Information


Houndstooth has a minion!

I am the Zodiac Dog Spirit




Houndstooth


The Nostalgic Kumos
Owner: Corgi

Age: 1 year, 4 months, 4 weeks

Born: December 25th, 2011

Adopted: 1 year, 4 months, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: December 25th, 2011

Statistics


  • Level: 3
     
  • Strength: 10
     
  • Defense: 10
     
  • Speed: 10
     
  • Health: 10
     
  • HP: 10/10
     
  • Intelligence: 0
     
  • Books Read: 0
  • Food Eaten: 0
  • Job: Unemployed


the speaker

nomen— Houndstooth
aka— Woof, talkbox, Kalliope's translator
age— circa 1968
owner— Kalliope Kells

function— medium
condition— loveworn
brand— National Hearts

the silent

nomen— Kalliope Kells
aka— Ventriloquist
age— young adult
primary— psychokinesis

heritage— welsh
photographs— [x]

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you."

My life is simple. Cotton holds few memories, and terrycloth feels no pain. I don’t really remember how I got my black-white-black-white checked patches, or when my eye fell out.

I do remember the day the Little One’s Twig wrote KK on my paw with a smelly black marker. By that time I was quite threadbare and shabby indeed, but I was delighted, for Twig only put the letters on the toys she really loved. Not too long after I was sent through the wash and it disappeared, but I knew she had put it there once and I was happy.

And I remember when Boy, ages and ages after he’d stopped playing with me and had given me to the Little One, who gave me to Twig when she grew up, ripped open my stuffing to put a strange box with holes inside me, and sewed a string tied to a plastic ring into my back. After that I suddenly made noises when someone pulled the string, almost like I was Real!

But mostly I remember the day Twig—her name is Kalliope Kells, I think, and that is why she wrote KK on my paw—I remember the day Twig made me really talk.

I am just a toy, so I don’t quite know what happened. By this time it had been even more ages and ages and I had not seen Boy in so long I had nearly forgotten him, but Twig never forgot me, even as she grew up. I had a special place in her bed, and sometimes when she was sick or lonely she would take me out into other parts of the house and hug me while the television chattered. I wanted to chatter back with my special box, but I couldn’t unless someone pulled the string, and Twig didn’t do that very often anymore.

She would talk to me, though, and I loved that. Twig was always full of words and clever things, and I enjoyed listening to her go on and on. She told me secrets no one else knew, or read me the exciting parts from her books, or would just tell me about her day. “Houndstooth,” she would say, pressing a finger to my nose, “you are an excellent listener.”

It made me so happy!

But, my story! Ah…

The first I knew of anything strange began with Twig taking me somewhere new, and for a moment I wondered if she had outgrown me, like Boy and the Little One. But no; she took me to a place that looked a bit like her bedroom, and it was not nearly so nice as home. The walls were all plain and the bed was thin and it all smelled very unpleasant, like the hospital Boy took me to once long ago when his mother took ill. That is not a smell you forget easily, and I have not forgotten the look Boy wore the entire time we were there.

We stayed in this place for a long time, and I wondered why. Twig seemed excited at first, and told me this was such "an amazing opportunity," but didn't say what it was an opportunity for. She would leave me in the bed, and would go away the whole day like she used to. At first she was still excited and fine, but as the days dragged on she seemed to get weaker and weaker. Sometimes whole days would pass without me seeing her. I began to become concerned, for I loved Twig as much as she loved me, but there was nothing I could do but snuggle in close on the nights she did return, and worry.

Sometimes she would talk to herself, which she never did before. It was very strange. At first I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t. She would talk like there was someone I couldn’t see there with us, and sometimes she would get very angry at them.

Sometimes she would just curl up with me for hours, crying. Twig was a very strong girl, and I had never seen her cry so much before, even when she was young. Certainly not when she was a grown-up.

And, sometimes, she would just go very still for hours, in strange positions. This always frightened me. Humans are not supposed to freeze stiff, like toys. When this happened, after a long time usually someone (who I did not know) would come into the room and they would have to stick a thin sharp stick into Twig to make her move again.

I always wondered if it was the strange hospital smell that was making her act in such a scary way.

Other odd things started happening, too. Once, I flew! Twig was playing with my forepaws, and then she looked at me kind of funny, like she was confused or concentrating very hard—and suddenly I felt weightless, and I was rising up into the air! But I was only there for a few seconds, because Twig shrieked and I fell back down, under the bed.

I did not see her for a long time after that.

When Twig came back, she didn’t say anything at all. We finally went home, and gosh, I was ready. I hated the hospital smell, and what it was doing to Twig. I hated the thin bed and the lonely room, and I was ready for things to go back to normal.

But they didn’t.

Twig started to have a hard time sleeping, and I spent a lot of long nights getting pitched back and forth between the sheets and pillows. Eventually she started taking some very small white things that looked like watch batteries from an orange tube, and those helped her to sleep. Sometimes she would still shout at people who weren’t there.

But most of the time she was very quiet. It was like she couldn’t talk at all. There would be long stretches of time that felt like whole ages where she said nothing, not even to me. When her pocket telephone would go off during these stretches of quiet, she never answered it: she would just look at it awhile before shutting it off and hunching into a ball.

And my terrycloth fur and checked patches were becoming stiff with all her silent tears.

I was so angry with the hospital place and its horrible smell, for I knew it had done something to her! I wanted to go back and rip it to pieces! But I am just a toy dog, not a real one. I don’t even have a mouth. I felt like a very shabby excuse for a dog indeed.

The strange things kept happening, too. Sometimes lights would go off and on without anyone to flip their switches, or the radio would start up on its own, or I would start moving again. Twig was always there for it, which I was glad of, since it is rather scary to move without knowing why! I would sometimes sit up on my haunches and wave my forelegs in a silly dance, or wag my tail on the rare occasion Twig talked to me. I went on more flights. I always found them exciting, and Twig seemed to look a little happier when I did. Once I landed on the table with the orange tube, very close! I was afraid I would knock out all the watch batteries that make Twig run now, but I came to a stop with my nose pressed right up against the orange plastic.

There were papers under the tube, and I tried to read them. I am not too good at reading, but I am old enough that I have learned most of the words. The paper I sat on had long, strange sentences on it. Here are a few of the ones I still remember:

Experimentation has triggered the onset of catatonic schizophrenia

and

Patient reports experiencing recurring muteness of varying severity, degree, and length

and

Beyond these side effects, patient nonetheless exhibits awakened psychic ability, in particular, finesse with technopathy and psychokinesis.

I wasn’t given long to wonder what they meant though; I was sent back into the air and Twig caught me and kissed my nose.

But one week, after a particularly bad stretch of silence, we were sitting together in the den. (Twig had been leaving the house less and less, and sometimes she would stay in bed for hours, which was nice for me, but I suspect bad for her.) She was touching my checked patches and staring into the distance, and her fingers caught on my drawstring. She pulled on it, and my special box said, “Hello, sunshine!”

Twig did something very strange then. She pulled on it again, and again, and my box went through all the different things it says (“Is it dinner time?” “You’re my best friend!” “Woof, woof!”). And then she put her hands on my back, and I could tell she was thinking very hard.

And then my box said, in a timid, tinny voice, “Hello?” and I wanted to jump so badly!

It was Twig’s voice!

Twig had put her voice in my box, without even pulling the drawstring!

I heard her make the sound she makes when she’s very startled, like when we watch the scary things on the television. And then she did it again: “It—it works…” Her fingers were trembling! “Oh my gosh, Houndstooth, it works, it works—you wonderful thing, you…”

And then she tossed me into the air, and caught me, and hugged me hard! It was so hard my box dug into my seams and was very uncomfortable, and Twig was crying again! But she was smiling, too, and she was making my box say it works, it works, it works, over and over and over.

After that she started taking me new places, outside the house, that weren’t the awful hospital, and she talked with my box constantly. I met so many new people and things! It was very strange, having her voice come out of me, but it made her happier than she had been in forevers. And so I was happy, too. It was so good to have my Twig back!

But do you know what made me happiest of all?

It was when, a few weeks later, she pulled out a smelly black marker—

and rewrote KK onto my paw!

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