Chapter 57: Unseen Ally
Ralph slowly raised his head up and stared opened mouth at the now still, inactive creature in the once again quiet, peaceful Sugar Russia air.
How in Lassie's sake Ralph had managed to not get devoured, he had no clue. And how the creature had, not only completely missed landing on him as it crashed, but also rolled and skidded straight into the gooey mud and died, Ralph had no idea.
The mastiff rose shakily to his paws and cautiously limped over to where the creature laid still, his mind reeling.
How...what..., his mind stumbled in awe as he stood a few feet from the creature and sniffed the air for any answers to his wondering.
W-why did this thing crash, anyways?
In his investigation of the huge, scary creature now limp in the puddle, Ralph then saw something mysterious under the cheery street light fully lighting the creature up.
There, right on one of the top sides of the monster's huge head, was a small dent. A strange dent, which was fairly small compaired to the huge head in was molded on; the impression was no bigger than one of Felix' paws as it curved a tiny chuck out of the scorpion's head.
Despite the surprise crash landing the creature suffered just moments before, the sudden dent seemed odd to Ralph.
He was sure it wasn't there when the two of them were having a stare off up on the hill. And although the creature had had a few dozen scrapes thanks to its' fall and somersaulting, the dent seemed to be almost too perfectly round to be caused by accident...It was as if it was inflicted purposely.
Eyeing it closer, it seemed to Ralph that that dent looked as if a small, round, hurling object, a stone perhaps, had been tossed at the creature while it was in the air...
And that must've been what caused the scorpion to be thrown off balance and to go crashing hard onto the ground, Ralph realized.
But what...or who...had thrown a stone or small, hard object at the scorpion? There's no one else around!
A chrill ran up the dog's spine suddenly as he looked around in different directions.
Had something...someone...been hidenly watching Ralph's desperate flight from the scorpion and unseenly step in to help? Did that creature or human even thrown a stone to knock the mutated scorpion off its' attack on Ralph and cause it to spiral out of control?
Ralph sniffed the air once more, trying to find some trace of a unknown smell of an ally of sorts, but his nose seemed failed him.
Shaking his head free, the mastiff decided to let it be...the unseen ally, despite saving his life, might not be too friendly itself.
Besides, it honestly didn't matter. Ralph was somehow alive- and although admittedly badly scraped up, he was ok for the most part.
Limping closer to the fallen scorpion, Ralph felt a smirk slowly forming on his face.
"Sayonara, sucker!" he laughed out softly as he wagged his tail with a sigh of relief.
Now that that psycho scorpion has kicked the bucket, Ralph thought happily, I can try to get the heck out of this dump with the good dog collar and-
A sudden, horrible, new reality hit Ralph hard, causing him to stop in midthought and his confident smile to falter.
It was only then did he realize that he no longer had the good dog collar safely in his mouth.
