The twisted bunch of blankets in the center of a double bed stirred slightly as a head of ruffled magenta hair was tugged back in under it, fleeing the bright early morning sunshine that was pouring in through the open window above the head board. Dust motes floated serenely through the beams as the individual bundled up beneath the comforter attempted to ignore reality and stay in the comfort of the warm, cozy world she had constructed for herself just a few minutes longer. A few minutes passed, though, and at last the refugee from the sun gave a sigh of defeat, and sat up under the blankets.

Arms appeared first, grabbing at the twisted mass of blankets, trying to free their owner, followed by a pair of legs. A minute’s bewildered flailing later, a still half-asleep, ruffled young woman appeared, trying, but failing, to run her long pale fingers through tangled magenta hair. She finally gave up and released a tremendous, jaw popping yawn and flopped over backward, long lashes fluttering as they tried to shield her green eyes from the intruding sun. She looked over and squinted through the offensive morning light at the clock on the dresser by her bed.

“Nine o’clock,” Cheena muttered to herself and sighed. She lay there a moment longer, mind wandering aimlessly until she finally worked up the gumption to roll over and tumble out of the bed.

She landed on her butt, the brief flare of pain sending enough of a wake-up jolt to her brain to give her energy to stand and stretch. Joints popped as she raised her arms above her head and stretched until she was on the tip of her toes, then stumbled forward as the blood rushed to her head, nearly making her fall over again. Cheena shook her head and groped around for her robe, pulling it on over her baggy t-shirt and pajama pants before wandering out into her living room, after a brief stop in the bathroom.

The woman’s groggy mind hardly even registered that she was falling until she hit the floor, barely managing to throw her hands out in time to keep herself from connecting with the brightly polished wood face first.

“Bloody…what the heck was that?” she muttered grumpily to herself as she sat up on her knees and examined her hands. Greeting the floor with her face was hardly her ideal way of starting the morning.

Cheena turned and looked around to see what it was she had tripped on, and saw the dog looking at her. It was lying in the middle of the floor, and was apparently what she had tripped over. She opened her mouth to berate the animal but it snorted and rolled over so its back was too her before she could get a word out. Cheena blinked in surprise. If a human had done what that dog had just done to her, they probably would have been calling her a stupid klutz…which she swore that dog had just done, albeit through body language rather than words.

She huffed and got to her feet, storming off to the kitchen without a word to the dog. If it was going to ignore her, see if it got any food! In the middle of her angry breakfast tirade, though, during which she had begun preparing eggs and toast for herself, Cheena stopped. What was she doing? She couldn’t let a dog get to her! It wasn’t as though it had done it on purpose or anything, and clearly her imagination was running away with her if she thought it was calling her a klutz!

Cheena could have laughed at herself. She was being ridiculous…again. Her parents had always said her imagination was stronger than her sense of reality, perhaps they were right.

“Well, not like it matters what it thinks anyways. It’s just a dog.” She said to herself as she pushed a pair of fried eggs from the frying pan onto her plate.

The dog watched her as she walked to the table and sat down with her back to him and began eating. Sitting there, she could practically feel its gaze burning holes into the back of her head.

“Oh no you don’t, you grumpy old thing,” She said aloud to the dog, still not turning to face it. “If you’re going to be rude to me early in the morning then you can just wait to get your breakfast.” Cheena heard the dog snort again, but she ignored it and went back to enjoying her food.

Some time later, after she had finished her food and cleaned the kitchen, Cheena returned to her refrigerator to stare at it, wondering once more, what on earth she was going to feed the dog. Said animal was sitting at the edge of the linoleum that covered the kitchen floor, watching her avidly. Perhaps she’d made it wait too long for its food. After all, it was still healing…

“Eggs it is.” Cheena finally said as she came to the conclusion that she had absolutely nothing else in her refrigerator that wouldn’t upset the dog’s stomach. Not that she’d ever had a dog before, so she wasn’t entirely sure, to be truthful.

A few minutes later, the dog was nearly through its first plate of scrambled eggs, and Cheena was hard boiling several more. Watching the dog eat so quickly, the young woman felt a little bad that she had made it wait to get its breakfast. Surely it hadn’t tripped her intentionally…but still, she just couldn’t get over its reaction when she had turned to look at it. Maybe all dogs were like this? After all, she’d never had any prolonged exposure to one before.

The high pitched ring of the timer brought her out of her reverie, and Cheena quickly moved the pot of hard boiled eggs off the fire and set the pot, contents and all, in the sink. She let the cold tap water cool them before she reached in and began quickly peeling them with her deft, long fingered hands.

As soon as she started peeling the eggs, the dog came over and sat beside her feet, watching her with those intense blue eyes again. That gaze still unnerved her a bit, and so to distract it, she dropped a peeled egg right above the dog’s head.

Jaws snapped and the egg vanished in a blink and the dog paused to chew it, almost, Cheena thought to herself, thoughtfully, as though carefully judging the taste. The dog looked up again, clearly wanting more, and the girl sighed, but then smiled in bemusement.

“What am I? Your private chef or something?” she asked sarcastically, and made a face when the dog barked, as if in agreement.

“Well don’t get used to it, dog, because today I’m going shopping and then it’s dog food for you!” Cheena said with a grin, but the dog just butted her elbow with its nose, encouraging her to peel more eggs.

~~~

One dozen hard boiled eggs later, Cheena was sitting on the floor at her coffee table, fingers flying across the keyboard of her laptop computer, back propped up against her sofa. The dog was lying on its belly on the hard wood floor, alternately napping and gazing boredly about the room. He was in what Cheena had deemed to be his “Mr. Anti social grumpy pants” mode, which he seemed to be in a lot. Though, granted, she’d only known him since yesterday.

For the moment though, her green eyes were focused on the screen, her brow furrowed in concentration, everything else was blocked out entirely. Well, it was until she heard a strange scratching sound. She tried to ignore it, but it kept coming until she finally looked up, and noticed the dog pawing at the door. She looked at it quizzically and it glared back at her until it finally dawned on Cheena that the dog probably had ‘business’ to attend too.

“Ooh, sorry.” Cheena said, realizing that she had been rather dense. She got to her feet, socked feet moving noiselessly across the hard floor. The woman opened the door, only to have the dog dash out before she could so much as make a grab for its collar.

“Hey, wait!” she shouted after it, but the dog had already disappeared into the nearest bushes.

Cheena frowned, slightly worried, but shrugged it off. If the dog wasn’t coming back, there was nothing she could do about it, if anything, it was a burden off her shoulders. The girl closed the door and went back to work, only to find herself constantly drifting over to the front window, looking out for a flash of gold and white. Finally getting worried, Cheena opened the window to shout for it, but realized she didn’t even know what its name was.

“Some help I am,” She said to herself, making a face of self disgust at her reflection in the glass.

Leaving the window open to let the cool air in, she went back to work, and remained there for several hours until she heard a slight clattering and then a thump.

This time she looked up right away at the noise, and was surprised to be rewarded with the sight of the dog, who had apparently decided to return after all, and through the open window, no less.

“So, you decided to come back after all, huh?” she asked with a slight smile.

The dog only huffed in reply, shaking itself so it’s fluffy gold and white fur lay neatly again, and trotted over to the spot where she’d tripped over it that morning. It promptly lay down and went to sleep, thoroughly ignoring her.

“Huh, I see how it is, you lazy thing.” Cheena said with a roll of her eyes. When she turned back to her monitor though, she smiled slightly to herself and went back to work. She had to admit, it was kind of nice having someone else around, even if it was just an ornery old dog.

Later that evening, Cheena returned from grocery shopping at the nearby supermarket laden with bags and a sack of dog food. The dog didn’t come to greet her at the door, though it did look in her direction as she came in. It didn’t seem to have moved from the spot where it had laid down after jumping in through the window earlier in the afternoon.

As Cheena set about putting the groceries away, she began to wonder if perhaps something else was wrong with it, something she hadn’t noticed. But then again, it could just be that it was simply tired from its body working in overdrive to heal itself. She threw a glance in its direction as she reached up to put a can of tomato sauce away in the cabinet, and saw that it seemed to have drifted off to sleep again. It seemed to do that a lot. Looking at it she noticed that its fur was bright and glossy, which she figured had to speak well for its health, though she did realize it would probably need its bandages changed that night after dinner.

The magenta haired woman sighed as she finished putting food away, and leaned against the counter, deep in thought. The other thing she had done while she was out was take a picture of the dog she had snapped and run it over to the local printer and had a stack of ‘Dog Found’ signs made. She’d stapled them up around the store and on posts on the way home, hoping that perhaps someone would call in about the dog.

When she looked up again, the dog was staring at her with those unnerving blue eyes that she swore could look straight into her head and see what she was thinking. To distract herself she grinned at the dog and said “Hey, boy, what about some dinner?”

The dog seemed to consider, then hauled itself to its feet and padded over to the kitchen, its claws making small clicking noises as it moved. When Cheena produced a bowl of dog food and set it before it though, the dog just looked at it, looked at her, snorted, and turned around and walked back in the direction it’d come from.

Cheena blinked in surprise. Everything in the way that dog moved belied absolute disgust. She looked down at the bowl of dog chow, wondering if there was something wrong with it. Curious, she picked it up, sniffed it, prodded it with a finger, and decided that it was perfectly normal. The thing that wasn't normal, was the dog.

“Oh for Pete's sake. You're honestly trying to tell me that the damn dog is a food snob or something?” Cheena demanded, though to no one in particular.

The woman could only shrug and set the bowl back on the floor, figuring the dog would eat it if it got hungry enough.

From there, Cheena's evening proceeded as it normally would, with the exception that she took care to step over the dog on the way back to her bedroom when midnight rolled around and her bed was calling more loudly than her laptop.

“Goodnight, dog.” Cheena said, pausing to pat it's golden head as she came out of the bathroom on the way to bed. “Do try not not to kill me in the morning, hmm?”

The dog just looked at her with those startling blue eyes though, cocking an ear in her direction, as though to catch her words. As Cheena retreated into her bedroom, it heaved a sigh and settled down to sleep there on the floor.