Needed Too: Part Four by tdyans |  |
Dantam's eyes opened and he blinked a few times at the
darkness of the junkyard, wondering what had woken him in the middle of the
night. Then he looked toward his barrel and noticed--it was empty. Dantam thought
he could feel his heart drop into his stomach and then come leaping back up
into his throat, where it began to beat wildly as he stood up quickly from the
ground, no longer anywhere near sleep. Tessa was gone.
He padded over to the barrel, sticking his head
inside and looking around just to assure himself that his tired eyes hadn't
deceived him, but there was nothing there. Dantam realised a fear that he'd
managed to keep hidden even from himself up until that point--that the kind,
pretty cloud Gelert would suddenly remember who her owner was or would simply
get tired of sleeping in a junkyard and leave.
Suddenly, a slight sound outside made Dantam's
ears stand up, and he spun around to spot a silhouette with curling ears and
tail outlined in the moonlight at the edge of the junkyard pets' encampment.
Dantam let out a sigh of relief and slowly walked over toward Tessa, whose back
was turned to him as she wandered aimlessly along the edges of the clearing.
"Hey," he said quietly, "what are you doing up?"
At his voice, Tessa whirled around with a slight
gasp, the shock on her face slowly leaving as she recognised Dantam's dark features
in the shadows. "Oh, Dantam," she said breathlessly. "You scared me half to
death."
"I could say the same thing," Dantam said, but
when she gave him a puzzled look, he just shook his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to frighten you. But what's the matter? Why aren't you asleep?"
"Oh," Tessa said, avoiding Dantam's gaze. "Well,
I--I had a dream--"
"A nightmare?"
"No, no not really a nightmare. I had a dream...
about my owner."
Dantam's eyes widened. "You--you remember--about your owner then?" he asked, uncertain of the emotions that were swirling
through his head right now.
But Tessa shook her head sadly. "I've been having
these dreams ever since the beginning," she explained. "But it's not like remembering.
I know that I'm seeing things from my old life, that the person in my dreams
is my owner--I sense it. But I can never see his face; I can never figure out
who he really is. And everything else just blends together until I just can't
understand any of it and I feel worse than I would if I didn't remember anything
at all..." Tessa's voice faded away as tears of frustration began rolling down
her cheeks.
Distressed, Dantam sidled up to her and put a
paw around her shoulders. "Hey, hey," he soothed. "It'll be okay. I'm sure that
soon you'll remember your owner for real." Tessa nodded miserably, but continued
to cry. "Come on," Dantam said, desperately searching for some solution. "Let's
go for a walk." He led her through the familiar maze of garbage and out of the
junkyard to stand atop the little green hill outside, where they could breathe
in the cool, night air, gaze up at the full moon, and talk without alerting
any of the other pets.
Dantam had been carefully planning a comforting
speech for their arrival at this destination, but before he could speak, Tessa
sniffed back her tears and asked, "Dantam, tell me about Madison." Dantam's
mouth simply hung open at the request, and Tessa hurried to explain. "It's just,
if I can't remember my owner, it would at least be nice to hear what it's like
to have one. And you don't talk about her much... But if you'd rather not, I
understand..."
Dantam turned away from her questioning eyes,
considering. What Tessa had said was true. He didn't talk about Maddy much.
But that didn't mean that he didn't think about her--all the time. He just liked
to keep her tucked away close to his heart--his own little secret. But when
he turned back to look at Tessa again and explain this to her, he found different
words pouring out of his mouth as he opened it. "Maddy... Maddy was a wonderful
owner. She had enough Neopoints that she could buy me anything that I ever wanted,
and she did. But the more I look back on it now, the more I realise that she
didn't prove that she cared through money but through other things--littler
things."
"Like what?" Tessa asked, sitting down and nodding
for Dantam to do the same.
Dantam sighed as he rested his rump on the damp,
grassy ground and turned his face thoughtfully into the cool breeze that blew
by. "I had this plushie when I was a pup," he began finally. "It was just an
ordinary yellow Gelert plushie--nothing special--but it was my favourite toy
in the world. I think I must have had it from the time Maddy brought me home,
and I took it with me everywhere, so it's not surprising that it was more than
a little worn. And there was this spoiled little Usul who lived across the street
from us--"
Tessa chuckled lightly. "Oh, she was spoiled,
was she?"
Dantam ducked his head and felt his cheeks burning.
He thought to himself that he'd blushed more in the short time that he'd known
Tessa than in the rest of his life put together. The surprising thing was, he
didn't really mind. He smiled sheepishly, cleared his throat, and began again,
doing his best to pretend not to notice when Tessa leaned her head against his
shoulder.
"Okay, so maybe we were both a little spoiled;
it was hard not to be in that neighbourhood! The point is, one day I was playing
in my front yard when she walked over, grabbed my plushie, and demanded that
I give it to her. Naturally, I refused, which led to a tug-of-war battle with
the plushie, which resulted in a plushie ripped in two. I know it was just a
plushie, but I was just a pup, and I was so upset. Maddy came out to find me
sobbing in the yard, and she scooped me and the plushie up and brought us inside.
She could have easily afforded another yellow Gelert plushie--that would have
been pocket change to her. But instead, she wiped away my tears, set me in her
lap, and sat there and sewed my plushie up until it was as good as new--with
a few added stitches. Somehow she knew--she just knew that she couldn't simply
replace it, that no other plushie, even if it looked exactly the same, could
ever be as special to me..." Dantam trailed off, staring aimlessly at the starry
sky, and then nodded and said, almost to himself, "She was a good owner."
Tessa watched Dantam watching the stars for a
few moments, and then she asked another question. "Where do you think she is
now?"
Dantam's gaze swung down from the sky to Tessa
and a troubled look moved over his face. He opened and closed his mouth a few
times, searching for answers. "I--I don't know," he finally stammered, his
voice tight with emotion. "When she left--she said that she was sick. And I
was too busy worrying about myself to even think about what that might mean...
She always took the time to show me that she loved me, but at that moment I
was too selfish to do the same--" Dantam halted his words, reserving his energy
to stubbornly hold back the tears that were threatening to overflow as he stared
at the ground.
This time it was Tessa's turn to put a comforting
paw on his shoulder. "Dantam," she spoke softly, "I'm sure that wherever Maddy
is, she knows you love her--just like you know she loves you."
Dantam looked into Tessa's sympathetic eyes,
and after a few moments he gave a shaky, but genuine, smile. "Thank you, Tessa,"
he said. "I'm sure your owner feels the same way too." Tessa turned away from
his gaze at that, but she nodded anyway. Dantam wondered what he'd said wrong,
but didn't ask.
The two Gelerts sat quietly together for a few
more minutes, and then, without having to say anything, they both got up and
headed back down the hill and into the junkyard. Worn out by their discussion,
Tessa climbed into the barrel, closed her eyes, and whispered, "Goodnight, Dantam,"
just before she fell asleep.
"Goodnight, Tessa," Dantam whispered back, but
instead of lying down to sleep, he found himself remaining to stand protectively
over her. While he watched the beautiful cloud Gelert sleep, Dantam's heart
clenched as he realised how much he'd come to care for her in the past weeks.
He cared for all of the pets who came to live with him in the junkyard, of course,
but this was different. What he felt now, for her, was something deeper--and
he didn't want to feel it.
To be continued... |
