Day in and day out, Elijah followed his singular pattern. He woke and sought food, and once his belly was full, he made his way down the hallway in a very particular way. First away from his own room, then right, then right again until he had returned to the steps. There he would climb down with stiff-legged leaps, hardly as graceful as his sister. The boy had begun to shed his velvet-soft puppy fur and grow a darker pelt of wolf-thick fur. It was thick but not coarse, and took after his mother’s breed in this respect. One might hardly think of him as a wolf, for very little signs gave this fact away. Perhaps as he aged it would change; Elijah didn’t think of these things, though.
He thought, simply, of becoming a horse.
He did this daily, and he did so because it pleased him. The kingdom of dogs became Elijah’s kingdom, where he ruled over all the butterflies (though he could not grasp this word and called them flutterbies) and birds and little bugs that he found. His sister thought of him as stupid, and had shown him how she played once—she crushed the butterflies and squirmy-worms with a cruel pleasure that even reticent Elijah could tell was wrong. Luckily, she had stopped trying to play with him. This meant once again Elijah was left to be king of the green land where bounty was plenty and he ruled without question. When he reached the grass, he turned into a stallion.
Today, though, as he made his way outside he was greeted by a familiar subject. His mother’s horse, Nana, was grazing without supervision near the field he had claimed. Pleased by her appearance, Elijah let out an odd bark-whinny and leapt towards her. Used to his behavior, the rotund mare snorted as she might at her own child and proceeded to watch the boy as she grazed. Elijah bounded through the grass with stiff-legged leaps, imitating the way he saw horses move, babbling in and out of high and low speech.
“Imma horsie, Nana! King Lijah! Flutterbies, I get you!” He barked, chasing after them. This world was warm and golden-green and his and his alone.
So when he came across an odd looking animal, too big to be a squirmy-worm but looking very much like one, he did not think it might hurt him. He did not fear anything, and this was perhaps one of his greatest flaws. With little hesitation the puppy reared up. “Rawr, squirmy-worm! Go ‘way ‘fore mean Elvira comes and gets you!” Yet as he landed with a thud, the odd-looking squirmy-worm coiled up and lifted its triangular head. Amazed, for he had never seen an animal and certainly not a squirmy-worm do such a thing, the boy began yapping loudly for the horse that even now was approaching at a speed that the puppy was oblivious too. “Nana! Nana look at the squirmy-worm! Look at what it does!”
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