Tiredly, Ward stretched out his neck as far as it would go. Straining weakly for the bowl of water only a few inches away, he almost gave up when the strain in his muscles and cramp in his side flared up enough to cause him pain over the general discomfort that existence brought. When the reality of thirst and dehydration hit him however, he made a renewed effort, ultimately managing to barely reach it's edge with his teeth without flipping himself off of his comfortable set of pillows. With another laborious groan, he pulled his neck back, bringing with him the water that he was so desperately thirsting for.
Taking a moment to pant and catch his breath, Ward soon lifted himself up just enough to bend down and lap at the bowl. It was to his unpleasant surprise when the bowl was yanked away from right beneath him.
"Hey!" he protested with more energy than he should have had, wrinkling his nose when a bushy tail brushed against it. "What's the big deal?" he asked, looking up at Peg conspicuously.
"We need to talk," she said shortly, not wasting any time. "It's about Dizzy."
Ward eyed her warily. It had not taken long for him to be introduced to Dizzy's mother and in all the time since then, he hadn't a clue what to make of the older dog. That was in large part due to the fact that she never bothered to speak to him, mostly watching from a far whenever he and Dizzy spoke with one another. The gesture had unnerved him at first, but not long after Dizzy had told him to simply ignore Peg, he had grown used to it.
"Could I get a drink first?" he asked, half in annoyance and half in desperation.
"After we talk," Peg insisted.
"Well then go ahead and say what's on your mind," Ward said, still eyeing the bowl of water being kept from him with a reverence.
She got closer than he would have liked, looking at him intently in the eyes, "What do you want with my daughter?"
That certainly had not been what he was expecting, something that reflected in his response, "Uhm what?"
"Dizzy," Peg repeated, "what is that you want with her?"
"I don't think I follow."
"Don't act the fool," she said, sharp voice seeking to cut a truth out of him. "I've seen the way that you two get all so cozy when you think that no one's watching and if you intend on choosing my daughter as your mate then I intend on figuring out your character before I allow that to happen."
As she had spoken, Ward had gone through a multitude of emotions. Starting with exasperation and then shifting to surprise before finally all the color drained from his face, leaving him pale, "M-mate?" he stammered in a baffled voice.
"It's a big responsibility you know?" Peg lectured him. "You pick someone once and you have to stay with them for life. If you don't, you feel like a hypocrite every waking moment, to that I can attest to."
"I don't want Dizzy as a mate!" he blurted out.
Rather than reassure the older dog, his outburst seemed only to make Peg more stern, "Ah, so you're just stringing her along are you? Letting her think that-"
"That's not what any of this is about," Ward argued.
Peg seemed to reassess her position, looking at him cautiously, "But I've seen it," she ultimately insisted, "you do like my daughter."
Ward swallowed past the unease in his dry throat, "Not in the romantic sense."
"Do you really expect me to believe that a street urchin like you just so happens to know my daughter and has gotten so close all in the name of friendship?" she asked, clearly eager to be proven correct.
"Listen woman, I don't know what type of view you've got on the world, but it doesn't apply here. Me and Dizzy are friends. Just friends. And I don't know how the two of you get along, but whenever you feel the need to speak for her, something I will admit to admiring just a tiny bit, please don't project your fears onto me."
He had hoped that his long-winded explanation would be enough to satiate the un-trusting curiosity that was evidently bothering her, but by the tight tone in her next words, that hope was extinguished.
"I still don't trust you. Nor do I like you and to be completely honest, it would be in my best interest for you to never speak with Dizzy ever again. Because even if you are just friend, as you claim, I can't believe that you'd be a very good one."
That hit a spot in him that stung harder than most words did and so Ward quickly fired back, "I'm not gonna let some wannabe mother who has been gone most of her kid's life tell me that I'm a bad friend."
"Is that really where you want to go?" Peg asked, her fur bristling.
"It's where you've led us," Ward retorted dryly and then went on, "I'm the one that's been there for her for all these years. I'm the one who found her cold, lost and alone. It ain't my fault that you were too busy wrapped up in your own business to be there for her. It's no wonder that she prefers my company to your's."
The anger on her face was evident and there was a low growl built up at the back of her throat. He knew that demeanor and so braced himself waiting defenseless for the onslaught to come. When it did not, his eyes darted upwards to find that anger had been replaced by an innocent looking smile.
"Well, it was nice talking to you then," Peg said, before proceeding to knock the bowl of water across the room. "Maybe I'll get to call you son someday," she pondered before taking her leave.
Ward looked across to where the bowl was now sitting and sighed in resignation, trying to ignore his dry tongue.
"Oh honey, I know all of this is a lot to take in, but I'm sure that you'll figure out a way to deal with it, you always do."
Dizzy leaned into Lady's reassuring touch, but could not quite find the certainty which her friend was trying to impart on her, "I don't always find a way to deal with things. Mostly, I just bury the things that I can't deal with under the ground. And Peg being here and Ward suddenly being back... I don't know how to deal with any of it."
More and more, she had been going to Lady for advice. Despite the fact that they were extremely close in age, Lady seemed to her to hold every answer that had a question preceding it. Sometimes, she was everything which Dizzy sought to be as a dog. Beyond the wisdom, she was graceful and seemed to live unbothered with a level of optimism rivaled only by her own. Except, whereas she put up that optimism as a front to escape the never-ending harshness of reality, Lady seemed to legitimately find the silver lining in whatever it was that happened to her.
"If it helps you any, I could speak with Peg or Ward or to whomever it is that's weighing heaviest on your mind."
"No, no," Dizzy said after considering the offer for a moment, "this is something I have to do on my own terms. I mean, I'm the one that was praying all these years to get the chance to find the mother I never had and now, I guess the blessing has come. Hopefully no curse has come with it..."
Lady regarded her with sympathy for a bit, "Are you quite certain that he rose from the dead?"
"That's what he says and that's what Tramp's been saying. I can't believe it," she said, shaking her head in disbelief, "all this time I thought that he must have just been off on some mission of his, meanwhile, he was laying dead in an unmarked grave someplace."
"I really am quite sorry for not telling you," Lady told her. "It was wrong of me. You deserved to know."
Not wanting her friend to feel guilty, Dizzy quickly assured her in a gentle manner, "I'm not mad. I'm really not."
"Still, the least that I could have done was brought the matter to you personally."
She broke off from Lady's soft touch and gave her a soft smile as gentle reassurance, "That's okay. He's back now and we can figure things out." She yawned and started to make for the exit of the Brown's household, "I could use a walk about now. Would it be alright if I popped in later?"
"Of course dear," Lady said, watching as she went, a barely hidden streak of concern stretched across her muzzle.
There was no compass in her life. No north, east, south or west.
All of that had been lost in light of the recent events which had upturned the entirety of her life. Or maybe it had never been there in the first place, that in of itself would not have been too shocking were it not for the bouts of happiness which she threw at herself as distraction.
Nothing of that happiness could even be mustered at that point, the large majority of it having already been surrendered to the cruel reality of life.
Maybe that was the compass, the north the twisted trees of her youth, the east her best friend who she'd been prepared to mourn, the west her mother's sudden presence and the south something which she had yet to discover.
"You seem like you have a lot on your mind senorita."
"You have no idea," Dizzy responded to the husky, smooth voice which had spoken. "My mind has been on so many things lately, mostly..." Upon noticing that she was in fact facing nothing but a bush, she trailed off, staring at the thing in confusion. "What the-"
"Up here."
The voice called out again and she did as it advised, trailing her eyes up a cracked wall and past a black tail to the owner of that tail, the black cat who was wiggling his eyebrows at her from his comfortable spot atop the wall.
Dizzy's nose wrinkled. She hated cats. Found the best of them to be the lowest of all bottom feeding liars and the worst of them to bringing about curses, destruction and ruin. Only time would tell what this one represented.
"Pardon me for disrupting your walk," he said, standing on light paws, "but as I said, you looked to have so much on your mind and I'm not sure if you knew, but a cat's motto is that it's never a good idea to have a lot on your mind."
"Uhm... I-"
"Ssshhh," he shushed, leaping down cleanly in front of her. "I can tell you're stressed. Luckily for you, I'm an expert in stress management. Lay down."
"What are you-"
"What do you fancy, eh?" he rubbed up against her before she could go on, sending nervous shivers up her spine. "Deep Sweden? The Mexican?"
"I don't get what you-"
Her mind was taken over by the fact that he suddenly had a gentle paw gently underneath her chin, "Or maybe you'd just prefer the old dog specialty."
Taken aback as she might have felt, Dizzy could not stop the way that her hind leg was suddenly tapping furiously against the ground.
"Wait. S-stop..." she tried to be assertive, tried to stay in control, but as someone who was starved of a touch that meant something other than just caring, could not muster up the strength to push him away.
"There you go senorita. Like I said, stress management is my expertise. Lay down."
She obeyed the command wordlessly, falling to her side and allowing him to continue working her magic.
"Good girl," he praised, eliciting only more excitement from her body. "My name's Antonio, if you cared to know. You can call me Tony."
"Tony," Dizzy repeated in a daze as he moved down to knead her stomach. "I'm D-Dizzy."
"You're Dizzy?" Antonio asked with a smirk. "My, my, Chiquita. I knew my skills as a masseur were good, but I never knew they were this good."
"No... my name... Dizzy," she clarified, lulled by his continued touch.
"I see... what a lovely name," he leaned forward to purr in her ear. "I have a debt to honor the will of my family, this is just one long part of that."
"Oh."
"Miss Dizzy, I have a feeling that the two of us will be seeing each other for a very long time."
"Stupid Ward with his stupid accent and his stupid knowing my daughter."
"You'll give yourself a hernia if you get any angrier," Ma Fitz cautioned Peg, a small twist of amusement on her beak as she watched the dog pacing angrily below her.
"You know what he said to me?" Peg demanded of the owl, looking up with a furiously expression. "He told me that she prefers his company over mine."
Ma Fitz offered a wince on her behalf, "Ouch. That must have hurt."
"And before that," Peg went on, voice still steaming, "he said I had nothing to worry about! That I was just 'projecting my fears onto him'. The nerve of that boy!"
"Sounds like he gave you the ol' women speech alright," Ma Fitz said with a chuckle, tiptoeing with claws along her branch. "It's not entirely unreasonable though."
The dog below her paused a moment to parse through those words, "What makes ya say that Ma?"
"Well and forgive me for keeping a close eye out, but you are the one that threw this entire thing on him as quickly as you did. I mean, you've said what? One? Two words at most ever since he crawled up out of that grave?" she asked in a knowing tone of voice. "And let me tell you right now, it ain't a peaceful experience to rise from the dead."
Peg could not help but roll her eyes. "Oh c'mon now Ma, you don't actually believe all that baloney about coming back from the dead do you?"
"Experience will do that to an owl," Ma Fitz said reasonably, her beak instinctively moving to clear her wings of debris. "Far as everything you've told me, his story checks out just fine."
"His story," Peg pressed, insistent, "is just a cover for the fact that he got bored or worse yet, scared of a real relationship with Dizzy, got beat up out there somewhere and only crawled back here with his tail in between his legs because he needed food and drink. I bet that limp in his step is all made up."
Ma Fitz shook her head, doing little to conceal how dismayed she felt. "Peg. You're my friend."
Quickly realizing what was happening, Peg groaned in an action of stubborn immaturity, "Not this Ma, you're supposed to be on my side."
"And I was," she moved quickly to pick Peg's sentence up, "cause that's what friends do. They give you the benefit of the doubt and stick by your side. But..."
"But?"
"Even I can't ignore obvious hypocrisy when I see obvious hypocrisy."
"You calling me a hypocrite now?" Peg asked, mildly annoyed.
"Only if the collar fits," Ma Fitz responded, offering a wry smile in return. "Don't fault me for digging up what's happened so long ago, but one of the reasons you did end up leaving was because you realized that you weren't mother material, you got scared."
"I..." unable to form any sort of retort to that, Peg only hung her head.
"And you did get beat up out there pretty bad. I'm guessing there wasn't much food or drink neither."
"There was if we looked hard enough," she mumbled.
"You couldn't have felt all that confident when you strolled into Chicago," Ma Fitz went on. "I'd wager your tail was at least a little bit shy of the consequences of the past."
Peg remained silent, considering the words of the owl.
"Do you want to finish or should I?"
With another rather childish groan, Peg cleared her throat and confessed: "I did try acting like I had parvo. In my defense, I figured that it wouldn't take as long to get to know Dizzy if she thought there was only so much time left."
"And there you go. You're forcing things way too fast and way too hard," Ma Fitz concluded. "I know you've got reservations about anyone spending time around Dizzy, but trust me when I say that she's a fan of routine. Ward has been apart of that routine for years now. You haven't."
"I'm trying," Peg, suddenly feeling quite admonished, said in a softer voice.
Ma Fitz was gracious enough to offer her a look of sympathy, "That much I have noticed and I'm sure it's working, but you've gotta stay patient. Feed into the things she likes, don't push them away. That way, she'll like the things you like and before long, the two of you will be dancing in the park like any mother and daughter would."
Though clearly still reluctant, if the tightness in her jaw was any indication, Peg gave a dutiful nod, "Alright. But that doesn't mean that I have to like him."
"Hate him all you want," Ma Fitz shrugged. "So long as you can tolerate him. Hey, maybe you are mother material after all."
Peg scoffed, but there was no mean spirit behind the action, "The years will do that to you."
Ma Fitz grinned and was on the verge of adding more to the conversation, when suddenly a voice called out in the near distance:
"Well I'll be damned!"
It was loud enough and well directed enough for them both to turn, watching as a sandy retriever padded around a few park goers and spatted with a dog on a leash as he came their way.
"Oh great," Peg lamented, "another beggar."
"What makes you think this is a beggar?" Ma Fitz asked, eyes squinting to pick out familiar detail after familiar detail.
"Chicago is filled with 'em. Had three approach me just on the way here and you see the fur on this guy?"
"I will be damned!" the retriever repeated excitedly, tail wagging as he scanned both of them.
"Listen buddy," Peg started, intent on sending him on his way, "we are an owl and a dog talking to one another in a park. What exactly did you see in us that made you think: 'Hey! These two would be the perfect pair to hustle a bone out of?'."
Where most any dog may have been ashamed or offended, this one only smiled in response, "Well, your bite certainly hasn't gone away Peg, I'll give you that. Ma Fitz!" he turned his attention to the owl up above. "You believe how our girl is talking to me? You used to scold her for that type of thing."
Confused by his easy identification of them both, Peg turned to a hovering Ma Fitz for answers, who landed to the ground, an easy expression on her beak.
"Hey there Rick."