"Awkward," you say, then after a moment, "tolerable. If it's you, anyway. If someone else tries it I'll misbehave." The little dog bounces up to you and announces, "I AM THE BOSS OF YOU!" with its entire body. You put a paw on it and gently squash it. In doing so, you find you've inadvertently told it, "I'm your mother and I'm tired." Well, you guess there are worse translation errors. The dog sobers up a bit, anyhow. You lean affectionately against Erskin's leg and give your tail a slight wag to show willing.
You scratch him behind the ears, in the manner of an owner, then follow him down the road. The little dog, of course, pulls wildly in every direction, gagging itself on the lead each time it comes to the end of it, and occasionally tripping you. It turns a completely deaf ear to any of Bel's remonstrations, even the nips, and when you pull the lead in closer it just gets underfoot. The two leads become so continuously tangled in the course of the hairball's erratic orbit that after only a few minutes you give up and unclip Bel, so he can manage his own affairs. "Do you have an idea which camp it might be, or should we just do a loop of all of them, and stop when we find the right one? Or should we just turn the little monster back into the brush and say good riddance?"
You take a good snoutful of the breeze, trying to sort through the smells while also using your logical brain -- surprisingly difficult to do in tandem. Smell tells you nothing useful, but you do manage to make your brain work. With a goofy little dog like this, badly trained and unused to the outdoors, there's no way they're planning any serious outdoorsmanship. They're going to be in a camper, probably. And thanks to looking at your trail map, you know where the RV hookups are. This late in the season, there probably aren't a whole lot of campers parked there, and it might be fun to watch Erskin charm some random senior citizens into helping him find the dog's owners. Speaking of the dog, it's gotten wrapped in its leash. "My god you are terrible at walking, how are you this screwed up? Stop. Sit down. Now lift your paw. No, this paw. Stop; just do it. There, good." By the time you hound (heh) the creature into untangling itself, it has peed a little in fright, and also decided it wants to be your best friend. You tolerate its attention-seeking benevolently, but you're relieved when you reach the RV area. As you guessed, there's not more than three or four parked. "I can't smell its owners on it," you tell Erskin, "since it rolled in half of Wisconsin. You'll have to human them out."
You're about to tell him to sniff some tires, before you realize that such a supremely self-confident disaster as this dog would scent-mark everything it came across. Human it is. The first doesn't open at a knock, the second one is opened up but has its people missing— gone walking like you two, you suppose— but the third flushes out your prize. A big shiny new vehicle, in-state license plates. Vacation rental? you ask Bel, the notion same as 'a bone taken away to play with but not to play keep-away with', and Bel agrees. The occupants are on the outside of middle-aged, and slightly disheveled. The male adjusts his shirt and takes up a lot of the doorway, while the female makes hasty clothes-putting-on noises in the back. "Hello!" you say. You do not say "I bet we had better sex than you," but from Bel's poorly stifled tongue-loll you suspect he caught the notion. Instead you brandish the small clot of dog. "Is this yours? We found it by the lake." "Princess!" the man says, taking it. "What? How did she—?" "What happened to Princess?" the woman says, coming forward. "It— she—" is neutered, and doesn't deserve the pronoun, "—had a bit of an adventure! She gnawed through her lead and took off for the wild, seems like. My friend and I were out looking for who to give her back to." The humans go and goggle at the limp end of Princess's former lead, then the small clear paw-prints heading straight out of camp and into the brush. Then they thank you a lot, lie about all the TV they had been watching, and make nervously admiring noises over your dog, while Princess makes lots of noise, licks its people all over, and pisses itself again. "This is my friend Sirius," you say. "Shake hands, Sirius." "Harry Potter fan, huh?" the woman says, delightedly accepting Bel's paw. "So they tell me," you say blandly, while she introduces herself to Bel. She is the sort to make talking-to-babies noise at dogs, and Bel probably outmasses her by fifty pounds. It's an excellent visual. "Say, might you have a biscuit? Sirius here did the lion's share of the rescuing." "Lion's share!" the woman laughs, inexplicably. "Oh, that's good. Let's see what we can get our brave hero, huh? Sit tight." Bel is also laughing at you. You suspect several stupid human things are going over your head right now. Harry Potter can get fucked.
You graciously accept the woman's rather overwhelming greetings, and enjoy Erskin's bafflement about the Harry Potter references. When the lady goes to get you a biscuit (you hope it tastes good to your canine mouth, you don't want to be rude), you lick Erskin's hand and rest your chin heavily on his knee so he knows your laughter is affectionate. Princess tries to initiate playtimes by basically jumping on you. You flop over on her. She squeaks and wriggles out from under you; her male owner is about to panic because of the squeak, but it was more of a 'whee' than an 'ow', and she grins like a dork and does it again. So you play this weird game with her a while, kind of enjoying yourself. "Dogs are stupid, but cute," you tell Erskin. "I guess I knew that."
"They're fun," you agree. "Even the bitty ones. We'll have to hit up a dog park some time. A lot of dogs are rude and crazy, but if you like mob games— er, sports?— a big pack of dogs can make for an excellent afternoon." The male human is looking at you funny. "Sorry, what?" you ask. "Oh, just, the way you talk to your buddy there. Got a good rapport, huh?" "You could say so!" you say. You could say so is one of your favorite phrases. Delivered with a smile, it serves as a friendly non-answer to nearly any situation. "So, uh. England?" the man says. He's starting to look uncomfortable. Not one of nature's socialites. "Yes, I've been visiting family over the summer hols," you say. Hols is another good phrase. Americans think it is the cutest thing. "Thinking about college?" the man asks. People asked you just the same thing two years ago, when you were last human. You are hoping you will outgrow the Going To College lifestage at some point. Bel snorts at you, to the effect of how college would eat you alive. "Hush," you say, tugging his ear. To the man you say, "I'm keeping my options open. Are there any good ones 'round here? I love the weather." "You won't say that in three months!" The man says, then, enormously relieved to have Information To Deliver, talks your ear off until his partner comes out with a box of biscuits and a few beers. "Have you had dinner yet?" she asks. "A meal would be the least we can do, and Carl bought more steaks than he knows what to do with." "Hey," says Carl. You nearly pass the beer off to Bel. Instead you hold it, and look to him. "How about it?" you ask. "Do you feel like eating delicious dog treats while I make do with some terrible old scrap of leather?"
You put your paws on his chest, give him a bit of a glare, and then lick his entire face in one swipe. Reply delivered, you delicately accept a tiny milkbone from the woman's fingers. It's not bad, honestly. It's not worth the flipout Princess is throwing, though.
"Would you be of a mind to spare a steak for the both of us?" you ask. "I think it might take rather more biscuits than Princess would like to share to fill him up." The biscuits are roughly the size of Bel's nose-tip. To amuse yourself, you balance one on it. He gives you such a look. It appears there really are a great big pile of cow meat, and the largest T-bone is awarded with all due ceremony to Sirius, for his heroism and valor, along with 'ten thousand points to griffindor', which makes Bel laugh at you again. Princess immediately attempts to steal the meat, to the sharp consternation of its owners, but Bel puts one enormous paw on the slab of meat and the little dog can't budge it an inch. You're aware that the dog is about twelve pounds of hair and its owners are watching you closely, but Bel is very attractive when he throws his weight around. He gives you a look to the effect of how he knows it, and now he knows that you know it, and is furthermore deeply pleased with himself. You clear your throat, give the humans a big smile, crack open your beer, and wander off with the man to let him Impart Information on the subject of grills.
Raw steak is apparently fantastic when you're a wolf. You have a blast scissoring off great chunks of it to gulp down while Princess tries every trick in her tiny playbook to steal a bit. Toward the end, you pull a shred off and let her have it. She acts like she's having a religious experience while she snarfs it, and follows you like a duckling when you nose the screen door open to carry your bone outside. When the humans notice they'll probably flip out and leash her, but she's not going anywhere; you're the most interesting thing in the world, you're her new play-pal and you have a bone you're not sharing. You flop down next to Erskin's lawn chair to gnaw on it (letting Princess get a tug in now and then just to keep her from wandering off) and watch Erskin charm the hell out of this middle-aged Wisconsin couple. He's much better at it than you expected. Some of it is his natural charisma, of which he has absolutely bags and bags, you'll readily admit. But he seems to really pay attention to people. He's probably better at it than you are, to be honest.
You enjoy your steak— beef is always a treat, it's so rich, and humans have dozens of clever ways to spice it— and run through your list of conversational phrases and inquiries. Are you enjoying here? Where did you come from? Do you enjoy it there? Where might you go next? These questions give you plenty of time to chew through one steak, give Bel the bone, and go in for another for each of you. You are a Growing Boy, and of course everyone loves telling recipes. From there it's a recounting of past feasts and holidays, then family status— both their children have grown and left, one for marriage and one for college, and the spectacularly obnoxious Princess serves as their infantile replacement—and back to the subject of travel. You are stuffed to the ears and on your second beer, and share a few stories. You're a travel journalist — a blogger? yes, you could say that— and your recounting of getting to florida from the carribbean as pest control on a cargo ship amuses, though you edit the bit where the rats were lunch as well as an occupation into a joke. This isn't the sort of country where a human doing that would be considered alright, and few countries actually are. Though, in the southern regions, squirrel hunting is fairly respectable. The topic from there is strange things people eat in other countries— and things other countries would find Americans strange for consuming, occupy desert, which is marshmallows and chocolate biscuits. You decline the chocolate, feed Bel a gooey half-melted marshmallow to the general delight of everyone but himself when he can't stop licking, and regards the three of you with deep and horrified reproach— while licking— and paws his mouth, gets marshmallow on his paw, then lies there mournfully licking his gooey paw. It's pitch dark and perfunctory invitations to a ride home or to stay over are made, but you downsize the offer to a borrowed flashlight, kiss them both goodbye— "Oh, uh, that's very European," Carl says, startled— and collect Bel from his sad licky heap. You're wobbly as hell as the second beer finishes hitting your system, but a steady hand on Bel's shoulder and the smoothness of the trail serve you alright. "That was nice," you say, picking your way along. "I love a free meal. I love steak. I love you."
"I love you too," you say with your tail and the tilt of your ears, and somehow in Wolf it's less of a oh-shit-now-it's-a-Relationship phrase and more of a we-get-along-and-this-is-great phrase, so you don't try to cover it up. When he stumbles, you add, "Go ahead and hang on to my scruff. Hell, you could probably ride me like a horse. I outweigh you even in this shape."
"You outweigh a horse," you say. "You are fat." This notion sets you off into giggles, and you nearly pitch over again. You hold on to his mane. He's got a lot of it.
"That's me, the Blimp of Blimps," you agree cheerfully. "Not much farther now. How are you so looped after two beers? I was less of a lightweight than that when I was twelve."
"You were probably this big when you were twelve," you say thoughtfully. "I'm not— I'm not big. Or human. Or good at this. So there."
"Naw, I was a skinny little thing. But at Greek family gatherings, even kids get a little wine, so I started building a tolerance early. Anyway, it's cute how stumbly you are. If you were in four legs right now you could smell how close to camp we are, there's all these trails of us converging. It's really cool."
"If I were on four legs I would bring up all this steak and that would be a, a— crime. A tragedy. Shan't do it." You make it into camp and burrow gratefully into the warm soft den of the tent, kicking off your shoes and then licking at the blister on your heel. It tastes terrible. "Humans are so bad at digestion," you say sadly. "And having mouths. And walking. And smelling. You're only good at steak. It's... the worst."
"Stop that, you goofball." You'd been planning to go fetch your clothes, but if he's going to lick his blisters you clearly can't leave him unattended. Shifting inside an enclosed space is awful, and you resolve to never do it again. Also, you're finally feeling the fatigue of too much back-and-forth. But your neck as a wolf is actually bigger-around than as a human, so the collar doesn't choke you, and it's a moment's work to unclasp it. You don't bother getting dressed before finding your first aid kit. "If you lie on your stomach I can get at your heels better," you propose.
"What?" you ask, but roll over obligingly. When he puts something much too cold to be a tongue on your heel you squeak.
"Don't be a baby," you scold fondly, "it's only antiseptic. You've got mud and who knows what in these." Since he didn't seem to know what to expect, you narrate the rest: "Now here's some ointment, to keep it from drying out or getting infected. A band-aid so it doesn't get bumped. And a kiss to make it feel better."
"You're too kind," you yawn, declining to let him know that such a tiny lesion would have fixed itself in an hour or two, and roll on to your side. "Come kiss the front part of me, it would be more effective," you propose.
