That night, Ozzy stays up long past the point he should be asleep. He’s in his bedroom, but the canvas he’d shown Vira earlier is in there with him, because he hadn’t been able to sleep for the excitement of starting on the next stage of painting. Instead of painting now, though, he’s taken a pencil to the canvas to vigorously sketch out a lone figure in the middle of the greyscale flower field: a figure with big ears, sleek and elegant wings, and graceful, twisted horns…

“Wwrroowwrr…”

Behind him, Styx slinks into the room. He nudges the back of Ozzy’s heels and paws at him, a tiny whimper in his throat, but Ozzy doesn’t look up from his drawing. Instead he frowns, bushy eyebrows bunching together in the middle, and sketches out another stroke on Vira’s dress. “Not yet, Styx. Hang on, I’m almost done…”

“Rrrooww…!” 

“I said not yet,” Ozzy repeats, more firmly this time. “I want to get this just right. We can go to sleep when I’m done.” 

The paw that had been tugging at Ozzy’s pyjama pants falls to the floor. In the corner of his vision, Ozzy sees Styx curl up at the foot of the bed as he likes to sometimes, where he’s got all his sticks for comfort. 

What he doesn’t see, though, is that something is different about the pile. And what he doesn’t hear is Styx sniffing at the pile, nor the little growl that floats into the night before the tiny Doglefox takes off running.

“I pushed him away.”