Chapter 2

Our watch started out alright.

Though Meric and Marcus ask too many questions for my taste.

"So Any family?" Meric asked.

"No." I said.

"No one?"

"No."

"Not even a grandma, or distant relative?" Marcus asked. I rolled me eyes.

"No last name-no family. I was just a young mot when I was dumped in the streets, t' young to remember anything."

"And how did you get this?" Marcus and pulled my brown hair away from my neck and brushed his fingers lightly against my crescent moon shaped birthmark. I slapped his hand away from me harder then I meant. Then looked forward- both Marco and Marcus seemed to be the same age- barely old enough to be proper full fledged dogs, why were they paired together?

Anyway, it was then that I saw the pickpocket, I am sure that Marcus and Meric saw her too, so I looked at Meric.

"Fetch puppy." He said, pointing to the younger teenage boy.

I don't remember what happened after that. Besides catching the rat by the shirt, and then-a burning sensation in my neck. Something that burned like a hot iron right below my ear.

I fell over. My eyes swirling with purple and pink.

Something was wrong. Something was going on.

I don't remember waking up. I just remember the wet. The wet liquid of the harbor.

Was I really in the harbor? A cold chill wrenched up my back. I tried to open my eyes, to stand, to swim-to do something.

I forced my eyes open. Sunlight-blinding light.

Next time I opened my eyes it was dark-terrifyingly dark.

I got a mouth full of water-but for some reason it didn't bother me.

Then, next I felt something beneath me besides water. It was stones. A ground.

I jerked to sitting, gasping for air as I did. I coughed the water from me lungs.

Where was I? Who was I?

I was Kaylee Corus.

I was a Puppy.

I was a Dog.

My head spun, and I checked myself for my things. My money purse was gone-though it had only had two coppers in it. My baton was also gone, and my shoes.

I pulled myself away from the water's edge, trying to see my surroundings.

It was dark, that much I could tell, by the sound of where I was I was under a bridge-or in a tunnel.

I whimpered, I think, as a pain seared up the left side of my neck.

Where my birthmark was, that's where it hurt-it burned.

Slowly I crawled back to the water and scooped some of it out, and splashed it on the wound.

It sizzled as it touched me, making it feel numb.

It was by then I could see torches, out at the sea. Probably ships, ducking in and out of the horizon.

I realized it was me bobbing, and the lights stood still. I collapsed onto the stone ground. Waiting, wanting this to be one of my terrible nightmares

I think I had passed out that time. But maybe not. But when I finally came too the sun was setting.

I had been asleep all night and day-yah, I fainted.

Pulling my body up I forced myself to walk to the edge of the tunnel. It was knee high water out until the edge, then it dropped off slowly so that ships could go close to it.

I realized, looking off into the water, that it the lights I had seen before was of Corus. Not of ships.

I had been gone from Corus who knows how long-what had happened?

How would I explain to them-even better, how did I?

I clenched my fists at the stiffness of my body, and thanked the goddess that it had been a warm hot week, with warm hot nights so I had not caught hypothermia.

I sloshed through the water to the edge of the tunnel, and climbed the rock incline to the top of the hill.

Then started along the coastline to Corus.

When the stars had shown me there sparkling forms in the night I had reached the ports of Corus. Many of the workers around me, or just didn't notice me.

That was how I had always been.

I lacked the will to walk, but still walked, I staggering into Janesstreet kennel I remember no more.