I did not know what was happening. We had just flown through an infinite night of moving stars and inconceivable distance, and then we ba-dooped on top of two guys, and they sort of blinked out of existence. That’s the best I can tell you. It wasn’t bloody, there were no innards or bones, just a flashing pancake that went away but left a little “100” symbol over it for a second. Then that vanished too. I had no idea what that meant and even now I forget what it’s called. I think it is a number.
“You saved me,” said the third guy who we didn’t squash. Everything about this guy was boring. His hair was boringly brown, not like the visually interesting pink and aqua of Commander Zideo’s hair. I mean, the pink doesn’t even register for me, what with being a dog and all, but even I can tell something is going on there. Commander Zideo’s hair is like: “Look at me!” and I like that.
New guy’s clothes were all brown and gray, too. I could barely tell you anything about them. They were nondescript in every way. Except for a huge backpack like the one Commander Zideo used to use at school before he had me. It’s still stored in the house, in one of the upstairs closets. It has patches all over it, depictions of big-eyed animals that aren’t dogs, so who cares what they are. This guy’s backpack had no patches at all, just lots of buckles and straps. I was already not interested in an ear rub from this dude, and this sealed the deal for me.
New Guy was holding something shiny, like the shiny things that Lisa uses to cut up raw chicken. I did not want him to do to Commander Zideo what Lisa does to raw chicken, so I put myself in between this new guy and Commander Zideo and growled. I made sure he could hear my deep voice. I gave him the level of growl that I only really save for that braindead terrier down the street, Kristoff, who smells like week-old fish and sounds like a squeaky toy when he barks. The language that little guy uses, good heavens. That’s enough for New Guy, apparently they have dogs wherever he comes from, because he puts the shiny thing away and puts his palms out where I can see them. He actually smells alright to me. He smells like old leather and dirty canvas, sweat that’s been there a while, roasted meats, and a sweet wood smoke. I decide right then and there I’ll call him “Smokey.”
“My name is Helmgarth,” he says. Okay, so Helmgarth. But honestly, I’m probably going to think of him as “Smokey” forever now. Smokey Leather-sweat.
It’s night, but we can see a long way in all directions. There is a noisy smelly forest behind us. There’s a path in front of us, like a road but lumpier and dustier. The horizon feels much closer than the normal horizon in Airy Zone, and it makes me feel like we could take a walk to the edge of the world.
Beyond the horizon are huge mountains spinning in the Big Night, which I have since learned can be referred to as “space.” Sometimes humans say “space” and sometimes they say “night” but I can’t tell when to say which. They both seem to mean “a vast expanse of pitch black with little white dots.” I don’t really know what to do with the big spinning mountains.
Until that point, Commander Zideo had been silent. He’s a real cool customer. He looked around and sort of took everything in. He looked beneath us and jumped away from the blinking pancake guys as they turned into the numbers. That seemed to startle him like when there’s a bug, although usually if there is a bug in the house I will take care of it. I will either scratch it to death or eat it. It’s not my favorite, but I’m happy to do it.
For some reason I remembered something he does on his glowing rectangle. The big stationary one. He does this thing where he picks up something and presses buttons on it, and a little shape on the glowing rectangle moves around. Sometimes he does this when he Does A Stream, and gets very worked up when he does something really good or really bad. When his little shape jumps on other shapes, it flattens them and they go away. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that.
“Where did you come from?” asks Smokey Leather-sweat. OKAY, fine—asks Helmgarth.
“I came from my room,” said Commander Zideo. He looked up and so did I. (Yes, dear human readers: We can look up!) There was a rectangle in the sky. It was hard to see and it was fading. Through it, I thought I could see the ruffled pillows of the sleeping couch that’s right behind where my human sits when he Does A Stream. That was really messing with my sense of distance! It felt both like I could jump up and grab it out of the sky like a frisbee, and also so far away that I could run for days and never reach it.
He, my human, looked at me and looked around. “You okay bud?” You gotta hand it to him. Even when the world is turned upside down, he checks on me. This is why he’s MY human. So selfless. I ran over to answer him but he was already talking to Smokey… Helmgarth. “I was just… streaming.” He dusted his arms and knees off. He looked around some more. “Maybe I still am?”
Helmgarth looked at him for a long time. “I do not know these words,” he said. “But you have saved my life. And now I am sworn to carry your burdens.” He knelt down, looking very formal, like he was in a one-man ceremony. Then my human looked back at him and stared at him for a while. He got up close, too close for normal human closeness I’m pretty sure.
“Say that again,” he said.
The Helmgarth guy was having a hard time kneeling with his heavy ruck-sack on his back. “I am… sworn to carry your burdens.”
There was something about his words that sounded old. Not elderly. More like the words themselves were archaic, from a time before. Like when someone moves a couch and you find a chew toy that had been lost for ages, tangled in dust bunnies and people-hair. The meaning isn’t lost on you, even if it takes a second.
“I remember you,” said my number one human bro. “You’re from that one.” He began to snap his fingers in the air, which usually means “come here” or “go away” so I did neither. “Uhhh, what’s it called… the big open world fantasy one. With vikings and dragons. What’s it called?” He snapped again and I couldn’t resist but run over to his side, just in case he was snapping at me or if not, then just in case he started snapping at me for any reason. “Glimmer sword. Glimmer blade.” He jabbed his finger into the air and snapped one loud snap. “Gleam’Blade (20ǂ1)!”
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Helmgarth looked up quickly, but stood up slowly. I tensed all my muscles in case I needed to pounce on him. But sometimes humans did this kind of thing, acted like they were going to attack when all they are really doing is trading words. His voice was like a low growl, which was a big change from kneeling. “M’lord should not say that,” he warned.
“No but we had a bunch of adventures together,” Commander Zideo insisted. “I got you late because I got distracted mining for like a while and then you and my guy traveled all across the continent together.” Suddenly, Zideo’s smile faded. His face became very serious. “But then you got yeeted by a giant, bro. I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“Yes, well,” said Helmgarth. He did not know what to do with this news. I mean, even I could see he was not dead. He was right there! Sometimes, Commander Zideo speaks in very mysterious ways. His words are full of meaning that you can just ponder and ponder. It’s too complicated for my dog brain, I’m afraid. But it’s a good reminder that he is just an absolute fountain of wisdom. Not everyone sees it that way, because not everyone sits around pondering Commander Zideo’s words. “Be that as it may… m’lord must be away from this place, with haste.”
Commander Zideo made a face. “M’lord? Haste?” he asked, looking like he was having trouble taking the other human seriously. “Oh I guess I forgot. Gleam’Blade (20ǂ1) takes place in like… wizard and dragon times. All of you guys talk like that, right?” He turned in a slow circle, letting it sink in.
This place smelled strange to me. The big blur of trees shook and shimmered with a breeze that was like cold fingers on my fur. It tousled Zideo’s artistic pink and aqua locks. It was such a visual, very cinematic, almost like ignoring the breeze served to highlight just how hard he was thinking, and what amazingly deep understanding he must be gaining from such powerful introspection.
“So, y’all got a bathroom here, or what?”
That’s my Zideo. Always in touch with his body. Such a natural sense of timing. He would make a great dog, and I wouldn’t say that about just any human.
Helmgarth got up really close and looked into my human’s eyes, so close that Zideo craned his neck backward to maintain a little space.
“Where did m’lord say he was from?”
It was quiet as my human tried to decide whether to answer. “Airy Zone,” he said. But he always said it in a weird accent, like “Airy Zona” or something. I never think too hard about that. For me, until that day, it had just been “the world.”
“Hm,” said Helmgarth. He began talking to himself. It sounded like an argument, like when two humans are both trying to impose their well on the other and one has to dominate the other but with boring words, and the other has to submit to the boring words usually after they both make a LOT of noise. I haven’t seen this happen myself much, except for when Lisa retrieves too many of a can called “White Claw” (which seems like it should be a dog word?) from the refrigerator and then argues with someone named “Door Dash” (also sounds like a dog name?). Also, there is a beagle down the street named Devonshire who tells us via the Howl Network that his owner engages in the practice of “argument” at the dog park, which always results in other humans holding up their glowing pocket rectangles at her.
Anyway, that’s what it sounded like, a one-man argument. The words word quiet and not loud, but they were intense, which means something that feels loud but isn’t. This felt loud, but wasn’t. He was snapping at himself, refusing his own words, and pacing back and forth like I do when I know Lisa or Commander Zideo are on the other side of the door. Who was Helmgarth expecting? Because he looked at Zideo with that exact look on his face. He said things like “Could it be?” and “After all this time” and “But how?”
Helmgarth shook it off. You know that term was invented by dogs, right? Human readers, you definitely got that from us. If you’ve ever seen or heard a dog just instantly get rid of water, dirt, or bad vibes by shaking his or her fur… that’s what that is. There was an instant shift in the energy, and Smokey Leather-sweat was urging Zideo to follow him.
Commander Zideo still wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t either. But my nose was being overloaded with information and I could not think straight. I’m willing to wager that even my human readers would have trouble making informed decisions if someone stuck a fresh-cut bouquet of pungent flowers in your face and started yelling in your ear. That’s what it felt like the first few seconds in this world.
There was something… shifty about this world. The mountains were moving, the trees were swaying, heck—even a tumbleweed was rolling down the dusty road. There was all this movement. And whenever I was able to really clamp down on one particular fragrance, it disappeared or changed. It was the olfactory version of ice skating with no skates. Frictionless.
Smokey—Helmgarth—snapped himself out of it and urged my human to follow him. He said that more “enemies” would come. I had never heard anyone say that word except for when Zideo was Doing A Stream, where he talked a lot about them. Aside from that, I only really thought of enemies in the abstract sense: the possibility of squirrels getting inside our gate, the likelihood of Kristoff the terrier peeing in our front yard during a walk. I didn’t think Zideo had really given it enough time to consider, and he still had a confused look on his face when his feet started moving.
The treeline shimmered and undulated. Eyes that probably only I could see gleamed out from its depths. Birds I could not recognize wheeled in the skies and called to one another. Dramatic cliffs and canyons yawned to the west and the south. (I hadn’t seen a sun yet, but dogs have a good sense for cardinal directions no matter where we are. Humans have invented so many tools to tell where they are, and yet, none has ever thought to simply ask a dog.) A vast frontier stretched between the two, a dense expanse jam-packed with features that a curious canine could get lost in for who knows how long. A wagon disappeared behind green hills in the distance, too far off to hear its creaking wheels. Moss and lichen hugged stone ruins, shapes that looked vaguely familiar but held no meaning to me. A disk of lights flickered in the distance, and in its center a crooked spike of a tower. Far to the north, an entire storm system fled the wind.
Helmgarth didn’t say something so much as gasp and put a hand out to halt Commander Zideo. I didn’t care for the personal space violation there and determined to keep a closer eye on this guy, with his backpack full of smells—I was getting old parchment, oil, and some kind of jerky now?—but he fell to his knees, pointing at the sky. Something glimmered there. An omen? It was a zig-zag shape that looked like one of the human English letters in Zideo’s name. (I can never tell human English letters apart, really. I’m a dog.)
More letters appeared there in the sky as well. Commander Zideo seemed very affected by this, and he took a step back. I was behind him and couldn’t see his face but I still knew what kind of face he was making, if that makes any sense.
“Is it… a sign?” asked Zideo.
“More than that, m’lord…” answered the guy with the smells. “It is a late title card!”
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