And when my husband opens his eyes again to look at the serene view of his old friend waiting to welcome DaiSzek to heaven, his gaze is covered in a thick layer of tears.
The sight is a wound and a miracle holding hands.
DaiSzek lies underneath his favorite tree; the one he will dig dozens of holes around in the future, burying bones, and sleeping in its vast shade on a hot day.
And old age sheds from him like a discarded cloak as DaiSzek’s soul steps out of his body. My sweet boy gallops like a young stallion to his friends, Knightingale and Niles, who welcome him home with quiet enthusiasm.
He looks back only once.
Pausing at the edge of the heavenly light, a slow turn of his head.
Suddenly, without a strand of white speckling his fur, our lifelong protector stares into our souls with those big cinnamon eyes. Not out of obligation, but of instinct and undying love. An instinct he’s had since he was a pup. The one that urges him to make sure we are safe before he leaves.
This last look nearly brings me to my knees.
He seems to ask us not to mourn, to be safe, and that he’ll be waiting to welcome us home one day soon—all at once. I save the image of him firmly into my memory. No longer with a graying muzzle or cloudy eyes. He’s young again. And free.
I can feel their love as my long-departed family walks DaiSzek into the light glimmering through the branches. I can feel that Niles and Knightingale will take such good care of our boy until we join him again. And before he takes his last step from this world, I can feel his hesitation. DaiSzek has been with us his entire life. And this will be our first time apart. But even so, his spirit disappears.
As the light vanishes, we rush to kneel at the side of his body. I stroke the fur of his neck as tears dripped from my cheeks to the dirt.
“I love you, DaiSzek!” I cry.
The man kneeling next to me presses his forehead into his fist and sobs quietly with shaking shoulders. His large, tan hand holding DaiSzek’s limp paw.
I don’t have to see his eyes to know that man is Kane.
“He lived a long, happy life,” I assure Kane, rubbing my hand over his back.
Each small tremble of his shoulders fractures my heart. I’ve only seen Kane cry a couple of times in my entire life. His system has held themselves together so well in front of me. But losing our first baby was bound to leave us in pieces.
“I love you, Big Boy,” Kane whispers through soundless sobs. “You have gotten me through the hardest moments in my life. You’ve protected me when I was too young to protect myself. You’ve kept my wife and my children safe…”
He falls short to finish his statement as we both cry at the swift gust of memories from our long life with this beautiful beast. All the years DaiSzek protected Sapphire and Krimson. The silent promise to die for our family if that’s what it came to. The time he killed the Demechnef soldiers hunting us down when Dessin saved me from Albatross and Absinthe. The long nights he’d stay awake to guard Kane and I while we slept in the forest. He was always there. Never strayed. Always came when we’d need him most.
“I don’t know what we did to deserve you, buddy. You could have left us a long time ago, but you stuck around. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for taking care of us.”
“He waited until he was sure we were safe, Kane. Through the years on the run, being hunted down, and until the wars were over. He made sure we would be at peace before saying goodbye…”
We spend hours hugging and crying over his body that is still warm and would remain warm well into the cold night.
I’ll never forget kissing those soft ears, and the space between his eyes.
The next morning, we buried DaiSzek next to the space where his friend, Niles, will one day be buried. And we finally understood that the legends of DaiSzek, the fae king’s dragon, was wrong.
As DaiSzek’s body returned to the earth, that green on the leaves of the trees turned bright red. Like blood seeping into each branch, each twig.
It was not a dragon like the legend stated.
It was DaiSzek. Our RottWeilen.
We waited until Sapphire and Krimson came to visit us again to tell them the news. Watching them cry over his grave ripped our hearts out of our chests all over again.
The Dellilian Castle was never the same after that. The halls lacked the soft pattering of DaiSzek’s paws as he’d run and slip through them to greet our children at the front door. The bed no longer had that lasting warmth from when he’d sleep between my husband and me. Yet we spoke about him every single day, keeping his memory alive and thriving.
Even over the next ten years when Dessin and I aged into our seventies…
We felt the absence of our lifelong protector. We mourned our boy that once lay with us under the shade of the red oak trees, ate bowls of blueberries until we scolded him for not sharing, and snuggled into us under the vast night sky of endless stars.
