Kenji had said her name was Yara.
She struggles in vain; the creature pays her no mind as he barks over and over, all the while pawing anxiously at the screen door—my screen door—which he will no doubt destroy if he does not soon desist.
“Let him out,” I say to her, my voice carrying.
The young woman startles at that, quickly fumbling now to unlatch the screen door. When she finally manages to slide the panel open, the animal all but lunges through the doorway, yanking her along with him.
Beside me, Sam makes a poorly muffled sound of disgust.
“I didn’t realize you hated animals,” I say without looking at her.
“Oh, I love animals. Animals are better at being human than people are.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Shocking.”
I turn to face her, surprised. “Why are you so angry?”
Sam sighs and nods discreetly at Yara, who waves enthusiastically even as she’s dragged along in our direction.
I raise my eyebrows at Sam.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she says, irritated. “You have no idea what Nouria and I have had to deal with since you arrived. It got a hundred times worse after everyone decided you were some kind of a hero. It was a really low moment for us, realizing that so many people we respected were shockingly shallow.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” I say, taking a breath as I lift a hand in Yara’s direction, “I don’t like it, either.”
“Bullshit,” Sam says automatically, but I sense her flicker of uncertainty.
I lower my voice as Yara closes in on us. “Would you enjoy being reduced to nothing but your physical footprint, forced all the while to absorb the weight of strangers’ indecent emotions as they assess and undress you?”
Sam stiffens beside me. She turns to look at me, her feelings scattered and confused. I feel her reexamining me.
“Hi!” Yara says, coming to a stop in front of us.
She is an objectively kind young woman; I recognize this even as I fight back a wave of revulsion. Yara has done the animal—and me, by extension—a great courtesy, which she needn’t have done for a stranger on such short notice. Still, her feelings are both generous and disconcerting, some of them loud enough to make me physically uncomfortable.
The dog is wise enough to halt at my feet.
He lifts a tentative paw as if to touch me, and I give hima sharp look, after which the paw retreats. In the intervening silence, the dog stares up at me with big, dark eyes, his tail wagging furiously.
“It was kind of you to wash the animal,” I say to Yara, still staring at the dog. “He looks much better now.”
“Oh, it was my pleasure,” she says, hesitating before adding: “You look—you look really, really nice today.”
My smile is tight.
I don’t want to feel what she’s feeling right now. I don’t want to know these things—not ever—but especially not on my wedding day.
I bend down to look the dog in the eye and draw a gentle hand over his head, into which he eagerly leans. He sniffs me, nosing the palm of my hand, and I pull away before the beast decides to lick me. I decide instead to check his collar; there is a single metal coin hanging from the red strap, and I pinch it between two fingers, the better to examine it.
It reads: DOG.
“That’s what you said you wanted to call him, right?” Yara is still smiling. “Dog?”
I look up at her then, meeting the young woman’s eyes against my better judgment, and her smile trembles.
Sam stifles a laugh.
