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Relatively few people walked their dogs on the path near the Eastwoods Campground and RV Park. With the highway on one side and the wilderness on the other, there were too many places a dog could run off to and get lost or hurt. Perhaps that was why Indrid Cold had noticed the heavyset person in track pants and a windbreaker who came by every day with their red-and-white greyhound.
Today he watched out the window of the Winnebago as they unclipped their dog’s leash and sat down on a bench. The dog took off running without seeming to acknowledge its owner, curving in an easy circle before it reached the tree line and never venturing near the highway.
Indrid decided to risk it. He put a sweater on over his tank top and ventured outside, his shoes crunching on the gravel of the campground. The dog, though it was about sixty feet away, turned its head to look at him.
“Hello,” he said to the person.
“Hello,” they said.
“You have a very well-behaved dog.”
They smiled, the wind sweeping the hair across their forehead. “She’s a good girl.”
“I’m Indrid Cold, by the way.”
“Roswell.” The dog loped towards them, though her owner had given no command. When she came close enough, Roswell looked more closely at Indrid. “Okay, this is gonna be a weird question, but what do you have in common with Barclay and Dani and Moira but not Mama and Aubrey or anyone else in town?”
Indrid studied them.
“You smell different.” Roswell gestured at the dog. “To… her.”
“How about I make you a deal? I’ll tell you that if you tell me how you know what your dog can smell.”
“Alright,” said Roswell. Both they and the dog were looking up at Indrid. Their eyes were the same, Indrid realized, deep brown. “Her name’s Birdie. My parents got her as a puppy at the same time I was born.”
Indrid looked down at Birdie. He didn’t know much about dogs, but Roswell was thirty at least.
“Yeah, I got worried when I was a teenager. I can see what she sees, smell what she smells, hear what she hears, taste what she tastes, feel what she feels.” Roswell took a deep breath. “Actually there is no she. Near as I can tell I’m one mind in two bodies.”
“Oh,” said Indrid.
“Now you tell me why y’all don’t smell like humans.”
“We’re not. We’re sylphs.”
“And what’s that?”
“Aliens.”
Roswell nodded sagely. “Ah.” A pause. “You don’t think I might be one too, do you?”
Indrid looked closely at them. “Let me see your teeth?” Both dog and human opened their mouths, revealing perfectly normal dentition for their respective species. “And you don’t have a piece of clothing that you never take off, do you? A piece of jewelry?”
“Nope.”
“Then no.”
“Oh.” They sounded a little disappointed. “I just… I don’t know why.”
Why was a more difficult question to answer on Earth than it had been on Silvain, at least in the old days. “I think not knowing is just the way it is.”
--
Several weeks later, Indrid was sitting in Roswell’s large, clean kitchen, about to enjoy a lunch of potato salad and hot dogs. The doors to the fridge and all of the cabinets had pieces of rope tied to the handles so Roswell could open them with both bodies.
“What have you been up to today?” Indrid asked politely. He liked Roswell. He appreciated talking to someone who didn’t expect him to make eye contact.
“Went to work. Dewey had a ham sandwich for lunch that smelled delicious. Then I went for a walk, and found a dead raccoon by the side of the highway.” Their dog body was intently focused on the hot dogs in the toaster oven.
A question surged to the front of Indrid’s mind. “Do you get the urge to eat stuff like that?”
Roswell grinned. “Little bit. And I ran, that was nice, but some lady got mad at me for being off-leash.”
“How rude of her.”
Watching Roswell cook was fascinating. They used both bodies, reaching into the fridge without looking at it knowing that a dog had pulled it open. The fluidity was… truly, they were one person, with two hands and six legs and two mouths and four eyes.
“What do you like on your hot dog?” Roswell asked finally.
“Do you have onions?”
“No,” said Roswell apologetically. “I don’t keep anything in the house I can’t eat in both bodies because it’s too much of a pain to keep track.”
“Understandable.” Indrid took the plate Roswell offered. “You said this was a family recipe,” he said, as neutrally as possible.
“Yep.” Roswell sat down across from him, handed one hot dog down to themself, and then took a bite. “My career is also a family recipe, you might say. My dad was a sheriff before me.”
“And your parents weren’t… like you, were they?” Future vision spared him the awkwardness of using the present tense.
“Nope. It took me a long time to figure out myself. It was confusing, when I was little.” They chewed thoughtfully for a while before continuing. “Not that it’s not confusing now, but. You know. I knew my name was Roswell, because that was what my parents called me, but they also meant me when they said Birdie. And it felt like the rules kept changing, because I wasn’t allowed on the couch, but also I was, and I had to go to school and keep track of what was going on there even when I was also at home or being taken on a walk.”
Indrid nodded. He understood probably as well as anyone could. He was thrilled they’d invited him over for lunch, it was probably the most normal social interaction with a human he’d ever had. “I have two bodies, too,” he said.
Roswell raised an eyebrow.
“Not at the same time,” Indrid added. “But one of them has… wings, and a second set of arms, and sometimes I get mixed up.” Reaching out for something with an arm that isn’t there. Hell of a phantom limb syndrome. “And I have a better sense of smell in my other body, but sight is a lot different.”
“Let’s see, then.”
Indrid stood up, pushing his chair back enough to make space for himself, and then drew in a deep breath and took his glasses off.
“Oooh,” said Roswell. One of their bodies trotted over to sniff at him. “You smell like… insect,” they said. “But you don’t have the same artificial smell you normally do.”
“Probably that smell is because my other body is a magical construct,” Indrid admitted.
“You’re much more impressive like this,” said Roswell, sounding very pleased.
“Thank you?” He put his glasses back on and sat down again to finish his hot dog. He didn’t suppose it’d taste very pleasant when he was a nectar-eating insect. He thought back vaguely to something the Pine Guard had been discussing the last time he’d dropped in on one of their meetings. “How would you feel about using your ability to pose as a dog to spy on an FBI agent on behalf of aliens?”
Both bodies smiled. “Great.”
--
When Agent Stern got back to Amnesty Lodge that night there was a tan-and-white dog curled up on in front of the fire. He stopped for a moment, surprised. He’d never seen a dog here before, or indeed any pets besides Aubrey’s white rabbit. The dog thumped her tail against the rug at the sight of him, and when he started walking again she got up to follow him down the hallway. He paused, looking around. There was no one else in sight.
He stuck his hand out for the dog to sniff, and she bumped her nose against it and pushed her head forward for scratches. She was wearing a pink collar with a pink heart-shaped metal tag on it, which just read BIRDIE with no phone number. “Birdie,” said Stern. “You’re a very pretty lady, aren’t you?”
Birdie followed him down the hallway to his room, and pushed in after him when he opened the door. “I suppose I can let you hang out in here for a while,” he said, and shut the door behind her. She wagged her tail. He put down his briefcase and shrugged off his jacket and unbuttoned his work shirt to put on a t-shirt instead.
(Sitting in Mama’s office, surrounded by the Pine Guard, Roswell spoke. “Oh, he’s cut.” Barclay suddenly became very interested in the floor.)
“I have a greyhound at home, you know. Her name’s Nessie. She’s staying with my sister while I’m here.” Stern sat down on the floor to scratch her belly. “I miss her.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Who do you belong to? I haven’t seen you around before. If there’s someone new staying at Amnesty Lodge… you’ll introduce me, won’t you?”
Stern sighed. “I should get back to work.” He went to the small desk and unpacked his briefcase, spreading out his work. Birdie put her black nose up over the edge of the desk and snuffled at the papers. “You want to be an FBI agent too?” Stern teased. “Maybe you can help me with this, though I can’t offer you any pay for it.” Her brown eyes focused on the report he was writing to send to Agent Hayes, almost like she could read it. He angled the paper so she could see it better. “Maybe some bacon, but we’ll keep that between us.”
--
Even though Barclay was giving her a look, Mama had absolutely no problems recruiting Roswell to fight the abomination. “You know how to use a gun, right? You must, bein’ a cop.”
“Yup,” said Roswell. “But I don’t if I can help it.”
Mama let out a dark little laugh as she unlocked the safe under her desk and pulled out a .45, one of the best she had when it came to stopping power. “Well, tonight I reckon you’ll see something worth shooting at.”
When everyone was as armed as they were going to get, Indrid led the Pine Guard through the woods towards where the abomination would appear. He was in human form, all skinny with his cardigan slipping off his shoulder and his red glasses looking almost too big for his face. Aubrey’s fingers were downright twitching with excitement, ready to light something on fire, and Ned was pointing his Narf blaster at every squirrel that dared to show its furry face. Not exactly a honed fighting force.
Still, Mama thought, it was better than those horrible years when it had just been her and Barclay.
Finally Indrid stopped, so suddenly that Duck, who had been valiantly attempting to make conversation, almost crashed into him. Indrid raised an elegant hand and pointed. “There.”
And then the abomination appeared. It looked like one of those lizards that could run on water, with a skinny body, needle-like claws, and scales as reflective as tiny mirrors. When it saw the group it flared out its neck frill, trying to be threatening, but Mama didn’t give it the chance. She raised her rifle to shoulder-height and bucked a shot off easily. The thing screamed and tried to run, but the dog that had been walking calmly at Mama’s heels leapt into a sprint.
Birdie was a pale streak in the dark forest, a stray pen-mark on a written page. She circled the abomination, easily avoiding its swings without looking around, driving it back towards the Pine Guard.
Mama, standing next to Roswell, could hear their breath accelerating as Birdie ran; high and fast as they felt the wind on their face.
“Holy shit,” said Mama. “Now, that’s really something else.”
Roswell shouldered aside the others to meet the abomination head-on. Birdie waited until they were close to strike, tearing at the abomination’s flesh with her wolfish teeth. Roswell put their thick human body (over six feet tall and probably three hundred pounds, Mama reckoned, about as far from the skeletal-by-design greyhound as it was possible to get) between the abomination’s claws and Birdie’s tissue-paper-thin skin. Those claws, however, sank deep into their shoulder, and Roswell went down howling. Birdie pranced anxiously. The abomination was lifting its arm again for the kill when Mama shot it again, and it recognized the larger threat and moved forwards into Aubrey’s fireball.
And Duck was holding not Beacon but a pair of red glasses, Mama realized just before she saw the dark silhouette of Indrid swooping down to lift Roswell off the ground and carry them away, Birdie at his heels.
Well, that was a problem for later. Mama refocused on the abomination and yelled for Ned to shoot.
--
Luckily Agent Stern was out looking for bigfoot somewhere else, so Indrid hauled one of Roswell’s bodies down into the basement infirmary without being seen, holding the door open for their other one of his lower arms. He laid the human form on the bed, grabbing the dog body’s collar and pulling them back to keep them from jumping up. Their only body, currently, now that one was unconscious. “You’ll hurt yourself even more,” he said. “And on Grey’s Anatomy they don’t like to let people look at their own injuries anyway.”
He sank back onto the beat-up couch, and Roswell whined. “You’ll be fine until the others get here.”
There were futures where they hopped up on the couch next to him, but instead they just paced back and forth on the floor while their own breathing evened out on the table above them.
“I imagine it must be claustrophobic,” Indrid mused.
Roswell nodded.
“Are you… in pain?”
Roswell shook their head.
He sighed. He was getting anxious, being undisguised for so long, but Duck would be along with his glasses soon enough, and Barclay would be able to tend to Roswell’s wound. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”