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The red boy has grown starveling thin, like the point-eared whisker creatures that yowl and hiss for you. This is very troubling.
Don’t eat the goddamn cats, Huan.
Your master—he knows so much and nothing at all. You try to show him, like the mother shows the pup. You stay close by, nodding friendly glances at the whisker creatures. See, master? They are children.
He can’t hear you.
A huff to your master, then, since he is afraid. Let him only sleep with his paws holding your paws! That would steady him.
The red boy—sleeps, but poorly. You want to run circles around him, want to shake yourself with joy, but there is too much anger, too many turned-out hearts.
The hearts bleed darkly, in their turning.
Your master bleeds inside himself, and you—wait. You are always waiting for him and he never sees you anymore, except to order you.
For him, anything?
For the red boy—
You press your cold nose, just once, against the red boy’s warmth. They are hurting each other over your head, over his head, tearing with their growling voices. There’s the rabbit scent on the wind, there’s—
So much blood on him. But.
His blood will go back inside him. His breathing will be uneven, withheld, as it often was in Long Ago. You could sleep on your side, your belly unguarded, for many days and nights, if it would bring him round to comfort.
Only:
There used to be a hand, and fingers. It used to touch you, a ruffle, a brush, and grip. Gone now.
You’re a good dog, Huan. God, makes me wonder if I should think myself one so often—
Gone, now. But all the rest of him is the same.
You wonder if your master knows.