-Earth, New Mexico, Hamburger Hippo, Sly-
“It’s always hamburger hippo with you isn’t it Murray?” We made sure nothing we ordered for Shanty would upset her stomach, they had pretty good vegetarian options like burritos.
“Hey, Hamburger Hippos are the All-American experience Sly!” Yeah, with mixed foods from every other part of the world Murray.
Shanty loved the French fries and also got a large salad to go with her burrito, she was an even worse stomach than Murray and I didn’t even think that was possible because she was far smaller than our favorite hippo.
Yes, a hamburger place that had burritos, probably one of the few reasons Murray frequented it so much in Paris.
Our tour of the southern US states was going pretty well, we were heading towards southeast Texas to catch a boat to Haiti. Hopefully Carmelita wouldn’t pick up our trail until after the stars from Hollywood’s walk of fame made it to Paris.
Also, we discreetly broke up at least five drug cartels on the way for some extra cash to keep Shanty fed, I had to resist leaving my calling card on those occasions as Carmelita would jump at the chance to chase us down.
Mopsy wasn’t as classy as we expected her to be, she also wasn’t as flirtatious as she first acted, I guess she noticed that she made us uncomfortable and didn’t say much about it as we weren’t biting at the hook. She still liked to tease us and even asked me how I was going to steal Carmelita’s heart after she’s already taken mine.
That sheep could be classy though and was good at getting to know people… whether that was intimately or not was the question we didn’t need to know the answer to.
Shanty made for a good scout when it came to casing places to stay, we were even teaching her a few thief techniques. None of them were my family’s techniques of course, I always had the final say on anything like that and was currently learning how to generate accurate stand-ups of myself in different poses. I was trying to make a special one for Carmelita to have.
We put Shanty through her paces with quickly constructed obstacle courses. She wasn’t going to be the best thief in the world, but she already had some skills from being a street urchin and she was trying to learn how to be more cunning in a fight with what fighting skills she did have.
Shanty was quite a unique kid, I didn’t think any orphanage could ever hold her even if they tried their hardest. Her friends might be impressed with some of the things she’s learning, provided they weren’t as black and white as Carmelita’s views about us were.
We would have made a quick trip back to Paris, but we didn’t want Mopsy or Shanty to know where our hideout there was yet. Trust is earned, not given, even if they have already earned our respect.
Bentley was still looking into where Shanty’s three friends were and nothing has popped up yet, as for Dodo…
It was a little odd that Dodo was a living machine that would eat regular food. That metal ostrich was ridiculously friendly and could also make some really good crepes, still don’t know where he got the ingredients for them and Shanty didn’t care to find out or bother with how Dodo makes baked goods.
It wasn’t hard to separate the deadly owl from our new two legged goofy friend that seemed to now have a habit of nesting on top of the van in disguise.
Dodo’s theme today to fit in with the van, well… he already fit by being himself… we’re rubber chicken salesmen today.
We make disguising ourselves fun.
-Camden Town, morning, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dolly-
Okay, breathe, you can do this, you can approach what has to be one of the coolest things to ever happen to your family.
I liked skateboarding, hunky dogs, my brothers, my sisters, my friends, fun and all the possibilities that were opened up to us recently. You are a top dog Dolly, one of the two in this household that everyone could depend on when the chips were down… of course I would eat those chips, we were always opportunists and fish tasted pretty good too!
Just so long as that fish wasn’t cooked with too much oil, if mom had to do another health and food lecture again... well we didn’t want puppies getting sick. A refresher about what not to eat wouldn’t be too bad I guess.
So Pom was an alien, so she was ridiculously fluffy and so what if I used her butt as if it were the world’s best pillow last night.
I didn’t even know how much sleep I had been missing until I fell asleep on Pom. She was comfortable and I can see why all our brothers and sisters took to trying to sleep on her, the Puppy Pack weren’t having any nightmares just by being in her presence.
Pom felt safe, a safe bet, someone that wanted us to be safe and would keep us safe. It kind of scared me that it was so easy to feel like that around her.
It’s just too bad we couldn’t actually make her stay last forever. I wanted to know more about Pom, as there was just something about her that was slowly drawing my attention to her the more she was around.
Oh, I knew that Pom staying here was an absolutely temporary thing and my Bro was quite sure of it as well. Whenever we agreed on something, Dylan and I would eye each other to see where a shoe would drop in the wrong place.
I nuzzled one of my sisters off of me, Dee Dee soon rolled over to fall on top of Dizzy.
I giggled at the two as they snuggled up into a ball together, it was so nice to not have my sisters clutching at me and crying about the nightmares of watching me be thrown into a death machine first.
Those two were precious, like all the puppies were.
Pom was nice, in fact… we didn’t do any puppy care yesterday evening because Pom just started doing it out of nowhere. I thought she would flop flat on her face from just one evening of it, but she didn’t even look vaguely tired after doing an entire evening’s worth of puppy care.
Pom actually outlasted the Puppy Pack, that not-sheep had stamina and knew how to move around.
When I asked Dante about it, he confirmed that she had mentioned her own ‘fam’ of dogs back home that she wanted to get back to. I could connect with that feeling of wanting to stick with family on a personal level.
That there was such a thing as traveling to other worlds made me want to jump right in on that adventure of a lifetime despite all the dangers involved, but only if I had the ability to come straight home at the end of the day. Pom… I didn’t think she had that option.
Aliens, monsters and magic. Our world used to seem so normal and tame… until we learned that there was like this whole hidden side to it. We never really went very far from our comfort zones in Camden Town or went looking for trouble on purpose, I usually caused enough trouble by myself on a good day.
So how do I approach Pom, how would I even begin to thank her for helping out my ‘fam’ with their trauma just by being here with us?
I was the only one currently awake and I carefully started wading through the mass of puppies Pom had around her. Today… I think… that I was actually going to do some chores.
Dylan would surely flip out about me doing that for once!
Speaking of the space case, my step brother Dylan was snuggled up under a pile of puppies as well and looked too comfortable to wake.
Bro and Hunter were slowly rebuilding their relationship fully based on honesty this time around.
I made my way downstairs and blinked as I saw Dante just setting up the tables.
“Dante?” My voice made him jerk away and yip in fright, I giggled at him as he flailed around with a pile of bowls falling all over the place.
“Oh, morning Dolly.” He picked up the bowls and continued setting up the table. “Wait… were you actually going to do...”
“Nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I hastily said, this made my brother chuckle at me.
“Right, you actually doing chores… what was I thinking… you’re just going to help me with the kibble pump and make sure I’m doing things right from the sidelines.” Wow, Dante certainly had me pegged and I couldn’t back out now. “So what’s got you up early this morning Dolly?”
“Why do you think Dante? I slept soundly last nice and woke up happy.” I sighed as I moved over to operate the kibble pump, while Dante took up the hose and prepared to fill the bowls. “These last few nights with Pom have been good for us, but you know that it won’t last right? Pom’s going to want to find a way home and… I don’t know how to approach her.”
“You’re overthinking that Dolly, Pom isn’t really complicated.” Dante looked a bit concerned as I hit the button on the accordion, but no explosion of kibble all over the place this time… thankfully. Dawkins’s kibble pump was always a bit touchy, but Dante seemed to be handling the even flow just fine as he evenly filled the bowls with the food that flowed out like water. “Have you ever considered why we don’t just out ourselves as animalistic? I mean, we can read and we know how to write and the only problem that is keeping us from being seen as smarter than we are is that we speak specifically in ‘animal’. That’s really all that truly separates us from the animalistic.”
“I… have never actually thought about that honestly.” Now that I think of it, neither has Dylan, Dawkins or any of the other smarter dogs in our family. “I think it’s that we like things simpler even if we’re smart enough to, mostly, understand bipeds and animalistic people. Still… we can barely pass as animalistic Dante. Pom would certainly pass with flying colors if you didn’t know that she came from somewhere else and wasn’t of this world. If we outed ourselves, people would start expecting more from us and… well they’d tried to mess with the ‘fam’ and I think we’re doing just fine flying under the radar.”
“Except for the occasional kibble shortages. The need for money to feed all of us is slowly working mom and dad into the ground. The house needs a good plumber thanks to Diesel’s digging messing up the infrastructure. There’s the messes you cause by being irresponsible. There’s the messes Dylan causes by being too uptight. Dawkins once blew a hole in our roof with a makeshift rocket powered elevator we would never use. Think about the amount of flea powder we needed to finally clear out this entire house of fleas. Da Vinci’s tongue is still blue after one incident, blue Dolly! I’m still surprised that absolutely nobody has noticed that we are far more intelligent than we appear.” Once he finished filling up the bowls with kibble, he shut off the pump. “We’re a mess Dolly, one huge clumped up mess that somehow barely works out for us. Being seen as animalistic would make things far too hard for us to really handle, so is it any wonder that my predictions were always about doom befalling us?! My horrifying thoughts about our lives aside, do we have any more nuts, vegetables and other stuff for Pom’s breakfast?”
“Yeah, we should, I know we have plenty of carrots for Dorothy’s teething at least. She loves gnawing on them.” I knew it would still be a while before Dorothy got her spots, but she’s recently started talking on our level and mom was trying to find the time to teach her… which was hard when she had work at the hospital with Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave was cool with us being smart, as he certainly hasn’t told anyone about all the dogs living in this house. Dante’s right though, we’re a mess, but were sticking together through thick and thin. “You’re right Dante, best to keep up the animal angle… at least until we can no longer avoid it. It almost feels like it is inevitable for us.”
“Scary thought… the future… to think I’m going to be better about my predictions... and they are going to be far more accurate now than just some random rambling.” Dante stated in a solemn tone, he was the one always predicting the end of our way of life. I could certainly see why, as he’s obviously thought about this even before we found out his predictions were a real thing. “Well Dolly… it’s your favorite part of doing chores. Go ahead and get them moving.”
“Breakfast!” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the house.
I heard the stirring of hungry bellies and several pups exclaiming ‘food’ and ‘breakfast’ already. That number was increasing exponentially as hundreds of paws started charging for the dining room and saw my smiling face on the way.
I loved yelling and getting a reaction from the Puppy Pack as they surged in to start eating, they could just clean their teeth after breakfast.
Huh… another thing that we took care of that bipeds and animalistic people wouldn’t expect of us. Speaking of, I should probably floss more.
The tidal wave of puppies left a dizzy looking Pom on the floor to stare at the ceiling, she let out a quiet huff and tried to say something. She only got raspy sounding air for her trouble.
I worriedly watched her roll onto her hooves despondently to look in Dante’s direction as he set about making a bowl of food specifically with her needs in mind.
Hunter and Dylan walked into the room chatting with one another, they were actually working things out and were now interacting far more casually.
I was actually happy that Hunter was okay given his current circumstances, he didn’t exactly have things easy right now and I had already gave him a pass for saving Dorothy.
Dylan was the only holdout among us, because he didn’t like people messing with our family.
I sat down and started to eat and gave Pom some glances as she slowly ate her food, I looked up at the portrait Da Vinci made of her.
It was Pom smiling shyly with puppies crawling on her with a sunset backdrop, Da Vinci never skimps on the details that mattered.
-An hour later-
I finally got the guts to approach Pom. I cleared my throat and drew Pom’s attention away from giving one of my brothers a belly rub in the living room.
“Excuse me, but there are some things I wanted to ask you about… you know… like where you’re from, what you do there… that sort of thing.” Tilting her head at me as I held out the notepad I brought, she eventually nodded and took it into her left hoof and I quietly shooed off my brother. “I just want to know more about you. I know you won’t be around forever, but… you’re seriously helping my ‘fam’ get back to normal and I can’t thank you enough for that. We haven’t really asked much about you outside of Dante spending time with you, mostly because he seriously needs your help with that magical dog stuff.”
Pom started writing something down and when she stopped, she showed it to me as puppies started gathering around us.
“You’re name is Pom Lambchop, heh that last name is kind of funny knowing what we do.” The puppies all around joined me in giggling. “You were born in Meadow Hills, a mostly quiet place full of flowers and sunshine. Sounds nice… your home is now the city of Huoshan, on the side of a… seriously, a volcano!?”
I just looked up at Pom and she nodded, I went back to her notes as the puppies seemed to find my interactions with Pom interesting.
I felt a strange twinge in my gut, but I didn’t know why.
“Wait… you’re a guard, isn’t that like a police officer?” She took the notepad and wrote on it and gave it back to me. “You might not have a job when you get back to it and you were the head of… the canine division? Well if you need someone to vouch for you guarding dogs, then you’re doing a good job of that at least.”
Pom huffed and wilted.
“Yeah, I didn’t honestly think that was a good joke either… so you’re all alone with being stuck on this world huh?” Sending me a look, Pom shook her head no. “Huh, that means there are others that came here like you?”
She nodded yes and wrote down four names.
“Smolder a dragon from the Dragon Lands, which Huoshan is a part of. Her friend Ocellus from the Changeling Hive. Shanty the island goat and her companion Dodo… a mechanical ostrich?” I looked to Pom to see her nod. “They are all lost somewhere on this world and you don’t know how to find them. Would you want some help with that?”
She took the pad and wrote on it. For some reason I felt a hunch that she was going to dismiss needing help.
“It’s not our problem and you will eventually have to set out once you figure out some way of getting their attention or know where to go… that and you don’t want to bother us with your problems.” I added that last part dryly as she didn’t write it down, but Pom still nodded at my assessment. “Well you’ll always be welcome here at least, until you can figure things out. I’m sure they are all fine and you’ll find your friends eventually.”
She took the notepad again and wrote something down, the puppies were looking to me curiously as if there was something off about me.
I felt perfectly fine, excellent even.
“Find them and then hopefully find a way back home? Well, maybe it would help if you wait until you get your voice back first.” It looked like my words were being tossed around in her head and she sighed while nodding. “Great, so… what are you going to do now?”
Pom was giving this some thought and she eventually wrote something down before passing it to me.
“Get a job and try not to be a big burden on our already stressed house? Don’t worry about it, we’re not that horribly stressed.” Well it wasn’t exactly like we were keeping it a secret and Dante recently pointed it out to me that we can hardly go a week without a disaster that could end our home. It would only take one really bad disaster to ruin all of our lives. “How are you going to get a job? I think you’d need at least some kind of identification and well… you’re an illegal alien, so that’s another problem.”
Pom was illegally in our world, as were her friends for that matter. They were all split up and I was already seeing that this was a problem that was far too big for our family to handle.
All the puppies whined and some were looking to me to figure out a way to help Pom like she’s helping us, I didn’t have all the answers or any answers for that matter.
We had little in the ways of helping aside from giving Pom a place to stay while she was here, we already had enough problems as it was and… Pom has been through a lot.
I felt my heart going out to Pom and something felt off for a second, like I was being rebuffed about something yet there was like this feeling of a string building up. It’s like I just walked into a thick bit of webbing.
I shook my head. Dylan might have an idea, but he and Hunter were still hashing out their… Hunter!
“I think I might have an idea as to where you can get a job and some help!” I said suddenly, while standing up and wagging my tail. This made Pom tilt her head at me. “Well Hunter is having a problems, aren’t we all, but he has plenty of money! He can pay you to work for him and maybe he can even aim some of his company’s resources to helping you out.”
Putting a small hopeful smile on Pom’s face was worthwhile, now if only I could tell Pom about a burgeoning thing I was feeling around her.
I wanted to spend more time in her presence and I felt something tugging me towards her, not physically just something that… that… I couldn’t actually describe it. It’s like I could ignore Hansel entirely just for this.
“Pom there’s something I want to ask you about magic, but before that it feels like I would do almost anything to help you and…” Before I could finish my statement, I tried to pull on this feeling to see what it was. Maybe I had some magic?
I felt something suddenly snap into focus between us, between me and Pom.
No matter how hard Pom resisted it with every ounce of her being, it was like it was instantaneous and nothing could stop whatever just suddenly surged into place between us.
Pom looked completely horrified and I felt… really strange.
“What… was that?” The stare I received from Pom felt quite forlorn. “That… this… it’s just weird and I can’t really explain any of this. What did I just do to myself and why are you so worried about it?”
I could feel Pom was slightly upset with me, but what she was more highly upset with was mostly… herself for letting whatever that was just happen?
Why would she be upset with herself about this feeling, she was great and… in fact I could almost feel her worries, anxieties from this and…
Okay, what the dog was going on?!
Pom put both her hooves to her head and shook it while slowly dragging her hooves down her face, she slowly took up her notepad and wrote something down with a large frown on her face.
The not-sheep looked at me sternly as she passed me the notepad.
“We need to break it… break what?” I asked, feeling something awful coming from Pom and a large sense of dread that I didn’t know I could feel around her.
Whatever she wanted broken, I didn’t feel like I wanted that to go away whatever it was.
What she wrote down next was confusing.
“The bond that formed between us? Why... what happened to me and… why would you want to…?” I think… I think I might have messed something up… like big time. Something that not even Dylan could solve with his odd ability to acquire ninety nine fur dryers on such short notice... we got a lot of mileage out of those too. “Whatever this is, we’ll try to make it work out, okay?”
-Pom-
What have I done, I didn't want to take anyone from this family!
Why couldn't I stop it, WHY?!
-Dolly-
Pom didn’t feel like she wanted this, but felt like she was slowly accepting that it happened.
It’s odd and it felt like we knew each other…
It felt like we were… familiar.