To Love

When Amara pictured the end—as often as she did—never once had she expected to meet hers alone at night on one of the safest college campuses in the world. Barrelling toward her, sending her heart into a rapidfire arrangement that sounded disturbingly familiar to the drums of the college band, was a mongrel whose shadow seemed to stretch onward endlessly, till it was swallowed up by the edges of the dorm building. It would be futile to run, she knew, having already weighed in her head the speed of the approaching foe against her own, so, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she braced herself, praying silently that this was an unfortunate nightmare from which she would soon arise. 

Alas, no such luck.

She heard the sound of the beast’s daunting footsteps nearing, contemplating whether it would be of any use to scream for help when, firstly, everyone was likely asleep, and, secondly, she had no friends or even friendly acquaintances who would deign to offer her assistance.

“Please don’t kill me,” she muttered under her breath when she found herself still very much alive after a couple of minutes, and, albeit hesitantly, peeked an eye open. 

Instead of chancing the odds and running for the hills, Amara nearly turned crimson from embarrassment at her own dramatics, finding before her not some sort of creature from the depths of Tartarus—it seemed she had been reading far too much greek mythology for English Lit—but rather, an absolute fluffball of a golden retriever that looked up at her with beseeching eyes. Not only was the once “inescapable danger” a mere dog, it was but a puppy, not even reaching as far up as her knee, its seemingly large size having been a trick of the light. Amara let out a single, almost hysterical chuckle, before crouching down beside the bundle of fur, placing a gentle hand against its neck in search of a collar.

Strangely enough, she was met with no resistance, instead of what she had hoped would be cool polyester, and the brunette frowned, appalled, as she realized that the puppy must have been abandoned. 

“How did you get here, sweetie?” Amara asked absently, running a hand down the pup’s back as she tried to string together a possible explanation as to how a stray had ended up in the middle of campus. At three in the morning, nonetheless!

The retriever whimpered, as if to say that it didn’t know how itself, and she shook her head, scooping it up into an awkward hold as she stood up.

“You sure are heavy, boy,” Amara grunted. “What am I to do with you?”

Of course, she was met with naught but eerie silence, and cursing under her breath, Amara lifted the tiny thing all the way back to her room, dumping it down unceremoniously onto her couch with a wince, before flopping down on the other side.

“Are you a stray, too?” she asked quietly after a while, legs draped over the handrest, arms sprawled out on the couch cushions, feeling almost too pleased with the way her new companion had nuzzled his head into her lap. Ah, there she went, already calling it a him and caring far, far too much. For all she knew, she could have whisked him away from his respectably frantic owner; yet, for some reason, she sincerely doubted it. Her hand subconsciously found its way behind his ear, scratching there till the pup let out a small yip of contentment. It had been a while, truly, since Amara had felt such jubilance in the pleasure of another—whether human or canine.

“Do you have a name?” she continued, aware that she sounded like a moron, talking to an animal that would never reply, yet unable to deny the sense of belonging she felt in its company. “I’ll take that as a no. I’ll give you one, then.” She paused, biting her nail, as she thought for a moment before typing something into her phone’s search bar. “How about… Carr? Short for Carwyn. It’s unusual, I’m aware,” she chuckled, her free hand still stroking the dog’s head, “but believe me, it’s perfect.”

She sighed, yawning as she at last allowed her heavy eyelids to gradually close, and tucked Carwyn against her side.

“I don’t know what possessed me to bring you here,” she mumbled, the words almost getting lost to the wind from how gently they poured out. “I can hardly watch over myself, nevertheless a pet! But I’m too selfish to let you go,” she admitted, “when I see so much of myself in you. Tell me, how do you hold onto such hope?”

Carr eyed her in confusion, and Amara shook her head, scolding herself. She should be studying for her English exam, not weaseling her way into a bigger commitment.

Over the weeks, however, she found herself falling into a steady rhythm with her newfound best friend, smiling a little wider and laughing a little harder. Coming back to an empty room didn’t feel as dreadful now that she had a confidante to share in its small delights, and staying up late studying wasn’t as miserable with an unwavering gaze trained on her the entire time.

In the beginning, Amara kept Carr around because she felt a sense of duty toward him–a sort of innate desire to protect him through thick and thin. It was something about the way he intuitively knew when she was about to break down, how he was equal parts chaotic and calm. He was, in every sense of the phrase, the brightest star in a galaxy of darkness.

Christmas came and passed, the winter weather bearable solely due to her little retriever that forced her to jog alongside him, despite his having grown almost double in size. And as Amara yearned for the days when he was small enough to bounce in her arms, she realized how duty had gradually faded into something far deeper than that.

She found herself no longer worriedly making sure Carwyn was there when she woke up, no longer triple checking the locks on her doors, no longer holding him on an extra tight leash just in case.

Because, at some point, the fear of him leaving her had turned into a trust that he would stay. 

As Saturday swallowed up Friday, Amara slowly placed down Carr’s bowl of kibble at the familiar rap on the door. Saturdays were for mail, and Amara had been impatiently awaiting the new collar she had ordered for Carwyn.

“Hi—”

“Hello,” replied a gruff voice of a young man, annoyance somehow seeping into the words, "I was quite recently informed that you’re the one who stole my dog.”

Amara felt all the blood drain out of her face faster than the air out of a deflated balloon. “I—what—never,” she stammered out, choking over the words in her panic.

“Golden retriever? Cute as a button?” the man prodded. “Ring any bells?” 

“No…?”

As if cursed with the worst possible timing, Carr chose that precise moment to come running up, rubbing up against Amara’s leg as if he were a cat. 

“Wren? Heel, boy,” the man demanded, and as if invisibly compelled to do so, Carwyn popped up beside the stranger’s side. For a second, Amara just blinked in disbelief, her heart feeling as if it were being torn up and ripped to shreds.

“Please,” she pleaded. “His name is Carwyn.”

The man wrinkled his nose distastefully. “And whatever does that mean?”

Amara opened her mouth to reply, but the words fizzled and died on her tongue before she could force them past her lips, her eyes welling with desperate tears.

It was incomprehensible, in truth, the bond girl and dog had formed over such a short, seemingly meaningless, period of time. For Amara, with all her faults and imperfection, had found herself soul-destroyingly alone since escaping from the tyranny that was her home at eighteen.

Amara, with her too-large brown eyes, chaotic curls, and too-small nose, had isolated herself from the rest of the overwhelming clusters of students in fear of not being wanted. 

Amara, now only a few days past nineteen, had at last found home in not a place or person, but, rather, another being altogether.

So as this foreigner, this stranger scoffed at her, left her gaping as he left with her darling Carwyn, tore away the last chance she thought she’d been presented with to find her happiness, Amara let salt water soothe her cheeks and the bowl full of dog food lay abandoned on the floor.

And as her grip on the door loosened, slackened, as the open door quite ironically closed in her face, she called out after the man who was but a silhouette in the distance now.

“To love,” she shouted, her voice pained, years worth of sorrow somehow simultaneously culminating and overflowing in two simple words. “Carwyn means to love.”

Not long after, a custom, blue color arrived pristinely packaged at the door and promptly found itself tossed into the fireplace.

Amara learned that day that love could, quite literally, burn.