Redbeard's Purpose

What is the purpose of life?
Is there any purpose? Is there a point to it all?
Maybe the point is to have fun. And to play fetch and eat.
For the first few years of my life, I sat in a cage in a white room. I could play sometimes, but it got lonely. There were other dogs around, but we couldn't interact much. Every day, people would come in, and other dogs would leave. But I just stayed there. Until one day...
"Hey, mum! Look at him!"
There was a boy! He smelled like ocean, and fresh cookies, and tea, and books.
"Don't you want a smarter dog? Like a retriever or something?" said another boy, kneeling next to him. He smelled similar to the curly haired boy, yet different. He smelled like cake.
"Just because he's an Irish setter doesn't mean he's stupid! I bet he's brilliant, Myc!"
"You want him, Sherlock?" said a woman, kneeling next to the boys. She smelled like cookies and biscuits and books and tea, and a bit of lemon, too. I like them.
"Definitely."
Sherlock.
Another woman opened the cage, and I was free! I ran to Sherlock and into his arms. He laughed and pet me and hugged me.
"Good boy, good boy!"
That's me! I'm a good boy!
"What's his name going to be?"
"Redbeard."
"Oh for God's sake..." muttered the other boy, Myc.
"Hush, Mycroft. It's his dog!" said the woman. Mycroft, not Myc.
They put a leash on my collar and I got a new name tag. On one side it said Redbeard. That's me now! And on the other side, it said Sherlock Holmes.
We got into a car, and Sherlock let me stick my head out the window. There were so many new smells!
We stopped at a new place, a place I soon learned was called "home."
There was an older man too, they called him dad. He was really nice, he smelled good like the others. He fed me food under the table.
But there was someone else too. A girl. I heard Sherlock call her Eurus.
There was something different about her. She smelled different, and I didn't see her as much as Sherlock and Mycroft.

One day, me, Sherlock, Mycroft, and Eurus went to the beach. I'd never been to the beach before, but I loved it! Sherlock wore a strange hat and played with me all day. He kept saying things about "pirates", whatever those are. He laughed when I tried to grab at the oddly shaped stick he was carrying. We ran around a lot, and I dug in the sand a lot. I discovered a lot of new smells!
Maybe the purpose of life is to have a Sherlock.
There were a lot of days like that, with Sherlock on the beach, or in the backyard. We spent hours playing pirate and looking for treasure. Sometimes he got Mycroft to be the bad guy. Sometimes, I was able to make him laugh. I loved when he did, because he didn't do it as often as Sherlock did.
One day, me and Sherlock were sitting on the couch. He was reading, and he read aloud to me. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I loved it anyway. I loved how excited he was with the stories. He read a lot of pirate books. Everything was good, until we heard a scream from upstairs. Sherlock froze, and I lifted my head.
It was Sherlock's mom. Was she in trouble? His dad and Mycroft raced upstairs, and we followed behind. But when we got there, Mycroft and his mom were frantically keeping us out of the room. I think it was the room Eurus slept in. It smelled like her, but there was another smell, too. I didn't like that smell.
"What's going on!" Sherlock yelled. There was a lot of yelling, and crying. Everything was happening in blurs. We were rushed away from her room into Sherlock's. There were loud sounds outside a few minutes later, and the sounds of lots of footsteps. Then the door slammed, and Mycroft walked in.
Immediately, Sherlock started yelling questions at him. Mycroft said some stuff that didn't make much sense. I heard "accident" and "hospital" and he kept saying Eurus' name.
He left, and then Sherlock started crying. I put my head in his lap and tried to make him smile, but he didn't.
"He's lying. They're all lying. Something happened and they're not telling me because I'm too young. I have a right to know, she's my sister!" he said angrily.
I didn't know why everyone was so upset, and I didn't know how to cheer him up.
I didn't see Eurus for a little while after that. Things went back to normal. His mom baked, his dad fed me food under the table and laughed when he was caught, me and Sherlock played pirate and read together, and I still tried to make Mycroft smile.
Then, Sherlock started to leave every morning. He told me he went somewhere called "school". Apparently dogs aren't allowed there, which he thinks is stupid. He thinks a lot of things are stupid. Other kids, rules, being polite, Mycroft occasionally. But he never calls me stupid. He says I'm brilliant.
During the day, I have his mom to keep me company. She's nice, and I love being with her, but I miss Sherlock. I run up to him and bark and lick his face when he comes home every day, and then we go outside and play until it's dark and we have to come inside.
But one day it was different. Sherlock came home, but he looked different. He looked hurt. He was crying, and there were strange red marks under his nose and his mouth, and there was a dark circle around his eye. He didn't reach down to pet me, just walked into the next room.
"Hey, sweetie! How was your-oh my...Sherlock, what happened?" his mom said, rushing over to him and kneeling down.
He didn't say anything. He just started crying more, and she hugged him. How had he gotten hurt? Had he fallen? What happened?
He sat down on the couch after his mom had cleaned him up, and he held an ice pack to his eye. I got up next to him and licked his face, but he only smiled a little, then went back to looking sad. How could I help him?
I went upstairs and looked around his room. I saw his pirate hat on his floor, and I picked it up carefully and ran back to him. I dropped it next to him on the couch and looked at him expectantly. He smiled more, and put it on. He put the ice pack down and ran outside with me, and we stayed outside for a long time.
That night, Mycroft gave him his last piece of cake. Today really was a strange day.
A few weeks later, we all went down to the beach, since it was a nice day. I loved the beach. It was my second favorite place after home. Everyone was happy, and Sherlock and Mycroft even played together, and Mycroft smiled and laughed a lot that day. That day, he didn't need much convincing to play pirate with us.
They laughed when I shook off all the water off of my fur, even though I got Mycroft wet, which he usually hated.
We played fetch, too. Sherlock had brought a ball, and we played for a long time. His parents laughed and tried to cover the food they had on the blanket from the sand we kept kicking up as we ran by. That was one of my favorite days. I wish there were more days like that.
Maybe the purpose of life is to live in the moment, to have fun doing it. Don't worry about the future, because right now is good.