While she watched the numbers tick, she saw what looked like a small black horse lolloping long-leggedly toward her. Bony, starveling. Sweet skull face that came up level with her waist. He rubbed against her hip, then planted his boxy head against her stomach and the knot of anger loosened. His ears curved at the top like delicate horns.

“Where’ve I been all your life, huh, boy?” She wondered how the dog could even walk on that asphalt. Must have been hot as hell, even this late in the day. Singeing those footpads. She knelt and pressed her palm against the ground. Too hot. She tried to touch his feet, and the dog pranced a little distance away.

Izzy walked up to the cashier. The dog followed her.

“Who’s this?” she asked the guy behind the glass.

“He’s a beauty, huh? Might be pure Great Dane. We call him Dog. Original, huh?”

“Yours?”

“He showed up about two weeks ago, and we’ve been taking care of him, but we were going to call Animal Control today.”

“Two weeks? Like since Halloween?”

“Yeah, I think. Something like that.”

The dog began to whine softly. It sounded almost like a high human whistle.

“I’ll take him,” Izzy said. She bent down and looked into Dog’s eyes. They had a familiar greenish cast or maybe it was just a trick of the light. Dog. Dog Gone, she thought.

“I see you and I hear you, Dog Gone.” She rubbed his ear between her thumb and forefinger the way one might touch a rose petal to coax out its sweetness. Someone or something had taken a precise bite out of the side of the ear. Dog stopped whining and leaned in to lick her face. Even the whiff of warm dog breath didn’t lessen the charm. “You and him both got gone at the same time? It’s better I have you instead.”

Dog sat with his head in Izzy’s lap on the way to the grocery store. The animal’s square jaw lay heavy, comforting, against her thigh.

She bought the biggest bag of dog food she could find, realizing it wouldn’t be cheap to care for this boy. She bought bottled water, and also eggs, milk, cheese, peanut butter, honey, bread, and vegetables, although she didn’t like the idea of spending so much, and she still wasn’t hungry. But now she had not one but two other creatures to care for. And she needed fuel for her mission. Though she wasn’t exactly sure what it was anymore.

Maybe her mission now was just to grieve the Cyrus she’d thought she’d known.

◆◆◆

When they got home, Dog nosed Yard who retreated—three feet and a head—into his shell until Izzy called Dog off and offered Yard some shredded kale. She fed Dog, too, and forced herself to eat a spinach omelet. Then she bathed Dog in the bathtub, dried him off with a towel, and made him a bed out of more towels. Yard, emboldened, would have none of this and, with a combination of elephantine lumber and duck-like waddle that Dog seemed to find quite fascinating, pushed his way onto the makeshift bed. Her tortoise had changed, Izzy thought. Maybe they’d both changed. In response to Yard’s advances, Dog wriggled off the pile of towels, and eventually climbed onto the futon where he managed to curl his entire body into the crook of Izzy’s legs. The warm weight of him kept her from getting up and shattering glass.