We Dream of Mountains

We Are Naive, Or So They Say

He was out jogging on the little path behind his neighbourhood when he first saw the dog. A medium-sized retriever mix sat docilely on the green of the park near the water, panting happily.

"Well hello there!" He stopped jogging just to say hi to her. She looked friendly enough.
She cocked her head, but didn't move as he slowly walked toward her.

"How are you?" he asked her, using the same ridiculous baby voice that his wife used on their Saint Bernard when she thought no one was watching. Upon hearing his tone, the dog walked toward him, wagging her tail.

"Aw, aren't you pretty?" She sat down at his feet, her tail still wagging. She was really friendly, nuzzling his hand and licking his fingers. He reached around her neck to see who she belonged to, and was startled to find a collar and no tags. He decided to take her back to his house and put up signs for a found dog. He and his wife didn't have any kids, so the presence of the dog wasn't likely to disturb anything, and Nana, their Saint Bernard, got along with everyone.

He tried to pull on the collar to indicate that the dog should follow him, but she didn't like that, and resisted his pulling with an oddly powerful movement of her neck. He let go, and she walked behind him as he jogged back to his house.

The two of them were less than five minutes away from the bright brick neighbourhood when he heard a voice behind him. From the corner of his eye, he could just see the dog running back from where they had just come, and he stopped jogging to watch her run into the arms of a young woman. The two were on the ground, with the dog enveloped in the young woman's arms when he approached them.

"Thank you for finding her," she said, standing up. The dog looked rather unhappy to be let go.

The young woman in front of him was unfamiliar, and that was the first thing he noticed. Having grown up in this area of North Shields, him and his parents knew just about everyone. He'd even gone to primary school with his wife before she was transferred to a private academy. People settled and never seemed to leave, so there was no room for new faces. Except her.

She must have noticed him staring, because she let out an uneasy sigh, and looked like she was about to walk away. He quickly tried to look less sketchy, staring anywhere but at her. She wasn't attractive per say, but more an enthusiastic adorable, much like her dog.

"Sorry," he coughed, as he tried to correct himself. Even her accent had been foreign, and she was definitely not from the Northeast. She was most likely American. "Are you new?"
That question should have come out better.

"Yeah, I didn't realise it was that obvious. I'm Malia Mac, most people call me Mac." She held out her hand, and he shook it hesitantly, knowing that he was probably sweaty from the jog and the day's humidity. It wasn't supposed to rain, but it certainly felt like it.

"Steven," he replied. He pointed a little ways down the road in the general direction of his house. "I live down there."

"Right. Tink and I live over there, I think." she pointed in the direction of a street off to the right. "She must have been spooked by something, 'cause she just ran off." Mac gave Tink a little pat on the head, and the dog looked up happily. She clearly liked the young woman.

"Well, that street is rumoured to be haunted," he joked, trying to clear the air from before. He still felt uneasy that she had caught him staring like that.

"In which case, my rent should be lower," she smiled back. She looked down at a silver watch on her wrist, and cursed. It was still relatively early in the morning, but the thought seemed to dismay her rather than comfort her. "Thanks again for finding her. We've got to go, though, before the girls wake up." She started to walk away, with Tink following closely behind. He wondered how she had gotten her so well trained. "It was nice meeting you," she called back to him.

The wind blew her hair a little in front of her eyes as she turned to wave at him, and for a moment he just stood there, dumbfounded, wishing that she would come back. He'd lived in this neighborhood his whole life and not met anyone like her. Not to say that there was anything particularly special about her; she was just a girl. But a foreign girl who had moved almost as North as possible without leaving England, which no one did unless they had to. And he didn't get that sense from her. She was a mystery that he now had to solve, seeing as there was little else to do in this town.

He jogged back home, consumed with thoughts of how their brief conversation could have been different.