Late First Eyes Runt^ follows me. She will not stay in creche with the other pups. She will sit alone for degrees^. She then runs around wildly, through others, stealing provision she cannot yet consume or digest. Pack is trying to teach her that she cannot do these things. The Soil parents are not able to persuade her to stay in creche. She howls and yips if I try to leave her. Sometimes Runts, who are not able to bond to Soil parents straight away, are cared for by their whelp-pack until they are ready for creche. I do not know if Late First Eyes Runt will ever be ready. I feel as though Soil is reaching across the galaxy to stop dogs bringing her into Pack. As if my reckless behaviour is her fault instead of the other way around. They would be right to punish me by leaving me with her. A pup with additional needs to be looked after by a warrior with no Soil parent experience. I have never seen a pup develop beyond weaning. They go to creche, onto training and then come back for their comfort-units when they find their own den. Unless I smell them by chance, that is all my input in their lives.

Late First Eyes Runt wants to be fed. Now she can keep pace with me, I cannot escape her insistent attempts to suckle. Clumsy Rise weaned her more than a quarter-season^ ago, but she still goes at my nipples. My already damaged teats are mercilessly chewed, they crack with the salt and abuse. I often bleed. I don’t ask for clot-weed. I don’t deserve it. I stop. I lie on my belly and try to drag myself to a shrub of palatable berries without giving her a chance to get in underneath me. She nudges and shoves my side. She is strong despite her uneven limbs. I am buffeted back and forth. I want to push her away, but I know I cannot run far enough to escape her determination and still have any chance of Pack. I get close to the berries and eat some, hoping she’ll follow my lead. She continues attacking me for another cent^ before she smells the paste I’ve chewed the berries into and licks it from inside my mouth. I hate her.

I need to hunt. I am pushed off provision so much. No-dog does it overtly, but I always find myself with a meatless, marrowless bone while others have slabs of flesh. I know I am weakened from the lack of provision and the constant energy it takes to deal with Late First Eyes Runt. I am grateful that my warrior training means I know about wild-provision. There are a surprising number of edible plants on Damp-World. There are fish in streams, which I stand a better chance of catching than mammals who can smell my shame, even if I have never successfully caught a fish before. Even if I didn’t stink, Late First Eyes Runt cannot be quiet or still or scent-mask so she effectively drives away all prey.

I will attempt to fish later. I am on a sixteenth-season-long tracking mission of some canine. No-dog knows I am. No-dog asked me to. But no-dog asked me to do anything and no-dog noticed when I left, with the wonky pup following me. No-dog from our den-pack, not even Tall Rise or Clumsy Rise, acknowledged it in the pack-bond. I know the pack-bond is fading. I only ever truly shared a private one with Tall Rise. But we do not groom, or night-walk close, nor even touch. The bond will be gone before long. I need to make it worth him touching me. I need to make it worth any-dog touching me. Then I will feel Pack. And, maybe, the burden of Late First Eyes Runt will be just a little shared. Runts are not burdens, they are gifted. Late First Eyes Runt is a burden. My burden and punishment.

I am following the scent of a dog. Possibly more than one. It is difficult to tell live-tracking versus going over and over the human-den and tracking each individual in my own time. I am not a good tracker. I am not intuitive or fast at smelling. I am not suited for this task. Even now, the Damp-World stench is hard to smell beyond. I cannot get a clear profile of what I am following. It is not my Small. It is a deeper scent. It does not have the taint of ungulate or monkey. Late First Eyes Runt is stumbling along just at my haunches. She is fast enough but she is a screaming warning to any would-be provision. The dogs I follow were here degrees ago. I am high on a slope, forests below. I am trying to discern how to follow this/these dog/s when Late First Eyes Runt falls down a gully. She screams. I want to leave her, let her fall into the Wilderness. Let this foul world take her twisted body. Maybe I could forget my shame. Pack wouldn’t forget. I would have failed in my duty to Soil. I would never be welcome in any pack if I made a made-runt Walk. It is the only thing worse than making her.

I try to reach her from above and drag her up by her tail. I feel the vertebrae in her tail separate. She screams louder. I try to swing her, but she is screaming and scrabbling at my face with her bent back legs. I release her tail and try to find a way to get her from below. She is in a blind panic and screaming. Birds erupt from the trees and fly in a column of dust and fear into the sky. I reach for her. I try to communicate to her to be calm, that I am trying to save her, but she cannot hear me or understand. I leap across her body and knock us both, in a shower of rocks, into a stream. It is not so deep that I couldn’t walk across dry. She lands on her side and doesn’t stand. She breathes in water and coughs and splutters. I haul her (she is not scruff-age) out of the trickle of water and put her on the bank. Our bloods are daubed onto both of our coats. When she is calm, I know I must groom her. I must also groom myself.

Her silence after her screaming feels unnerving but I find I hate her less now she is not squealing like a caught hog. I am about to groom her (to get the task completed, as I should) when I catch the tiniest scent of human and small dog. It smells like the monkey-den but much more recently inhabited. This was inhabited until the experiment began. I look at the helpless pup in front of me. I decide she is not dying, and she is now injured enough to not follow. I will find out if I can find this place. Then return and clean her when I am cursing her less.

I follow the monkey-den scent. Breaking through undergrowth at speed, heading downhill, I am beginning to feel like a Soil-dog and a real warrior for the first time since I whelped. I hear a crackling behind me. Late First Eyes Runt is following. I don’t know how far she will get following me. I can find her whenever I return. She stinks even on Damp-World. I scent-mask to leave her in this relatively safe area. And to have a break from her incessant needs. I continue downwards. The track I follow becomes wider with the scents of more and more animals. I roll in the scents to further discourage Late First Eyes Runt from following. I can still occasionally hear the crackling of leaves under her wonky gait.

The trail becomes wider and starts to smell of unnatural chemicals^. It is hard and even. I can run more easily on this, even though many plants have broken through the hard, dark rock and are twisting it up. I follow it along a ridge. I see an monkey-settlement far bigger than the one we found near the settlement. The scents here are many. I feel a swell of questions. I might be here longer than a sixteenth! I scent-mark. If Late First Eyes Runt reaches here, she will hopefully stay. I can waste less time searching for her. As I choose a monkey-den to investigate, I smell her reek. I turn. She is just breaking out of the trees onto the dark, stone track. She smells me, howls and pelts towards me. Still coated in our blood and now full of leaves and twigs. Froth falling from her mouth, eyes wide and panicked. A pup her age should not notice being parked for a degree. I left her less than half a degree ago. I wait for her. Not out of love or pity or even duty but to save myself having to deal with the yipping for the rest of the day.

She reaches me and rolls onto her back. She is filthy and vile. I tell her she can follow, but I will not slow for her. She stands and, though her sides are still heaving, and I cannot make out her spots, she sneezes. I head down into the settlement. I know the monkeys are not here. I feel confident in that knowledge now. I know I will be able to learn much while we stay here.

Set is coming. I am suddenly tired. I head to a monkey-shelter. There is an unguarded entrance with a strange invisible barrier across half of it. I enter, remembering how frightened I was when Vicious Set entered the first monkey-den we found. The thought of all I have done since then is more coat than I can groom. I lie down. She lies with me. She smells so horrendous I cannot rest. I drag myself upright and begin to groom her. It is arduous. She squirms and resists and whimpers. I want to rip her throat out to stop her. I pin her with my paw and work my way over her coat, revealing her spots and tasting our mixed blood and all the plants and animals that have flavoured her pelt in the last day. After I have groomed her for at least 40 cents, I feel her licking my paw. She, for the first time, is trying to groom me. She is not good at it. This is not a surprise to me. I brush her away, finish her coat and begin on my own.