.
yellow
Bucket blocks out most sight. Outside is conveyed to him in broad strokes of color; the details are filled in with lines of scent and sound.
Movement in the beyond. Air circulates. It is sharper, somehow, than normal. One scent lingers longer than it should; it cannot be placed. Two pairs footsteps sound instead of one; echoes of steel-tipped feet against steel-clad walls.
She bends down to meet his level. The eye contact is foreign to him but he matches it.
Look.
In her he sees Silver metal like the hard glint in her eyes, like the steel bars she slides open without hesitation. In her he sees a mirror.
One hand outstretches toward him, an invitation; unconsciously, one gnarled, mismatched foreleg does the same.
Reflection.
Master.
This was what Dodger remembered when the checkpoint turrets turned their sights toward Wren and the girl and unleashed a maelstrom of bullets.
There was a brief moment of clumsy calculation as alarm flooded through him like electric current—bullets-travel-half-mile-in-heartbeat; they will not react fast enough—and then he summoned the memory and leaped. The transformation raced across his body like a wildfire; tufts of fur turned to hardened steel exoskeleton starting from his crest and rippling down to his tail, just fast enough, so that by the time the lead storm made contact, it was ricocheting off of his iron armor and harmlessly into the dust.
Master and Second are yelling at each other. He does not know why. They chatter many words in rapid-fire with meanings and sounds that he cannot comprehend; words echo around in bucket until they all become muffled and wooden.
Second points a finger at him like a weapon. Even with the bars of his cage between them he feels threatened and quails against the rage in her voice.
Master fires back. Words uncharacteristically fierce. He watches with admiration. Usually around Second she is gentle and soft and uses the same tone of voice that she uses with him. But here she is firm and decisive. She fights.
They blur together. A third person with green eyes hair comes down the stairs, grumbling at something, and pulls up short when he sees the three of them. His face contorts into a tight knot that cannot be unfurled. Second snaps something and Master coldly retorts.
Master stands like alpha. She turns away from Second and Green and says words to him that are slow and clear. DODGER-SIT-STAY.
He remembers this. They practiced it and when he does a good job she gives him round snacks that are sweet like green-eyes used to. He knows that these are words but they have meaning. It is complicated but he will try his best.
He sits and stays.
Master reaches for the door. Second and Green reach for her but they are too slow; his cage slides open before they can stop her. Second's shouts disappear and her mouth sets into a thin crease and she pulls a bang-stick out and points it at him but he sits and stays.
The air must be thick if he can feel it freezing him in place.
Second pockets her bang-stick, snarls something at Master, and leaves.
Green hesitates for a minute and then runs after her.
Master stays with him. Feeds round snack. Pets his head gently and looks into his eyes so he can see how much she means it.
DODGER-word-word-word-word.
This was what Dodger remembered he jolted awake to the sound of shouting and found Wren already kneeing one of the bandits in the gut and redirecting his wrist so that his bullets dug into the ground.
He allowed the memory of fighting to overtake him as he leapt over the sleeping form of the girl by the smoldering campfire, tasting steel, rage and power flooding the corded muscles of his rear legs as he kicked one of them into a tree while slashing open the face of the third.
He doesn't hear the Pack tonight.
The Pack is full of pups that attacked Master and dented his bucket and bit at his heels, in the junction between foot and leg where two fleshes meet. The Pack comes back each time stronger—once they were small, with tiny rings of fur around their collars and pitiful roars; now have a hardening ruffs that preclude something stony, something more feral. For now he is strong enough. They are many but he is mighty. They sense weakness there and do not find it, not yet, not when he is still strong.
He dislikes the Pack.
Sharpness pierces his side, accompanied with the needle-like smell of antiseptics. Nostrils flare wildly in response to familiar but hated scent. He grits his teeth and chokes back a snarl when he remembers that the sharpness and the reek comes from Master. She whispers words to him. He does not understand them, but he senses the comfort; he allows one hand to be placed on his scarred flank while the other causes more sharp pain. One leg spasms involuntarily. Bucket hides the way his mouth roils with discomfort. She dabs at the bitemarks in his side with practiced care. The stinging liquid on the cloth in her hand mixes with his blood until they are both wearing it.
Master chatters words to Second. They exchange words. He hears his name but it is not addressed to him so he ignores it. More words are exchanged in a rapid-fire string. He understands two of them. DOGER. COLD. Second grumbles and then busies herself pulling objects from Truck.
Master is wise to find safe place for them to stop away from Pack. Truck is well-protected inside of large webs of metal that two-legs kept around city. Metal webs and city are both abandoned, but the Pack cannot find entrance here. It is just Master and Second and Truck and him, and he knows to defend them in that order.
Second does not seem to like him very much. He does not blame her. He does not like Second very much either; that is why she is Second. But Master likes Second, so he will tolerate her until he is told otherwise.
Master whispers soothing words. word-WILL-HURT-DODGER, he recognizes her say in warning, and then he hears her sharp intake of breath as she steels herself and begins stitching him back together.
Something about that breath makes it better. Like it pains her to hurt him like this, like she has to do it for a reason. He does not understand the reason but if she must brace herself for it, then he believes in her resolve.
Second swears something in agitation and kicks at the pile of wood she gathered, and then she recoils suddenly as it spurts to life with crackling warmth.
His nostrils widen in alarm and he almost bolts—memories of the spiked fire-turtles from the hotlands, with breath that sent his bucket into flames—but Master laughs and claps her hands. Fire is under their control somehow. He did not catch the full meaning of their conversation, but now he understands the gist.
Master ordered this fire to be made for him.
That warms him more than the flames do.
DODGER-word-word-GOOD-word.
This was what Dodger remembered when a pair of a pair of enormous, spike-encrusted moles erupted from the grass beneath them, steely-tipped claws glinting in the light of Wren's flashlight as they turned the gravel to frost and prepared to fight.
"Dodger, we need fire!" Bullets launched out of Wren's pistol toward the attackers' eyes, Wren roughly shoved the girl behind her and out of the way of the fighting, and Dodger let the warmth of the memory consume him until he and it and the tunnel went up in flames.
He likes the smell of pine.
Needles sprout against the pads of his rear feet, but he enjoys the way they crunch. The brown ones make a nice sound; the green ones smell like air and tree and life.
Master says words in the tone of voice that is meant for him, and he rubs affectionately up against her arm. She must be growing shorter; he nearly reaches her shoulder.
Second mutters something that he cannot catch, let alone begin deciphering into words and not-words. Master brightens, in a way that makes her teeth dazzling in the afternoon sun that filters blurrily through the trees. She shuffles through the undergrowth with her feet, the sound of underbrush rustling filling their ears, and then she selects a large stick. Word, she says.
He does not understand.
Word, she repeats again. DODGER-word. She said his name so it must be important.
Master throws the stick.
He tilts his head and stares after it.
Word-DODGER.
She points at the stick.
Word-DODGER.
Unsure.
Word.
He gets the stick.
Master breaks out into uproarious laughter and claps her hand for him. GOOD-DODGER, she says. VERY-GOOD-DODGER. He races back to her; her joy is infectious and it feels like he has wings. Pine needles flatten under his approach and rear-fin is shaking out of control but he does not mind. It is like he is pouncing the whole way back to her.
Word. Master takes the stick and then repeats herself. Word solidifies. FETCH-DODGER. She throws the stick again.
Dodger stops for a moment as the paradox hits him. Why does she want the stick and then tosses it away? He almost believes that she threw it by accident, but Master does not do things by accident.
Unsure.
He gets the stick.
Second is staring at him in open-mouthed disbelief but he ignores her and prances back to Master with stick. This time, he does not give her the stick right away. She will probably throw it again and then regret it and he does not want her to have to regret anything.
But Master is smarter than he is and reaches into her pocket for round-sweet-treats-with-hole.
CHEERIO.
Dodger drops the stick.
DODGER-word-word-GOOD-BOY.
This was what Dodger remembered when they finally gave in to their fight for exhaustion for the day, made camp, and Wren dug her water bottle out of her nearly-empty backpack with a sigh of disgust, her tension written all over her face. The girl and her floating rock-that-was-not-an-enemy looked stood in the center of the clearing, arms folded and glowering with emotions Dodger could not read.
He allowed the crisp scent of the memory of grass to alter his core. The sprout started slowly but gained speed; the stem erupted into leaves and then bloom and then fruit, and he tore one off and threw it to Wren.
He grips the riverbed hard enough to tear thick gouges in the rocky surface. Scent and smell are lost here; lashing rain makes it almost impossible to see—
Second splutters and surfaces. She is a mismatch of features that don't quite form a complete human to him. Black hair plastered to her face, volume lost. Eyes frantic. Blood worn across her forehead like a second skin, so thick that the rain cannot begin washing her clean.
Howls behind him, sharp and piercing, threatening to dominate his other senses and blot out the image of Second drowning in the summer storm. Vengeance, fight, destroy. It is in his blood, in his thoughts, in his purpose. He seeks out the monsters and ravages them; this is what he was stitched into being to be. They had already hurt each other so much. This fight is almost done.
There is a moment of overwhelming loss, tumultuous like the rising tides into which Second threw herself and which now threaten to consume her even as the wave of grief threatens to devour him as well. The stitched scar in his side aches; he will never feel pain in that way again.
He closes his aching eyes and tries to hear the words that Master cannot speak for him, what she would have said. She always knows what to do but now—
The first of the Pack explodes out of the woods. They are larger than he remembered; they sought weakness in him and they found it. Fur mottled with red, damp against downpour. Damp air reeks with blood. He yowls a challenge; one roars something back while other bashes bucket in with thick swipe of paw. Wood splinters and he keens in pain, the scent of his own blood thickening.
Pain rushes in alongside the electric surge of adrenaline.
He remembers a storm like this. A storm with a better time. The storm had a better time because it had—
The bucket shatters in an explosion of color as he unfurls for the first time, weary power crashing through his limbs like lightning. He rears back and howls, swiping foes back into the woods with both forelegs and a blast of newfound strength. One flees back into the forest. The other leaps back toward him, snarling and a tangle of rock-hard fur. He breaks it in half.
More erupt from the trees. The stones around the riverbank rise in response to one's call. He rips off its arm with newly-freed jaws and throws the offending limb back at its owner, bowling over two more of the Pack while another leaps at his throat.
That was their fatal error. When it is this close to him, jaws fastening around his neck like a collar, there is no mistaking her scent on its breath. He roars, and the thunder answers his call. Yellow eyes shoot open; a bolt of lightning explodes from him; they are all blown from him like leaves in the storm.
The ones that get up flee to the forest. He makes a move to pursue them and then stops, wrestling with his instinct. Second still has not surfaced from the water.
Hesitation. The bloodlust screams for him to kill-them-all.
But five words fill his memories, in her voice, and they are louder. He jumps into the river.
Fingers lace into his waterlogged fur and around his neck, holding him tight. If he does not look back he can imagine, for a moment, that he is saving her instead of Second, that it is her voice breathing into his ear. But Master is not there to speak the words that he hears.
DODGER-word-A-GOOD-BOY.
This was what Dodger remembered when they reached the river and the girl blurted, "I can't swim."
He didn't know the words, but even if he had, he wouldn't have told the girl Wren's secret—that Wren also couldn't swim, not any more. Instead, he kneaded the grass beneath them with his talons and then rolled his shoulders, allowing the amphibious skin to swell upward from his finned tail alongside the memory of rushing water, while the ghost of a sad smile rippled across Wren's face.
Second has barely moved since they got back. Sometimes she gets up to replace her glass bottle when it runs dry. Sometimes she remembers to feed him. Most of the time she stares at the wall without moving like when Master told him to SIT-DODGER-SIT.
But Second is much better at Sitting than he is. He used to get distracted by cheerios and interesting smells and Master never made him wait this long. Second sits on the couch and glares at her empty bed as if it is the reason behind all of their problems.
He dozes fitfully in the corner. Normally Master does not keep him in the house and he is taken back to his steel-home so it takes a few tries to figure out which corner is the best corner. He likes the one beside her bed because it has the most scent of her left on it. But even that begins to fade and still Second has not moved.
When the scent fades completely he finds himself inching his spot closer and closer to Second, starved as he is for contact.
One day she jerks as if shocked by lightning. Her eyes are red-rimmed and dry as she mechanically turns to look at him. DODGER-GO.
His head snakes up. He tilts to one side, studying her. She is not Master. He does not take her commands.
DODGER-GO.
He sits and stays.
SHE-IS-NOT-COMING-BACK.
He hisses at her.
She throws him a cheerio and he does not catch it out of sheer surprise. It bounces off of his face and hits the wooden floor. He stares at it for a moment, perplexed, and then pecks it up.
It tastes like the same cheerio. Very interesting.
Second throws one at the door. Tilts her head toward it to indicate direction, like she normally does. DODGER-GO.
He sits and stays.
There is raw fury in her voice, but it is mixed with hurt as well, different from the time he watched Master and her and Green fight in front of him. YOU-AND-ME-word-word-MONSTERS-word-word-AND-SHE IS NOT COMING BACK. She devolves into a deluge of words, and then: DODGER-GO.
He sits and stays.
Second's body shakes with great, heaving breaths. WHATTHEFUCK-IS-WRONG-WITH-YOU.
Blink.
WHY.
Blink.
Something inside of her breaks more than it already was. The fire dies out and her eyes glaze over. She slumps to the side. Glass bottle hits the ground and rolls under the couch.
When she wakes up hours later her eyes fly to his spot in the corner, which has migrated through the weeks until it is almost at her side. He has not moved today. She looks at him. He looks back.
One hand stretches toward him, an invitation. Drops down and pets his crest a little too roughly. Second's raspy voice speaks with Master's words.
DODGER-IS-A-GOOD-BOY.
This was what Dodger remembered when the fences rose up around them and it looked like the way was impassable.
He let the memory fill him, the memory of the ghost of a girl and the dead girl she loved, and for a moment he turned incorporeal, so light and hazy that he almost floated away before he landed on the inside and nudged the door open.
On sunny days he reminds himself of the storm.
It starts when Master leads him to the set of stairs he has never been allowed to climb before. Forbidden. This much is ingrained in his muscles with repeated punishments to back it up: he cannot touch these stairs no matter what.
Master makes sounds with her mouth that do not sound angry, and he tries to puzzle over her communication.
They climb up the stairs together; her hand shakes as it holds on to his chain with a thick glove that he knows he cannot bite through but he does not try. Master pushes open the door at the top and a blast of wind and light hits him in the face, so hard that he snarls at it because surely it must be attacking them both.
Master makes more sounds with her mouth.
The unfamiliar scents hit him then, so sharp they nearly overwhelm him. The ground is covered in green and the sky in grey; the hues are so saturated that he can see the smudges even through head-covering. Water falls from the sky, makes the dirt smell so much richer than dirt.
Master repeats one sound more than the others like it is aimed at him. She lets his chain fall out of her hand but he does not run from her. They sit there as the water continues to fall and she lets him watch, and forever intertwines her scent with the smell of the summer storm.
DODGER.
This was what Dodger remembered most of the time. In his mind, Master was painted in thick bursts of yellow, the only color bright enough to match her exuberance and joy. She lives in real-time in the memories that made him who he was, a recording on a disc that he plays over and over again,
They settled down for the night on the third story of an abandoned building. The falling star hovered around the girl, its mottled surface trailing glitters that belied the warped exterior, and they slowly settled into slumber. Wren propped herself up on the windowsill, keeping uneasy watch over the broken ghosttown of crumbled cityscape and twisted steel around them. One hand strayed to pick at the elbow of her jacket, and she shivered despite the warmth of the night air.
Dodger threaded his way under her limp arm and remembered the feel of her current, allowing the tingling warmth of the memory to press up against Wren's resistance. She idly scratches the feathers on the side of his head. Together, they watched the night in silence, waiting for the sun to peer out of the clouds of a storm that had run dry years ago.
"Good boy, Dodger."
.