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It’s a bit like staring into three black holes.
Something Vi’s noticed in the past months she’s been living Topside- every dog she’s met has eyes like tapioca pearls, wet and luminous and irritatingly adorable, with little round snouts and lolling tongs so unlike the few gangly hounds she remembers from the streets of her childhood.
This one’s got a snout, too, obviously. Though this one’s is the furthest thing from little.
Black coat so black it gleams blue in the park’s morning sunlight, a white underbelly with two little pale narrowed brows like a permanent disgruntled furrow on a creature with absolutely no reason to feel anything but total permanent positivity, and fur so long and well groomed it practically looks feathered. Tall, freakishly so for a house animal, thin legs and droopy ears, a plume tail-
And a snout that goes for miles.
Vi can barely break eye contact enough to address the person holding the thing’s studded silver leash. “And her name is…?”
“Trill,” the canine’s owner beams, freckled cheeks thinning their eyes to two happy slits, “But I call her Trilly.”
Vi isn’t here to argue the futility of giving a dog a nickname that’s longer than her actual name- not when the dog’s staring unblinkingly at her with no signs of stopping, snout high and big black nose pointed like a bullet between her eyes.
She’s got little black boots on, trimmed silver and kept spotless, when Vi’s own sneakers have been muddied up by the leftovers of the morning rainfall she’d slept in to avoid. It’s like this dog’s had the decorum to step around the puddles, where the typical rambunctious hound would gleefully go nose-first into sewer water when given the opportunity.
It’s a marvel, really- even the dogs up here are stuck-up. Last week she met a pomeranian she watched wipe its paws on a welcome mat before entering a cafe.
“She’s uh,” Vi hums, “Pretty chill, isn’t she?”
Trill takes the opportunity to yawn, unhinging that jaw of hers like some kind of snake, exposing rows of teeth and the cavern of her mouth before resuming her prior position of making Vi feel like she should be in her finest drapes rather than her weekend jogging tank.
“She’s well trained,” her owner says, “You should see her at the actual dog park- out of control!”
Vi can believe it. This thing’s got legs like it could jump a vertical ten feet, like a spring loaded with kinetic energy fit to burst in whichever direction some poor soul happens to be standing in. Right now, though, she’s got her head up like everyone’s totally beneath her pedigree- like the silver studs on her collar have got some nickel mixed in and she is not happy about it.
Oh, but still. What a cutiepie.
“Can I?” Vi says, opening her hand, because god damn her if she doesn’t try to pet every dog she comes across no matter how unhinged they may look.
Trill’s owner, handsome and far too friendly for the fine clothes they’re wearing, gives an enthusiastic nod, and Vi approaches Trill like one would approach a creature with a jaw so long her entire forearm could probably fit inside its mouth.
Trill accepts the pet and does absolutely nothing else. A second pet- a pat, more like- gets her a nose twitch. Her fur continues to billow beautifully in what is really only a light breeze. When Vi’s hand moves slightly down her snout, her nose twists away, separate from the rest of the appendage like it’s a disgruntled black bug avoiding a poking finger.
“Hah, well,” her owner laughs, and it sounds remarkably like the nervous huffs she hears at galas when an elite’s preteen child doesn’t perform exceptional human interaction, “She’s a bit, ah, stoic around strangers, but once she gets to know you, she’s sweet as can be.”
Vi nods along like the perfect picture of a listening stranger, but truthfully, her mind has started putting an image together, one that has her biting her lip to stifle a giggle fit as the dog starts to look uncannily familiar.
“What… breed is she?”
“Borzoi.”
Her girlfriend is exactly where she left her just earlier, sat perfectly hunched over a fuck-off mountain of files at her desk in the study, hair done up in that handsome ponytail, the two strands framing her face proving Vi exactly right .
Cait blinks. The single word has thrown her off hard enough that she skips the usual ogle post-jog Vi’s sweaty body phase, staring blankly instead. “What?”
“Changed my mind,” Vi says so helpfully, grinning, “You’re a borzoi.”
The height, the ears, the soulful eyes and regal posture, midnight fur and furrowed brow- she giggles again, can’t bite it back fast enough, and wonders if she can find Trill’s owner and schedule a meeting so the two twins can stand next to each other. She wonders if she could get a few pictures.
“Met one today, they’re absurd,” Vi continues as she approaches, “There’s gotta be some horse in that lineage- why do you need dogs that tall?” she laughs- hell, Trill would probably come up to Cait’s waist, a feat usually only reserved for unusually overgrown infants. “Never thought I’d get to describe a dog as aristocratic.”
Cait’s giving her a remarkably similar dog look, eye scanning and judging, before it crinkles with mirth and she smiles that small gap-toothed smile she’d never see a puppy pull off half as cute in a million years.
“Last week I was a doberman, before that, a saluki, a pointer,” Cait recites, “I ought to start keeping a list.”
“Sounds like you are,” Vi rounds the table with a grin, kisses the top of that intelligent head of hers, and heads off to shower the sweat and spring pollen off her satisfyingly sore body.
“Better than mongoose,” she thinks she hears Cait mutter under her breath as she’s through the door, and the resulting cackle echoes down the hallway so loud you wouldn’t need a canine’s hearing to catch the utter audacity.