Miss Smith was delighted to see him. “I was afraid you’d got yourself shut up for good,” she said. She gave him a bowl of raw hamburger. Mr. Gumble gave him a bone and a doughnut. The two old men on the benches gave him a steak pie and a hamburger. Feeling full and contented, Sirius trotted through the sunshine to the cleared space where Yeff had vanished. He told himself he was not putting off Mrs. Partridge: he had to check on this place first.
There was not the faintest prickle from the Zoi. But he hardly knew the cleared space, it had changed so in the last week. It was now the beginning of May. The grass was thick and green. The bushes were putting out leaves and the nettles had come up high enough to brush him underneath. The greening mounds of rubble were so studded with dandelions that Sirius felt homesick. The flowers looked like luminaries, and the green was like his own sphere. Earth was a beautiful place.
He was so homesick he thought he would go and see Patchie. He was not sure why, except that he was sad and joyful at once, and it seemed to fit.
As soon as he came to the end of her street, he knew that the compulsive feeling connected with Patchie had gone. There was no longer a crowd of dogs at her gate. “Hallo, hallo!” said Rover and Redears as he trotted by. Bruce was very busy tugging at the latch of his gate with his teeth.
“I’ve nearly got the hang of this,” he said. “I’m working on a new system. You’ll see—I’ll be out and about like you soon.”
“Great!” said Sirius. He trotted on to Patchie’s gate and put his nose to the netting. Patchie did not seem to see him. She was scratching nonchalantly. “Hallo,” Sirius said.
Patchie looked round. Seeing him, she stood up, stiff-legged and bristling. “Go away. I don’t want you.”
Very hurt and surprised, Sirius said, “I only came to see how you were.”
Patchie let out a rasping growl and advanced on the netting. “Go away. I don’t like you. I don’t want you. Take your nose away or I’ll snap it off.”
More hurt and surprised than ever, Sirius moved his nose. “What’s wrong? You liked me last week.”
“No I didn’t. You’ve got horrid eyes. I don’t like anyone except Rover.”
“Rover!” exclaimed Sirius, deeply wounded. “He’s stupid.”
“And you’re worse,” said Patchie, “thinking I’d like you! Go away.”
Sirius got up and crept away, pursued by snarls from Patchie. He had never felt so hurt or so mortified before. He could not bring himself to face the other three dogs again. He went the other way, down to the filthy gray-green river, and plodded dejectedly along the towpath with his head down and his tail hanging.
“Cheer up,” said Sol. “They often go like that when they come off heat. And she always did like Rover best.”
Sirius turned and snarled at him over his shoulder. “Oh, shut up!”
Sol answered with a glare that would have blinded any other creature. “Stop that! You don’t even like her. You know she’s silly, even for a dog.”
There was truth in that. “Yes,” Sirius said morosely. “Yes. I suppose you’re right.”
“I am,” said Sol. “Now are you going out toward those kennels, or do I have to arrange to have you delivered there?”
“All right, all right,” said Sirius. “I’ll go. There’s no point in anything anyway.”
He turned and followed the towpath in the other direction. At first he plodded. The river was dirty and depressing. Small, smelly factories sat on its banks making it filthier. After those were the railway lines. Sirius walked a little faster. Ever since he had first seen them, he had been interested in the long clattering trains. The railway gave way to allotments, where the black hedges were spattered with bright green buds. Sirius began to feel more cheerful. He trotted. Then he loped. And suddenly he was out in his own meadow where Kathleen took him for walks. It was all blazing green, with dandelions and daisies thicker than the stars of home. Here the river was soft clear blue, a rival to the Milky Way, and the hawthorns on its banks were a piercing young green, as if they had been newly lit with green fire.
Sirius bounded forward jovially. He forgot his hurt pride and frolicked along by the river, around a couple of bends, under tall trees of black lace and yellow-green flames of leaf, until he came to a meadow where there were few flowers but an interesting smell of dog. The dog smell led him up the meadow and through a gate in a newly lit hedge. Here were concrete paths. He dimly remembered that concrete. It led in crisscrosses around low buildings with wire-netting runs in front of them.
He stopped near the center of the crisscrossings and sniffed the air. There was no Zoi. He was sure Sol was wrong. It was not here. There was dog, however. Dog upon dog, everywhere. And human. A very strong smell of Mrs. Partridge. Sirius hated it. His back rose slightly. There was another smell too, like a mixture of jasmine and ozone. For some reason, it was hauntingly familiar, but Sirius could not place it. All he could tell was that it did not quite fit in with the other smells, the grass, the concrete, the dog, or the Mrs. Partridge. He puzzled about it while he thoughtfully went over and lifted a leg at the corner of the nearest wire run. The smell could have had a tingle of Zoi about it. Or could it? He was not sure.
The dog inside the run hurried over to sniff. “Good morning,” she said pleasantly. “I’m Bess.”
She was a beautiful yellow-white Labrador with a bright black nose and melting brown eyes. Her sole fault was that she was a trifle stout.
“It is a nice morning,” Sirius agreed. He liked the look of this Labrador. He took to her so much, in fact, that he asked, “I say, you don’t happen to have seen the thing I’m looking for, do you? It fell out of the sky with a bang some time last year, and it must have looked quite bright as it fell. You know it if you’re near it by a strange prickly feeling it gives you.”
“Now there you have me,” said the Labrador. She sat on her haunches and put her head on one side to think. “I think I know the thing you mean—”
Sirius’s ears came up. He could hardly believe them. He wished he had taken Sol’s advice earlier. “Go on,” he said.
“I saw it come down,” said Bess. “It was in the night. I think I must have been going to have puppies, because I felt awfully heavy and miserable, and I went outside to have a good moan at the Moon. And the thing came down past the Moon like—well, I thought it was a star coming unstuck and I was scared stiff. The ground jiggled. But I didn’t feel it prickle. It was too far away.”
“Thanks,” said Sirius. “That’s a great help. How far away?”
“Down the river, where all those houses are,” the Labrador said. “I remember seeing it go into the glare from all their lights just before the ground jiggled.”
“So it is in the town!” said Sirius. “I wish I’d met you before this. You’ve been more help than anyone.”
“I like to be useful,” Bess said, a little wistfully. “I used to be a gun dog until I was sold to Mrs. Partridge. I don’t seem much use here.”
“Boring, isn’t it?” Sirius said feelingly.
“Oh it is!” she said. “I see you know, too. Are you a hunting dog, by any chance?”
“Well—only a Zoi-hunter,” said Sirius. “Why?”
“You look a bit like a frosty sort of dog that jumped my fence once,” said Bess. “Mrs. Partridge didn’t have all these high wire things then, so he came over quite easily. He told me he hunted.”
“Did he tell you where he came from?” Sirius asked eagerly.
“He was called Yeff,” said Bess. “And—”
“Sirius!” said Sol sharply. “Sirius!” Light twinkled and blazed on the wire between the dogs, so that the Labrador backed away blinking. “Run!” said Sol. “Get out of here. Not the way you came—the other direction. Quick!”
Sirius, quite confused, started off the wrong way, found Sol blazing in his eyes and turned back. “Why? What’s the matter?”
“It’s my fault,” said Sol. “I’ve slipped up again. I’ve not had much experience recognizing—Just run. Please!”
Since Sol was so urgent, Sirius set off loping toward the next concrete crossroad. He had gone ten feet when Mrs. Partridge came clopping around the corner. Sirius skidded to a stop, turned and bolted the other way.
“Hi!” bawled Mrs. Partridge. “You wretched mongrel! Stop him, Mrs. Canning dear, please!”
Sirius tore back past the Labrador’s run, ears flying, tail outstretched, and galloped around the corner. And stopped as if he had run into a wall.
There was another woman standing there, a more elegantly dressed one. She was small, and she had extraordinary dead white hair falling smoothly to her shoulders. Despite that, she seemed young. Her face was dead white too, with cheekbones and eyes that, ever so slightly, slanted upward. That made her both striking and beautiful. The ozone-jasmine scent which had so puzzled Sirius was coming from her—and he knew now that it was a scent quite alien to Earth. Though he had never seen her look quite like this before, he knew her by the faint white nimbus standing around her. He would have known her whatever she looked like.
Sirius wanted to wag his tail and whine with joy. He wanted to go down on his fringed elbows and lick her elegant feet, and then put his paws on her small shoulders and lick her slanting face. But he did nothing. He just stood there, for agelong seconds, staring at her, unable to credit what all his green nature and his dog nature had learned while he had been on Earth. He had met people like her while he begged at doors. One of them had kicked him. He knew Duffie. But she could not be like Duffie! She was his Companion.
His Companion thought he was simply a dog at first. She looked at him with cold dislike, which hurt him, even so, far more than Patchie had done. Sirius knew he should go before she learned he was anything more. But he was too confounded by knowing it to move. Then his Companion looked at his eyes.
“I can’t believe it!” she said. Duffie at her coldest and highest was nothing to the way she said it. “You! I thought I’d made her have you drowned!” The white nimbus round her spread into a cold blaze. “You—!”
The dog nature reacted like lightning, while Sirius’s green nature still lay shattered. He jumped clear, back and sideways. Wire netting twanged. His Companion’s blast of white hatred lashed the path where he had been standing, consuming dust, setting fire to the grass at the edge, destroying some of the concrete too. Sirius felt the longer hairs of his coat sizzle while he was in the air. He bounced, blundering, into the netting and let it shoot him away again through the chemical reek of the blast, so that he landed on the hot concrete just as his Companion turned and struck the netting where he had been. That blast melted the netting as if it were a nylon stocking, and left it steaming, dripping and turning from dull red to cindery black. Poor Bess howled and ran into the farthest corner. Howling and barking arose from most of the other runs. Sirius had time to see that the Labrador was safe as he ran like a dog possessed, back around the corner of her run and full tilt toward Mrs. Partridge.
Mrs. Partridge had noticed nothing peculiar, beyond an odd smell. She planted her corduroy legs wide across the path to stop Sirius. She did not matter anymore. He went straight between her legs like an arrow. How he made himself low enough he never knew. Mrs. Partridge staggered about. “Wretched brute!” she yelled.
Sirius heard her boots cloppering on the concrete behind him. He heard the small light feet of his Companion overtake them and patter swiftly after him. She might be in human form, but Sirius knew she would run with unearthly speed. He ran as he had never run before, even to catch Yeff. His tail was curled under him. His eyes stung. His nose was blocked with strong wrong smells from the blasts. His head seethed with misery. This was why he had put off coming here. His puppy brain had remembered “Mrs. Canning dear” persuading Mrs. Partridge to have him drowned, but he had not admitted it. To think he had spent long, long ages doting on a being like Duffie! What a flaming green fool! He dashed down concrete paths, past surprised dog faces, past sheds, past an astonished youth with a bucket. The youth dropped the bucket and gave chase too. Sirius sped from him easily. But he felt his Companion coming, quicker than he could run, closer and closer, until she was bringing even to his blocked nose her scent of ozone and jasmine.
There was a house in front of him and its door was open. Sirius shot inside it. His feet skidded helplessly on a polished floor. He fell painfully on his side and slid across a hall, tangling rugs and smashing a gray pot so ugly that it could only have been made by Duffie.
“Yap! What on earth? Yap! Who are you?” A little black poodle, a cosseted house dog, pattered beside him, her nose and eyes bright with curiosity.
“I’m being chased. Is there another door?” said Sirius, heaving himself out of the rugs. His right back leg hurt.
The poodle cocked an ear to the shouts and pounding feet outside. She sniffed the ozone-jasmine smell distastefully. “The other door’s down that passage. Shall I hold them up for you?”
“Don’t you dare. Keep out of her way—the smelly one—whatever you do.” Sirius limped across the beastly shiny floor. He could hardly move at human walking pace on it, and his terror increased. He seemed to have bolted into the worst possible place. Behind him, to his surprise, the door of the house crashed shut. The little poodle came skipping gaily after him.
“That’s stopped them for a moment. Hurry. They’ll come round the house. This way.” She skipped around a corner, where another door stood open on green countryside. “There. Good luck.”
“Thank you very much,” said Sirius. He ran limping across a stretch of garden and a lane and gathered himself for a gallop across the field beyond. His back leg hurt hideously over the first hundred yards. Then he felt his Companion behind him again. He forgot his leg. He ran. He raced. He crossed the ten-acre field like a hare, except that instinct and fear and green thoughts combined to make him run low and slinking, as the cats did, in order not to make a target for another white sheet of hatred. There was a wood on the skyline. Sirius raced toward it, up a long slope, taking cover in a fold of ground as he went. He tore through a fierce hedge, and climbed another meadow. It was vivid with growing grass. He trod on wrinkled leathery leaves and broke the primroses growing from them with his heavy paws. It seemed a pity, even in his panic. His Companion was closer every step.
As he reached the cool shade of the wood, something held her up. He did not know what it was, but he was sure it would not detain her for very long. He ran up a bank. There was a filthy strong smell there, like a butcher’s shop mixed with peppermint. It was coming from a large damp-looking hole. The smell was horrible, but Sirius had no time to be dainty. He squeezed into the hole and pushed his way down it.
It was a tight fit, but it opened out shortly. Sirius, though he had never noticed the fact before, could see in the dark rather better than the cats. He saw that the hole went on beyond the wider part, but he decided to go that way only if he had to. The smelly occupant of the hole was down there somewhere. He turned around, pressing himself against the earthy side of the space, so that, if need be, he could turn around again and face the occupant, and stared anxiously up the way he had come. The entrance to the hole was a dim circle, where grass and leaves fluttered. There was a hint of bright sunlight above and beyond, but it did not strike the mouth of the hole. His Companion seemed to have stopped in the middle of the meadow, about a hundred yards away. He could hear her talking to someone.
“. . . not used to being detained in the sphere of my Most Effulgent Consort,” she was saying.
“But, Effulgency,” Sol said, out there, “it is such an unexpected pleasure to find you honoring my humble sphere. I feel I must meet Your Effulgency with proper politeness.”
“My dear Sol! There’s no need for that!” the Companion answered. “I’m here quite informally.”
“But how delightful, Effulgency!” said Sol. His voice dripped golden politeness. “Naturally I should not want to intrude on your privacy, except that, since Your Effulgency is honoring my sphere, I take it that you have come to visit me.”
“I don’t wish to disappoint you, Sol,” began the Companion.
“Effulgency,” Sol said, sweetly earnest. “My only disappointment is that you came without my knowledge. That was why I stopped you. I had no wish to be rude, nor to point out that I am of higher effulgence than your honored self, but—”
“Oh, very well,” the Companion said crossly. “I’m here on business for my Effulgent Consort, which is secret. Does that satisfy you? Effulgency.”
“Effulgency, I must always be satisfied in your presence,” Sol said unctuously.
Sirius put his face on his paws and groaned. What a flaming green fool Sol must think he was! It was only too clear Sol knew what his Companion was like. It was equally clear that Sol disliked her intensely. But he had never said a word about her to Sirius. He had always hurried the conversation away from her—no doubt to spare Sirius’s feelings. Sirius lay in the damp smelly hole and writhed. He was very grateful to Sol for stopping his Companion, but he could hardly bear to listen to them quarreling so politely.
A voice spoke near his ear. It was a voice as jealously ruffled as Tibbles, the time Sirius turned her off Kathleen’s knee. It said, “Who is that being out there? What is she?”
There was no new smell, apart from the strong meat-and-peppermint stink and the clay of the walls around him. Sirius supposed it must be the owner of the hole speaking. He dared not offend the creature, whatever it smelled like, so he answered politely, “She’s the Companion of Sirius. A white dwarf.”
“Then she’s a luminary,” the voice answered, not at all pleased. After a stormy pause, it asked, “Very beautiful, is she?”
“Very,” Sirius answered miserably. And because his Companion was beautiful, he thought, he had made a far worse fool of himself over her than he ever did over Patchie. He had let her lead him as tamely as Kathleen led him on the leash.
“How beautiful?” the voice persisted. “Compare her to something. Is she as beautiful as Sol?”
“Well—” Sirius said helplessly. “They’re very different. Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then she’s more beautiful than the Moon?”
Sirius sighed a little, and wondered why it mattered to this persistent creature. He thought of the living pearly luster of the Companion. He had not seen the Moon often, but he knew it was a dead white in comparison. “Oh yes.” He could tell that the creature was not at all pleased to hear this. He tried to explain in terms it would understand. “Put it like this: she’s more than the Moon, about the same as Sol, but nothing like as lovely as that meadow with the flowers out there.”
“Really!” For some reason, the demanding creature was truly pleased by this. Sirius hoped it would now go away and let him hide with his misery in peace. But it added thoughtfully, “Then, if she’s a luminary, I suppose something like a small volcano wouldn’t finish her off, would it?”
Sirius did his polite best not to laugh. “I’m afraid not. Luminaries are not like creatures, you know. Sol himself couldn’t finish her off without destroying himself too—unless he had a Zoi he could use on her.” Then he did not want to talk any more. He remembered that his Companion had tried to use the Zoi on him. She had knocked him nearly senseless with it while he tried to snatch it away from her.
The demanding creature seemed to be thinking. It did not say anything for a while, and Sirius could hear Sol and his Companion still talking out in the meadow. Sol must have forced the Companion to tell him her business, because she was saying, “I’m sure you have enough to do without looking for Zoi.”
“Effulgency,” Sol prompted her sweetly.
“Effulgency!” snapped the Companion. “My Consort sent me to find it before it got into the wrong hands.”
“But, Effulgency, I must offer my services in my own sphere,” Sol replied. “Your Consort would wish it. And that was one of my creatures you tried to kill just now.”
“Who cares? Creatures die all the time,” said the Companion. She sounded so much like Duffie as she said it that Sirius shivered.
“Effulgency,” Sol prompted with dreadful politeness.
“Oh—Effulgency!” said the Companion, cold and furious. “To blazes with you and your creatures! They’re not important.”
“A correction, Effulgency,” said Sol, in melting contempt. “Everything in my sphere is important to me.”
The creature in the hole seemed to share Sol’s contempt. Its voice said in Sirius’s ear, musingly, “A Zoi could finish her off, you say? Hm.”
Sirius knew he ought to get away from this hole. Sol was keeping the Companion talking so that he could. Since the creature in it did not seem unfriendly, he asked it, “Could you help me escape? You see, I’m the creature she tried to kill. That’s why I had to come in here without asking you.”
“Asking me?” said the voice. “No one asks—” It broke off, and seemed very surprised. “Does that mean you don’t know who I am?” That amused it highly. It chuckled, a huge, joyous chuckle that shook the clay walls around Sirius and cheered him as much as it puzzled him. “Then you paid me a real compliment just now, didn’t you?”
“Did I?” said Sirius, feeling stupid and confused. “But I’ve never talked to you before, have I? Er—are you male or female?”
“I’ve no idea,” was the confusing reply. “I’ve never considered it. And you have talked to me, and I’ve talked to you—ever since you were a puppy.”
“I’m afraid I’m being very stupid,” Sirius apologized. He looked carefully around the dim green hole. There was nothing there except the yellow clay walls and the strong smell. He began to think the creature must be invisible. “Is this a silly question too? What do you look like?”
“What you see,” said the voice, amused.
“But I can only see—” Sirius suddenly understood. “Earth!” he exclaimed. “How stupid of me! Do forgive me.” It was not a creature at all, it was a planet, the most beautiful and kindly he had known. Of course he had talked to Earth. He had done so every time he scoured around the meadow or splashed in the river or sniffed the air. And Earth had talked to him in return, in every living way possible—in scents and sights, in the elegance of Tibbles, the foolish charm of Patchie, in Miss Smith’s brusqueness, in Kathleen’s kindness, in Basil’s roughness and even in Duffie’s coldness. Earth contained half the universe and had taught him everything he knew. He did his best to apologize, but Earth was not offended.
“There’s no need to keep saying you’re sorry. It’s Sol’s fault. I’ve listened to him. He deliberately didn’t mention me, because you told him you liked me for being green. And I didn’t like to speak to you directly, until you were out of Sol’s sight. I knew he’d be annoyed.”
Sirius thought he did not blame Sol. He knew a number of luminaries who might be tempted to steal Earth if they knew what Earth was like. But he was a little hurt that Sol had not trusted him. Then it struck him that Earth had not been wholly honest with Sol either.
“Look here,” he said. “You know where that Zoi is, don’t you? Why haven’t you told Sol?”
“I’m not going to tell you either,” Earth said, and fell into another stormy silence.
Sirius was alarmed. He was afraid he had really offended Earth this time, and just when he needed help most. The meat-and-peppermint smell was stronger, coming in warm gusts along the hole. The real occupant had clearly scented an intruder and was on its way to investigate. Sirius scrambled hurriedly around to face the stink. “I need the Zoi,” he said to the earthy wall. “I shall die a dog if I don’t have it.”
“There are worse fates,” said Earth. “Believe me.”
“But it’s making a mess of your climate,” said Sirius.
Earth did not answer. Outside in the meadow, the Companion was losing patience. “Effulgency,” she said, high and cold, “if you don’t let me go, I shall be forced to damage this wretched planet of yours.”
“You just try!” Earth muttered at her.
At that, Sirius remembered how interested Earth had been in what a Zoi might do to the Companion. He saw that Earth was not unwilling to let him find it, if he asked for it in the right way. “Why are you hiding the Zoi?” he asked.
“Because my most unhappy child has it,” said Earth. “He hopes it might help him, and so do I. But I can’t tell you who he is, because that’s against his rules. You know that, too. His hound told you.”
The longer hairs of Sirius’s back lifted with excitement until they caught on the damp clay. “Yeff, you mean? But he wouldn’t say anything.”
“He told you the rule,” said Earth, and repeated almost exactly what Yeff had said: “No one can ask anything of Yeff’s Master unless he has run with his hounds and shared their duties.”
When Yeff had said this, it had seemed like nothing. But now Sirius knew Earth was willing to let him find the Zoi but not to tell him where it was, it sounded almost like a promise. “You mean, if I ran with the cold hounds, I might bargain with your child for the Zoi?”
“You might,” said Earth. “His rules allow him to bargain.”
“Why does he have rules like this?” said Sirius.
“All my darker children have to have strict laws,” Earth said. “Sol wouldn’t let them exist otherwise.”
There seemed such sadness in this that, at any other time, Sirius would have put his nose in his paws and thought about it. But, outside, the Companion’s voice was high and angry and Sol’s beat against it like the flames in a furnace. Inside the hole, the real occupant was making its way through the last foot or so, snarling shrilly as it came.
“I think you ought to be going now,” said Earth.
The animal’s pointed snarling face appeared in the hole. It had green eyes too, strong white teeth and reddish fur. It was quite a bit smaller than Sirius, but it was prepared to tear him to pieces all the same.
“What is it?” he asked Earth.
“Get out of here, dog!” snarled the creature. “How dare you sit in my earth!”
“It’s a vixen,” said Earth. “Vixen, I’m sorry, but I want you to help this dog. Take him through your earth and show him your other entrance.”
“I will not!” said the vixen. “I’ve a litter of cubs back there, and he goes near them over my dead body!”
“And a fat lot of good your dead body will be to your cubs!” said Earth. “Don’t be so unreasonable.”
“I promise I won’t touch your cubs,” said Sirius.
“No. You’ll come back later with men and spades and more dogs,” snapped the vixen. “I know dogs.”
“Of course I won’t,” said Sirius.
“This isn’t really a dog,” said Earth. “Look at his eyes.”
Grudgingly, with her lips drawn back from her teeth, the vixen crouched and stared up at Sirius. “Yes, I see,” she said. “But it’s not a fox either. What is it?”
“Quite another order of creature from a long way away,” Earth told her. “Now let it out through your earth before another creature comes and sets fire to you, him, your cubs and probably the whole wood too.”
Stiffly and reluctantly, the vixen turned and crawled back down the hole. “Make haste!” she said to Sirius, flicking the white tip of her brush at him. “I want you out of here.”
He squeezed himself after her. It was some distance. The smell was abominable, and grew stronger. Sirius sneezed. He wanted to stand up and stretch, but there was no space. If he had not known that it was Earth all around him, he would have panicked. At length, the vixen crawled out into a lighter, warmer place—a clayey cave, with a hole slanting up from it into bright sunlight. A number of chubby cheerful foxcubs were tumbling about in the sunny patch. Sirius thought they looked rather jolly. He would have liked to stop and play with them. They felt much the same about him. They came bundling playfully toward him, yipping excitedly, obviously under the impression that he was some sort of kindly uncle.
The vixen cuffed them fiercely aside. “Don’t go near it! And,” she added to Sirius, “touch a hair of their tails and I’ll bite your throat out!”
“I told you I won’t hurt them,” Sirius protested.
“Maybe. But I can’t have them thinking dogs are friendly,” the vixen snapped. “A fine mother I’d be if I did! Go up that hole. It comes out on the other side of the wood.” As Sirius put his head into the sunlit hole and forced his shoulders after, she added, “There’s a stream where you can get a drink down to the right.”
After all that running, Sirius was terribly thirsty. “That’s thoughtful of you,” he called back, as he squeezed his hind legs after his front.
“No it isn’t. I just want you gone,” snapped the vixen. In her voice he could hear all the strain it was to live in the wild.