I wake in a dark den. The floor is hard. The place reeks of salt. There is the sound of water gently licking stone. I sniff around and peer into the crevices. There is no apparent entrance. There is a little-saltwater in the corner of the sealed den. It has no freshness to it.

Having sniffed each corner, relieved myself and groomed the encrusted salt from my coat until my thirst is overpowering, I decide to wait to find out what happens next. I can’t get myself out of this den. I don’t remember coming in here. I don’t remember getting this salty. I am sure I can think of a way out. Until then, no need to panic, it is not becoming of a great scent-scientist (in training).

I am getting thirsty. I know this water is not fresh, Soil sent Sentinels^ to warn us against drinking or entering such water. By the big-saltwater, I saw Soil-Sentinels. Do they warn Salt-dogs on Salt-World to not approach this water? I know dogs can survive several days without water. So, I don’t need to panic yet, but I would really like to drink soon. I listen to the little-saltwater lapping against the floor of this den for a few moments.

I smell, hear and feel a change in the tone of the space.

A pair of long tails snake up out of the little-saltwater, they grab purchase on the rocks and pull. This produces one of the creatures from my night-walks: dark blue-black in the dim light with a huge eye and the smell of intelligence. This creature understands. It pulls itself free of the water. It is a tangle of tails around a big body like organ-provision, with yellow eyes. It slithers over to me; it uses its tails like legs. It is soft and wobbly. I could easily make it prey. I don’t feel inclined to do so. Others follow it from the water. How could so many individuals fit in that one little-saltwater?

The first one, a darker colour than the others, slops over to me and touches me with its tail. Its tail is covered in small, sucking mouths. It tastes me and retracts its mouth-tails. The creatures form a writhing lump. I can vaguely smell chemical communication. After a few moments, one breaks away from the huddle. They slide into the little-saltwater and hurry back with a large-bodied creature followed by a smaller, but somehow similar, creature. I cannot distinguish these creatures, but these two seem different to the others. The smaller of the two approaches me and wraps their tails around my nose.

I suddenly break and back away. I want to shake them off and fill my belly with their wobbly, salty bodies. They swarm toward me and wrap around each part of me. I feel a stabbing, like a thorn, in my side. As the thorn pops through my skin I feel a warm rush of calm throughout my body. Although it doesn’t seem too urgent anymore, I still don’t like this situation, I try to back further away. I cannot. I ask my limbs to move but they don’t respond.

Now I am frightened, more frightened than I ever have been. This is why Pack exists; I am not sufficient Pack on my own. I will never get back. What am I doing here? They are going to eat me, and no-dog will ever know what happened to me.

I observe as they spread out. The sound of them squelching around is unnerving me. One goes to where I slept, in a small divot in the stone floor. They move their tails and a channel in the stone is opened and the divot fills with water. Fresh water. Why are they tormenting me? We never treat provision like this. One takes a strange plant to it and dips it in. They then bring it over and place it in front of my nose. Beautiful clear, fresh, water trickles over the stone and onto my tongue. I cannot move, but I can almost swallow. I let it slide down my throat and thank Soil for looking out for me. I don’t know which Soil I mean but I will praise Them all the same. Maybe They will save me after all.

I can hear, smell and see that the creatures are touching my body, but I cannot feel it. They are feeling me and tasting me with their tail-mouths. The smaller of the last two creatures to enter approaches my face. They put their tails on my face. I can feel that – tail-mouths tasting my nose and mouth. They stare into my eye and touch me on the nose and gums. Are these creatures going to take my scent ability? I panic. Their eyes are frightening and alien, pupil curved like a rib. They look at my eyes and then I feel nothing but calm. I feel love. I feel Pack. I relax. One of them is doing something to me. I look at this individual and I know they want me to survive. They are looking at me like a Soil parent.

Now, they are leaving. Water is dribbling into my mouth. My new Soil parent is still by my eyes, watching them. My limbs start to tingle, my tail feels heavy and limp. As feeling rushes back to my limbs, I feel burning in my lungs and pressure in my eyes. My skin feels covered in ants. I am panicking again but my Soil parent sends me more Pack, more calm. I yip and twitch in pain. It feels like my skin is being notched all over. I feel out of breath. The skin between my toes feels like it has been slashed by a hyena. My Soil parent and the largest individual are the only creatures remaining. They are both looking at me.

After moments of all-consuming pain, the larger individual approaches the little-saltwater. My Soil parent stays with me. The larger individual extends a tail to my Soil parent and drags them away, into the little-saltwater. They look back one last time and disappear into the water. I still cannot walk, but I can move my limbs now. I slowly drag myself to the little-saltwater. I cannot smell them through the salt. They are gone. This loss, even of an imagined Pack, hurts more than anything wracking my body. More than when I awoke, under an outcropping outside a natural den where once some Salt-dogs had denned, and found myself alone.

Another wave of agony roils through me. As it subsides, I drag and stumble over to the water-divot and drink my fill. I can walk now, if slowly and stiffly. My lungs suddenly explode. I fall back into blackness, is this the Wilderness? I’m not ready to Walk yet.

I wake in panic. There is no way to tell how much later it is. I had night-walks of tails and mouths and creatures and smells I do not understand. It is slightly lighter in the den. There are some small holes a long way above, which I had not noticed before. I could certainly never get up there, even with my honed climbing skills. I am thirsty again, so I must have been out for a while. I drink deep and then consider my options.

That little-saltwater must be much bigger. It only appears small from here. They all went in there. It must be a tunnel of some kind. The rest of this den-complex is down there. Dogs do not swim. No dog has ever gone into water without knowing where they would get out. That is the only way out. I might as well see if I can leave that way. I am not sure where I will go, but if I could get out, I could return to Pack, try to get Inside somehow. Or maybe I can just warn them, even if I can’t get back Inside.

Well, better to serve Pack while there’s provision to be had. I approach the little-saltwater and put a paw in. I cannot reach the bottom. I was right, this is a tunnel. I step into the water. I feel disoriented. I have never swum before; I have never gone deeper than my chest, that is for specialist providers and warriors. I splash around for a few cents^. I think I can do this. Once you trust the water to take your weight, controlling motion is easier. I put my head under the water and come up coughing, spluttering and confused. I will take air with me. I breathe deep. It feels like the deepest breath I have ever taken. I force my head under the water and push off the edge of the stone.

My progress is not fast. I have problems steering but I do go forward. I cannot smell or hear anything; I am in the dark to most of my senses. The tunnel goes sharply down for a little while then levels out. I go one way and bump against the mouth of another tunnel sloping upwards. I pop up in a very similar den to the one I left. I expected my lungs to be fit to bursting, like holding my breath waiting for prey, but I feel fine. I must be more suited to this than I thought. Maybe all dogs can swim but no-dog tried before me.

I notice some kind of cat. It is a little like a World sap-cat^, pungent, speckled, acidic, small ears and about the size of my head. He is not happy to see me, but he is more eager to tell me to get out of his space than he is worried.

I will not give ground to a tiny cat. I wait, watching him. Eventually he relaxes and begins to groom. He goes and eats from a provisioning spot. It smells like fish. I have not eaten fish before, but I have smelled it when Team Set gave it to Naked Runt^. I am aching with emptiness. I consider taking the provision; the cat can’t stop me. I then realise I could eat the cat; it’s well-fed. I begin to search for purchase beneath the water without making it obvious what I am trying to do. I feel mouth-tails in my fur. I yelp. The cat is startled and runs away from the little-saltwater I am crouching in. The mouth-tails wrap round my leg and gently pull me under, along the tunnel and back into the den they left me in.

There is a huge fish in the provisioning spot. It seems the fish on Salt-World are bigger than I thought fish could be. It is bigger than that sap-cat! I drag myself out of the water and over to it. I savagely bite into it before anything tries to stop me. The creature waits, watching me. It is the dark one from before. It is emitting some kind of pheromone. I can smell the mixture of salt and fish being tinged with urgency and the sweet scent of excitement. I decide I will stay here a little while and study these weird creatures. They seem capable of communication. Maybe I can learn what they think; it would be useful to Pack to understand these creatures who are of Salt-World.

Soon enough, the largest of the creatures and my Soil parent enter. My Soil parent smells concerned, or am I interpreting too much into it? I can smell them a little over all the salt. They are both female, I think. They are definitely related. They smell very similar. Or I cannot smell one at all? They watch me for a few cents. My Soil parent approaches and puts her mouth-tails on me. She touches my nose, where she can most easily touch my skin, and she sends me Pack. I do not reply but I want her to keep holding me and sending me comfort and kindness.

She lets go of my nose and flops over as quickly as I have ever seen these things move to the larger female. They intertwine their tails for a few cents and then, with a rush of happiness, my Soil parent returns and puts a tail around my foreleg. She pulls me, very gently, towards the little-saltwater. She wants me to go into the water with her. Well I guess now is the time to learn about them. I walk into the water. She slides in and disappears down the tunnel. I take a deep breath and duck under. She is almost already at the mouth of the tunnel, with the large female. I push myself down the tunnel. It is very hard travelling like this. I look forward to being able to run on Soil again.

The two creatures seem to effortlessly travel two dogslengths ahead of me. I barely feel them move their tails. I thought they would be slow as they are on land, but in this environment, where I am barely making the progress of a scarred veteran taking their Walk into the Wilderness, they drift and stop and wait for me. The larger of the two is getting darker. I think, and I can almost smell annoyance. My Soil parent darts to one side, pulls a vine of some kind from a stone and brings it to me. She puts it into my mouth, then rockets off. I jerk in the water and then feel the almighty pleasure of travelling fast, hearing nothing, seeing little more than on my first expedition but definitely beginning to smell a cacophony of information.

She tows me to a different chamber in a few cents. Once inside, the larger female settles down next to a bubbling column of warm water and begins to pluck, possibly, small fish from it and funnelling it underneath herself, two tails at a time. There is an air pocket at the top of this chamber, with holes in the roof as in the previous den. When I see it, I realise that I do not yet need to breathe. I am not sure what to make of that. I am ravenous again. I have no idea how to communicate this to my Soil parent; she would surely find me something to eat. I approach her clumsily. She too is taking small fish from the column. I nudge her, her eerie eye turns to me. She puts a tail-mouth on my nose. I send the strongest Pack-message I can of hunger. She waits for a heartbeat and then, as if to check, takes her tail-mouth off me and replaces it. I send her hunger again. Her skin flashes white. She radiates urgency, while seemingly experiencing no urgency herself.

A few cents later, the darkest creature comes in. Now I have a frame of reference, I can tell that he is male and young, like my Soil parent. He smells less salty than the others somehow. I do not understand how I am smelling. I am not drawing scents over my nose by breathing as I would in air, but I can still smell with more and more clarity each passing heartbeat. My Soil parent and this individual touch each other – I think that must be how they communicate as well as the pheromones I am picking up. The dark one leaves and returns quickly with more fish-provision. He breaches the surface and hauls himself out onto a ledge up there and returns without them in a cent. My Soil parent looks at me and then up. I get the hint.

I burst out of the water, barely aware that I had not breathed air for at least 40 cents. I fall to the fish and start to rip it apart. It tastes more delicious than the last and I eat both of the large fish and some kind of salty snake. I was in the water too long. I am shivering and wet. I groom myself as well as I can and feel a little warmer. The holes in the roof are glowing with warm light. There is a nook in the rock here, in the warm light and above the warm column in the chamber below. It is as snug as a den on World, full of Pack. I curl up and go straight to sleep.