Karies is a mutt. He knows this well, and he carries the truth with quiet pride. It is not a flaw, not a shadow to shrink from. Being a mutt is a simple fact of life, as unremarkable as the color of the sky or the cycle of the seasons.
And yet, even with that truth etched deep in his being—seared into his brain, carved onto his bones—Karies mourns.
Now, curled in the cage that has defined his world for as long as memory feels safe to touch, he curses the blood that flows through his veins.
Karies is a kennel dog. He knows no home beyond the cold concrete floor and the rusted bars that confine him. His world is measured in the clink of a food bowl and the slow drip of water from a pipe overhead. He exists in fragments: the faint light that slants through the cracks in the kennel wall, the distant sound of laughter that never reaches him, and the heavy smell of damp fur and despair that clings to the air.
Karies is a kennel dog, bound by bars and invisible chains, yearning for nothing more than a single moment—a fleeting minute—of freedom.
Freedom.
Karies does not know its taste, its scent, or the way it feels against the skin. He knows it only through dreams—blurred and fleeting, like glimpses through frost-covered glass. In these dreams, the ground beneath his paws is soft, unyielding, and endless. The air is alive, free of the staleness that clings to the walls of his cage.
In his dreams, Karies runs.
His legs stretch, his paws thunder against the earth, and the wind tears through his fur. The sky above is vast and open, painted in hues he cannot name but feels he has always known. The world is a canvas of possibilities, and in his dreams, he is the artist, creating paths with every step.
But here, in the waking world, the bars are unyielding. They loom like silent sentinels, cold and indifferent, confining him to a space too small for the size of his longing. The kennel is alive with the sounds of others—barking, whining, scratching—but it is not a place of camaraderie. Each dog is an island, isolated by their own despair.
Karies presses his nose against the bars, feeling the chill seep into his flesh. Beyond them lies the world he can only imagine, where the sky stretches unbroken and the wind carries scents he has never known. Sometimes, if he strains hard enough, he can hear it—the rustling of leaves, the distant hum of a car, the song of a bird. These sounds are like breadcrumbs leading to a place he cannot reach, and they make his heart ache with a longing he cannot name.
He closes his eyes and wonders if freedom is truly worth yearning for, or if it’s just another cruel fantasy, designed to make the cage feel smaller. He knows the dangers of the world outside—the stories whispered among the other kennel dogs about those who escaped only to face hunger, cruelty, or worse. But deep in his chest, his heart whispers the answer: Run.
And so, he waits. Not patiently, not idly, but with a simmering defiance, his gaze fixed on the faint light that filters through the cracks in the kennel walls. Someday, the cage will open. Someday, his paws will know the earth.
But waiting is not easy. The days blur together in a gray haze, and the cage feels smaller with each passing moment. He paces the length of it, over and over, wearing a groove into the concrete floor. He claws at the bars until his paws bleed, then lies still, panting and defeated, until the fire in his chest reignites and he begins again.
There are moments when the fire dims, when exhaustion and hopelessness creep in like shadows, whispering that the bars will never break, that the cage is all he will ever know. But then he dreams again. He dreams of the wind, the earth, and the endless sky. He dreams of running.
And when he wakes, the fire burns brighter.
Karies does not know how or when the moment will come. He does not know if it will come at all. But he knows this: he is a mutt. He is a survivor. The blood in his veins, the very blood he curses, carries the strength of those who endured before him.
Someday, the cage will open. Someday, he will run.
