AN: So I'm supposed to leave for Canada today. But everything is going screwy because just now have we noticed that my passport's about to expire (in five months). So I am quietly freaking out and praying intensely that my non-refundable ticket won't become just useless paper, that I won't be stuck here and miss the start of school, ...shit, I'm hyperventilating. So what do I do when such occurs? I read/write/post fanfic.
Yeah.
Story inspired by a truly adorable piece of fanart by ToboeLoneWolf.
She'd been thinking about getting a pet for a while now. She was a college student far from friends and family, alone in a large apartment (one whose lease allowed pets) and she was lonely. And her parents, urged on by their long-time friend Tsume Inuzuka, were keen on the idea of extra security in the form of a living alarm system. And, methodical researcher-type personality that she was, she had already invested several hours' worth of reading into the possibility of being one of that wide-spread fraternity of Dog-Owners, looking over breed descriptions, "How To Raise Your Dog" books, watching dog-owners as they walked by with their pets on leashes and trying to see if she could see what they were doing right and what wrong.
But that hadn't felt like preparing for a dog - more like gathering information, for some impersonal report, a duty, an obligation, something to show her parents she took their suggestions seriously. She was lonely, but dogs were so - troublesome, and she'd always been somewhat lonely, only child, somewhat distant to friends. Dogs were big noisy animals who needed to be pampered like children. Honestly, she was leaning towards a cat...
Then she had passed him by in the window and - "fallen instantly in love," her friend Ino, who had been walking with her, said in amusement, later, to anyone who asked.
He was a gorgeous dog - a dog, yes, near his full growth and not a tiny cuddly puppy as were often displayed in pet-store windows. He was colored starkly in black-and-white, most of his silky-shaggy pelt white with accents of black. The two upright ears, angling towards her as she pressed against the plate-glass, were pure black. He was solid in build, not greyhound-lithe for racing and not bulky either, and tall. He had the smooth economical lines of the hunter-breeds closest to the wolves they had descended from. His eyes were rare, strange, eyecatching - purest silver, whites almost indistinguishable, but Tenten could tell the animal was not blind for the intelligent way the eyes tracked her every movement. He was standing straight and tall as she looked at him, noble in bearing, very still, like a statue of some hero-dog or maybe a legendary hound.
But his tail was wagging madly as he looked at her.
"How much is that doggy in the window?"
"The one with the waggly tail?"