Work Text:
Rikiel used to feed the stray dogs that roamed the streets with what he could find. Dirty, flea-bitten, and rib-raw, the motley packs trampled through their created trails in the high grasses of the mostly-abandoned neighborhood, unkempt and forsaken like the yards they grew in. Rikiel found it no chore to toss onto the paths an extra piece of dinner’s cold chicken, some scraps of stew coagulated with fatty oils dripping along their broths, or handfuls of stolen dog food snatched from the convenience store.
He’d take a plastic bucket from the shed, filled it with water, and leave it on a rotten wood porch to find it again come evening under the sickly yellow glow of the streetlights, a circle of wet pawmarks and droplets dancing around the empty plastic. He considered childishly once to sit by the pail and see if a rover would peek its head out from the bush, but even his young mind already understood: The bodies of the canines bore bruises and marks made by neither tree nor rock. Humans could be cruel; Rikiel knew that. They knew it better.
The life cycle ran its inevitable course as summer froze to winter and melted to spring. Whimpers in the grass were the telltale signs of life, from little folds of fresh skin and mother’s blood. New life welcomed into the world in-between the safety of the dry hay. He grieved. He tried to imagine their callow bodies torn like their parents. The little legs, barely moving now, forced to forever run once they found their standing. Eyes born closed but once opened, would wish they hadn’t.
But what could he do? The dry grass and rotten wood would be their home, and they’d forever feed on scraps found in the dirt, with water rationed in a bucket. He’d pity them only because he drank from a faucet, but maybe the bucket was heaven compared to teeth facing the rain. When he watched the puppies grow, among the scars that grew and patches of fur that didn’t, they played, and bit, and yelped, and loved.
Rikiel liked dogs; adored them for their loyalty. He could empathize. Why not bare your belly to the one who licks your wounds? Why not howl in darkness if it meant to learn the path back home? He'd felt sorry for them for so long as a boy when they were freer than his confined childhood. He thought he was acting as their savior until he grew older and found that rotten porches were softer than any bare bed and water that came from a bucket meant it came from love.
When he ran away to join the streets, he could feel more wind under his legs than he ever did before. The world felt wider. The sky, higher.
If howling was crying, then he’d called for home all through the night.