In Dire Straits

Two Loners

Vega tilted her head. "Sorry, I probably shouldn't have brought that up."
Gunner's eyes cleared from the veil of sadness that oppressed them as Vega apologized, distracting him from his thoughts. "Nah, don't worry about it, kid. You couldn't have known." The sad expression left his features as quickly as it came.
Quietly, Vega thought over her own past and if it might be similar to Gunner's. Then she shook the thoughts out of her head. Reliving it wouldn't do her any good now.

With a sigh, she dipped her head to lap noisily at the water, drinking as much as she could. This felt off, being in a loner's backyard, enjoying their source of clean water without any sort of cover if they came out.

She looked up at Gunner. "So, you said something about... food, too, right?" The hot dogs from the man on the corner did little for her. It felt like it'd been days since she'd last eaten, and she was getting fatigued from lack of nourishment.

Gunner almost actually felt a slight feeling of pity for this female. She was rather thin, and so nervous. You had to be tough to survive in a place like this. Flicking a cropped ear, he brought his gaze back to Vega, who had finished lapping up the water.

"Yes. I did say that," he confirmed with a lash of his tail. He got up and trotted around the pond, heading back the way they first went. After making a quick dash across the surface of the lawn, he slipped through the gate and waited for Vega to pass. He pushed the gate with his shoulder, closing it. "Don't wanna raise any suspicion," he muttered.

After a few minutes of walking in the alleys, they came to the back of a restaurant on a little paved road. Restaurants had the nasty habit of throwing away anything that wasn't to their standards of quality, and that often meant throwing out foods that were perfectly good. "Eat," came Gunner's booming voice.

Vega followed behind quietly. Although she was still rather fearful of this irritable beast, she would follow him anywhere if he brought her to food. She normally avoided places like this, because you never knew who else might be hungry. She had been bitten by other dogs and clawed by cats.

But this place seemed empty enough. Even though she was very hungry and not exactly picky, she was careful. The meats were no problem; she could smell which ones were starting to rot and which ones were relatively fresh. She ate the bread with a bit of reluctance; she didn't like the way it felt in her mouth, especially if it stuck. Secondly, if spoiled milk that humans drank on a regular basis was thrown out by them, then there must be something seriously wrong with it.

She didn't speak as she ate, but her ears were pricked upwards, ready to snatch any sound of the pit bull's gruff voice from the air.

Gunner watched in silence as Vega helped herself to the feast in front of them, and ravenously ate his own fill. Vega had soon started rummaging through the thrown out food as well, hoping to find a little morsel. Using her acute sense of smell, she detected the scent of fresh meat a little further off. She trotted up to the source and started pushing aside bags and other produce. She quickly found the meat in question, a nice fresh chicken, plucked and all. "Jackpot," she murmured, a grin crossing her muzzle. She sniffed it again, wondering why in the world the humans would throw a perfectly good chicken out. 

And so what, it seems perfectly good to me, she thought with a shrug. She picked it up in her jaws and sauntered over to Gunner. "Hey, look what I found!" She tore off a leg and watched the pit bull expectantly.

"Are you mad?!" Gunner roared, throwing his massive form in front of her and batting the meat away from her. Vega immediately lowered herself to the ground and backed away submissively, her ears flattening in fear as her tail shot between her legs.

"What if it's a trap?! Humans are evil, and you never know what they might have done to it to get rid of strays!" He knew only too well how cruel humans could be.

Noticing Vega's fearful, submissive posture, he slowly began to calm down. He didn't know why it was thrown out, but he didn't smell anything suspicious in it. He sighed and sat down on the sidewalk. "But... it does seem to be fine." He inched forward, ripping the other leg off effortlessly. "If not, then I die," he said with a shrug. "If this is the mistake that will cost me my life, then hell, there's nothing I can do about it."

"What?" Vega exclaimed, clearly taken aback. "You mean... you don't fear death?"

Gunner huffed. "Aren't you the observant one. No, I'm not afraid of dying. I've lived my not-so-great life, kid. The world wouldn't exactly lose anything." His commanding golden-brown gaze met with Vega's. "Now then. You finished, kid?"

Vega shook her head, not believing how laid-back the male was about death. Death was something she'd been avoiding for too long to talk so lightly of it. "But... how can you be so calm about that? Death is the end! You can't do anything for anyone if you're dead."

She shook her head again, trying to clear her thoughts of it. Reluctantly, she sat down in the gravel, quietly bringing one strong back leg up to scratch behind her ear. "Sorry about that... It's just that I don't want you to die, and definitely not because of carelessness."

The pit bull rolled his eyes in annoyance at Vega's outburst, though he admittedly saw the truth in her sayings. However, the world still wouldn't be deprived of something exceptional. He was just the ordinary stray in an ordinary town in and ordinary world. 

"What you say is... nice, kid. But I'm just another stray in an ordinary town."

"But you can become something so much more." The words weaved out of Vega's throat with genuine concern for this beast, and she could have sworn she almost saw his eyes softening at her words.

Vega laid down, setting her head on her paws gently. For a long time, there was a silence, but it wasn't tense. It was actually somewhat calming, allowing her to run her thoughts out in her head. Watching him, she tilted her head a bit. "So," she began as carefully as she could. "I trust that in time you will open up a bit more. You seem interesting, Gunner."

She pricked her ears forward, expecting to hear his gruff voice respond. But there was a long, almost eerie silence. Gunner's muscular body reclined onto the earth beneath him. Golden eyes wandered to the pile of junk that littered the back of the restaurant, lost in the meanders of his own mind. Sometimes, his own mind seemed like a labyrinth, but luckily, he could usually find his way out. Unlike some, he knew himself rather well.

He listened to the daily life of the city, hearing the dogs bark and the birds chirp happily in the branches of the sparse trees. The volume these tiny creatures could come up with never missed to impress the male. He had often longed to have such happiness.

A warm breeze ruffled his short fur, bringing a new set of scents to his nostrils. The suffocating smell of oil, gas and cars, metal, wood, dirt, and all sorts of other unnatural scents.

"Maybe in time, kid. Maybe in time. "