I Among Dogs

Chapter 16: Traumatic Truths and Built Bridges

Bandit and I both stared at the front of the very house that served as the home of a certain border collie that Bluey was good friends with. Neither of us said a word to each other as if either one of us was expecting the other to speak up. How this all started in the first place was only yesterday when the parents of Mackenzie had contacted Bandit and Chilli, having been made aware of my presence in Canistralia and how their kid had been avoiding me ever since he first laid eyes on me and had requested to invite me over for a sleepover to hopefully resolve the situation.

"You reckon he might give you a chance?" Bandit was finally the first to speak, referring to Mackenzie when he asked that question.

"I kind of doubt it, but let's not count ourselves out until the very end." I replied, feeling that a slither of optimism would help. Bandit smiled a little and patted my back.

"Good on ya, mate. Now if there's any problems, just tell Mackenzie's mum or dad. I'll come pick you up tomorrow morning." The adult blue heeler then waved bye to me before returning to the family car whilst I returned the gesture with a hand, the other clutching my sleeping bag before then turning back to the front of the house to find the front door open, an adult red merle border collie with the typical fur pattern of most of the body being a reddish brown, save for the muzzle, neck, forearms, thighs and the tip of the tail which were instead a creamy white.

"Ah, so you're human fella Bluey's mum and dad's keeping for the time being. Pleased to finally meet ya!" The female collie approached me and held a hand out which I didn't hesitate to shake before responding.

"Nice to meet you too, Miss Collie."

"Oh please, just call me "Molly", mate." The collie requested to which I obliged with a smiling nod before I was lead into the household and met another adult border collie, who almost looked like a carbon copy of the red merle collie but with the common black fur and different facial fur and a few grey dots around the nose.

"Hi there! Nate, was it? Bandit told me a lot about you. Heard you were real great with his kids!" The male said with a friendly grin, making me chuckle a little.

"Yeah, they really do love having me around." I affirmed before remembering why I had come here in the first place. "Speaking of which, where is Mackenzie right now?" As soon as I asked this question, both smiles on the adult collies' faces fell as they knew as well that Mackenzie wouldn't take me being in his home very well.

"He's... in the living room." Molly meekly said, stepping aside to give me access to said room as I only nodded and stepped into the living room to find their young border collie off-spring drawing on a piece of paper. His eyes didn't even glance up to see me but I could definitely see a scowl on his face, making it all too clear that he was aware of my presence.

At this point, I was starting to have second thoughts about patching things up with Mackenzie and resolving the shade we had between each other but I knew that I had to press on and try to ease the conflict, so to avoid the awkward bout of silence currently going on, I slowly paced over to the boy collie and sat down next to him.

"Hi, Mackenzie." I spoke out in the most friendliest tone I could manage, but as I should've expected, that didn't even make Mackenzie budge. In fact, I think his scowl contorted to one of near annoyance.

"I... I know you're not very fond of me. And I understand that whatever it was you went through might be why you don't like me. But the truth is, I'm not here to hurt you or anyone you love. And Bluey's other friends trust me enough to never hurt them. So... do you reckon that maybe we can be frie-"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" I immediately recoiled in shock as Mackenzie suddenly turned and barked at me, his teeth baring at me. In my moment of trying to reason with him, I had almost forgotten that I had attempted to reach out to him to better ease him. The many other times Mackenzie had interacted with me, it was just a silent disapproving glare, but his aggressive reaction right now only cemented that he wanted nothing to do with me, and even if I had a few hints, I still didn't fully know what made him so distrusting towards me. I lowered my hands to signal submission as he slowly turned back to drawing, still with a snarl on his face.