DISCLAIMER: This story is based on materials owned by the great J.K. Rowling. I do not make any money with it or anything…

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to dedicate this humble story to the heroes of the Columbia crew. All my heart and my prayers are with the NASA people and the families of these great men and women who have given their lives for knowledge, science and peace's sake. You will never be forgotten.

padfoot1979: Thanks for your review, it's great to know what people like.

nycgrl: Thanks for your good words, it's fantastic to see people coming back to read more!

CHAPTER 3: The taming

When Sylvia came back from town in early afternoon, exhausted as usual after such an outing, she went straight to her room to get rid of Rowena. She went back to her loose shirt, comfortable leggings and short brown curls with a sigh of relief. Rowena could be fun to play, but only for so long, her loud ways added with the strain of playing a role and being scared all the time was just too draining to make it last longer than absolutely necessary. She felt a headache starting to pound behind her left eye and knew she'd better take two aspirins and lie still for a while before it got into a full fledged migraine.

She went into the kitchen to fetch the bottle and once there realized she better put away the grocery before something started to go bad. Emptying the bags, she found the dog food and large bone she had decided to buy at the last minute. "Now, why did I do that?!" she wondered. She had done it impulsively, in an after thought like something she had forgotten suddenly coming back to consciousness. Sylvia frown: that was not like her. Not at all. She was the prudent and even-tempered type. She never did anything without thinking it through. It was more like something Rowena would do. Well, maybe she had been more into character than she thought and had let Rowena act it out. Her frown deepened, letting Rowena spontaneous ways creep out was dangerous. In her circumstances, she needed cold logic and good planning; Sylvia had too many problems without having to deal with the consequences of her alter ego's volatile nature. She started to feel giddy. God! She was thinking of Rowena like a real person, this was a dangerous path to walk. She refused to look more closely at the revelation.

"One problem at a time," she murmured under her breath, wincing at the pain growing stronger in her head. Since she now had the dog stuff, whether it had been her idea or not, she might as well use it. After all, she had decided to make it up to that black brute for yelling at it, as crazy as it was. She took the bowl she had used for the stray the day before and pour Purina dog food into it, before going out outside and putting it on the grass near the three steps leading to the porch. Then, disgusted at herself for letting an impulse control her decisions, she went to bed for a short nap. Maybe the dog would never come back…

* * *

It came back. During the following weeks, while the leaves grew and the weather changed from spring to summer, the black dog came and went at leisure, sometimes disappearing for days at a time and sometimes seeming to always be around, sleeping under the porch. Sylvia was not sure what to make of its behavior, she never had a dog and did not know if this was normal or not. She also was of two minds about the dog's presence. The way it was forever following her with its eyes, sharply examining every of her movement with a look of what she could only call speculation was making her very nervous. This dog seemed more, well, intelligent than most. Sylvia felt stupid to apply human definitions on the stray but she could not find any other words appropriate to describe the situation.

This mystery, as frustrating as it was, had its good sides; it took her mind away from her problems and gave her something to do in her spare time, someone to take care of and keep her from getting depressed. She got used to having it around, and after a while, she actually slept better at night when it was laying outside her cabin.

On the other hand, she had absolutely no idea what the dog thought of her. It never came to her and seemed weary of everything. She was not even able to check its sex for it would never let her come close, especially while it eats.

With constant food and a safe place to sleep, the dog also became less skinny and its fur started to have a healthy sheen. So the uneasy friendship went on, each grudgingly accepting the other, while making sure not to start liking the other too much.

"You know," Sylvia began dryly, one sunny early June afternoon, eyeing the dog eating from its bowl on the grass with its ears up and an eye on her, "you really need a good bath. The wind just changed and I received a horrible draft of your stinky self." At that, the dog stopped eating and looked up at her, sitting, ankle propped on the banister and laptop on her knees, surprise plain on its eyes. It was the first time she had talked to it since that spring day when she had yelled at it.

The dog kept looking at her, its head leaning to one side as if weighting its options and suddenly veered and trotted away on the path going to the lake. Sylvia let her booted feet fell on the wooded planks of the porch as she heard, astonished, the splashing going on in the lake. Through the branches, she could barely see the big form of the stray rolling in the water. "It understood me!!! That's impossible!!"

Reeling from the shock, she looked at the dog shaking itself dry and coming back to eat the rest of its food. Stopping in front of its bowl, it gave her a strange glance before lowering its head to the food.

"God, am I dreaming? I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode! I have to find a way to be sure one way or another." Her mind going in circle, it took her a while before asking in a shaky voice "Are you a male or a female?" The stay looked up at her questionably. "I have enough of thinking of you as a it, especially now when you seem to be able to understand me!! Give me one bark for male, two for female." She waited, hardly breathing, half wondering if she was going to hear a voice instead of barking. But the dog did nothing, just looked at her and then went back to its feeding.

Slowly, Sylvia felt her face go red as a wave of embarrassment flushed through her, glad there was nobody here to witness her stupidity. "Stupid, idiot, half-wit…" She berated and swore at herself for some time before she regained her composure enough to think, "It's either the new-age stuff, the stress or the solitude that got to me. Or all three. I just hope I'm not really going crazy here. Maybe I imagined that stint with the bath and the lake. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Oh shit! There's nothing I can do. If I'm going nuts…" she did not cared to finish that train of thought.

The familiar taste of fear was in her mouth, and her hands started shaking, "Oh no! Not again." She knew well enough the first symptoms of a panic attack and tried to forestall it by taking deep breaths but the fear of the crisis itself was feeding the reaction and soon her breathing got strained and her body drenched in a cold sweat. She fought against it as much as she could, knowing it was in vain. In a minute she would be in a tight ball on the floor, shaking and pleading with nothing but a roaring red fire of fear in her mind, the sound of rushing fist in her ears and the pain of breathing in her chest. There was nothing to do really but wait until it runs its course. She knew that but fought anyway, willing it to stop, praying for release but unable to control the growing storm rising in her.

Suddenly, she felt something cold touch her left hand, she opened her eyes and almost choked on her breathing when she stumbled into two deep black eyes full of concern, drilling holes into her soul. With a cry, she took the dog's head between her hands and with her fingers cringing in the soft fur, chained herself to those eyes as if in there she could find the reason to live, the reason to fight, the reason to breathe. Somewhere in the maelstrom, she found a tread where she had never found one before, gripping it with the strength of desperation, she followed a voice softly saying "/Come, come…I'll help you…don't be afraid...come, come…/". Her whole body was shaking now, the voice was so far away and small, the tread so fragile and the wind howling inside so violently that she almost lost it. The wet dog's nose touched hers and its paws lift to her lap. The voice came back, stronger, and the tread became a small rope pulling her inch by inch back to sanity. The shaking subsided, her breathing became easier, her tears started to flow and slowly she put her head in the dog's neck, her arms coiled around its body and there she cried like she had not let herself cry in more than three years. The dog had kept the winds away, maybe magic was real after all…

* * *

Once she had calmed down, feeling muscles scream all over her, she untangled herself from the dog enough so that it could get down to its feet and after a small lick at her hand, turned around, tail high, and went down the steps. She had a pretty good view of its rear end then, she smiled ruefully, "Well, that answers that…it's a he!"

Tacking a tissue in her pocket, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose thinking "Don't be ridiculous, that was not magic, just the comfort of someone, something being there for me. It had been much too long since I have touch and cling to a warm body, even a strange dog is better than nothing." "Thanks dog" she said while he dropped to the ground, putting his head on his front paws. Closing her eyes, she let the sounds, smell and feel of summer ease her back to her usual self. Feeling better, she opened her eyes to reality. "What about giving you a name? Now that we're friends, I can't go on calling you Dog." She waited but he didn't seem very interested as he was examining a bee that had just landed on a flower near his nose. "What do you think of …mmm… Skif? It's the name of a character in a story I read a few years back. He was a thief, a scoundrel and a vagabond. It kind of fits you." The dog's eyes lifted from their contemplation just long enough to make eye contact and bark once, then went back to the bee.

She smiled, feeling better than she had in weeks, then laughed gaily at his disappointed look as the bee flew away, and said "I'll take that as a yes!" Still chuckling, she took the computer on the bench, propped her feet on the banister once again and started working. She didn't notice the wonder in the dog's eyes, his ears up, straining to get the last notes of her chuckling laughter.

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-Note: I'm a French-Canadian from Montreal, I'm sorry to say that English is not my first language. I want to apologize for any grammatical and syntax error or misspelling that find their ways into this text. Be certain that I do everything in my power to make sure that such insults to the beauty of Shakespeare's language are seen and destroyed. If you find any mistakes, please let me know so that I can correct it. Thank you!!