“If I may ask,” said Helmgarth, bowing obsequiously in a sign of submissiveness that every animal reading this account will recognize instantly, “what is m’lord’s name?”

Commander Zideo paused. “I haven’t told you my name?” Addrion tried to conceal that she glanced back at him, but I could tell.

“M’lord has not revealed it.”

“It’s… Zideo,” he said. “Commander Zideo.”

Addrion could not stifle a pffftt. It seemed to me like she didn’t understand that Commander Zideo is, was and will be the greatest human of all of everything. But you have to give people time, I’ve come to realize. Besides, she had probably never experienced one of his spine-tingling back-scratches, or his belly rubs that could always find that spot on one’s sternum that makes one kick uncontrollably, or one of his signature double ear-rubs which is like plugging both sides of my head into stereoscopic, endorphin-blasting IVs and turns my brain into quivering putty.

“What?” he demanded.

“Commander, huh?”

“Yes? What about it?” His brow was tightening.

“Just wanted to make sure I heard that right,” she said, and produced a microfiber cloth to scrub down her weapon arm. “How did you get that rank, Commander?”

There was a smirk on Addrion’s face, but Zideo scowled openly. “It’s a screen name,” he said. “You’re not supposed to shit on people’s creative output.”

“So,” she turned, gesturing with the cloth, unable to help herself, “just so I’m clear: you’re not a real commander? You have no forces under your command to help us? You just made it up? Woke up one day and decided to style yourself like military brass?”

“I mean,” said Zideo. He shrugged.

She hissed air through her teeth like a deflating snake, and returned to scrubbing down the residues from her weapon. From what I’ve observed, humans have problems with one another all the time based on absolutely nothing. If one had stolen a chew toy from another, I could understand. If one had intruded on another’s personal space while he was eating, that I get. If someone had peed on top of someone else’s pee puddle, it only makes sense to start swinging. But at the end of the day, humans just made noises at one another and got worked up at one another about it. It can be exhausting.

Zideo suggested that they head out, although I didn’t think he knew where we were going. He looked around and did not find the horse. He said, “Horse. Come here,” and waited a full thirty seconds before saying, “HORSE.” He made strange sounds that he must have thought was a horse call, clicking, smoochy sounds with his lips. He snapped and clapped. “Maybe it’s a mental thing?” he asked. He put two fingers of each hand against his temples and closed his eyes. He closed his eyes tightly, and strained. He flexed his core, his body tensing and straining again. When he gave up, he was out of breath, but there were no horses. Helmgarth looked like he knew the answer, and it made him sad.

“We ought not travel the Screenwilds on foot at night, if it can be helped,” said Helmgarth.

Zideo, catching his breath, asked, “Because of boarsquirrels?”

“In…deed,” assented Helmgarth.

“What are we gonna do?” asked Addrion without looking up. She had finished polishing the weapon and begun again. “Sleep out under the Shards?”

“I have bedding in my pack,” said Helmgarth. “Perhaps one of us can keep watch.” He looked like he was going to volunteer if Addrion didn’t. She didn’t even glance at him.

“Or…” said the thickly accented voice of the leather trenchcoated man, “you could use a Tent.”

All heads turned toward him. He sat on a rock. His leather hood was somehow incongruous with the rest of his outfit, though made of the same sturdy leather.

This was the first moment I had been afforded to take a good look at him. Even now there was little light by which to see, but my canine sight grants me some vision even in the dark. Before, when we were rushing through the prison complex and riding for our lives, he had been little more than a lumpy blur of brown and gray. Now I saw that he had much more “going on” than that. He wore durable black boots that had seen much wear, and his ankle-length trenchcoat was high-collared and fastened with clasps rather than buttons or snaps (two things I very much enjoyed gnawing off of their intended fabrics, if I ever found clothes with them left unattended around the house in Airy Zone), and gloves that terminated at the knuckle such that his bare fingers protruded. This puzzled me; what was the purpose of a glove if not to protect humans’ soft, vulnerable digits? His hood was always up, and beneath it a garment of knit fabric concealed his features, such that the only thing between hat and facemask was his eye—only one at a time. He carried a backpack as well, from which hung lanterns and guidebooks, but it much smaller than Helmgarth’s—which is to say, a more normal size. Between the lengths of his coat, I saw pockets and supplies hanging from leather straps across his chest and waist. A flask or canteen poked out.

“Do you… have a tent?” asked Commander Zideo. The doubt in his voice was well founded. I could not imagine him concealing something so bulky in his jacket, unless our definitions of a tent were vastly different. And if he could, it could not be the kind of tent that offered much comfort or space.

He shrugged in the way humans do when they really want you to pursue the line of inquiry. “I could,” he said, and let the idea linger in the cool night air for some time, then continued, “if you got the gold!”

After everything the group had experienced together, while all their bodies were coming down off of the adrenaline of the life or death experience and the rush (I had to admit) of riding horseback, this longshot insinuation met with dead silence. While his body language implied, “I’m happy to oblige you, eh? Ehh?” the potential customers did not seem receptive to this value.

Addrion broke the silence. “We should continue on foot.”

Helmgarth winced. “I fear we will not be up for the challenge on foot.”

“Look,” she pointed to crooked spike. “Ludopolis is right there.” Commander Zideo looked then, and must have realized at the same time as I did that it was a city. Suddenly I became aware of its faint lights, whether torch or window.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“What’s Lu-” began Zideo, but Helmgarth put up a hand to urge him to silence, and I recalled how the book had been summoned previously.

“Begging m’lady’s pardon,” insisted Helmgarth, “but it is simply too dangerous.”

“For you, maybe,” spat Addrion. But she turned her back and did not press the point.

Helmgarth released a complex series of snaps and buckles on the straps of his own backpack and lowered it to the ground. Several small animals appeared from the pockets, including the frightened porcupine.

“What, nobody wants to negotiate?” asked the trenchcoated man, unsatisfied. “Haggle with me!”

“Read the room, weirdo,” shouted the mouse from the pocket of Helmgarth’s backpack.

“We’re not giving you anything,” said Addrion.

“C’mon,” said the trenchcoated man. He stood, and tried to prevent Helmgarth from unpacking his things by making fretting exhortations.

“Y’know,” said Zideo, “we are kinda in this together, bud. If you do have anything that could help, now’s a great time to contribute. We did rescue you from prison.”

“We?” came Addrion’s voice, although her head did not turn.

“At least check out my wares, heh?” he said, and was met with more silent stillness. He stood with his palms out and his exposed fingers splayed.

They waited. I waited.

“You uhh… have to ask me first,” he said. “I can’t show you if you don’t ask me.”

Zideo rolled his eyes. “Alright. What’re you selling?”

Pumping his fist, he whispered yesss to himself. He spun in a circle, dramatically gripping the tops of each side of the coat, and whipped them to the sides like wings. This gesture must have carried some meaning for Zideo, who covered his eyes and said “Oh no,” but, cracking his fingers apart, saw that all was safe.

I now had an explanation for all the peculiar scents that came off of this strange man. He was a walking storefront. Lining the insides of his coat, scores of items hung rattling against one another. Small glass orbs of red and blue and yellow liquids.

Small tubules of plastic and metal that I suspected were ammunition for conventional human weapons, as well as laser sights and scope modifications. Symbolic trinkets that seemed to glow with magical effect. There was food I had not smelled before, masked by the strange liquids’ aromas: protein bars, MREs, even an entire bowl of hot savory soup, the metallic handle of a spoon protruding as steam wafted upward. Rope, tape, keys. “Ta-da,” he may have said out loud, and if it didn’t, it felt like he did.

He paused and looked around as though something were missing. “Wait,” he said, then pulled a small tab near his shoulder. A sign ejected from the top of his backpack, unfolding into the word OPEN in all capital letters, as well as some other longer words in smaller human writing.

“Welcome to… Kriegs… ge… swiner’s?” asked Commander Zideo, squinting and struggling to sound out the words. “Who is Krieg Swiner? You?”

“Kriegsgeswinnler,” said the seller.

“Kriega what now?”

“Kriegsgeswinnler,” repeated the seller.

Helmgarth frowned. “I see no tent within your wares, Master Seller.”

“Oh, hang on,” he said, then raised the coat-flanks to view them better, inspecting them up and down. “It’s here somewhere.” He dropped one side and shuffled in a pocket under the bowl of soup. How he refrained from spilling it, I will never know. “I thought it was here… next to to the Resurrection Vial… a-ha!” He produced a small glowing card and held it out—what seemed to me a luminous paper cutout depicting a tent in jagged diagonals that reminded me a little bit of our unfortunate late cowboy friend.

“Now, you’re thinking, ‘I’m really tired and I want to go to sleep, and I also need to be protected from monsters and beasts.’” He impersonated what he thought our collective voice was like, a ridiculous, high-pitched whine, plaintive and nagging. “And I bet you’re also thinking, ‘Goodness! I’d pay upwards of fifty gold for something like that!’”

Helmgarth recoiled as though struck.

“Well, good news, friends—”

“Get on with it,” said Addrion.

“—yeah, uh, I would be willing to part with this authentic JRPG tent for no more than forty-nine gold.”

Helmgarth shook his head. “Thanking the Master Seller for his time. But we really must set up camp.”

Addrion turned all the way around now. Green hair hung under one eye, and the one that showed was not impressed. “Didn’t you hear the man?” she said, but it didn’t seem like she was actually talking to the Helmgarth. “He’s got a tent for us. We’re not sleeping on the ground here while he’s hoarding a tent for us.”

“I, err,” said the opportunist named Kriegsgeswinnler.

She did not raise her newly polished weapon, but she did, somehow, make it part of the conversation. She rested it on her knee as she sat on the rock. She tapped her finger coverings across its casing, a metal unknown to me. I recalled the way she had converted the scroblins’ bodies into nothing but dancing, swirling sparks.

“Heyyyy, hey. Listen, we’re friends here,” protested Kriegsgeswinnler. “We’re old prison buddies. We have a bond. We go way back.”

“Yeah,” said Zideo. “Back to like… over there.” He pointed into the distance at Fort Weepus.

“Exactly,” said Kriegsgeswinnler. “See? Exactly. Listen, for old combat buddies like us, I could do thirty-five. Alright?”

A green dot danced on his chest, playing like a pixie across his canteen. “Whoa,” he stated, waving his palms at Addrion. I knew this to be a laser, something that Zideo had once brought home and driven me mad as I chased it all over the house for hours. I repressed the desire to leap onto the seller’s chest to catch it even now, knowing Addrion aimed her weapon at him.

“How about you give it to us, now, for free?” she suggested.

“Listen lady,” said the merchant. “You make your living shooting, I make mine selling, heh?” I admit that I was not in love with the way he said “heh” rather than “huh.” It gave him an air of untrustworthiness. “You understand, right?”

“I understand perfectly,” she said. “You find people who are desperate… and you gouge them.”

The green pixie light migrated up to his mask.

“Aright, aright!” he said. “Take it!” Kriegsgeswinnler threw the card like a frisbee. With a start, I repressed the urge to chase it and snatch it out of the air. It landed in a clear, rocky space. There was a sound of plastic snapping into place, creaking pulleys, twine running through eyelets, and a zipper all in the space of two or threat heartbeats. A cloud of dust puffed outward, and dissipated.

A tent stood assembled before us, having assembled itself. Warm orange light shone from within, and a powerful aroma of savory smells (chicken sizzling in a pan? Boiling broth? Fresh-chopped scallions and carrots?) encompassed me, crowding out all other scents I could detect. I heard calming, slow music playing within. As a dog, I’m not big on music myself, but it seemed like the kind you could put on and go to sleep. (Although I am more adept than most humans I know at sleeping under any conditions.)

Addrion put away her weapon, blurring it out of existence. Her hand returned in its place. “Thank you for your contribution.” She pulled back one of the tent flaps and disappeared inside without hesitating.

Helmgarth was already rolling his things back up.

“Shouldn’t someone keep watch? Are we all gonna fit in that?” asked Zideo, again bringing the practical questions. What a mind on that guy! I would have been perfectly willing to keep watch outside for Sorrow Trooper patrols or boarsquirrels. I was tired, but sleep sacrificed for the safety of the most honorable, noble and thoughtful human whose ear rubs are the BEST was always worthwhile.

“I see you’ve never slept in a JRPG tent,” said Kriegsgeswinnler, letting his coat drape back down over his body and pulling the tab on his shoulder, which retracted the OPEN tab back into his backpack somewhere. “You’ll sleep like a baby and wake up refreshed. It’s perfectly safe.”

Commander Zideo still made no move toward the entrance of the tent. He touched his forehead lightly with his fingertips. “Did you say ‘JRPG?’” he asked. “You said that, right? Out loud?”

“It sure beats a Survival tent, heh?”

Another memory came upon me then: During one of Zideo’s Streams from before he moved out of the house several dog years ago, his glowing rectangle showed that he entered a blocky, virtual bed and faded to black. He sat back, all his muscles relaxed. Then the glowing rectangle had suddenly shown him being attacked by green people. He had been so startled that he knocked his ear coverings off of his head, and began screaming “They can get you while you’re asleep?!”

Helmgarth went in, dragging his huge backpack and stooping under the flaps of the tent. The small animals followed him. The merchant followed him, his goods clinking and rattling within his coat as he ducked in.

“Well,” he said, and looked at me. I wagged my tail helpfully. “Let’s try to get some rest.”