Dog Star

Claire

Evening had fallen over the town of Puláng Bató, but the streets were still bustling. People were going home to their families or stopping by the sari-sari stores for some last-minute purchases or heading over to the many small eateries to buy dinner or to sit down and eat right there. Children squeezed the last precious minutes of playtime before their mothers yelled at them to come inside, while teenagers lingered on street corners to chat. Later, men would drift toward the semi-hidden joints that stayed open when the ordinary eateries have already closed, where cheap greasy food, alcohol and cigarette smoke would flow and the karaoke machines would blare well into the night.

No one paid any heed to the thin, yellow dog trotting through the streets, head craning this way and that as if trying to take in all the sights. No one noticed how the dog would slow to a stop every now and then to sneeze and lower its head to its paws, whining softly. No one saw how it would be drawn to a random garbage pile or narrow alley or the back area of a food stall or eatery, then stop, shake its head and whirl away, only to double back and dive in anyway. The dog was an inconspicuous stitch in the town's tapestry, a typical, ordinary creature that belonged to that typical, ordinary night.

Oh God, this feels awful...amazing...disgusting...hella weird. I—I think I'm going to be sick.

The dizziness hit Claire again and she halted, panting and leaning against the side of a concrete fence. Ever since she'd accepted Kiko's hand and let him draw her down into an odd sort of darkness—a heavier, more crowded darkness, where the remaining embers of warmth were rapidly being overwhelmed by a creeping chill—and she'd woken up in Yellow's body, she'd been assaulted by the never-ending barrage of new and confusing sensory inputs, and it was taking a while for her to adjust to the difference in perceptions.

For one thing, it had been a shock to discover that she'd lost her ability to discern color, and that the world had been reduced to shades of blue-violet, yellow and gray. It was an even bigger shock to realize that her sense of smell now more than made up for the loss. The smells! Holy shit! The very air was an immersive experience that virtual reality could only dream of. One sniff, and she knew. That the next-door neighbors were cooking something with a splash of vinegar and soy sauce in it, with some stuff that smelled like boiling water and plants on the side. That the house behind her reeked of days-old smoke, charred plastic and wood, scorched chemicals, dirty water, fear and sadness, all overlaying the warm, homey scents of the people who lived here not that long ago. That several stray cats had claimed the ruined vegetable garden as their toilet. That the plastic bag she'd found herself in was given by an elderly female human and once contained green leafy stuff that smelled of earth. Even her own body still bore the scent of heated metal, asphalt and blood, a fresh accounting of the accident that had ended Yellow's life.

And launched Claire's new, temporary life in her borrowed body.

With her human mind, she struggled to comprehend how it was she was learning all these things through her sense of smell alone. Whenever she thought too hard about it, her body reacted by sneezing, to the point where she started to wonder if she'd developed an allergy.

A dog. Developing an allergy. To what? Being alive?

"Don't think about the hows too much," Kiko had counseled as soon as she emerged from the bag. "Your body has its own intelligence. As a dog, you must let instinct guide you, instead of you doing the human thing of letting your mind dominate everything else."

"Easy for you to say," Claire retorted, and her words emerged as kind of doggy huff. She blinked. Oh, good. I can communicate in this body. Sort of.

The scent reached her before the strange gurgling sound did. A familiar scent, beloved even, judging by the way her new heart had begun beating faster and warmth had started to spread throughout her body. A human male. Adolescent. Dressed in old clothes that didn't smell much like him and covered in sweat, with a dash of her own blood and the plastic bag's scent mixed in, which meant he was the one who'd stuffed Yellow's body into that bag and brought it here to his burned-down home. Physically healthy. At that, Claire blushed, or would have if she'd been in her real body. It was decidedly disconcerting to pick up such intimate details about another human being who was a total stranger to her, especially since she was fairly sure he would've died from embarrassment if he ever found out what she'd learned about him from his scent alone.