He licked her hand softly and did his best to comfort her.
After several minutes, she stood from the floor and brushed her knees off. She walked from the living room to the kitchen and sat at the well lit dinner table. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and mashed at the buttons for a few seconds before dropping it onto the table and taking another deep breath.
He could only imagine what she had gone through in that room, yet every passing moment he saw more of her normal self return.
With one major difference: There was a hardness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. A resolve that spoke tomes about how different she really had become due to whatever had happened.
He cocked his head to the side and looked up at her, wishing now more than ever that he could talk to her. He needed answers.
She picked up on his body language and said, “I just sent Piper a text and told her she needed to get here ASAP. For most of our lives, they were her parents, too. She needs to know.”
Her parents. Of course. His heart broke for her as the weight of the news settled onto his shoulders.
Ardra cast a glance toward the living room and he smelled the fear flow off of her in a quick wave before she picked up the phone again. “I better tell her to use the back door.”
She caught a glance of her reflection in the glass of the window and made a face. He jumped up on his hind legs and put his paws on her chair and licked her cheek, leaving a clean streak and making her laugh.
The sound relaxed a few of the knots out of his stomach.
“Yeah, I better wash up. I don’t want to scare her to death when she gets here either. I look like I just escaped from a burning building!”
The woman stood and jogged up the stairs.
Kaiser walked through the still open back door and did a quick patrol of the yard. With no fence surrounding the property, he didn’t like how vulnerable the house was.
After checking the entire property and sniffing every rock and tree, he was confident that nobody else had been there without his knowing. He had picked up on the musky odor of the man that had come to speak to Ardra about her parents. He had smelled Ardra’s trail from the door to the mailbox and even the rapidly fading scent of her parents that had been left on the front porch, but nobody else.
His nose wasn’t the only tool at work; He had also been running all of his other senses to the maximum, trying to feel for anything that left an imprint anywhere. Both physical and Astral clues were being logged for future reference.
As he sauntered through the back door, careful to remove as much snow as he could from his paws, Ardra came down the stairs with a fresh outfit on and methodically drying her hair with a towel. He stopped in his tracks and took her in. She was tense and guarded, but still oozed strength and dignity.
She was built to handle what was to come.
She didn’t realize it yet, but she was slowly becoming the woman that would, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, save the world.
He heard the soft crunch of snow outside and spun around, blocking the doorway and snarling. Teeth bared and muscles ready to pounce, he crouched down and scanned the darkness.
“Ardra!” the familiar female voice called, “Call off your attack beast! He almost gave me a heart attack!”
Kaiser relaxed at the sound of Piper’s voice and walked over to Ardra’s side near the counter. He thumped his tail sheepishly at her feet as an apology for the false alarm.
Ardra reached down and scratched his ears before walking over and hugging her best friend. She motioned for the other girl to have a seat at the table and Kaiser walked over and lie down at her feet as they sat. He knew it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation for either girl and he wanted to try to comfort them both in any way that he could.
“I got here as soon as I could. Any excuse to break away from homework and that house is good enough for me!” Piper explained cheerfully. “What’s up?”
Ardra took a deep breath before saying, with amazing control, “My parents died tonight. Bishop Stauffer was here a little while ago to deliver the news. Something happened at the temple in Nauvoo and they were inside. It was exactly like the accident in Kirkland. Nobody has been able to determine a cause yet.”
Piper’s eyes got as big around as dinner plates and instantly filled with tears. She started shaking her head, but couldn’t seem to form any words to express what was going on in her head. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
“That’s not possible.” She whispered at last. Tears began flowing in full force a moment later.
Ardra was keeping it together fairly well, so Kaiser decided that the other girl could use his company more. He scooted to her side of the table and rested his head on her lap and sighed.
She seemed to take comfort in the gesture and dropped one hand to pet the top of his head while the other hand reached for a napkin from the holder on the table. She dabbed at her eyes and took several deep breaths to tray to regain her composure. He looked up at her and could see that the shock was starting to wear off a little bit and it was staring to sink in that her friend needed her help now, more than ever.
“Do your grandparents know? I mean, the church would contact them and let them know right?”
Ardra shrugged her shoulders and dropped her head into her hands.
Feeling that both of the girls were as in control as they could be, he left the table to go lie on the floor not far off for a better view of both of them.
“I don’t know, honestly.” Ardra sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I should probably call them and tell them just to make sure. I’m sure if they had been informed they would both be fighting over air time to get me on the phone while they did whatever they could to get here. You know how they work.”
She let out another sigh as the weight of calling her grandmothers settled onto her shoulders. He sent out a silent prayer that she would be able to handle all of this on top of everything she had to learn before Chaos’ imminent arrival.
“I have a hard time wrapping my head around how little information Bishop Stauffer gave you. I mean, they’re you’re parents. Shouldn’t that tell him to round up all the information he could before coming to drop a bomb on you like that?”
“He was acting really weird. It was like someone was after him or something. He was all scattered and not all clean and pressed like he always is. He seemed pretty frazzled.”
That caught Kaiser’s attention. Piper was right, it was definitely strange that a man in that position came so unprepared. Usually they’d have all the facts lain out in neat little packages, or they’d lie through their teeth and have an elaborate cover story made up well in advance. Kaiser would need to meet this man. Size him up, so to speak. He had a feeling that the man knew more than he had shared with the rest of the class.
As the girls sat there in silence absorbing the events of the last couple hours, Kaiser began to doze off. Probably why he didn’t realize what he was feeling until the hair on the nape of his neck was standing on end.
He jumped up from the floor and ran to the back door barking like a hound from hell. Both girls jumped and whirled around to look at him. The smell of their fear filled the air. That was about the time that he realized what he was sensing wasn’t coming from outside at all. It was in the house.
Sitting about five feet away from him.
He zeroed in on the direction that the energy was coming from and felt his stomach drop. It was coming from Ardra. The black tentacles were barely visible in her aura, but they were unmistakable.
There was Chaos inside of her.
He couldn’t believe he had missed it before. There was no way it had always been there. He would have sensed it.
It was at that moment that Ardra finished wallowing and squared her shoulders determinedly. She put all of her sorrow out of her head and the darkness that was winding its way through her aura receded inside of her and she began to glow with the soft gre
en light that he was accustomed to seeing.
He made a mental note to think more about it when there wasn’t so much going on.
The unexpected twist had caught him off guard, but right now, she had other things he needed her to focus on. They’d figure out what was going on with her dark little friend later. He needed to focus on teaching her to use the tools that she had been given to protect herself.
The fact that she’d need to protect herself from Chaos as well as herself was only mildly off-putting.
“Okay. Here’s the plan.” She paused to run her hands over her face. “I need sleep. There’s no way I can get all of this straightened out in my head when I’m physically exhausted. I can handle emotional exhaustion by itself, but add that to sleep deprivation and I’m bound to be a hot mess.”
“I can stay here tonight if you want. I have nothing else going on over the weekend and I can always just make you do my homework if it comes down to it.”
The two girls agreed that it was probably for the best and started shutting off lights and locked the back door.
Kaiser followed them upstairs where the bedroom door was shut in his face. From the other side of it he heard Piper ask, “What was that for? Poor Kaiser is locked out in the hall!”
“He can come back in just a minute.” Ardra’s voice reached his ears through the door, much louder than his dog ears needed for her point to be made. He heard the sound of clothes hitting the floor and a dresser drawer sliding open.
Moments later, the door opened and both girls had changed into their night clothes. Ardra was standing in the doorway pulling her hair up.
“Are you coming in or what?” She asked.
He stood up and walked into the room, almost shaking his head. Even to a dog, women were a mystery.
She closed the door behind him and he jumped up on the bed to lie down in his usual spot. Piper scoffed and shouted at him, “Don’t get too cozy you beast! That’s my spot!” She sat down on the edge of the bed and shoved him into the center. It was going to be a tight sleeping situation if he stayed where he was. After sending Piper a doggy glare, he got up and moved to the foot of the bed.
He wasn’t excited about sleeping with their feet all night long, but it was better than the floor. Life is all about give and take after all.
Ardra shut the light off and climbed in bed, tucking her toes under his rib cage. It was a comfort thing that both of them had grown accustomed to and, as much as he hated to admit it, he liked it. Not as much as having room to sprawl and have her pet his tummy in her sleep of course, but it was a close second.
The three of them drifted into a peaceful sleep. The kind that only mental exhaustion can bring on. No dreams, no nightmares and, best of all, no drama.
The next morning, Kaiser woke up before both girls. He stretched and yawned to get his blood flowing before jumping to the floor. He hadn’t moved all night long and he was stiff. His muscles ached in protest as he paced back and forth to work out the rest of the kinks.
Ardra stirred right as he was sitting down in front of the door to wait for her to wake up. He wagged his tail in relief. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to wait very long. Nature was calling and it was getting hard to ignore.
After he watched her do the same yawn and stretch routine he had, he walked over to the edge of the bed and licked her face. She opened her eyes and laughed at him. He wagged his tail furiously, biting back a bark so that Piper could continue sleeping.
Ardra laughed again before flipping her legs over the edge of the bed and righting herself. She stretched her long legs again, pointing her toes, before standing up and stumbling to the door. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes before twisting the knob and pulling the door open for him.
He bolted from the room and slid across the tile floor in the kitchen. He gained traction and changed trajectory, heading for the door. He beat her there by a good ten seconds and danced in place in his excitement.
When her hand finally reached for the door, he let out a single bark, unable to contain himself any longer.
She jumped and laughed saying, “Shh! You’ll wake up Piper!” Then added in a stage whisper, “You’re awfully chipper this morning!”
She opened the door and he was across the yard in a flash, racing around relieving himself on anything that would hold still long enough for him to lift his leg.
This was one time he was glad he could rely on his animal instincts to take over and erase the embarrassment of acting like a five year old with bladder problems and ADHD.
When he finally felt like he wasn’t going to explode anymore, he ran back to the open door. He looked around the kitchen, panting and wagging his tail, in search of his charge. He didn’t see her, so he sniffed the air to see if he could smell her.
She was in the living room.
He put an effort into slowing his breathing and tucked his tail between his hind legs as he crossed the kitchen. He poked his head around the corner and saw her standing in the middle of the room. She was turning in a slow circle and surveying the wreckage that had been her mother’s favorite room in the house.
A rather large pile of ash had collected in the middle of the room, having been blown away from the heater vents. She stood right in the middle of it like she was the Queen of the Mountain.
He continued to watch from afar as she completed her survey of the mess. Once she had turned a complete circle, he saw the look of sadness from the night before return to her eyes.
“It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
He took it as an invite and entered the room slowly. He dropped his head lower to the ground in commiseration. He had grown to like her parents as well and this was going to be a constant reminder that they were gone. Not to mention a reminder of how they had been removed from her life. Something would need to be done with the room.
He needed to get her on track and thinking straight. He needed to be able to talk to her and get her moving in the direction of reaching her full potential. If she knew what she had inside of her and how to use it, she could repair the damage that Chaos had raked, not only across that room, but the temples as well.
It wouldn’t bring her parents back though. For that, he was deeply sorry. He physically ached for the girl. Had her parents been around, his job would have been much easier. The timing of this tragedy really irked him.
He needed to drop it and move on.
He really needed her to take a trip to the Astral Plane where he could communicate with her more easily. He was certain that it wouldn’t happen with Piper around. Unfortunately, he couldn’t exactly force the woman to leave. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her to leave. Ardra needed support right now. Support that he, being a dog, couldn’t provide. She needed someone to talk to that would talk back to her. Someone that would cry with her. Someone to share in her misery. Someone that understood.
He wished he could be all of those things. He wished that he could cross into this realm with the body that could give her all of those things. The rules that prohibited that were very old and were not easily broken and the consequences for doing so were heavy.
The hair on his neck stood on end and shook him from his reverie. Ardra noticed that she was slipping at the exact same moment and took a sharp breath, squared her shoulders, and removed herself from the throne of ash.
She was blackened by the soot halfway up her calf and left petite black footprints on the tile in the kitchen as she walked up the stairs and headed for the shower. He made sure to put his extra senses on high alert while she was out of his sight so that he could try to get to her at the first sign of trouble. He was pretty sure she was mostly sad and scared, but it drove him crazy not being able to hear what she was thinking like he had that day they had talked under the shifting sky in her garden.
The way she had been mesmerized by his eyes had made him want to pluck them from his head and hand them over to her. Now that she was going through all of this, he wanted to do so even more. If only to give her somethi
ng to hold on to. Something to make her smile when she was down.
The bedroom door opened and a bleary eyed Piper emerged. She scowled at the bathroom door when she heard the shower come on and made a left into the master bedroom instead. When she emerged a few minutes later, she had splashed some water on her face and run a brush through her hair, but she looked suddenly exhausted. Kaiser guessed it was due to being reminded that the Coopers were gone. He sighed a sad sigh for the girls and made up his mind to be there for them in every way he could for as long as he could.
He ran over to the bottom of the stairs to greet her as she came down. That act alone, an enthusiastic hello, seemed to cheer her up considerably. She scratched the top of his head as she passed by him on the way to the fridge. She grabbed some fruit and the jug of orange juice out of it and set them down on the counter so she could get a glass from the cupboard.
She saw the living room when she turned to fill it.
Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head and she ran around the island to get a better look. She stood in the entryway and surveyed the wreckage, much like Kaiser had a few minutes prior. He was suddenly thankful that Ardra was in the shower instead of standing in the middle of the large pile of ash as she had been when he’d been in Piper’s place. The poor girl would probably keel over of a heart attack right in the middle of the kitchen.
A few stunned moments later, she turned away from the messy room and he could see it in her face that she fully intended to get the full story out of Ardra. He could see in her eyes that she was convinced Ardra had gone crazy and lit the room on fire before she had arrived the night before. Never mind the fact that a fire that size would have taken the whole house. Or the fact that there wasn’t even a tiny hint of smoke in the air.
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