Goodbye Perun

When my little Scottish Terrier of 15 years passed away in 2020, I wrote this for her as a way for me to express my grief, using Zoltar as my vehicle. She was my heart dog, I finally felt ready to share it. 

For the fifth time, in the span of ten minutes, Zoltar sighed. Sitting at his desk he stared vacantly at the papers before him, uninspired to work on it or any new mech designs. In fact he was pretty sure if G-force stormed into his room at that very moment, he could care less. They would find a man, broken, depressed and unwilling to resist. In fact, he mused, he may even go willingly if it was a way to escape the pain he was feeling at this juncture in his life.

Ice blue eyes lifted to look forlornly at the empty dog bed that sat in the corner of the room. He talked into the stifling silence, “I dreamt of you last night, or at least I think I did. You appeared to me as you were when we first met, no gray in your muzzle, or age fogging over your eyes, frisky and waiting to accompany me on whatever adventure there was to embark”.

Large wet splats fell on the papers before him as tears fell from beneath his purple cowl. He let them run freely down his face. He had cried before but usually as a result from a beating by the Great Spirit, and it was usually fear driven. But this was something he wasn’t accustomed to, he was sad and felt empty, like a piece of his heart was missing.

“What did you do to me?” he said into the nothingness. “How could you leave me? Where are you now? Are you in another dimension? Are you happy, young again? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?”

Zoltar tore at his cowl and ripped it off his head, flinging it across the room. His blonde hair fell in around him as he pulled his gloves off and rubbed at his eyes trying to make the tears stop. Sobs wracked his body and he could not control his grief. Eventually he wore himself out and stopped crying.

Realizing that this was a waste of a night he got up and readied for bed.

As he lay there waiting for sleep to take him, he realized that for all his narcissistic diabolical ways he finally understood love, and that the hardest part  of love was saying goodbye.

As his eyes closed and the oblivion of sleep took him he uttered one last word.

“Perun.”