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It's fucking cold, okay? Myrne is on a rise of exposed land with a naked view of the sea and the mountains. It is blessed with rain in spring and summer and blasted with cold in autumn and winter. The fields are fallow, their furrows serving only to gather little drifts of snow behind them as sharp flecks of ice go screaming eastwards towards Odessya city looming grey-brown on the horizon.
He is bundled in his homeguard coat, his rifle at his shoulder, a bucket in hand. He's scooping alfalfa out into the goat pen's feeding trough inside the barn. Kevin, a tiny black little runt of a goat comes running immediately at him, colliding with his leg and continuing to run at it over and over again like a dog with its tongue but with the top of its head.
"I hate you, too, you miserable animal. Good evening, Kevin." He bends down and gives the little guy a slice of apple when nobody's looking, either. "There. You piece of shit. I hate you." He pets its head and it bleats at him with cockeyed sideways slanted stupidity. (edited)
"I saw that," says a fox, peeking its head around the corner of the barn. Sometimes Fox uses Forces to talk, and sometimes foxes just talk like this is some sort of got-damn Disney cartoon. "I saw you liking Kevin." It's a teasing sort of accusation, and the fox comes skulking out. There's a tiny little bit of blood on her muzzle which she has not yet licked away, which means she was probably ridding the barn of mice again.
They don't have any barn cats. The last time it came up in conversation there was a twenty-minute dissertation on why barn cats are an archaic thing which should not be perpetuated in this modern day and age, both for the health of the cats and also the health of the local ecology. Since then, Fox has hunted the mice and kept their population to a dull roar.
Mei's presence at Myrne isn't a planned thing today, but she also doesn't intend to try to sneak up on anybody, so once she gets close enough that she can call out and expect it to be likely she'll be heard she does so. "Hello! It's me, don't shoot! Or at least don't shoot to kill!"
She's coming up the way from where the nearest ley line is, clad in clothing suited to the current weather conditions even if she has the ability to keep herself warm with magic. Sometimes just doing things the normal way is okay, after all. Not everything has to be done with magic. In addition to her big stompy boots and a heavy coat suited to the frigid chill, she's wearing a large carrying bag that's slung by its strap over her shoulder, with the bulk of whatever is inside sitting in front of her. Since there's light coming from the barn, that's the direction that she trudges, looking contented. And maybe a little excited. Mei doesn't usually make a lot of efforts to hide what she's feeling, since she's bad at it anyway.
"I am trying to lull him into a false sense of security with me so that I can hatch my ultimate plan of revenge for all these fucking bruises, Kevin.". Vasya says it grumpily down to the goat which continues to chase him around, bonking into him over and over and over and over again the entire time.
It's not clear, least of all to him, if Vasya felt Mei arrive through the lines or not. But he sure looks a little distracted by something until Mei's voice calls out, and that seems to do it for him. He pokes his head out the door and shouts, "We're here. Come in. Shut the door." And then he does, because it is-- again --really fucking cold out there. "It's Mei," he announces with some more thought, then dismisses said thought.
In twilight, many pairs of eyes peer out of the shadows of the loft. Many more are just staying the fuck out of Revontulet's way for the time being.
Sniff. Sniffsniff. Fox curls around Vasya's ankles happily, sniffing at him and checking in with him. "Oh, hush, I know you love him," Fox chides. And then as Mei arrives, her ears perk up, and she dashes out of the barn, circling around the Obrimos twice, yipping happily.
And then she stops for a second, her ears going UP, and her tail going UP, and she starts flipping out in the most canid of ways. There are no words, there is just sniffing and literally hopping up and down in the air and making very excited canid yips. HOP! HOP! HOP! Have you ever seen Fox bounce literally four feet into the air as a fox? Well, now you have.
"But you're keeping out all this lovely cold air! If you're cold, it's cold! Let it inside!" Mei calls back to Vasya, even as Fox is coming out to sniff around her. When the freak out starts she begins to grin and try to hide a bit of a giggle, and she lifts a finger to her lips in a silent "shhh" gesture.
Which is probably futile, since the bag that's sitting against her stomach starts to wiggle as Mei comes in through the door, makes sure Fox is inside, and then shuts it. She lets out a quiet little laugh and says, "okay, okay, I should have figured you wouldn't understand the idea of waiting for the right moment for the surprise." The Obrimos says to her bundle, and she flips open a flap and unzips a zipper. No sooner has she started to do this than first a small nose, and then a fluffy head pokes out of the opening and peers around.
That is definitely a puppy, who she calms down a little bit by stroking its head. Only a very little bit, though, because the moment it sees the fox it starts squirming even more, eager to play.
"Hello Fox, hello Vasya. I hope you don't mind that I brought a friend." She pauses and calls out, "hello, Kevin. Keep up the good work."
Vasya stoops down and picks up the little goat, which seems to be what it actually wanted with all those headbutts. It nibbles on his jacket and at his beard and ear, but what it doesn't do is try to eat him or bite off his nose. He bounces Kevin a little, gives him some more scritches, and then places him back in the enclosure with the other goats.
Yes, it's a mystery how the little goat keeps escaping, yes indeed.
Vasya engages with this small adorable creature about as well as he does with Kevin, especially in front of people. There's a little confusion on his face, and a well intentioned grin. "You have a puppy?" Statement questions are real hard things to get out of an Acanthus, so well done.
Fox's entire body just sort of inhabits a single letter, and that letter is a repeated capital A. Just AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
She goes bounce bounce bounce and then she stands on her hind legs and she sniff at the puppy and she nose at the puppy and she tug on the bag because let the puppy out so it can play with me and usually she can use her words but there's a puppy and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Once Kevin is back in the enclosure, where collision between goat and puppy is not so likely, Mei opens the zipper on the carrying harness and lifts the puppy out. The little guy starts squirming immediately, and when she sets him down on the ground he bounces part way around Fox, does a little play bow, and yips at her.
Mei keeps an unnecessary eye on the puppy, because who doesn't want to watch a puppy play? It's not like there's any danger of Fox not being able to handle the situation.
"There is a puppy present," Mei corrects with a grin. "This particular puppy's ownership priorities actually start with you, and end with me," she continues, a little cryptically. "He was a rescue from the exclusion zone near Chernobyl, after his mother died before he was weaned, and the rescue group didn't feel like releasing him back there now, when he didn't grow up in that environment, so he was put up for adoption. That made me think of you, and I thought maybe you could use a farm dog, but I also know that a puppy or an adult dog is a major responsibility, so I'm offering you first dibs, but if that's not something you want to take on right now, then I have a new puppy, and I will gladly take that responsibility. For now I've been calling him Pupyat."
He is clearly, right now, a healthy, happy, and boisterous little mutt of a dog who wants nothing more than to play incessantly.
He gets the joke. That, of all of it, is what he seizes on to react to. The pun. It gets a little grin from that grim face and a little twitch of the shoulders that would have been a laugh about seventeen murders ago.
He remembers that time. Every Ukrainian his age does. This is a lot to take in. Just starting with the fact that Mei is paying attention to the fate of puppies in the exclusion zone. That's a daunting emotional consideration just all by itself, with all sorts of complex things for him to process. Add in everything else, and yeah. He laughed at the Pripyat pun.
He's speechless, he doesn't know how to react. But he does know how to proceed.
"It's not really up to us, either. Fox, could you make me a mutt, please? I can handle the speech, I think." (edited)
Okay but hold on for a minute because Fox is play-bowing to the puppy, but not quite as low as the puppy bowed, and has to go over and sniff Pupyat, first. There are some important Boundaries that need to be laid down, and some Roles that need to be established. Like I am the bigger canine. This will be important when the puppy is bigger and not in fact smaller than Fox. So she pads over and around the puppy and licks the top of its head after gently batting at its ears. Yes, correct, I am bigger and in charge.
Then she scampers back a step or two, shakes her head, back through her shoulders, hips and tail, and then pushes up onto her back feet, putting her forepaws on Vasya's leg. And then Vasya sort of collapses in on himself, and now he is the adult version of Pupyat.
The puppy, like many puppies, is not immediately good at observing boundaries, but it's just exuberance temporary overriding other instincts, and after some initial attempts at starting up a bouncing game of snappy jaws, he lets himself be put in his place. It doesn't seem terribly important to him if he's the big dog whatever game or the little dog, he just wants to play games!
When there's suddenly another dog to play with his day gets even better, and he comes bouncing over on extremely oversized feet to start sniffing around dog!Vasya, tail wagging vigorously. His tail is shaggy, with longer hair than the rest of his body that turns it into a bit of a fan behind him.
"True, true," Mei says with smile, stepping back to let this happen without too much involvement on her part. She's made some effort not to cement herself as Most Important Person in the little pup's life, for much this reason. They haven't had a lot of time to bond yet, and she's been a kind presence in Pupyat's life so far, but not THE presence, since getting him to fully bond with her only to offer him to someone else wouldn't be ideal.
She does make herself able to understand the coming conversation, but she seems content not to insert herself into it for now, and remains human.
Dogs can handle a lot of communication in dog. Vasya ears flick and point straight upwards, head tilting this way and that as new senses deliver familiar information to his mind in new ways. He's happy to sniff at the little pup, nose at its side and tummy, and endure being treated ike a big dog gets treated by a puppy. He never quite starts to play with it, though. He leans heavily onto one paw to lift the other as though he might bap, muzzle opening with a nervous warble as the puppy keeps being such a damn puppy at him.
A paw eventually comes down on the puppy's back, and Vasya drops to all fours in a play bow atop the puppy. He falls stock still at this point, save his tail which is straight back, slightly up, and wagging in a right favoring circle. When motion happens again, pup and dog do a little flail readjustment and Vasya is worrying at the puppy's belly with blunt foreteeth and little clicks. Then some licking and grooming as the paw pulls the puppy in closer and a big pink tongue gets to work.
All of this works out to more or less:
What the-- Oh. Dog, right. Oh, it's Pupyat. Hi, Pupyat. You're kind of cute and smell funny. And kind of annoying. if I'm being honest. And I don't know what to do with you, exactly. You could have an easier life some place else. A safer one. But you'd never have a more important one. Or one where you're better understood. I mean check this out! Look what we can do. You've had it rough. I have a place for you to belong and jobs that need done if you want to stay here. And you can always sleep on the bed.
While the conversation happens between Vasya and Pupyat, Fox -- ears up, tail up -- circles around the entire affair, just being Large and Important and A Big Canine. It's something kind of wired in with foxes at this point, and there's only so much she can or wants to do to override that.
Pupyat tries to nip playfully at the raised paw, but when the paw's put down on his back he lets himself be pushed down and settled in just a little. A little. He does keep doing a little bit of enthusiastic mouthing at the limb attached to the paw that's on his back, but he calms down some. His tail is still wagging, and he pauses on occasion to glance at the rest of the dog that comes attached to both the paw and the leg, checking in.
Before too long the nuzzling at his belly, the grooming, and all of that calms him even further, and he squirms a little until he's laying down on his side. His large paws flail a little in Vasya's direction, but he doesn't try to get up or away, and his tail thumps happily against the ground.
He's a little baby still, so a lot of what Vasya is conveying isn't really within his realm of understanding just yet, so a great deal of what his own body language conveys just reflects what's currently important to him.
Is there food here? Can we do games? I'm good at games. I'm good at sleeping, too! What kind of games do you play here? Will you show me new games? Can I play with that weird dog over there in that play pen too?
He has a little bit of a one track mind at his age, and that track is whatever urge is currently at the forefront of his mind. If he hadn't eaten recently it might be more about food, but he's got a contented belly at the moment, so it's play. And, of course, for a dog, especially a working dog, games and jobs can be pretty similar, or even one and the same.
Nothing is ever so simple or easy.
Oh, you're another Kevin. You're just going to love me despite yourself. You're a fool and you will regret this. All the same I've known you for approximately three and a half minutes and I would fight a bear for you. Do you know what bears are? Of course you don't. Because you're a dumb stupid puppy baby. Kevin? Kevin, are you listening? This thing is smarter than you but only just, Kevin.
In other words, the dog just stares down at the puppy and warbles with constant low grade anxiety and frustration. Paw lifting and falling slowly, not really quite knowing what to do with the puppy. He stands, he circles with his tail curled under his legs, and eventually curls up around the puppy, stress yawning and panting heavily.
Fox pauses in her circling around and watching everything to peek out from behind Mei's legs and comments, Isn't that what I said to you right after we met? at the bear comment.
It's funny if you know the two of them had a shitty ex who was a bear Orphan. It's funny anyway, but it's funnier if you know the history.
Fox certainly thinks it's funny, anyway, because she snickers and circles around Mei's legs again, more like a cat than a dog. Canine hardware running feline software.
Mei sits down on the ground, careful not to sit on Fox in the process, though Fox is perfectly capable of not getting sat on all by herself. She pats her lap, inviting Fox over, and watches Vasya and Pupyat continue their doggylogue.
Is fighting a bear a fun game? Can I play too? But you seem worried. Are bears bad? Don't worry. I'll keep the bad bears away from you. I'm not stupid, I'm a very smart dog. I can come up with the best games. Is Kevin the weird dog? Is Kevin a bear? Is that why Kevin looks different than other dogs? Should I scare Kevin away? Oh, you're not scared of Kevin. What are you called? How were you a human and then a dog? Can I be a human?
The puppy gets up the very moment that Vasya does but seems a little less interested in play now, and more focused, warily, on Kevin, until he realizes that Vasya doesn't seem to actually be afraid of Kevin and instead is more interested in curling around him. He spends a few moments finding a comfortable place to lay down with the bigger dog curled around him. A spot where he can give Vasya's muzzle a few affectionate licks, and then put his own head down and just stare.
You shouldn't be worried. We're friends now, so you don't have to worry any more.
The panting continues, brown cow eyes tracking the puppy all the while as a little line of drool dribbles off his sagging tongue. He smacks his muzzle and resumes the stress panting and drooling, even as the little pup comes over and starts trying to take care of him. That pins his ears back with a quiet little whine in the back of his throat. His head shrinks down, nuzzling the pup in closer. After some more staring, Vasya's muzzle lifts up with a final series of pants, one big yawn, and a final series of muzzle smacks. He sets his head down atop the puppy, then, eyes flitting about.
No. I don't suggest it. Yes. I'm not worried about bears. I'm a misanthrope. Misdogthrope? I'm sure your games are adequate. Kevin is the weird dog. Weird dogs like that are goats. They aren't as smart as you are. So you have to learn how to make sure the kevins on the farm don't get hurt. I'll show you how. I am Myrne. All you can see and smell around you is me. I'm just being a dog for you right now. I suppose you could be. That would probably get me in a lot of trouble. I'm sure there's a rule about it.
He doesn't have the heart to tell the puppy that's just not fucking true. So he puts his head on it instead.
Love you too kid. You should sleep. You're going to have a lot of stuff to pee all over tomorrow.
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