A Shaggy Dog Story by Drakue < Submission | Inkbunny, the Furry Art Community

Keywords male 1202225, dog 173595, sfw 29109, desert 2419, anubis 1769, egypt 1358, weird 1299, egyptian god 122, shaggy dog story 1

Once, there was a dog.

Born of an average wild bitch and sired by the second strongest in his family, he was one in a litter of seven. When it came time for him to leave the pack, he walked east, and his brothers and sisters walked west.

The grass under his ever-moving paws changed, first in lustre and then in density. Food and water became more scarce as he moved, but onwards he leant, relentlessly persuing a gap in the sky under the sun. The light burned his eyes every morning, and stretched his visage before him every night; the dark shadow underfoot becoming longer and longer as if it was pulled by the same force which moved him, before eventually fading as night fell. The soil became thinner, and grainy. It stung his eyes and whistled past his ears, yet still he walked east.

Food was becoming harder to hunt and scavenge, and water hid in the cracks of the ground where he couldn't reach it. Hunger and thirst sat upon his back, constant companions in the dog's silent journey onwards. The nights had always been cooler, but now they were cold; his exhausted panting would mist in front of him and form strange shapes which reminded him of places he had never been and creatures he'd never seen. It became his habit to shake the crystaline sweat from his tail each morning. Onwards he would walk, his path moving underfoot. With barely enough energy to move more, he walked east.

Then, the strangest thing had happened. He had been watching his shadow grow long and tall as the sun-baked dunes twisted it this way and that, when quite suddenly it had stopped and turned its head. The dog had never seen this before, but knew from his brothers and sisters that if his only dog-shaped companion was looking, he should look as well, and so he matched the dog's pose. In the distant north, he saw something. It was unfocused, the heat of the dying sun baking the moisture out of the air cut the vision to ribbons, but he saw something. It was not sand, which is all he had seen for... he wasn't sure how long. Dogs were never good at measuring time. Cautiously, sparing only a glance back down to his dark visage, he turned and began walking north.

This time he did not stop for the freezing night to calm him into sleep, as his hunger and thirst whispered that he would not move again if he did. His paws crunched the cooling sand as he dragged them towards the vision he had seen. His eyes wept and ran precious icicles down his fur, but this small sacrifice did help him see. It was a structure of some kind; the sort he had seen elsewhere, where there was food and drink in abundance... but equally risk. His hunger barked at him that risk was immaterial now, and his thirst whispered of the fresh waters he could get if only he kept going. He could no longer feel his tail, and he knew that it was too late to turn back now. He walked north.

The freezing darkness of the night gave way to the burning light of the day. The dog, for what thought would normally lay in his mind to help him hunt, navigate, and spread his lineage, was burning with deperation. He urged his body to move faster than it would, and while every movement was accompanied by a numb pain, still he continued on. Walking almost as if asleep, he was awoken rudely by his left paw. It had registered something different. His curiosity forced his tired eyes to open. The air was not blurry anymore, but the world was slowly turning. His balance remained unaffected, and so he ignored it. Looking down and sniffing, he found new ground had been uncovered in the sand. It was not soil; it smelled like sand and rock, and it was hard against his paws. Looking up once more, he saw what he had missed for however many suns he had walked. It was a structure, stretching up past his ears and far into the sky. It was the same shade as the sand he had been forcing himself to endure, but different in the way that it lay; firm angles and slabs, somehow sorted by size and girth made this place able to resist falling into piles. Black figures, burning against the sun-lit sand walls they stood amongst, looked down at him in pity. They had... strange patterns among their coats. They looked like the dog in all the reflections he had seen when drinking in pristine pools, like his brothers and mother and father, but different somehow. Sharper, more refined. They had eaten well.

He had not seen their eyes move to meet his since he intruded upon their territory, and so he took another step. Still no growls or barks of threat, in fact there were no sounds to be heard at all aside from the ever-present, eye-burning winds. Gradually, the dog continued. He walked across these firm, flat blocks and felt as if he had returned to the place he was sired. That place had many creatures bigger than him though, and some smaller yet more dangerous. This place, aside from the ever-still dark figures sitting dutifully along either side of this flat path, seemed to have no activity to speak of. Had he been smarter, he may have considered being frightened, or in awe. Instead, he was wiser. His eyes darted around, seeking food. His ears swivelled, listening for rustles among the sandy walls that may mean one more meal before his end. His cracked and dry nose, too, was trained on the wind, seeking desperately for the smell of moisture.

He had reached the end of the path and his legs decided that this was the end. He unexpectedly collapsed, and then again when he tried to push them to lift his body again. Panting with effort, letting his stomach burn with a hunger that would never again be sated, he looked up once again at the dark figures around him. There were more here, at the end of the path, but they were different. Rather than those which looked somehow familiar to him lining the sides of this place, these had strange bodies. One had the head similar to the others, with patterns of bright colours wrapping around the base of the neck, of the eyes, and the ears. Others were more odd still; one had the head of vermin, though it was still monsterously too tall for him to take down alone. Yet another had a face he could not even fathom. With these faces and the sun staring down upon him, he lay his head on the firm, flat ground, and narrowed his eyes to rest.

"What is it?"

His eyes widened slightly, and he strained them to look up. One of the figures had moved, and now had its head tilted as if confused. The dog was confused as well, though far too hungry to try to figure out why. If it did not bring a meal, he did not have to consider why his ears had lied to him. If it left his body dry and burning for water, the voice without a voice, the bark with such profound meaning behind it of which he had never even thought possible, the context, the meaning, it did not matter. He let out a soft huff of frustration, blowing up small particles of sand in front of him, and lowered his eyes once more.

"It is a dog of some kind. Is it not one of yours?" Came another voice, passing across Dog's ears without touching the sides. He flicked his ears in annoyance, hoping they were still working. Still he could hear the wind, he could hear his haggered breaths as they forced their way into his wheazing lungs. He was not deaf, but then why could he hear the sounds without hearing them? Why did he know these sounds?

"I-I think it is thirsty." Came a third voice, a chirping that almost had the Dog assume birds were nearby. Fast little things, but tasty in a pinch. His stomach lurched as his mind strayed too close to thoughts of food. He stretched his jaw in the hopes of mimicing eating, that his stomach may be fooled for one more sunrise, that it may stop the pain from clawing at his empty insides. It did not let go.

"It is not one of mine." The first voice felt. Dog looked up again; perhaps with so many sounds nearby, he had lost track of some scurrying creature, some droplet of moisture. He--

"L-Let's give it something to eat."

This voice was not for eating. A bird it may be, but the strange feeling of recognition did something within the unseen parts of his head. The hunger was screaming now, but his curiosity was now louder. They had communicated food. Of course! All of the others like him, as still and obedient as they were, they all seemed well fed. Perhaps these creatures would trade food for service. Renewed energy and excitement built up within the dog, prompting him to raise his head to the figures, as he could not bear the pain of trying to stand again. All of the figures were staring at him quite intently now, except the familiar canine. He was watching one of the others carefully, instead. The dog stared at the one which reminded him of a bird. As it spoke, no part of its strange, sharp muzzle moved. Perhaps his ears were not lying after all, the dog idley wondered.

"It came upon his place, after all, and it is a mortal. It may not be what we were expecting, however... perhaps we should reward it with some food or drink."

The dog had never considered what a heaven was, but this fresh concept was beginning to take root in his mind. He was sure now, as sure as he was hungry that they had mentioned not only food, but water. He smelled none of either, but if his ears could betray him, there was no reason to trust his nose either. His eyes stared up at them, unable to comprehend what reason these gigantic figures may ask in return for sharing their bounty.

"Are you suggesting we provide potence and blessings upon the first creature that basks before us?" This voice felt less kind, and the dog saw the taller dog gesture with his strange, malformed front paws. If he was in charge, there may be little left for the dog who strayed so far from his path to be here. Once again he lay his head down, almost resigned to his fate. There may yet be hope, but his strength was waning quickly, and his breaths were becoming harder to draw forth. He tested his tongue, and found it barely able to escape his maw. His eyes, the last part of himself he had full control over, were becoming heavier. To save what little energy he had left, he closed them, and left himself at the fate of these monsterous beings as they whispered their unheard voices back and forth.

The dog had almost retreated all the way back in his mind, barely aware of the outside world. He had seen droplets fall from the sky, as it had before the ground became soft and difficult to walk through. He remembered his days as a pup, playing and fighting with his brothers and sisters before a small meal. He remembered the day he left, unremarked by his peers and understood by those who had sired him. Long, long walks, always with that dark dog before him telling him when it was time to rest. He saw it before him now, the ground made flesh, peering over him with sunlight lines over his pitch black coat. It looked at him with eyes he had never seen, and it had tilted its head.

"I believe it is dying." A voice barely heard escaped the black dog's throat. The eyes an ears were not one of threat, but dog was disturbed by its expression all the same. It was colder than the nights on the grainy sand, and held no place for interpretation or bargain. Dog tried to bark out a response, but knew not what to say, for he had only ever known the posture and the voices for hunting, cooporation, and threats. He tried regardless, except his breath had left him. His tongue felt no wind pass between his teeth, and the expression on the black dog's face did not so much as twitch.

"Very well, if you all insist. Let this be the first, and may the others never ask this charity of me again. Awaken."

The dog's eyes opened quickly as a rumble of deep thunder felt its way into his mind. He coughed a dry, hacking cough before opening his eyes. The feeling was returning to him faster than his sight; he still saw the black dog from his dreams, except now the surroundings were decorated with what he had seen during his waking time. The even, gold blocks of sand standing against the wind, and the other three figures just beyond the black dog's body. The dog blinked, and recognised a difference. He slowly pushed the ground away from him and stood up, feeling the baking sand road under his paws once more. His hunger had left him and taken the thirst with it. He licked the roof of his mouth to see if any reminents of food remained, but his tongue reported nothing out of the ordinary. He looked around, and found the dutiful figures still sitting, dotting the sides of the path he had walked. There was no food on the ground, and no pond had formed at his muzzle, yet his nose was moist once more and his belly... it did not feel full, but nor did it wretch when he thought of food. His gaze returned to the large black dog, and he tried to speak.

"Do you see? The mortal is grateful of your blessing!" The bird chirped in the dog's mind, accompanied by the strange figure behind the black dog nodding. "Perhaps you misjudged it."

The black dog did not seem to take this kindly, as the look he gave the feather-faced figure was devestating. The dog was thankful only not to have been unfortunate enough to be between them, although that would have required quite a significant jump in order to meet their gaze.

The dog tilted his head. What was a gaze? It was a look from eye to eye, and it could communicate a great many things. He had never considered this before, but it seemed so... intensely obvious now. He sat down on his haunches and looked at the floor. It was made of... a kind of dirt. Grainy, but there was a reason it was so flat. It was like some great paw print had compacted the grains together so they would not move. Looking up at the walls, he considered that they, too, must have been compacted. Otherwise they would fall, just as they did when he shook his body each morning.

"Look, it is shaking its filth over our road!" Came the black dog's voice, although the now sandless dog could recognise something in it which he could not before. It was not angry, it was... something. Looking up at it with his eyes wide, his body frozen mid-shake, he recognised a new expression. It made him want to... be affectionate. It made his insides warm, but in a good way.

"You like it, do you not? Wind will sweep the filth away. Would you rather your blessings go to something caked in it?"

The bird faced creature - not a dog, and not malformed as he now realised - was carrying a tone which could lead to a fight. The dog clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes at the figure, which only glanced down at him passingly. The black dog threw up a digit towards him, and that seemed to relax the tension. The dog sat back down again.

So many thoughts ran through his mind, and found much room to play in. These... creatures in front of him, they were not truly birds, or dogs, or rodents. They had to be something more than those things, and surely something more than himself. The thought burned in the dog's mind as he tried to make sense of it. Something greater than him, but not a threat to him. Something bigger in body, yes, but also... something more. Different to physical strength, these creatures had... ah, but what was it! The dog had found a profound frustration with these new thoughts. They did not fit well in his head, and yet they barked and ran constantly through it as if they had marked the place. He barked at the compacted sand.

"Witness, look at me." The black dog's voice was felt, and the confused dog looked up without, what he realised a moment later was even possible, a second thought. The towering black figure bore its teeth at him, but it wasn't a threat. It was something good. The dog did the same, attempting to mimic the expression. This lead to the large black dog letting out a sound never before heard by canine kind. It was like a jostle of barks for attention mixed with the playful whining of a pup. It wasn't altogether unpleasant, and so the dog continued stretching his maw open slightly to bare his teeth, while keeping his ears tucked as far up into the air as he could manage.

"H-he's smiling!" The smaller voice echoed through the dog's mind. He didn't like this one very much as it made his claws itch. He dared look away from the black dog for a moment, and noticed the large rodent-faced creature moving at the same time the voice had come. That must be why. The dog, given as he was the blessings of this large black dog, still had his desires. Even a rodent as large as that was afraid of something, and the dog knew that even if it wasn't him, he could feast for weeks off of the meat that would be left over. He relaxed his maw, unable to keep the strain up any longer. The large black dog nodded in response. This time, the voice was felt quietly, whispered past the dog's ears and into his mind, barely enough to even register as an apparition. Still, it came, and was seen by the dog's mind. "Yes. I am what he fears, and you would never go hungry again."

"Telling lies again?" The featered one spoke without sound, yet louder than any other before him. The black dog rolled his eyes as if watching an insect flit above him and responded in kind; "I am informing this beast of the blessing placed upon him. You are welcome to do with your first vessel as you wish."

The black dog broadened his shoulders, his magnificent black skin skining only where the golden material lay across it. The dog tilted his head again, considering for the first time that this sunlight-looking skin may simply be something bright laid across exceptionally dark fur. Very puzzling indeed, and something which he would have to think about later, now that he was capable of it.

"Small... Mortal." Spoke the black dog, drawing the smaller canine to attention. "You have been blessed. Never again shall you go hungry, never again will you feel thirst. You will not be ravaged by the wind, the rain, the icy cold nor the scorching sun above. You will-- Are you listening?"

What was a mortal? Something that could die. Death is when something isn't moving, or... able to move anymore. The thing that tells you to eat and hunt and mate is gone, and there's only the meat left behind. The dog had known about these things only as vague physical events that happened to others, but now he was being flooded with thoughts of what it meant to be alive, to be able to move, and what it means when that ends. It was all very stressful and concerning.

For the first time, his ears picked up a sharp sound, a cracking like a tree branch breaking or the sky crying moments after the horizon flashes. He looked up at the black dog again, which had focused its front limb into a shape to produce the sound. It was trying to get his attention. The dog dutifully sat and stared at the great black hound, ready to act as ordered. The black dog's expression seemed lined with... something. The dog tried not to think about it, as that would only distract him further.

"That is more like it. You are blessed, mortal. You do not have to fear death. You do not have to kill to eat."

Focusing his attention on this large black being was a mistake. Clearly, just as the dog's mind had been broadened to allow for all these alien thoughts and concepts to enter, the black dog's mind had been somehow damaged. Still the dog listened, because if anything had been held onto by his education since birth, it was that he should not offend those who could eat you in less than one bite.

"You will be my vessel, to carry my word across the lands." The large black dog stretched its limb out to the sky to show emphesis, and dog tilted his head to the side.

Words? Words they had been giving him, but he had not given any back despite trying. If this creature was offering food in return for something he could not accomplish, the dog would only end up starving in this place anyway, or worse, killed for being undutiful. In an attempt to communicate this, he manufactured the softest bark he could. It seemed to do the trick; the black dog's expression faltered, and his raised limb fell to his side limply.

"Well..." There is a pause. The large black dog is thinking, too, just like him. Other things are experiencing the same thing the dog is, except they clearly have more practice. Perhaps one day he could be like them. "...Just do your best." The muttered voice crawled through the dog's head. Knowing only the expressions and movements he had seen here, the dog lowered the front of his head, then sharply brought it back up.

"Good, you understand. I was concerned. Now, go."

That last word the dog knew even before finding this incredibly strange place, and with his stomach no longer biting him and his nose no longer cracked and filled with sand, the quiet thought of leaving had been getting steadily louder. With the black dog pointing out southwards down the road the dog had already travelled, the dog saw no reason not to follow it. The sun was beginning to lower, but he wasn't feeling particularly warm or cold. He took off at a middling pace, trotting down the smooth sand road until it turned bumpy and soft once more. When he reached the top of the first dune, he turned his head back to survey how far he had gotten and found himself slightly more lost than normal. The place he had just left was no longer where he had left it, replaced instead by some hundreds, millions of near-identical dunes stretching up until they hit the sky.

The dog turned back to the landscape in front of him, and tilted his head. Why was he heading in this direction? For so long he had felt this urge, this pulling notion, as if all the water in the worlds had been receeding and dragging him with it to this place, but now... there was nothing. There was no hunger, no thirst, no freezing cold or burning heat. Why was he moving? What was the reason? The dog sat down to consider.

What is a reason?

The dog sat for a great many hours on the top of that dune, waiting patiently until the barking and thudding of paws in his head slowed to a more understandable pace. The next time he pointed his eyes to the horizon, the sun was peeking up over the tips of the largest dunes for the start of a new day. He blinked, and pushed himself up without any effort. If he had been travelling with a purpose before and now had none, he thought to himself as best he could manage, then it stood to reason... that he should find a new purpose. Looking around, none but sand offered themselves to him. With another thought, the dog turned and began walking away from the sun.

If a reason could not be found for walking in any particular direction, then perhaps walking in any particular direction would find him a purpose.

Beneath him, the great black dog began to stretch, mimicking his steps and matching his pace. It wavered as he crossed dunes, valleys, and large flat oceans of dry sand, but it was not the same great black dog as had been with him all these suns. He was very familiar with that dog, recognising how it could stretch out against the ground even before he could think, and he knew this dog was different. Still, he walked, only occasionally staring down at his ever-growing shadow.

Occasionally, when the dunes would twist the shadow in a certain way, or the light reflected from the sky at just the right angle, he could almost catch a glimpse of gold from within the shadow's pelt. He did not consider why this may be, and he did not know how impossible it was. He knew only what he saw, and what he saw could be thought about later, perhaps for as long as he wanted. He was in no rush now.

Many long days and nights the dog walked, feeling no weakness, no hunger, and no thirst despite his ever-moving pace. He had not drank or eaten for a very long time, and some part of him knew the wrongness with that. But it meant no pain, and so he ignored it. It was not something he was well practiced with, ignoring these new thoughts, but he had found that if he did not engage with one, it would wilt and disappear into his mind. These would take some getting used to.

When the sand eventually became firm and speckled with dirt, the dog knew that his journey in the sand was coming to an end. At the first patch of dry grass, he glanced back at the endless dunes, at the barren sky and, most importantly of all, at his dark shadow, which was the only one to grace him with a returning look. In the back of the dog's mind, he felt the voice that had given him freedom from the pain of hunger, the traps of thirst, and his instinctual fear of death. He knew few things yet, but knew the voice that had freed him when it crept into his mind, foreign and alien yet comfortable and familiar at the same time. He felt it blossom in his mind, then soak in behind his eyes, the last kind words given to the dog who could not even speak, by the most powerful creature he had ever encountered. It was not even truly a command; it was not given with expectations of returned favour, without the threat of harm if ever it be broken. Instead, it felt more like... a request, given from a place in the mind the dog had no explanation or name for yet. With it said, he turned to the scrubland and the new sun rising before him. With a new mind filled with fresh ideas, the dog walked east.

He had found his purpose, and it seemed like a pleasant one.

"Be a good boy."

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