Disclaimer One: Yep, can’t be a good sign if I’m anticipating multiple disclaimers, can it?

I’m using the new wordpress editor. ‘Nuff said.

Observations: The writing slogged on this section. Slogged, bogged, fogged brain. Something to look forward to reading, am I right? 😉

Like yesterday’s break, I’m going to eat and then try to write more and hope that helps.

Disclaimer Two: This is a draft! Read at your own risk.

Total word count: 19,184

820 words behind for yesterday. Something to look into. It’s not obvious how to make one word a different color. Not discovering it now.

Oddly you can’t read green text in preview. We’ll see if it shows up after publishing. So much fun! 😉

You can read previous sections here.

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All of the good feelings I’d had since finding out that there was a real reason for the events of last week drain away. Someone in my woods. Someone hurting my familiar dog. This isn’t good. And maybe familiar dog and I weren’t going to be the best of friends right away, but I feel bad that something’s happened to her. I’ve always been an animal lover. When I find out who that was stalking around in my woods, hurting my familiar dog, he’s going to be very sorry. I hope.

The first thing I register as I walk in the deck door of my cottage is that there is a dog licking its right paw nonchalantly on my loveseat, only giving me the slightest hint that she notices my presence. The second thing I register is that I have not lost my familiar dog at all. I’m relieved and happier than I’ve been in a while. Maybe things are looking up.

“I heard gunshots. I thought you were going to be stealthy.”

Familiar dog (She really needs a name. She probably already has one and will enlighten me when she feels like it. She seems like that kind of dog.) glances up at me with a huge amount of tolerance in her gaze, as if she were looking at a child she had to suffer.

“For a guy with a sophisticated gun, a Sig Sauer to be exact, he was mighty jumpy. Probably not used to being out in the woods and thought I was a bear or something ferocious and just shot into the bushes. Silly, silly man,” she says and then tilts her white and sable head. “He smelled foreign, by the way.”

“That sounds a little racist.”

She raises her dog eye brow. Okay, I get her drift.

“So, you can smell that someone’s foreign.”

“I can smell what people had for lunch last week.”

We eye each other. I don’t believe that, and I’m wondering if she’s testing me. It’s quite possible this dog is smarter than me. Sitting on the loveseat next to her, I settle back into the mauve suede throw pillow.

“Where’s he from?”

“Europe.”

“Can you be any more precise?”

“Are you serious? How many Europeans are there around here?”

“At the moment? Two.” That I know of. Who knows now?

She sighs. “Nice cologne or aftershave, if you like that kind of thing.”

Heath hasn’t worn cologne nor aftershave that I’ve noticed. On the other hand, Yuri smelled very nice.

“Could you tell if he was tall?”

She’s silent for several moments. Are all familiar dogs like this? Are all familiars like this, for that matter? Something to investigate. I wonder what you do if you and your familiar don’t get along. Trade in for a new one? Is it like a car? I chuckle to myself.

“Anyone over four foot is tall to me…and, no, it’s not like a car.”

“You can read my thoughts.”

“Poor me,” she says before spinning twice on the loveseat and curling up with her bacm to me.

I presume I am dismissed. She must have been a Princess in her former life the way she puts on airs. Maybe she’ll find that she just gets boiled chicken…or chicken dog food. Ha.

“Still reading your thoughts. Not impressed.”

—

Before the sun’s even risen, I am ready to go. After having a week worrying if the life, I’d made for myself was over, I am so grateful to have it returned to me, in a fashion. There’s still so much I don’t know, but I’m eager to find out.

I throw on my usual outfit of blue jeans, t-shirt, long-sleeved because it’s cold outside, and comfortable shoes after a quick shower, pour dark roast into a travel mug and am ready to go when I realize that familiar dog is standing in front of the door blocking me.

“What?” I ask.

“I eat in the morning and in the evening. Fortunately I ate before coming to you or I would have ended up going hungry for as much thought as you gave me. I would like some breakfast.”

“I don’t have chicken. And obviously don’t have dog food.”

She says nothing, just waits. What can dogs eat?

“Egg and toast?” I ask.

I get what I’m realizing is a typical behavior from her, something akin to a human shrug. “Sure. That’ll do. You have to get some real food for me. You don’t want me to get weak or I can’t function to optimum.”

Okay, then. Considering that I’m making the dog eggs and toast, I decide to do the same for me. It’s probably better than grabbing a meatless egg mcmuffin from the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way into the kitchen. And, it does taste better, no doubt about that, I think, as I chew on the buttered whole grain bread.

Familiar dog lays down by the kitchen door and waits for me to finish. It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t know what to do with her. Take her to work? Leave her here? Leave her outside?

“Take me to work.”

“But, it’s against health code.”

“You must have a room that’s not part of the dining area or kitchen,” she says in her long suffering voice.

—

As usual, Rose is baking when I come in the back door. She takes one look at familiar dog and shakes her head and wipes her floury hands on a dishcloth.

“You can’t have a dog in here.”

“She’s going in the back room until I can figure out what to do with her.”

Rose glances around as if our conversation might be overheard, which makes me glance around. I suppose she’s getting paranoid too.

“Is that your familiar?” she asks in a soft whisper.

“Yeah, you have one now too?”

“A raven flew into my house and wouldn’t leave. I’m freaked out about my familiar being a raven. It keeps trying to take my pearl necklace. And it talks in this weird voice and reads my mind and tells me I should read more Poe. He said I would have a better understanding. Creepy thing. Can I trade it in, like a car?”

We are so obviously sisters. I chuckle. “At the familiar depot?”

As I start the preparations for lunch, which include roasting cubes of fresh pumpkin and chestnuts, sautéing onions as well as making fresh stock, I realize how content I feel, how in the groove. Although just thinking about last week’s troubles puts me on edge.

Rose and I discuss in whispered tones the books that Gran had given us. Evidently, she’d had the foresight to copy the books so that when the time came, as she knew it could, we could learn exactly who we were.