Kalon woke up groggy and feeling dizzy and lightheaded. These were different things for him, because, normally feeling empty-headed, the added “weight” made him feel slow and clumsy.

“I shall cultivate! Beat cousin Crusadina!”

He grabbed Jagger, that was sleeping curled by his side. He had him grasped tightly from the extra skin of his neck.

“Jagger, we should cultivate faster. Where can we find more rod wailers?”

Jagger shrugged. He wanted to sleep and dream with a warm bowl of milk. “It’s… it’s Rottweiler,” He said, opening an eye and closing it again before realization hit him like a wrecking ball. “Oh fuck, I spoke in front of the village idiot.”

Kalon looked frantically to the sides, taking in the practice dolls, hoops, and the benches of the already emptied field.

“Where? Where is Culmino?”

Jagger’s pupils turned until he could make inventory of the inside of his skull. “I meant you. Who is Culmino?”

Kalon carried Jagger like a dumbbell all the way to the exit of the practice field, into the open street of the clan, where he witnessed a scrawny kid stalking in all fours, like he was crocodile. It was trying to hunt an elusive banana, and had to be very careful to not scare his quarry away.

Kalon walked up to his cousin and rubbed Jagger’s nose on the boy’s temples. “Culmino.”

Culmino stayed still, pretending to be a rock, tasting the air with his tongue now and then. The lack of a proper vomeronasal organ wasn’t going to stop him.

“Fine, you are not the village idiot. Now, as for where to find more Rottweilers, dear owner, think: Where in this whole clan there could be more dogs like me?”

Kalon scratched his head. Wind howled inside his skull. A lone wolf that traversed the deserted steppes of his intellect fell face-first into the sands and died from exhaustion. Where did dogs come from? Perhaps…

“We shall find the Rottweiler tree!” he sentenced.

The heavens listened. Gods lined up to laugh at Kalon. The God of Popcorn was born and provided sustenance for everyone else.

“Dogs don’t come out of trees, you moron!” said Jagger, wishing once again for the sweet embrace of death.

Kalon considered it for another second and held Jagger at an arm’s length. “The Rottweiler aquifer?”

Jagger shook his little head.

“Rottweiler…vein?”

“Could you mine a Rottweiler?” Jagger asked.

Kalon shrugged. “Maybe.”

In that moment, something broke inside Jagger. He whined a bit and then went silent in acceptance.

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“Aha! a Rottweiler Basidium!”

Jagger tilted his head. How the fuck did Kalon know what a basidium was? Even the word “aquifer” felt confused at being part of his vocabulary.

“Listen, Kalon, couldn’t we have a normal life? You can grow to be a farmer or blacksmith or something and I can grow up to get fulminating cancer at nine years old and make you sad for the remainder of your days after I pass away,” suggested the Rottweiler puppy with a straight puppy face.

Contrasted to a gay puppy face.

How that looks, I don’t know.

“No, I shall pursue immortality. I shall live forever,” Kalon decreed, shaking his Rottweiler-occupied fist at the sky. Jagger didn’t mind. At least he wasn’t getting beaten against a practice doll.

“Why?” Asked Jagger.

Kalon placed the puppy in the ground and bowed before it, his forehead kissing the dirt. “I find myself defeated before your wiseness, master Jagger.”

Jagger resisted the urge to correct him. At least he would stop pursuing immortality…

Kalon stood suddenly: he had had a revelation. “I think I shall be immortal… to not die,” he said, elated by the new sense of meaning he had gleaned from the uncaring reality.

Jagger thought about biting his hand, but then feared it would get him drunk with his stupidity.

“Right, astounding display of mental skill, Kalon,” Jagger sassed.

“I have no skills regarding metal,” he corrected his pup.

Some sources claim that, in that very moment, Jagger blew up, killing everyone in the clan. This is a lie, mainly because reality suffers from aversion to happy endings. And secondarily, because dogs don’t randomly explode. That is not something that happens. Ever.

Then, both pet and owner walked back home.

----------------------------------------

Kalon bowed before his mother, as one could say every single person who bowed did. Not by virtue of her being powerful, nor honorable, no: it was by virtue of Kalon’s mother enjoying the sort of omnipresence that comes with joint pain and clogged arteries. While some pursued immortality, she pursued immobility. Hers was the Dao of Diabetes.

But it wasn’t mere coincidence, not this time at least, that Kalon was bowing before her. He had the intent to do so.

“Mother, tell me where the Rottweiler udder from which you milked Jagger out can be found.”

Jagger stared at his owner whale eyed. He sat by his side, but, in those moments, thought very seriously about mauling him as soon as he grew up into a teenaged rottie.

“Tell the child about the bees and the drones at once, woman!”

Kalon turned to stare at his dog, and scratched the sides of his own head. “Rottweilers come from hives?”

“Shut your traps you two, Rottweilers come from bigger Rottweilers. Like matryoshkas.”

Jagger raised his paw, and then lowered it. There was no point complaining about how it made no sense to call nesting dolls “matryoshkas” in a world without Russia: if he pursued that path of argumentation, he would need to explain what a Russia was, and he hadn’t the palest idea. They were speaking English in a world without England, so what was the harm on letting reality fail to be verisimilar one more time?

“I see, so, when Jagger grows up, I shall split him in two!” Kalon declared, and Jagger begged the woman with his sole stare: save me from your inbred sprog. The woman scooped Jagger from the floor, doing a great deal of effort to not crush him with her fingers like unwagging Labrador tails.

“It is your fault that my son follows a road without a future.”

Jagger thought about biting her, but he fostered old school values regarding loyalty and cholesterol management.

“Listen here, you collective noun of a woman, I am stuck with him by no fault of my own and my breed lives about a decade in average. A decade! That’s like eighty times my current lifespan. An eternity of suffering under the useless wing of this gender-confused kiwi bird of a man.”

The woman shot a blank stare to her son. “Translate, for you are blessed in the fields of the mind, dear.”

“I think he is learning to bark.”

Jagger went limp, and Kalon’s mother shook him. There was no point in trying. Emptying his mind of thoughts was probably the path of least resistance.

“Mother, where did you get Jagger from?” Kalon interrupted the energetic dog shaking. He had stood, stretching, trying to reach for one of the ceiling’s reeds to chew onto.

“Aunty Lora gave him to us. Go visit her if you want to know more. And come home by time for the third dinner.”

“Shall do. Thanks, mother.”

“No problem, sprog.”