Chapter Text
Dark.
Dark is all he knows. That is all he is. Nothing but crumbled up, wet cardboard, dark all the way to the bottom. He does not remember how he got here. He was never anywhere else. It hurts.
The world is four scratched metal walls, a stained metal floor, rusting at the seams of the panels, and a metal ceiling. The world is a steel trap, a metal box, four by four. The universe is a series of boxes connected by prisms, and existence is a number of journeys between them. Stars live and die in the glint of fluorescents off the edge. Dust mite moons catch in the opposite of darkness, whatever that is, and he breathes them in. They disappear. If it meant something before, it doesn’t mean anything now.
He is dragged from box to box, sometimes. Mostly he stays in one. One world, one life within it, passing by like something he used to know. No, that’s wrong. He never knew anything. He’s always been here, blank as an infant. What’s that? He’s always looked like this.
He knows things he does not know. His brain supplies words that have meanings he cannot assign. Baby. Tree. Lion. These are things, he understands that much, but he does not know what those things are. Mountain. Sky. Castle. He cannot see them when he closes his eyes. Earth. All he sees is darkness, dust, and boxes.
Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do. He doesn’t remember where that comes from. The guardians never said it. Someone else did, but there has never been anybody else. When they return to him he says those words, he asks them what a father is, and they tell him not to be ridiculous, that he knows. He says he doesn’t. They don’t believe him, and they bring him to another box. The liar’s box.
Their words come into his ears differently than they arrive in his brain. He asks them about this, and they laugh for a long time. Then he is taken to the pool until he stops hearing the difference.
Was there somewhere else? Where did he come from? Boxes are all he knows.
Dreams come to him of creatures he has never encountered, fluffy orange things with four legs and eyes a color he has never seen in waking. Textures he has never felt beneath his hands, ridged and warm and brown, crumbling, wet. Nothing like metal, in the color of the creature's eyes that he thinks he might have invented. A place that only exists in his dreams, that refuses to leave however hard he begs. Yellow grains that sift through his fingers. Cold water that moves by itself and tastes bad, a different bad from the pool. Water that doesn’t make him afraid and never, ever ends. Dreams that vanish the moment they end, lingering like nuclear decay, emerging like bubbles in a swamp when he tries too hard to keep them back. He sees bubbles in the washbowl they bring him, in his spit when he retches into the bucket. He doesn’t know what a swamp is.
And the bodies. He hates the bodies most of all. Facing away, always. Dark heads and light heads and long white heads, never turned towards him. They get him in trouble, make his body hurt and put him in the darkest box in all the universe, the longest prism away. All the dancing horrors that creep along the walls. Liar liar liar. He returns to the world with limbs sore from folding, his mouth parched, and dizzy enough to spin through walls without moving a muscle.
Somebody is smiling. He only sees when he closes his eyes, less and less as time goes on. The dark head, one of them, is the only one that ever turns towards him. And it smiles like nothing he’s ever known. Bright and white and big enough to cut the face in half, so big he can’t see the face’s eyes, so beautiful he can’t bother to focus on anything else. One of the teeth, just to the left side, is chipped at the corner.
His guardians don’t like it when he sees the face. They are kind enough to forgive him when he confesses, even if they have to teach him better. But the smile is so big and so bright that when he sees it, he cannot help but smile back. Cannot help but reach his arms out, press his palms against the metal walls of his box and imagine they are warm.
It is so dark in here. Nothing else exists. Light is a lie told by luckier people than him.
Death. Another meaning he cannot assign. But it lingers, stealing over him in the night, less and less each time as he shrinks, cold breath over his thinning cheek. Watching and waiting for the moment he can comprehend. By then it will be too late.
They are not coming back for him. Even if they are, they will come too late. He understands this and cries for days at the understanding.
And then he forgets.
On the morning of the day he died, Canis woke up happy.
He was only a little hungry, and a few days ago he’d been given a new pillow as a reward for good behavior, wadded with scraps of fabric instead of dried grass, so the near-constant crick in his neck was fading each night. Next time he was good enough, he would ask for a blanket. His room was horribly cold, and despite his cheer he woke up every morning with goosebumps.
Next door, his neighbour was trying to sing again, the ever enduring alarm clock Canis had long grown used to. The neighbour, whose name Canis had never learned despite asking every day, was a terrible singer. Pained and pitchy, like the wordless, one-note song was tearing out of his throat.
Sometimes Canis tried to sing along, but then the neighbour swore at him and threatened him until he stopped. He wasn’t afraid of his neighbour - he’d never even seen them, always separated by the thick metal wall between their rooms. Maybe he was shy about his singing. Canis could forgive that; it truly was awful.
Sitting up and stretching his bony arms above his head, Canis stood, straightened out his mattress, smoothed the creases out of his pillow, and paced his room while he waited for breakfast. He did his pacing every day, counting each lap of the small room until he reached a hundred. Then he sat down, stretched all the cracks out of his joints, and paced again.
Canis’ room was a perfect square twice the width of his body lying down, and much taller than him. Maybe twice the height if he could stand on his own shoulders. Every wall, the floor, and the ceiling was metal; dirty and rusting in the corners and at the seams between panels, but very strong.
The same words were scratched into the walls so many times they started overlapping, but Canis avoided looking at it when he could.
Aside from his bed and his body, the only decorations were his wastebucket and the two circles of lighter metal on one wall. He didn’t know what made the circles, and the last time he’d asked the guardian had taught him better, so he didn't ask again.
When Canis had reached lap two hundred and thirty seven, he heard the zapping of electro keys opening his door and stopped, chanting the number to himself so he didn’t forget how many he’d done. It was easy for Canis to forget things. It frustrated him sometimes, not knowing, but his guardians would always explain it to him if it was something he needed to know. He walked to the far side of the room and waited.
They’d sent Zorak that morning, and Canis dropped easily to sit cross legged on the floor as he turned and locked the door behind him. The guardians looked different from Canis; bigger, fuzzier, their skin and hair purple where it peeked out from their armor. He was smaller, thinner, and his skin was a sallow brown. His hair was brown too, but he had less of it. Sparse patches across his body, a thicker patch on his head that his guardians shaved off every now and then. Their faces were wide and their eyes yellow, big teeth sometimes protruding from their lips if they weren’t masked. Canis didn’t know what his own face looked like, the metal of his room was too dull and scratched to catch himself in, but when he put his hands to it to try and figure it out, all he could tell was that his nose and teeth were smaller.
‘Good morning Zorak,’ he chirped from the floor. The guardian set out two bowls on the metal panels in front of him. Then he set out a spoon and a rag. ‘Did you sleep well? I slept well, but I don’t think my neighbor did. They were singing again this morning.’
Another guardian slipped in behind to change out Canis' wastebucket. He tried not to look at the bucket guardian, it made him embarrassed to think of someone seeing his waste. He wished he could cover it with something. They swapped it for a clean one and left without a word, and then it was just Canis and Zorak.
‘Did I tell you to speak?’ The guardian’s hand floated towards the rod strapped to his belt, and Canis shrunk into himself. The rod sent fire under his skin, made his body lock up in pain, zap and tingle for hours after. But Zorak’s hand only rested on the top, making no move to retrieve it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’ll remember next time.’ He looked down at the bowls. One was filled with water, the other with the sludgy porridge that made up his breakfast. The bowls were a strange material that made the water warp and ripple too much for Canis to see his reflection, and once again his face eluded him. He picked up the spoon and started eating.
The sludge tasted like sludge and stuck to his mouth the same. But it stopped the hunger, which was all Canis really cared about. It didn’t need chewing, but he liked to pretend anyway. Just to make the time pass. Any kind of sludge was better than the needles. Eating through the needles left him too tired to do his laps, and his stomach howled all the time, even when it was supposed to be full.
Canis raised one palm, waiting for Zorak to allow him to speak. The guardian jerked his chin in permission.
‘What do I look like?’ he asked after swallowing another mouthful of sludge. Zorak stared blankly at him, one eyebrow raised a touch. He looked Canis up and down, and snorted.
‘Small,’ he said curtly, ‘Ugly. Eyes too close together, wrong color.’
Canis looked down into his breakfast and frowned. He supposed it didn’t really matter if he was ugly. Only his guardians saw him anyway. But it still stung, ‘I’m not like you though,’ he said quietly, ‘Maybe to my people, I look fine.’
‘You have no people.’
‘Yes,’ Canis nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Some of his guardians looked different from each other. He wondered how different he might look from his people, ‘Did you ever meet one of my people? Apart from me, of course.’
Zorak’s voice was low, warning, ‘You’re asking a lot of questions.’ His eyes on Canis were hot, hot like the rod when it bore into him, ‘Have you had another dream?’
‘No,’ he shook his head quickly, shovelling down another spoonful, ‘No. The dreams are gone. They stopped, they all stopped. I don’t even remember them.’
‘Canis,’ Zorak didn’t sound convinced, striding across the room to stand over him, ‘You know where liars go.’
‘I’m not lying,’ Canis pushed up onto his ankles and crawled to grasp at his trousers, halfway to pleading, ‘I promise, I promise, I don’t need the box. I’m just asking, just wanted to know, I-- I don’t even really care!’
His bowl was forgotten, still half full of the pastelike gruel. Zorak lifted a boot to Canis' chest and kicked him down and away.
‘Finish your food,’ he said, ‘And get cleaned up. You’re seeing the doctor today.’
Canis tipped his head, ‘But I saw the doctor two-’
‘Is that a problem, Canis?’
He fell silent and picked up his bowl again, shoving the rest into his mouth without another word. When it was empty and Canis was so full he felt sick, he picked up the rag and dipped it into the water, scrubbing the folds and creases of his skin with it. Under his shirt, down his shorts. Canis didn’t take his clothes off unless one of the guardians told him to, which wasn’t often. Thankfully.
Zorak was in a bad mood today. Canis could tell because he was sitting back, paring dirt out from under his claws, and usually he would at least grunt along when Canis tried to talk. It was his fault, he shouldn’t have asked questions. Gymaria told him only yesterday that he was doing well, and now he’d ruined it all. Canis scrubbed and scrubbed at his skin until it flushed a dark, angry red, hairless and ugly to the only people that saw it. It flaked pale as it dried, stretched thin over his bones and cracking into layers like scales, dry and scratchy.
Last week he’d asked Zorak why his skin did that, why it itched and tore and hurt, but Zorak had only shrugged.
‘You’re weak,’ he’d said blankly, ‘That’s why we’re here.’
He finished his washing and wrung out the rag into the bowl of dirty water, stacking it into his empty food bowl and laying them both gently in front of Zorak for him to take away. Then he crawled back to the far side of his room so Zorak could open the door. Canis never tried to come through the door when he wasn’t allowed, but he still had to go to the back just in case.
Zorak leant back against the wall, regarding Canis through his mask. Slowly, he kicked off, bent down to pick up the bowls, and tapped his claws around the rim.
‘I think you’re hiding something,’ he said, his voice low and sending a spike of panic through Canis’ chest, ‘Either a liar, or plain ungrateful. What a shame.’
Canis shook his head, biting down hard on his lip, ‘I’m not,’ he swore, ‘I’m sorry, I- I won’t do it again, I promise.’
‘What is it,’ the guardian tsked, stepping towards Canis, into the middle of the small, cramped room, ‘Make your mind up, Canis. Are you innocent or are you sorry?’
‘I, I can be whichever!’ Canis pushed up onto his knees, ‘I- I didn’t mean it, and, and I’m still sorry for it. For even, I don’t know, even maybe doing it. I don’t know! You’re right, I was being stupid. But I’m grateful, I am. I don’t care about my people, they’re not mine. You’re the ones who care for me, who’re kind to me. You taught me better.’ The guardian’s free hand floated to the rod on his belt, resting lightly on the handle, and Canis swallowed.
Zorak tilted his head a degree, seeming to weigh something in his mind. Then he held the washing bowl outstretched and tipped it over, spilling the dirty water over the metal floor of Canis’ room.
‘Look at what you’ve done,’ he said evenly, dropping the bowl with a clatter that echoed off the walls, ‘Made a terrible mess.’ Canis opened his mouth and shut it immediately. ‘Clean it up.’
His eyes flicked down to the growing puddle on the floor of his room, up to Zorak, and back down to the water. He’d been bad enough this morning. Zorak's fingers still danced around the rod. Canis nodded to himself and reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it slowly over his head.
‘Not with that.’ Zorak’s voice interrupted him, and he frowned up at the guardian. He could hear the curl of his lip beneath the mask that covered his mouth, ‘Put your clothes on.’
Canis’ mouth felt dry, ‘But I have to clean it,’ he said, ‘I, I could use the rag, but-’
Zorak pulled the rod out of his belt, and Canis fell quiet, ‘Go on,’ the guardian taunted, ‘But what?’
‘But… But I don’t have it.’ His eyes flicked around the room, trying desperately to figure out what Zorak wanted him to do. He would do it. Instantly, without reservation, because Zorak only did what was best for him. So Canis owed him the same.
‘You don’t need it,’ Zorak said, pressing his thumb down on the button, and the rod hummed to life, ‘Put your shirt back on, I don’t want to look at you. And clean it up. Stars above, it’s a miracle this took us as long as it did, if you’re really this stupid.’
He bent down on one knee before Canis, held the tip of the rod inches before his nose, ‘It’s no trouble for me to ask again. But I don’t think you’ll like it.’
‘I-’ Canis’ eyes were fixed on the end of the rod, thrumming purple with the energy that burnt his hair off, shocked his skin with squiggly white lines, ‘If I could just get, get the rag. Or I can use my shirt, I’ll hide myself, or- or you could close your eyes, you don’t have to see me. I just-’
The butt of the rod cracked hard into his cheek, whipping his head to the side, nearly biting through his tongue mid-word. Canis toppled forward and Zorak’s hand wrapped around the back of his head, pressing his throbbing cheek into the puddle on the floor. He tried to push up, keep the water away from his nose, but Zorak was stronger and held him down, claws digging into his scalp as he struggled.
‘Make it so much harder than you have to,’ he sighed, pushing Canis harder against the floor, spinning the rod in his hands and jabbing it hard into Canis’ ribs. His body locked, seized, and went limp, arms splaying out, unable to hold himself up.
Fire under him, in him, alight in every cell in every inch and burning skin burning hair light that flashed behind the skin of his eyes blinding bright and hot and blinding. Dirty water crept into his nostrils and he wriggled back, but the claws held him in place. ‘I’ll have to tell the doctor about this. And that is your own fault, Canis. Now clean up your mess.’
Zorak’s fingers held tight around his skull, and Canis made his body as still as it would go. When he was still it ended quicker. The guardian’s breath came hot against his face, rod humming, lit up blue in his free hand. Its color made his brain itch but Canis refused to pick at it, looking as far away from the light as he could manage with his head pinned in place.
‘Why did I have to do that?’
Canis gasped as the claws broke skin, ‘To teach me better,’ he squeezed his eyes shut and recited. Zorak dug in harder, firm around the blood that sprung out through the punctures in his scalp.
‘And what am I teaching you?’
‘That, that when I get an order,’ Zorak angled his head into the puddle, snorting it up his nose and choking on it when he tried to breathe. Mercifully, Zorak yanked his head up by the claws dug into his skin and let him splutter until he could speak, ‘When, when I get an order, I follow it.’
The grip on his hair eased, claws retracting, stroking softly over his hair, smearing the blood over the short strands, ‘There you go,’ Zorak muttered, guiding Canis’ head to rest against his shoulder, ‘There you go, well done.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Canis sobbed, eyes still shut as Zorak hushed him, caressing his cheek, his hair, wiping his tears away, ‘I’m really sorry. I want to be better.’
‘You know how to be better,’ Zorak pointed out, holding him and waiting for Canis to cry himself out and pry his itchy eyes open, ‘You just have to listen. Will you listen?’ Canis nodded so hard he thought his head would come off, ‘Then do what I tell you, what all of us tell you. Understand?’ Canis nodded again, and Zorak released him, standing, the buzzing rod still gripped tight in his free hand.
‘Thank you,’ Canis said, ‘For teaching me.’
‘I haven’t finished,’ Zorak’s words were curt, clipped and full of sibilance. Canis knew better than to ask by now. ‘I still gave you an order.’
Canis didn’t know anything. He was stupid and ugly and small, and his guardians still cared for him. Held him softly when the lesson was hard. It needed learning. But he wished Zorak would turn around. He wished Zorak would let him use his shirt, however much he hated taking his clothes off in front of them. He could see blurry dregs within the water where he’d wrung his own sweat into it, and contemplated pleading again. But the rod hummed behind him, and Canis knew it was useless.
In the surface of the dirty water, Canis could see his face. He was thinner than he felt in his hands, gaunt hollows around his eyes, under his cheeks, around his forehead. His lips cracked into flaps of dry skin, paler than the rest of him. Zorak had been right - his eyes were too close together, much closer than any of his guardians’ were, and not the beautiful yellow of theirs at all. No wonder they called him ugly. The structure of his face was more similar to the smile in his dream, and that scared him. He shut his eyes against the reflection and knelt down, face hovering over the puddle.
Looking at it, he felt even sorrier than before for upsetting Zorak - the guardian was only doing this so Canis could see what he looked like, just like he’d asked, and he’d made it so difficult. All the wonderful things that all of his guardians did for him, all the lessons they were so careful to teach, and he just threw it in their faces by not trusting them. He should know better by now. He was a miserable, ungrateful wretch that didn’t deserve their kindness.
Canis closed his eyes, and lowered down until his lips breached the surface of the puddle. If he could, Canis would never touch water. He didn’t like when it got in his nose or down his windpipe, when it slithered down like worms into his chest until he couldn’t breathe without coughing. He didn’t like when the guardians with the other masks brought him to the pool. The porridge they gave him was wet enough that he didn’t need anything else, and Canis preferred it that way. Still, Zorak had given him an order, and he was not going to spit in their kindness again.
He pursed his lips and drank.
The first mouthful of water was salty, diluted sweat and a whole day and night's worth of grime, and he nearly gagged it back out onto the floor. Zorak turned a dial up on the rod and it hummed louder, painting the smooth planes of metal, the shallow ridges of scratches across them, a pale blue. Canis told himself to get it together. He braced himself with both hands on the floor, lowered his head back down, and slurped up as much of the dirty water as he could.
It was what he had asked for. Canis wanted to see his face, and Zorak was kind enough to let him. These were the consequences of his own actions and desires. This was a lesson; what happened when he didn't listen to the people who knew better.
The water was stale and tasted like wet dust, like the grimy folds of his skin. The dirt from his body and the dirt from the floor mingled in the puddle , and Canis fought hard every time his throat tried to refuse it. He gagged a few more times when he felt the flakes of his scrubbed off skin slide between his teeth, but he kept his head to the floor, and drank up as much of the mess as he could. Not once did he look up at Zorak, but a few times he heard the guardian snort or chuckle to himself, rod humming in his hand.
He tried to shepherd it with his hands, spreading out across the floor as its volume sapped, but it only put the dirt on his hands into the water, and then he had to drink that too. Canis licked up his own tears as they fell onto the floor, before Zorak could see and think him ungrateful again. He swallowed his fear with the water that wormed down his throat, the dancing molecules of dirt that it carried.
‘That’s enough,’ Zorak’s voice echoed off the walls and Canis shot upright, sitting back on his ankles, ‘Open your mouth.’
Canis’ jaw dropped open and Zorak ambled over to him, taking him roughly by the chin. He snorted out another laugh, slapping him lightly across the cheek, right where the earlier hit was starting to bruise, ‘Look at you. Actually drank it up. The name suits you more than I thought. Come a long way, haven’t we Canis?’
Sometimes the guardians made comments about a past Canis never had, one where he didn’t do the things he did now. He’d learned better than to ask.
Canis didn’t respond, and Zorak tapped his cheek one more time, telling him he’ll be back with dinner. He left with a quick buzz of the electrokeys, the echoing slam of the door.
The door slammed shut and Canis crawled over to the niche with his wastebucket. It was a shame; he liked the smell of his room with a fresh, unused bucket, so he usually tried to keep from using it for as long as possible. But the taste of his own sweat throbbed like a slug down his throat, so Canis hauled himself over the lid of the bucket and shoved his fingers down his throat.
Dirty things were alive, someone that never existed had told him once. They wriggled with tiny beings that would make him sick, and it was important to stay clean, to never give them a chance. Someone had said it. Nobody anymore. The water on his hands then had bubbled and stung his torn hangnails and all the wriggling things died. When? Never. Where? Nowhere. His fingers inched further down his throat and he retched, teeth clamping down over his knuckles, coughing out thick, foamy with spit when he took them out, waiting for his stomach to heave. It wasn’t enough.
Canis rose to his feet and jumped on the spot until he was out of breath, before folding his body in half over the bucket and shoving his fingers back down his throat. The motion had thrown his organs around enough to unsettle his guts, and he barely pushed his fingertips past his tonsils before the water came retching out, thrown back into the bucket by his rioting muscles, forcing Canis down on his knees, gripping one hand around the edge of the rim and he shoved his head down.
His breakfast came up with it, thick and acidic, smacking wet and heavy into the bottom. Canis pouted, staring into the mess of sludge and foul water, knowing his belly would howl all day now. He retched long after he was empty, gagging throatfuls of stringy yellow bile and spitting it out atop his breakfast until everything inside him ached and his skin prickled with sweat. Dirtier and hungrier than he’d been before Zorak entered. But the wriggling things were gone, and he was safe.
Canis flopped down onto his back to catch his breath, staring up at the welded panels of his ceiling as he cooled off. The last waves of nausea passed by in thrashing pangs, and his neighbor started singing again. Frustrated, hungry, and dirty all over again, Canis sucked in a long breath and sang back, just as ragged and pitchy, so loud it hurt his own ears. He matched his neighbor in the single noted, anguished song until his throat stopped listening to him, and fractured under its own volume. He lay there, quiet, until his neighbor got bored of singing and switched to crying. Canis used to cry with them, but not anymore. There was only so long he could hear it before getting bored.
When the song died down into soft, muffled sniffling, Canis sat up and crossed his room to the circles. The circles were Canis’ favourite part of his room. Two pale rings on the metal of his wall, about knee height when he stood up, the length of his finger in diameter. There were holes in the middle of both rings, poking through the metal, and when he put his eye to it, he could see the tiniest sliver of light in the distance, through the seam of a door that sometimes opened. Canis could, and sometimes did, spend hours and hours with his eye to the hole, just peering through. On one occasion he saw his guardians walking past, carrying a person that didn’t look like them, hanging limply in their hold. But the new person didn’t look like Canis either, so he decided not to ask.
The door was shut and he couldn’t see anything right now, and throwing up had left his head pounding, so he didn’t stay at the hole for long. He stood up to resume his laps from the morning and realized he’d lost count amid the questions and the lesson and emesis. It made him sit back down and cry for a few minutes, before resolving to start from scratch. But the weakness from vomiting and the loss of his breakfast left him exhausted by the first hundred, and he gave up, flopping down on his bed.
Then he stretched again, slow and tenuous with his shivering limbs, and decided to spend some time with his pet until the doctor came. The doctor knew about his pet, so he wouldn’t get in trouble if she caught him.
His pet was hiding in the corner of the room near his pillow. Canis didn’t know when it moved in, but he’d first found it after a trip to the liar’s box. He’d opened his eyes, curled up on his side and sobbing, to see it walking across the floor, right in front of him. It was the only creature to ever come to his cell beside the guardians, and Canis felt a fierce urge to keep it there.
Now, Canis crouched low in front of his pet and cupped his hands around it until it stepped into his palm. Eight skinny legs on a big round body with eight even bigger, rounder eyes. Sparse brown hairs like his own on the joints of its body and legs. Maybe it looked nothing like Canis, but his pet wasn’t purple like the guardians and it let him hold it every day, so he liked to think they were friends. The insect crawled over his hands and Canis turned them this way and that so it wasn’t upside down.
‘Did you sleep well?’ he whispered to the insect, who did not respond. Canis had never seen its mouth open, just the little pincers that protruded from either side of it. He lifted his hand to his face and tried to look in its eye, but the insect was fast.
‘I think Zorak is upset with me. But I guess I was bothering him with all those questions. Maybe if I tell the doctor I’m sorry, she can pass it on. Or I can wait until dinner. What do you think?’
He blinked at the creature, who continued to scuttle around his hand, and lowered it gently to the floor with a sigh, lying down on his side to watch the creature start to string its bed in the corner between two walls and the floor, ‘I wish I could make it up to him. He’s much nicer than Bhuyxo. Maybe not as nice as Gymaria, Don’t tell anyone I said that,’ his voice dropped to a whisper, ‘I didn’t listen, and I took too long to do what Zorak told me. That’s not good, so he was right, I suppose. Bhuyxo used to laugh. Zorak doesn’t do that, at least. He just wants me to learn.’ He looked over at the insect, merrily weaving its web, and sighed again, ‘I wish you would say something.’
But the creature, as always, said nothing. Canis tucked into himself and watched it weave until his eyes grew heavy, and he fell asleep.
Canis awoke to the heavy clang of his door slamming shut. He jerked up and whipped around to see his doctor entering, nodding at the guardian who locked the door behind her. She didn’t wear the masks that Zorak and the other guardians usually did. The doctor smiled at him, and he smiled brightly back at her.
She paced slowly around his room, raking her eyes over the scratches on his walls. Canis ignored the scratches when he could. The doctor looked at them without much interest, like they didn’t say anything at all, peering around at his neatly made bed, chuckling to herself when her eyes landed on the circles, and glancing over into his bucket. She tapped a stylus against the tablet in her hand and tutted at him.
‘Oh dear, Canis,’ she shook her head, ‘Not feeling well, are we?’
Canis didn’t answer. She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t push him, ‘Patrol Officer Zorak claims you made a nuisance this morning. Anything to say in your defence?’
‘No,’ he shook his head, throat feeling dry from the remnants of his stomach acid, ‘Zo- I, um, I spilt some of my bath water. He asked me to clean it, and I took too long.’
She arched a brow at him, pursing her lips, ‘He says you asked about your people.’
‘Not anything real,’ Canis shuffled up to sit on his ankles, ‘I was only asking if I looked like them. Because I don’t know.’
The brow arched higher, ‘You don’t?’
‘No! I- I’ve never even seen them. How could I know?’ The doctor tapped a few more things out on her tablet, and crossed the room, crouching before Canis and taking his chin roughly in her gloved hand. She tilted his face this way, that way. Canis kept his eyes on the ceiling.
‘What did you dream of?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied, a second too quickly. Her grip hardened on his jaw, ‘Um, last night,’ he elaborated, ‘There was, it was the, the um. The big water, and the grains. It was warm. And, and the things that fly, above,’ he gestured around his head, ‘Without a ceiling.’
‘Metal?’
‘No,’ he tried to shake his head, but she was holding him too hard. Her claws dug in, there was always a claw digging in, and Canis stifled a whimper of pain, ‘Small. Made of, um, almost like hair. But not. With, with the feet, a-and the... Sharp mouths, like metal but not. They fly, and stop, and sing.’
The doctor stared at him, intent and scrutinizing. She released his jaw and burst out laughing.
‘Do you-’ she gathered up scraps of her composure, her eyes glinting with something sharp, ‘Do you mean a fucking bird? Oh Canis, you beautiful, beautiful thing.’ She swept a lap around the room and returned to him, took his face in her hands and stroked her thumbs over his cheekbones. Canis let his eyes slip shut, basking in her praise, ‘You amaze me. All wiped clean, so sweet, aren’t you? We couldn’t wish for better.’
‘Did I do well?’
‘Yes, my darling,’ she told him, ‘You have done remarkably.’
‘But I didn't know-’
‘It doesn't matter,’ he voice was calming, and Canis’ neck sagged, trusting her to hold him up, ‘You don’t need to know a thing. We can know things for you.’
‘Oh,’ Canis agreed, ‘Okay. If you say so.’
She stroked across his cheeks one more, pressing down on the bruise from that morning and narrowing her eyes, ‘Did Zorak do this?’
Canis bit his lip, ‘It was my fault. I didn’t listen to him.’
‘Brute,’ the doctor huffed, ‘He knew not to mark you today, I should have sent Gymaria after all.’ She smoothed her hand through his hair and released him, ‘Now, has anything changed since your last examination?’
‘No,’ Canis told her honestly. She pulled a small case out of her pocket, and opened it to reveal a needle and a small rubber tube with a glass vial at the end.
‘No lumps or bumps, anything strange under your clothes?’ He shook his head, ‘Perfect. That’s what I like to hear. Means we can skip the body check, and I’m sure you’re as happy about that as I am, poor thing. But we will need another before the commander… Now, give me your arm.’
Canis held out his wrist to the doctor. She buckled a strip of stiff cloth tightly at his elbow, smacked at the skin inside his forearm, and slid the needle into one of his bulging veins. He watched his blood flow out through the tube and into the glass. It was a beautiful color; deep red and vibrant, glittering under the light. He shut his eyes and kept them shut until the tube was full.
The doctor slid the needle out, jammed her thumb over the hole in his skin, ‘Easy, there we go. Just hold that for me, darling.’ He took over, pressing down on the tiny wound, and she put the apparatus back in its case, pausing to type a few more things in her tablet, before clutching it to her chest and turning back to Canis. Her eyes were wide and filled with excitement.
‘Guess what,’ she whispered loudly, ‘I have a surprise for you, Canis.’
His stomach dropped, ‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘Of course not, not at all,’ she laughed again, ‘This is a good surprise, you’ll like it.’
Drop by drop, the ice that filled his chest melted. The doctor didn’t lie to him, so if she said he would like it, then he would like it. ‘What is it?’
She bit down a grin, ‘I’m taking you to a party tomorrow,’ she said, ‘Do you know what that is?’
Canis thought hard, brows furrowing until they almost touched over his nose, ‘It’s… um, I think it’s a room.’ He dug through the murky pits of his mind, clinging to any scrap that floated past. Party, he’d heard the word before. But he couldn’t quite reach it, ‘A room with people in it, lots of people, but I, I-’
‘Easy, easy,’ She set the tablet on the floor and knelt opposite him, taking one of his hands in hers, ‘Don’t hurt yourself, I’ll tell you; my word, you are fantastic. A party is a place where lots of people go for the evening. They talk, and eat - good food, Canis, much better than the slop Zorak brings you - and everyone has a wonderful time.’
‘Oh,’ he hummed, trying to grasp at the last of the scraps. Songs much better than his neighbours’, light that was soft, and-
The doctor snapped her fingers, and Canis jerked out of chasing himself down. He blinked at her, ‘And I’m going to the party?’
‘Going?’ she barked out a short laugh, ‘Even better! It’s your party, Canis, where you get to show everyone just how much you’ve learned.’
‘But,’ Canis’ eyes went wide, then crumpled into a frown, ‘But I was bad this morning, you can’t take me to a party. I’m wrong, I don’t listen fast enough, they won’t want to see m-’
‘But you learned this morning, didn’t you?’ She asked, and Canis supposed she was right, ‘And you don’t want to do it again, do you?’
‘...No.’
‘And I’ll be at the party too. I’ll be with you all night. It’s a very important party, Canis. Lots of very important people want to see you, to see how good you’ve become. It’s a triumph, how far you’ve come. One of them,’ her voice dropped into an exaggerated whisper, ‘Is the man in charge here. He’s very excited to see what you’ve learned.’
Her fingers danced along the sharp edge of his jaw, ‘And if he likes you, if you’re good enough,’ she said, ‘Then you get to go and live in his house. You’ll have a much bigger room, much nicer clothes, nicer food-’
‘Will I have a blanket?’
She smiled at him, ruffled his shorn hair, ‘A hundred blankets, if you want. A new one every day. But you have to be good.’
It sounded wonderful, ‘Why does the man want to meet me?’ The doctor pursed her lips, smiled sweetly.
‘He wants to see how much we’ve helped you, taught you. And if you can show him that you’ve done well, that we’ve done well together, then we can start helping other people like you. People that need our help. So it’s important you’re on your best behavior until then, Canis, or we’ll have to cancel, and keep teaching you until you’re ready.’
‘Do you think he’ll like me?’
‘Oh, I’m sure of it,’ she chuckled, ‘Pretty thing, so well-behaved. As long as you keep up your good streak, I’m sure he’ll love you.’
Canis stuck out his bottom lip, ‘Zorak said I was ugly.’
‘Zorak doesn’t understand you. Not like I do, Canis. Not like the commander will,’ the back of her fingers grazed down the side of his face, ‘He’s fresh off the training field, can’t appreciate what you are. But the commander will. Vicious blue, all wrapped up in a sweet little bow. Oh, he will just adore you. And once you go to his house, you have to keep being good. I’ll tell him how to teach you, but he doesn’t know yet, so it’s your responsibility.’
‘Can my pet come to the commander’s house with me?’
‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘But I’ll take good care of her here.’
‘Oh,’ Canis deflated a little, ‘I’ll miss her.’
‘And I’m sure she’ll miss you too. We all will. You’re my crowning jewel,’ she kissed him on the forehead and pushed up to her feet, breezing out towards the door. Right before reaching it she turned back, tilted her head at him, and said quietly, ‘Just remarkable. I do wonder what your princess would think, if she could see you now.’
Canis wrung his hands in his lap, ‘What’s a princess?’ One side of the doctor’s mouth pulled up.
‘Don’t worry,’ she answered, ‘Nothing you need to know.’
The door buzzed open and she left. Canis untangled his limbs and lay down supine on the floor and attempted to ignore his hunger. His guardians were throwing a party, all for him. He wouldn’t let them down.
Zorak didn’t say much when he came with Canis’ dinner, only nodding curtly when he apologized for his behavior that morning. He even brought a second washbowl so Canis could clean himself again. Canis ate quickly, famished from throwing up his breakfast, and swished the water around his mouth to wash out the lingering acrid taste of his vomit, spitting it out into his bucket. But he didn't really clean himself, just in case the water spilled again.
When Zorak was about to leave, Canis asked him, ‘Did the doctor tell you I’m going to a party?’
Zorak sniffed out a chuckle under his mask, ‘I heard. Sorry about your face.’
‘It’s, it’s okay,’ Canis blinked. Usually he was the one saying that word, ‘You were right to. I needed teaching.’
The guardian nodded, blank yellow eyes flicking around the cell, ‘Might be leaving us soon, if the commander likes you.’
‘That’s what the doctor said,’ Canis tapped idly at the floor of his room, running his fingertips along the seams of the metal, ‘Do you think he will like me?’
Zorak looked at him for a long time, a crease forming between his brows. His hands clenched tighter around the two bowls.
‘Not too much,’ he said after a long, weighty silence, ‘I hope.’
And then he was gone, before Canis could even think to ask what he meant.
It was always difficult to sleep. Tonight was no exception.
Canis was excited for the party tomorrow. He wanted to make the doctor, to make all his guardians proud, even if Zorak wasn't happy. Eventually, Canis decided that Zorak would probably just miss him. Canis would miss him too. Maybe the commander would let him send messages home if Canis went to live with him.
He sat upright in his bed, turned to face the wall, and traced his fingers over one of the scratched inscriptions. It wasn’t something he let himself do in daylight. Canis followed the strokes in the metal, sharp lines, angled into poor imitations of loops and curves.
He’d asked Gymaria what it meant before, and she’d only shrugged.
‘It means nothing,’ she’d told him, ‘Just scratches.’
Canis looked over the scratches now. He wasn’t sure why she’d said that. Not at the time, and not now. It was clear to see the words, he could read them without even trying, each poorly formed letter that made them up.
Don’t break.
Over and over, a dozen at least in each panel of each wall. But Canis wasn’t sure who’d scratched it, or what was breaking. And after Gymaria brushed him off he hadn’t asked the others. They looked over the wall like they couldn’t even see it.
Don’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon’tBreakDon-
Muffled speech filtered through his door, angry, rapid yelling punctuated by curses and scuffling. Someone thumped the wall and the emergency alarm blared to life, snapping Canis out of his reverie.
Sharp and shrill and loud enough to make his skull jab inwards. Canis clamped his hands over his ears and scrabbled back to press his spine against the far wall. Red lights blinked and swirled in the seams of his door. Over the din of the alarm, his neighbour started singing again. Easy enough to hear over the alarm and Canis’ fingers plugging his ears, he knew the sound of it well enough to pick it out half-deafened.
This had happened once before. Canis never found out why, but that was when his guardians started bringing the rods into his cell. Everyone had been on edge for days, and the pacing outside his room at all hours went up from one set of feet to two.
Now, though, he could hear the thundering of boots down corridors, the distant melting and rending of metal as humming things cut through it. Canis squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to listen. The sounds of fighting continued, yelled orders and panicked rebuttals from the guardians sprinting past his door.
‘Lock it down, lock it down!’ Someone shouted over the screaming alarm.
‘Fucking what is there to lock?’ Another one yelled back, ‘They’re already here!’
‘If we lose him, we’re dead.’
‘And if we’re here when they show up, we’re dead anyho- shit, shit, eastern wing gate breached. Eyes on the door, charge up.’
Canis pressed his hands harder against his ears, not hard enough to block out the heavy screech of metal tearing, the thrumming slash of electric blade against blade, the death throes of his guardians as they fell. He buried his face between his knees, curling his body as small as it would go and rocking back and forth. He just had to keep quiet. He just had to be still, and it would all be over soon.
A few moments passed with no sounds of movement, no speaking. Then the alarms shut off as abruptly as they’d started, leaving Canis’ ears ringing with the phantom echo.
‘Security disabled on the prisoner’s wing,’ said a gruff, husky voice. Canis peeled his hands away from his face, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating.
‘Lance?’ the voice called out, ‘Lance, can you hear me?’
In the tiny part of his brain not already consumed by terror, Canis realized that the sounds the voice made were exactly the same as the words that came into his mind. The realization made the terror bloom tenfold, and he pressed as far into the wall as he could go, like the metal might grow arms and pull him into it, keeping him safe.
‘Pidge,’ the voice continued, but there was only one set of footsteps, ‘Are you close to getting the doors?’
A second, quieter voice, tinny and echoing off the hallway, answered, too distant and distorted for Canis to make out the words. The intruder growled, ‘Make it quick. In the meantime, everyone start clearing an escape route. This is not a combat mission, as soon as we find him we’re outta here.’
Canis’ neighbour started singing again, undercut by his manic laughter. Some of the other neighbours joined in, hollering out to the intruder.
Their voices were coy, teasing. ‘You here to save us, Red?’
Filled with mockery. ‘Liberating planets and prisoners alike.’
Dripping with half snark and half pity. ‘God fucking help him. Miracle the kid’s still breathing.’
Crawling over each other to be heard, clamoring for the new person’s attention. Voices Canis had never heard in all his life, suddenly finding themselves for this stranger, this threat to their home and their guardians. He couldn’t believe them. Traitors, every last one; ungrateful, slimy traitors.
‘Enough,’ the intruder whacked something heavy against one of the doors. His voice was getting further away, and Canis kept as still as his trembling limbs permitted. He heard the viewing slot groan open a few rooms down and the intruder barked, ‘You, four-eyes. Where’s my fucking teammate?’
‘Get this door open and I’ll tell you.’
The intruder laughed. It was a sharp, empty sound, ‘Wrong guy to play smart with,’ the humming grew louder, like the rods, and vivid purple light flooded under the crack between Canis’ door and the wall, ‘You’ll get out of that cell either way. But whether you make it past the rest of the guards is up to you. Or me. Where’s Lance?’
Someone else called out from the other end of the hallway, ‘Four doors down. Left of the guy who keeps screaming. Dibs on the first shuttle out!’
‘Princess, how’re we looking on that escape route?’ The intruder said to nobody. His feet pounded down the corridor, coming to a stop far, far too close for comfort. Canis drew into a ball, covering his head with both arms. The purple light grew brighter, more saturated, until it painted the bottom half of his room violet.
A flurry of sparks burst into a spray of bright heat as a humming sword stabbed into Canis’ door. Canis jerked up, breathing shallow and ragged as he looked desperately around his room for a place to hide. He’d been doing so well, he just had to sit tight and wait for his guardians, and they would fix this. He was going to a party tomorrow!
The blade dragged a crooked arc through the door, pulling out and slashing back in to make a wonky archway, and the intruder kicked the cut metal until it fell down, a body-sized hole in the door. The red emergency lights flooded into his room, mingling with the purple of the intruder’s weapon. Canis scrambled back towards the wall like it could save him, and the intruder loomed in the doorway, wrenched open and molten at the ridges, panting hard.
He wore white armor with red accents that melted into the blood splattered over him. Blood of his guardians, of the only people that cared for him, and Canis felt he might be sick again, without any effort at all. The weapon in his hand was long, curved and wickedly sharp, glowing softly purple in his grip.
‘Lance,’ he whispered, skidding across the room and falling to his knees before Canis. His weapon dropped forgotten to the floor. When Canis kicked out at him he caught the ankle easily, reaching out to touch his face. His dark eyes were alight with desperation, flitting over Canis’ face, fingertips hovering just shy of his skin, ‘Lance, it’s me, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m gonna get you out of here, alright?’
‘No,’ Canis whimpered, ‘No, no, no.’
The stranger lifted his wrist to the visor of his helmet and spoke into it, ‘I’ve got him. Going back the way I came. Pidge, are we ready on the doors?’
As if on cue, a siren blared once and all the doors on the wing squealed open, thudding harshly into the walls. The clamor of Lance’s neighbors, cut with whoops of delight as they ran out of their rooms and out into the hallway. The stranger’s eyes never left Canis’ face, and he tugged at Canis’ wrists, trying to pull him to his feet.
‘Come on, Lance, we gotta get out of here while they’re distracted.’
‘No, no,’ Canis tried to pull back, but the intruder was stronger, ‘I’m not going anywhere with you!’
The intruder reeled back as if Canis had slapped him, and Canis tried to shove him back. But he was quick, and caught Lance’s wrist before the hit could land.
‘We have to go, now.’
‘I’m not going!’
‘Lance-’
‘You’ve got the wrong person!’ he cried out, ‘I’m not Lance.’ The stranger stilled again, face frozen in shock. His eyes worked over Canis’ face, down his body, then flicked back up.
‘What did they do to you?’ he whispered again, voice thick and halfway to cracking. Canis blinked at him, trying to swallow. He shook his head, kept shaking it as the stranger stared at him.
‘I- I’m not going with you, I can’t. I need, I need Gymaria, or Zorak, where’s Zorak, he’ll know, he can fix this,’ Canis wrung his hands, trying to back away from the stranger, ‘I need the doctor, the doctor can help me, the doctor, we, we have a party, I have to go, she said it’s, it’s for me.’
The stranger snapped like a spring and bent down, wrapping an arm around Canis’ waist, and hauled Canis onto his shoulder. He stood up and took off out the door, down the corridor Canis had never walked without at least two guardians and both hands bound behind his back.
No matter how much he writhed and screamed and kicked, beating his fists at the stranger’s back and trying to wriggle free to run back to his room and sit tight until morning, the stranger was stronger, held Canis firm on his shoulder as he ran backward through the web of corridors, checking and hissing into his wrist every now and then.
They ran past the limp bodies of his guardians, and Canis felt cold spread out from the center of him. The stranger was a killer. The stranger killed Gymaria, her head lolling on the floor, blood pooling around her stomach. His whole body became one great vat of panic, and he thrashed harder. Still, the stranger kept running, hitched Canis higher on his shoulder and took him away.
‘Something’s wrong with him,’ the intruder grunted into his wrist, ‘He’s fighting me.’
‘What?’ The console on his wrist crackled back, ‘What do you mean fighting you?’
‘Let me go!’ Canis yelled, kneeing the stranger in the chest until he swore. ‘I can’t leave, I can’t leave, let me go let me go let me go.’ His grip faltered, Canis tried to push it, but the intruder only snapped his blade into his belt and wrapped his other arm around Canis’ calves.
‘Like that,’ the stranger ignored him, jogging down a narrow hallway littered with more bodies. ‘We’re coming up on the loading dock. Everyone ready to go?’
The console answered an affirmative, and the stranger kicked over a half shredded door, dragging Canis out into a room he’d never seen before. He twisted in the stranger’s hold to see where the man was taking him, but the intruder turned and started running right, so he could see off to the side. He was slowing down, getting tired. It might be Canis’ only chance to escape.
He brought them into a room that was huge, huger than anything he’d ever seen, ceilings higher than ten of himself stacked on top of each other, so long and wide he couldn’t see the detail of the far walls. Canis had never known anything so huge could even exist, let alone be so close to his room, his world of boxes and dust and little pets tucked into the seams. The beauty of it, all that room in one room, knocked him limp, and as the stranger ran Canis forgot to fight him.
His pet! He’d nearly forgotten all about the tiny little creature that shared his room. There was no way the doctor would care for it now, not now that he’d disobeyed her like this, right before the party. Canis started to cry and the stranger squeezed his calf, but kept running.
The intruder’s footsteps changed sound to something hollower, and Canis blinked through his tears to see he was running up a metal platform, away from the broken door they’d come through. He twisted again to see where they were going.
Above them, engulfing Canis and the stranger in its titanic shadow, was a great metal beast. Red as the stranger’s armor, the beasts’ mouth opened, its eyes blank and yellow like his guardians, and Canis knew with utter certainty that if the stranger took him here then everything was lost. He screamed as loud as he could, thrashing harder than ever, but the stranger ran up the walkway, metal pulling up behind them as he sprinted past the creature’s jaws.
The metal teeth clamped shut, and Canis was trapped. When the stranger finally released him, lowering him gently to the ground, Canis dashed to the jaw, hammering his fists against he side and begging them to open again.
The stranger threw himself into a chair at the front of the cramped, red cell he’d flung them into, and tapped at the dashboard before him until the room lit up with glowing holographic screens. The yellow eyes of the beast melted into transparency and Canis could see out into the huge room, out to the grand slabs of doors opening out to reveal complete blackness.
‘Lance, come on.’
‘Get away from me,’ he hissed, ‘Let me out, let me go. You, you killed them.’
‘I did,’ the stranger pulled himself up straight in his seat, ‘And I’d do it again. We’re going home, Lance.’
‘Lance, this, this stupid Lance,’ he waved his hands around, pacing towards the stranger’s seat, fury battling fear until he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hit the man or beg him for mercy, ‘I told you, told you, you’ve got the wrong guy! You made a mistake, and I can’t leave, and, and Lance, your Lance that you’re looking for, he’s still there! Because you got me instead, and I’m not him!’
The stranger’s face flickered and he tapped again at the dashboard, taking hold of a joystick until the ground shook beneath him and Canis fell over, clutching the wall for support. The beast was moving. It was moving and it was taking him away.
He had to get out. The stranger, the killer, covered in the blood of his guardians. Gymaria, Bhuyxo, maybe even Zorak. Maybe the doctor. And he was going to kill Canis too. He crawled as fast as he could back to the hinge of the jaw, digging his fingers into the unforgiving trap and trying to prise it open as the beast flexed and rose up.
Canis couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t leave, he wasn’t allowed to leave. But he’d done everything right. Sat tight, kept quiet, stayed as far back in his room as he could, clawed and kicked and screamed the whole way, and none of it mattered. The stranger had broken all the doors and killed all his friends to throw him into a beast.
Through the beast’s eyes he saw darkness. Dark like the dark of the swamp he didn’t know, the empty space left after dreaming. Big and black and entirely empty, save for the odd pinpricks of white, either so small or so far away. The stranger was taking him into the abyss.
He lunged forward, slamming his hands haphazardly over every button and dial and slider he could find as the beast took off into open space, taking Canis with it. The beast veered and jerked as he flung it around, the stranger trying his best to fight Canis off and stay on course.
‘Lance, what the fuck are you-’ Canis flung himself over the stranger, trying to wrangle the joystick out of his hand. He snatched it away, throwing them left, and grumbled out a curse. The stranger tried to shove Lance back with his armored foot, and Canis kept throwing himself toward the controls, toward any attempt to get him out of the beast and away from the murderous intruder.
Faster than a shot, faster than a single stuttered beat of Canis’ frantic heart the stranger shot up, yanked Canis’ wrist behind his own back, and pinned him face first against the wall of the cell.
‘Whatever this is,’ he hissed into Canis’ ear, ‘It ends now. This is a really shitty time to joke around, Lance.’
‘I’m not joking,’ he gasped, winded by the impact. The stranger’s hand flexed around his wrist, ‘Please, please let me go.’
His grip tightened, then fell away. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and Canis sat. It was an order. Cross legged on the floor, staring down at his ankles as the stranger paced, tugging at the black hair that fell around his shoulders and mumbling under his breath. He paced back to the console and tapped a few more things in, and the beast stabilized, hurtling straight ahead, taking Canis away from everything he knew.
Then the stranger came back towards him, and sat in front of Canis. His hand was gentle as he reached to tuck a bent finger under Canis’ chin, tilting his head up to meet the stranger’s dark eyes.
Canis waited for him to speak, and he kept waiting. The stranger only looked at him, irritation melting down into something heavy, so desperately sad that Canis wasn’t sure where it came from. Maybe he’d realized he’d gotten it wrong, maybe he’d turn them around and take Canis home any minute now.
The stranger’s bitten lips parted, and Canis saw a flash of blunt white teeth. One, right at the edge of his mouth, was chipped at the corner.