Argos

      A ball of reeds and grasses hurtled through the air towards me.  It passed over my head and, leaping into the air, I snatched at it, missing.  I twisted around in the air to continue the chase, and caught it on my landing.  Happiness pulsed through the core of my being as my master, the great and revered Odysseus, jogged towards me.  I allowed him to pat my head in congratulations, but when he stopped I noticed that my hair where he had patted me felt wet and slightly matted.  I looked about, only to see my beloved master lying on the ground in a pool of blood, staring ahead blankly...
      I awoke with a start.  The dung pile that had become my home smelled slightly
less rank today; perhaps things were looking up.  I stood, padded over to the gates of my masters estate, and gazed in.  I could see drunken, passed out, and hung over suitors through the window.  I had to find some way to get them out of there.  Not many still believed that Odysseus would ever return, but I was one of those who did, and I could not have him return to see his once glorious manor in such a sad state.  I lowered my head to the ground with a mixed purpose of showing my shame and of sniffing out breakfast.
      Odysseus, my master, had left to go and fight in Troy over twenty years ago.  The war had long since ended, and still he had not returned.  I neared the butchers shop.  The back door was propped open just the tiniest bit, so that I could nudge it open with my nose.  On the floor, I saw a most glorious sight.  The butcher had been making sausages today, and there were scraps strewn about.  There was even a full sausage link.  I managed to pick up the sausage before the butcher came in and gave me a fair swat to the head with the back of his hand.  As I left, whimpering with my tail between my legs, he continued to yell incoherently in a language that I had never been able to understand.  Odysseus had spoken this language as well. 
      Two or three years after the war ended there had been no word to indicate my masters return and almost everyone had believed him to be dead.  Believing that Odysseus was dead, the suitors had come in droves and taken over the house.  I snapped out of my thoughts when I bumped into the fountain in the town square where Odysseus used to take me to play with the children by the fountain.  All of these children were grown now, but as some of them passed and recognized me, they would give me a scratch behind the ears, and perhaps a treat.  On this particular day I met one of my former playmates, who had nothing more to offer me than kind words. This was enough, and much more than I got at home.
      The suitors had completely invaded my master’s household.  They lived there and constantly pestered and harassed his “widow,” Penelope.  I arrived at the market hoping that there would doubtless be scraps here for me to scavenge. The brilliant scents of every manner of food and person closed in around me, covering and comforting me like a favorite blanket.  I found a leaf of cabbage, two carrot stubs, and several apple cores, but was shooed away by a lady with a broom before I could make it to the friendly man who sold the olives.  He was one of the children who used to play with me in the square sometimes, and had grown up to own an olive stand at the market.  He had loved me since he had been a boy and was generous in giving me olives whenever I stopped by. 
Oh, how I loved olives!
    As I walked from the market, I returned to my thoughts.  Either Penelope still had faith that my master (and hers) would return, or she thought him dead and was in a severe state of denial.  So severe, in fact, that she had tricked herself into believing the former.  I say this only because she was wonderfully deceitful and meticulous in her attempts to hold off the suitors.  I made my way back to the dung pile to settle myself in.It takes longer than one would think to journey throughout an entire city every day, and it was already becoming twilight.
      As I lay down to rest until darkness fell and the sleep and nightmares took me, I thought of my old master.  He had been gone for twenty years.  His wife was constantly pestered by the same nuisances that had taken over his noble estate, and his son, Telemachus, had left to search for him.  And worst of all, there was nothing I could do.  Odysseus had been the only one who had actually cared for me, and now it was my turn to protect his estate, and I could do nothing.
      Under the care of Odysseus, I had been a beautiful, lean and fit hunter.  I was well cared for and well loved.  Once my master went off to war, however, I had been shunted out of the estate.  I had been neglected for twenty years.  And then, this day at twilight, I heard footsteps. 
      No one ever came to call at this time of day except for suitors, and these footsteps did not sound like drunken staggers.  They sounded strong, noble, and tired.  They smelled familiar, and at the same time foreign.  They smelled like a fire in the study during a thunderstorm. They smelled of adventure and the ocean and exotic lands.  They smelled like home.  I looked as the footsteps neared and saw, at the same time expecting it and not believing it, my old master Odysseus.  He wore a guise, but it was unmistakably him nonetheless.  Clothes cannot cover the scent of a great and just man.  At that moment three extraordinary things happened: I saw my master at last, I felt at peace for the first time in twenty years, and I laid down my head to rest.
      I ran across a cloud.  A ball of reeds and grasses hurtled through the air towards me...