I Among Dogs

Chapter 3: Meet the Heelers

~ 8:13AM ~

"I told you it was real!"

"Yeesh, what happened to it? Is it even breathing?"

"Hang on, I think it's moving."

The voices I heard were muffled and unintelligible at first, but as my mind slowly slipped to an awake and conscious state, I could make out what the voices were saying. They seemed to have an accent similar to the two separate voices I had heard last night whilst hiding in the burrow. These ones however sounded very different and I soon noticed there were more than two. I let out a small groan as my eyes fluttered awake, my vision at first blurry much like the time I woke up from unconsciousness and as soon as it was clear enough, I pushed myself upwards with my arms, feeling the pain on my back return, thankfully not as unbearable as before I blacked out. I rubbed my eyes for a moment before tensing up as soon as he registered the sight in front of me.

Two of those dog like creatures stood ahead of me, both possibly about the same height as the basset hound in that RV. Unlike him however, their appearances seemed to match the smaller bipedal canine I encountered at the creek. Hell, one of the two even looked almost like an adult version of the aforementioned smaller dog, but with many notable differences.

For one, their tan stomach had a light blue border like the tan fur on it's muzzle, which had white hairs around the mouth area, resembling a stubble beard. The dark blue patches were instead more darkish in colour, the head having fine white hairs as well.

The other looked almost the exact same, but the main blue fur colour was replaced instead with light orange and unlike the blue dog's face having both dark patches around the eyes, this one only had one patch of brown around it's left eye, both it's ears did have the matching brown colour. Instead of having a border colour, it's muzzle was completely coloured in cream with a stripe going upwards between it's eyes. It's hands and feet and the spots on it's tail and back having the same cream colour.

As soon as I registered what I was looking at, I screamed in panic, scrambling backwards to get away from as they both yelped in response, flinching at my sudden reaction as I grabbed the nearest twig and held it out towards them defensively.

"P-PLEASE! DON'T HURT ME!" I begged, hoping that they wouldn't react like the basset hound had done and try to shoot me dead. The blue adult dog held up it's hands in front of itself and quickly spoke out, having a masculine sounding voice.

"Woah woah, chill the beans!" I still held the stick out in place, trembling as I didn't avert my gaze from the two large two-legged dogs in front of me. The blue one looking anxious whilst the one that was orange coloured gave me an uncertain look. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something else. My eyes darted over to see something I never would've expected to see again, especially so soon. It was the very same small dog I had seen at the creek, peeking at me from behind the larger blue dog, looking just as unsure as the orange canine.

"Okay... You good now, mate?" The voice of the larger blue dog regained my attention as I looked back at him. "...We'll just ask you a few questions and then we'll let you go, fair?" He requested. Still trembling slightly, I nodded, dreading to think what they would do if I said no. "Okay. First off, who are you? And... what are you?" He asked as clearly as possible. I managed to find my voice as my answer came out in stutters.

"N-N-Nathan... I-I'm a human." The two larger dogs glanced at each other upon hearing the latter part, their eyebrows arched in slight confusion before they faced me again.

"Alright... Nathan, you aren't a Bunyip, are you?"

"Bandit!" The orange dog hissed at the blue dog with an annoyed look on her face. "I'm just making sure!" The blue one whom I seemed to know was called "Bandit" defended with a slight shrug before watching me shake my head in response. "Now... Did you see a young blue heeler at the creek yesterday?" That question caught me off-guard a little, though the fact that I was seeing that small dog with him told me two things, the species of the dogs I was being questioned by being heelers or cattle dogs and that the smaller dog was related to them, supposedly they were the larger ones' child.