forward-dating this a few days, and keeping the circumstances vague
@Junkyard Dog As the days revolved, their faction had changed -- and many of the dogs had fallen ill in the inhospitable climate or found their end by unknown jaws. Dogmeat, bigger than most, was fatefully yet to discover his own termination -- though the ravenousness that hounded his belly oft reminded him his dissolution was near.
He and the svelte comrade he had come to learn was titled Junkyard Dog had delved from the group, surveying the land that stretched well to the west. They avoided wolves where they could, though the glen was bepopulate with them. When they came to a sodden slough where a dark estuary spread deep and caliginous their progress was halted. Dogmeat turned to his comrade, his expression taut -- he did not possibly wish to conceive what depraved or profane creatures called this interminable wasteland their home.
Thanks for starting!!! Keeping things equally vague for similar reasons.
Purpose was her only reprieve in the dark days of her freedom. There was a man to serve, and so she did, and that gave her some joy. Indeed her spirits were high as the two left to scout the lands that lay in their path, and this despite the weight she bore. Soon she would leave them.
"Dogmeat," she began, still staring over the frozen waste,
"the beasts here are fell. We are not long." And her death, she knew, was closing in ever swifter on her. As the days passed she grew only colder, and could not remember the last time she had felt comfort. Hunger gnawed at her, bones showing through the thin hairs of her coat. Junkyard Dog had had precious little weight to spare, and that was already gone. If the cold did not take her, hunger would. And if neither proved to be her end, then the wolves may well be.
It was with a forlorn air that Dogmeat turned to his slender associate, his eyes soft with a cheerlessness only the grieving know of. They thought similar thoughts, grim and foreboding -- and despite their victorious crawl from the wreckage of the van, he worried they were not long for this earth.
His gaze fell on her slim coat and he could only imagine the gossamer gleam in her short fur she had once sported, now fraught with grime and scars. His thick lips pulled taut and his brow furrowed with concern. "No." The bullheaded male growled, limping forwards to touch his comrade's skinny flank. "We will die sometime, but not now." His words were filled with a growling assertion -- he would not tolerate such talk in their camp. It was not their way -- this was no longer the world of humans. It was the world they made of it.
His gaze fell to the foothills, where he had tracked the heavy scent of monsuta passing. "They have food and we will take it."
Morale, she knew, was a weighty thing.
That was why she had held her tongue, waited until they were alone. There were yearlings among their numbers, and younger. She had never been the maternal type, but her heart hurt for them. For all of them. For this reason alone, she would not die among them.
Junkyard Dog frowned at Dogmeat, then turned to gently touch her nose to his cheek. His words seemed to add to her resolve. She now felt brave enough to die, though her fear was great.
Junkyard Dog shook her head. "More mouths than food we can steal," she told him in her rough voice. Junkyard Dog was trying to hold off the inevitable. She had to tell him, but she was afraid. Saying it aloud would make it true, give it a corporeal form in her steaming breath. "I am not long. Death follows me. I will go. They won't see. You will all live on." That was the best she could do, to die away from them.
Junkyard Dog's words, sullied with despair, caused the inu to rally with a growl. This expedition would not take this turn -- it could not -- despite the pragmatism that often consumed him, for once Dogmeat could not see the truth behind the thinfurred female's words.
"You will go where?" He asked incredulously, his voice trailing into a soft whine. Even his tail seemed dejected, the way it hung about him unsure and defeated. If they lost more of their own, the camp would lose all purpose -- and worse, possibly perish in the icy clutch of winter.
The inu's growl, not wholly unexpected, still had the intended effect. Junkyard Dog shrunk back a bit, cowed. Then she shook her head sadly, drawing forward to press her forehead into his neck.
"Do not despair," she said softly, pleading, "I will go, and I will die. I will be free, then. Do not despair for me." Junkyard Dog's own turmoil was too much for her, she would not allow him to do the same. She continued to make, in her own way, an attempt at comforting him. Almost-soothing sounds issued from her rough throat, a coo of, "good dog, good dog."
*pat JD* )':
He had not meant to cow her -- and when he saw the repercussion of his growl his assertiveness seemed to dissolve. He did not wish for the survivors -- any of them -- to meet their end, not this way. He wondered now if they had been better off in the lab; at least then they were warm and fed..
But he snapped quickly to his senses, comforted by Junkyard Dog's mutterings. Yet all the same it sickened him and wrought great upset in his gut --
good dog? He was not ever a good dog in the eyes of the otoko -- yet all the same, he swallowed any bitterness he had for their kind.
"Stay close - we can make it." The goliath shook his head, unbelieving -- despite Junkyard Dog's slowly draining state, he could not and would not allow the wilderness to win.
*pets all the puppies :(*
Before they had left, she had worked up the courage. It had not been easy, of course, to muster the courage to die. Now, she thought, it might have been better to slink off in the dead of night. The thought of them remembering her with anger was too much, though. To have them hate her memory as a traitor was a worse fate than she could imagine, and so she had decided to be brave.
"Please," Junkyard Dog pleaded,
"you make this hard. All must die, and I sooner. Think this and be comforted. I will sleep. I will not hurt." She was tired, so tired, though fear permeated her very being. Junkyard Dog was scared to die, she was not ready, but so few ever are when the time comes. She began to push her head against him more insistently, though whether she was trying to get closer to him or push him away, even she did not know.
He swung his broad head to her to butt her gently, his anguish-laden gaze falling to the ground. In a short period of time they had been transformed from strangers into comrades -- not just he and Junkyard Dog, but all of them. They shared the same fate -- they shared the same sorrow -- and nothing in the world was so binding a coalition as the passel of grief.
Yet all the same, he remained silent -- morosely he deliberated her words. He could not deliver her the death she deserved -- nor would he have any part in any suicide she attempted. With a low growl he looked away. "Good dog." The male rejoined, his voice soft -- though somewhere in his tone was the lancing timbre of irony.
It ached to leave, a visceral pain that lanced to her core, but her mind was made. To leave them was a terrible thing, as she had come to love each in the short time they had been together. Situations such as theirs make fast friends.
The return of affection, desperately needed, draws a thin whine from her throat. It chokes, aborted with the threat of tears, at his words. She had been a good dog, she was a good dog. This simultaneously weakened and strengthened her resolve. A good dog would do what is best for them all, and so she straightened up, looking at him with a tired determination. "Thank you. You should return to them now."
Piteous was the thin fur that covered Junkyard Dog's lean muscles -- Dogmeat eye for the last time the dull sheen of her coat. His expression was drawn downwards, sombered sharply by their grim fate.
"Alright." He shifted with a groan, favoring the soreness in his limbs. He offered the failing dog a half-hearted smile that did nothing to temper the despondency that cut through him sharper than any human's implement ever had. "Farewell forever." The hulking brute proffered one last gentle lick to her slender muzzle before he turned and listlessly headed back to their dwindling group.
"Farewell."
Heavy was her heart as he turned, and she watched his solid, retreating form for a selfish moment. Then she, too, turned away. The spot he had licked seemed to tingle, an after touch that warmed her heart and sent vigor through her muscles as she walked away. It was a dead man's march that carried her away, through the flat lands to whatever may lay beyond.
She struck for the forests, her best bet for survival, for there there was shelter and food for those who could find it.