A sound.
So soft and strained.
It drifted to him like a wisp upon the breeze, vanishing into the air.
Another sound.
He didn't want to move; moving didn't feel good. There wasn't any point. He hadn't moved in so long anyhow.
The sound wavered; plaintive and frail. A word that he recognized, but, from where...
He'd been sunk into darkness so long that it had become like a cloak blotting out the horrible world.
Again came the sound, twice, thrice again. More insistent and desperate this time.
It couldn't be from him. No. He was gone.
But then again who else would know...that name...
Very reluctantly, Hobbes opened his eyes.
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The blurry mishmash of colors that assaulted his vision tangled together, shifted, slowly coming together into something vaguely recognizable. A face looking longingly at him; stretching one hand out to rub behind his left ear. That striped shirt...no, it couldn't be.
"Cullllvnnnhhhhgh?"
By now even the edges of his mouth were as stiff as the rest of him, twisting his speech into mush. But despite the half-growled gibberish the figure seemed to react, hand moving to stroke the crusted fur on his cheek.
"...hey buddy."
Memories tried to come back through a consciousness that felt like a morass of cold mud. Buddy? There had been such a person, once. So long ago it was the faintest echo ringing through the darkened halls of a dormant mind from a time which had withered away to nothing.
A finger gently wiped some debris from his face enough to see just a little clearer through one eye.
"Come on, pal. It's...it's been a bit. I know you're in there. You - gotta still be in there. You remember your old pal, right?"
With an arm that seemed to creak like a wooden plank, Hobbes managed to roughly swipe his right paw across the other half of his face. His hazy vision simply wouldn't work quite right - it used to be better, hadn't it? Out of a dozen half-formed questions slumping together in Hobbes' dim thoughts, all he managed to croak out was "...I 'member. A bit. How long....pal?"
The words cut Calvin's soul. "Too long. But...but let's...c'mon, buddy, let's go home. "
Clearer memories burst through the sludge of a weary mind; with a drawn-out moan he shook his head slowly. It hurt as much to move as to suddenly recall why he'd been sleeping there. "Oh......but....don't you 'member...there's no......"
His shaky voice trailed off, but the figure in front of him closed his eyes suddenly. They both remembered.
"No h-h-home," Calvin managed to stammer out. It was a blasphemous thing to say. A denial of everything held dear. And yet it had come true. As if reading his mind once again, his old friend managed to move his paw enough to barely clasp the hand that was still picking twigs out of his muzzle.
"...you can go....buddy. Thanks...but I'll...be...oh-kay. It's okay."
"No!"
"Buddy...look at me. It's like you...said...everything's..."
"Gone." came the faint confirmation. "I know. It's all gone. The house's gone. The sled's gone too. And the wagon you're sitting in ain't going anywhere now. But you're not gone. I'm sorry we just - quit. C'mon, you need a bath. You need like ten baths."
"But...what would we...do?" Hobbes rasped, managing a pitiful half-smile. A trickle of memories, clearer and more precious than pure diamonds, were flitting past his mind's eye. Adventures. Places. Peril and daring faced together. So many wonderful memories with his buddy from a lifetime ago.
"We'll find something," pled Calvin, "we'll make something. We'll get a puzzle from the thrift store so we have something to do if that's what it takes. I'm all alone every night wandering around my apartment like a zombie and you...you're gonna turn moldy and have birds crap on you every day until you're a pile of trash that used to be my friend. Look; I know things suck rotten eggs now and there's no summer vacation and bosses are ten million times worse than teachers. But this is stupid. We didn't spend all that time together and do all that stuff even if we beat up each other some times like we were brothers just to end up like...this." The last word was both an exclamation as well as a desperate plea.
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Seeing little reaction to his words, Calvin babbled on desperately. "C'mon, it's not like a lady tiger is gonna wander in front of a rusted old wagon, peek under the tarp and bat her eyes at you. I sure can't afford dating. So what are we gonna do, huh? Just melt into a couple piles of sad and lonely? C'mon, pal, let me carry you home. I know we promised 'no more' because all the best times came to an end - but this just can't be where it all ends. Forget what I said last time...just...even if all we can do is read comics and play checkers...please...I promise I'll get you fixed up..."
Hobbes tilted his head slowly and regarded him with a mixture of wisdom and grief. There was much to consider. When they had parted ways at the end of a golden era, it had been with the truest conviction that there was nothing left to be done. The most heartfelt of oaths, once given between comrades, were not easily broken. To try and continue on now seemed to be almost an insult; as if attempting to pick up a pen and write another chapter to a classic work after the original author's final benediction. With all the old paths torn up by forces far beyond their control, so much less time, so many more cares and worries...
...was it really worth the effort?
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In the end, he had his way. Being the wiser of the two (if no longer the larger) had certain advantages, among them being the ability to stand one's ground in an argument for as long as necessary. It was inevitable.
So Calvin carried him out facing forwards, as awkward a task it might be at the moment. It kept Hobbes from looking back at the filthy blue tarp crumpled up around the rusted old wagon while they made their slow escape from that sad place together.
Under one arm he even managed to wedge the weatherbeaten sign that the two of them had proudly labeled with a Sharpie to commemorate their 'discovery', so many seasons past.
"What do you say we come back in a month and turn the wagon into a planter?"
A feeble chuffing sound issued from Hobbes' muzzle. "Sure. Maybe....some....roses?"
"Yeah. Roses. Those were mom's favorite."
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Their trip home was silent and uneventful, besides a stop at a drug store that Calvin hoped sold laundry detergent. They did - an insanely overpriced and tiny tub of it. Calvin rebelled against the corporate robbery by surreptitiously scanning only one of the two tubs at the self-checkout, although stealth hardly mattered as the front counter was completely devoid of staff. Nobody had seen him come in; nobody saw him leave. Sometimes his innate tendency to go entirely unnoticed seemed to have its advantages.
It took two full cycles of being washed in the tiny old Whirlpool on the "Delicate" setting in warm water to completely cleanse his stuffed friend of all the grime that months of harsh weather had exposed him to. Hobbes gratefully compared it to a sauna at a 5-star hotel after being stranded in the Amazon. Drying off was an even longer process with a cheap hairdryer waved slowly from head to tail for an entire hour. But his buddy didn't complain; merely switching hands when one became too tired from holding the clunky thing.
Hobbes constantly flexed himself under the slow waves of warmth; becoming ever more animated and lively as the minutes dragged on. "Grrrrrr! Man, it's good to feel all soft and fluffy again after my fur turned into stale bread crust for so long! I feel like I could race you down the street for a 6 pack of Mountain Fizz! Whaddya say?!" He suddenly whirled about to ruffle Calvin's hair into worse disarray than usual.
His old buddy merely smiled and aimed the hairdryer at a damp spot on his side. "Maybe on the weekend, if the rain cuts out. Freezing rain is the worst. Can't build a rain-man, right?"
"How about build a bookcase?" Hobbes observed the sparseness of the open basement room. "Can't have all those Nuke-man comics sitting on the floor!"
"Heck, you know I'm no Harry Handyman. But...I guess what's a bookcase, anyway? Four cheap boards, a sheet on the back and a couple shelves in the middle with paint optional? Yeah. That wouldn't take Einstein to make one."
"Then it's settled," affirmed his friend with a hearty pawshake. "Today we plan - tomorrow - we build!"
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An old carpenter's adage is to "measure twice and cut once".
In the hands of a mildly-scatterbrained pair of old friends, the adage became "measure three times, argue about the results each time, almost cut your finger off the first time, Google how to use a circular saw properly, then measure a fourth time and cut with the care of a heart surgeon while debating about who was right the first three times. Also be sure to hit each other's thumbs with every other swing of a hammer." Cursewords were used in abundance, reinvented, interleaved with such original terms as "frizzletop" and "catnip-breath".
The net effect somewhat resembled the efforts of a dyslexic octopus attempting to recreate a Bob Ross masterpiece by watching 'painting for amateurs' from videos on Youtube, with ongoing commentary from Statler and Waldorf. Even a task as simple as painting a simple coat of eggshell white turned to violence when a freshly-painted sideboard suddenly sported a doodle of Nuke-Man about to be stomped by a giant foot. That conflict ended amicably with a suggestion to doodle both sideboards with whimsical amateur art, turning a simple task into a frenzy of concentrated activity lasting half the afternoon.
After over twelve hours in total the result was a six foot high monstrosity whose shelf-pegs were less than perfectly aligned and spaced, festooned on the sideboards and fronts of the shelves with a wide variety of artwork and random phrases befitting a pair whose enthusiasm exceeded their sanity. A half-inch wide knot in the woodwork had its 'plug' gouged out and labelled "girls bathroom! ---->" in a fit of gleeful immaturity. Altogether it was the absolute pride of a pair of reunited friends who sat together on a small throw rug, drinking hot cocoa warmed on a hot plate.