[Explore] Through the City

Leaving home hadn't been easy on Rob. He didn't chase mystery and newness in the same way Ollie did, and quite frankly, the prospect of turning up to an unknown land without job prospects, without know what lay in store or how it was better than the life they had already had, well. All of that had been a bit difficult for Rob to swallow.

 

The one thing that had made sense to him and had made him feel a twinge of excitement was the idea that there was a thriving economy out here and a potential to rise in a way that they never could have back in the old land. And slim though that prospect had seemed, it had been enough to convince him to get on the boat with Ollie, to sail to Itona and not look back.

 

Still. It wasn't easy.

 

Since their arrival, Rob and Ollie had scrapped together enough shifts on the local trawlers to make a living, but it wasn't enough, and Rob hungered for more. Always, he wanted to do better, to be better. But progress was slow.

 

"You need to take your mind off of being stuck," Ollie had said. "Leeward needs some work, why don't you try taking her out?"

 

Rob had looked him a bit like his brother was mad. Take the hound out for a stroll? Was that Ollie's suggestion for fixing their dire, prospectless future? Surely not.

 

A stupider idea, Rob could not have imagined. But it was a day off. They hadn't scheduled any shifts, and the endless sitting about, the lingering indoors, it was driving him a bit nuts. Different though they might be as individuals, Rob and Ollie did share one thing about them, and it was an inability to sit still and do nothing.

 

So Rob had relented. Up until now, he'd left the hounds to his brother, who seemed to have quite an affinity for the animals. But as time passed and it became clear that Landfall was not a social creature, Ollie had found it increasingly difficult to balance her needs with those of the others.

 

"That's why he's pawned you off on me," he said to Leeward, his voice a low, reluctant grumble as he opened the door to the hounds' room. The orange hound raised her head off the floor, her thick, rudder-like tail beating happily against the ground. This would be their first real interaction, and she didn't know quite what to expect from him, but she seemed happy to see him nonetheless, having adopted him into her pack after weeks of living under the same roof.

 

"Well. Come on then," Rob said decisively, and even though he'd never given her a command before, she responded, bouncing to her feet and trotting through the doorway, listening to him simply because he ought to be listened to. Rob moved through the world with a confidence - a confidence in himself and a confidence in others, an ironclad expectation that he would be listened to when he spoke. 

 

And usually, it paid off for him. People, Rob had found, were generally quite amenable to being told what to do, particularly by someone who sounded like they knew what they were doing. Although Rob certainly did not always have the answers, he knew himself well enough to expect that he would figure out anything he hadn't already. And if he wasn't worried, the certainly nobody else should be. Making decisions came to him as naturally as breathing, and he didn't shy away from shouldering burdens or responsibilities. It was how he was wired.

 

That would come in handy for him today, he figured. He picked up a leash and hooked it onto Leeward's collar, opened the front door, and let them both out into the world. Leeward didn't wait. Rob barely had time to ease the door shut behind them before the hound charged down the front steps and onto the sidewalk. She careened to the left, narrowly avoiding a cart that was trundling past, and threw her full body weight into the collar, yanking at the leash.

 

"What the f-" Rob growled, planting his feet. He was built like a small building, and even then, he could feel Leeward's weight against the leash. Anyone smaller was likely to be dragged clear off their feet. "You'd better stop that."

 

He waited, testing his own patience for as long as he could, until Leeward finally stopped trying to strangle herself on her collar. "There we go," he said, taking a step toward her. It was the wrong move. Leeward immediately leaped up enthusiastically and threw herself in the direction of the street corner again. Rob stopped again. "What is wrong with you?"

 

At the sound of his voice, Leeward's head whipped around toward him again, and she wagged her tail enthusiastically. She came trotting to his side, circled him once, briefly sat down beside him, and then was up again in a flash, bouncing her way to the end of the leash before being pulled to a stop by Rob's immovable weight. She let out a little whine, looking imploringly at him, and then at the street corner, and then back again.

 

"This isn't how we're meant to walk," he said gruffly, refusing to budge. "Have you seen Ollie and Landfall? Proper manners, that. It's not what you're doing right now." This was quite the opposite, in fact, and Rob hadn't previously paused to consider that perhaps Ollie had spent quite a few hours training Landfall to behave the way she did now.

 

Certainly, she hadn't come prepackaged that way.

 

He stared intently at Leeward, who stared intently back, as if she was waiting for him to cave. "You know what? If we're going to do this, we are going to do this the right way." The only way Rob knew how.

 

He took a step toward the hound, who was up on her feet again in a flash, leaping about excitedly. She was so overwhelmed with enthusiasm for life and the outdoors that she couldn't quite handle herself. There was so much to sniff, so much to look at! It was all amazing and wonderful and great.

 

Rob sighed. "Okay. We're out here already, so I'm going to take you on your walk," he said. "But don't you get to thinking this is how it'll always be."

 

They started walking, Leeward dragging forward, Rob holding back, refusing to let her hurry his pace. "Tomorrow is a brand new start, I'm telling you right now," he said, wagging a finger at her. She didn't see it. She was too busy doing her best to break the leash. "Tomorrow, we start training. And not only are we training, but we are going to become the best."

 

Rob didn't really know what there was to become the best of yet, but he knew there was something to aspire to. If nothing else, they could become better behaved than Ollie and Landfall. But there had to be some sort of world out there, some kind of hound world, where training could propel them to the top of the totem pole. Rob was going to figure out how it all worked. They were going to take this place by storm.

 

Grudgingly, he allowed a little grin to settle on his face. The prospect of a new project was exciting - perhaps the first exciting thing he had encountered since he had landed on Itona. Things were looing up.