(The Two Dogs story) Lucky and Rose stick together in a bad situation.

First of our Tsunami stories, complete. Please feel free to donate to Red Cross, as offered on our previous posts. I will try to get a donation number for everyone to use when I have the rest of the cycle finished. Enjoy!

The smell of everything seemed moved around, as though the familiar pathways of scents were no longer. Lucky wags her tail, nosing through damp mud, smeared across a yard of debris.


The smell that so often drifted upon the winds is now coating everything. Wet. Cold. Lucky trots across a long mud hole towards yet another pile of scrap, where a building (which smelled of turpentine sometimes) had stood. For several blocks---Lucky’s roving territory---the wetness, the smell of dirt, wood, and the sea, over rode all other smells, though there was a faint hint of gasoline two blocks from this place. Lucky then spies a friend. It’s Rose. Lucky wags her tail. Wet and cold do not matter so much at the moment. This was a smell Lucky knew well.


But Rose did not get up. Rose, mostly white, but now dirtied, pants for a moment. Recognition passes between the dogs. Lucky wonders: “where are the people who take care of us? I am ready to be petted. Also, I wonder where some food might be. But it is strange not to see anyone.”

“There’s no one around at all,” Rose thinks. “I have not seen the people who care for me and it seems like forever now. I want to look around, but my leg hurts so much. Now I have not eaten for some time, too, and I cannot sniff out anything to eat. It is all covered with this wetness, and I cannot walk without yelping in pain.”

“Let me give you a sniff,” Lucky thinks, and Lucky proceeds to give Rose a once-over with her nose. “You may hurt, but you are not rotten and sick yet.” Lucky nuzzles Rose, who keeps her head up.

“I hope the people who groom my long hair will come find me,” Lucky thinks.

“I am so hungry,” Rose thinks.
“I will look around,” Lucky thinks, “and see if there’s anything.” But wherever Lucky looks, amidst the broken windows, broken boards, and smeared mud, not another living thing. All the things of the workmen are scattered everywhere. Much of the road has disappeared. There is always a chance maybe further on there will be someone, some food. Lucky looks back at Rose. Rose really seems miserable. Lucky’s feelings guide her back over to Rose’s side.

The wind blasts the wet dogs, who sit beside a large drum the color of rust. Fortunately, it begins to blow against the drum, and for a few minutes they are not hit by it. Lucky nuzzles Rose’s hindquarters, and then comes to her head. She puts out a paw onto Rose’s head, and then turns around and sits on her head. “I can think of nothing that would make your feel better,” thinks the dog.

“What are doing on my head?” Rose thinks. She begins raising herself. Then Lucky puts her forepaw over Rose’s neck. They wait.

The person who finds them watches with a camera, and when the human with him sees the dogs move, he comes over and kneels beside them. Lucky’s tail wags.

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