Mans Best Friend

Another short story I wrote for school.

The early morning sunlight spears through the small gap between the curtains. I’m always the first one up, my foster family could be seen as a little lazy. They seem to spend hours ignoring each other and me. They can sit and stare at one point for impressive amounts of time. I get up and walk into the kitchen. I love the feeling of the tiles under my soft feet. They’re very cool and refreshing compared to the hot, suffocating carpet.

My family always have breakfast together, so I have to wait. I often go to my sister’s room in the mornings. I like to lie on top of the blankets and look out the window. She has a much nicer bed than me, and because her room is upstairs I can see the whole town from there. The white walls and terracotta roofs stand to attention in orderly rows, staring vigilantly at the encroaching sea. I think it’s an old town. It has cobbled streets and stone buildings and monuments at its hub. In the town square there is a peculiar statue. My family have taken me to see it. A man stands in armour, body faced towards the sea with his shield up and a trident in his hand, but his head is looking down to his feet, where his four legged child sits and looks obediently up towards him. There is an inscription at the base of the ancient stone, “mans best friend” it says.

Sometimes I wonder if my dad thinks I’m his best friend. He ignores me most of the time though. My sister is my best friend. She lets me sleep on her bed, she often slips me food when I’m hungry. She goes for walks with me on cold evenings when our parents sit and stare at tables and walls. She talks to me about stuff. As we stroll up and down the cobbled streets she tells me about her life. I mostly don’t understand what she’s talking about, but I can tell she is confiding in me. Normally we walk down to the statue, then we turn and start walking up a hill on the other side of the town.

There is a small track on the side of the cliff, and she tells me how some day she’s going to walk over the track and never come back. She wants to get out of this small, silent, salty town. At the top of the track we sit a while and look out at the sea. The sea is peaceful, I like it best when it lies flat like a mirror,and when I look down into it I can see the sky. Other days the sea is angry, grey and jumps up and down as if trying to climb up the cliff. The sea reminds me of my sister, sometimes her eyes are blue and when I look into them, I see the sky and its infiniteness. Other days her eyes are grey and the shadows jump and claw at the surface.

I climb slowly up the stairs and nudge the door open. As soon as I walk in I can tell something is wrong. The smell of her is faint and stale. In a panic I leap on to the bed. She’s not there. A salty breeze whispers from the window. She’s gone, she has gone to walk over the cliff and she will never come back. My instincts tell me I must follow her. She needs me. I need her. I dash down the stairs and sprint through the flap. My breathing is heavy and my tongue flaps around as I speed past the statue in the square. He looks approvingly at me, reassuring I’m doing the right thing. The track seems steeper than ever as I burn my lungs to follow her.

I finally crest the summit I get hit with her pungent aroma, an alluring mix of lavender and something else. It tickles the insides of my nose and fills me with love.

Then I see her, a slim figure standing as still as an impaled corpse, perched precariously on the edge of the cliff. I unleash a howl to call her home, and the sounds carries across the wind and struggles its way into her ears. She hears. She turns. She sees me. Tears are trickling down her cheeks like condensation down the inside of a window. Then the connection between us solidifies like a rope, and pulls us together in an embrace. She strokes my furry head and cries into my furry shoulder. When she’s finished crying, we stand up and face away from the wind, vigilantly watching the wild sea, together.