Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

The Dark Place

Waffles woke with the smell, and the changing of the light. It buzzed softly when it changed, a sound that was difficult to hear but not quite impossible. There was no light in the sky here on this strange place, not like there was light in her memories, on the place where the sky burned, and the ground was filled with the smell of things that lived and died, and had lived and died for a very long time. Here the ground was just beginning to smell of life, and that life was strange and unusual , smells that she did not recognize.

She had lived much of her life in the small place with the metallic smell, and the ground that thrummed and hummed under her feet, but in these last three years of her life she had lived in the dark open place with the strange soil smells and the weird other animals. It was hard to tell if she liked it here or not. At first she had because there had been open spaces and new strange smells, but then she had disliked it when Adam vanished and she couldn't find him again, and this time he had stayed away for a long time, what felt like forever, but then she liked it again when he came back, and suddenly things were more normal than they had ever been.

She liked this new version of life, even if she worried when Adam went away, worried that he would leave forever next time.

So, it was important he be the first thing she check on.

Now there was just one other thing.

She walked with a few quiet steps, paws soft against the cold floor and nosed her pup once in the side of the head. Pancake jerked upright, eyes opening in the near darkness glowing like they always did, like a cat's might glow in the beam of a stick light. She blinked and sat up licking at Waffle's face. Waffles nosed her again urging her to keep quiet but to get up.

Pancake followed her mother's lead, stretching out luxuriously before standing and trotting to her mother's side. Waffles nosed her again to quiet her down. The two legs were sleeping after all, and she didn't want to wake them up. She liked it when they were asleep because that meant they were relaxed. They stood by the big window that looked down over the strange dark place with the strange smells and slowly watched as the distant light changed from blue to yellow.

Waffles felt like this could be the time of day back where she was born, when the sky was just beginning to turn from dark blue to simple blue. It wasn't something Pancake would ever know, since her daughter was born here in the strange dark place and thought the smells were pretty normal.

Waffles nosed her pup again for attention.

This was important, she wanted her pup to know this for when she was no longer alive. Waffles liked the idea of her daughter being here, so she could do all the things that Waffles did for the two legs when the two legs didn't know it. All of the important things.

And now that Pancake was here, she was determined to teach pancake to do those things too, and that meant waking up when the blue was turning yellow.

That meant walking quietly too, and she nudged Pancake again with her nose to urge her to be more quiet, like they were stalking something. Pancake did her best, but she still wasn't very good at it. pancake was big, much bigger than waffles herself, so she had a lot of weight to be quiet on, which would only make things harder.

But she needed to try.

It had taken waffles a while to decide what was most important when Pup Kay was born. When Adam wasn't there of course Pup Kay was most important, but when Adam returned it had taken Waffles some time to decide. Later she figured that pup Kay was still most important, despite how much she had missed Adam.

So that is where they needed to go first. Sometimes Waffles slept with Pup Kay, but that was mostly if she could smell soemthing odd on him, like he was sick. When he was healthy, she mostly slept halfway in between where she could hear what was going on the best in all corners of their den. She trotted with pancake at her heels down the little hallway and into Pup kay's room. She paused so they could sniff the air to sense if anything was wrong.