I find myself currently in possession of a two-year-old and a longsuffering border collie. This, therefore, seemed the most natural course to take with the "pets" prompt.

I had all kinds of fun digging up obscure medieval terms of the hunt for this one, but if anyone happens to have real knowledge of these things and finds me guilty of malapropism, please don't be afraid to speak up!

My thanks, as ever, to Levade, for getting me into this ;)

Pets

Still in sleep I bay and harrow down the kitted boar and taste his heat and tang and stink as the pack unmakes him all around me. I hear the call and rumble of the huntsman and am nearly mad with joyful ravening.

But then I wake and remember that old tusk-mark down my haunch. Feel the hot slabbed hearth, the fire licking warmth into my limbs.

Once I hounded the boar and the wolf and the dark unmen who stank of hate and cowardice, whose reek clung filthy to my tongue. Once I was fleet and fierce and tireless and my jaws could crush the marrowed thighbone of a hart. Once mine was the duty of obedience, of the love of he who bade me.

Now I am old. I ache in the damp. I have a new duty.

The pup finds me. He is a good pup, and I loved his sire dearly. He is newly weaned, still unsteady on his fat hind legs. His mother leaves him with me and I sigh, for he understands not that the fire will burn him, that he will fall from high places, that the spider-eyed cat curled on the mantle has a demon's soul and should not be trusted.

But I am old, and his dam must tend her work. My lot now is to mind the litterlings.

He is the same as any pup. He worries my ruff and laves my snout and batters me with sticks. I do not correct him unless he wanders.

He smells of the den still, milky sweetness, though he has no littermates. When clothed, he smells of this serene and quiet place we've come to.

He smells faintly of his sire, smoke and steel and sovereignty.

I roll flat. He scales me like a high hill.

After a while he tires and nests into my belly and sleeps snuffling, paws fluttering, pink mouth suckling the air. I clean soot from his ear. Rest my head and the heat seeps and I doze.

And dream of the pack, the pack in full tongue, the boar hindquartered in at bay before us, carving furious at the loam, and behind us the call, avoy! avoy! the hornsong beating fire in our blood. The black taste of bristly hide.

I dream of Arathorn and smell him on his sleeping son and am content with this new duty.

Thank you so much for reading!