Chapter 2

To say that I was stunned and in mild shock would be an understatement. “You can speak? How? And your body changed! Who are you? What are you?”

“Hy um Bellle. Yur good gurl! Hy take care hof yhu und yhu take care off meee. Thish is how et es to bee.”

“This makes no sense. I don’t understand.”

(For the sake and ease of writing Belle’s words, I will just use English, without her accent.) “It’s complicated and not. I have been here for over a century. You are the first person I felt I could trust to show who I really am. So many humans would not stop to care for a dog that’s sick and near death. You did. Your heart is good and I’m grateful!”

“A hundred years? How is that possible? Are you an alien? From another planet? Belle, I have to admit I’m not sure what to do.”

Belle looked at a calendar I had on the wall. It was from the local Tractor Supply. There was a Norman Rockwell style painting on it, depicting an image of a cottage in the woods, on a snowy day. “More like 142 years. Am I an an alien? I’m not sure. I come from a version of earth that is not quite like this one. We were stranded here by accident. I’m the last one left.”

As preposterous as the idea was, the simple fact that I was here with a being that seemed to be a mix of human and canine had me suspending disbelief. I decided to see where this rabbit hole that I was teetering over would lead.

“An accident? Last one left? What happened? How could you live for so long?”

“My species is very long lived. I was a child when my parents were selected to be part of a research team to observe humans. On the day of the accident, I was in the woods, and was wandering around collecting samples of leaves and other flora. The humans were washing the side of the hill out, with pressurized water, they were looking for gold. They accidentally washed away the foundations and covering for our hidden facility. It collapsed and killed everyone almost instantly. By the time I returned, it was nothing but a sunken mud pile, and all the humans were trying to dig it open. The couldn’t. Which was a good thing because they wouldn’t know what to do with anything they might have found. If I was there, I would also be dead.”

She went on to say that her family and several others of her kind were scientists, sort of like anthropologists that studied other species, but tried to do it in hiding. Understandable, when you think about it. On her “home world” a way to travel between the versions of earth was discovered and numerous teams were sent out, and would return at a later date with their findings.

There was more to it, but for now, and the sake of this narrative, we will leave it at that.

I had no idea what to say, but I understood grief. I hugged Belle close and gently rubbed her face, trying to offer comfort. “I’m so sorry that happened to your family. All these years alone. It must have been miserable for you.”

“It was. For me to survive, most of the time I stayed in full canine form. Nobody looks at a dog and thinks anything about it. It is easy for me to maintain that appearance. If I need to, I can force myself to look fully human, but it takes a lot of energy from me and I need to rest a lot after. This is my natural form.”