard to get the grill lit, and then we would end up sitting around while Dad and Eddy 'shot the breeze'. (I never understood that phrase, since there were no guns involved.) Eddy would say, "You and Autumn still sappier than a pine tree?" (By 'Autumn', he meant Mom; I wasn't sure why he had to complicate things and use a different name for her.) Dad would always get this goofy smile and a slightly far-off look and he'd say "More than a whole Christmas tree farm." And then they would laugh and clink beers and talk about sports or pole-ticks or something. (That last subject made me uncomfortable; I didn't want any ticks on me, regardless of whether they had poles or not.) Still, sports or ticks, I looked forward to when Eddy came over. He always let me cadge a tummy rub, or at least an ear scritch.

Anyway, the second part was much more helpful. There were still some confusing bits in it—like, why did they do that thing where Mom and Dad and Cassie used 'green' when they actually meant 'gray'?—but overall I got the gist. Which, of course, meant that I had to dig farther down and ask Mr. FloatyBox about my Cha—

Character Sheet Name Athos Physique * Recovery * Spirit * Restoration * Channeling 25 (+) Essence 100/100 (+) Recuperation 120 (+) HP 347/1000 MP 88/1000 Attunement 2142 Skills Supreme Exemplar (MAX)

Huh.

I'd seen most of this before; Hit Points and Mana Points held no mysteries. I wasn't sure what the little bug-splatter symbol meant, or why some of the things got a splatter and some got a number.

Experimentally, I pawed at the splatter symbol next to Physique. Nothing happened. I harumphed.

Experimentally, I pawed at the 'make better' symbol next to Channeling.

Increase Channeling to 26 for 260 Attunement. (Yes) / (No)

Ooh! Channeling and Attunement were going to get better? Neat!

I batted the '(Yes)' option and watched as the number next to Channeling changed from a 25 to a 26 and the number next to Attunement changed from 2142 to 1882.

Wait, what? The little cross thing was supposed to make numbers better! Weren't bigger numbers better? Why was it making one number bigger and one number smaller?

{Give that back!} I barked, thwapping the stupid (+) thing again, hard. I'd show it who the biggest dog in the park was!

Increase Channeling to 27 for 270 Attunement. (Yes) / (No)

{What? No!} I barked angrily. {You were supposed to put back the Attunement you stole!}

I was onto Mr. FloatyBox's tricksy ways, and I wasn't going to let him steal any more of my Attunement. I smacked the (No) option so hard that its mother would have yelped. I even snapped my teeth at it for good measure. The box disappeared without a word, and without putting my Attunement back.

Thief. Dirty rotten Attunement-stealing thief.

Oops. My barking at Mr. FloatyBox had woken everyone up. They came bursting out of their wagons, looking alarmed and clutching whatever they had that would work as weapons. Most of them weren't fully dressed and two of them weren't dressed in anything except thin shorts.

I hung my head in shame. {Sorry,} I whined.

After a minute of looking around, everyone realized that there was no threat and I had simply been rude. Most of them went back into their wagons with an annoyed look at me and a grumpy shake of the head. Eugene, the man who had tried to stop Zoola from fixing my owies last night, glared at me for several seconds. I hung my head lower and looked away until he went back into his wagon.

Everyone was awake, and they universally and independently decided that they might as well get up instead of trying to go back to sleep. We'd gone to sleep as the sun came up and that big yellow ball was saying that it was early afternoon now.

It didn't take long for everyone to be fully dressed, out of their wagons, and fed. (Except for Marza and her smols; they stayed inside.) If you had a functioning nose then it was very clear that they hadn't wasted time bathing, but given my earlier misbehavior I simply did my best to stay upwind and not be obvious about my distaste.

Within an hour we were back on the road. Progress was slow; there were five wagons and six horses, but the wagons had been intended for a team of two. The humans harnessed one horse to each wagon with one walking on its own, and then stopped every half hour or so to swap the extra horse in. They let the horses rest for fifteen minutes, then got moving for another half hour and did the whole thing again, swapping the extra horse in on a different wagon each time. Getting a wheel stuck in a rut was common, and a single horse didn't have the strength to pull the wagons out. Fortunately, we were able to manage with me pushing from behind, the horse pulling from the front, and sometimes a human or six pitching in.

We were starting up again after our second break when SpearGuy, more accurately known as Marcus, wandered over to where I was keeping station on the left (upwind) side of the road, halfway down the caravan. He was dressed as he had been yesterday: a pack on his back, broken-in brown leather pants, brown leather gloves that reached to his elbows, a wool cap on his head, and his nose-pinching metal coat. His spear was in his hand but he was using it as a walking stick, not pointing it at me.

"Swiddle dee oop?" he asked, falling in beside me.

{I got nothin' from that, but am extremely interested in having a meaningful discussion with you,} I replied, delighting in my ability to complement my carefully-calculated head tilt with an appropriate tail-flick to provide the 'interested' part.

Marcus chuckled and shook his head. He squatted down and swept his hand across the dirt, flicking a few twigs and pebbles aside so that he had a clear surface. He sketched a stick figure, then looked at me while pointing from himself to the picture a couple times to show what it represented. I nodded my understanding.

He jotted some squiggles above the stick figure and pointed to them. "Marcus."

I nodded. Okay, he was playing the same nonsense game with his writing, but that was fine. Assuming that they kept consistent with their fake letters I could remember what that looked like and remember that it was supposed to be spelled M-A-R-C-U-S. I wasn't sure why he didn't just use the proper letters, though; there were eight of the little squiggles when it only needed six if you spelled it right. Then again, maybe he just didn't know the proper spelling; he certainly wasn't pronouncing his own name properly.

He sketched a stick figure of me and pointed back and forth a bit under I rolled my eyes and nodded.

He smiled and then started adding more lines until he had a simple map. The road beside us, winding back and forth among stick-figure trees, then coming out of the trees and crossing over another road before arriving at a cluster of stick-figure houses that was probably supposed to mean a town or city.

Ohhhh! That's what Ravi was trying to say! Houses!

"Hellsport," he said, tapping on the town that was obviously our destination.

Well, that name didn't sound ominous at all.

I remembered hearing Brother Jed rant about Hell. He was a 'God-botherer' (Dad's words) who used to set up in the park to harangue good dogs who just wanted to take their people for a nice relaxing walk on a nice sunny day. He would talk about how Mom was "goin' to Hay-ull" for "dressin' like a strumpet", or how Cassie "oughta be in Sunday skew-el and not indulgin' in the pleasures of the flesh, because otherwise she's going to Hay-ull!" My best guess was that "dressing like a strumpet" meant wearing skinny jeans and "indulgin' in the pleasures of the flesh" meant having two scoops on your ice cream cone instead of one. Or maybe it was that the scoops were different flavors? I remembered him saying something about how "Does that sweatah got cotton AY-und polyestah?! Gawd say-ed in Doo'tronomy Twenny-Two that thou shalt not wear mixed fabrics, you vile heathen!" If God was against mixing things then maybe he thought that pistachio and salted caramel shouldn't go together? I tended to agree—I was more of a bubblegum and applemint guy myself, but Cassie didn't usually ask for the bubblegum ice cream. Also, Mom and Dad were big selfish meanies who didn't like it when Cassie gave me a lick, so she had to wait until their backs were turned.

Anyway, Brother Jed had gone into loving detail about Hell or, as he called it, 'Hay-ull'. Fire, brimstone, devils torturing you with pitchforks (whatever those were), "the whole nine", as Dad used to say. (Dad was never very clear about nine what, although I remembered his band practicing a song about a guy named Angus that maybe was related.)

The memories flashed through my head in a blur, leaving me confident that a town named Hellsport was unlikely to be full of bacon and frisbees and sunny-day walks.

{Sounds bad,} I woofed.

He chuckled and babbled a bit. The tone suggested that it was something along the lines of 'You are absolutely correct that it is a terrible place and we are all fools for going there, but I am a stubborn human who refuses to listen to the much wiser pupper who says that we should not go there.' Except shorter.

Marcus smoothed out everything except the Hellsport picture. He drew another stick figure of me near the town and then drew some people in front of it with exaggerated frowny faces and angry eyes.

I eyed this in confusion, then looked at Marcus, then at the picture, then at Marcus. {I resent your implication that the humans would dislike me. I'm a good dog,} I whined.

Marcus held up one finger in a 'hang on' gesture, then drew a stick figure of himself next to me, and added a curved line from his stick figure to my stick figure with the line looping around my stick figure's neck. He scratched out the heads of the townspeople and drew them again, this time with big smiles.

A leash? He thought he, some rando that I'd met yesterday, was going to put me on a leash?!

He must have thought I didn't get it because he rummaged around in his pack and pulled out a rope with a slipknot in it. He opened the loop out a bit and held it up for my inspection. When I didn't react he started to tentatively reach out towards me, being clear about the fact that he was going to put it over my head unless I protested.

{Try it and I will eat your heckin' face,} I growled, showing a little teeth. I stomped one foot on top of his picture and scratched it away. I wouldn't actually eat his face—that would be a very rude and bad-dog sort of thing to do—but he didn't need to know that.

He immediately retracted the rope and dropped it so that he could hold up both hands placatingly. I growled one more time and then let it go.

He bent to the dirt and once more drew the picture of himself and me arriving in Hellsport to meet angry-eyed frowny-faced villagers. Then he put two fingers on his own picture and mimed walking over to me and jumping on. He sketched a new stick figure of himself sitting on my shoulders. Once again the villagers lost the angry eyes and turned their frowns upside-down.

Hm.

On the one paw, that sounded kinda cool. Cassie had tried to ride me a few times when she was a smol smol, but I was littler then and it hurt, so I would sit down and let her slide off. I was way bigger and stronger now and could have supported her with ease. On the other paw Marcus was far from a smol. He wasn't as tall as Dad, probably only five-nine or five-ten, but he was solidly built. That metal coat probably weighed a bit too.

Eh. I remembered watching the movie Braveheart with Dad and thinking that the horses looked freakin' awesome, and that they were so lucky to get to carry humans around like that.

Tentatively, I lay down next to him and jerked my head in a 'get on' gesture.

He eyed me for a moment to make sure I was serious, then set his spear and pack down. He very carefully swung a leg over and settled on my back, as far forward as he could get so that the weight was closer to my shoulders than the middle of my back.

I got to my feet, moving carefully so as not to tumble him off. Halfway up, his stupid pinchy coat pinched me, so I lay down again. He hopped off quickly (taking a little fur with him, ouch!) and backed up, clearly nervous.

I raised a paw to calm him down, then walked over to his pack. There was a wool blanket rolled up and stuffed through the straps on the bottom; it would be just the thing to prevent pinching. I delicately nipped the corner of it and tugged, but it was strapped in tight. I let go and looked over at him expectantly.

We had to play a little more charades, but within a few minutes we were parading around with him on my back and me feeling like the most coolest war dog ever. Granted, I wasn't nearly as tall as a war horse, but it was still awesome. Marcus didn't weigh nearly as much as I expected, either. I hardly knew he was there.

The problems began when I started trotting. It bounced him up and down, which for me felt like being repeatedly punched in the back, and from the noises he made I didn't think it was doing any favors to his tailbone or boy bits. A canter worked better for both of us, until the unsecured blanket slipped and Marcus fell off. Oops.

He fell on the dusty-and-gravelly road, but he managed to roll out of it and stand up again with only a little bit of a wobble and a shake of the head.

I hurried to check him over and offer a slurp and head-bump of apology, but he laughed it off and pushed my snoot aside. He got the rope from his pack which he had stashed on the driver's seat of the lead wagon when we started doing riding practice. I eyed him suspiciously but didn't move as he brought it over. Very carefully, with lots of "it's all good, I promise" gestures and a lot of intended-to-be soothing babble, he got the blanket back on me and used the rope to tie it in place. He pulled it in tight against my chest; I whumped in surprise and twisted around to get a good look. He stepped back and waited for me to decide if I was okay with it. Eventually, with only a little grumbling, I decided that I was. The opportunity to be a mighty war dog was too good to pass up. I could only imagine how much fun it was going to be, chasing stupid ugly wolves all over the place with Marcus on my back and his spear stretched out in front.

He fiddled a little more with the rope until he was sure that the blanket was secure, then added an extra loop hanging down on each side that he could put his feet in and a smaller loop at the top that he could hold onto.

He climbed up and we practiced moving around a bit, cantering up and down the slow-moving caravan until we were both confident that he could stay on when I was moving at a decent speed. We got to the rearmost wagon and I stopped. I looked towards the front of the caravan, then twisted around so I could look at Marcus. He looked back, confused, until I nodded my head up the road. He got a wicked smile and sank down closer to my back, setting his feet tight in the rope loops.

"Harzle blarzle," he whispered, sounding excited.

I faced forward, crouched down to be sure I had good traction, and exploded off the starting line.

At the speed I was moving, I wasn't so much running as repeatedly leaping at a small angle. Marcus stretched out low on my back, hiding his face from the impact of the wind. I wasn't sure if the noise he was making was more 'cry of excited delight' or 'scream of girlish terror', but it kept going and going and going like that rabbit on the noisybox.

The wagons were strung out along the road over the course of a mile or so, keeping distance between them so that if one of them got stuck the one behind would have plenty of time to stop. They didn't move fast, but the wagons weighed a lot more than the horse pulling them, so they couldn't change speed quickly. I, however, could. I went from "standing" to "ears streaming out straight" in one second flat and passed the whole caravan before Marcus ran out of breath. By the end of the line I was wrrowling in excitement with every step, but my ouchies were hurting, so I slowed down and stopped a quarter-mile-ish ahead of the lead wagon, then turned and walked back.

I wasn't even panting and I bet I looked. So. Incredibly. Cool!

Marcus's noise cut out after I stopped; he spent a few second gasping for air, then started laughing hysterically. He cast his head back, laughing into the sky so hard I could feel him shaking on my back. The sound was infectious and soon I was howling my own excitement alongside him.

"Harzle blarzle! Bleblesnort!" he said, waving down the road in the direction we'd come. "Harzle!"

{I enjoyed that very much, but I'm good for now,} I explained by way of an eloquent head shake, plumfing of the lips, and panting smile. The big ouchie on my flank was hurting again; I'd really stressed it with the running.

"Harzle!!" Marcus demanded, thumping me hard in the ribs with his heels.

What.

I twisted around so I could see him and let my lips skin back from my teeth in a low, ripping growl. {Do not. Ever. Do that again.}

He went white and let go of the top loop so that he could raise both hands in surrender.

I gave him a disgusted snort and crouched down, shrugging one shoulder to indicate that I wanted him off. He could walk back to the caravan on his own two puny human legs.

"Blardy blardy blah blah," he wheedled, trying to convince me that no, really, he didn't mean it and wouldn't I please be nice and give him another chance.

Nope.

When he didn't get off, I slowly rolled to the side. He didn't react fast enough; with a shouted "Fleeeeebbblee!" and much waving of arms, he fell to the ground and lay there with my weight pinning his leg to the dirt.

I rolled back and stood up, panting happily at my own cleverness in showing the puny hooman what was what. I decided to trot back to Zoola's wagon and see if she could fix up some of my bandages that had started coming loose. I'd only gone a dozen yards when I realized from the noises that Marcus still had his foot stuck in the rope and was being dragged. Oops.

o-o-o-o

After Zoola got done scolding me and fixing everything, I left Marcus to her not-so-tender mercies while I took a moderately-paced walk up and down the caravan, sniffing to make sure that nothing was threatening us. Nothing was.

By the time I got back, Marcus had one arm in a sling and bandages on the right side of his face, which apparently had gotten a little scraped up from being dragged. If Zoola's attitude was anything to go by, the injuries weren't anything to worry about, but I still felt about one slurp and a couple of snoot-nudges worth of guilty.

Marcus spent a little time assuring me that no, really, we were cool. When I was finally convinced, I nudged him to follow me over to the side of the road; it was time to start working on this babble nonsense of his. He followed me, spear in hand and confusion on his face.

I found a patch of dirt and pawed at it to clear away a few bits of leaves and whatever, then drew an arrow towards the nearest tree and a question mark.

Marcus stared at the symbols, frowning in confusion.

Oh, for Snoopy's sake! He was even going to pretend he didn't know what a question mark was?! Honestly, I was getting really tired of this game.

I walked over and tapped a paw against the tree, then looked at him with my head cocked and tailed flirted. {Would you be so kind as to tell me the name of this thing I'm indicating?}

"Blarbleflotz? Mebah hebuh plotz flots?" He walked over and looked at the tree. He looked up to see if there was anything in the branches, walked around the tree, and then looked at me with a shrug. "Marbul blarble blarble. Blehglots."

I facepawed.

Okay, this was going to be tougher than I thought. I pawed a clear spot on the dirt and delicately used one toenail to write out the letters T-R-E-E with a stick-figure Christmas tree next to it. I pointed from the tree he was standing beside to the elegant simplicity of my dirt rendition. {The name, if you please,} I head-tilted. There was a lot less politeness in the tail this time.

He looked at the letters, blinking in surprise. "Snabble babble flibble flobble glutz glats farmafabalap...urblb blurble!"

I grunted in annoyance and pointed imperiously at the drawing.

"Zeb!" he said, clearly apologizing at taking so long for the penny to finally drop. He pointed to the tree and said the stupid nonsense babble word that he was using instead of the much simpler 'tree'. I nodded in acknowledgement.

He walked over to where I'd been writing in the dirt and added his own squiggles next to my clean block-printed letters.

"Tree," he said, repeating his babble word and tapping on the squiggles.

I studied the squiggles, commiting them to my newly-enhanced memory. Apparently I was going to have to learn his ridiculously child-like written code too. Well, at least he was willing to share.