Chapter Text
Flour, flour, flour…
Zoey folded miserably over the push-bar of her miserably, failingly still-way-too-empty trolley and sighed into her phone for the fourth time in as many minutes. Even pretending that she was Korea’s top racer in the trolley division wasn’t helping. She needed a pit stop—a refresh of her gas tank ASAP…and someone genuinely needed to look at the wonky wheel on the front of the trolley that rattled and clattered with every sullen step.
On the other end of the line, Mira—Zoey’s incredible, wonderful, stupendous best friend of five years—paused in her monotone, scathing report of the conference she was stuck watching.
‘Yo. Am I boring you?’
‘What? No! Don’t be silly. No. Never have, never could.’
Well. There was submarine night…she thought, before squishing said thought into a teeny tiny ball and eating with vigorous irritation because no! Submarine night was fun! And always interesting! It was just…so thorough. Which was cute! But the maps… charts… numbers… So many numbers. Why so many numbers?
Mira waited patiently because she was a godsend and knew how Zoey got, all distracted all the time; jumping a few times in place to re-invigorate the brain systems and jump-start—ha, literally!—her thoughts, Zoey said,
‘It’s just—blegh. You know? Me and shopping. We’re nemesii. Nemeses?’
’Nemeses.’
‘Right. We’re nemeses and I’m fighting for my life out here!’
At the end of the aisle, she shifted gears on her high-powered Formula One super-cart; with a jog-and-hop to put more weight on the back wheels of her trolley, Zoey drifted around the corner, all squealing tyres, burning rubber, and the thrill of the race surging through her veins like nitro. She nearly killed a bespectacled guy in a suit (or, nearly bruised his precious shins) and felt guilty about it for half a second—but then he went and opened his mouth to scoff something unflattering, so Zoey stopped feeling guilty and instead tried her very best to beam it telepathically into his brain that he looked shit in his suit and that Mira would rock it ten times better than he did.
Whatever.
Drifting into the next aisle, Zoey tuned back in to catch Mira partway through an apology-tinted non-apology.
‘—and if this seminar had wrapped up when it said it would, I would have gone myself. It’s not fair to make you do my chore—‘
Zoey (fondly) rolled her eyes—no one in the world was better at self-recrimination than Mira—and plucked churro-flavoured turtle chips from the shelf. She must have made a noise because Mira told her, not unkindly, to,
‘Put it back.’
‘Put what back?’
‘Whatever you just picked up.’
‘You don’t know that I—‘
‘Zoey.’
‘Fine, fine. I put it back. I put it back!’ she insisted when Mira expressed silent yet palpable disbelief. ‘Anyway, at least it stopped you talking about the chore wheel. You know that thing is a suggestion not a sacred oath, right?’
‘It should be.’
‘But it’s not.’
‘But it should be.’
‘But it’s not. And I can’t believe I’m saying this because it should be obvious but obviously I’m happy to help while you fill your noggin with knowledge—even if you just kinda didn’t want to do the groceries, I’d help. But I would be concerned. I know you love doing the groceries. That’s a weird phrase. Doing the groceries. Is that normal or a me-ism? Grocery shopping. Doing the shopping. Getting the groceries? All I’m saying,’ she hooked herself back on track, ‘is I’m happy to help but I’m not so sure how much help I am. The organisation system in this store is bonkers. I’ve been trying to find the flour for, like, an hour.’
‘You’ve been gone for thirteen minutes—‘
‘Time works different in the demon realm? Check and mate.’
‘—and it’s in aisle three. With all the other dry ingredients. Demon realm?’
Zoey lifted her head from her despairing hunch just enough to check the aisle number—nine—and spun back around with her fifth sigh.
‘Yeah, demon realm. You know, gloom and despair. A realm of absolute evil. The sound system is going haywire because of this storm, there’s water on the floor and everyone’s shoes are squeaky, and I didn’t bring my headphones because they’d absolutely get wet, which I cannot risk because they’re already not looking so hot—‘
‘What? What’s wrong with them? Aren’t they new?’
Zoey heaved a sixth sigh.
’It’s— Whatever, they’re fine, it’s a whole thing, it’s not important.’
‘It’s important to you,’ Mira countered, voice firm, ‘so it’s important to me.’
It took everything Zoey had not to explode on the spot. For one, the store really didn’t need another hazard to deal with. For two, she was a big girl and had to get over her half-decade fully-impossible crush at some point and it might as well be right now.
‘That’s very sweet of you. You know what would be sweeter?’
‘To never make you go shopping again?’
‘To never make me go shopping again alone,’ Zoey corrected.
Now, she was pretty sure she was in the right aisle this time—aisle three, check! dry ingredients, check!—but her eyes were having trouble with the labels, bouncing from item to item without pause. Her eyes gave an aggravated throb at being asked to focus up. Rubbing them, she had to laugh.
‘How come this is so fun when we go together and sucks so much ass when it’s just me?’
‘Did you take your meds today?’
‘Did you take your meds today?’ Zoey repeated in an unflattering imitation. ‘Yes!’
‘Did you actually take them or did you pick up the bottle, look at it, then put it down again because you thought you took them?’
‘…The first one. Probably.’
‘Okay,’ Mira said, doubtfully.
‘I did!’
’Sure. Have you found the flour?’
‘No.’
‘Do you see the weird sign at the end of the aisle? Okay, go there. Look up to the middle shelf—’
‘Rude.’
‘The top middle shelf.’
‘I’m not short.’
‘Even I have to look up at the top middle shelf,’ Mira lied, like a liar. ‘The flour bag is bright pink with a white stripe. We only need a little bag, do not go for the big one.’
‘Wow. It’s like you’re here with me,’ Zoey told her, half-impressed, half-irritated by the reminder that Mira wasn’t, and shrugged the biggest bag of flour off her shoulder and back onto the shelf. It let out a faint wheeze of powder from a very small rip in the paper—which could have been made by anyone—and Zoey patted it, apologetic, before stealing its baby. ‘Aw, Mira, you should be here with me. We could pick out our flour baby together. It’s so tiny and cute.’
‘Please don’t call it a flour baby.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ll be killing it later when I make us dinner?’
‘…Flour nemesis.’
‘Good. Now, if you did the list in order like I suggested, next should be vegetables,’ Mira redirected her with all the cool aplomb of her guy-in-a-chair. The Oracle to her Batman. The Player to her Carmen Sandiego. The Q to her Bond. Wait.
‘Are you reading from a second list or do you have this memorised?
Without missing a beat, Mira said,
‘Whichever will make you tease me less.’
‘Mira!’
‘Vegetables, Zoey. Preferably before the store floods?’
‘Fine. I’ll tease you later,’ she said, not realising how suggestive it sounded until the words left her mouth and hung in the air between her and an other shopper, an ancient raisin of a woman, who looked shocked just long enough for Zoey’s entire body to cringe, then chortled and winked as she moved on.
Wait! Zoey wanted to yell after her. You don’t understand! You misheard! I’m talking to my tall, beautiful, clever housemate! Not a partner!
‘Hrg,’ was what she did say, in pitiful mortification.
’Someone heard that?’
‘Mhm.’
‘Old lady?’
‘Mhm.’
’Sucks to be you. So, the carrots—‘
Phone-Mira was a decent stand-in for the real thing but she couldn’t save Zoey from the Horrors. (To be fair to Phone-Mira, even Real-Mira couldn’t do that.)
Squeaky shoes.
Trolley wheels.
Flickering lights in the refrigerated section.
The sting of torn skin where Zoey had gnawed at her thumb, forced to make the potentially life-altering choice between shrimp chips and sweetcorn.
The Zoey who staggered out of the store seventeen minutes behind schedule was a sweating, swearing, and bloodied mess (self-inflicted, minor: the thumb thing) but most importantly—she was a survivor. Triumphant.
Henceforth, she would be known by all and sundry as Mira’s right hand, her chosen soldier, her most trusted snack advisor, her silly rabbit.
Every item on the list was ticked off. The receipt was accepted—
‘Give. It. To. Me,’ Zoey had grunted, planting her sneaker against the self-service counter as the computer held onto the slip of paper like a dog with a bone, mechanisms growling at her
—folded, and tucked lovingly (normally. Tucked normally) away for Mira’s inevitable examination. And now she began the long march home, laden with the spoils of war.
A great victory!
Zoey made it most of the way home before the storm…changed.
It really did look weird, she decided, peering up at the roiling waves of cloud, and wished that she’d been more insistent that morning.
‘Does that storm look weird to you?’
Mira had abandoned the hallway mirror to join her in the kitchen, brushing long pink hair back over her shoulder as she put in the last of her half-dozen earrings. As she glanced obligingly out the window, the light caught in brown eyes and the gleam of gold between her fingers; thus very understandably distracted, Zoey had almost missed her very casual,
‘No.’
‘Seriously? But it’s red! Kinda. Sometimes. Just watch…There! See?’
If it hadn’t so clearly been a storm, Zoey might have thought it a cloud of ash; she’d seen a wildfire or two in her time in California, though, and these clouds weren’t at all the same.
Mira squinted over her glasses. ‘I think that means it might hail.’
‘That’s green.’
‘Hm. Pollution, then. And as much as I would love to spend my day looking at weird clouds with you—‘
‘So you agree. It is weird.’
‘—some of us don’t have the day off. Breakfast is in the oven. Should still be warm. And I have that video conference this evening, remember, so I’ll be back early to set up. Four at the latest. Are you still okay to go to the store?’
‘I only said I would like a million times.’
‘You’re the best. Okay, I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now. Mind if I…?’
Warmth brushed Zoey’s fingers as Mira had stolen her mug and drunk with a low hum of approval. Pleasure, even. A second later, the mug was back in Zoey’s hands, less a sip of coffee but with the vibrant addition of a pink perfect imprint of her lips against the ceramic.
Zoey shook her head.
Focus.
She could forgive past-Zoey for being distracted by the mental mathematics of whether or not it would be creepy to drink from her own mug, lips touching where Mira’s had been, or to dwell on the idea that at that very moment, Mira’s mouth tasted identical to her own. She also forgave past-Zoey for having to sit down right there in the kitchen when her knees gave out, because that was absolutely a thousand per cent justified. But it did mean that now-Zoey was out beneath the bulk of the storm as it swarmed overhead and despite her earlier misgivings, it suddenly didn’t seem like she had misgave—misguve?—misgifted?—enough.
The storm had been normal when she’d left to get the groceries. Normal-ish.
Slightly heavier than most storms, with big droplets that fell like knocking fists. Polite, at first, and then rapidly less polite and more insistent. Like it was asking for something. Like it was asking Zoey, specifically, for something.
Maybe that’s why shopping had been so hard. The rain, drumming, drumming distantly, an insistent question at the threshold of her senses.
Or maybe she had forgotten to take her meds, like Mira suggested.
It didn’t feel like that, though.
It felt like…weird.
Weird, weird, weird.
She kept an eye on it as she took the familiar roads, worry churning in her belly. The rain fell harder, faster. The clouds spread until every inch of the sky had been eaten up by the storm. She had just passed the point of no return—where it would be equally as much effort to go back to the store and wait out the storm as it would be to finish the trek home—when the sky tore open along a jagged line.
Lightning. Had to be. Even if it wasn’t like any lightning Zoey had seen before, its edges blue-bright as it split out, forking into a hundred tongues flicking across the sky. It was so close, yet it didn’t strike out at any of the lightning rods atop the buildings. Thunder followed, a deafening clap, so loud Zoey almost couldn’t hear it. She could feel it, rumbling in the cavern of her chest.
As if the lightning had been a starting gun, the rain finally dropped with purpose (to drown her, specifically, it seemed) and the somewhat miserable slop homeward became a fight for her very life.
Within seconds, the first casualty was lost; the wind snatched at Zoey’s hat, ripped it out of reach and then out of sight as visibility closed to no more than an inch past the end of her nose. It was like standing under a waterfall! Her hair was plastered to her scalp, flyaways Grudge-esque tendrils smeared dark to cheeks and brow and rain had managed to push past the bouncer (Mira’s “borrowed” wet-weather jacket). Not that it would be hard—the jacket was a size too big. It felt nice, usually, like being wrapped up in Mira’s spicily perfumed hug, but she was paying for her theft now with gross discomfort as rain quickly soaked through shirt to skin.
Gone were the orienting sounds of other people, music, beeping traffic. All she could hear was that crashing drumbeat—the knocking, so loud and so close now, like her head was the drum.
Still—it could be worse.
All she needed was to get to the top of the hill and she was pretty sure she could find the entry to the apartment block from there. Easy! So long as she was headed up, she was going in the right direction. And the groceries were safe in the waterproof bags Mira liked. Zoey only wished she were safe and dry inside them, too. Maybe she could call Mira and ask her to get the apartment toasty warm and cozy for her and—
Oh fuck.
Her phone.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Zoey veered off the path. There wasn’t much around that offered any break in the storm—the awnings did fuck all with the wind blowing the rain fully sideways—but finally she found a respite, pressing into a narrow alley between apartment blocks that the residents were using as a dumping ground.
Muck carpeted the ground and there was a grotesque looming tower of trash and cardboard deeper in. She didn’t need to get closer. No way, no thanks. A few steps into the alley was an overturned bucket surrounded by cigarette butts. Zoey sat there, dropping the bags between her feet, and dug her phone from her pocket.
It felt wet.
Maybe it was just her hand that was slippery and cold. But it felt wet. And there were droplets on it—more every second, as the rain had doggedly followed Zoey into the alley—and the screen stayed stubbornly black when she prodded at the home button.
God, she was so fucking stupid.
What had she been thinking?
She hadn’t been—that was the problem, that was always the problem with her, and now she was going to have to pay for another phone when she’d only just replaced it and—
Nope.
‘It’s fine, actually,’ Zoey insisted, jabbing at the button a few more times just to be sure. ‘It’s fine! It’s literally fine.’
And it was. Because whatever was wrong with it—out of battery or totally waterlogged or some secret third thing—she couldn’t fix it here so it was literally fine and a problem for later-Zoey.
‘I basically don’t even need a phone anyway so it’s literally fine. Who needs phones? I like not being able to talk to people when I’m out and about or take photos or—‘ Oh god, her photos. What if her phone was fucked tremendously? Was she going to lose all the billions of photos she had of Mira and her family and the store cats and all the cool shit she saw every day? ‘Pyen [the Pyen is mightier than the sword] Zoey, it is not the right time to spiral. You’re a big girl. You are not going to cry in this random stinky alleyway,’ she told herself, stern words ending with a sniffle. ‘Ugh. Why are you like this?’
Head too heavy for her neck, Zoey let it fall until her chin touched her chest. Three seconds. Three seconds to feel miserable and sorry for herself before she rallied and ventured back out into the storm.
One missy-sippy.
Two miss-sippy.
A rustle from deeper into the alley interrupted her despair.
Zoey tensed.
‘Please don’t be a rat,’ she whispered. ‘Or a murderer. But especially please don’t be a rat. If you are a rat, please be a cute rat.’
She lifted her head.
It was not a cute rat.
It was not a rat at all.
From within the tower of trash, first the nose—a black-tipped snout, lips curled to show a glinting fang—then, in a menacing slink, the body of a large and muscular dog emerged. A growl rumbled in its throat like thunder and its eyes shone like twin moons in the reflected, faint streetlight.
Fear froze her to the spot.
Urgently, uselessly, two urges tugged Zoey in opposite directions—run, right now, as fast as you possibly can, and, stay very still and calm and maybe it will go back where it came from—and cancelled each other out. As her mind scrambled for something—anything—she could do, it did what it did best.
‘Hi, baby!’ she called in her sweetest please-don’t-hate-me-I’ll-make-you-like-me voice. ‘It’s fine. I’m not coming any closer, you’re fine, you’re safe. I bet this storm really freaked you out, huh? Lots of noise, lots of water? And it’s really dark, I guess it’s hard to see, but I’m not here to hurt you, angel. I just needed to get out of the rain, everything is so so fine,’ she rambled.
Was it working? The dog stayed where it was—close enough that it could catch her, easily, if she ran (right? She shouldn’t run, should she?) but far enough away, sticking close to the trash, that she was almost certain it was just defending its…
Oh.
Was this its home?
Turning, very very slowly, Zoey looked back over her shoulder to the street and saw the storm. How the wind pushed and pulled at the falling sheet of rain until it rippled, dazzling in silver and blue and gold under the street lights. The drumbeat had been near deafening out there—but in here, in the alley, it was muted. Which could mean nothing. And in fact could almost certainly be explained by science Zoey didn’t know. Or acoustics, which she actually did know a fair bit about. But acoustics didn’t explain how Zoey just felt like there was something she had to do.
Zoey reached for her bags.
The dog tensed—flinched?—growl dripping from between clenched teeth.
‘No, hey,’ she told it sweetly, urgently, ‘it’s alright. I’m just getting you some food. You look hungry.’
It did look hungry. Half-starved, in fact. Under the very visible muscles—short fur matted with what Zoey hoped was only rain—she could see a ship-wreck of ribs and the sunken hollow of its belly, stomach stuck nearly to its spine.
Fear was nothing to the warmth Zoey carried with her in every fibre of her being. Most people made the mistake of thinking she was naturally like that—a little naive, a lot sweet—and that had been true, once upon a time; now, it was a choice. She’d seen a lot of the world and of other people and knew very well how dark life could get and had decided a long time ago, and every day since, that she wanted to be the light. When someone was sad, she wanted to help them smile. When someone was lonely, she wanted to be with them. And when someone was hurt, she wanted to kick the ass of whatever had hurt them—but usually settled for making sure they were okay.
‘I’m just going to get you some food,’ she repeated, speaking loud enough to be heard over the muted drumming but not enough to scare. ‘What would you like? It’s mostly gross stuff because it was a necessities trip. That’s what Mira calls it. She usually does the shopping—it’s fine, we split the chores, the bathroom is all mine. I lock the fuck in when I take my meds and who doesn’t like the satisfaction of spiting your neurochemistry and a beautifully clean bathroom? No one, that’s right. Can dogs eat raw meat? I think you can, I mean you’re basically wolves,’ she mused, with a nervous glance at the now-slightly-less-menacing-but-still-menacing dog.
‘But is it good for you? I’m not sure. I think…probably? The real question,’ she posed to the dog, tilting her head and grinning when it tilted its head too, ‘is how pissed is Mira going to be that I gave our good meat budget away to a dog? I think it’ll be fine,’ she decided, digging through the bags for the lump of diced beef she knew was in there somewhere. Beef, beef, beef—aha! ‘We can live without meat for a week, can’t we, angel? You need it way more than us. Still. Forgive me, Mira,’ she prayed as she used her keys to rip open the plastic.
Standing, she overturned the bucket and plopped the meat into the makeshift bowl. Slowly, cautiously, she set it a little further down the alley and moved quickly back to where she had started where she made herself busy packing up the bag again and pretending she wasn’t watching the dog out of the corner of her eye.
It didn’t make her wait long.
Moving forward with a pained limp, it stopped a few paces from the bucket.
It glanced at Zoey again.
‘Go ahead,’ she told it softly. ‘It’s for you. I promise.’
The very tip of its tail—which was so cute now that Zoey could see it, scraggy and scrappy like the rest of it but with a really sweet half-curl to it—wagged. Its eyes darted to Zoey when she cooed and, as if embarrassed, it hunkered lower to the ground and slunk closer to the bucket. A pair of pointy ears, previously pressed nervously flat to its head, popped up with interest when it sniffed the contents.
The instant it started to eat, Zoey ran.
The rain pummelled her as she sprinted up the hill, fighting the river the road had become. Up the fourteen flights to the apartment she shared with Mira. Beautiful Mira, waiting in the open doorway for her, whose face flooded with relief and who hurried to meet Zoey at the top of the stairs, immediately reaching to take the grocery bags with one hand and Zoey with the other. A gentle press between her shoulder blades, steadying, coaxing her inside. It was almost as effective as the look of tender (platonic) concern on Mira’s face that grew more pronounced the more Zoey tried to explain what she needed, what was happening, what they had to do, right now.
‘Zoey,’ Mira interrupted her babbling, the warmth of her eyes and voice and hand still resting on her spine almost scalding after her freezing trek. ‘Zoey! I don’t understand, I’m sorry. What are you saying? Take off this jacket, is this mine? You’re soaking wet—‘
’It doesn’t matter—‘
‘You’ll get a cold—‘
‘It doesn’t matter—‘
‘—your skin is ice, I’m going to make you tea, I don’t care if you think it tastes like grass—‘
‘Mira!’ Zoey snapped, yanking out of her grip. ‘I have to go back out!’
‘What?’ Mira followed Zoey deeper into their apartment. ‘What are you talking about? It’s storming—you were right this morning, it does feel weird—‘
‘There’s a dog! In the rain! I have to go back!’ she said, digging through her laundry for towels and, oh, she needed something to use as a lead. ‘Do you have a tie?’
There was a strange, long pause.
Zoey glanced up from the mess she was making to see an unfamiliar sight. Mira was frowning at her. Properly frowning. Arms folded, lips downturned, face set in a look of real disapproval.
‘No.’
‘You literally wore one yester—’
‘I mean you are not bringing a dog back here.’
Zoey faltered.
Admittedly, she hadn’t really thought the whole thing through but in the bits and pieces that she had—how to get the dog back to the apartment, mostly—Mira had been right there, helping her.
‘You’re not…going to help me?’ she asked, voice small.
Mira blinked, like it was a shock to her as well. Her arms uncrossed, falling limply to her sides.
‘I… Zoey…’
‘I know how it sounds. I know it’s crazy. I know she’s some random dog. But she’s hurt. She’s scared and starving and it’s so bad out there, Mira. I was only out there for twenty minutes—look at me! And she’s all alone. Can you imagine?’
Mira could, of course. She’d been alone for a long time with no one to help her when she was hurt, and scared, and starving. And now she had Zoey.
She glanced away. A muscle ticked in her cheek as she chewed on the thought, eyes flicking to the water flooding down Zoey’s bedroom window and the dark, dark clouds overhead.
‘We met on a night just like this,’ Mira reminded her quietly, tiny smile flickering like a struck lighter. ‘Maybe it’s fate.’
‘Does that mean—’
‘I’ll meet you at the door. Two minutes.’
Smoke curled up from the cigarette between the girl’s fingers. She wore her jacket—fur, fabulous, far too much for the weather, even if the rain was coming down hard—loose around her shoulders like a cloak and her disdain twice as sharp as the spiky bands around her wrists, or the piercings in her ears.
It wasn’t the first time Zoey had seen the girl at the train station but it was the first time she’d been brave enough to speak.
‘Okay, I kn-know my Korean isn’t perfect but that didn’t s-sound like happy goodbyes,’ she’d joked, glancing between the cluster of people—pretty, and pretty rude—disappearing down the platform steps and the girl—smoking, smoking hot—they’d left behind.
No response.
Unless one counted the dismissive slide of a bored glare and another pull on the cigarette. Smoke fluttered thin from the corner of her mouth like a fishing line.
Zoey fiddled with the rings on her fingers, the familiar motion settling.
‘D-do you want to get dinner? Not - n-not in a creepy way - I mean, it’s been a long day and I am st-starving. Plus, there’s this American-style d-d—there’s a diner near here and I always go there when I get h-homesick. Two streets that way. They m-make really good pancakes and really bad coffee. You could join me. If you want? Or - or not. I guess it d-doesn’t really m-make up for m-missing out on a p-party.’
Pretty fingers tapped the end of the smouldering cigarette, then dropped it. Crushed the ember under a merciless boot.
‘You sound fine,’ she’d rasped, pushing off the concrete wall and moving toward her. ‘For an American.’
And that was the start of the end, really.
An open chamber in her heart welcomed Mira in. Shut and locked its door. No more applications necessary. It had found what it was looking for, thank you very much.
There were vastly more important things to think about than how cute Mira looked in her puffy pink rain jacket but it insisted on being thought. And said out loud, actually.
‘You look so cute.’
The tips of Mira’s ears went the same colour as her jacket as she packed their supplies.
‘And you look like a drowned rat. I will be making tea when we get back. And soup.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Zoey.’
‘But deal. Also, I gave the beef to the dog. Sorry.’
Mira’s face went tight but, with a glance over into Zoey’s wincing face, only sighed and nodded. She checked the supplies again. Lead (tie). Towel. Water and plastic bowl. Umbrella. Opening the fridge, she took out chicken and cheese, which she ripped into small pieces.
‘You know,’ she said as she worked, ‘the dog might not even be there anymore.’
‘I know. But—I need to try. And we’ll only be out there for a little while, if she isn’t.’
‘I’m not complaining. I’m just… I don’t want you to get your hopes up.’
‘They’re not up.’ Mira looked doubtfully at her. ‘Really. I—I can’t explain it. I just want to help her.’
She thought, for a moment, about explaining how intensely she was feeling it. The drumming, the drumming of the rain, like a heartbeat. The intense worry pulling her like rope back down the stairs and into the street. Mira would understand. Maybe. At least, Zoey knew she wouldn’t laugh at her.
In the end, it wasn’t necessary. Mira just said,
‘Okay,’
and finished tucking the treats into the bag.
‘Finally.’
Zoey started for the front door—only to stop with a strangled ‘Hrk!’ as Mira yanked her back by the raincoat Zoey put on—and rain boots!—as a concession to Mira’s worry. Pulling the hood up over Zoey’s head and yanking the cords tight, she knotted them. Zoey wheezed, wiggling a finger between skin and hood to get some breathing room.
‘Are you trying to stop rain getting in or suffocate me?’
‘Both. No one else would make me do this,’ she complained, even as she opened the front door for Zoey.
They held hands as they hurried down the stairs, not wanting to slip on the water Zoey had carried up with her, and clung on tight as they ventured bravely outside. The storm was tremendous. Worse than before, even.
It was almost impossible to hear Mira even when she ducked to put her mouth next to Zoey’s ear.
‘This is crazy!’ she yelled, tugging Zoey back toward the apartment door when a bolt of lightning struck across the sky. ‘Seriously, Zoey, this isn’t safe!’
‘We’ll be okay!’
‘That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the one holding the umbrella!’
Zoey shook her head and tried to wiggle her hand free. ‘If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to. Go back, Mira, I’ll be fine! Really! It’s not that far!’
Mira held tighter. She didn’t look happy but bravely lifted the umbrella higher over the both of them—and the wind ripped it from her hand and whisked it away, high into the sky. The second casualty of the storm. Third, depending on whether Zoey’s phone survived the night. She saw more than heard Mira yelp,
‘My umbrella!’
and had to fight not to laugh at her dismay.
‘Less worried about the lightning now?’
‘No! I’m taller that you!’
Zoey smiled her condolences but tugged at Mira’s hand again. She would let her go if she wanted—of course she would—but… Her heart fluttered high in her chest when Mira dropped her irritation like it was meaningless and focused on Zoey like she was—well. Not meaningless. On any other day that look, the gentle squeeze of her fingers that Mira gave her, probably would have catapulted her into the sun; tonight, it was enough to propel her forward, back into the heart of a dreadful storm, down the hill to the rotten alley where something still called to her.
‘No. No fucking way.’
‘Mira.’
‘Fuck. No.’
‘Mira.’
‘That’s not a dog that’s a - a wolf.’
‘I don’t think it’s a wolf.’
‘Think? Think!’
‘I mean it’s not! It’s not a wolf! She’s a dog and she’s more scared of us than we are of her, okay? It’s literally fine, she was such a sweetheart before,’ Zoey said, which was mostly true, and spun out of Mira’s over-protective grasp to face the dog.
Who was still here!
Zoey gave a mental fist pump. This was probably where it lived all the time, which would have been a depressing thought on any given day but was twice as depressing today as the tower of trash was melting into a noxious sludge under the force of the rain.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Zoey crooned, wrestling the hood down so that the dog could see her face. She wasn’t imagining the way the dog relaxed, ears lifting. ‘See? She recognises me! We’re so chill. Aren’t we?’
Zoey stepped forward.
Mira yanked her back as those lips curled up into a crinkled snarl, teeth flashing.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay—‘
‘It’s going to bite you!’
‘No, she won’t! It’s okay,’ she promised Mira, lifting a numb wet hand to her cheek to pull black eyes away from the dog. Poor Mira. She was shivering in the rain. She had to be freezing. ‘I promise I’m going to be okay. She’s just scared. She just like you, see? Her bark is worse than her bite.’
‘I don’t want you to get bitten at all.’
‘No—what? Oh. No, it’s a saying. She looks meaner than she is.’
‘That’s not as reassuring as you think it is. She looks really mean.’ People said the same thing about Mira all the time, and Zoey saw the second that clicked for her because her expression went mulish. ‘It’s not the same thing,’ Mira insisted. ‘She’s a wild animal. She will literally bite you if she gets scared.’
‘Technically, she would be feral because—it doesn’t matter,’ Zoey cut herself off. ‘I won’t scare her and she won’t bite me. She likes me. Trust me.’
‘My trust in you is not the problem! That thing is the problem!’
That thing, Zoey noted, had relaxed enough to sit and watch their whispered argument with curiosity.
Between abandoning her and returning, a light had come on in the alley, dull and dimly flickering.
The menace of the dark had done a lot to make the dog seem scarier. The snarling and growling, admittedly, hadn’t helped but that wasn’t happening anymore. For now. But now that she could get a good look at her, Zoey saw that the dog wasn’t as large as it had seemed.
She stood mid-thigh to Zoey and a little taller than Mira’s knee, and was impossibly scrawny, all ribs. Zoey knew the instant Mira clocked it because she inhaled sharply and gave a very small nod.
‘Okay. Fine. A bath and a meal. But when the storm is over, she leaves.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Mira?’
‘Mm.’
‘You’re still holding me pretty tight.’
‘…Sorry. Sorry.’ Mira held her a moment longer, fingers hooked around her arms, before letting her go. When Zoey stepped forward, she hissed her name and, in an urgent tone, reminded her to be careful.
‘When am I not?’
‘Are you serious? That is not reassuring. Too many times to count.’
‘…I’ll be careful.’
Moving forward, the mucky floor was now flooded with a good centimetre or two of water. Newspaper pages and trash floated past Zoey’s boots.
‘Hi, angel. Do you remember me?’
It tilted its head as she came closer, ears twitching—on a human, it was as good a nod, but it was probably just trying to keep an eye on her. Oh. Her better eye, Zoey realised, heart clenching, as she saw the scar splitting the skin above and below the right eye. It wasn’t her only injury either; it was basically impossible to tell what colour the dog was under the grime but there were darker patches on her left leg and side, the fur sticky and matted, and the light glinted off…glass? metal? There was something in there.
‘My name is Zoey.’
‘Seriously? You don’t have to introduce yourself, it’s a dog.’
‘And that girl back there is Mira. She’s the sweetest person in the world.’ The dog squinted against the rain and the dark. Zoey muffled a laugh, delighted at the notion that it didn’t quite believe her. ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it but I swear she’s an angel. She helps so many people every day and she’s so sweet and pretty, she could be living the high life but just between you and me? There’s nothing she likes more than putting on her slippers and robe and a face mask and crashing on the couch with me.’
Zoey returned the doggy grin that earned her before realising nope, not a grin. She was panting. It was cold so it wasn’t a temperature thing. What else could it be? Exhaustion? Thirst?
She sank to her knees. Her pants instant soaked from the knees down but literally who could give a shit about that when the dog relaxed and even crept forward.
The light flickered. Brighter.
‘You’re a bit of a sorry sight, aren’t you?’ Zoey murmured. She lifted a hand very slowly and paused when the dog recoiled, eyes wide and fearful. ‘Shh, shh, I’m not going to hurt you. We aren’t going to hurt you. You’re alright. I promise. Can you trust me? Just for a second? I won’t hurt you.’
She continued to sooth the dog as she inched closer and closer, until her fingers met the soaked wet fur of the dog’s neck and slid up to a cutely pointed ear. Zoey petted her gently, tears hot in her eyes when the dog’s eyes squinted shut with pleasure and it leaned into her palm.
‘There you go. Hi, pretty girl.’ Zoey pet her for a second longer, gathering her thoughts. ‘Um. How do I say this? Well. You may have noticed the storm. There’s a lot of rain and noise and I’m worried—we are worried—‘
‘I’m not that worried,’ Mira muttered.
Zoey peeked over her shoulder. Her heart stuttered in her chest. Mira—who had maybe shuffled another centimetre further into the alley—was shivering, glasses fogged, and knuckles white around the strap of the supplies bag. Zoey had to get her home and out of this horrible wet weather ASAP.
The dog shifted under Zoey’s palm. Hunched, but not meanly. Ears pricked in Mira’s direction as she made tiny motions toward looking around Zoey’s side.
‘It’s okay, pretty girl. That’s just Mira.’
‘Just Mira?’ the girl in question scoffed.
‘Yep! Just Mira. My everything, my reason for living, my one and only, the brightest part of my day and night, the rhythm to my songs, the beat of my heart.’ Zoey shot a smirk over her shoulder. ‘Better?’
‘…I guess.’
‘She sounds a little grumpy but that’s her normal voice. Like I said, she’s very sweet. Anyway. We are worried about the storm,’ Zoey continued, petting and petting and petting. She didn’t worry about the gritty slime coating her hand, or the smell. It would wash off. ‘We were hoping you would come home with us. Get out of the rain. Be nice and warm? What do you think?’
‘Zoey. It’s a dog. Just put the tie around its head, feed it some treats, and let’s get out of here,’ Mira grumbled, making no move to do any of those things herself. ‘I need a tetanus shot just looking at this alley.’
‘We have some food in the bag,’ Zoey continued like Mira hadn’t spoken. ‘Do you like chicken? Mira, can you—thank you,’ she beamed up at her when Mira slid the bag over her shoulder and held it out for her. Taking a piece of ripped up chicken, Zoey held it out with flat fingers. ‘Do you want—oh shit!’ she squeaked, when the dog snapped it instantly out of her hand.
It would have been genuinely frightening if the dog hadn’t then pushed her wet nose into Zoey’s hand, snuffling for more, and licked the grease away when there was nothing.
‘What happened! Are you okay?’
‘No, no—I mean, yes, I’m fine, I just—it surprised me, how fast she moved. I’m fine.’
The dog whined.
‘Aw. See? She’s sorry.’
‘Right. She wants more food, that’s all.’
‘Good thing we have heaps of it. All for the low, low price of coming home with us,’ Zoey tempted, pulling the tie from the bag. Mira had already helpfully knotted it so all Zoey had to do was put it over the dog’s head. ‘What do you think?’
The dog eyed the bag—which surely seemed like magic, full of leash-ties and chicken—and then Zoey. Then, with a whine, it ducked away from Zoey and retreated back into the bags of trash.
‘Great. She likes it here. You tried your best but no point. Let’s go.’
‘Okay, well, that can’t be true, this place sucks.’
Heaving a great sigh, Mira finally came to stand with Zoey. Arms tightly folded.
‘There’s banana peel on your pants.’
‘Wha—ew!’
Focused on peeling—ha!—it off her leg without touching it (Challenge Level: Ultra), it was Mira who noticed the dog’s odd behaviour. With another, even greater sigh, she said,
‘This is going to sound nuts—’
‘Call me a squirrel then.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because I want your - er, wait—’
‘Wow.’
‘Don't, don't, don't. I already regret saying it. What were you saying?’
Mira’s lips twitched with a smile but she didn’t tease Zoey any further. Instead, she flicked a finger over to where the dog had vanished.
‘It’s, like, pawing at something. Do you think it…wants something? From in there?’
Zoey considered her words and the trash tower. It was the least appealing thing she had ever seen. Seven or eight feet tall, the tower was built of trash bags mottled blue and black and the occasional neon yellow. Awnings of jutting cardboard and newspaper were crushed haphazardly between, the exposed edges now wilting under their own weight, sopping.
‘Can you book me into the doctor’s if I need to get a tetanus shot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Thank you, I love you. Wish me luck.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid.'
‘Close enough. Hi angel, what have you got there?’ Zoey switched registers, jumping back up to the sweetie-pie octave, as she crept toward the rapidly disintegrating trash throne.
The dog’s tail wagged, once, in its crooked curl. When Zoey came close, she put a paw on a stack of newspapers.
‘We can get you some more later. Less wet, much nicer,’ Zoey promised. Or maybe lied. She wasn’t exactly sure where anyone even got newspapers these days. The convenience store? Maybe? She had probably just never noticed. ‘Are you a business news kind of girlie or—oh, I see, you like the sports pages. Well, you and Mira can bond over that. She likes soccer. And tennis, which I think might be the most boring sport ever invented. Except whatever Challengers had going on.’
‘You need to give it more of a chance,’ Mira huffed. ‘And you never watched that movie.’
‘I saw gifs,’ she argued, and crouched when the dog pawed again, more insistently, at the papers. ‘Okay, okay. What is it? Let me see.’
Reaching down, and ignoring Mira's hissed request for her not to get so fucking close to it (even though Zoey obviously has to be close to sort through the papers?), Zoey began to sort through super soggy newspaper after newspaper, each wetter than the last. The paper was practically mush as she dug into it and Zoey gagged.
‘Okay, you might not know—oh god—about sensory issues but I am not having a good time right now,’ Zoey said, trying not to retch as her fingers squelched into—actually, it was just better not to know and not to think about it. Not now, not ever.
When she tried to stop, the dog barked.
Once.
Zoey startled. Not because it was loud—it was rough and quiet, more of a cough than a bark—but because it was the first noise the dog had really made. Purposefully. It was kind of cute, honestly. Could dogs lose their voices? Zoey would have to look it up when they got home. But first…
‘Okay. I get it, really, and I am listening with happy ears and I am looking but I really can’t find anything in here,’ she said, just as her fingers brushed something cool and hard. She yelped, wrenching her hand away.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mira barked from behind her. ‘Zoey? I’m calling a doctor right now—‘
‘I’m fine! I’m fine! I just didn’t…expect to find anything.’
Pressing back into the pulp of papers, she peeled the mass aside. All she honestly expected was a bit of trash. A fragment of a chewed up remote, or abandoned phone. Helpfully, a piece of a collar. Exactly no part of her expected to see what she did see—a norigae.
Most of the thread was unfortunately wet and gross. But the charm part of it was strange. It looked more like a hair-clip than a charm, with purple threads woven in and out of its toothy clasp, and a decorative diamond piece dangled from it with a tassel at its end. It looked hand-made. It looked personal and adored, if slightly scuffed. It looked expensive, the metal piece heavy in her hand with what felt like solid gold.
‘Whoa. Did you steal this?’ she asked the dog, who huffed at her. ‘Sorry. Um. Is it yours?’
‘She’s a dog. Dogs don’t have jewellery.’
‘Maybe this one does! She obviously wants us to take it. Is that right?’ Zoey held up the norigae, gagging when water dripped down her wrist. It was fine! It was fine! Focus! ‘You want us to take this?’
The dog barked again.
‘Can’t argue with that,’ she murmured, and made a show of putting it safely away in the bag.
Satisfied with that, the dog wandered closer to the bag—and the person holding it. She blinked—or, winked?—up at Mira, who scowled, arms crushingly tight across her chest.
‘I’m not feeding you.’
‘Um.’
‘Zoey.’
‘Sorry! But…you kinda have to? I have trash all over my hands now. ‘
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
‘Mira, please. Just until we get home.’
Mira’s scowl turned scowlier. Glaring down at the dog, who did its best to make itself smaller, almost laying flat, she bit out.
‘You are not eating out of my hand. I’ll drop the food into your mouth. Good enough?’
The dog’s ear flicked.
‘Good. Now hold still for Zoey. She’s going to put the tie on you now.’
‘Yes I am. You’re going to be a handsome business dog. Doesn’t that sound nice?’
She petted the dog for a moment—feeling the tension trembling in her, even if she was being very good, as Zoey praised her—before gently looping the tie around her neck. She pulled it snug but not tight and the dog obediently stood and walked beside her.
Equally tense but less fond of pats, especially when Zoey was in gross hands mode, Mira nodded.
‘Good. Here is your chicken.’
Reaching into the bag, she plucked a sad looking piece from the plastic container and dropped it into the dog’s mouth, taking a huge step back when the dog snapped it out of the air.
‘Give her another piece, that one was really small.’
‘No.’
‘Mira, come on. She looks like she’s never eaten a home cooked meal before. Are you really going to deprive her?’ That harsh expression wavered. Eyes dipping down to the pitiful shape the dog made, cowering at Zoey’s feet. Then up—like a real chump—right into Zoey’s huge, pleading eyes. ‘Please? One more piece and then she’ll walk so nicely back home. Won’t you?’ Zoey asked the dog, who hadn’t stopped staring at Mira and the bag.
When Mira’s hand reached for the bag, the dog wagged her tail. Just the tiniest ittiest bittiest bit.
When she had eaten a bit more chicken and flicked her ear as if to tell Zoey she didn’t want to be patted anymore, thank you, they set off. They made it all the way back to the entrance of the apartment before two thoughts occurred to Zoey.
First, it was weird. The storm hadn’t eased at all but, cocking her head, Zoey realised she couldn’t hear the drumming anymore.
Second, and more importantly,
‘…Our apartment doesn’t let us have dogs.’